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Confirmation Bias. We tend to ask questions that will confirm our hypotheses
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Confirmation Bias • We tend to ask questions that will confirm our hypotheses • Snyder & Swan - told to find out whether someone is an introvert people tend to ask questions like “what factors make it hard for you to really open up to people?” Told to find out whether someone is an extrovert people tend to ask questions like “What kind of situations do you seek out if you want to meet new people?” • When they let people answer these questions and other people listened to only the answers they thought the respondents were like the questions asked • Base rates (Study 3) and monetary incentives to be accurate (Study 4) do not eliminate this effect
The Trope & Bassok Response to the Snyder & Swan Study • People would prefer diagnostic questions to the types of questions Snyder & Swan allowed them to choose. • What questions do people prefer in testing whether someone is an extravert, “Do you shy away from social interactions?” or “Do you talk loudly?” • People preferred, “Do you shy away from social interactions?” • Further testing showed that people do prefer hypothesis confirming questions, but diagnosticity of the questions is a stronger determinant of what questions people want to ask.
Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977) -Behavioral Confirmation • Men believe women are attractive or unattractive and then they have a real conversation. The two sides of the conversation were taped separately. • Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing - men ask women questions that elicit physical attractiveness stereotype (men were more pleasant to women perceived to be attractive) • Behavior Confirmation - the men’s behavior creates confirmation of the stereotype (men’s attitude toward the women created it’s own reality)
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies • Word, Zanna, & Cooper (1974) • Study 1 - White participants interview Black or White Confederate • Study 2 - White confederates trained to interview like interviewers in Study 1 interview White participants • Rosenthal & Jacobson - teacher expectancy effects • In a number of classrooms students are picked out at random and designated to be late bloomers who are going to exhibit a large spurt in their learning ability. • These students did do better and it seems to be mediated by teacher’s interactions with these students.
Perceiving Causality • Nisbett & Wilson Studies • Rasing the Tide • Power saw experiment • Which pantyhose do you like? • Wilson Relationship Studies • List all the positive and negative qualities of your partner • Tell me how much you feel about your partner • Which predicts better?
Perceiving Relationships Between Variables • 2 X 2 tables and how we don’t use them • Illusory Correlation • Chapman & Chapman studies • Hamilton studies - Stereotype formation through illusory correlation? • Failure to Detect Actual Correlation • Chapman & Chapman studies • Jennings, Amabile, & Ross - correlation between walking sticks and height
Hypothesis Testing and 2 X 2 Tables Occurred Yes No Predicted Yes A X No Y Z
When are people accurate? • People can perceive correlations pretty well if they are high • When their theories are right about how the world works people are fairly accurate • When they are familiar with the domain - such as whether they agree with others evaluations of people they know well
Ratings of ability vs. personality (Kunda & Nisbett, 1986) • People are much more accurate in estimating consistency across situations for abilities than for personality • They correctly perceived that people’s abilities vary across situations (someone who is smart in math may not be in English) • They incorrectly overestimated the consistency of people’s personality (someone who is shy in class will be shy at parties)
How Do We Make More Complex Judgements with Many Variables? • We understand things better when they are presented in a storyline - Story model of jury decision making (Pennington & Hastie studies) • People spontaneously construct stories when viewing a trial • How easy or difficult it is to construct a story influences the verdict that juries make. • We like stories best if they have • Explanatory breadth • Simplicity • Extent to which they can be explained by other information
Counterfactual Thinking - What Caused This to Go Wrong? • Imagine you get to the airport and you missed your plane • By an hour or by five minutes • What would make you more upset? • Anticipatory Regret • Notion of Normality and Mental Models • Closeness of the Counterfactual to the Actual Event- Airplane Example, Olympic Medals • Exception vs. Routine - exception causes more counterfactual thinking • Controllability
Other Factors that Affect Our Counterfactual Thoughts • Action vs. Inaction - do you feel worse if you did something or didn’t do something? • Black Jack (Miller & Taylor, 1995) • The importance of time (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995) - what we regret more depends on when it occurred • Ease of Mental Replication (Miller, Turnbull, & McFarland, 1989) - Stealing cookies from the cookie jar • Functions of Counterfactuals • May prevent future problems • Let us feel better by imagining how things could have been worse
