The more you know
The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis: Drivers of Prediction Accuracy in World Politics
Barbara Mellers et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article extends psychological methods and concepts into a domain that is as profoundly consequential as it is poorly understood: intelligence analysis. We report findings from a geopolitical forecasting tournament that assessed the accuracy of more than 150,000 forecasts of 743 participants on 199 events occurring over 2 years. Participants were above average in intelligence and political knowledge relative to the general population. Individual differences in performance emerged, and forecasting skills were surprisingly consistent over time. Key predictors were (a) dispositional variables of cognitive ability, political knowledge, and open-mindedness; (b) situational variables of training in probabilistic reasoning and participation in collaborative teams that shared information and discussed rationales (Mellers, Ungar, et al., 2014); and (c) behavioral variables of deliberation time and frequency of belief updating. We developed a profile of the best forecasters; they were better at inductive reasoning, pattern detection, cognitive flexibility, and open-mindedness. They had greater understanding of geopolitics, training in probabilistic reasoning, and opportunities to succeed in cognitively enriched team environments. Last but not least, they viewed forecasting as a skill that required deliberate practice, sustained effort, and constant monitoring of current affairs.
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Constructing Rich False Memories of Committing Crime
Julia Shaw & Stephen Porter
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Memory researchers long have speculated that certain tactics may lead people to recall crimes that never occurred, and thus could potentially lead to false confessions. This is the first study to provide evidence suggesting that full episodic false memories of committing crime can be generated in a controlled experimental setting. With suggestive memory-retrieval techniques, participants were induced to generate criminal and noncriminal emotional false memories, and we compared these false memories with true memories of emotional events. After three interviews, 70% of participants were classified as having false memories of committing a crime (theft, assault, or assault with a weapon) that led to police contact in early adolescence and volunteered a detailed false account. These reported false memories of crime were similar to false memories of noncriminal events and to true memory accounts, having the same kinds of complex descriptive and multisensory components. It appears that in the context of a highly suggestive interview, people can quite readily generate rich false memories of committing crime.
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Daniel Chen, Tobias Moskowitz & Kelly Shue
University of Chicago Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
Can misperceptions of what constitutes a fair process lead to unfair decisions? Previous research on the law of small numbers and the gambler's fallacy suggests that many people view sequential streaks of 0's or 1's as unlikely to occur even though such streaks often occur by chance. We hypothesize that the gambler’s fallacy leads agents to engage in negatively autocorrelated decision-making. We document negatively autocorrelated decisions in three high-stakes contexts: refugee asylum courts, loan application review, and baseball umpire calls. This negative autocorrelation is stronger among more moderate and less experienced decision-makers, following longer streaks of decisions in one direction, and when agents face weaker incentives for accuracy. We show that the negative autocorrelation in decision-making is unlikely to be driven by potential alternative explanations such as sequential contrast effects, quotas, or preferences to treat two teams fairly.
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Sequential Judgment Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from the National Basketball Association
Paul Gift
Economic Inquiry, April 2015, Pages 1259–1274
Abstract:
This study investigates the impact of past performance evaluations on future decisions involving judgment. I analyze the decisions of highly skilled and highly monitored referees regarding offensive fouls and violations in the National Basketball Association. After testing for equilibrium adjustments in player behavior, findings support a hypothesis of increased referee scrutiny on one team following a potentially questionable call on the opposing team. Results are inconclusive for subsequent changes in scrutiny toward the original violating team. The analysis provides a nonexperimental test of sequential bias on elite employees working under strict performance standards, and suggests a likely role for sequential judgment effects in other areas of economic activity.
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Thinking Outside the Box: Multiple Identity Mind-Sets Affect Creative Problem Solving
Sarah Gaither et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Rigid thinking is associated with less creativity, suggesting that priming a flexible mind-set should boost creative thought. In three studies, we investigate whether priming multiple social identities predicts more creativity in domains unrelated to social identity. Study 1 asked monoracial and multiracial participants to write about their racial identities before assessing creativity. Priming a multiracial’s racial identity led to greater creativity compared to a no-prime control. Priming a monoracial’s racial identity did not affect creativity. Study 2 showed that reminding monoracials that they, too, have multiple identities increased creativity. Study 3 replicated this effect and demonstrated that priming a multiracial identity for monoracials did not affect creativity. These results are the first to investigate the association between flexible identities and flexible thinking, highlighting the potential for identity versatility to predict cognitive differences between individuals who have singular versus multifaceted views of their social selves.
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Gueorgui Kolev, Gonçalo Pina & Federico Todeschini
Kyklos, February 2015, Pages 65–80
Abstract:
We find evidence of suboptimal decisions leading to underperformance in a policy experiment where two teams of professionals compete in a tournament (National Hockey League shootout) performing a task (penalty shot) sequentially. Before an exogenous policy change, home teams had to perform the task second in the sequence. After the policy change, home teams were given the choice to lead or to follow in the sequence. Home teams should move first only when this is optimal, and this should lead them to winning the tournament more often. We find that after given the choice, home teams most of the time choose to move first in the sequence, and this results in a lower winning frequency for them. Contrary to what economic theory would predict, we find that an expanded choice set can lead to worse outcomes for the agents.
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William Hart et al.
Cognition, April 2015, Pages 1–8
Abstract:
Because people lack access to the many unconscious thought processes that influence perception, they often have the experience of seeing things “as they are”. Psychologists have long presumed that this “naïve realism” plays a role in driving human confidence and closed-mindedness. Yet, surprisingly, these intuitive links have not been empirically demonstrated. Presumably, if naïve realism drives confidence and closed-mindedness, then disabusing people of naïve realism should reduce confidence in one’s judgments and instill openness to change. In the present experiment, we found that participants who read about naïve realism and also experienced various perceptual illusions showed reduced confidence in their social judgments and indicated a greater willingness to change their judgments relative to participants who merely read about naïve realism and perceptual illusions, participants who received failure feedback on an earlier task, or participants left in a baseline state. Broadly, the present research provides evidence for an untested origin of human confidence and closed-mindedness and may have broad implications for decision making.
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Frank Wieber, Lukas Thürmer & Peter Gollwitzer
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
When groups receive negative feedback on their progress toward a set goal, they often escalate rather than temper their commitment. To attenuate such escalation, we suggest initiating a self-distancing response (i.e., taking the perspective of a neutral observer) by forming implementation intentions when, where, and how to act (i.e., making if-then plans). Implementation intentions should help groups to translate a self-distancing intention into action. In line with this reasoning, only groups that had added implementation intentions to their goal to make optimal investment decisions reduced their high levels of investment (Study 1) or maintained their moderate levels of investment (Study 2) after negative feedback. Groups that had merely formed goal intentions, however, escalated even when their decision goal was supplemented with self-distancing instructions (Study 1), and they escalated as much as control groups without such a goal (Study 2). Implications for improving group decision making by implementation intentions are discussed.
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Mark Nieuwenstein et al.
Judgment and Decision Making, January 2015, Pages 1–17
Abstract:
Are difficult decisions best made after a momentary diversion of thought? Previous research addressing this important question has yielded dozens of experiments in which participants were asked to choose the best of several options (e.g., cars or apartments) either after conscious deliberation, or after a momentary diversion of thought induced by an unrelated task. The results of these studies were mixed. Some found that participants who had first performed the unrelated task were more likely to choose the best option, whereas others found no evidence for this so-called unconscious thought advantage (UTA). The current study examined two accounts of this inconsistency in previous findings. According to the reliability account, the UTA does not exist and previous reports of this effect concern nothing but spurious effects obtained with an unreliable paradigm. In contrast, the moderator account proposes that the UTA is a real effect that occurs only when certain conditions are met in the choice task. To test these accounts, we conducted a meta-analysis and a large-scale replication study (N = 399) that met the conditions deemed optimal for replicating the UTA. Consistent with the reliability account, the large-scale replication study yielded no evidence for the UTA, and the meta-analysis showed that previous reports of the UTA were confined to underpowered studies that used relatively small sample sizes. Furthermore, the results of the large-scale study also dispelled the recent suggestion that the UTA might be gender-specific. Accordingly, we conclude that there exists no reliable support for the claim that a momentary diversion of thought leads to better decision making than a period of deliberation.
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Money, Time, and the Stability of Consumer Preferences
Leonard Lee et al.
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Consumers often make product choices that involve the consideration of money and time. Building on dual-process models, the authors propose that these two basic resources activate qualitatively different modes of processing: while money is processed analytically, time is processed more affectively. Importantly, this distinction then influences the stability of consumer preferences. An initial set of three experiments demonstrates that, compared with a control condition free of the consideration of either resource, money consideration generates significantly more violations of transitivity in product choice, while time consideration has no such impact. The next three experiments use multiple approaches to demonstrate the role of different processing modes associated with money versus time consideration in this result. Finally, two additional experiments test ways in which the cognitive noise associated with the analytical processing that money consideration triggers could be reduced, resulting in more consistent preferences.
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John Petrocelli, Sally Williams & Joshua Clarkson
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2015, Pages 82–94
Abstract:
The present research explores a new effect of regulatory resource depletion on persuasion by proposing that the experience of depletion can increase or decrease openness to attitude change by undermining perceived counterargument strength. Ironically, this openness is hypothesized to be strongest for individuals holding attitudes with high (versus low) certainty, as individuals should expect high certainty attitudes to be more resistant — an expectation the experience of depletion is hypothesized to violate. Supporting the hypotheses, three studies demonstrate that individuals expect high certainty attitudes to be stable (Study 1), the experience of resource depletion violates this expectancy and increases the openness to counterattack (Study 2), and this openness is driven by decreased perceptions of counterargument strength (Study 3). By augmenting (attenuating) the effect of argument quality for high (low) certainty attitudes, the experience of depletion on perceived counterargument performance offers insight into novel means by which resource depletion can influence persuasion.
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No pain no gain: The positive impact of punishment on the strategic regulation of accuracy
Michelle Arnold, Lisa Chisholm & Toby Prike
Memory, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies have shown that punishing people through a large penalty for volunteering incorrect information typically leads them to withhold more information (metacognitive response bias), but it does not appear to influence their ability to distinguish between their own correct and incorrect answers (metacognitive accuracy discrimination). The goal of the current study was to demonstrate that punishing people for volunteering incorrect information — versus rewarding volunteering correct information — produces more effective metacognitive accuracy discrimination. All participants completed three different general-knowledge tests: a reward test (high points for correct volunteered answers), a baseline test (equal points/penalties for volunteered correct/incorrect answers) and a punishment test (high penalty for incorrect volunteered answers). Participants were significantly better at distinguishing between their own correct and incorrect answers on the punishment than reward test, which has implications for situations requiring effective accuracy monitoring.
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Marco Sahm & Robert von Weizsäcker
Managerial and Decision Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the influence of reason and intuition on decision-making over time. Facing a sequence of similar problems, agents can either decide rationally according to expected utility theory or intuitively according to case-based decision theory. Rational decisions are more precise but create higher costs, though these costs may decrease over time. We find that intuition will outperform reason in the long run if individuals are sufficiently ambitious. Moreover, intuitive decisions are prevalent in the early and late stages of a learning process, whereas reason governs decisions in intermediate stages. Examples range from playing behavior in games like chess to professional decisions during a manager's career.
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Fear-Appeal Messages: Message Processing and Affective Attitudes
Nancy Rhodes
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theories of fear appeals suggest that fear-inducing messages can be effective, but public service announcements (PSAs) that emphasize fear do not always lead to desired change in behavior. To better understand how fear-inducing PSAs are processed, an experiment testing the effects of exposure to safe-driving messages is reported. College students (N = 108) viewed PSAs of varying message sensation value (MSV). Results indicated that messages with medium MSV resulted in intentions to drive more slowly than messages with low or high MSV. Measures of affective attitudes indicated that medium MSV messages resulted in fast driving being rated as less fun and exciting than those of either high or low MSV. These affective evaluations mediated the effect of message exposure on driving intention. Message derogation was not related to message intensity. Production of message-related thoughts decreased, and emotional thoughts increased with message intensity. This decrease in processing of message content suggested a limited capacity explanation for the effect of highly intense fear appeals.
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Anxious and Egocentric: How Specific Emotions Influence Perspective Taking
Andrew Todd et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
People frequently feel anxious. Although prior research has extensively studied how feeling anxious shapes intrapsychic aspects of cognition, much less is known about how anxiety affects interpersonal aspects of cognition. Here, we examine the influence of incidental experiences of anxiety on perceptual and conceptual forms of perspective taking. Compared with participants experiencing other negative, high-arousal emotions (i.e., anger or disgust) or neutral feelings, anxious participants displayed greater egocentrism in their mental-state reasoning: They were more likely to describe an object using their own spatial perspective, had more difficulty resisting egocentric interference when identifying an object from others’ spatial perspectives, and relied more heavily on privileged knowledge when inferring others’ beliefs. Using both experimental-causal-chain and measurement-of-mediation approaches, we found that these effects were explained, in part, by uncertainty appraisal tendencies. Further supporting the role of uncertainty, a positive emotion associated with uncertainty (i.e., surprise) produced increases in egocentrism that were similar to anxiety. Collectively, the results suggest that incidentally experiencing emotions associated with uncertainty increase reliance on one’s own egocentric perspective when reasoning about the mental states of others.
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Zhongqiang(Tak) Huang & Robert Wyer
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2015, Pages 112–123
Abstract:
Thoughts about one's death can not only induce death anxiety but also activate death-related semantic concepts. These effects of mortality salience have different implications for judgments and behavior. We demonstrate these differences in an investigation of variety-seeking behavior. Four experiments showed that the anxiety elicited by thinking about one's own death decreased the variety of participants' choices in an unrelated multiple-choice decision situation, whereas activating semantic concepts of death without inducing anxiety increased it. Moreover, inducing cognitive load decreased the anxiety-inducing effect of mortality salience, leading its concept-activation effect to predominate. The accessibility of death-related semantic concepts spontaneously induces a global processing style that increases the range of acceptable choice alternatives in a variety-seeking task, and this occurs regardless of how mortality salience is induced. However, the effect of inducing death anxiety, which is driven by a desire for stability, may override the effect of semantic concept activation when participants think about their own death.
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Turning molehills into mountains: Sleepiness increases workplace interpretive bias
Larissa Barber & Christopher Budnick
Journal of Organizational Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies draw from evolutionary theory to assess whether sleepiness increases interpretive biases in workplace social judgments. Study 1 established a relationship between sleepiness and interpretive bias using ambiguous interpersonal scenarios from a measure commonly used in personnel selection (N = 148). Study 2 explored the boundary conditions of the sleepiness–interpretive bias link via an experimental online field survey of U.S. adults (N = 433). Sleepiness increased interpretive bias when social threats were clearly present (unfair workplace) but did not affect bias in the absence of threat (fair workplace). Study 3 replicated and extended findings from the previous two studies using objective measures of sleep loss and a quasi-experimental manipulation of minor sleep loss (N = 175). Negative affect, ego depletion, or personality variables did not influence the observed relationships. Overall, results suggest that a self-protection/evolutionary perspective best explains the effects of sleepiness on workplace interpretive biases. These studies advance the current research on sleep in organizations by adding a cognitive “threat interpretation” bias approach to past work examining the emotional reaction/behavioral side of sleep disruption. Interpretive biases due to sleepiness may have significant implications for employee health and counterproductive behavior.
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The Role of Self-Affirmation and User Status in Readers’ Response to Identity-Threatening News
Xiao Wang, Andrea Hickerson & Laura Arpan
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research suggests that the effect of self-affirmation on readers’ responses to media messages is not uniform across groups. The present experiment examined whether self-affirmation and group/user status interacted in influencing participants’ responses to a news article with identity-threatening information related to Apple sweatshops in China. Results revealed that for non-Apple users, self-affirmation influenced their appraisal of emotional responses, led them to perceive more news slant and more negative influence of the article on neutral Americans, and lowered their future purchase intentions. The effect of self-affirmation was nonsignificant among Apple users, which could have been thwarted by Apple users’ high defensiveness. Both theoretical implications for future self-affirmation research and practical implications are discussed.