Questionable decisions
Perspective Taking and Self-Persuasion: Why “Putting Yourself in Their Shoes” Reduces Openness to Attitude Change
Rhia Catapano, Zakary Tormala & Derek Rucker
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Counterattitudinal-argument generation is a powerful tool for opening people up to alternative views. On the basis of decades of research, it should be especially effective when people adopt the perspective of individuals who hold alternative views. In the current research, however, we found the opposite: In three preregistered experiments (total N = 2,734), we found that taking the perspective of someone who endorses a counterattitudinal view lowers receptiveness to that view and reduces attitude change following a counterattitudinal-argument-generation task. This ironic effect can be understood through value congruence: Individuals who take the opposition’s perspective generate arguments that are incongruent with their own values, which diminishes receptiveness and attitude change. Thus, trying to “put yourself in their shoes” can ultimately undermine self-persuasion. Consistent with a value-congruence account, this backfire effect is attenuated when people take the perspective of someone who holds the counterattitudinal view yet has similar overall values.
Shooting the Messenger
Leslie John, Hayley Blunden & Heidi Liu
Harvard Working Paper, January 2019
Abstract:
Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to ‘shoot the messenger,’ deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable. In a pre-registered lab experiment, participants rated messengers who delivered bad news from a random drawing as relatively unlikeable (Study 1). A second set of studies points to the specificity of the effect: Study 2A shows that it is unique to the (innocent) messenger, and not mere bystanders. Study 2B shows that it is distinct from merely receiving information that one disagrees with. We suggest that people’s tendency to deem bearers of bad news as unlikeable stems in part from their desire to make sense of chance processes. Consistent with this account, receiving bad news activates the desire to sense-make (Study 3A), and in turn, activating this desire enhances the tendency to dislike bearers of bad news (Study 3B). Next, stemming from the idea that unexpected outcomes heighten the desire to sense-make, Study 4 shows that when bad news is unexpected, messenger dislike is pronounced. Finally, consistent with the notion that people fulfill the desire to sense-make by attributing agency to entities adjacent to chance events, messenger dislike is correlated with the belief that the messenger had malevolent motives (Studies 5A, 5B, & 5C). Studies 6A & 6B go further, manipulating messenger motives independently from news valence to suggest its causal role in our process account: the tendency to dislike bearers of bad news is mitigated when recipients are made aware of the benevolence of the messenger’s motives.
Loss Aversion in Professional Golf
Ryan Elmore & Andrew Urbaczewski
University of Denver Working Paper, January 2019
Abstract:
We examine loss aversion in the context of professional golf, and in particular how it plays out in certain US Opens. We analyze data from two courses, Pebble Beach Golf Links and Oakmont Country Club, each of which has hosted five US Opens in the modern golfing era. In the last two tournaments at each course, they changed the par rating of a par 5 to a par 4 without fundamentally altering the hole. In this natural, albeit unintentional, experimental setting, we find evidence of significant loss-aversive behavior in the world’s best golfers based solely on a hole’s par rating.
Sour Grapes in the Lab and Field: A Test of Access-Based Beliefs
Vinayak Alladi
University of California Working Paper, November 2018
Abstract:
Standard economic theory holds that beliefs about an alternative’s value are independent of the probability of it being in the choice set. Using data from two lab experiments (conducted in the US and India) and one field experiment (conducted in the US), I find consistent evidence that agents have systematically lower beliefs of the value of alternatives that they have a low probability of accessing. Such access-based beliefs are at odds with prominent models of decision under uncertainty, but are compatible with models of motivated cognition. Additionally, the effects appear larger for poorer individuals, suggesting that access-based beliefs may partially explain low levels of investment amongst the poor.
Diversity may help the uninterested: Evidence that exposure to counter-stereotypes promotes cognitive reflection for people low (but not high) in need for cognition
Ekaterina Damer, Thomas Webb & Richard Crisp
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous theorizing and research has linked exposure to counter-stereotypical diversity (e.g., an Oxford-educated bricklayer) to enhanced cognitive performance and creativity. However, it is unclear whether people’s motivation to cognitively engage with the counter-stereotypical information (i.e., need for cognition [NFC]) influences this effect. Across three experiments (N = 887) we found consistent support for the idea that exposure to counter-stereotypes (CSTs) promotes cognitive reflection for people low in NFC (d+ = .34). In contrast, people high in NFC showed decreased cognitive reflection after being exposed to CSTs (d+ = −.18), although the evidence for the latter effect was weak. These findings suggest that exposure to CSTs can promote cognitive reflection unless people have a strong desire to understand and predict outcomes and events, in which case exposure to CSTs may backfire. Taken together, we conclude that motivation to engage in cognitive activity may be an important consideration for research and interventions involving social and cultural diversity.
Wise reasoning benefits from emodiversity, irrespective of emotional intensity
Igor Grossmann, Harrison Oakes & Henri Santos
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
The role of emotions in wise reasoning is not well understood. On the one hand, work on emotional regulation suggests that downregulating intense emotions may lead to wiser reasoning. On the other hand, emerging work suggests that recognizing and balancing emotions provides critical insights into life experiences, suggesting an alternative path to wiser reasoning. We present a series of observational, diary, and experimental studies (N = 3,678 participants) addressing these possibilities, examining how wisdom-related characteristics of reasoning — epistemic humility, recognition of a world in flux, self-transcendence, recognition of diverse perspectives on an issue, and search for integration of diverse perspectives/compromise — relate to emotional intensity and to emodiversity (i.e., emotional richness and evenness) in a given situation. Across 5 studies, testing wisdom nominees and examining individual differences and manipulated wise reasoning, wisdom-related characteristics appeared in conjunction with emodiversity, independent of downregulated emotional intensity. The positive association between emodiversity and wisdom-related characteristics occurred consistently for daily challenges, unresolved interpersonal conflicts, as well as political conflicts. The relationship between emotional intensity and wisdom-related characteristics was less systematic, with some studies showing a positive (rather than negative) association between emotional intensity and wisdom. Together, these results demonstrate that wise reasoning does not necessarily require uniform emotional downregulation. Instead, wise reasoning can also benefit from a rich and balanced emotional life.
Social learning strategies regulate the wisdom and madness of interactive crowds
Wataru Toyokawa, Andrew Whalen & Kevin Laland
Nature Human Behaviour, February 2019, Pages 183–193
Abstract:
Why groups of individuals sometimes exhibit collective ‘wisdom’ and other times maladaptive ‘herding’ is an enduring conundrum. Here we show that this apparent conflict is regulated by the social learning strategies deployed. We examined the patterns of human social learning through an interactive online experiment with 699 participants, varying both task uncertainty and group size, then used hierarchical Bayesian model fitting to identify the individual learning strategies exhibited by participants. Challenging tasks elicit greater conformity among individuals, with rates of copying increasing with group size, leading to high probabilities of herding among large groups confronted with uncertainty. Conversely, the reduced social learning of small groups, and the greater probability that social information would be accurate for less-challenging tasks, generated ‘wisdom of the crowd’ effects in other circumstances. Our model-based approach provides evidence that the likelihood of collective intelligence versus herding can be predicted, resolving a long-standing puzzle in the literature.