Getting it right
Do I Think BLS Data are BS? The Consequences of Conspiracy Theories
Katherine Levine Einstein & David Glick
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
While the willingness of people to believe unfounded and conspiratorial explanations of events is fascinating and troubling, few have addressed the broader impacts of the dissemination of conspiracy claims. We use survey experiments to assess whether realistic exposure to a conspiracy claim affects conspiracy beliefs and trust in government. These experiments yield interesting and potentially surprising results. We discover that respondents who are asked whether they believe in a conspiracy claim after reading a specific allegation actually report lower beliefs than those not exposed to the specific claim. Turning to trust in government, we find that exposure to a conspiracy claim has a potent negative effect on trust in government services and institutions including those unconnected to the allegations. Moreover, and consistent with our belief experiment, we find that first asking whether people believe in the conspiracy mitigates the negative trust effects. Combining these findings suggests that conspiracy exposure increases conspiracy beliefs and reduces trust, but that asking about beliefs prompts additional thinking about the claims which softens and/or reverses the exposure’s effect on beliefs and trust.
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Thomas Ormerod & Coral Dando
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Current aviation security systems identify behavioral indicators of deception to assess risks to flights, but they lack a strong psychological basis or empirical validation. We present a new method that tests the veracity of passenger accounts. In an in vivo double-blind randomized-control trial conducted in international airports, security agents detected 66% of deceptive passengers using the veracity test method compared with less than 5% using behavioral indicator recognition. As well as revealing advantages of veracity testing over behavioral indicator identification, the study provides the highest levels to date of deception detection in a realistic setting where the known base rate of deceptive individuals is low.
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Lies, Damn Lies, and Expectations: How Base Rates Inform Lie–Truth Judgments
Chris Street & Daniel Richardson
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We are biased towards thinking that people are telling the truth. Our study represents the first test of how beliefs about the base rate of truths and lies affect this truth bias. Raters were told either 20, 50 or 80% of the speakers would be telling the truth. As the speaker delivered their statement, participants indicated moment by moment whether they thought the speaker was lying or being truthful. At the end of the statement, they made a final lie–truth judgment and indicated their confidence. While viewing the statement, base rate beliefs had an early influence, but as time progressed, all conditions showed a truth bias. In the final judgment at the end of the statement, raters were truth biased when expecting mostly truths but did not show a lie bias when expecting mostly lies. We conclude base rate beliefs have an early influence, but over time, a truth bias dominates.
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The Effects of Subtle Misinformation in News Headlines
Ullrich Ecker et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
Information presented in news articles can be misleading without being blatantly false. Experiment 1 examined the effects of misleading headlines that emphasize secondary content rather than the article’s primary gist. We investigated how headlines affect readers’ processing of factual news articles and opinion pieces, using both direct memory measures and more indirect reasoning measures. Experiment 2 examined an even more subtle type of misdirection. We presented articles featuring a facial image of one of the protagonists, and examined whether the headline and opening paragraph of an article affected the impressions formed of that face even when the person referred to in the headline was not the person portrayed. We demonstrate that misleading headlines affect readers’ memory, their inferential reasoning and behavioral intentions, as well as the impressions people form of faces. On a theoretical level, we argue that these effects arise not only because headlines constrain further information processing, biasing readers toward a specific interpretation, but also because readers struggle to update their memory in order to correct initial misconceptions. Practical implications for news consumers and media literacy are discussed.
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An Episodic Specificity Induction Enhances Means-End Problem Solving in Young and Older Adults
Kevin Madore & Daniel Schacter
Psychology and Aging, forthcoming
Abstract:
Episodic memory plays an important role not only in remembering past experiences, but also in constructing simulations of future experiences and solving means-end social problems. We recently found that an episodic specificity induction — brief training in recollecting details of past experiences — enhances performance of young and older adults on memory and imagination tasks. Here we tested the hypothesis that this specificity induction would also positively impact a means-end problem-solving task on which age-related changes have been linked to impaired episodic memory. Young and older adults received the specificity induction or a control induction before completing a means-end problem-solving task, as well as memory and imagination tasks. Consistent with previous findings, older adults provided fewer relevant steps on problem solving than did young adults, and their responses also contained fewer internal (i.e., episodic) details across the 3 tasks. There was no difference in the number of other (e.g., irrelevant) steps on problem solving or external (i.e., semantic) details generated on the 3 tasks as a function of age. Critically, the specificity induction increased the number of relevant steps and internal details (but not other steps or external details) that both young and older adults generated in problem solving compared with the control induction, as well as the number of internal details (but not external details) generated for memory and imagination. Our findings support the idea that episodic retrieval processes are involved in means-end problem solving, extend the range of tasks on which a specificity induction targets these processes, and show that the problem-solving performance of older adults can benefit from a specificity induction as much as that of young adults.
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Becky Choma et al.
Journal of Individual Differences, Summer 2014, Pages 177-183
Abstract:
Although much is known about the motivational underpinnings of authoritarian ideologies, less is known about the underlying mental abilities. In the present study, the relations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and reasoning abilities were investigated. Participants (n = 198) completed measures of reasoning ability (Necessary Arithmetic Operations task, Diagramming Relationships task), RWA, and SDO. Greater RWA was only associated with lower ability to recognize hierarchical relationships; neither RWA nor SDO were associated with general arithmetic reasoning ability. Implications for understanding ideology are discussed.
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Food for creativity: Tyrosine promotes deep thinking
Lorenza Colzato, Annelies de Haan & Bernhard Hommel
Psychological Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Anecdotal evidence suggests that creative people sometimes use food to overcome mental blocks and lack of inspiration, but empirical support for this possibility is still lacking. In this study, we investigated whether creativity in convergent- and divergent-thinking tasks is promoted by the food supplement L-Tyrosine (TYR) — a biochemical precursor of dopamine, which is assumed to drive cognitive control and creativity. We found no evidence for an impact of TYR on divergent thinking (“brainstorming”) but it did promote convergent (“deep”) thinking. As convergent thinking arguably requires more cognitive top-down control, this finding suggests that TYR can facilitate control-hungry creative operations. Hence, the food we eat may affect the way we think.
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Beating Irrationality: Does Delegating to IT Alleviate the Sunk Cost Effect?
Philipp Herrmann, Dennis Kundisch & Mohammad Rahman
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the impact of delegating decision making to information technology (IT) on an important human decision bias — the sunk cost effect. To address our research question, we use a unique data set containing actual market transaction data for approximately 7,000 pay-per-bid auctions. In contrast with the laboratory experiments of previous related studies, our research presents the unique advantage of investigating the effects of IT-enabled automated bidding agents on the occurrence of a decision bias in real market transactions. We identify normatively irrational decision scenarios and analyze consumer behavior in these situations. Our findings show that participants with a higher behavioral investment are more likely to violate the assumption of normative economic rationality because of the sunk cost effect. More importantly, we observe that the delegation of auction participation, i.e., actual bidding, to IT significantly reduces the occurrence of the sunk cost effect in subsequent decisions made by the same individual. We can attribute this reduction to the comparably lower behavioral investments incurred by auction participants who delegate their bidding to IT. In particular, by mitigating different contributors of behavioral investments, delegating to IT reduces the likelihood of the occurrence of the sunk cost effect by more than 50%.
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Annika Scholl & Kai Sassenberg
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, forthcoming
Abstract:
E-mail allows individuals to deliberate on their communication before sending it off. For instance, communication partners can easily take their time to ponder how best to frame a request before they actually send a message. Individuals at times strategically exploit this opportunity to deliberate in order to tailor messages to their communication partner, such as when communicating with a relatively more powerful person. As social power reduces concerns about impression management, we predicted that individuals deliberate more while composing e-mail messages under low (vs. high) power. This assumption was tested with well-established power priming. As such, we expected that experienced power in one context would diminish deliberation times during a subsequent e-mail communication. An experiment manipulating the experience of (low vs. high) power and measuring deliberation times during e-mail composition supported this hypothesis. The findings thus indicate how social power alters deliberation times. More importantly, the results show that individuals not only strategically deliberate during e-mail communication in line with their current situation, but also in line with their social standing in a previous situation (here, their experience of power).
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Hengchen Dai, Cindy Chan & Cassie Mogilner
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, September 2014
Abstract:
Do people rely on consumer reviews differently when making experiential purchases (events to live through) than when making material purchases (objects to keep)? Six experiments reveal that people perceive consumer reviews to be less useful and are less likely to seek consumer reviews for experiential purchases than for material purchases. This effect was found among participants contemplating an experiential or material purchase (Studies 1A, 2-5), and among participants contemplating the experiential or material aspects of the same purchase (Study 1B). Importantly, it is not that all information is discounted more for experiential purchases than material purchases, because participants perceived company provided information to be no less useful for experiential purchases (Study 2). Rather, the effect seems specific to consumer reviews. People believe that others’ evaluations will be less representative of their own evaluations for experiential purchases than for material purchases, and this drives the value people place on other consumers’ reviews (Studies 3-5). Although a growing body of work has shown the range of outcomes that follow from consuming experiential versus material purchases, this is the first examination of the decision processes leading into these two purchase types.
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The Tongue-Tied Chameleon: The Role of Nonconscious Mimicry in the Behavioral Confirmation Process
Rachelle Smith et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, January 2015, Pages 179–182
Abstract:
The current study examines whether mimicry of negative behaviors occurs in ongoing social interactions, and whether mimicry may be a process through which one person’s negative expectations lead to another person’s expectancy-consistent behaviors. Using a simulated phone interview, applicant participants heard questions from an interviewer in either a neutral or negative tone of voice. Audio-recordings of applicant responses were transcribed to remove all tone information, and coders assessed applicant performance. Audio-recordings were subjected to a low-pass filter to remove recognizable words but retain vocal tone, and different coders assessed applicant tone of voice. Evidence of both behavioral mimicry and expectancy-consistent performance was found. Importantly, interviewer tone had a significant indirect effect on applicant performance through its influence on applicant tone. Nonconscious behavioral mimicry of negative behaviors occurs in social interactions, is not always associated with positive outcomes, and serves as a process through which behavioral confirmation can occur.
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The Dynamic Nature of Risk Perceptions After a Fatal Transit Accident
Kris Wernstedt & Pamela Murray-Tuite
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
In 2009, two trains of Washington, DC's Metrorail system collided, resulting in nine deaths and 50 serious injuries. Based on a multiwave survey of Metrorail users in the months after the crash, this article reports how the accident appears to have (1) changed over time the tradeoffs among safety, speed, frequency of service, cost, and reliability that the transit users stated they were willing to make in the postaccident period and (2) altered transit users’ concerns about safety as a function of time and distance from the accident site. We employ conditional logit models to examine tradeoffs among stated preferences for system performance measures after the accident, as well as the influence that respondent characteristics of transit use, location, income, age, and gender have on these preference tradeoffs. As expected, respondents appear averse to longer headways between trains, longer travel durations, higher travel costs, a higher number of late trains, and a higher number of fatalities. The models also show evidence of higher aversion to fatalities from transit system operation among females compared to males. In addition, respondents less experienced with Metrorail travel and those with lower household incomes show higher aversion to fatalities, and this aversion increases as a subject's psychological distance from the accident site decreases. Contrary to expectations shaped by previous studies, aversion to fatalities appears to have increased between the early months after the accident and the end of the survey period, and the expected relationship between age and aversion to fatalities is not statistically significant.
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The Power of Social Influence on Estimation Accuracy
Burcu Gürçay, Barbara Mellers & Jonathan Baron
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research shows that crowds can provide more accurate estimates of uncertain quantities than individuals (Surowiecki, 2004). But little is known about how to organize crowd members to maximize accuracy. When should crowd members work independently, and when should they work collaboratively? We examined the effects of social influence on estimation accuracy, consensus, and confidence. Participants first made independent estimates of uncertain quantities, such as the percentage of U.S. deaths due to heart attacks or the height of the tallest building. Then, in some conditions, they interacted with others online. After the discussion, they made second independent estimates. Social interaction improved accuracy. Despite well-known problems with groups, such as herding and free riding, discussion resulted in more accurate estimates and greater consensus relative to independent estimates. We offer a simple model that describes the process by which group discussion improves the estimates of uncertain quantities.
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What Happens When We Switch Tasks: Pupil Dilation in Multitasking
Ioanna Katidioti, Jelmer Borst & Niels Taatgen
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
Interruption studies typically focus on external interruptions, even though self-interruptions occur at least as often in real work environments. In this article, we therefore contrast external interruptions with self-interruptions. Three multitasking experiments were conducted, in which we examined changes in pupil size when participants switched from a primary to a secondary task. Results showed an increase in pupil dilation several seconds before a self-interruption, which we could attribute to the decision to switch. This indicates that the decision takes a relatively large amount of time. This was supported by the fact that in Experiment 2, participants were significantly slower on the self-interruption blocks than on the external interruption blocks. These findings suggest that the decision to switch is costly, but may also be open for modification through appropriate training. In addition, we propose that if one must switch tasks, it can be more efficient to implement a forced switch after the completion of a subtask instead of leaving the decision to the user.
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Characterizing the Genetic Influences on Risk Aversion
Amal Harrati
Biodemography and Social Biology, Fall 2014, Pages 185-198
Abstract:
Risk aversion has long been cited as an important factor in retirement decisions, investment behavior, and health. Some of the heterogeneity in individual risk tolerance is well understood, reflecting age gradients, wealth gradients, and similar effects, but much remains unexplained. This study explores genetic contributions to heterogeneity in risk aversion among older Americans. Using over 2 million genetic markers per individual from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, I report results from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on risk preferences using a sample of 10,455 adults. None of the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are found to be statistically significant determinants of risk preferences at levels stricter than 5 × 10−8. These results suggest that risk aversion is a complex trait that is highly polygenic. The analysis leads to upper bounds on the number of genetic effects that could exceed certain thresholds of significance and still remain undetected at the current sample size. The findings suggest that the known heritability in risk aversion is likely to be driven by large numbers of genetic variants, each with a small effect size.
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High Construal Level Reduces Overoptimistic Performance Prediction
Jin Yan, Songhui Hou & Alexander Unger
Social Behavior and Personality, Fall 2014, Pages 1303-1313
Abstract:
Overoptimistic performance prediction is a very common feature of people's goal-directed behavior. In this study we examined overoptimistic prediction as a function of construal level. In construal level theory an explanation is set out with regard to how people make predictions through the abstract connections between past and future events, with high-level construal bridging near and distant events. We conducted 2 experiments to confirm our hypothesis that, compared with people with local, concrete construals, people with global, abstract construals would make predictions that were less overoptimistic. In Study 1 we manipulated construal level by priming mindset, and participants (n = 81) predicted the level of their productivity in an anagram task. The results supported our hypothesis. In Study 2, in order to improve the generalizability of the conclusion, we varied the manipulation of the construal level by priming a scenario, and measured performance prediction by having the participants (n = 119) estimate task duration. The results showed that high-level construal consistently decreased overoptimistic prediction, supporting our hypothesis. The theoretical implications of our findings are discussed.
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Brandon Schmeichel, Ryan Caskey & Joshua Hicks
Self and Identity, January/February 2015, Pages 75-89
Abstract:
Three experiments compared the effects of engaging a more rational versus more experiential processing mode following self-relevant negative feedback. Participants in each experiment were encouraged to process negative feedback about their social skills in a more rational versus more experiential mode before completing a mood measure (Experiment 1), a disguised measure of self-enhancement tendencies (Experiment 2), and a behavioral test of self-control (Experiment 3), respectively. Compared to experiential processing, more rational processing of negative feedback reduced negative mood and self-enhancement tendencies but increased the likelihood of self-control failure. Together, these findings suggest that processing negative feedback in a more rational processing mode helps to dispel threats to self-regard but exacts a cost in the form of a temporary depletion of self-control strength.
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The Perils of Marketing Weight Management Remedies and the Role of Health Literacy
Lisa Bolton, Amit Bhattacharjee & Americus Reed
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research explores the impact of weight management remedy marketing on healthy lifestyle behaviors. Three studies demonstrate that exposure to drug (but not supplement) marketing for weight management encourages unhealthy consumer behavior, due to consumers' reliance on erroneous beliefs about health remedies. The authors explore the possible mitigating role of two dimensions of healthy literacy: nutrition knowledge and remedy knowledge. Whether measured or manipulated, remedy knowledge is shown to be more effective than nutrition knowledge at lessening the effect of weight management drug marketing on unhealthy behavior. The theoretical and substantive implications of this research for consumer welfare are discussed.
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Self-Affirmations Provide a Broader Perspective on Self-Threat
Clayton Critcher & David Dunning
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
We present an “affirmation as perspective” model of how self-affirmations alleviate threat and defensiveness. Self-threats dominate the working self-concept, leading to a constricted self disproportionately influenced by the threat. Self-affirmations expand the size of the working self-concept, offering a broader perspective in which the threat appears more narrow and self-worth realigns with broader dispositional self-views (Experiment 1). Self-affirmed participants, relative to those not affirmed, indicated that threatened self-aspects were less all-defining of the self (although just as important), and this broader perspective on the threat mediated self-affirmation’s reduction of defensiveness (Experiment 2). Finally, having participants complete a simple perspective exercise, which offered a broader perspective on the self without prompting affirmational thinking (Experiment 3a), reduced defensiveness in a manner equivalent to and redundant with a standard self-affirmation manipulation (Experiment 3b). The present model offers a unifying account for a wide variety of seemingly unrelated findings and mysteries in the self-affirmation literature.