I Didn't Know
Power, competitiveness, and advice taking: Why the powerful don't listen
Leigh Plunkett Tost, Francesca Gino & Richard Larrick
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
Four experiments test the prediction that feelings of power lead individuals to discount advice received from both experts and novices. Experiment 1 documents a negative relationship between subjective feelings of power and use of advice. Experiments 2 and 3 further show that individuals experiencing neutral and low levels of power weigh advice from experts and experienced advisors more heavily than advice from novices, but individuals experiencing high levels of power discount both novice and expert advice. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrate that this tendency of individuals experiencing high levels of power to discount advice from experts and novices equally is mediated by feelings of competitiveness (Experiment 3) and confidence (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, Experiment 4 shows that inducing high power individuals to feel cooperative with their advisors can mitigate this tendency, leading them to weigh expert advice more heavily than advice from novices. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.
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Control deprivation and styles of thinking
Xinyue Zhou et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Westerners habitually think in analytical ways, whereas East Asians tend to favor holistic styles of thinking. We replicated this difference but showed that it disappeared after control deprivation (Experiment 1). Brief experiences of control deprivation, which stimulate increased desire for control, caused Chinese participants to shift toward Western-style analytical thinking in multiple ways (Experiments 2-5). Western Caucasian participants also increased their use of analytical thinking after control deprivation (Experiment 6). Manipulations that required Chinese participants to think in Western, analytical ways caused their sense of personal control to increase (Experiments 7-9). Prolonged experiences of control deprivation, which past work suggested foster an attitude more akin to learned helplessness than striving for control, had the opposite effect of causing Chinese participants to shift back toward a strongly holistic style of thinking (Experiments 10-12). Taken together, the results support the reality of cultural differences in cognition but also the cross-cultural similarity of using analytical thinking when seeking to enhance personal control.
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"737-Cabriolet": The Limits of Knowledge and the Sociology of Inevitable Failure
John Downer
American Journal of Sociology, November 2011, Pages 725-762
Abstract:
This article looks at the fateful 1988 fuselage failure of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 to suggest and illustrate a new perspective on the sociology of technological accidents. Drawing on core insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge, it highlights, and then challenges, a fundamental principle underlying our understanding of technological risk: a realist epistemology that tacitly assumes that technological knowledge is objectively knowable and that "failures" always connote "errors" that are, in principle, foreseeable. From here, it suggests a new conceptual tool by proposing a novel category of man-made calamity: the "epistemic accident," grounded in a constructivist understanding of knowledge. It concludes by exploring the implications of epistemic accidents and a constructivist approach to failure, sketching their relationship to broader issues concerning technology and society, and reexamining conventional ideas about technology, accountability, and governance.
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Neural Correlates of Effective Learning in Experienced Medical Decision-Makers
Jonathan Downar, Meghana Bhatt & Read Montague
PLoS ONE, November 2011, e27768
Abstract:
Accurate associative learning is often hindered by confirmation bias and success-chasing, which together can conspire to produce or solidify false beliefs in the decision-maker. We performed functional magnetic resonance imaging in 35 experienced physicians, while they learned to choose between two treatments in a series of virtual patient encounters. We estimated a learning model for each subject based on their observed behavior and this model divided clearly into high performers and low performers. The high performers showed small, but equal learning rates for both successes (positive outcomes) and failures (no response to the drug). In contrast, low performers showed very large and asymmetric learning rates, learning significantly more from successes than failures; a tendency that led to sub-optimal treatment choices. Consistently with these behavioral findings, high performers showed larger, more sustained BOLD responses to failed vs. successful outcomes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobule while low performers displayed the opposite response profile. Furthermore, participants' learning asymmetry correlated with anticipatory activation in the nucleus accumbens at trial onset, well before outcome presentation. Subjects with anticipatory activation in the nucleus accumbens showed more success-chasing during learning. These results suggest that high performers' brains achieve better outcomes by attending to informative failures during training, rather than chasing the reward value of successes. The differential brain activations between high and low performers could potentially be developed into biomarkers to identify efficient learners on novel decision tasks, in medical or other contexts.
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Relatively certain! Comparative thinking reduces uncertainty
Thomas Mussweiler & Ann-Christin Posten
Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Comparison is one of the most ubiquitous and versatile mechanisms in human information processing. Previous research demonstrates that one consequence of comparative thinking is increased judgmental efficiency: Comparison allows for quicker judgments without a loss in accuracy. We hypothesised that a second potential consequence of comparative thinking is reduced judgmental uncertainty. We examined this possibility in three experiments using three different domains of judgment and three different measures of uncertainty. Results consistently demonstrate that procedurally priming participants to rely more heavily on comparative thinking during judgment induces them to feel more certain about their judgment.
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Jennifer Whitman & Todd Woodward
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, December 2011, Pages 1156-1165
Abstract:
In a hypothesis comparison task involving quantifiable evidence, we investigated whether judgments of relative probability were affected by gradual evidence accumulation and by making a series of revised ratings, rather than a single final one. Each trial of our task required participants to rate the probability that a focal hypothesis, rather than its alternative, was correct. We manipulated (1) the strength of evidence supporting the focal hypothesis, (2) the strength of evidence supporting its alternative, and (3) whether that evidence was presented in three sequential portions (gradually accumulated evidence condition) or, instead, was all presented instantaneously (control condition). In a second experiment, we also manipulated (4) the number of successive ratings made within a trial with gradually accumulated evidence. Regardless of how many ratings were made per trial, gradual evidence accumulation increased the effects of evidence strength on ratings of relative probability.
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Age dynamics in scientific creativity
Benjamin Jones & Bruce Weinberg
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 November 2011, Pages 18910-18914
Abstract:
Data on Nobel Laureates show that the age-creativity relationship varies substantially more over time than across fields. The age dynamics within fields closely mirror field-specific shifts in (i) training patterns and (ii) the prevalence of theoretical contributions. These dynamics are especially pronounced in physics and coincide with the emergence of quantum mechanics. Taken together, these findings show fundamental shifts in the life cycle of research productivity, inform theories of the age-creativity relationship, and provide observable predictors for the age at which great achievements are made.
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Priming of spatial distance enhances children's creative performance
Nira Liberman et al.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to construal level theory, psychological distance promotes more abstract thought. Theories of creativity, in turn, suggest that abstract thought promotes creativity. Based on these lines of theorizing, we predicted that spatial distancing would enhance creative performance in elementary school children. To test this prediction, we primed spatial distance by presenting 6- to 9-year-olds with pictures of increasingly distal objects (from their own desk to the galaxy) or increasingly proximal objects (from the galaxy to their own desk) and then assessed the fluency and originality of their ideas in a creativity test. We found, consistent with the hypothesis, that after priming of spatial distance, compared with priming of spatial proximity, children were more creative, as reflected in higher scores of both fluency and originality. This result was not qualified by children's age or gender.
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Action-specific effects in a social context: Others' abilities influence perceived speed
Jessica Witt, Mila Sugovic & Eric Taylor
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to the action-specific account of perception, perceivers see the environment relative to their ability to perform the intended action. For example, in a modified version of the computer game Pong, balls that were easier to block looked to be moving slower than balls that were more difficult to block (Witt & Sugovic, 2010). It is unknown, however, if perception can be influenced by another person's abilities. In the current experiment, we examined whether another person's ability to block a ball influenced the observer's perception of ball speed. Participants played and observed others play the modified version of Pong where the task was to successfully block the ball with paddles that varied in size, and both the actor and observer estimated the speed of the ball. The results showed that both judged the ball to be moving faster when it was harder to block. However, the same effect of difficulty on speed estimates was not found when observers watched a computer play, suggesting the effect is specific to people and not to the task. These studies suggest that the environment can be perceived relative to another person's abilities.
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Naïve realism and capturing the "wisdom of dyads"
Varda Liberman et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies provided evidence for the role of naïve realism in the failure of individuals to give adequate weight to peer input, and explored two strategies for reducing the impact of this inferential bias. Study 1 demonstrated that dyad members see their own estimates as more "objective" than those of their partners and that this difference in perceived objectivity predicts the degree of underweighting. Compelling participants to assess their own versus their partners' objectivity prior to revising estimates decreased underweighting, an effect that was mediated by differences in perceived objectivity. Study 2 showed that the increase in accuracy that results from requiring dyad members to offer joint estimates via discussion is largely retained in subsequent individual estimates. Both studies showed that underweighting is greater when dyad members disagree on the issue about which they are making consensus estimates - a finding that further supports a "naïve realism" interpretation of the phenomenon.
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Mighty metaphors: Behavioral and ERP evidence that power shifts attention on a vertical dimension
Kiki Zanolie et al.
Brain and Cognition, February 2012, Pages 50-58
Abstract:
Thinking about the abstract concept power may automatically activate the spatial up-down image schema (powerful up; powerless down) and consequently direct spatial attention to the image schema-congruent location. Participants indicated whether a word represented a powerful or powerless person (e.g. ‘king' or ‘servant'). Following each decision, they identified a target at the top or bottom of the visual field. In Experiment 1 participants identified the target faster when their spatial position was congruent with the perceived power of the preceding word than when it was incongruent. In Experiment 2 ERPs showed a higher N1 amplitude for congruent spatial positions. These results support the view that attention is driven to the image schema congruent location of a power word. Thus, power is partially understood in terms of vertical space, which demonstrates that abstract concepts are grounded in sensory-motor processing.
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Test-enhanced learning in the classroom: Long-term improvements from quizzing
Henry Roediger et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three experiments examined whether quizzing promotes learning and retention of material from a social studies course with sixth grade students from a suburban middle school. The material used in the experiments was the course material students were to learn and some of the dependent measures were the actual tests on which students received grades. In within-subject designs, students received three low-stakes multiple-choice quizzes in Experiments 1 and 2 and performance on quizzed items was compared to that on items that were presented twice (Experiment 2) or items that were not presented on the initial quizzes (Experiments 1 and 2). We found that students' performance on both chapter exams and semester exams improved following quizzing relative to either not being quizzed or relative to the twice-presented items. In Experiment 3, students were given one multiple-choice quiz in class and encouraged to quiz themselves outside of class using a Web-based system. The assessment in this experiment was a short answer test in which students had to produce answers, but we also used multiple-choice tests. Once again, we found that quizzing of material produced a positive effect on chapter and semester exams. These results show the robustness of retrieval practice via testing as a learning mechanism in a classroom setting using the subject matter of the course and (in most cases) the tests on which students received grades as the dependent measures. Our results add to a growing body of evidence that retrieval practice in the classroom can boost academic performance.
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Thomas Griffiths & Joshua Tenenbaum
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, November 2011, Pages 725-743
Abstract:
Predicting the future is a basic problem that people have to solve every day and a component of planning, decision making, memory, and causal reasoning. In this article, we present 5 experiments testing a Bayesian model of predicting the duration or extent of phenomena from their current state. This Bayesian model indicates how people should combine prior knowledge with observed data. Comparing this model with human judgments provides constraints on possible algorithms that people might use to predict the future. In the experiments, we examine the effects of multiple observations, the effects of prior knowledge, and the difference between independent and dependent observations, using both descriptions and direct experience of prediction problems. The results indicate that people integrate prior knowledge and observed data in a way that is consistent with our Bayesian model, ruling out some simple heuristics for predicting the future. We suggest some mechanisms that might lead to more complete algorithmic-level accounts.