Jane L Risen

University of Chicago | UC · Chicago Booth School of Business

Belief in conspiracy theories results from a combination of intuitive and deliberative cognitive processes (van Prooijen, Klein, & Milošević Đorđević, 2020). We propose a novel construct, conspiracy intuitions, the subjective sense that an event or circumstance is not adequately explained or accounted for by existing narratives, potentially for nef...

Having close relationships with outgroup members is an especially powerful form of intergroup contact that can reduce prejudice. Rather than examine the consequences of forming close outgroup relationships, which has previously been studied as part of intergroup contact theory, we examine how outgroup relationships—relative to ingroup relationships...

More information is available today than ever before, yet at times consumers choose to avoid it. Even with useful information (“I should find out”), people may prefer ignorance (“But I don’t want to”). Seven studies (N=4271) and five supplemental studies (N=3013) apply the concept of “cover” to information avoidance for consumer choices with real f...

More information is available today than ever before, yet at times consumers choose to avoid it. Even with useful information (I should find out), people may prefer ignorance (But I don’t want to). Seven studies (N = 4,271) and five supplemental studies (N = 3,013) apply the concept of “cover” to information avoidance for consumer choices with real...

Research shows that individuals with dual identities have the potential to serve as a gateway between the groups represented by their dual identity, reducing bias between opposing sides. But does this potential necessarily exhibit itself in an intergroup contact setting where all groups are present? We study Palestinian Citizens of Israel (PCI) at...

We examine how a simple handshake—a gesture that often occurs at the outset of social interactions—can influence deal-making. Because handshakes are social rituals, they are imbued with meaning beyond their physical features. We propose that during mixed-motive interactions, a handshake is viewed as a signal of cooperative intent, increasing people...

One of the most pervasive and powerful superstitions is the belief that it is bad luck to “tempt fate.” We explore what people mean by tempting fate, both by reviewing the existing literature and by reporting the results of a cluster analysis of the different themes related to tempting fate highlighted in newspaper articles on the subject. We then...

We present evidence of sudden-death aversion (SDA)—the tendency to avoid “fast” strategies that provide a greater chance of success, but include the possibility of immediate defeat, in favor of “slow” strategies that reduce the possibility of losing quickly, but have lower odds of ultimate success. Using a combination of archival analyses and contr...

Rationally, people should want to receive information that is costless and relevant for a decision. But people sometimes choose to remain ignorant. The current paper identifies intuitive-deliberative conflict as a driver of information avoidance. Moreover, we examine whether people avoid information not only to protect their feelings or experiences...

Preferences and behavior are heavily influenced by one's current visceral experience, yet people often fail to anticipate such effects. Although research suggests that this gap is difficult to overcome-to act as if in another visceral state-research on mental simulation has demonstrated that simulations can substitute for experiences, albeit to a w...

Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little consideration of the psychological processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have begun turning their attention to the study of ritual, uncovering the causal mechanisms driving this universal aspect of human behavior. With growing interest in the psy...

Will people follow their intuition even when they explicitly recognize that it is irrational to do so? Dual-process models of judgment and decision making are often based on the assumption that the correction of errors necessarily follows the detection of errors. But this assumption does not always hold. People can explicitly recognize that their i...

When people identify an error in their initial judgment, they typically try to correct it. But, in some cases, they choose not to—even when they know, in the moment, that they are being irrational or making a mistake. A baseball fan may know that he cannot affect the pitcher from his living room but still be reluctant to say “no-hitter.” A person m...

Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little consideration of the psychological processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have begun turning their attention to the study of ritual, uncovering the causal mechanisms driving this universal aspect of human behavior. With growing interest in the psy...

Traditionally, research on superstition and magical thinking has focused on people's cognitive shortcomings, but superstitions are not limited to individuals with mental deficits. Even smart, educated, emotionally stable adults have superstitions that are not rational. Dual process models-such as the corrective model advocated by Kahneman and Frede...

Embodiment research has primarily focused on metaphor-assimilative effects (e.g., perceiving someone to be socially warmer when holding a warm object). Research shows these effects can occur by activating metaphor-associated knowledge constructs. This account is not sufficient, however, for explaining complementary effects-for example, the tendency...

One of the largest Middle East coexistence programs annually brings together Israeli and Palestinian teenagers for a 3-week camp in the United States. For 3 years, we longitudinally tracked how this intervention affected Israelis’ and Palestinians’ relationships with, and attitudes toward, each other. Specifically, we measured participants’ outgrou...

After incidental exposure to Blacks who succeeded in counterstereotypical domains (e.g., Brown University President Ruth Simmons, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison), participants drew an automatic inference that race was not a success-inhibiting factor in modern society. Of note, participants’ automatic inferences were not simply guided by their explici...

Humans use subtle sources of information — like nonverbal behavior — to determine whether to act cooperatively or antagonistically when they negotiate. Handshakes are particularly consequential nonverbal gestures in negotiations because people feel comfortable initiating negotiations with them and believe they signal cooperation (Study 1). We show...

Across cultures, people try to "undo" bad luck with superstitious rituals such as knocking on wood, spitting, or throwing salt. We suggest that these rituals reduce the perceived likelihood of anticipated negative outcomes because they involve avoidant actions that exert force away from one's representation of self, which simulates the experience o...

People often face outcomes of important events that are beyond their personal control, such as when they wait for an acceptance letter, job offer, or medical test results. We suggest that when wanting and uncertainty are high and personal control is lacking, people may be more likely to help others, as if they can encourage fate's favor by doing go...

We propose that visceral states can influence beliefs through "visceral fit": People will judge states of the world associated with their current visceral experience as more likely. We found that warmth influenced belief in global warming (Studies 1-3) and that thirst impacted forecasts of drought and desertification (Study 5). These effects emerge...

The theory of cognitive dissonance has been among the most influential theories in social psychology for the last 50 years. Support for the theory has come primarily from three experimental paradigms: free-choice, induced compliance, and effort justification. Recently, Chen and Risen (2010, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 573–594)...

After making a choice between 2 objects, people reevaluate their chosen item more positively and their rejected item more negatively (i.e., they spread the alternatives). Since Brehm's (1956) initial free-choice experiment, psychologists have interpreted the spreading of alternatives as evidence for choice-induced attitude change. It is widely assu...

The tendency to mimic and synchronize with others is well established. Although mimicry has been shown to lead to affiliation between co-actors, the effect of interpersonal synchrony on affiliation remains an open question. The authors investigated the relationship by having participants match finger movements with a visual moving metronome. In Exp...

In a recent working paper, Chen (Chen, M. K. (2008). Rationalization and cognitive dissonance: Do choices affect or reflect preferences? (Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 1669). New Haven, CT: Yale Univer- sity, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics) argues that a methodology central to the cognitive dissonance literature (the free-choi...

The present research explored the belief that it is bad luck to "tempt fate." Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that people do indeed have the intuition that actions that tempt fate increase the likelihood of negative outcomes. Studies 3-6 examined our claim that the intuition is due, in large part, to the combination of the automatic tendencies to atte...

In four studies, the authors explored the emergence of one-shot illusory correlations--in which a single instance of unusual behavior by a member of a rare group is sufficient to create an association between group and behavior. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, unusual behaviors committed by members of rare groups were processed differently than other types...

People are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets, a result that previous investigators have attributed to anticipated regret. The authors suggest that people's subjective likelihood judgments also make them disinclined to switch. Four studies examined likelihood judgments with respect to exchanged and retained lottery tickets and found that (a) exc...

Do people distinguish between sincere and insincere apologies? Because targets and observers face different constraints, we hypothesized that observers would differentiate between spontaneous and coerced apologies but that targets would not. In Studies 1 and 2 participants either received or observed a spontaneous apology, a coerced apology, or no...

Premise 1: All good chapters begin with a pithy quote. Premise 2: We do not begin with a pithy quote. Conclusion: This is not a good chapter Is this a valid conclusion? According to formal logic, it is. Formally, an argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises (whether or not the premises are true) and is invalid if it does not. Th...

Decisions are powerfully affected by anticipated regret, and people anticipate feeling more regret when they lose by a narrow margin than when they lose by a wide margin. But research suggests that people are remarkably good at avoiding self-blame, and hence they may be better at avoiding regret than they realize. Four studies measured people's ant...

Decisions are powerfully affected by anticipated regret, and people anticipate feeling more regret when they lose by a narrow margin than when they lose by a wide margin. But research suggests that people are remarkably good at avoiding self-blame, and hence they may be better at avoiding regret than they realize. Four studies measured people's ant...