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The Freezing and Unfreezing of Lay-Inferences: Effects on Impressional Primacy, Ethnic Stereotyping, and Numerical Anchoring
Abstract
Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that primacy effects, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring all represent “epistemic freezing” in which the lay-knower becomes less aware of plausible alternative hypotheses and/or inconsistent bits of evidence competing with a given judgment. It was hypothesized that epistemic freezing would increase with an increase in time pressure on the lay-knower to make a judgment and decrease with the layknower's fear that his/her judgment will be evaluated and possibly be in error. Accordingly, it was predicted that primacy effects, ethnic stereotyping, and anchoring phenomena would increase in magnitude with an increase in time pressure and decrease in magnitude with an increase in evaluation apprehension. Finally, the time-pressure variations were expected to have greater impact upon “freezing” when the evaluation apprehension is high as opposed to low. All hypotheses were supported in each of the presently executed studies.
... Cette tendance a été conceptualisée dans la Theory of Lay Epistemics (Kruglanski, 1989) comme deux dimensions orthogonales rendant compte de la part motivationnelle des processus d'acquisition de la connaissance : les individus peuvent être orientés à la recherche d'une clôture cognitive (spécifique ou non spécifique) ou au contraire éviter cette clôture. Selon la théorie, les individus rechercheront une forte clôture/cristallisation épistémique (epistemic freezing) en situation de pression temporelle tandis qu'ils opteront pour une faible clôture/cristallisation face à la peur du jugement et la possibilité d'une erreur (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983;Freund, Kruglanski, & Shpitzajzen, 1985). Par ailleurs, l'importance subjective de l'objet pour la personne ou bien l'attractivité qu'il génère déterminera si cette clôture cognitive porte sur cet objet spécifiquement ou non. ...
... Le besoin d'une clôture spécifique reflète une motivation à atteindre une réponse à une question spécifique, et personnellement désirable ». Selon la théorie, cette tendance psychologique motivée peut être considérée comme une différence inter-individuelle relativement stable dans le temps, mais également comme un état induit par certaines circonstances comme la pression temporelle (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983) ou le bruit environnant (Kruglanski & Webster, 1991) indépendamment des niveaux d'intelligence. Des différences liées à l'autoritarisme (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) ou la culture (Hofstede, 1985) peuvent 15 « L'étendue des responsabilités fait référence à un manque d'informations claires sur l'étendue de ses propres responsabilités. ...
Ce travail de thèse s’intéresse aux facteurs de régulation de l’incertitude des individus au travail. L’incertitude, de par l’évolution constante du monde organisationnel, s’impose de plus en plus comme un facteur avec lequel conjuguer, et ce dans différents contextes autour du travail. Ce facteur constitue un risque pour les individus de par sa nature aversive. Dans cette optique, nous nous sommes intéressés, dans un premier temps aux théories portant sur le concept d’incertitude. Cela nous a permis de mieux comprendre et délimiter le concept. Dans un deuxième temps, nous avons été chercher dans les théories autour du concept de leadership les moyens de réguler l’incertitude. Ce qui nous a conduits à envisager cette régulation comme étant soit potentiellement possible par une forme directive de leadership, soit au contraire par une forme participative du leadership. Après avoir étayé ces deux pistes, nous nous sommes fixés trois objectifs : (1) identifier quelle forme de leadership est la plus à même de réguler l’incertitude ; (2) vérifier si cette forme de leadership peut contribuer au bon fonctionnement psychologique de l’individu ; et enfin (3) mettre à jour les mécanismes inhérents à ladite forme de leadership permettant de comprendre par quels moyens s’opère cette régulation. Ces objectifs ont guidé une série de sept études. Les trois premières études nous ont permis de répondre à nos deux premiers objectifs. Les résultats de ces études ont indiqué globalement que le leadership participatif contribuait à réguler l’incertitude, ce qui permettait d’alimenter un ensemble de variables positives pour le bon fonctionnement psychologique des salariés, ou bien la recherche d’emploi pour les demandeurs d’emplois. Trois autres études ont-été réalisées, dans l’optique cette fois de répondre à notre troisième objectif. Chaque étude se concentrait sur un aspect du leadership participatif que nous avons assimilé à un levier. Toutefois, même si nous avons obtenu quelques résultats intéressants, nous n’avons pas considéré cet objectif comme atteint. C’est pourquoi nous avons réalisé une dernière étude destinée à répondre aux limites identifiées précédemment. Cette dernière étude nous a permis de répondre à un troisième objectif, et de rendre plus manifestes les mécanismes relatifs à la régulation de l’incertitude. Les apports, tant théoriques, que méthodologiques et bien sûr pratiques, sont discutés. La conclusion que nous pouvons apporter à cette discussion, et à ce travail de recherche plus généralement, est que la régulation de l’incertitude n’est pas une simple démarche individuelle, mais requiert plutôt un effort mis en place par les organisations de travail. Selon nous, une organisation peut être évaluée selon trois critères d’importance quant à la régulation de l’incertitude : l’affiliation de l’individu à un réseau relationnel, le partage d’informations, et la projection dans le futur. Il s’agit des trois pistes par lesquelles, selon nous, ce travail de thèse pourrait être poursuivi.
... Accordingly, the NCC has been associated with an acceptance of outgroup stereotypes since the earliest research on the construct (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983)-a finding which has been supported in subsequent research (e.g., Baldner, Jaume, Pierro, & Kruglanski, 2019). Although there is nothing in the NCC that is specifically related to any form of stereotype content, stereotypes nonetheless present very strong epistemic properties, in that they T A B L E 1 Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations (Study 1) represent perceived knowledge that applies to large groups of people that are difficult to quickly change. ...
... First, correlational data are uninformative about the causal direction of the relationship between variables. In future research, NCC could be manipulated by inducing appropriate situational conditions (e.g., see Kruglanski & Freund, 1983;Kruglanski & Webster, 1996;Roets, Kruglanski, Kossowska, Pierro, & Hong, 2015). Second, even if we controlled for social desirability, the dependent variable could be measured with implicit measures of attitudes (Cunningham, Preacher, & Banaji, 2001;Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009) rather than self-report measures. ...
This research investigated the relationship between individual preference for the need for cognitive closure (NCC) and attitudes towards women as managers and the moderating role of direct or imagined contact with women leaders. In two studies (total N = 369) collected in different countries and with different methods (Study 1: Italy, correlational; Study 2: U.S., experimental), it was found that the positive relationship between NCC and negative attitudes towards women as managers was moderated by the quality, but not the quantity of current or past direct contact experiences with women managers. In Study 1, employees with higher scores on NCC had more positive attitudes towards women managers when they had more positive work experience with women managers. In Study 2, those with higher NCC scores had less negative attitudes towards women as managers when they merely imagined (positive) contact with them (vs. a control group). These results advance the literature on the interaction between NCC and positive intergroup contact; theoretical and practical implications of NCC and positive intergroup contact are presented.
... Accountability can also reduce bias through unconscious cognitive processes, such as the encoding of information (Tetlock, 1992, cited in Reskin, 2000Tetlock, 1985). Research shows that accountability and the evaluation apprehension it creates reduce the use of ethnic stereotypes in evaluating writing samples (Kruglanski and Freund, 1983), and reduces bias against older job candidates (Gordon et al., 1988). Others show that when organizations enhance social accountability, inequality in personnel decisions or in workforce composition declines (Castilla, 2015;Kalev, 2014;Kalev et al., 2006). ...
Managerial bias is a major source of workplace inequality and a central target of employer diversity efforts, yet we know little about the content of stereotypes and where they prevail. Stereotypes can be ambivalent, mixing negative and positive dimensions. Ambivalent stereotypes can rationalize discriminatory decision-making but they may also be more amenable to change. This article examines the prevalence of wholly negative and ambivalent age-based stereotypes across organizational contexts. Data on 551 managers reveals, first, that the modal manager holds ambivalent stereotypes about older workers, with positive perceptions of their personal attributes and negative perceptions regarding their employability. Second, both negative and ambivalent stereotypes are common in the presence of a labour union. Their prevalence declines, however, in different contexts: ambivalent stereotypes decline with increased intergroup contact and negative stereotypes decline when accountability triggers are implmented. Implications for research on work, organizations, older workers, and diversity management are discussed.
... System 1 responds quickly to propose intuitive solutions, while System 2 takes longer to settle and may "endorse, correct, or override" these proposals (Kahneman & Frederick, 2012). As time pressure prevents thorough information processing [47], System 2 is less likely to prevail [33,48,49]. Therefore, we expect people to be more likely to employ fast and associative heuristics under more intense time pressure [50,51]. ...
We investigate emergency decision-making behaviors in the face of life losses under an uncertain time limit. We design a behavioral experiment with the background of a hypothetical disaster to investigate the subjects' decision strategies. We find that prior experience affects a subject's estimation and actual consumption of time on comparing the rescue options in the following disaster. We also observe a risk shift that when an uncertain time limit is imposed, most risk-averse subjects with no time limit exhibit risk-taking behaviors. Moreover, under more intense time pressure, subjects are more likely to adopt heuristics such as seeking the best outcome with the highest probability, seeking the best while avoiding the unacceptable worst, and achieving a satisficing result with a target probability. As time pressure relaxes, most subjects perform actuarial calculations to compare the available options. We recommend emergency managers to be cautioned against the anchoring effect of prior experience and the heuristics of seeking the possibility of saving more people (which could pose an unwarranted risk).
... This is normally operationalized by making them believe they would have to justify these explanations in front of other people. For example, subjects motivated to be accurate have shown less of a primacy effect in impression formation, less of a tendency to use ethnic stereotypes in their evaluations of essay quality, and less anchoring when making probability judgments (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). However, in situations where other motives are more relevant, beliefs and strategies that aid satisfying those motives will be strengthened instead. ...
This paper examines the folk theory of ELO Hell, which stems from the community of esports players. ELO Hell is a causal explanation for the failure to achieve which is prominent but controversial in esports. Within the community, the belief in the existence of ELO Hell associated with lower skill. We aim to explain the persistence of this folk theory despite the debate within the community using psychological theories. We find this folk theory relevant for investigation because the blame placed on other players could escalate to patterns of harmful behavior, known as toxicity. Given the association with lower-ranked players, we predict this could be an operationalization of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a tendency for lower-skilled performers to overestimate themselves, and its associated motivational biases. Surveying 267 players of
the esports League of Legends and triangulating the quantitative, qualitative, and mined data collected, we find evidence of lower-skilled players overestimating their skills more so than higher-skilled players. Further, we find that motivational biases regarding causal attributions for failure and success did explain significant variance in the degree of overestimation. However, we also found some players withdraw their effort from competitive play and we use self-determination theory to categorize their reason for losing motivation. Taken together, we show the psychological mechanisms which lead to the formation of the folk theory of ELO Hell and the motivational biases that uphold the conflict about its existence.
... We employed a time-pressure manipulation, which in previous research has been shown to increase the mediator NFC (47,48). Specifically, participants were randomly assigned to a time-pressure or control condition. ...
Understanding the psychological processes that drive violent extremism is a pressing global issue. Across six studies, we demonstrate that perceived cultural threats lead to violent extremism because they increase people's need for cognitive closure (NFC). In general population samples (from Denmark, Afghanistan, Pakistan, France, and an international sample) and a sample of former Mujahideen in Afghanistan, single-level and multilevel mediation analyses revealed that NFC mediated the association between perceived cultural threats and violent extremist outcomes. Further, in comparisons between the sample of former Afghan Mujahideen and the general population sample from Afghanistan following the known-group paradigm, the former Mujahideen scored significantly higher on cultural threat, NFC, and violent extremist outcomes. Moreover, the proposed model successfully differentiated former Afghan Mujahideen participants from the general Afghan participants. Next, two preregistered experiments provided causal support for the model. Experimentally manipulating the predictor (cultural threat) in Pakistan led to higher scores on the mediator (NFC) and dependent variables (violent extremist outcomes). Finally, an experiment conducted in France demonstrated the causal effect of the mediator (NFC) on violent extremist outcomes. Two internal meta-analyses using state-of-the-art methods (i.e., meta-analytic structural equation modeling and pooled indirect effects analyses) further demonstrated the robustness of our results across the different extremist outcomes, designs, populations, and settings. Cultural threat perceptions seem to drive violent extremism by eliciting a need for cognitive closure.
... Beyond demonstrations of peoples' readiness toward forming beliefs, research has repeatedly affirmed people's tendency to be intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty and found a preference for "cognitive closure" (i.e., a made-up mind) instead (Dijksterhuis et al., 1996;Furnham & Marks, 2013;Furnham & Ribchester, 1995;Kruglanski & Freund, 1983;Ladouceur et al., 2000;Webster & Kruglanski, 1997). And last but not least, D. T. Gilbert (1991) made a strong case for the Spinozan view that comprehending something is so tightly connected to believing it that beliefs may be unaccepted only after deliberate reflection-and yet may affect our behavior (Risen, 2016). ...
One of the essential insights from psychological research is that people's information processing is often biased. By now, a number of different biases have been identified and empirically demonstrated. Unfortunately, however, these biases have often been examined in separate lines of research, thereby precluding the recognition of shared principles. Here we argue that several-so far mostly unrelated-biases (e.g., bias blind spot, hostile media bias, egocentric/ethnocentric bias, outcome bias) can be traced back to the combination of a fundamental prior belief and humans' tendency toward belief-consistent information processing. What varies between different biases is essentially the specific belief that guides information processing. More importantly, we propose that different biases even share the same underlying belief and differ only in the specific outcome of information processing that is assessed (i.e., the dependent variable), thus tapping into different manifestations of the same latent information processing. In other words, we propose for discussion a model that suffices to explain several different biases. We thereby suggest a more parsimonious approach compared with current theoretical explanations of these biases. We also generate novel hypotheses that follow directly from the integrative nature of our perspective.
... 61 Lerner and Tetlock (1999). 62 Kruglanski and Freund (1983). 63 For the controversies about reasoned verdicts when it comes to jury decision-making see Burd and Hans (2018). ...
The process of rendering numerical legal verdicts, such as non-economic damages or prison terms, is as common in legal systems, as it is inconsistent and erratic. The undue variability and unpredictability of numeric outcomes of legal proceedings may be a result of cognitive biases such as the anchoring effect. If anchors affecting verdicts are legally irrelevant, they might lead judges and jurors astray. In this Chapter, we review debiasing methods proposed in the literature to mitigate the anchoring effect in order to evaluate their effectiveness and applicability to the legal system. Then, we focus on an issue often neglected when it comes to the application of debiasing measures in law, namely the concept of judicial discretion. We argue that in cases in which judges are not aware of the biasing factors, they may not exercise their discretion properly. We try to assess which debiasing methods may make the process of rendering numerical verdicts more reasonable and predictable without necessarily eliminating the element of discretion in contexts where its preservation is deemed worthwhile.KeywordsJudicial decision-makingJudicial discretionDebiasingAnchoring effect
... One such negative outcome of a user experience is the stress felt using new-age technologies. In this regard, prior research has observed technical anxiety (i.e., the fear that customers feel when considering or using a self-service technology) to cause cognitive interference (Cambre & Cook, 1985;Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). Moreover, the inconvenience of using a self-service technology not only causes dissatisfaction but also heightens a customer's anxiety (Collier & Sherrell, 2010). ...
While the new‐age technologies do provide firms with opportunities to engage with customers better, they create undesired effects such as stress among customers in terms of navigating the newer technologies. This study identifies such stress as customer technostress and defines this new construct as “the result of negative experiences faced by customers when interacting with firm‐based new‐age technologies.” We also identify that the customer technostress construct to be comprised of six stressors—techno‐invasion, techno‐complexity, techno‐uncertainty, techno‐dependence, techno‐vulnerability, and techno‐inferiority. In doing so, we use a triangulation approach to develop a framework that proposes that customer technostress mediates the effect of new‐age technologies on customer engagement. Accordingly, we propose that (1) the negative experiences of customers when using new‐age technologies can create customer technostress, (2) a nonlinear relationship exists between customer technostress and customer engagement, (3) an increase in the marketing efforts of new‐age technologies by firms will help mitigate the effect of negative experiences of customers on customer technostress, (4) an increase in the customers’ familiarity with new‐age technologies will help mitigate the effect of negative experiences of customers on customer technostress, and (5) compared to reactive and proactive coping strategies, adaptive coping strategies will have a greater mitigating influence on the nonlinear relationship between customer technostress and customer engagement. This proposed framework also recognizes that a firm's reactions to a decline in customer engagement due to customer technostress can serve as inputs for subsequent improvements. This study concludes by identifying areas for future research.
... Previous research has shown that this desire to close epistemic gaps can be conceptualized both as a stable personality trait as well as a motivational tendency that can be induced by a given decision-making context (e.g., under time pressure; refs. [19][20][21][22]. In particular, past work shows that need for closure has enormous consequences for how group members interact with each other, all in an effort to receive or acquire firm knowledge from the environment (e.g., by preferring autocratic leaders and silencing dissent; ref. 23). ...
Many important social and policy decisions are made by small groups of people (e.g., juries, college admissions officers, or corporate boards) with the hope that a collective process will yield better and fairer decisions. In many instances, it is possible for these groups to fail to reach a decision by not garnering a minimum number of votes (e.g., hung juries). Our research finds that pivotal voters vote to avoid such decision failure—voters who can “tip” their group into a punishment decision will be more likely to do so. This effect is distinct from well-known social pressures to simply conform with others or reach unanimity. Using observational data from Louisiana court cases, we find a sharp discontinuity in juries’ voting decisions at the threshold between indecision and conviction (Study 1). In a third-party punishment paradigm, pivotal voters were more likely to vote to punish a target than nonpivotal voters, even when holding social information constant (Study 2), and adopted harsher views about the target's deservingness of punishment (Study 3). Using vignettes, we find that pivotal voters are judged to be differentially responsible for the outcomes of their votes—those who “block” the group from reaching a punishment decision are deemed more responsible for the outcome than those who “fall in line” (Study 4). These findings provide insight into how we might improve group decision-making environments to ensure that their outcomes accurately reflect group members’ actual beliefs and not the influence of social pressures.
... In Mercier et al.'s (2018) and in Kunst et al.'s (2018) study, there is some evidence that the attribution of attacks to mental health problems goes along with a preference for milder punishments and lower perceptions of guilt respectively. Noor et al. (2019) argue that such effects are a manifestation of motivated reasoning (e.g., Kruglanski & Freund, 1983) and that attribution of violent crimes to mental health problems function as exculpatory attributions. Such attributions can help to prevent threats to the ingroup. ...
The present work investigates whether the assumed religious background of a perpetrator in a carried out (Study 1) and attempted mass shooting (Study 2) influences attribution of the crime to mental health problems or terrorist motives as well as to evaluation of appropriate punishment. In two experimental studies (n = 113 and n = 340) participants were confronted with a scenario depicting an (attempted) mass shooting that was either carried out by a perpetrator with a German or an Arabic/Muslim name. Results indicate that compared to a perpetrator with a German name, a shooting carried out by a perpetrator with an Arabic/Muslim name led to increased attributions to a terrorist motive and fewer attributions to mental health problems. Moreover, in Study 2, this attribution pattern was accompanied by increased punitiveness. The findings are discussed against the background of previous work showing comparable results as well as practical implications.
... A distinction between state and trait personal need for structure is needed (Sollár, 2008). Whereas state personal need for structure refers to situationally evoked and activated in urgent and ambiguous conditions (Kruglanski and Freund, 1983), trait personal need regards a typical way of individuals' reacting which will be evident regardless of the character of the situation (Thompson et al., 2013). In this study, we focused on state personal need for structure. ...
This study aimed to examine the effect of cognitive priming linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, through state anxiety and personal need for structure, on teachers’ tendency toward sustainability and teachers’ tendency toward a conservative socio-economic vision. We involved a sample of 984 Italian teachers, and by manipulating the saliency of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that the saliency of the COVID-19 pandemic positively impacted state anxiety and that state anxiety impacted teachers’ tendency toward sustainability both directly and indirectly through the mediational role of the personal need for structure. Finally, we found that state anxiety only indirectly through the personal need for structure impacted teachers’ tendency toward a conservative socio-economic vision.
... The extent of this need for structure is reflected in how rigidly individuals hold on to a belief by trying to fix knowledge in order to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Studies show that individuals with a high need for closure tend to hold more unambiguous and onedimensional stereotypes (Crawford & Skowronski, 1998;Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). Bar-Tal, Y. and Guinot (2002) recently proposed that the ability to structure information has an effect on oversimplified characterization of an outgroup. ...
Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish society.
... In addition to facilitating norm enforcement, demand for warrant should facilitate accurate information processing on the part of the blamer (Monroe & Malle, 2019). Research has demonstrated that the goal to be accurate leads to more complex, less biased information processing (Kunda, 1990), and in these studies, factors that increase demand for warrant, such as expecting to justify one's judgments or expecting to be evaluated by other people (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983;Tetlock, 1992), were directly manipulated. If demand for warrant is to be met, people must be able to access the kind of information that provides such warrant. ...
Blame is not only a cognitive process but also a social act of moral criticism. Such acts of criticism often serve to correct a transgressor’s behavior but can be costly—to the moral critic, the transgressor, and the community. To limit these costs, blame is socially regulated: Communities set standards of evidence for blame and expect individuals to provide warrant, or justification, for their expressed judgments by pointing to appropriate evidence. We describe the path model of blame, which captures the cognitive processes that underlie blame judgments and that specify the kind of evidence that counts as warrant for blame. We then show how the varying costs of blaming put social pressure on the moral critic to be accurate and fair. We also identify conditions under which these pressures are weakened and standards of evidence decline: for example, when the transgressor has low status or is an out-group member, when the critic has high status or is anonymous, or when interactions are online. We close with numerous open questions that we hope will inspire further research into the hypothesis that cognitive blame is socially shaped.
... Policy makers, private entities, and researchers have introduced a host of measures to counter adverse effects of implicit bias: affirmative action policies which increase representation of affected groups [81,50,78,10,69], structured interviews which reduce the scope for bias in evaluation criteria [73,40,87,6], and anonymized evaluations that blind decision makers to the socially-salient attributes of applicants [43]. Significant effort has also been devoted to reduce implicit bias itself: training that exposes individuals to counter-stereotypical evidence opposing their implicit beliefs [89,62,39], enhanced accountability which enables enforcement of other interventions [58,60,14], and information campaigns that increase awareness about implicit biases [64]. ...
In selection processes such as hiring, promotion, and college admissions, implicit bias toward socially-salient attributes such as race, gender, or sexual orientation of candidates is known to produce persistent inequality and reduce aggregate utility for the decision maker. Interventions such as the Rooney Rule and its generalizations, which require the decision maker to select at least a specified number of individuals from each affected group, have been proposed to mitigate the adverse effects of implicit bias in selection. Recent works have established that such lower-bound constraints can be very effective in improving aggregate utility in the case when each individual belongs to at most one affected group. However, in several settings, individuals may belong to multiple affected groups and, consequently, face more extreme implicit bias due to this intersectionality. We consider independently drawn utilities and show that, in the intersectional case, the aforementioned non-intersectional constraints can only recover part of the total utility achievable in the absence of implicit bias. On the other hand, we show that if one includes appropriate lower-bound constraints on the intersections, almost all the utility achievable in the absence of implicit bias can be recovered. Thus, intersectional constraints can offer a significant advantage over a reductionist dimension-by-dimension non-intersectional approach to reducing inequality.
... La NCC ha sido estudiada en su relación con otros fenómenos. Recientes investigaciones han vinculado el fenómeno con la formación de estereotipos sociales (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983), el prejuicio (Baldner et al., 2019), el perdón (Pica et al., 2020), sesgo de atribución (Webster, 1993), el extremismo , los modos regulatorios (Jaume & Roca, 2020), efecto de homogeneidad intragrupal (Kruglanski, 2013), la justificación del sistema (Jaume et al., 2014) y el conservadurismo (Jost et al., 2003). De modo que, los efectos de NCC tienen efectos psicológicos individuales y grupales (Kruglanski, 2013). ...
Los estilos decisorios se refieren a patrones cognitivos habituales que utilizan los sujetos en tareas decisorias cuando procesan la información. Recientes investigaciones han referido el rol que cumple la motivación epistémica de la Necesidad de Cierre Cognitivo en el procesamiento de la información. Esta influencia puede generar un procesamiento sesgado afectando la toma de decisiones. Esto se debe a que la NCC trae dos consecuencias en el procesamiento de la información. La primera es la Urgencia donde los individuos tienden a una búsqueda generalizada de la información generando mayores hipótesis hasta superar el umbral cognitivo. La segunda refiere a la Permanencia donde una vez superado el umbral, la información se cristaliza y se extrapola a otras áreas. El presente estudio exploratorio, tuvo como objetivo explorar la relación entre la Necesidad Cierre Cognitivo y los Estilos decisorios. Para ello, se tomó muestra de 378 individuos residentes en Ciudad de Buenos Aires y Gran Buenos Aires. Se utilizaron para evaluar las variables el Test Revisado de Necesidad de cierre cognitivo (TR NCC) y la escala de Estilos Decisorios (ED).Los resultados indican que si bien no existe una relación contundente entre ambas variables, este abordaje exploratorio debe seguir siendo explorado en futuras investigaciones.
... La TMT dialoga expresamente con las necesidades epistémicas dentro del marco de la teoría de Conocimiento Lego de Kruglanski (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). Este marco describe los procesos a través de los cuales las personas adquieren conocimiento y los principios invariantes que gobiernan la formación y revisión de creencias en diversos ámbitos de la vida (Kruglanski, 1989). ...
Justificación. La Teoría del Manejo del Terror (TMT) propone que la saliencia de mortalidad (SM) produce estados de ansiedad que las personas afrontan con la Defensa de la Visión del Mundo (DVM) y la adhesión a Motivos Identitarios (MI). Objetivo. Analizar el efecto de la SM en la DVM y los MI en católicos y ateos de Lima (Perú). Método. Se desarrolló un diseño cuasiexperimental, intersujetos, 2 x 2 [Condición: Experimental vs. Control X Grupo de Creencia: Católicos (n = 30) vs. Ateos (n = 32)]. Los participantes de la condición experimental fueron expuestos a la SM y los de la condición control no, respondiendo posteriormente a cuestionarios de DVM y MI. Resultados. No existen diferencias en la DVM y los MI por condición, ni por la interacción entre condición y grupo de creencia. Sin embargo, analizando las diferencias por grupo de creencia, los ateos muestran mayor DVM y los católicos mayores niveles en los MI de Pertenencia y Continuidad. Discusión. Los hallazgos sobre los efectos de la SM en las variables dependientes son consistentes con resultados en contextos no anglosajones. Adicionalmente, las diferencias entre grupos de creencia se discuten desde un marco de relaciones intergrupales en el contexto peruano.
... increases when the motivation to process information is high or the available time is limited. On the other hand, highly motivated consumers without time constraints are more likely to process information systematically (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983;Sanbonmatsu & Fazio, 1990). In other words, high involvement and self-relevance tend to lead consumers to engage in more systematic information processing than low involvement and low-self-relevance (Chaiken, 1980;Chaiken et al., 1989). ...
The aim of this article is to explore how the dimensions of psychological distance and motivation impact the left-digit effect in consumer price evaluation. The left-digit effect occurs when the leftmost digit of the prices being compared changes (e.g., $499 vs. $500); the difference between the prices is perceived as larger than if the leftmost digit does not change (e.g., $569 vs. $570). Furthermore, a nine-ending price may be perceived as larger than a price that is actually one dollar higher, when the motivation to process the price information is high and the psychological distance (temporal distance) is near. Likewise, when the motivation to process information is low, regardless of whether the temporal distance is near or far, consumers are also more likely to process information heuristically, strengthening the left-digit effect. However, when the motivation to deal with information is high and the temporal distance is distant, consumers are more likely to process information systematically which tends to diminish the perceived magnitude of the difference due to the left-digit effect.
... For example, an affiliation goal may promote a reliance on heuristics that are consistent with discovering enough about a person to serve the goal to simply get along. As another example, the goal to achieve fast solutions and reach early closure (e.g., Kruglanski & Freund, 1983) promotes getting an answer, any answer, through the use of fast, easy, preexisting explanations such as stereotypes, spontaneous trait inferences (STIs), and accessible constructs (see Thompson et al., 2001). Accuracy in attribution is not perfectly associated with greater effort. ...
Behavior is a reflection of the intentions, attitudes, goals, beliefs, and desires of a person. These intra-individual factors are coordinated with what opportunities the situation affords and the perceived constraints placed on the person by their context and the norms of the culture they are in. Further, the intentions, attitudes, goals, beliefs, and desires of a person are often not known to them in any given moment, and because they reside within the mind of that person they are almost always not known to the people who are perceiving that person. To know anything about other people we must observe and identify/classify their behavior and then attribute to the observed behavior inferences and judgments about the internal states of that person serving as the motivating force behind their behavior. This entry explores this process of attribution. Heider described attribution as the process that determines “how one person thinks and feels about another person, how he perceives him and what he does to him, what he expects him to do or think, how he reacts to the actions of the other.” The entry explores the rules that people follow in order to make sense of behavior, and the rational versus non-rational nature of the procedure. Even when highly motivated to think rationally, this process can be biased, and flaws can appear in the attribution process, such as from chronic differences among perceivers due to culture, experience, or personality. How the process would unfold if accurate and purely rational is contrasted with how it unfolds when biased. How we feel, and how we choose to act, are derived from how we make sense of the world. Thus, attribution processes are foundational for understanding how we feel, for establishing expectations, and planning how to act in turn.
... Thus, our feedback was inconsistent with other feedback on academic success, and participants may find it easier to consider the particular circumstances as causative of the outcome and are therefore more likely to subtype (Deutsch & Fazio, 2008). The tendency to subtype can be linked to a stronger need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983) and also to the desire to maintain the self-concept (Olson & Fazio, 2004). ...
Most students experience expectation violations during their academic career, such as unexpected failed tests. However, contradictory evidence does not always result in expectation change (accommodation). Expectations often persist through stronger efforts to fulfil the expectation (assimilation) or ignoring the discrepancy (immunization). Our study addresses possible situational and dispositional predictors that may be decisive influences on the use of the three coping strategies. We conducted an experimental study with n = 439 students who experienced an expectation violation in an achievement test. Dispositional coping tendencies, valence of expectation violation, and the interaction of valence and degree of expectation violation were found to predict situational coping. Furthermore, higher need for cognitive closure predicted stronger accommodation, and a large degree of expectation violation predicted stronger immunization. Thus, our study provides initial evidence on which situational and dispositional factors predict coping with expectation violations in an educational context. Expectation violation in a performance context mainly resulted in stronger efforts to protect positive achievement expectations.
... Seizing refers to the tendency of some individuals to reach decisions prematurely, without careful consideration, ultimately to override feelings of ambiguity and uncertainty (De Dreu, Koole and Oldersma, 1999). Freezing refers to the inclination of some people to neglect feedback or information that could challenge their assumptions (Kruglanski and Freund, 1983). Threats to meaning, therefore, are likely to provoke both premature decisions and disregard of feedback (Van Tongreen and Green, 2010). ...
As social media proliferates, this platform provides multiple entry
points for organizational and consumer communication. Social media
are Internet sites where people interact freely, sharing and discussing
information about each other and their lives, using a multimedia mix
of personal words, pictures, videos and audio” (Kodish, 2015). Walaski’s (2013) social media categories include blogs, microblogs, social net working sites, professional networks, video sharing, and content-driven communities (i.e. crowd sourcing).
Customer relations managers using social media to communicate
with their colleagues and clients must navigate various opportunities
and constraints (Haenlein and Libai, 2017). In 2016, The Gartner
Group, among others, argued that organizations need to consider how
to best augment or retrofit data analytics and IT systems for the digital
age in relation to social media, particularly within a big data context
(Smilansky, 2015). Big data is high volume, high velocity, and/or high
variety information assets that require new forms of processing to enableenhanced decision-making, insight discovery and process optimization (Moorthy, Lahiri, Biswas, Sanyal, Ranjan, Nanath and Ghosh, 2015). Big data is fast-paced and includes large amounts of data or information that is accumulating. In this study, big data that is used by companies in their organizational development included crowd sourcing from social media platforms and enterprise level data, as well as analytics approaches. These three types of big data are used to enhance organizational agility and inform strategy at the intersections of their economic, political, and social place and space (Bhimani, Mention and Barlatier, 2018).
... Accordingly, the relationship between the NCC and stereotypes has been observed since the earliest days of the construct (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). More recently, the NCC has been found to be associated with constructs related to stereotypes toward women (Baldner & Pierro, 2019a;Roets et al., 2012), as well as toward other marginalized outgroups (e.g., Baldner & Pierro, 2019b;Brizi et al., 2016). ...
Women are harmed by stereotypes about their fit for positions of authority and changing these stereotypes is not a simple task. As stereotypes have strong epistemic properties, individuals with a high need for cognitive closure (NCC; i.e., the desire for epistemic certainty) can be more likely to accept these stereotypes and, consequently, to prefer men in positions of authority. Consistent with the reactive liberal hypothesis, this effect could be actually more visible among individuals with both a high NCC and left‐wing political orientations. We supported these hypotheses in a series of three studies. In Study 1 (N = 217), we found that manipulated NCC predicted preference for men in authority through stereotypes of women as not being fit for authority in a measurement‐of‐mediation design. In Study 2 (N = 151), we supported this effect in a mediation‐as‐process design. In Study 3 (N = 391), we found the indirect NCC effect on preference for men in authority was more visible among political liberals. A major implication of this work is that ways of changing the effect of these stereotypes should take into account the NCC, but particularly among individuals with left‐wing beliefs.
... Although NFCC can be conceptualized as a personality trait, it is also a psychological mindset that varies with situational demands (Roets, Kruglanski, Kossowska, Pierro, & Hong, 2015;Roets, Van Hiel, Cornelis, & Soetens, 2008;Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). For instance, NFCC can be manipulated through time pressure, noise, fear of invalidity, or task attractiveness (Heaton & Kruglanski, 1991;Kruglanski & Freund, 1983;Roets at el., 2008;Webster, 1993). Importantly, NFCC has been shown of great relevance for various organizationally relevant outcomes, such as creativity or resistance to innovation (e.g., Chernikova, Kruglanski, Giovannini, Vezzali, & Su, 2017;Chirumbolo, Livi, Mannetti, Pierro, & Kruglanksi, 2004;Pierro, Kruglanski, & Raven, 2012). ...
This paper makes a case for explaining diversity effects through cognitive factors as compared to demographic or other differences in backgrounds. We argue that studying perceived diversity in conjunction with diversity beliefs can explain positive and negative effects through a motivated opening or closing of the mind (Need for Cognitive Closure, NFCC). NFCC is the motivation to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity. In Study 1, we experimentally demonstrate that asking participants to think about differences among their coworkers increases their NFCC. Study 2 shows that greater uncertainty about social norms in the workplace is positively related to NFCC. Study 3 confirms the mediating role of NFCC in explaining divergent thinking attitudes in expatriates working in various multicultural cities around the world. Study 4 demonstrates that perceived diversity is positively associated with NFCC when people hold negative beliefs about diversity, whereas positive beliefs mitigate this effect. Lastly, Study 5 shows that the interaction between perceived diversity and diversity beliefs is further moderated by task type. Taken together, the present research highlights the importance of studying cognitive factors to explain diversity effects.
... Put another way, when a person finds processing information as intrinsically rewarding, he or she tends to evade closure (i.e. low need for closure, Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). On the other hand, when the person has an answer to a question, there is no need to process information; therefore, need for closure is high (Kruglanski, 1980;Roets et al., 2015). ...
This study examined the role of need for closure and need for cognition in predicting second language (L2) writing-specific psychological factors, namely, self-efficacy, anxiety, motivation, and self-regulation. To do this, we collected self-report data from 186 undergraduate learners of English. Results of path analyses revealed that both need for closure and need for cognition predicted writing self-efficacy, anxiety, motivation, and self-regulation. In addition, mediation analyses showed that different aspects of need for closure predicted the psychological aspects of L2 writing indirectly through need for cognition. The findings highlight that learners’ cognition and their tendency toward information processing and willingness to engage in effortful thinking play an essential role in their perception and emotions toward L2 writing. It is recommended that teachers pay particular attention to learners’ need for cognition, need for closure, and the aforementioned writing-specific psychological factors in L2 writing classrooms.
The current study aimed to uncover the correlation between Positive and Negative Affect and the personal need for Structure and health orientation among university students and Post Graduate, the differences between university students in the health orientation according to some demographic variables, the differences between high and low positive and negative Affect in the health orientation, and determine the predictive value of positive and negative Affects and the need The personal Structure to health, and the study participants were divided into: Participants in the exploratory study, which consisted of 141 male and female students at the university and graduate studies; To calculate the psychometric characteristics, and the basic study participants, who numbered 250 students in both the university and postgraduate levels, ranged between 21-35 years, with an average age of 24.69 years, a standard deviation of 4.11, an average monthly income of 2775 pounds, and a standard deviation of 2,191. applying the study tools, These are: The health orientation Scale; Snell ,Johnson, Lloyd & Hoover (1991) Translation & Validation via Ahmed Khairy Hafez, Fouad Muhammad AlDawash, Mustafa Abdel-Mohsen Al-Hudaibi (2020), and a Schedule of positive and negative Affects prepared by Watson, Clark, & Tellegen (1988)., And a measure of personal need for Structure by Thompson, Naccarato, Parker & Moskowitz (2001) Translation & Validation via Fouad Muhammad Al-Dawash, Mustafa Abdel-Mohsen Al-Hudaibi (2020). The results of the study Showed that: in a positive correlation and health orientation as a whole with positive Affect, and was not Correlate to self-control and external health, and health Status, while negative Affect and health anxiety, health personal awareness , Evaluation, health confidence, attention to health perception, negative expectations of health, the general need for Structure and the dimensions of the health orientation and its overall degree, The dimension response of the lack of Structure correlated with the overall degree of health orientation and its sub-dimensions except for the self-control of health, and the overall degree of personal need for Structure was correlated with the dimensions of the health orientation and was not related to health motivation, external health control, health expectations, health Statues, and the absence of significant differences Statistically among the five taxonomic variables of the participants in the basic study on the scale of health orientation, the presence of statistically significant differences between high and low positive and negative Affect in the health orientation in favor of high positive and low positive Affect, and the presence of statistically significant differences between high and low personal need for Structure and two dimensions in the health orientation in favor of high The personal need for Structure, and the existence of a predictive ability statistically significant for the health orientation of positive and negative Affect and the personal need for Structure, and the results were interpreted in the light of the theoretical literature of study variables and related studies, and based on these results and their interpretation a number of recommendations have been formulated.
Social scientific work on argumentation is yet to address the perennial tension between social cognition and social constructionism. Moreover, argumentation-based qualitative analysis protocols are needed for interview and textual data. Nonetheless, argumentation models remain too complex to reflect everyday argumentation and are not necessarily reflective of underlying cognitive processes. This presents the need for further theorising social behaviour, with a view to formulating a model of argumentation that (a) is parsimonious, and (b) aligns with the literature on joint projects, due to the fact that in social cognition terms, argumentation is for doing. In this paper, we draw upon interdisciplinary literature on argumentation, noting convergences among different approaches. We then proceed to consider the socio-cognitive bedding provided by Lay Epistemic Theory, to present our Minimal Model of Argumentation (MMA). In MMA, interlocutors are held to make claims concerning an issue of concern, and defend them using warrants, evidence and qualifiers. We end by providing empirical examples supporting the utility of our model in qualitative research.
Evidence-based policymaking has the potential to improve the efficiency and impact of climate mitigation and adaptation policies, but that promise cannot be fulfilled if policymakers fail to change their minds (update their beliefs) when presented with new evidence. Research suggests that individuals often resist changing their mind, especially on polarized topics like climate action. Here we explore whether an “evidence-based policymaker” intervention can reduce resistance when policymakers interpret new information. We hypothesize that, if policymakers wish to see themselves as "evidence-based", reminding them of that identity can make changing their beliefs more comfortable. This is because belief-updating provides an opportunity to affirm their identity as an evidence-based policymaker. In two survey studies of state and local U.S. policymakers – a neutral policy pilot (n = 152) and a polarizing climate policy experiment (n = 356) – we show that the intervention was effective, even when evidence was incompatible with prior policy beliefs or party ideology. This finding suggests that making evidence-based identities salient when presenting new evidence could increase that information’s impact on climate policymaking.
Drawing on a motivated information processing model, we tested the hypothesis that groups' receptivity to outside advice is facilitated by their epistemic motivation—the desire to gain an accurate understanding of the world. Epistemic motivation was measured by proxy in Study 1 using a team task reflexivity measure, and was experimentally manipulated in Studies 2 and 3 by varying, respectively, either the amount of time allotted to complete the task or whether a consensus judgment was required before receiving advice. Receptivity to advice was operationalized as group advice seeking in Studies 1 and 2, and as advice utilization in Study 3. In support of our hypothesis, groups with higher levels of epistemic motivation consistently sought out and utilized advice more than those with lower levels of epistemic motivation. Moreover, epistemic motivation affected judgment accuracy via groups' receptivity to advice.
Ghosting—the act of ending a relationship by ceasing communication without explanation—is a type of ostracism that threatens a person’s basic psychological needs for belonging, self-esteem, meaningful existence, and control. The experience of ghosting creates uncertainty within the relationship and may vary based on individual differences in the need for closure, which is the desire to avoid ambiguity. Across three preregistered studies with emerging adults, we predicted that a greater need for closure would be associated with lower intentions to use ghosting (Studies 1 and 2) and lower needs satisfaction after being ghosted (Study 3). Results from Study 1 ( N = 553) and Study 2 ( N = 411) were inconsistent, but together indicate that a higher need for closure is not negatively associated—and may be positively associated—with ghosting intentions. In Study 3 ( N = 545), participants who recalled a time when they were ghosted reported lower needs satisfaction than included and directly rejected participants. Further, a higher need for closure was associated with lower needs satisfaction after being ghosted and after being directly rejected, but with greater needs satisfaction after being included. Overall, these findings suggest that the need for closure is less influential when deciding how to end a relationship, but it appears to play an important role in amplifying both positive and negative experiences within a relationship.
Previous research has investigated characteristics of individuating information, stereotypes, and evaluative circumstances that moderate reliance on social category information and individuating information in implicit person perception. However, possibly no research has examined characteristics of perceivers that may be involved in these processes. In four studies (N = 1,545), the present research tested the effects of six individual differences on application of race and gender stereotypes in implicit perceptions of individuals and the potential moderating effects of diagnosticity of individuating information. We found that individuating information affected implicit person similarly regardless of the diagnosticity of the individuating information, the target group, and—largely—individual differences. Although these findings involved several null results, these results are nonetheless informative because they provide evidence that individuating information is a promising means of bias reduction given its consistent effects.
Parenting motivation, the inspiration and drive to take care of one’s children, is regarded as a powerful instinct for facilitating human reproduction. In a set of hypotheses, the authors address how, why, and among whom parenting motivation affects a pervasive decision-making tendency, namely variety seeking. Six studies, including a large-scale panel data study and five online and lab studies, show that parenting motivation spurs feelings of time crunch that further result in less variety seeking among consumers. The effect is diminished when time-saving parenting support exists (which reduces feelings of time crunch in parenting), when consumers are led to believe that they have sufficient time available for shopping, or when they do not have much loyalty to any brand offered in the choice set and thus cannot save time by simply choosing the top-of-mind product option. The current research thus contributes to the growing literature on how parenting motivation affects consumer decision making. In addition, it augments the literature on variety seeking by identifying an important factor that can influence it.
It is known that people can distinguish authentic from inauthentic emotional displays. It is also known that emotions are generally impactful in crowdfunding pitches. Yet, the potential lynchpin-like role that displays of authentic emotion may play in funding pitches has been overlooked in entrepreneurial resource acquisition research. More importantly, research on authenticity has not uncovered the mechanisms through which display authenticity positively affects observers’ responses. Our work fills this gap by developing a theoretical model that explains the underlying processes of entrepreneurs’ display authenticity and success in crowdfunding. Consistent with the predictions of the emotions as social information model, results from a field study and an experiment reveal the mediating roles of inferential and affective processes. Furthermore, our findings provide evidence for the moderating role of funders’ epistemic motivation on performance. We find that, depending on path, these effects take different directions.
The last chapter proposes to go not only beyond the epistemic dimension to improve it, but also beyond the lesson content. The German's lesson shows how easily we can exceed students' expectations and arouse their curiosity, enthusiasm, and learning investment. If we aspire to decrease school violence, bullying, and delinquency, a new educational mission would be to surpass teaching without necessarily being demanding or time-consuming. Indeed, making use of the relational dimension—using the multiple intelligence and STEAM approaches to include students through competence—seemss to refer to the new school mission as an aspiration builder rather than a selection referee and inducer of discouragement.
Is there a liability of foreignness in online crowdsourcing contests for creative work? Digitalization mitigates physical orthodox transaction-based frictions and is therefore expected to reduce the liability of foreignness. However, for creative work sourced digitally across borders, due to the decoupling of the locus of creation from the locus of selection and due to the cognitive nature of creative tasks, we suggest that frictions continue to arise from foreign solvers’ cognitive home biases in creative task generation and from solution-seeker firm managers’ cognitive home biases in creative task selection. These biases manifest as LOF, reducing the likelihood of foreign solvers’ work being selected as winners in online crowdsourcing contests. Furthermore, we argue that as foreign solvers gain both breadth and depth of international experience in prior online contests, and observe host peers in a live contest, the effect of the liability of foreignness is reduced due to the conceptual expansion of solvers’ creative consideration sets. Similarly, the seeker firm’s cognitive openness in selection arising from its being in a technology industry or being a physically international firm reduces the liability’s negative effect on solvers’ success. Our conditional logit estimation with multiway fixed-effects using 558,504 contest-solver observations from 13,993 solution-seeker firms in 102 countries and 11,497 solvers in 124 countries on an online platform broadly supports our hypotheses, suggesting that there are both demand-side and supply-side cognitive sources of LOF even in unblind online crowdsourcing contests.
This experimental investigation explores the influence of election fraud fact-checking and cognitive processing styles on participants’ confidence in the 2020 U.S. presidential election’s legitimacy and characterizations of the January Sixth Capitol Hill Attack. The results indicate fact-checking, accuracy motivated reasoning, and systematic processing exerted positive effects on participants’ legitimacy levels, especially among Republicans. We also found that participants’ systematic processing, affiliation with the Democratic Party, and negative attitudes toward Donald Trump were associated with their characterizations of the January Sixth Capitol Hill Attack as violent and extreme. Overall, these results support both motivated reasoning and dual process models, but partisan motivated reasoning exerted the greatest effects. Further, these findings suggest Republican and pro-Trump participants who rely on heuristic processing may find violent, extra-political actions acceptable means of attempting to achieve their goals.
Internet-based firms extensively use freemium pricing strategies to thrive in the hyper-competitive e-marketplace (e.g., Spotify, Tinder). Yet many firms using this pricing strategy operate at a loss. Few studies have theorized whether consumers’ decision to pay for the premium subscription is contingent on their individual traits. In response, this study posits that need for closure and deal proneness explain consumers’ decisions to choose free versus premium pricing options. We test our predictions using one survey and one experiment. Study 1 shows that need for closure prompts consumers to pay for the premium subscription. Moreover, deal proneness negatively moderates this relationship. Study 2 finds that uncertainty reduction mediates the effect of need for closure on the decision to pay for a premium subscription. These findings have important implications for managers aiming to increase conversion rates from free to premium subscriptions.
Tour experiences often comprise sequences of episodes, yet little is known in tourism research on how two common situational factors might alter individuals' evaluation of such multi-episode experiences: hedonic trend (i.e., the order of such episodes) and perceived time pressure (i.e., individuals' perception of limited available time). Two studies (i.e., an online experiment on a multi-city tour and a field experiment in a multi-site archaeological park) examine the interaction between these two factors by showing that individuals exhibit better evaluative responses (i.e., liking and revisit intention) to multi-episode tour experiences when such experiences have an ascending hedonic trend (i.e., their constituting episodes unfold in an increasing attractiveness order) rather than a descending one (i.e., the same episodes unfold in the opposite order). Importantly, individuals' perception of time pressure reverses this tendency. Our findings carry theoretical and managerial implications on how to design multi-episode tour experiences.
Intergroup dialogue (IGD) is a prominent social justice pedagogy that engages diverse groups of students in sustained, facilitated dialogues on social issues. Decades of IGD research have informed the development of the critical–dialogic theoretical framework of intergroup dialogue, which describes how IGD engages students in communicative, cognitive, and affective processes that promote intergroup understanding, intergroup relationships, and intergroup collaboration and action. Scholars have recently highlighted the need to better understand the relationships between students’ developmental capacities, their corresponding attitudes and dispositions, and IGD processes and outcomes in order to discern how students at different levels of development respond to and experience IGD.
Previous research on the need for cognitive closure (NFC), or the desire for epistemic certainty, has consistently found that it is associated with negative attitudes toward immigrants, among other outgroups, potentially because they represent agents of change and/or due to a general preference for perceived stability and certainty associated with right-wing politics. However, as individuals with this need theoretically prefer stable and certain knowledge, independent of the specific content, it is also possible that these individuals could have positive attitudes toward immigrants when they are provided with a positive source of information to which they can metaphorically “close” upon. In two studies (n = 397), controlling for participants’ political orientation, we found that individuals with an NFC were more likely to accept immigrants when their positive effect was endorsed by an epistemic authority (Study 1), but only when they trusted this source (Study 2).
We conduct two experiments to investigate how the presence of the CEO pay ratio, a recently mandated disclosure, influences nonprofessional investors' reactions to a CEO's internal attributions for poor firm performance. Results of our first experiment suggest that relative to blaming oneself, blaming other firm employees for poor firm performance more effectively absolves a CEO from responsibility for poor firm performance and damages perceptions of the CEO's trustworthiness less when a pay ratio disclosure is present versus absent. These perceptions, in turn, affect investors' support for the CEO's compensation and the company's attractiveness as an investment. Our second experiment provides evidence of the underlying process, showing the pay ratio disclosure and the CEO's attribution to other employees affects the perceived status of a CEO. Together, our findings inform managers about the impact of their attributions for poor firm performance and regulators about potential unintended consequences of pay ratio disclosures.
Data Availability: Contact the authors.
JEL Classifications: G40; M41; M52.
A rich body of research throughout the social sciences demonstrates that bias—people’s tendency to display group-based preferences—is a major obstacle in the way of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. The current article moves beyond the single-level focus of prior theories of workplace bias to propose a novel theoretical model that conceptualizes workplace bias as a multilevel cycle. First, we discuss the theoretical foundations of our bias cycle theory and describe why understanding the nature of workplace bias—and effectively reducing it—requires considering the reciprocal influences of both individual and organizational levels of the cycle. Specifically, we describe how workplace bias operates as a cycle and then propose that successfully reducing workplace bias requires multilevel interventions that interrupt bias across both the individual and organizational levels of the cycle. Second, because workplace bias is reproduced through both of these levels, we review and bring together literatures that are often considered separately: psychology research on reducing bias at the individual level and sociology and management research on reducing bias at the organizational level. Third, we use our bias cycle theory to formulate general principles for determining how to begin and how to pair interventions across levels. Finally, we conclude by discussing our theoretical contributions and outlining directions for future research.
This paper examines the effect of teachers’ stereotypic perceptions on their evaluations and expectations of students. In Study 1 teachers responded in stereotypic manner when they were presented only with information regarding students’ ethnic origin and sex. The results of Study 2 show that teachers’ stereotypic perception influenced their grading practices. The results of Study 3 indicate that familiarity with students’ behavior might override teachers’ stereotypic impressions based on students’ group membership. The implications of these results for educational practices are discussed.
Subjects were requested to choose between gambles, where the outcome of one gamble depended on a single elementary event, and the other depended on an event compounded of a series of such elementary events. The data supported the hypothesis that the subjective probability of a compound event is systematically biased in the direction of the probability of its components resulting in overestimation of conjunctive events and underestimation of disjunctive events. Studies pertaining to this topic are discussed.
People who hold strong opinions on complex social issues are likely to examine relevant empirical evidence in a biased manner. They are apt to accept "confirming" evidence at face value while subjecting "disconfirming" evidence to critical evaluation, and, as a result, draw undue support for their initial positions from mixed or random empirical findings. Thus, the result of exposing contending factions in a social dispute to an identical body of relevant empirical evidence may be not a narrowing of disagreement but rather an increase in polarization. To test these assumptions, 48 undergraduates supporting and opposing capital punishment were exposed to 2 purported studies, one seemingly confirming and one seemingly disconfirming their existing beliefs about the deterrent efficacy of the death penalty. As predicted, both proponents and opponents of capital punishment rated those results and procedures that confirmed their own beliefs to be the more convincing and probative ones, and they reported corresponding shifts in their beliefs as the various results and procedures were presented. The net effect of such evaluations and opinion shifts was the postulated increase in attitude polarization. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
160 undergraduates in 3 experiments were induced to explain particular events in the later lives of clinical patients whose previous case histories they had read, and they were then asked to estimate the likelihood of the events in question. Each experiment indicated that the task of identifying potential antecedents to explain an event increases that event's subjective likelihood. This phenomenon was replicated across a variety of clinical case studies and predicted events and was evident both under conditions in which Ss initially believed the events they explained to be authentic, only to learn afterward that no information actually existed about the later life of the patient, and under conditions in which Ss knew from the outset that their explanations were merely hypothetical. Implications for previous investigations dealing with belief perserverance and the consequences of hindsight perspective are outlined, and potential boundary conditions of the observed effect are discussed. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two experiments demonstrated that self-perceptions and social perceptions may persevere after the initial basis for such perceptions has been completely discredited. In both studies subjects first received false feedback, indicating that they had either succeeded or failed on a novel discrimination task and then were thoroughly debriefed concerning the predetermined and random nature of this outcome manipulation. In experiment 2, both the initial outcome manipulation and subsequent debriefing were watched and overheard by observers. Both actors and observers showed substantial perseverance of initial impressions concerning the actors' performance and abilities following a standard "outcome" debriefing. "Process" debriefing, in which explicit discussion of the perseverance process was provided, generally proved sufficient to eliminate erroneous self-perceptions. Biased attribution processes that might underlie perserverance phenomena and the implications of the present data for the ethical conduct of deception research are discussed.
This chapter discusses the social psychologists study “top of the head” phenomena in their experimental investigations. Attention within the social environment is selective. It is drawn to particular features of the environment either as a function of qualities intrinsic to those features (such as light or movement) or as a function of the perceiver's own dispositions and temporary need states. These conditions are outlined in the chapter. As a result of differential attention to particular features, information about those features is more available to the perceiver. Relative to the quantity of information retained about other features, more is retained about the salient features. When the salient person is the self, the same effects occur, and the individual is also found to show more consistency in attitudes and behaviors. These processes may occur primarily in situations which are redundant, unsurprising, uninvolving, and unarousing. They seem to occur automatically and substantially without awareness, and as such, they differ qualitatively from the intentional, conscious, controlled kind of search which characterizes all the behavior.
The present study tested the hypothesis that perseverance of discredited self-perceptions after debriefing varies with subjects' opportunity to engage in causal explanation. Subjects were presented with false feedback indicating that they had either succeeded or failed at a novel discrimination task. Four information processing conditions varied subjects' opportunity to explain their outcomes to themselves. Subjects who, through distraction, were prevented from generating explanations showed no evidence of perseverance, while perseverance increased with increasing opportunity to engage in causal explanation.
A theory of epistemic behavior is applied to the problem of cognitive therapy. The theory addresses the process whereby all knowledge is acquired and modified. The task of cognitive therapy is to modify some types of knowledge, those with aversive consequences to the individual. Any knowledge is assumed to be inevitably biased, selective and tentative. It is assumed to be affected by three epistemically relevant motivations: the need of structure, the fear of invalidity and the need of conclusional contents. Such motivations can be appropriately enlisted in the aid of uprooting the patient's dysfunctional beliefs or “frustrative hypotheses” concerning his/her failures to attain important goals. Unlike major alternative approaches, the present one: (1) disputes the dysfunctional misconception hypothesis whereby neurotic inferences are distorted or biased as compared to normal inferences, (2) questions the value of constructing a priori lists, or taxonomies of dysfunctional beliefs, and (3) qualifies the suggestion that own behavior or personal experience is a superior vehicle of belief-induction. Instead, the persuasive value of behavior or experience is assumed to be restricted to cases in which the individual trusts his own ability to interpret the events at hand.
Currently prevalent views of human inference are contrasted with an integrated theory of the epistemic process. The prevailing views are characterized by the following orienting assumptions: (1) There exist reliable criteria of inferential validity based on objectively veridical or optimal modes of information processing. (2) Motivational and cognitive factors bias inferences away from these criteria and thus enhance the likelihood of judgmental error. (3) The layperson's epistemic process is pluralistic; it consists of a diverse repertory of information-processing strategies (heuristics, schemas) selectively invoked under various circumstances. By contrast, the present analysis yields the following conclusions: (1) There exist no secure criteria of validity. (2) Psychological factors that bias inferences away from any currently accepted criteria need not enhance the likelihood of error. (3) The inference process may be considered unitary rather than pluralistic. The various strategies and biases discussed in the literature typically confound universal epistemic process with specific examples (or contents) of such processes. Empirical support for the present analysis is presented, including evidence refuting proposals that specific contents of inference are of universal applicability; evidence suggesting that people do not, because of a reliance on subnormative heuristics, underutilize nonnative statistical information—rather, people seem unlikely to utilize any information if it is nonsalient or (subjectively) irrelevant; and evidence demonstrating that the tendency of beliefs to persevere despite discrediting information can be heightened or lowered by introducting appropriate motivational orientations.
The chapter summarizes evidence indicating that cognitive biases can result in the perceiver holding stereotypic conceptions of social groups; that is, cognitive mechanisms alone may be the foundation of perceived intergroup differences. The chapter reveals the significant role of cognitive mechanisms at several possible points in the overall attribution process. The cognitive orientation presented in the chapter provides a new perspective for understanding why stereotypes are so persistent over time and resistant to change. Stereotypes, as cognitive schemas, can influence the encoding, interpretation, retention, and retrieval of subsequently obtained information about members of stereotyped groups, along with the perceiver's causal attributions regarding the target person's behavior. The chapter discusses a number of cognitive biases, which have bearing on the stereotyping process. One of the primary challenges faced by researches in this field is the question of how these biases can be altered or modified in cases where they yield consequences hat reduce, rather than facilitate effectiveness. The chapter considers the question of what behavioral consequences result from the perceiver holding a stereotype of a particular group.
Outlines a theory of the lay epistemic process. According to this theory knowledge-seeking behavior is initiated by a purpose that a person has for reaching a given inference and consists of the stages of problem formulation and of problem resolution, the latter stage being governed by the principle of logical consistency. Major attributional formulations are interpreted within the lay epistemic framework. It is concluded that such formulations have typically addressed particular instances of epistemic (inferential) behavior rather than the underlying epistemic process. In this sense, the attributional formulations may be considered special cases of the present model applied to specific contents of knowledge. The present lay epistemic paradigm thus provides an integrative framework that allows for the consideration of diverse attributional models in common theoretical terms and for the derivation of the necessary applicability conditions of different such models. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Discusses whether causal attributions protect and/or enhance self-esteem. In a recent review, D. T. Miller and M. Ross (1975) proposed that there is evidence for self-serving effect in the attribution of success but not in the attribution of failure and that this effect reflects biases in information-processing rather than self-esteem maintenance. The present review indicates that self-serving effects for both success and failure are obtained in most but not all experimental paradigms. Processes that may suppress or even reverse the self-serving effect are discussed. The examination of research in which self-serving effects are obtained suggests that these attributions are better understood in motivational than in information-processing terms. (5½ p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness,
which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process
B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a
class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical
prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead
to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could
improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.
Applies functional measurement theory to 4 experimental situations in psychophysical scaling. 2 judgment models: additive and multiplicative are 1st applied to a psychophysical averaging task and to a ratio estimation task in which the numerical response is assumed to be a valid and proper measure of subjective magnitude. It is shown that factorial designs and analysis of variance procedures not only provide tests of the models, but also scales of the independent, stimulus variables. Next multisection (including bisection) and ratio setting tasks are considered. For these, the response is on the physical stimulus scale, and this is not in general an adequate psychological scale. However, the monotone rescaling procedure of functional measurement provides a way to get a valid scale of the dependent, response variable. A robust method for distinguishing between the log and power versions of the psychophysical law is also obtained. Finally, it is argued that the experimental base of traditional psychophysical scaling with direct, numerical response methods is inherently too narrow to support a solution to its problems. Tasks based on psychophysical information integration provide a broader and potentially simpler approach to scaling. In this approach, the psychophysical law appears as a by-product of the substantive development. (2 p. ref.)
Ss judged the likableness of persons described by sets of 3 adjectives under 1 of 4 instruction conditions: (1) each adjective is equally important, (2) the adjectives may differ in validity, (3) and (4) 1 adjective does not apply. The adjective sets embodied affective and antonymic inconsistency. The results were interpreted as indicating that the impression response was an average of the scale values of the adjectives. For Condition 1, a simple average model worked reasonably well though not perfectly. Data for the remaining conditions were interpreted in terms of a weighted average formulation in which inconsistent adjectives received a decreased weight.
The hypothesis that psychological stress will result in increased intolerance for ambiguity is supported by the generally significant differences between the stress and security groups on the experimental measures.
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Social-personality inference in clinical psychology
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Kruglanski, A. W., & Jaffe, Y. Lay epistemology: A theory for cognitive therapy. In L.
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inference in clinical psychology.
New York: Gui]ford
Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases
- Tversky
Stereotypic perceptions of teachers
- Guttman