Article

Counterfactuals as Behavioral Primes: Priming the Simulation Heuristic and Consideration of Alternatives

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract

We demonstrate that counterfactuals prime a mental simulation mind-set in which relevant but potentially converse alternatives are considered and that this mind-set activation has behavioral consequences. This mind-set is closely related to the simulation heuristic (Kahne-man & Tversky, 1982). Participants primed with a counterfactual were more likely to solve the Duncker candle problem (Experiment 1), suggesting that they noticed an alternative function for one of the objects, an awareness that is critical to solving the problem. Participants primed with a counterfactual were more likely to simultaneously affirm the consequent and select the potentially falsifying card, but without selecting the irrelevant card, in the Wason card selection task, suggesting that they were testing both the stated conditional and its reverse (Experiment 2). The increased affirmations of the consequent decreased correct solutions on the task—thus, the primed mind-set can bias or debias thought and action. Finally, Experiment 3 provides further evidence that counterfactual primes increase the accessibility of relevant alternatives. Counterfactual primes attenuated the confirmation bias in a trait hypothesis testing context by increasing the selection of questions designed to elicit hypothesis-disconfirming answers, but without increasing the selection of neutral questions. The nature of priming effects and the role of counterfactual thinking in biasing and debiasing thought and action are discussed.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

... Counterfactual generation is an everyday activity commonly reported by individuals in a variety of settings 13,14,17,18 . Research has demonstrated that counterfactual thinking during one task can prime decision makers to consider alternatives in subsequently encountered information, influencing their judgments in separate, unrelated tasks 19,20 . The effects of counterfactual thinking on subsequent judgments and decisions have been documented in the context of analytical problem-solving 15,19 , hypothesis-testing 19 , debiasing 21,22 , and information sharing in groups [23][24][25] . ...
... Research has demonstrated that counterfactual thinking during one task can prime decision makers to consider alternatives in subsequently encountered information, influencing their judgments in separate, unrelated tasks 19,20 . The effects of counterfactual thinking on subsequent judgments and decisions have been documented in the context of analytical problem-solving 15,19 , hypothesis-testing 19 , debiasing 21,22 , and information sharing in groups [23][24][25] . ...
... Research has demonstrated that counterfactual thinking during one task can prime decision makers to consider alternatives in subsequently encountered information, influencing their judgments in separate, unrelated tasks 19,20 . The effects of counterfactual thinking on subsequent judgments and decisions have been documented in the context of analytical problem-solving 15,19 , hypothesis-testing 19 , debiasing 21,22 , and information sharing in groups [23][24][25] . ...
Article
Full-text available
In a series of experiments involving beliefs and misinformation beliefs, we find that individuals who are prompted with a counterfactual mindset are significantly more likely to change their existing beliefs when presented with evidence that contradicts their beliefs. While research finds that beliefs that are considered part of one’s identity are highly resistant to change in the face of evidence that challenges these beliefs, four experiments provide evidence that counterfactual generation causes individuals to adjust beliefs and correct misinformation beliefs in response to contradicting evidence. Indeed, we find that a counterfactual mindset was effective in promoting incorporation of accurate facts and causing individuals to revise misinformation beliefs about COVID vaccination safety for a large sample of individuals who have rejected COVID vaccinations. Finally, the results of the psychophysiological experiment reveal that counterfactual generation alters decision makers’ search strategies, increases their cognitive arousal in response to evidence that challenges their beliefs, and increases their desire to seek out disconfirming evidence. Overall, the four experiments indicate that counterfactual generation can effectively activate mindsets that increase individuals’ willingness to evaluate evidence that contradicts their beliefs and adjust their beliefs in response to evidence.
... Besides affecting behavior related to the content of a specific thought, counterfactuals can also have broader consequences independent of the thought content. One way by which these content-neutral effects were previously demonstrated is the induction of a so-called counterfactual mindset (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). Such a mindset affects performance and behavior in unrelated situations in diverse ways. ...
... The standard induction of a counterfactual mindset involves participants imagining a situation in which they almost win a prize at a lottery (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). This is typically followed by a measure of performance in a problem-solving or creativity task (e.g., Kray et al., 2006). ...
... The biggest difference between our studies and the existing body of research is the sample size used. Much of the existing research used samples ranging from N = 7 to N = 15 per condition (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray et al., 2006). Our studies adhered more to the current standards using much larger samples. ...
Article
Full-text available
Motivational states are important determinants of human behavior. Regulatory focus theory suggests that a promotion focus stimulates risky behavior, whereas a prevention focus fosters conservative tactics. Previous research linked counterfactual structure with regulatory focus. Extending this work, we predicted that additive counterfactual mindsets (“If only I had…”) instigate risky tactics in subsequent situations, whereas subtractive counterfactual mindsets (“If only I had NOT…”) lead to conservative tactics. We tested this prediction and the underlying assumptions in four preregistered studies (total N = 803) and obtained consistent null results. Additive and subtractive counterfactual mindsets did not elicit different tactics – neither on behavioral nor on self-report measures – and they did not influence participants’ motivation compared to a neutral control condition. Likewise, our results put doubts on previous findings on counterfactuals and regulatory focus as well as regulatory focus and conservative or risky behavior. More general implications for research on counterfactuals and motivation are discussed.
... A growing body of research supports this view. It shows that bringing people into a state of cognitive flexibility (i.e., activating a flexibility mindset) via the mental simulation of conflicting alternatives reduces their reliance on dominant outgroup-related judgments (Kleiman et al., 2014;Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005;Stern & Kleiman, 2015;Vasiljevic & Crisp, 2013;SUBTRACTIVE COUNTERFACTUALS AND TRUST IN IMMIGRANTS 7 Winter et al., 2021), as well as biased judgment and decision-making in general (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kleiman & Hassin, 2013;Landkammer & Sassenberg, 2016;Savary et al., 2015). For instance, Winter et al. (2021) found that reading messages with negations ("asylum seekers are not criminal")-which inherently entail a mental simulation of conflicting alternatives (Dudschig & Kaup, 2018)-increased outgroup trust among those who were initially the most distrusting. ...
... Accordingly, the mental procedure applied during counterfactual thinking is a simulation of two conflicting alternatives (i.e., reality and a counterfactual alternative); applied to the example above, failing the exam in reality and simulating alternatives how one could have passed it. Several studies show that if a counterfactual mindset is activated via priming procedures in one situation, it has a debiasing effect in unrelated, subsequent situations (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003). This effect could, thus, also apply to the debiasing of outgroup judgments. ...
... In line with this idea, Markman et al. (2007) discovered that the mindset manipulations used in the studies that showed a debiasing effect of counterfactuals (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003) primarily elicited subtractive counterfactual thoughts. Thus, especially subtractive counterfactual thinking should be suitable to reduce people's reliance on their dominant responses (i.e., debias strong or extreme attitudes). ...
Article
Full-text available
Public discourse on immigration has seemed to polarize over recent years—with some people strongly trusting, but others strongly distrusting immigrants. We examined whether a cognitive strategy could mitigate these biased outgroup judgments. Given that subtractive counterfactual thoughts (“If only I had not done X. . .”) facilitate cognitive flexibility and especially a relational processing style, we hypothesized that these thoughts (vs. additive counterfactuals “If only I had done X. . .” and no counterfactuals) would weaken the relationship between people’s political orientation and the perceived trustworthiness of immigrants. In five experiments (two preregistered; total N = 1,189), we found that inducing subtractive (but not additive) counterfactuals—either via rhetorical questions in a political speech or via mindset priming—had the predicted debiasing effect. Taken together, subtle means such as using subtractive counterfactual questions in political communication seem to be a promising way to reduce biased outgroup judgments in heated public debates.
... Individuals can be primed to adopt a counterfactual mindset by being exposed to a stimulus that elicits counterfactual thinking (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). A typical method for examining mindset effects involves asking participants to read a scenario about a mishap, generate counterfactuals from the protagonist's perspective, and then complete an unrelated task. ...
... A typical method for examining mindset effects involves asking participants to read a scenario about a mishap, generate counterfactuals from the protagonist's perspective, and then complete an unrelated task. Such a mindset is considered to be functional if individuals who are primed to adopt a counterfactual mindset perform better in a subsequent unrelated task than those who are not primed (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003). Indeed, counterfactual mindsets have been found to improve performance in divergent thinking tasks (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), reduce confirmation bias (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003), facilitate group discussions and decision making Liljenquist et al., 2004), and improve critical appraisal of persuasive messaging (Krishnamurthy & Sivaraman, 2002). ...
... Such a mindset is considered to be functional if individuals who are primed to adopt a counterfactual mindset perform better in a subsequent unrelated task than those who are not primed (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003). Indeed, counterfactual mindsets have been found to improve performance in divergent thinking tasks (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), reduce confirmation bias (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003), facilitate group discussions and decision making Liljenquist et al., 2004), and improve critical appraisal of persuasive messaging (Krishnamurthy & Sivaraman, 2002). ...
Article
We investigated the preparatory benefits of counterfactual and prefactual thinking towards cognitive task performance. Experiment 1 replicated the robust finding that individuals focus more on mutating internally controllable elements when thinking prefactually about their future task performance than when thinking counterfactually about a past performance. We also replicated the finding that counterfactual thinking was associated with significant performance improvement in an anagram task. However, despite their greater focus on internally controllable thoughts, individuals who generated prefactuals showed no performance improvement. In Experiment 2, we examined the relative performance-enhancing roles of counterfactuals and prefactuals in a subsequent unrelated analytical reasoning task. Only individuals who completed a counterfactual priming task performed significantly better than those in a control group did. These results corroborate extant findings of the preparatory advantage of counterfactuals. They also raise questions regarding some ways in which the preparatory functions of counterfactual and prefactual thinking have been conceptualised.
... An alternate, but not incompatible view is that considering counterfactuals may make the learner more open to alternative possibilities. In a series of experiments with adults, Galinsky and Moskowitz (2000) found that priming individuals with counterfactuals debiased reasoning on a range of tasks. Most relevant to the current proposal, however, was the finding that adults who had read a counterfactual-inducing scenario (e.g., about an individual who narrowly missed winning a large prize) were subsequently more likely to engage in disconfirmatory hypothesis-testing on an unrelated task than were those who read a control scenario. ...
... Those who had read the counterfactual-inducing scenario were more likely to select hypothesisdisconfirming items that tested an alternate hypothesis (e.g., that the individual was an introvert), whereas those in the control condition selected more hypothesis-confirming items. The authors argued that thinking counterfactually makes individuals more open-minded to alternative possibilities, causing them to adopt a "simulation mind-set" (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). ...
... We have provided evidence that thinking counterfactually positively contributes to scientific inquiry. Its engagement leads to controlled, disconfirmatory hypothesis-testing (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Nyhout, Henke, & Ganea, 2019;Nyhout, Iannuzziello, et al., 2019), and more ideal evidence evaluation (Engle & Walker, 2021;McCormack et al., 2013). Counterfactual thought experiments may also enhance learning and transfer of science concepts (Nyhout & Ganea, 2021b). ...
Chapter
In this chapter, we bridge research on scientific and counterfactual reasoning. We review findings that children struggle with many aspects of scientific experimentation in the absence of formal instruction, but show sophistication in the ability to reason about counterfactual possibilities. We connect these two sets of findings by reviewing relevant theories on the relation between causal, scientific, and counterfactual reasoning before describing a growing body of work that indicates that prompting children to consider counterfactual alternatives can scaffold both the scientific inquiry process (hypothesis-testing and evidence evaluation) and science concept learning. This work suggests that counterfactual thought experiments are a promising pedagogical tool. We end by discussing several open questions for future research.
... testing hypotheses about numeric abstract rules) was replaced with more ecologically valid tasks resembling everyday-life problems (e.g. testing hypotheses about people), and general support was found for the previous findings on the systematic use of confirming, rather than falsifying, strategies (Dudekov a et al., 2017;Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Snyder & Swann, 1978;Strachanov a & Valu s, 2019). ...
... The second part consisted of four tasks (related to the four topics) measuring confirmation bias in information search. The task identifying confirmation bias in searches was based on methods typically used in previous research (Frost et al., 2015;Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003; Strachanov a & Valu s, 2019). First, we presented participants with this situation: "Imagine that your friend asks you to help them with a decision. ...
... This was true for all four selected topics, so our results constitute strong evidence of people adopting a confirmation strategy when looking for new information. The results also extend previous findings (Frost et al., 2015;Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000; Strachanov a & Valu s, 2019) by including measurement of participants' attitudes and their effect. On the other hand, some researchers argue that an alternative explanation is possible and that confirmation bias is often confounded with desirability (Tappin et al., 2017), or influenced by plausibility rather than confirmation bias. ...
Article
Confirmation bias is often used as an umbrella term for many related phenomena. Information searches, evidence interpretation, and memory recall are the three main components of the thinking process involved in hypothesis testing most relevant to investigations of confirmation bias; yet these have rarely been explored using a unified paradigm. Therefore, this paper examines how confirmation bias works in each of these three stages of reasoning, using four controversial topics. Participants (N = 199) first indicated their attitudes and then answered tasks measuring confirmation bias. The results showed that confirmation bias was most prevalent in information search as participants tended to search for information confirming their prior attitudes. During information interpretation, confirmation bias occurred only for more polarizing topics. On the other hand, our results did not show confirmation bias in memory recall, as there was no difference in recall of information confirming or disconfirming prior attitudes for any of the topics. Although our attitudes affect the way we process information, it seems the effect varies depending on the reasoning stage, and this can have implications for debiasing strategies.
... In line with Kahneman and Tversky's (1982) simulation heuristic, researchers have proposed that consideration of multiple alternatives leads individuals to adopt a "mental simulation mindset" (Fischoff, 1982;Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Hirt & Markman, 1995;Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Hirt et al., 2004). This proposal was based on the observation that adults who generate a single explanation, especially when explaining social phenomena, show a number of biases in subsequent prediction and interpretation of related evidence (e.g., Ross et al., 1977;Anderson et al., 1980). ...
... In line with Kahneman and Tversky's (1982) simulation heuristic, researchers have proposed that consideration of multiple alternatives leads individuals to adopt a "mental simulation mindset" (Fischoff, 1982;Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Hirt & Markman, 1995;Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Hirt et al., 2004). This proposal was based on the observation that adults who generate a single explanation, especially when explaining social phenomena, show a number of biases in subsequent prediction and interpretation of related evidence (e.g., Ross et al., 1977;Anderson et al., 1980). ...
... Several studies indicate that when children have a strong belief in a hypothesis (Penner & Klahr, 1996) or are motivated to produce a specific outcome (Zimmerman & Glaser, 2001), they tend to engage in biased hypothesis-testing, seeking to confirm, rather than disconfirm their initial hypothesis (Kuhn & Phelps, 1982). If their commitment to a particular hypothesis leads them to engage in hypothesis-confirmation, then asking children to generate alternate explanations could reduce this tendency (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). There is at least one piece of suggestive evidence indicating that hypothesis-testing may be facilitated by exposure to contrastive beliefs in childhood as well. ...
... Therefore, we focus on several aspects related to the social dimension that are deemed to be important in the light of enhancing innovative work behaviors in firms. In particular, after conducting a thorough literature study and interviews with highly innovative professionals and entrepreneurs [10], we decided to move the work in this field forward by adopting a perspective-taking framework [11][12][13]. Perspective-taking is one of the drivers of sustainable business behaviors and organizational sustainability [14,15]. To understand how innovative work behaviors can be enhanced, predictor variables that all refer to the ability to relate to others (for instance, one's supervisor), in particular, the ability to perceive someone else's thoughts, feelings, and motivations (e.g., perspective-taking), and to engage with one another in the day-to-day practice, were hypothesized. ...
... To the best of our knowledge, so far, these variables have never been related to each other in a mediation model (with employability being the mediator) predicting innovative work behaviors. As such, this study increases the empirical knowledge that builds upon perspective-taking theory [12,13]. ...
... Perceived organizational politics negatively moderate the relationship between employability and innovative work behaviors. As explained in the introduction section, next to testing our hypothesized research model (see Figure 1) using a quantitative approach, our study further aims to achieve a better understanding of SME employees' and supervisors' experiences of the antecedents and outcomes of employability building upon perspective-taking theory [12,13] as an underlying framework. For this reason, three research questions (RQ) have been formulated that guided the qualitative analyses in this contribution: RQ 1. ...
Article
Full-text available
In this mixed methods study, a moderated mediation model predicting effects of leader-member exchange (LMX) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) on innovative work behaviors, with employability as a mediator, has been tested. Multi-source data from 487 pairs of employees and supervisors working in 151 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) supported our hypothesized model. The results of structural equation modelling provide support for our model. In particular, the benefits of close relationships and high-quality exchanges between employee and supervisor (LMX), and fostering individual development as a result of employees’ OCB have an indirect effect on innovative work behaviors through positive effects on workers’ employability. Innovative work behaviors depend on employees’ knowledge, skills, and expertise. In other words, enhancing workers’ employability nurtures innovative work behaviors. In addition, we found a moderation effect of organizational politics on the relationship between employability and innovative work behaviors. Secondly, qualitative methods focusing on experiences of the antecedents and outcomes of employability were used to complement our quantitative results. All in all, this study has important consequences for managerial strategies and practices in SMEs and call for an awareness of the dysfunctional effect of perceived organizational politics.
... By considering and generating alternative situations, considering the opposite or using a pre-mortem analysis for one's own decisions and its consequences and potential outcomes, decision makers can actively reduce verification biases like overconfidence, confirmation bias, anchoring, hindsight, and control illusion (Adame, 2016;Arkes, 1991;Babcock et al., 1997;Epley & Gilovich, 2005;Hirt et al., 2004;Kaufmann et al., 2010;Koriat et al., 1980;Kray & Galinsky, 2003;Lord et al., 1984;Mussweiler et al., 2000;Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977;Soll et al., 2015;Veinott et al., 2010). This technique further helps to enhance likelihood assessments and judgmental biases (Heiman, 1990;Kaufmann et al., 2010;Koonce, 1992), mitigate the influence of opportunity cost neglect (Frederick et al., 2009), and functional fixedness (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000a). It is also seen to support the generation of alternatives and options (Keeney, 2012;Montibeller & Winterfeldt, 2015) and reduces the effect of framing, an attitude-decision gap, and recall biases (Payne et al., 1999). ...
... This leads to two major insights: a) when which debiasing technique may make sense in a decision process, and b) potential gaps in research and communication of research results versus practice. (Koriat et al., 1980) • Hindsight, logical problem solving, social judgement, availability, salience (Lord et al., 1984) • Anchoring (Mussweiler et al., 2000) • Hindsight (Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977;Soll et al., 2015) • Narrow option generation (Keeney, 2012) • Opportunity cost neglect (Frederick et al., 2009) • Likelihood assessments (Heiman, 1990;Koonce, 1992) • Confirmation bias (Kray & Galinsky, 2003) • Functional fixedness (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000a) • Framing, problematic valuation effects, attitudedecision gap, memory/recall biases (Payne et al., 1999) • Narrow option generation (Montibeller & Winterfeldt, 2015) • Confirmation bias, availability, self-serving biases (Babcock et al., 1997) • Overconfidence, planning illusion, illusion of control (Veinott et al., 2010) • Judgmental biases, control illusion, hindsight, anxiety based biases, planning fallacy (Kaufmann et al., 2010) • Association-based biases (Arkes, 1991) • (Schwenk & Cosier, 1993;Schwenk & Valacich, 1994) • Confirmation bias, narrow option generation (Schweiger et al., 1989) • Availability, confirmation bias, planning fallacy, information neglect (Herbert & Estes, 1977) • Judgmental biases, planning biases (Cosier, 1978) Accountability, secondorder judgement ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The impact of cognitive biases on (managerial) decisions has been recognized over the last decades with a recent surge due to the COVID-19 based policy making. This article analyzes existing debiasing techniques to mitigate the influence of cognitive biases on (managerial) decisions and links the theoretical perspective with the practice. As debiasing techniques have a surprisingly little awareness among managers a card-sort experiment was applied to search for a more practice-oriented understanding and structure of debiasing techniques with the goal of developing a framework that helps practitioners to integrate debiasing techniques more easily in their decision processes. The result of the experiment shows 9 clusters of debiasing techniques (checklists, preparation, what if?, group debiasing, reason analogically, in-process debiasing, starting viewpoints, involvement, and calibration) which can be implemented in different phases of a decision process and thus may help to improve (managerial) decisions in times of uncertainty.
... Priming is specifically used in design ideation to improve quality and creativity. Participants who were primed by unscrambling sentences containing harsh words drew more hostile features, such as spikes and claws, in their sketches of hypothetical aliens [41]; participants who answered questions about nutrition habits showed improved productivity and quality of ideas on how to improve health [43]; participants who received positive affective priming-for example, being shown a picture of a laughing baby-generated higher-quality ideas in an alternative uses task [46]; participants who mimicked limited mobility, by wearing gloves, showed more empathy for elderly users, showed more originality in their concepts, and had less design fixation [10]; and participants who received counterfactual priming-that is, they considered events that happened as well as events that almost happened-performed better on the Duncker candle problem (a problem-solving test involving a candle, matches, and box of thumbtacks) by triggering more alternative-use ideas for the given supplies [47]. ...
... Beyond design ideation, idea evaluation or selection is another crucial step in engineering design in a collaborative environment, and a wide set of alternatives are usually reviewed and evaluated by a team of designers [47]. This activity can have a significant impact on the success of the design process [48]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Although three pillars of sustainable design—social desirability, economic competitiveness, and environmental friendliness—are all important, they are not necessarily equally accessible or salient during the design process. This paper applies a collage priming method to activate designers’ mindsets regarding sustainability pillars prior to conceptual design exercises, and to facilitate early-stage sustainable design. The study tests if collage priming (1) improves ideation outcome in terms of the sustainability pillars, interpreted as user desirability, cost, and environmental impact, and (2) encourages designers to further explore others’ ideas during idea evaluation. For (1), collage priming related to environmental aspect is shown to assist designers with generating more relevant ideas regarding environmental impact and more feasible ideas as compared to the control. The priming is not effective in helping designers generate ideas related to user desirability or cost, potentially because designers lack readily accessible information to be activated by priming. For (2), the collage priming related to user desirability is shown to encourage further exploration when exposed to (simulated) others’ ideas. The study shows the effectiveness of collage priming in improving environmental impact in conceptual design; it also demonstrates the existing challenges of addressing user desirability and cost.
... As a cognitive process, engaging in CFT can subsequently change how consumers process information (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Galinsky & Kray, 2004). If consumers who engage in upward CFT believe they have the means and motivation to alter their future behavior, then these CFT thoughts can help them change their behavior (Smallman & Summerville, 2018). ...
... Prior research shows that engaging in CFT changes the way consumers process information (Galinsky & Kray, 2004) by directing attention to the sequence of choices and behavior, and increasing the value of feasibility information (Wang & Zhao, 2014). Upward CFT may prime positive behaviors, encouraging consumers to consider alternatives (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000) and develop implementation plans (Epstude & Roese, 2008;Smallman, 2013). We find that CFT following reflection on a dieting lapse prompted functional counterfactual thoughts (Roese, 1994) focused on how this tool could help a person take specific actions to track their eating and make healthy choices. ...
Article
Objectives: Dieting is a cognitively taxing task that does not always advance well-being. A dieting lapse may result in overconsumption that undermines long-term health goals. This research explores how a process known as counterfactual thinking (CFT), reliving an event to figure out where things went wrong, may help consumers faced with a temptation to indulge. Consumers who engage in upward CFT generate an alternative set of steps or actions that could have changed the outcome in a situation. We investigate if and how CFT may be used strategically to help consumers stick to their dieting goal and advance their own well-being. Methods: A 2 (CFT vs. control) x 2 (dieter vs. non-dieter) between-subjects factorial design was used to evaluate participant interest in a digital health tracking tool after viewing an advertisement (Study 1). Study 2 was conducted as a follow-up to measure their use of the digital tracking tool, intentions to continue to use, and calories consumed (as tracked in the system) after a two-week period using the digital tracking tool advertised in Study 1. Results: We find that engaging in upward CFT increases a dieter's intentions to track their food, a practice emerging as a strategy to help maintain goal consistency. Among dieters, perceived feasibility mediated the impact of CFT on both ad evaluations (Study 1) as well as intentions to continue to use the digital health tracking tool (Study 2). In the follow-up study we also find that dieters in the CFT condition used more of the online features offered and that all consumers in the CFT condition ate marginally fewer calories across two weeks of tracking using the digital health tool. Discussion: Encouraging consumers to generate upward counterfactual thoughts in the face of a dieting lapse increases their propensity to use an online tracking tool and reduces calories consumed. In the age of digital tracking tools, personalized prompts could be set to encourage CFT to help get a consumer back on track to pursue their healthy eating goals.
... On Day 1, participants completed an online questionnaire regarding work history, demographic information, and cognitive flexibility using the Martin and Rubin (1995) scale. 4 On Day 3, participants were randomly assigned to a treatment or a control group. Participants in the treatment group received a counterfactual scenario activity designed to manipulate cognitive flexibility (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003). Counterfactual primes work by increasing individuals' awareness of different alternatives and have been shown to increase individuals' propensity to engage in search for disconfirmatory information (Kray & Galinsky, 2003). ...
... Counterfactual primes work by increasing individuals' awareness of different alternatives and have been shown to increase individuals' propensity to engage in search for disconfirmatory information (Kray & Galinsky, 2003). These effects tend to last beyond the counterfactual event itself (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), and make them a suitable choice for our experiment. Participants in the control group received a similar scenario, but it did not include the cognitive flexibility improvement activity. ...
Article
Research summary Though prior research highlights the organizational and cognitive challenges associated with achieving organizational ambidexterity, there has been comparatively less empirical attention focused on the cognitive characteristics that may differentiate top managers of firms that achieve ambidexterity. We build on emerging research and identify cognitive flexibility as a cognitive characteristic with particular relevance to the challenges associated with ambidexterity and suggest that it works through CEOs’ information search activities. We find that cognitively flexible CEOs are more likely to engage in effortful and persistent information search and rely to a greater extent on outside sources of information. In turn, effortful and persistent information search activities are associated with higher levels of organizational ambidexterity. Our study pushes forward the research agenda on cognitive micro‐foundations of firm capabilities. Managerial summary Ambidextrous organizations, or organizations that have the capability to pursue both incremental and discontinuous innovation, enjoy more sustainable competitive advantages. However, the achievement of organizational ambidexterity poses unique demands for top managers, including cognitive challenges. To help managers better understand these challenges, this study focuses attention on the role of the CEO in the achievement of organizational ambidexterity, and on CEO cognitive flexibility as a potential influencing factor. Our results suggest that CEO cognitive flexibility may influence organizational ambidexterity indirectly through its effect on CEO information search activities, in particular where and how intensely CEOs search for information. Our study reinforces the importance of human factors in the executive office for the development of firm dynamic capabilities, and the implementation of an innovation‐based strategy. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
... The highly selective attention and limited bandwidth of phasic EA zoom the entrepreneurial attention on the third-person opportunities (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Gavetti & Levinthal, 2000;Markman & McMullen, 2003;Zellweger & Zenger, 2023) delivered by intrinsic EA. It is crucial to emphasize that these third-person opportunities do not automatically translate into entrepreneurial prospects without a thorough evaluation (Short et al., 2010). ...
Article
Full-text available
Entrepreneurial alertness (EA) is pivotal in opportunity recognition, yet the origins and processes underlying EA remain elusive. Drawing upon key insights from the neuroscience and entrepreneurship streams of literature, our study classifies EA into intrinsic and phasic components to delve into the entrepreneurial opportunity recognition process. Intrinsic EA—a self-initiated top-down control mechanism—continuously processes information to generate unconstrained associations from entrepreneurial schemata. As gatekeepers, intrinsic EA pre-processes external stimuli and internal thoughts, aiming to produce novel insights that may manifest as potential opportunities or threats. This triggers phasic EA, a short-term, bottom-up process with a selective focus on the insights. Phasic EA employs experiments to assess the attractiveness of first-person opportunities, refining entrepreneurial schemata. Utilizing 52 video interviews of 11 mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporean, and Indian entrepreneurs, our research distinguishes between intrinsic and phasic EA, delves into their origins, and presents a unified framework to elucidate their respective roles in entrepreneurial opportunity recognition.
... Although this conception of open-mindedness was prominent in earlier philosophical discussions (e.g., Hare, 1979), more recent accounts, such as Jason Baehr's (2011) proposal that open-mindedness involves transcending one's own perspective, provide a better starting point for thinking about the effects of art and media. One direction of research is to determine the extent to which open-mindedness in the doxastic senseas measured by, say, openness to new evidence (e.g., Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000) or the need for cognitive closure (e.g., Kruglanski et al., 1993) correlates with characteristics of open-mindedness in a broader sense, such as creativity, imaginative ability, openness to new experiences, and self-transcendence. The same kind of approach could foster a shared concept of moral understanding and its component abilities. ...
Article
Full-text available
According to a widespread view in the arts and humanities, artworks are not only cognitively but also morally valuable. However, arguments for this claim often proceed with little attention to empirical evidence. At the same time, artists, filmmakers, and media creators deliberately deploy various devices to effect cognitive change; but whether these devices have the desired effects, and on whom, also remains largely untested. If we want to understand the ways that film and media can have moral impacts, we must step out of our disciplinary siloes. It is not enough for film experts, philosophers, and experimentalists to merely take note of each other’s work; collaborative interdisciplinary research is required, both to improve methods and to examine questions that have not yet been empirically explored. In this article we propose a framework for this kind of research, focusing on how media can influence moral understanding. We first outline the challenges that must be met for such research to be successful, including clarifying and operationalizing concepts, measuring moral understanding, and applying empirical methods to media and the arts. We then describe the advantages of interdisciplinary collaboration for meeting these challenges, in the context of some recent examples of interdisciplinary projects on related themes.
... Psychological work on problem solving is consistent with this view: sometimes naturalistic settings and prior knowledge help, as in solving the Wason task; other times they impair problem solving because people fail to see unusual useful properties of an object, as in the famous candle problem (Galinsky Moskowitz 2000). Systematically engaging with bottom-up attention, shaped by contrast and prominence, may help design decision architectures conducive to improved judgments. ...
... 17, No. 2 Переводные статьи / Translated Articles ность своих решений и выбор той или иной информации, на которой они основаны; это должно оказывать дисциплинирующий эффект и помогать избегать когнитивных искажений 186 . Агентство обязано отвечать на комментарии, рассматривая альтернативные возможности и неверную информацию, что также должно снизить предвзятость их решений, поскольку рассмотрение контраргументов и альтернативных точек зрения является одной из лучших стратегий борьбы с предубеждениями, особенно с такими когнитивными искажениями, как предвзятость фактического восприятия и предвзятость подтверждения [162][163][164][165]. ...
... 17, No. 2 Переводные статьи / Translated Articles ность своих решений и выбор той или иной информации, на которой они основаны; это должно оказывать дисциплинирующий эффект и помогать избегать когнитивных искажений 186 . Агентство обязано отвечать на комментарии, рассматривая альтернативные возможности и неверную информацию, что также должно снизить предвзятость их решений, поскольку рассмотрение контраргументов и альтернативных точек зрения является одной из лучших стратегий борьбы с предубеждениями, особенно с такими когнитивными искажениями, как предвзятость фактического восприятия и предвзятость подтверждения [162][163][164][165]. ...
Article
Objective : to document the declining respect for expertise in the US Congress, the implications for policymaking given the wholesale nature of the legislative process, and some possible ways to account for the decline of expertise in the legislative process. Methods : dialectical approach to cognition of social phenomena, allowing to analyze them in historical development and functioning in the context of the totality of objective and subjective factors, which predetermined the following research methods: formal-logical and sociological. Results : It is no surprise to anyone that the US Congress has become a hyperpartisan battleground where little effort is expended to promote policies that work for Americans. While the US Congress has always viewed policy issues through the lens of party politics, the role of nonpartisan expertise in the legislative process is at an all-time low. The disrespect for experts is growing across society, but the decline in their use is particularly troubling in the US Congress because it exacerbates deficiencies that are inherent to the legislative process. The US Congress passes laws of general applicability and does not sit in judgment of specific applications of the law. Whether the US Congress does a good job setting those general policies depends on the process it uses for doing so. Sometimes, though increasingly rarely, the US Congress gathers the relevant facts and arguments about different aspects of a problem before acting. More often, legislators have specific outlier problems or prototypes in mind when they draft legislation, and if there is not an expert fact-finding process in place to study a proposal, cognitive biases may go unchecked. Scientific novelty : Part I details the role nonpartisan experts have played in the legislative process over time and documents the various ways that experts have fallen out of favor in the US Congress. Part II explains why this decline of expert involvement in legislation is particularly troubling given the way the US Congress operates as a body making wholesale policy with little individualized feedback on how its policies are applying to real-world scenarios. Part III then turns to the question of what, if anything, could or should be done about it. While the US Congress could, in theory, shift course, that seems unlikely. Throughout its history, the US Congress has cared about nonpartisan expertise when it worried about presidential overreach. But with parties dominating the political landscape, there is little likelihood that the US Congress will care enough about its institutional position relative to the executive. In the absence of legislative reform, Part III therefore considers two additional implications of the decline of expertise in the legislative process. First, the decline of internal expertise in the legislative body places greater weight on the use of administrative agencies to provide that guidance. Ironically, the US Supreme Court may be toying with a revitalization of the nondelegation doctrine at the precise moment that delegation is most urgently needed. Second, courts and other bodies that interpret statutes could consider the relationship between statutory meaning and the US Congress’s consultation with nonpartisan experts to help address statutory ambiguities. Practical significance : the main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in scientific, pedagogical and law enforcement activities when considering the issues related to the functioning of the US Congress .
... Using this problem, researchers have examined creative problem-solving and which conditions facilitate overcoming the constraints of existing mental models, also known as functional fixedness (Adamson, 1952). Interesting findings are that pressure does not improve performance in solving the candle problem, whereas positive affect (Isen et al., 1987), previous counterfactual thinking 2 (Galinsky and Moskowitz, 2000;Santamaría et al., 2005), and multicultural experience (Leung et al., 2008) have been shown to facilitate overcoming the existing mental model. Figure 2.6: Duncker's candle problem, own illustration, based on Weisberg and Suls (1973) The two-string problem (Thomas and Lleras, 2009) is a second illustration of the kind of reframing skills required for architectural innovation. ...
Thesis
Full-text available
Doctoral dissertation on using the cognitive surplus to crowdsource the creation and evaluation of innovation ideas. The objective is to help firms accelerate architectural innovation, which relies on making new and value-creating connections between existing solution components. Companies traditionally struggle with architectural innovation as their research and development departments are focused on deep expertise in a small number of individual disciplines rather than a broad knowledge across several disciplines. The latter is a prerequisite for discovering new and previously unexplored ways in which existing solutions can be combined to create a new value proposition. The empirical study shows that the cognitive surplus provides a valuable and mostly untapped resource that companies can leverage if they approach their customers with the appropriate incentive framework.
... This encourages the act of giving feedback [36,37]. Second, providing a list of common, assignment-specific issues or opportunities that the submission could have essentially reduces inhibition and prompts peers to think critically [38]. Third, because feedback snippets mostly used terminology learned in class, they may trigger cued recall of these concepts [39] leading to more conceptual and actionable comments. ...
Article
Full-text available
Peer and self-assessment open opportunities to scale assessments in online classrooms. This article reports our experiences of using AsPeer-peer assessment system, with two iterations of a university online class. We observed that peer grades highly correlated with staff assigned grades. It was recorded that, the peer grade of all student submissions within range of instructor grade averaged to 21.0% and that within the next 2 ranges was 49.0%. We performed three experiments to improve accuracy of peer grading. First, we observed grading bias and introduced a data driven feedback mechanism to inform peers of it. Students aided by feedback were mindful and performed grading with better accuracy. Second, we observed that the rubric lacked efficiency in translating intent to students. Simplified guiding questions improved accuracy in assessment by 89% students. Third, we encouraged peers to provide personalized qualitative feedback along with rating. We provided them with feedback snippets that addressed common issues. 64% students responded that the snippets helped them to critically look at submissions before rating.
... Once triggered, this specific information processing style remains activated, which means that it can influence subsequent information processing through acting as a procedural prime. As with other mindsets, what carries over to the next situation is not the content of the initial conflict experience, but merely the cognitive procedure of considering alternatives (e.g., Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Sassenberg et al., 2017). Typical manipulations that evoke a conflict mindset ask participants to remember and write down a past situation in which two important goals were in conflict (Alquist et al., 2018;Stern & Kleiman, 2015), or activate the conflicting goals (e.g., study vs. party goal) by means of priming (Kleiman & Hassin, 2013;Savary et al., 2015). ...
Article
Full-text available
People experience conflicts between goals, thoughts, and actions on a regular basis. Those conflict experiences can trigger a conflict mindset, a unique information processing style characterized by the activation and consideration of conflicting alternatives. This processing style has been associated with a reduced reliance on dominant or default response tendencies. It could, therefore, affect self-control decisions, in which in order to receive a larger delayed reward (e.g., good health) people need to forego a smaller immediate reward (e.g., tasty pizza). Importantly, the tendency to choose the delayed over the immediate reward varies between individuals, with people scoring low on trait impulsivity (or high on trait self-control) showing an overall stronger tendency to forgo the immediate reward. In three studies (Ntotal = 480) we tested the effect of a conflict (vs. neutral) mindset on people's repeated choices for smaller immediate over larger delayed rewards in a delay discounting task. A fully powered analysis across all three studies supported the notion that a conflict mindset reduced the influence of dispositional “default” response tendencies on self-control decisions: participants’ trait impulsivity and self-control scores predicted delay discounting only in the neutral mindset condition. In the conflict mindset condition, those dispositional tendencies and delay discounting were unrelated. This finding extends previous work on conflict mindsets by showing that they can reduce the association between individual differences and behavior.
... According to the first approach, novel uses may consist in the simulation of sensorimotor experience associated with tools (Matheson and Kenett, 2020). Although the simulation used to be considered a potential heuristic to deal with problems involving high uncertainty (Kahneman and Tversky, 1982;Galinsky and Moskowitz, 2000;Ball and Christensen, 2009), Matheson and Kenett (2020) reviewed neuroimaging studies and provided neural evidence of simulations of tool-related actions during the generation of creative uses in the AUT. This data is in line with studies of episodic future thinking (Schacter et al., 2017; see also Schacter et al., 2012), which stress the role of an individual's ability to recollect past personal experiences. ...
Article
Full-text available
Why does one need creativity? On a personal level, improvisation with available resources is needed for online coping with unforeseen environmental stimuli when existing knowledge and apparent action strategies do not work. On a cultural level, the exploitation of existing cultural means and norms for the deliberate production of novel and valuable artifacts is a basis for cultural and technological development and extension of human action possibilities across various domains. It is less clear, however, how creativity develops and how exactly one arrives at generating new action possibilities and producing multiple alternative action strategies using familiar objects. In this theoretical paper, we first consider existing accounts of the creative process in the Alternative Uses Task and then present an alternative interpretation, drawing on sociocultural views and an embodied cognition approach. We explore similarities between the psychological processes underlying the generation of new uses in the Alternative Uses Task and children’s pretend play. We discuss possible cognitive mechanisms and speculate how the generation of new action possibilities for common objects in pretend play can be related to adults’ ability to generate new action strategies associated with object use. Implications for creativity development in humans and embodied artificial agents are discussed.
... Fourth, we cannot account for the results by positing that any sort of prefactual thinking affects moral judgments by putting people in a mental simulation mindset (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Hirt et al., 2004;Kray et al., 2006;Wong et al., 2008). We find that a specific type of prefactual thought reduces moral condemnation of a falsehood: imagining how that falsehood might become true. ...
Article
Full-text available
In our "post-truth" era, misinformation spreads not only because people believe falsehoods, but also because people sometimes give dishonesty a moral pass. The present research examines how the moral judgments that people form about dishonesty depend not only on what they know to be true, but also on what they imagine might become true. In six studies (N = 3,607), people judged a falsehood as less unethical to tell in the present when we randomly assigned them to entertain prefactual thoughts about how it might become true in the future. This effect emerged with participants from 59 nations judging falsehoods about consumer products, professional skills, and controversial political issues-and the effect was particularly pronounced when participants were inclined to accept that the falsehood might become true. Moreover, thinking prefactually about how a falsehood might become true made people more inclined to share the falsehood on social media. We theorized that, even when people recognize a falsehood as factually incorrect, these prefactual thoughts reduce how unethical the falsehood seems by making the broader meaning that the statement communicates, its gist, seem truer. Mediational evidence was consistent with this theorizing. We argue that prefactual thinking offers people a degree of freedom they can use to excuse lies, and we discuss implications for theories of mental simulation and moral judgment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... Unfortunately, analyses yielded complex order effects. Order effects are a common issue for studies of counterfactual thinking due to counterfactual mindset (e.g., Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Kray & Galinsky, 2003). Thus, we report analyses only for the first scenario, creating a 2 (culture: White American vs. Arab) × 2 (event condition: routine vs. unusual) × 2 (scenario: car accident vs. construction accident) betweensubjects design. ...
Article
Full-text available
Counterfactual thinking is a ubiquitous feature of daily life with links to causal reasoning. Therefore, we argue that cultures that vary in perceptions of what controls important life outcomes may also vary in counterfactual thought. Investigating White American and United Arab Emirates-based Arab participants’ counterfactual potency and spontaneous counterfactual thinking, we found that Arab participants endorsed counterfactual thoughts less than White Americans, and were unaffected by the routine nature of action when negative outcomes were severe. Differences in counterfactual endorsement in response to severe negative outcomes were linked to greater beliefs in divine control and fate in Arab participants, and not to religiosity, reinforcing an important role of perceptions of control in counterfactual thought. However, although reporting less counterfactual endorsement overall, Arabs showed a similar pattern of counterfactual thought to White Americans when negative outcomes were mild, or when reporting spontaneous thought. Arabs likewise showed a similar pattern of regret as White Americans regardless of event severity, reporting more regret when outcomes resulted from unusual action. These patterns suggest a dissociation between affect and cognition, and between what kind of outcomes are subject to counterfactual scrutiny in Arab participants.
... Counterfactual reasoning is a core concept in human cognition that corresponds to thinking about a past situation and reflecting on alternative outcomes that might also have been. Galinsky and Moskowitz (2000) show in a psychological study that counterfactual reasoning can make study participants explore alternative explanations in situations in which they typically seek confirmatory information. Future work can explore how to develop counterfactual recommendations that help users explore alternative choices and their impact on user behavior. ...
Book
Full-text available
Personalized recommender systems have become indispensable in today’s online world. Most of today’s recommendation algorithms are data-driven and based on behavioral data. While such systems can produce useful recommendations, they are often uninterpretable, black-box models that do not incorporate the underlying cognitive reasons for user behavior in the algorithms’ design. This survey presents a thorough review of the state of the art of recommender systems that leverage psychological constructs and theories to model and predict user behavior and improve the recommendation process – so-called psychology-informed recommender systems. The survey identifies three categories of psychology-informed recommender systems: cognition-inspired, personality-aware, and affectaware recommender systems. For each category, the authors highlight domains in which psychological theory plays a key role. Further, they discuss selected decision-psychological phenomena that impact the interaction between a user and a recommender. They also focus on related work that investigates the evaluation of recommender systems from the user perspective and highlight user-centric evaluation frameworks, and potential research tasks for future work at the end of this survey.
... Counterfactual reasoning is a core concept in human cognition that corresponds to thinking about a past situation and reflecting on alternative outcomes that might also have been. Galinsky and Moskowitz (2000) show in a psychological study that counterfactual reasoning can make study participants explore alternative explanations in situations in which they typically seek confirmatory information. Future work can explore how to develop counterfactual recommendations that help users explore alternative choices and their impact on user behavior. ...
... In our opinion, the hypothesis of joint synthesis is a unified hypothesis being able simply and parsimoniously to explain various phenomena of cognition and behavior. For example, because joint synthesis is always performed anew and on the basis of minimal construction costs, JSH explains why decision-making is susceptible to priming (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Bargh & Ferguson, 2000) and depends on the format of the situation (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981;Shafir, 1993). Joint synthesis underlies riddles and puzzles when an individual cannot solve a simple problem, although his or her knowledge and skills are extremely sufficient to do this (Prudkov, 2000). ...
Preprint
Full-text available
The cause of actions is one of the most important problems in psychology. The field of psychology suggests three approaches (innate basic mechanisms, the separate construction of goals and means to accomplish them, and the dual-process models) to the problem. However, these approaches face fundamental difficulties. We suggest a new hypothesis that assumes the goal and means of an action are synthesized jointly based on the criteria of minimal construction costs. Some ideas in favor of this hypothesis and objections against it are considered. The hypothesis was examined in three experiments. In the first experiment, the criteria of minimal construction costs determines the actions of subjects. The second experiment shows the functioning of joint synthesis is independent of the intentions and wishes of participants. In the last experiment, subjects intentionally attempted to violate the mechanism of the synthesis, but they were unsuccessful. Thus, joint synthesis entirely determined actions.
... Counterfactual thinking is an inclination to imagine what might have been and consider "what if" alternatives to realities (Bonsignore et al., 2012). Counterfactual thinking encourages people to think using fantasy and imagination (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Markman et.al, 2007). Previous research has suggested that watching films (such as the Harry Potter series) with magical content encouraged children to use their imaginations and thus facilitates their counterfactual thinking (Subbotsky, Hysted, & Jones, 2010). ...
Article
Full-text available
The ability to think flexibly has become increasingly important for success in work, life, and learning in the 21 st century. Flexible thinking enables students to overcome thinking fixedness and generate creative ideas and helps students to apply what they learned when faced with unknown or unfamiliar challenges. However, there has been a lack of effective and engaging teaching methods designed for teachers to facilitate students’ thinking flexibility (Middleton, 2015). This study explored an innovative method based on the activity of magic performance with the aim of facilitating flexible thinking in an interactive and engaging way. An in-depth exploration of students’ experience in this activity revealed how magic performance as a unique schema disruption stimulus influences students’ flexible thinking. The results suggested three aspects of such influence: 1) Magic primes a childlike mindset in students and encourages them to use their imaginations, 2) The curiosity toward the secret of magic drives students to develop a flexible mindset, 3) The principles of magic promote flexible thinking transfer. The results may help creativity scholars understand why magic can be used to facilitate flexible thinking. The outcome may also help teachers form a deep understanding of how magic performance can be used to facilitate students’ flexible thinking in class.
... In these situations, other types of questions may provide better pedagogical support, such as questions that engage children in the evaluation of alternatives ("What if?") or questions that prompt counterexplanations ("Why else?"). These prompts have been found to attenuate confirmation bias in adult learners, shifting their attention from salient hypotheses to other possibilities (Galinsky & Moskowitz 2000). Prompting children to reason about alternative outcomes may provide similar benefits for scientific reasoning, supporting their use of the control-of-variables strategy (Nyhout et al. 2019) and scaffolding their recognition of confounded evidence (Engle & Walker 2018). ...
Article
Full-text available
Young children are adept at several types of scientific reasoning, yet older children and adults have difficulty mastering formal scientific ideas and practices. Why do “little scientists” often become scientifically illiterate adults? We address this question by examining the role of intuition in learning science, both as a body of knowledge and as a method of inquiry. Intuition supports children's understanding of everyday phenomena but conflicts with their ability to learn physical and biological concepts that defy firsthand observation, such as molecules, forces, genes, and germs. Likewise, intuition supports children's causal learning but provides little guidance on how to navigate higher-order constraints on scientific induction, such as the control of variables or the coordination of theory and data. We characterize the foundations of children's intuitive understanding of the natural world, as well as the conceptual scaffolds needed to bridge these intuitions with formal science. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 2 is December 15, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... Researchers also proposed certain specific mindsets, for example, deliberative and implemental mindsets (Gollwitzer & Bayer, 1999;Gollwitzer, Heckhausen, & Steller, 1990;Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006), a counterfactual mindset (Galinsky & Kray, 2004;Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), a comparative mindset (Xu & Wyer, 2007, a scarcity mindset (Shah, Mullainathan & Shafir, 2012) and maximizing and satisfying mindsets (Ma & Roese, 2014;Luan & Li, 2017a, 2017bLuan, Fu, & Li, 2018). ...
Article
Full-text available
The current research provides novel evidence on how intuitive decision process is activated under a crisis condition and demonstrates a substantial and robust relationship among crisis mindset, inattentional blindness, and intuitive decision. We activate and measure a crisis mindset instead of directly measuring a crisis situation because a crisis can affect people only if they perceive and interpret it as a crisis. In Experiment 1, we find that a crisis mindset leads to a higher level of inattentional blindness. In Experiment 2, we provide direct evidence that inattentional blindness creates a bridge between a crisis mindset and intuitive decision. In conclusion, we fill the research gap on how crisis links to intuitive decision by demonstrating the key role of inattentional blindness in activating intuitive decision under a crisis condition.
Article
The practice of medicine is a complex endeavor requiring high levels of knowledge and technical capability, and the capacity to apply the skills and knowledge to do the right thing in the right way, for the right reason, in a particular context. The orchestration of the virtues, managing uncertainty, applying knowledge and technical skills to a particular individual in a particular circumstance, and exercising the virtues in challenging circumstances, are the tasks of practical wisdom. Centuries ago, Aristotle suggested that capacities for wise action are developed through practice, experience, and reflection. Neuroscience and cognitive psychology are now beginning to contribute to our understanding of the complex interplay between emotion, cognition, and behavior that is necessary for wise action, and how this capacity for wise action can be developed. In this paper, I propose that wisdom offers an appropriate true north for medical education. Wisdom shifts the focus beyond the simple acquisition of knowledge and technical skills and integrates essential virtues like compassion, trustworthiness, humility, and the balancing of the virtues, into the professional formation for medical students. Informed by the humanities, the neurosciences, and the social sciences, we must now integrate the skills and practices necessary to the development of practical wisdom into medical education at all levels.
Article
Full-text available
The detrimental influence of cognitive biases on decision-making and organizational performance is well established in management research. However, less attention has been given to bias mitigation interventions for improving organizational decisions. Drawing from the judgment and decision-making (JDM) literature, this paper offers a clear conceptualization of two approaches that mitigate bias via distinct cognitive mechanisms—debiasing and choice architecture—and presents a comprehensive integrative review of interventions tested experimentally within each approach. Observing a lack of comparative studies, we propose a novel framework that lays the foundation for future empirical research in bias mitigation. This framework identifies decision, organizational, and individual-level factors that are proposed to moderate the effectiveness of bias mitigation approaches across different contexts and can guide organizations in selecting the most suitable approach. By bridging JDM and management research, we offer a comprehensive research agenda and guidelines to select the most suitable evidence-based approach for improving decision-making processes and, ultimately, organizational performance.
Article
SYNOPSIS We conduct an experiment with practicing Big 4 audit seniors and demonstrate that generating counterexplanations for an event in an unrelated task prior to completing audit planning tasks activates a counterfactual mindset that enhances auditors’ professional skepticism. This approach to activating professional skepticism can be implemented without auditor training and can be deployed across many different audit tasks. Overall, the experiment indicates that activation of a counterfactual mindset has significant potential to enhance audit quality.
Article
Teachers' comments on how the students' performance might have been if they performed in a specific way can have several implications for their motivation and engagement. This study examined the effects of upward and downward counterfactuals comments on the motivational aspects of L2 writing. To this end, 189 English as foreign language (EFL) learners were randomly assigned to three groups of upward counterfactual, downward counterfactual and control conditions and received counterfactual communication about a piece of writing. They were asked to answer to self-report scales on motivation, anxiety, growth mindsets, intended effort, willingness to write and perceptions of the rater. The results indicated that upward counterfactual communication positively influenced L2 writers' motivation, anxiety, growth mindsets, intended effort, willingness to write and perceptions of the rater, while downward counterfactual communication produced negative effects in regards to these motivational variables. The implications of the study for research and practice are presented.
Article
Full-text available
The counterfactual thinking cannot be only developed in early childhood, but it also could be a requirement for the causal reasoning. In this research a replica of German (1999) was made using counterfactual stories with Latin American kids between three and four years, demonstrating the possible main role counterfactual reasoning, by using computer animations. This was a different approach to the most recent made by Nyhout and Ganea (2020). Nonetheless, the participants of the study evidenced counterfactual reasoning to the relevant choice and the negative consequence conditions shown on the stories that represented the choices made by a starting role ( McNemar, N = 40, k = 11.53, p = .001). Although some of the results were not totally conclusive under the analyzed conditions. Lastly, some possible not controlled effects are discussed from stories shown to the children, that could have motivated the counterfactual thinking.
Article
We investigated whether prompting children to think counterfactually when learning a complex science concept (planetary habitability) would promote their learning and transfer. In Study 1, children (N = 102 6- and 7-year-olds) were either prompted to think counterfactually about Earth (e.g., whether it is closer to or farther from the sun) or prompted to think about examples of different planets (Venus and Neptune) during an illustrated tutorial. A control group did not receive the tutorial. Children in the counterfactual and examples groups showed better comprehension and transfer of the concept than those in the control group. Moreover, children who were prompted to think counterfactually showed some evidence of better transfer to a novel planetary system than those who were prompted to think about different examples. In Study 2, we investigated the nature of the counterfactual benefit observed in Study 1. Children (N = 70 6- and 7-year-olds) received a tutorial featuring a novel (imaginary) planet and were either prompted to think counterfactually about the planet or prompted to think about examples of additional novel planets. Performance was equivalent across conditions and was better than performance in the control condition on all measures. The results suggest that prompts to think about alternative possibilities-both in the form of counterfactuals and in the form of alternative possible worlds-are a promising pedagogical tool for promoting abstract learning of complex science concepts.
Article
Full-text available
The essence of an integrated marketing communications program is designed messages that effectively reach the target audience. A creative strategy directs all communications. The creative strategy guides and directs the development of current and future sales messages, brochures, and advertising. A written creative strategy becomes a potential management tool for directing the activities of advertising agencies. It clearly articulates how the product or service will be presented to customers and positioned versus competitors. The relationship between creativity and advertising is long, rich and textured. Creativity is considered to be an important determinant of advertising effectiveness. However, there is a robust relationship between creativity and dishonesty. This research provides a critical first step toward understanding how creative thinking is associated with unethical behavior, two often-discussed ingredients of our complex world. Across five studies, we demonstrated that both a creative personality and creativity primes promote individuals' motivation to think creatively, such that higher scores on dispositional creativity or exposure to creativity primes lead to an increased motivation to think outside the box. In turn, this increased motivation promotes dishonesty. Our results suggest that there is a link between creativity and rationalization. As Mazar et al. (2008) proposed, the ability of most people to behave dishonestly might be bound by their ability to cheat and at the same time feel that they are behaving as moral individuals. To the extent that creativity allows people to more easily behave dishonestly and rationalize this behavior, creativity might be a more general driver of this type of dishonesty and play a useful role in understanding unethical behavior.
Article
Full-text available
Spontaneous (i.e., heuristic, fast, effortless, and associative) processing has clear advantages for human cognition, but it can also elicit undesirable outcomes such as stereotyping and other biases. In the current article, we argue that biased judgements and behaviour that result from spontaneous processing can be reduced by activating various flexibility mindsets. These mindsets are characterised by the consideration of alternatives beyond one’s spontaneous thoughts and behaviours and could, thus, contribute to bias reduction. Research has demonstrated that eliciting flexibility mindsets via goal and cognitive conflicts, counterfactual thinking,, recalling own past flexible thoughts or behaviour, and adopting a promotion focus reduces biases in judgements and behaviour. We summarise evidence for the effectiveness of flexibility mindsets across a wide variety of important phenomena – including creative performance, stereotyping and prejudice, interpersonal behaviour, and decision-making. Finally, we discuss the underlying processes and potential boundary conditions.
Article
Full-text available
This paper discusses how counterfactual thinking can be incorporated intobehavioral economics by relating it to a type of attribution substitution involved in choices people make in conditions of Knightian uncertainty. It draws on Byrne’s ‘rational imagination’ account of counterfactual thinking, evidence from cognitive science regarding the forms it takes, and identifies types of attribution substitution specific to economic behavior. This approach, which elucidates the reflective stage of causal reasoning, is relevant for the explanation of hypothetical causal rules suitable for diverse tasks such as planning, expectations and mental simulations and for behavioural change interventions, which take into account people’s social and institutional embeddedness. The paper closes with a discussion of how this implies a specifically social Homo sapiens individual conception. Keywords: counterfactual thinking, attribute substitution, Knightian uncertainty, rational imagination, economic behavior, Homo sapiens JEL codes: A12, A13, B41, D90
Article
Full-text available
The use of structured risk assessment instruments (SRAIs) has increased significantly over the past decades, with research documenting variation between countries. The use of SRAIs, their perceived utility and potential for mitigating bias in forensic risk evaluations (FREs) was investigated in a survey of Dutch forensic mental health practitioners (N = 110) We found generally positive views regarding SRAI utility. Bias in FREs was of concern to respondents. We found no evidence of a bias blind spot (the belief that oneself is less prone to bias than peers/colleagues). SRAIs were rated as the most effective debiasing strategy, but respondents also endorsed introspection. There were few differences in beliefs about sources of bias or debiasing strategies between respondents who had bias training and those who had not, suggesting the need for development of effective strategies to mitigate bias and training related to bias in FREs.
Article
Often, the evidence we observe is consistent with more than one explanation. How do learners discriminate among candidate causes? The current studies examine whether counterfactuals help 5-year olds (N = 120) select between competing hypotheses and compares the effectiveness of these prompts to a related scaffold. In Experiment 1, counterfactuals support evidence evaluation, leading children to privilege and extend the cause that accounted for more data. In Experiment 2, the hypothesis that accounted for the most evidence was pitted against children's prior beliefs. Children who considered alternative outcomes privileged the hypothesis that accounted for more observations, whereas those who explained relied on prior beliefs. Findings demonstrate that counterfactuals recruit attention to disambiguating evidence and outperform explanation when data contrast with existing beliefs.
Article
Full-text available
Groups of people often find it challenging to coordinate on a single choice or option. Even when coordination is achieved, it may be inefficient because better outcomes were possible. Numerous researchers attempted to address this coordination problem with various manipulations ranging in complexity and generalizability, but results were mixed. Here, we use a more parsimonious and generalizable method – counterfactuals – to nudge (i.e. indirectly guide and allow for free choice) individuals towards choosing options that are more likely to result in efficient coordination. We used a modified version of an existing coordination game, the minimum effort game (MEG), where we added actual effort (i.e. solving an arithmetic problem) and counterfactuals (i.e. statements highlighting the hypothetical outcomes had they or other players chosen differently). Based on previous literature and promising results from a pilot experiment using bidirectional counterfactuals (i.e. both upward and downward), we designed and preregistered a follow-up experiment to directly assess the effectiveness of counterfactuals. We replicated the pilot study with a bidirectional counterfactual condition, then added an upward, downward, and control (no counterfactuals) condition. We found weak evidence for counterfactual nudging and clear evidence that players can effectively nudge the group towards higher efficiency.
Article
The design brief informs particularly the first phases of the design process; however, there are very limited studies on its role and functions. The current study proposes a framework that relates problem statement types in a design brief to creative outcomes by promoting the priming effect, which is a cognitive phenomenon describing the ways individuals behave accordingly to the way they receive a stimulus. The claim is that the brief has the potential to stimulate creativity and influence the type of outcomes by priming the design students using the problem statement. An experiment was conducted in which two groups of design students generated sketches in response to two types of problem statements (in noun and verb formations) in similar design briefs. The problem statements in verb formation were found to lead to a higher number of sketches containing more novel and flexible, yet less realisable ideas. The results support the contention that the design brief and the type of problem statements have the potential to act as a catalyst for creativity early in the design process.
Article
Real Activities Manipulation (RAM) is an earnings management technique that is increasingly being used by managers. RAM is a purposeful action by managers to manipulate earnings by altering operations, finances, and investments. In this study, we investigate the effects of reporting frequency and the knowledge that financial analysts view RAM negatively on the likelihood of management engaging in RAM. Based on the results of an online experiment with 73 experienced managers and MBA students, we find that more frequent financial reporting significantly reduces managers' likelihood to engage in sales-related RAM when they are also informed that analysts view RAM negatively. As a result, the combination of more frequent reporting and the knowledge that analysts view RAM negatively, taken together, may assist indeterring managers' engagement in sales-related RAM.
Article
Bias is a ubiquitous problem in human functioning. It has plagued medical decision making, making physicians prone to errors of perception and judgment. Racial, gender, ethnic, and religious negative biases infest physicians' perception and cognition, causing errors of judgment and behavior that are damaging. In Part 1 of this series of 2 papers, the authors address the problem of harmful bias, the science of cognition, and what is known about how bias functions in human perception and information processing. They lay the groundwork for an approach to reducing negative bias through awareness, reflection, and bias mitigation, an approach in which negative biases can be transformed-by education, experience, practice, and relationships-into positive biases toward one another. The authors propose wisdom as a conceptual framework for imagining a different way of educating medical students. They discuss fundamental cognitive, affective, and reflective components of wisdom-based education. They also review the skills of awareness, using debiasing strategies, compassion, fostering positive emotion, and reflection that are inherent to a wisdom-based approach to eliminating the negative effects of bias in medical education. In Part 2, the authors answer a key question: How can medical educators do better? They describe the interpersonal, structural, and cultural elements supportive of a wisdom-based learning environment, a culture of respect and inclusion in medical education.
Preprint
Full-text available
The use of structured risk assessment instruments (SRAIs) has increased significantly over the past decades, with research documenting variation between countries. The use of SRAIs, their perceived utility and potential for mitigating bias in forensic risk evaluations (FREs) was investigated in a survey of Dutch forensic mental health practitioners (N = 110) We found generally positive views regarding SRAI utility. Bias in FREs was of concern to respondents. We found no evidence of a bias blind spot (the belief that oneself is less prone to bias than peers/colleagues). SRAIs were rated as the most effective debiasing strategy, but respondents also endorsed introspection. There were few differences in beliefs about sources of bias or debiasing strategies between respondents who had bias training and those who had not, suggesting the need for development of effective strategies to mitigate bias and training related to bias in FREs.
Article
Full-text available
This research shows stereotype activation is controlled by chronic egalitarian goals. In the first 2 studies it was found that the stereotype of women is equally available to individuals with and without chronic goals, and the discriminant validity of the concept of egalitarian goals was established. In the next 2 experiments, differences in stereotype activation as a function of this individual difference were found. In Study 3, participants read attributes following stereotypical primes. Facilitated response times to stereotypical attributes were found for nonchronics but not for chronics. This lack of facilitation occurred at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) where effortful correction processes could not operate, demonstrating preconscious control of stereotype activation due to chronic goals. In Study 4, inhibition of the stereotype was found at an SOA where effortful processes of stereotype suppression could not operate. The data reveal that goals are activated and used preconsciously to prevent stereotype activation, demonstrating both the controllability of stereotype activation and the implicit role of goals in cognitive control.
Article
Full-text available
Two studies examined the heuristic and systematic processing of accuracy- versus impression-motivated individuals expecting a discussion with a partner believed to hold either a favorable or unfavorable opinion on the discussion issue. Given the goal of having a pleasant interaction, impression-motivated (versus accuracy-motivated) participants in both studies were particularly likely to express attitudes that were evaluatively consistent with the partner's opinion, reflecting their selective use of a “go along to get along” heuristic. Study 2 yielded stronger evidence for the distinct nature of heuristic and systematic processing in the service of accuracy versus impression goals. In this study, the evaluative implication of impression-motivated participants' low-effort application of a “go along to get along” heuristic biased their more effortful, systematic processing, leading to attitudes consistent with the partner's views. In contrast, given the goal of determining an accurate issue opinion, accuracy-motivated participants exhibited relatively evenhanded systematic processing, resulting in attitudes unbiased by the partner's opinion. The results underscore the utility of a dual-process approach to understanding motivated cognition.
Article
Full-text available
Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes (1986) demonstrated that Ss were able to evaluate adjectives more quickly when these adjectives were immediately preceded (primed) by attitude objects of similar valence, compared with when these adjectives were primed by attitude objects of opposite valence. Moreover, this effect obtained primarily for attitude objects toward which Ss were presumed to hold highly accessible attitudes, as indexed by evaluation latency. The present research explored the generality of these findings across attitude objects and across procedural variations. The results of 3 experiments indicated that the automatic activation effect is a pervasive and relatively unconditional phenomenon. It appears that most evaluations stored in memory, for social and nonsocial objects alike, become active automatically on the mere presence or mention of the object in the environment.
Article
Full-text available
Study 1 established either deliberative mind-set by having Ss contemplate personal change decision or implemental mind-set by having Ss plan execution of intended personal project. Ss were subsequently requested to continue beginnings of 3 fairy tales, each describing a main character with a decisional conflict. Analysis revealed that deliberative mind-set Ss ascribed more deliberative and less implementational efforts to main characters than implemental mind-set Ss. In Study 2, Ss were asked to choose between different test materials. Either before or after making their decision, Ss were given information on deliberative and implementational thoughts unrelated to their task at hand. When asked to recall these thoughts, predecisional Ss recalled more deliberative and less implementational thoughts, whereas for postdecisional Ss the reverse was true. These findings suggest that deliberative and implemental mind-sets tune thought production and information processing.
Article
Full-text available
This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will rely on the low-effort acceptability heuristic and simply shift their views toward those of the prospective audience, (b) when people do not know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will he motivated to think in relatively flexible, multidimensional ways (preemptive self-criticism), and (c) when people are accountable for positions to which they feel committed, they will devote the majority of their mental effort to justifying those positions (defensive bolstering). The experiment yielded results supportive of these 3 predictions. The study also revealed some evidence of individual differences in social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability.
Article
Full-text available
Proposes that several biases in social judgment result from a failure to consider possibilities at odds with beliefs and perceptions of the moment. Individuals who are induced to consider the opposite position, therefore, should display less bias in social judgment. In 2 experiments, with 150 undergraduates, this reasoning was applied to 2 domains––biased assimilation of new evidence on social issues and biased hypothesis testing of personality impressions. Ss were induced to consider the opposite through explicit instructions to do so and through stimulus materials that made opposite possibilities more salient. In both experiments, the induction of a consider-the-opposite strategy had greater corrective effect than more demand-laden alternative instructions to be as fair and unbiased as possible. Results are consistent with previous research on perseverance, hindsight, and logical problem solving, and they suggest an effective method of retraining social judgment.
Chapter
Full-text available
The chapter proposes a model to integrate the cognitive and motivational perspectives on social inference. The model specifies (1) the conditions under which affective and motivational factors do and do not influence inferential processes and (2) the mechanisms through which affective and motivational processes influence inferential processes to produce biased conclusions. The chapter focuses on the role of a self-esteem motive in producing the self-serving attribution bias. This particular motive is chosen because a wide variety of theorists throughout the history of psychology have suggested that the need for self-esteem exerts a powerful influence on people's cognitions and behavior. It should be pointed out; however, the model is quite general and applicable to the mechanisms through which other motives influence inferences as well. Influenced by recent developments in cognitive psychology and information processing, the theorists focus on the way people encode and organize—the retrieve information and on the knowledge structures—transformation rules and heuristics that are used to make inferences of various kinds. The chapter briefly discusses some of the major influences on various steps in the sequence when the only goal of the process is to arrive at an accurate attribution for the observed event.
Article
Full-text available
How might being outcome dependent on another person influence the processes that one uses to form impressions of that person? We designed three experiments to investigate this question with respect to short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency. In all three experiments, subjects expected to interact with a young man formerly hospitalized as a schizophrenic, and they received information about the person's attributes in either written profiles or videotapes. In Experiment 1, short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency led subjects to use relatively individuating processes (i.e., to base their impressions of the patient on his particular attributes), even under conditions that typically lead subjects to use relatively category-based processes (i.e., to base their impressions on the patient's schizophrenic label). Moreover, in the conditions that elicited individuating processes, subjects spent more time attending to the patient's particular attribute information. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the attention effects in Experiment 1 were not merely a function of impression positivity and that outcome dependency did not influence the impression formation process when attribute information in addition to category-level information was unavailable. Finally, Experiment 3 manipulated not outcome dependency but the attentional goal of forming an accurate impression. We found that accuracy-driven attention to attribute information also led to individuating processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
The priming literature has documented the influence of trait terms held outside of conscious awareness on later judgment relevant to the primed trait dimension. The present research demonstrated that spontaneous trait inferences can serve as self-generated primes. In Experiment 1, Ss instructed to memorize trait-implying sentences (thus spontaneously inferring traits outside of consciousness) showed assimilation effects in judgment. Ss instructed to form inferences from these sentences (thus consciously inferring traits) showed contrast effects. Experiment 2 demonstrated that these findings were due to semantic activation rather than to a general evaluative response. When evaluatively inconsistent trait constructs were primed. similar patterns of assimilation and contrast were found. Implications for the ubiquitous occurrence of priming through the process of social categorization are discussed.
Article
Full-text available
When Ss solve functional fixedness problems do they formulate the solution and then look for the object needed, or does perception of the functionally fixed object itself trigger solution? Duncker’s candle problem was administered in tactual form so that discrete observing responses (touching the functionally fixed object, a box filled with tacks) could be observed and counted by E. Problem solution occurred upon contact with the functionally fixed object. The specific contact immediately preceding problem solution was usually adventitious.
Article
Full-text available
Three experiments tested whether counterfactual events can serve as primes. The evidence supports the hypothesis that counterfactuals prime a mental simulation mind-set that leads people to consider alternatives. Exposure to counterfactual scenarios affected person perception judgments in a later, unrelated task and this effect was distinct from semantic construct priming. Moreover, these effects were dependent on the availability of salient possible outcomes in the person perception task. Direction of the counterfactual comparison, upward or downward, did not moderate any of the effects, providing evidence that the process of thinking counterfactually, and not the content of the counterfactuals, was responsible for the priming effects. These experiments also provide evidence that the effects of mind-set accessibility, similar to semantic construct accessibility, are limited by the applicability of the primes to the later judgments. Implications for the nature of priming effects are discussed.
Article
Full-text available
Presents a theory of norms and normality and applies the theory to phenomena of emotional responses, social judgment, and conversations about causes. Norms are assumed to be constructed ad hoc by recruiting specific representations. Category norms are derived by recruiting exemplars. Specific objects or events generate their own norms by retrieval of similar experiences stored in memory or by construction of counterfactual alternatives. The normality of a stimulus is evaluated by comparing it with the norms that it evokes after the fact, rather than to precomputed expectations. Norm theory is applied in analyses of the enhanced emotional response to events that have abnormal causes, of the generation of predictions and inferences from observations of behavior, and of the role of norms in causal questions and answers. (3 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
Five studies examined D. Kahneman and A. Tversky's (see record 1986-21899-001) hypothesis that events become more "normal" and generate weaker reactions the more strongly they evoke representations of similar events. In each study, Ss were presented with 1 of 2 versions of a scenario that described the occurrence of an improbable event. The scenarios equated the a priori probability of the target event, but manipulated the ease of mentally simulating the event by varying the absolute number of similar events in the population. Depending on the study, Ss were asked to indicate whether they thought the event was due to chance as opposed to (a) an illegitimate action on the part of the benefited protagonist, or (b) the intentional or unintentional misrepresentation of the probability of the event. As predicted, the fewer ways the events could have occurred by chance, the less inclined Ss were to assume that the low-probability event occurred by chance. The implications of these findings for impression-management dynamics and stereotype revision are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
It is now well-established that stereotypes can become activated unintentionally and outside of awareness by the presence of the relevant group features. There is also a long tradition of theory and evidence that perceptual and behavioral processes are intimately related (e.g., Berkowitz, 1984; James, 1890; Piaget, 1948). Considering these two phenomena together suggests that stereotype activation can cause the perceiver to act in stereotype-consistent ways, and recent evidence confirms this prediction (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). The present study extended these findings by showing that the perceiver's stereotype-consistent behavior causes the target person to reciprocate in kind, thereby confirming the perceiver's stereotypic beliefs. Compared to a control condition, subliminal activation of the African American stereotype in participants resulted in greater hostility in their interaction partners (as rated by outside judges) and more extreme hostility ratings of the targets by their perceiver partner.
Article
Full-text available
Three experiments tested the hypothesis that people high and low in prejudice respond similarly to direct stereotype activation but differently to category activation. Study 1 (N = 40) showed that high- and low-prejudice people share the same knowledge of the stereotype of Black people. In Study 2, (N = 51) high-prejudice participants formed a more negative and less positive impression of the target person after subliminal priming of the category Blacks than did participants in the no-prime condition. Low-prejudice people tended in the opposite direction. In Study 3 (N = 45), both high- and low-prejudice people increased negative ratings when valenced stereotype content was also primed. These findings support a distinction between automatic stereotype activation resulting from direct priming and that consequent upon category activation, implying that the relations among categorization, stereotyping, and prejudice are more flexible than it is often assumed.
Article
Full-text available
Previous research has suggested that an effective strategy for debiasing judgments is to have participants "consider the opposite." The present research proposes that considering any plausible alternative outcome for an event, not just the opposite outcome, leads participants to simulate multiple alternatives, resulting in debiased judgments. Three experiments tested this hypothesis using an explanation task paradigm. Participants in all studies were asked to explain either 1 hypothetical outcome (single explanation conditions) or 2 hypothetical outcomes (multiple explanation conditions) to an event; after the explanation task, participants made likelihood judgments. The results of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that debiasing occurred in all multiple explanation conditions, including those that did not involve the opposite outcome. Furthermore, the findings indicated that debiased judgments resulted from participants' spontaneous consideration of additional alternatives in making their likelihood judgments. The results of Study 3 also identified the perceived plausibility of the explained alternative as an important moderating variable in debiasing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
In 4 separate investigations, female undergraduates were provided with hypotheses about the personal attributes of other individuals (targets). Ss then prepared to test these hypotheses (i.e., that their targets were extraverts or that their targets were introverts) by choosing a series of questions to ask their targets in a forthcoming interview. In each investigation, Ss planned to test these hypotheses by preferentially searching for behavioral evidence that would confirm the hypotheses. Moveover, these search procedures channeled social interaction between Ss and targets in ways that caused the targets to provide actual behavioral confirmation for Ss' hypotheses. A theoretical analysis of the psychological processes believed to underlie and generate both the preferential search for hypothesis-confirming behavioral evidence and the interpersonal consequences of hypothesis-testing activities is presented. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
Counterfactual thoughts ("might-have-been" reconstructions of past outcomes) may serve an affective function (feeling better) and a preparative function (future improvement). Three studies showed that counterfactuals varying in their direction and structure may differentially serve these 2 functions. Direction influenced affect such that downward (vs upward) counterfactuals caused more positive affect. Direction influenced intentions such that upward (vs downward) counterfactuals heightened intentions to perform success-facilitating behaviors. Both direction and structure influenced performance on an anagram task such that upward and additive (vs downward and subtractive) counterfactuals engendered greater improvement. These findings suggest that people can strategically use downward counterfactuals to make themselves feel better and upward and additive counterfactuals to improve performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
A number of philosophers and psychologists stress the importance of disconfirmation in reasoning and suggest that people are instead prone to a general deleterious "confirmation bias." In particular, it is suggested that people tend to test those cases that have the best chance of verifying current beliefs rather than those that have the best chance of falsifying them. We show, however, that many phenomena labeled "confirmation bias" are better understood in terms of a general positive test strategy. With this strategy, there is a tendency to test cases that are expected (or known) to have the property of interest rather than those expected (or known) to lack that property. We show that the positive test strategy can be a very good heuristic for determining the truth or falsity of a hypothesis under realistic conditions. It can, however, lead to systematic errors or inefficiencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
Recent research has indicated that a perceiver's expectancies about a target person can lead that perceiver to channel social interaction with the target in such a way that the target person's behavioral response may confirm the original expectancy, thus producing a self-fulfulling prophecy. It is suggested that once the target person behaves, the target may undergo a self-perception process and internalize the very disposition that the perceiver expected him or her to possess. Such a change in the target person's self-concept is apt to affect his or her behavior in future and different situations not involving the original perceiver. To test this hypothesis, 40 undergraduates first participated in an initial interaction with the experimenter, which purposefully was biased to produce either introverted or extraverted behavior on the part of the target S. On both a subsequent self-description measure and on a variety of behavioral measures involving a subsequent interaction with a confederate, Ss displayed evidence of having internalized the dispositions implied by their earlier responses during this initial interaction. Implications for the self-fulfilling prophecy are discussed. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
We propose that people imagine alternatives to reality (counterfactuals) in assessing the casual role of a prior event. This process of mental simulation (D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, 1982) is used to derive novel predictions about the effects of default events on causal attribution. A default event is the alternative event that most readily comes to mind when a factual event is mentally mutated. The factual event is judged to be causal to the extent that its default undoes the outcome. In Experiment 1, a woman was described as having died from an allergic reaction to a meal ordered by her boss. When the boss was described as having considered another meal without the allergic ingredient, people were more likely to mutate his decision and his causal role in the death was judged to be greater than when the alternative meal was also said to have the allergic ingredient. In Experiment 2, a paraplegic couple was described as having died in an auto accident after having been denied a cab ride. People perceived the cabby's refusal to take the couple as a stronger cause of the deaths when his taking the couple would have undone the accident than when it would have not have. We conclude that an adequate theory of causal judgment requires an understanding of these counterfactual simulations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
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)
Article
Full-text available
A total of 130 Ss in 2 experiments within a debriefing paradigm examined the perseverance of social theories. Ss were initially given 2 case studies suggestive of either a positive or a negative relationship between risk taking and success as a firefighter. Some Ss were asked to provide a written explanation of the relationship; others were not. Experimental Ss were thoroughly debriefed concerning the fictitious nature of the initial case studies; some Ss were not debriefed. Subsequent assessments of Ss' personal beliefs about the relationship indicated that even when initially based on weak data, social theories can survive the total discrediting of that initial evidential base. Correlational and experimental results suggest that such unwarranted theory perseverance may be mediated, in part, by the cognitive process of formulating causal scenarios or explanations. Normative issues and the cognitive processes underlying perseverance are examined, and possible techniques for overcoming unwarranted theory perseverance are discussed. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
Research on automatic behavior demonstrates the ability of stereotypes to elicit stereotype-consistent behavior. Social judgment research proposes that whereas traits and stereotypes elicit assimilation, priming of exemplars can elicit judgmental contrast by evoking social comparisons. This research extends these findings by showing that priming exemplars can elicit behavioral contrast by evoking a social comparison. In Study 1, priming professor or supermodel stereotypes led, respectively, to more and fewer correct answers on a knowledge test (behavioral assimilation), but priming exemplars of these categories led to the reverse pattern (behavioral contrast). In Study 2, participants walked away faster after being primed with an elderly exemplar. In Study 3, the proposition that contrast effects reflect comparisons of the self with the exemplar was supported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Counterfactuals are mental representations of alternatives to the past and produce consequences that are both beneficial and aversive to the individual. These apparently contradictory effects are integrated into a functionalist model of counterfactual thinking. The author reviews research in support of the assertions that (a) counterfactual thinking is activated automatically in response to negative affect, (b) the content of counterfactuals targets particularly likely causes of misfortune, (c) counterfactuals produce negative affective consequences through a contrast-effect mechanism and positive inferential consequences through a causal-inference mechanism, and (d) the net effect of counterfactual thinking is beneficial.
Article
Article
Observed in 3 experiments that impressions of an ambiguously described stimulus person were assimilated toward the implications of primed concepts when performance of the priming task was interrupted, but they were contrasted with these implications when performance of the priming task was allowed to continue to completion. In Exp I, with 36 female undergraduates, when the primed concepts were evaluatively consistent, assimilation and contrast were observed on both prime-related and prime-unrelated dimensions. In Exp II, with 40 female undergraduates, when the primed concepts were evaluatively inconsistent, these shifts in impression were observed only on dimensions directly related to the primed concepts. In Exp III, with 44 undergraduates, when no concepts descriptively relevant to the stimulus information were primed, the assimilation and contrast were relative to the favorableness of a primed general evaluative person concept. Results suggest that (1) a concept may be accessible to an individual and may be relevant to target information, yet not be used to encode that information; (2) assimilation and contrast may occur for reasons other than the discrepancy between the target and the contextual stimuli on the dimension of judgment; and (3) individuals may use the evaluative implications of their person representation as a cue in deciding which of several equally applicable, equally accessible descriptive concepts to use in interpreting information about a person. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Conference Paper
Counterfactual thoughts (''might-have-been'' reconstructions of past outcomes) may serve an affective function (feeling better) and a preparative function (future improvement). Three studies showed that counterfactuals varying in their direction and structure may differentially serve these 2 functions. Direction influenced affect such that downward (vs. upward) counterfactuals caused more positive affect. Direction influenced intentions such that upward (vs. downward) counterfactuals heightened intentions to perform success-facilitating behaviors. Both direction and structure influenced performance on an anagram task such that upward and additive (vs. downward and subtractive) counterfactuals engendered greater improvement. These findings suggest that people can strategically use downward counterfactuals to make themselves feel better and upward and additive counterfactuals to improve performance.
Article
Previous research indicates that our initial impressions of events frequently influence how we interpret later information. This experiment explored whether accountability-pressures to justify one's impressions to others-leads people to process information more vigilantly and, as a result, reduces the undue influence of early-formed impressions on final judgments. Subjects viewed evidence from a criminal case and then assessed the guilt of the defendant. The study varied (1) the order of presentation of pro-vs. anti-defendant information, (2) whether subjects expected to justify their decisions and, if so, whether subjects realized that they were accountable prior to or only after viewing the evidence. The results indicated that subjects given the anti/pro-defendant order of information were more likely to perceive the defendant as guilty than subjects given the pro/anti-defendant order of information, but only when subjects did not expect to justify their decisions or expected to justify their decisions only after viewing the evidence. Order of presentation of evidence had no impact when subjects expected to justify their decisions before viewing the evidence. Accountability prior to the evidence evidence also substantially improved free recall of the case material. The results suggest that accountability reduces primacy effects by affecting how people initially encode and process stimulus information.
Article
Three studies examined the effects of expectancy violation and outcome valence on spontaneous counterfactual thinking. In Study 1, prior expectations and outcome valence were varied orthogonally in a vignette. More counterfactuals were generated after failures and unexpected outcomes. Also, more additive than subtractive counterfatuals were found after failure, particularly unexpected failure, and more subtractive than additive counterfactuals were found after unexpected success. Evidence for the generality of these results was obtained in Study 2, in which counterfactuals were assessed after students' real-life exam performances. In Study 3, the authors further assessed nonspontaneous counterfactuals, which were shown to differ in number and structure from spontaneous counterfactuals. Discussion centers around antecedents to spontaneous counterfactual thinking and comparisons to research on spontaneous causal attributions.
Article
Two experiments suggested differential determinants of the activation versus content of counterfactual thinking. Activation refers to whether counterfactuals consciously come to mind and was assessed by thought-listing and response-latency measures. Content refers to which antecedent forms the basis of the counterfactual and was assessed using categorical codings of thought-listings. Counterfactual activation was facilitated by negative as opposed to positive outcomes, and this effect was mediated by affective experience. Expectancy violation did not influence counterfactual activation. Normality (whether an outcome was preceded by exceptional versus normal events) had no effect on activation, but it did influence content in such a way that counterfactuals more often mutated exceptional than normal antecedents. These findings are consistent with a functionalist depiction of counterfactual thinking.
Article
To study productive thinking where it is most conspicuous in great achievements is certainly a temptation, and without a doubt, important information about the genesis of productive thought could be found in biographical material. A problem arises when a living creature has a goal but does not know how this goal is to be reached. Whenever one cannot go from the given situation to the desired situation simply by action, then there has to be recourse to thinking. The subjects ( S s), who were mostly students of universities or of colleges, were given various thinking problems, with the request that they think aloud. This instruction, "Think aloud", is not identical with the instruction to introspect which has been common in experiments on thought-processes. While the introspecter makes himself as thinking the object of his attention, the subject who is thinking aloud remains immediately directed to the problem, so to speak allowing his activity to become verbal. It is the shift of function of the components of a complex mathematical pattern—a shift which must so often occur if a certain structure is to be recognized in a given pattern—it is this restructuration, more precisely: this transformation of function within a system, which causes more or less difficulty for thinking, as one individual or another tries to find a mathematical proof.
Chapter
This chapter describes the role of naïve theories of bias in bias correction in the flexible correction model. The notion of bias correction was reviewed across a variety of research domains. Corrections are often the result of people consulting their naive theories of the influence of potentially biasing factors on their perception of the target. This view differs from competing views of bias correction because a view of corrections based on perceivers' naive theories of bias allows for a more flexible set of corrections than those proposed by other current models of bias removal. The chapter illustrates that flexible correction model (FCM) principles demonstrate the relevance of the perspective to a variety of research areas (including persuasion, attribution, impression formation, stereotyping, and mood). Finally, this chapter hopes that research and theory based on flexible correction notions will help to build a unifying framework within which correction processes in many areas of psychology can be investigated and explained.
Article
Norm theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986) identifies factors that determine the ease with which alternatives to reality can be imagined or constructed. One assumption of norm theory is that the greater the availability of imagined alternatives to an event, the stronger will be the affective reaction elicited by the event. The present two experiments explore this assumption in the context of observers' reactions to victims. It was predicted that negative outcomes that strongly evoked positive alternatives would elicit more sympathy from observers than negative outcomes that weakly evoked positive alternatives. The ease of counterfactual thought was manipulated in the first experiment by the spatial distance between the negative outcome and a positive alternative, and in the second experiment by the habitualness of the actions that precipitated the victimization. Consistent with norm theory, subjects recommended more compensation for victims of fates for which a positive alternative was highly available. Implications of the results for various types of reactions to victims are discussed.
Article
The present study examined the immediate and delayed effects of unobtrusive exposure to personality trait terms (e.g., "reckless," "persistent") on subjects' subsequent judgments and recollection of information about another person. Before reading a description of a stimulus person, subjects were unobtrusively exposed to either positive or negative trait terms that either could or could not be used to characterize this person. When the trait terms were applicable to the description of the stimulus person, subjects' characterizations and evaluations of the person reflected the denotative and evaluative aspects of the trait categories activated by the prior exposure to these terms. However, the absence of any effects for nonapplicable trait terms suggested that exposure to trait terms with positive or negative associations was not in itself sufficient to determine attributions and evaluations. Prior verbal exposure had little effect on reproduction of the descriptions. Moreover, no reliable difference in either evaluation or reproduction was found between subjects who overtly characterized the stimulus person and those who did not. Exposure to applicable trait terms had a greater delayed than immediate effect on subjects' evaluations of the stimulus person, suggesting that subjects may have discounted their categorizations of the stimulus person when making their immediate evaluations. The implications of individual and situational variation in the accessibility of different categories for judgments of self and others are considered.
Article
Previous attitude-attribution studies indicate that people are often quick to draw conclusions about the attitudes and personalities of others-even when plausible external or situational causes for behavior exist (an affect known as the overattribution effect or fundamental attribution error). This experiment explores whether accountability-pressures to justify one's causal interpretations of behavior to others-reduces or eliminates this bias. Subjects were exposed to an essay that supported or opposed affirmative action. They were informed that the essay writer had freely chosen or had been assigned the position he took. Finally, subjects either did not expect to justify their impressions of the essay writer or expected to justify their impressions either before or after exposure to the stimulus information. The results replicated previous findings when subjects did not feel accountable for their impressions of the essay writer or learned of being accountable only after viewing the stimulus information. Subjects attributed essay-consistent attitudes to the writer even when the writer had been assigned the task of advocating a particular position. Subjects were, however, significantly more sensitive to situational determinants of the essay writer's behavior when they felt accountable for their impressions prior to viewing the stimulus information. The results suggest that accountability eliminated the overattribution effect by affecting how subjects initially encoded and analyzed stimulus information.
Article
This study is concerned with the effects of prior experience on a deceptive reasoning problem. In the first experiment the subjects (students) were presented with the problem after they had experienced its logical structure. This experience was, on the whole, ineffective in allowing subsequent insight to be gained into the problem. In the second experiment the problem was presented in “thematic” form to one group, and in abstract form to the other group. Ten out of 16 subjects solved it in the thematic group, as opposed to 2 out of 16 in the abstract group. Three hypotheses are proposed to account for this result.
Article
This chapter advances to a testable middle-range theory predicated on the politician metaphor: the social contingency model of judgment and choice. This model does not map neatly in any of the traditional levels of analysis: the individual, the small group, the organization, and political system. The unit of study is the individual in relation to these social milieux. The model borrows, qualifies, and elaborates on the cognitive miser image of the thinker that has been so influential in experimental work on social cognition. The model adopts the approval and status-seeker image of human nature that has been so influential in role theory, symbolic interactionism, and impression management theory. The model draws on sociological and anthropological theory concerning the necessary conditions for social order in positing accountability to be a universal feature of natural decision environments. The social contingency model is not tightly linked to any particular methodology. The theoretical eclecticism of the model demands a corresponding commitment to methodological eclecticism. The social contingency model poses problems that cross disciplinary boundaries, and that require a plurality of methodologies. The chapter ends with considering the potential problem of proliferating metaphors in social psychological theory.
Article
The present research investigated the psychological correlates of counterfactual thinking. Building on existing research in this domain, it was predicted that empathic focus would exert considerable influence on the magnitude of counterfactual effects on social judgments. More specifically, it was predicted that whereas a victim set would amplify the effects of counterfactual thinking on accident-related judgments, a perpetrator set would attenuate them. The results obtained strongly supported this prediction. The implications of these findings are considered, and suggestions are offered for future research.
Article
105 male undergraduates were primed with either competitive or neutral words outside of awareness and then played a prisoner's dilemma game. Results indicate that the subliminal primes, in interaction with the Ss' behavioral predispositions toward competitiveness or cooperation in the game situation, had a significant influence on competitiveness. Competitive Ss played more competitively when exposed to the competitive primes than when exposed to the neutral primes. Competitive Ss exposed to the competitive primes played much more competitively than did cooperative Ss exposed to the same competitive primes. Mediating mechanisms and the generalizability of subliminal priming effects are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
The mental processes by which people construct scenarios, or examples, resemble the running of the simulation model. Mental simulation appears to be used to make predictions, assess probabilities and evaluate casual statements. A particular form of simulation, which concerns the mental undoing of certain events, plays an important role in the analysis of regret and close calls. Two rules of mental undoing are proposed. According to the downhill rule, people undo events by removing surprising or unexpected occurrences. According to the focus rule, people manipulate the entities on which they focus. The implications of the rules of undoing and mental simulation to the evaluation of scenarios are discussed. (Author)
Article
Examines the role of control and automaticity in social life. The question of when and how people control their behavior, and the related but not identical questions of when and how behavior occurs automatically is reviewed. Are people in control of their behavior in interactions with other people, the opinions they form of those others, their emotional reactions to events of the day? To what extent are people aware of the important determinants of their judgments, emotions, and actions, such as the powerful effects of authority and conformity and the presence of others? Classic studies in this field in the area of social psychology are considered with a view toward exploring how concerns about control or automaticity of behavior have been historically central to the field. The concepts of control and automaticity are defined, first by looking at the nature of each idea and then by considering how they are interrelated. The social psychological literature on a series of topics for which issues of control and automaticity have special relevance is examined. These include attitudes, social cognition, emotion, and expressive behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
The experiments in this dissertation explored the role of perspective-taking in debiasing social thought and improving intergroup relations. In the first four experiments, perspective-taking was contrasted with stereotype suppression as a possible strategy for achieving stereotype control. Previous research has found that stereotype suppression can ironically make stereotypic thoughts more, rather than less, accessible. In Experiment 1, participants were shown a photograph of an elderly male and asked to write a short narrative essay about the typical day in the life of that individual. After a series of filler tasks, participants then completed a lexical decision task that was used to measure the accessibility of the stereotype of the elderly. The results showed that both perspective-takers and stereotype suppressors expressed fewer stereotypic thoughts in their narrative essays about the elderly male compared to a control condition, but only perspective-takers expressed more positive evaluations of the target. Only suppressors, on the other hand, demonstrated heightened accessibility of the stereotype compared to perspective-takers and participants in the control condition in the subsequent lexical decision task. Experiment 2 replicated the basic procedure and effects of Experiment 1 using a more socially sensitive stereotype (i.e., the photographed individual was an African-American male). In Experiment 3, after taking the perspective of an African-American male, perspective-takers rated discrimination against African-Americans to be a continuing, unsolved problem, but they did not rate, compared to suppressors, that contemporary discrimination was still a significant liability for women (Experiment 4), suggesting that the benefits of perspective-taking may be group specific. Experiment 5 utilized the minimal group paradigm in order to test whether perspective-taking could affect intergroup relations. Perspective-taking reduced evidence of in-group bias by increasing evaluations of the out-group. In addition, perspective-taking increased the positivity of the connotative meaning of group-relevant words (e.g., cooperative, kind) in the context of the out-group. Finally, perspective-taking led to the selection of more hypothesis-disconfirming questions, but only when the perspective-taking instructions were particularly vivid and descriptive (Experiment 6). Across the six experiments, perspective-taking reduced a variety of biases suggesting that it is a robust strategy for debiasing thought in an increasingly multicultural and diverse social world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)