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Shallow Thoughts About the Self: The Automatic Components of Self-Assessment.
Abstract
It is not our intent to coin a new term, but any review of the pertinent social psychological literature leads to the conclusion that people are prone to an illusion of personal strength. That is, people's assessments of their own abilities to meet various challenges exceed the best dispassionate analyses of those abilities. People read about Milgram's obedience experiments and come away convinced that they, unlike the majority of actual participants in those studies, would be strong enough to stand their ground and disobey the experimenter (Bierbrauer, 1979). People read about the various bystander (non)intervention studies and likewise remain convinced that they would have sufficient strength to overcome the fear of embarrassment and come to the rescue. And people's assessments of their own traits and abilities have been shown, time and time again, to be overly optimistic (see Alicke & Govorun, this volume). Our aim in this chapter is to shed light on why people are prone to such an illusion of personal strength. This aim is likely to make some readers wonder whether we are prone to the illusion of personal strength ourselves. After all, there are already perfectly satisfactory explanations of the various manifestations of this illusion. Do we really have anything useful to add? Is another perspective likely to advance our discipline's understanding of these phenomena? Does the discipline really need yet another explanation of the above average effect? We believe there is still much to be learned about the processes that give rise to the various manifestations of the illusion of personal strength. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... Overestimation is considered to emerge when individuals have unrealistic and optimistic perceptions of their own competencies, hence an "error" of judgement leading to overestimating one's capabilities, and/or underestimating a reference group or the context itself (Alicke, 1985;Ferraro, 2010;Johnson & Fowler, 2011;Kruger & Dunning, 1999). The reasoning behind this assumption is that individuals distort their self-assessment by suppressing undesirable information that may threaten their self-confidence (Bénabou & Tirole, 2002) and favouring evidence that supports them (Gilovich, Epley & Hanko, 2005) to preserve a positive self-image, despite the lack of information or knowledge (Dunning, 1999;Krueger, 2002;Brown, 2012). However, this self-enhancement bias is double-edged as evidence reveals that, in certain circumstances, high beliefs of self-esteem may encourage individuals to engage in a behaviour to maintain a positive self-image (Baca-Motes et al., 2013;Cialdini, 2001;Dickerson et al., 1992;Joule & Beauvois, 1998), even motivating them to engage in more challenging tasks as they assess their performance highly enough (Krueger, 2002). ...
... Likewise, the lack of information could be an effect of their own "real ignorance" (Dunning, 2011a(Dunning, , 2011b, hence ignoring information that they judge unnecessary (as they consider to already be performing pro-environmentally enough) or information that could threaten their self-esteem (Dunning, 2011a(Dunning, , 2011bSawler, 2021;Trotta, 2021). Moreover, Gilovich, Epley & Hanko (2005) state that individuals also use past and related information to self-evaluate (see also Larrick et al., 2007). For instance, an individual that engages in pro-environmental behaviours in other domains, for example, recycling paper might use this information to assess their related behaviour in question (in this case, the water conservation in the household). ...
Water resources are under pressure, which poses serious challenges for our society. Persuading individuals to conserve water is difficult, especially when they have the impression that they already conserve water. This is identified as the cognitive bias of self-assessment, where a lack of information can lead to misperceiving one’s performance. This means that people misperceive their actual performance and have the self-perception of behaving “good enough”, or “better” than others while this is not the case. This paper explores the magnitude of these misperceptions, their impact on water conservation intentions and linkages to personal and situational factors. An online survey (n = 1013) explored whether individuals under-/over-/correctly estimated their own water conservation performance in comparison with others and examines if personality traits (i.e. intentions to conserve water, moral obligation to conserve water, personal values) and situational factors (i.e. social influence, exposure to media content) can explain the tendency of the individuals’ misperceptions of their self-assessment. The results revealed that people do have misperceptions about water conservation (with at least half of the sample misperceiving to perform better or even worse than the norm). Results also demonstrated that a combination of personal and situational factors is related to the incorrect self-assessment of water conservation performance. The work reveals tendencies and potential explanations for misperceptions, but also potential barriers to promote water conservation.
... When people predict others' preferences for them, however, they exhibit an egocentric bias and overlook others' concerns about relationship quality. Instead, they focus on the positive personality traits that are associated with having a large number of friends (Gilovich, Epley, & Hanko, 2005). As a result, they perceive that a relatively large number of friends is an indication of social capital that increases their attractiveness to others. ...
... For example, people are often motivated to enhance their self-evaluations (Rosenberg, 1979;Sedikides, 1993). To this extent, they tend to interpret information in ways that reflect positively on themselves (Critcher, Helzer, & Dunning, 2010) and this tendency can be reflexive and automatic (Gilovich et al., 2005). Therefore, people's motivation for self-enhancement could also predispose them to focus on the desirability of having a large number of friends and hence to overlook others' concerns about relationship quality. ...
We identify a friend number paradox, that is, a mismatch between people's preferences for the friends they might acquire in social interactions and their predictions of others' preferences. People predict that others are attracted to them if they have a relatively large number of friends. However, they personally prefer to make friends with someone who has a relatively small number of friends. People regard a large number of friends as a signal of social capital that increases their interpersonal attractiveness. However, it can actually be a signal of social liabilities that diminish their ability to reciprocate obligations to others. We conducted a series of studies, including 3 speed-friending studies in which participants either engaged or expected to engage in actual interactions for the purpose of initiating long-term friendships. These studies provide converging evidence of the hypothesized mismatch and our conceptualization of its determinants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... It is now commonly agreed that evaluations of goodness and badness are among the first, quickest, and most frequent assessments humans make (Arnold, 1960;Bargh, 1994;Barrett, 2006;Gilovich et al., 2005;Kahneman, 1999;Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). It has even been proposed that the significant role that evaluations play in our lives justifies the name "homo evaluaticus" (Winkielman et al., 2003). ...
This chapter briefly introduces the humanistic theory of wellbeing (HTW), which suggests that a life is good to the extent that it allows us to perform our humanness well. More concretely, our humanness is well performed when three universal human needs are satisfied. They are the need for stability, the need for change, and the need to and for care. The term humanness is also embedded in a normative framework, referred to as basic humanistic values.
The premise of the HTW is that all living organisms care about how they are faring in life. Many species also care about how others are faring. This fundamental ability to care originates in a valuation mechanism that constitutes the biological cornerstone of wellbeing. The valuation mechanism explains why and how humans evaluate their lives and the lives of those around them. Valuations operate in different forms; some are quick, automatized, and controlled by System 1 thinking. Others are reflective and controlled by System 2 thinking. The psychology of goodness and badness, including central concepts in positive psychology, is reviewed with regard to these valuation mechanisms.
The normative study of values has traditionally been the business of philosophy, which often distinguishes between prudential goodness and moral goodness. Something is prudentially good if it is valuable for the person whose life it is, whereas something is morally good if respecting others is explicitly valued. The chapter asks whether this distinction is too rigid and based on a tradition that erroneously favors the rational and competitive rather than the relational and cooperative attributes of human nature.
The HTW is a normative theory. With reference to feminist epistemologies, it argues that a value-based wellbeing theory can be justified by means of scientific reasoning. Basically, the argument draws on the insight that scientific hypotheses cannot be directly confirmed by empirical observations. It is not the relation between a fact and a hypothesis that determines whether the hypothesis is correct; it is background believes held about that relation. Just as epistemic values are scientifically grounded in a consensus about background assumptions, the HTW argues that a moral value also can be accepted as a scientific background assumption.
Allowing for the use of normative statements, HTW equates wellbeing with a good life. Wellbeing can be further defined as to like one’s life for the right reasons. To like one’s life means that it feels good and is thought of as good by the person who lives it. The right reason part of the definition is the normative element. This implies that liking one’s life is not a justified indicator of wellbeing if it violates a few, universal, humanistic values. Three values are particularly important: respecting basic human rights, avoiding preventable harm, and accepting an ethics of care. Importantly, an activity need not be aimed at humanistic values to be good, but the activity must be consistent with them.
A distinction is made between hedonic wellbeing (HWB) and eudaimonic wellbeing (EWB). HWB means to be well in the sense of spontaneously like one’s life and is associated with fulfilling the need for stability. One major indicator of HWB is harmony feelings such as pleasure, happiness, and tranquility; another is spontaneous life judgments such as life satisfaction and the presence of meaning in life. EWB means to be well in the sense of becoming a better human being and is associated with the need for change. A major indicator of EWB is opportunity feelings such as interest, engagement, immersion, and wonder; another is reflective judgments such as wisdom and morality. The concept of EWB further includes the notion of betterment orientations, having to do with a will to improve and perform salient life tasks with some perfection or elegance. Personal growth, searching for meaning in life, and a will to be a good human being are indicators of the betterment dimension. The need to and for care is feeding into both HWB and EWB.
... Such a "simplification heuristic" corroborates with observations showing that people are reluctant to make deeper analyses of the item they are about to answer (e.g., Tetlock 1992). Rather than thinking each question through, survey responses are typically produced relatively spontaneously and automatized (Gilovich et al. 2005). ...
We assess the effects of differing welfare-capitalist ‘regimes’ on income inequality, economic (job)insecurity, gender inequality and life satisfaction. Thirty-one advanced industrial countries are classified as having a ‘regime’ that is predominantly social democratic, liberal, corporatist-conservative, Southern European ‘familial’, or East European post-communist (Esping-Andersen, The three worlds of welfare-capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, Social foundations of postindustrial economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; Arts and Gelissen, The Oxford handbook of the welfare state. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). We find that income inequality and economic insecurity (fear of job loss) are lower in the Scandinavian social democratic regimes than the other regimes. Life satisfaction is both higher and more equal. It is also found that differences in life satisfaction between people of higher and lower socio-economic status, and between those with higher and lower incomes, are comparatively small in social democratic regimes. The evidence on gender equality is mixed. Women are well represented in political office in Scandinavia, but the gender pay gap is not smaller than elsewhere. Nor are Scandinavian women more satisfied with life, relative to men, than in other regimes. Satisfaction with ‘work-life balance’ is highest in Scandinavia, but it is men not women who are most satisfied. Data are drawn from the European Social Survey (2002–), the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia Survey (2001–), the Japanese Household Panel Survey (2009–), and the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (2009–).
... Such a "simplification heuristic" corroborates with observations showing that people are reluctant to make deeper analyses of the item they are about to answer (e.g., Tetlock 1992). Rather than thinking each question through, survey responses are typically produced relatively spontaneously and automatized (Gilovich et al. 2005). ...
... Such a "simplification heuristic" corroborates with observations showing that people are reluctant to make deeper analyses of the item they are about to answer (e.g., Tetlock 1992). Rather than thinking each question through, survey responses are typically produced relatively spontaneously and automatized (Gilovich et al. 2005). ...
In this chapter, I highlight how Ruud Veenhoven influenced my work about subjective well being in Latin America. Or that purpose I propose some coincidences in the way of thinking between Ruud and the Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef. I also share some anecdotes about his memorable trip to Colombia. I start from his now classical analysis about the four types of quality of life. From then on, I elaborate on how social relationships in particular relations of good quality with family and sharing of positive emotions can be considered as an interesting variable to explain the paradox of happiness in Latin America.
... However, there are many contexts in which referent-specific judgments involve the self as the target of judgment, with peers or others as referents. There are, in fact, research literatures devoted to biases affecting each of the following 3 types of questions (e.g., Alicke & Govorun, 2005;Chambers, & Windschitl, 2004;Chambers et al., 2003;Gilovich, Epley, & Hanko, 2005;Kruger, 1999;Kruger & Dunning, 1999;Kruger & Savitsky, 2009;Larrick et al., 2007;Savitsky, Van Boven, Epley, & Wight, 2005;Weinstein, 1980): 1. comparative ability-e.g., How good are you compared to your peers? 2. comparative optimism-e.g., Compared to others, how likely are you to suffer X? 3. responsibility/contribution-e.g., What proportion of this task did you do? ...
Judgments of direct comparisons, probabilities, proportions, and ranks can all be considered referent-specific judgments, for which a good estimate requires a target to be compared against a referent(s). This paper presents a Referent-Specific Judgment Framework (RSJF) to organize and integrate over- and under-estimation biases commonly associated with these judgments. RSJF assumes a dual-process structure in which one key source of bias can arise from spontaneous comparisons whose input—unless offset by a controlled process—can yield an underweighting of evidence about referents. Another key source of bias is the misaggregation of evidence associated with multiple referents. Two studies tested RSJF predictions about similarities and differences in patterns of bias in comparative versus probability judgments. As expected, there was similarity in patterns tied to misweighting and differences in patterns tied to misaggregation. The findings support the utility of RSJF for organizing and advancing the study of referent-specific judgments.
... 3) Non-motivational Cognitive Bias Accounts. There are numerous accounts that explain comparative unrealistic-optimism, better-than-average, and/or sharedcircumstance effects as the result of cognitive biases and processes, such as anchoring, the representativeness heuristic, focalism, and egocentrism (for reviews, see Chambers, 2008;Chambers & Windschitl, 2004;Gilovich, Epley, & Hanko, 2005;. According to one explanation, unrealistic optimism can arise when people envision a stereotyped version of those who suffer a given negative outcome. ...
This chapter discusses various types of optimism biases and the causes of those biases. It suggests that the field sorely needs more consistency in its use of terms related to optimism biases. The chapter discusses definitions for relevant terms and identify key features of various forms of bias. It also provides a framework for understanding relations among those terms and effects. Then, the chapter talks about optimism in studies involving self-other comparisons, isolating a subset of optimism biases (unrealistic-optimism, better-than-average, and shared-circumstance effects). Finally, the chapter elucidates classic and recent findings from another subset of studies, namely those on the desirability bias. This is the subset of studies that are designed for, and relevant to, testing the question of whether outcome desirability has a biasing influence on expectations about that outcome. The chapter also mentions four types of accounts for self-other overoptimism.
... Indeed, a vast amount of research has established the existence of a universal upward drive that stands at the basis of enhancement biases. However, there is also evidence to suggest individual differences in the strength and prevalence of these biases (e.g., Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996;Gilovich, Epley, & Hanko, 2005). For example, Taylor and Brown (1988) suggested that enhancement biases such as illusions of control, unrealistic positive self-views, and unrealistic optimism are less likely to arise among depressed individuals. ...
We adopt an individual-differences perspective and introduce a model that links between types of biases and types of people. We propose that biases are created in the course of people's attempts to satisfy basic motivations, and that three such motivations underlie many of the biases that have been researched over the years. Accordingly, our organizing framework classifies biases into three categories: verification biases, regulation biases, and simplification biases. Individual differences in core evaluations, chronic regulatory focus, and cognitive style and ability help explain how biases come about and why some people are more likely to exhibit some biases. Finally, we introduce a process model that links between the three bias categories and helps integrate findings from the expansive literature on biases. Implications of our theory for managerial cognition and practice are discussed.
... Cognitive biases affect all of us, and students should be advised that people just like them, who are reasonably bright and have the best of intentions, are just as susceptible to their influence (Gilovich, Epley, & Hanko, 2005;Stanovich, 2009). For example, Stanovich, West, and Toplak (2013) demonstrated that students' intellectual abilities, as evidenced by conventional indicators of cognitive ability (i.e., SAT scores), were unable to minimize the likelihood that they would be prone to cognitive biases. ...
Critical thinking is increasingly recognized as an essential knowledge and skill for the helping professions. Yet, our pedagogical literature has provided infrequent guidance on how instructors can help students to understand what “critical thinking” means or how it might contribute to their professional lives. Therefore, the purpose of this tutorial is to provide guidelines on how instructors might teach future practitioners to become critical thinkers. The main topics address an instructional definition of critical thinking, the basic knowledge and skills that comprise critical thinking, a broad view of instructional approaches, and a summary of developmental milestones of adult critical thinkers. Specific teaching strategies from instructors who have hands-on experience with guiding their students to become critical thinkers are included.
... Hence, when participants search for the information they need to answer questions about life satisfaction, it is a favorable self-view that most readily comes to their minds. And on the rare occasions that our optimism bias is corrected, responses are then modifi ed through a conscious and effortful process of adjustment (Gilovich et al., 2005 ). What goes on mentally when selfreports on life satisfaction are produced is therefore strongly infl uenced by hedonic processes. ...
People often find complex things interesting and simple things pleasurable. This seemingly trivial observation reflects something fundamental about the good life. It is that humans, in order to do and be well, must balance their need for biopsychosocial stability with an equally important need for changing these structures. Two classes of positive experiences are proposed to help regulate these needs. The first is hedonic, with pleasure as the prototypic feeling state. Hedonic feelings signal what is referred to as “simple goodness” and they function to motivate the experiencer to maintain homeostatic stability. The concept of life satisfaction is also categorized as hedonic, even if it is not a pleasant feeling state. The second class of positive experiences is eudaimonic. It is experienced as a positive striving, such as interest, engagement, and sometimes as awe. The function of eudaimonic experiences is to motivate departures from the comfort zone of pleasant stability, and it operates as a feeling of being absorbed in the task of overcoming a challenge. These feelings reflect a kind of “complex goodness” and are considered eudaimonic because of their ability to facilitate personal growth (interest) and civic virtues (awe), in ways related to the Aristotelian idea of excellent functioning. The chapter ends with a discussion of the asymmetry between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. The former is sufficiently explained with reference to pleasure and life satisfaction, whereas eudaimonic wellbeing cannot be defined with reference to eudaimonic feelings alone.
... Эта ошибка получила название иллюзии интроспекции [8] -тенденции людей давать ошибочные, но уверенные объяснения причин своего поведения. Кроме того, люди оказываются «слепы» к этой иллюзии: они уверены, что не подвержены ей, что своим собственным интроспективным отчетам уж точно можно доверять [9]. Но если возможность дать интроспективный отчет лишь иллюзия, связанная с отсутствием доступа к неосознаваемым причинам поведения, если человек даже не подозревает, что может фантазировать для объяснения причин своего поведения, то можно ожидать, что он будет обосновывать даже то поведение, которого никогда не совершал. ...
The study is devoted to the problem of a gap between the explanations of behavior reasons and the real reasons of that behavior.
The author examines an assumption to get the choice blindness effect in self-estimation of personality traits in modified Cattell’s
16 PF Questionnaire. The procedures of choice blindness creation and misinformation paradigm in false memory studies are used
in the experiment. It is shown that self-estimations are subject to choice blindness in 36% of cases, and it is also demonstrated
that choice blindness has an aftereffect, which manifests in false memories about previous choice. The limitations of possibility
to evoke the choice blindness effect within self-estimation decisions are discussed.
K e y w o r d s : introspection illusion; choice blindness; R. Cattell’s 16 PF Questionnaire; self-reflection; self-estimation
decisions; false memories.
... Indeed, a vast amount of research has established the existence of a universal upward drive that stands at the basis of enhancement biases. However, there is also evidence to suggest individual differences in the strength and prevalence of these biases (e.g., Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996;Gilovich, Epley, & Hanko, 2005). For example, Taylor and Brown (1988) suggested that enhancement biases such as illusions of control, unrealistic positive self-views, and unrealistic optimism are less likely to arise among depressed individuals. ...
We adopt an individual-differences perspective and introduce a model that links types of biases and types of people. We propose that biases are created in the course of people's attempts to satisfy basic motivations, and that 3 such motivation categories underlie many of the biases discussed in the literature. Accordingly, our organizing framework integrates findings from previous research and classifies biases into verification biases, simplification biases, and regulation biases. Individual differences in core self-evaluations, in approach/avoidance temperament, and in cognitive ability and style help explain how biases come about and why some people are more likely than others to exhibit particular biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). (from the journal abstract)
... Research in psychology tells us that our often biased positive self-assessments (Gilovich, Epley, & Hanko, 2005) can sometimes lead us to believe that because we see ourselves as possessing above-average intelligence and having the best intentions, we cannot possibly do any harm. But, this is where we may be wrong. ...
Purpose
I respond to Kamhi’s (2011) conclusion in his article “Balancing Certainty and Uncertainty in Clinical Practice” that rational or critical thinking is an essential complement to evidence-based practice (EBP).
Method
I expand on Kamhi’s conclusion and briefly describe what clinicians might need to know to think critically within an EBP profession. Specifically, I suggest how critical thinking is relevant to EBP, broadly summarize the relevant skills, indicate the importance of thinking dispositions, and outline the various ways our thinking can go wrong.
Conclusion
I finish the commentary by suggesting that critical thinking skills should be considered a required outcome of our professional training programs.
... Most people hold overly positive beliefs about their traits and qualities (e.g., Alicke & Govorun, 2005; Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004), and especially about their prosocial qualities (e.g., Allison, Messick, & Goethals, 1989; Epley & Dunning, 2000; Fetchenhauer & Dunning, 2006; Gilovich, Epley, & Hanko, 2005; Van Lange, 1991; Van Lange & Sedikides, 1998). Such, " positive illusions " have been said to be psychologically and reproductively adaptive (Haselton & Nettle, 2006; Taylor & Brown, 1988). ...
Samenvatting “The Self in Social Rejection” by Jessica Pass Door anderen afgewezen te worden is een onderdeel van ons dagelijks leven. Of we nou solliciteren voor een baan, kiezen voor een beste vriend op school, of met iemand in een café flirten, er is altijd de kans dat de ander onze wensen niet beantwoordt. Het hebben van een liefdevolle partner en goede contacten met familie, vrienden en collega’s is echter erg belangrijk voor mensen. Daarom moeten we in staat zijn om tekens van dreigende afwijzing te kunnen herkennen, zodat we ons gedrag op tijd kunnen bijstellen om zo onze relaties te kunnen beschermen of op zoek te gaan naar een nieuwe partner of vriend. De resultaten van dit proefschrift laten zien dat wat we over onszelf voelen en denken een belangrijke rol speelt in (1) hoe we het afgewezen worden ervaren en evalueren, en (2) of we gemotiveerd zijn om daarna weer andere mensen te benaderen. In haar promotieonderzoek kon Jessica Pass laten zien dat wanneer mensen afgewezen worden, bijvoorbeeld tijdens een speed-dating avond, of doordat ze te horen kregen dat ze een lage partnerwaarde hebben, iemands gevoelens van eigenwaarde hierdoor omlaag gingen. Dit gebeurd vooral als mensen in de liefde afgewezen worden en is een gevoelsgebaseerde reactie op de ervaren afwijzing—een soort alarmklokje. Tegelijkertijd blijven mensen echter geloven dat ze een goede partner zijn. Jessica Pass kon verder aantonen dat het behouden van deze positief getinte gedachten belangrijk is, omdat het mensen motiveert om op zoek te gaan naar een nieuwe partner. Dus de volgende keer dat iemand je afwijst: Blijf positief denken over jezelf
Life satisfaction (LS) is the major component of subjective wellbeing (SWB) and is often referred to as cognitive wellbeing. LS can be defined as a comparison between a person’s ideal life and their actual life, but it can also be defined as a broad appraisal that a person makes of their life as a whole. Both conceptualizations have their weaknesses. The first overestimates humans’ computational capacities and is unable to account for how comparisons are performed mentally. The second is underspecified and does not provide enough detail about the judgmental mechanisms involved in the subjective evaluation of the favorability of one’s life. Despite these limitations, measures of LS are reliable and provide vital information about people’s quality of life. LS items are also stable predictors of a bundle of outcome variables at both the individual and societal levels, such as health, longevity, motivation, investments, and political elections. The humanistic theory of wellbeing (HTW) argues, however, that self-reports of LS are not valid in the sense of measuring what they intend to measure. Self-reported LS does not reflect an unbiased, reflective, and broad report of all the important appraisals individuals make about the quality of their lives. The SWB literature holds LS to represent cognitive wellbeing, even though empirical evidence shows that the concept comprises strong affective cues. The HTW therefore claims that LS is similar to pleasure and other harmony feelings in that it reflects spontaneous good–bad evaluations and that the concept functionally operates to maintain universal needs for stability. But LS is not a feeling state. The cognitive attributes of LS have been specified by Diener as following a three-step procedure. The first is an examination of the conditions in one’s life, the second is a weighting of the importance of these conditions, and the third is an aggregated evaluation of the weighted conditions on a quantified scale running from dissatisfied to satisfied [Diener, E. (2009). Assessing well-being: The collected works of Ed Diene r. Springer. (p. 196)]. However, survey participants only spend a few seconds responding to an LS item, which is not consistent with such a complex and time-consuming process. The workload required to calculate one’s life satisfaction according to a set of computation rules is too large for the human brain to carry out. Therefore, the HTW accuses the default version of SWB to fall for an “all things considered” myth. Rather than considering LS as an overall and reflective evaluation carried out as a System 2 process, the HTW suggests that self-reported LS is determined as a System 1 response. A System 1 approach is more consistent with the idea that affective and cognitive elements interact in forming the concept of LS. Another disagreement between mainstream SWB theory and the HTW relates to the functions of LS. Most SWB researchers consider states of high life satisfaction to be approach oriented and concerned with “doing” things. The alternative perspective is that high life satisfaction reflects a mode of “having” rather than “doing.” Since the HTW associates LS with the regulation of stability, it supports the latter view. However, the “having” and “doing” elements of LS are complex. For example, measures of LS correlate with a broad specter of active lifestyles, which speaks against the “having” hypothesis. The last section of this chapter discusses how LS relates to values. An important hypothesis offered by the HTW is that LS is biased toward values that are “spontaneous” and come easily to mind. Accordingly, reflective values tend to escape the evaluative space of an LS judgment. LS should for example be sensitive to gaps between what we want to accomplish and what we actually have accomplished. But empirical studies suggest that only gaps in “spontaneous” values have an impact on LS, while gaps related to “reflective” values leave LS unaffected.
The term affect is used in a multitude of ways in the wellbeing literature, and this chapter identifies three diverging clusters of definitions. One considers affect to be an umbrella term, a top-down concept under which moods, emotions, feelings, and other kinds of affect are taxonomically organized. A second group of definitions holds affect to be a bottom-up phenomenon. Here, affect is taken to be a fundamental or primitive building block, a “natural kind” that is present in all other concepts referred to as affective or emotional. On this view, an emotion is not a kind of affect but contains affect as one of its constituents. The third cluster of affect definitions uses affect as a synonym for other concepts, such as moods, emotions, or feelings.
The HTW uses affect as an umbrella term, and the chapter proceeds by surveying the major kinds of affect, such as temperament, mood, emotion, feeling, and evaluation. For emotions, three groups of theories are examined. They consider emotions to be basic, continuous, or constructed, respectively. Among the presented approaches, one of the basic theories, referred to as the communicative theory of emotions, appears to be the most promising. The theory offers a list of nine basic emotions, among which the “big four” of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear are the best exemplars. According to the communicative theory, basic emotions are psychological primitives and therefore cannot be separated into lower-level states that are not themselves emotions.
A feeling state is part of an emotion but is not limited to emotions. In contrast to emotions, feelings are always present in a conscious mind, and they reflect what it is like to have a subjective experience on a moment-to-moment basis. A feeling informs us if we are OK or in need of tending, and it comprises four components: valence (pleasure/displeasure) tells us how good a stimulus is; quality identifies the nature of what we are feeling; intensity accounts for the importance of the feeling; and duration tells us how long a feeling is lasting.
An evaluation is another kind of affect; it represents a valuation mechanism and is quite similar to a feeling in terms of functions. However, evaluations are not restricted to being consciously experienced and can be integrated into other mental processes, such as perception. A promising approach has been developed by Shizgal, and it suggests that a good-bad evaluation interacts with nonevaluative dimensions to generate a value judgment.
The last part of the paper provides an account of emotional happiness and emotional interest. Emotional happiness has many different meanings, but two major conceptualizations are easily identified. One associates happiness with active goal pursuits and with the execution of plans that are progressing well. The second conceptualization links happiness with low-effort activities and with goal achievement and the fulfillment of needs. The HTW refers to happiness in this latter sense as a harmony feeling. Emotional interest is related to learning and exploring unfamiliar territory. It often occurs when we are confronted with a challenge and when skills are developed. Interest therefore belongs to a category called “opportunity feelings.” Harmony feelings differ from opportunity feelings both functionally and phenomenologically. Hence, it is unfortunate that mainstream wellbeing research tends to collapse them both into the grab-bag notion of “positive affect.”
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leadership articles published in various journals and had very
good citations, downloads and reviews from the Research Gate
and Academia.edu. This book on an anthology of leadership traits,
with the opening chapter as HR leadership situations, in which
the entire chapters discuss in depth the issues related to
SHRM, which is a very important area of knowledge any HR
leaders or any other leader needs to learn since the transition
ix
stages are very clearly explained in the chapter, backed with
research literature which supports with evidence the
contemporary leadership practices across the world in the
SHRM area. This chapter comes with the leadership qualities
required for the inducing commitment in the people and how
to create high-performance work systems in various kinds of
organizations with suggestions, and it concludes with
suggestions for further research.
The second chapter alters the thought process of a
reader to take up the leadership as a challenge and not as a mere
function to control. The challenge that a leader faces in the work
behaviour of the people and to keep them motivated despite the
problems. It comes with a detailed explanation of what is
Leadership Challenges against the CWBs which is raising in the
the contemporary world, and is backed with statistical evidence
that is required for broader understanding.
Leadership Outlook and its importance under various circumstances, and how to develop the capacity of higher cognisance.
Everything alive searches for goodness. And Ruut Veenhoven is no exception. During a long and truly amazing career, Ruut has added more to the study of happiness than most of us can hope for. One of the lasting contributions come from his insistence that in order to understand happiness, our thinking must be grounded in a broad conceptualization of goodness, one that also includes moral reasoning (e.g., Kainulainen et al. 2018; Veenhoven 2009, 2020). According to this framework, goodness can be arranged within a two (outer vs inner) by two (life-chances vs life-results) scheme in which only the inner life-result quadrant counts as happiness (Table 27.1). Hence, what Veenhoven refers to as overall happiness can be defined as “the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his or her life-as-a-whole favorably. In other words: how much he likes the life he leads.” (Veenhoven 1984, p. 22). In this vocabulary, terms like wellbeing, quality of life and happiness in the broadest sense of the word are used interchangeable, whereas the term overall happiness is used as a synonym for satisfaction and subjective wellbeing.
Badania, prezentowane w artykule, zmierzały do: – rozpoznania ob- szarów trudności identyfikowanych przez studentów w przebiegu własnego uczenia się w aspekcie nowej sytuacji epidemicznej i nauczania on-line; – rozpoznania dzia- łań zaplanowanych i podjętych przez uczestników badań w celu optymalizacji włas-nego procesu uczenia oraz sposobów monitorowania uzyskiwanych efektów; – okre- ślenia poczucia satysfakcji osób badanych z podjętej próby optymalizacji własnego procesu uczenia się. W badaniach, o charakterze diagnostycznym, wykorzystano metodę analizy dokumentów intencjonalnie tworzonych – 246 pisemnych raportów, sporządzonych przez studentów pedagogiki Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Obszary trud- ności identyfikowane przez osoby badane dotyczyły: warunków organizacyjnych i higieny uczenia się; braku systematyczności w nauce oraz mało skutecznych tech- nik uczenia się. Studenci zaplanowali i zastosowali w praktyce wiele różnorodnych sposobów optymalizacji procesu uczenia się, dokonując pisemnej analizy własnego działania i jego efektów.
Leadership Blind Spots means, not or unable to see beyond his/her vision by a leader. Those who aspire to become an entrepreneur, a professional in any field, a manager or a leader who has a vision will have to take the road uphill task. Anyone aspiring to become a business leader, entrepreneur or an effective professional needs to be aware of these conversational blind spots. They usually depend on the quality of our culture, which depends on the quality of our relationships, which depends on the quality of our conversations. Everything happens through conversations. Most importantly we tend to loose focus on certain blind spots which occur inadvertantly most of the time and at times supernaturally due to the leaders not sensing it. The blind spots are five like false assumptions, underestimating emotions, lack of empathy, making our own meaning, assuming shared meaning. Any leader need to be alert on the above five blind spots and need to take guard like having his concience questioning before speaking like Do I need to be on guard-and how?, Can I trust this person?,Where do I belong? Do I fit in? What do I need to be successful? and How do I create value with others?. This Exploratory study will reveal those conceptual clarity on the Leadership blind spots and its psychological implications on the individual and leadership personality for personal and professional success. This study will particularly focus on Leadership blind spots.
The tendency for people to evaluate themselves more favorably than an average-peer--the better-than-average effect (BTAE)--is among the most well-documented effects in the social-psychological literature. The BTAE has been demonstrated in many populations with various methodologies, and several explanations have been advanced for it. Two essential questions remain conspicuously unanswered in the BTAE literature. The first concerns the extent to which the BTAE can be represented as a social-comparative phenomenon, and the second concerns the role that strategic motivational processes play in self versus average-peer judgments. With regard to the first question, Study 1 provides direct experimental evidence that self versus average-peer judgments are made relationally rather than independently and, further, that self-ratings anchor these relational judgments. Moreover, Study 1 demonstrates that the consequence of this comparison is for judgments of average to be assimilated toward, not contrasted from, self-ratings. Studies 2-4 provide evidence that self-enhancement motives play a moderating role in the outcome of self versus average-peer judgments. We show that for dimensions on which the self is positively evaluated, enhancement motives restrict the extent to which average-peer assimilation occurs (Study 2). But for dimensions on which the self is negatively evaluated, enhancement motives amplify average-peer assimilation (Studies 3 and 4). Discussion focuses on the function of such differential assimilation, the relation of the current findings to extant perspectives, and directions for future research.
People tend to believe that their own judgments are less prone to bias than those of others, in part because they tend to rely on introspection for evidence of bias in themselves but on their lay theories in assessing bias in others. Two empirical consequences of this asymmetry are explored. Studies 1 and 2 document that people are more inclined to think they are guilty of bias in the abstract than in any specific instance. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that people tend to believe that their own personal connection to a given issue is a source of accuracy and enlightenment but that such personal connections in the case of others who hold different views are a source of bias. The implications of this asymmetry in assessing objectivity and bias in the self versus others are discussed.
An important source of people's perceptions of their performance, and potential errors in those perceptions, are chronic views people hold regarding their abilities. In support of this observation, manipulating people's general views of their ability, or altering which view seemed most relevant to a task, changed performance estimates independently of any impact on actual performance. A final study extended this analysis to why women disproportionately avoid careers in science. Women performed equally to men on a science quiz, yet underestimated their performance because they thought less of their general scientific reasoning ability than did men. They, consequently, were more likely to refuse to enter a science competition.
The culture movement challenged the universality of the self-enhancement motive by proposing that the motive is pervasive in individualistic cultures (the West) but absent in collectivistic cultures (the East). The present research posited that Westerners and Easterners use different tactics to achieve the same goal: positive self-regard. Study 1 tested participants from differing cultural backgrounds (the United States vs. Japan), and Study 2 tested participants of differing self-construals (independent vs. interdependent). Americans and independents self-enhanced on individualistic attributes, whereas Japanese and interdependents self-enhanced on collectivistic attributes. Independents regarded individualistic attributes, whereas interdependents regarded collectivistic attributes, as personally important. Attribute importance mediated self-enhancement. Regardless of cultural background or self-construal, people self-enhance on personally important dimensions. Self-enhancement is a universal human motive.
People tend to approach agreeable propositions with a bias toward confirmation and disagreeable propositions with a bias toward disconfirmation. Because the appropriate strategy for solving the four-card Wason selection task is to seek disconfirmation, the authors predicted that people motivated to reject a task rule should be more likely to solve the task than those without such motivation. In two studies, participants who considered a Wason task rule that implied their own early death (Study 1) or the validity of a threatening stereotype (Study 2) vastly outperformed participants who considered nonthreatening or agreeable rules. Discussion focuses on how a skeptical mindset may help people avoid confirmation bias both in the context of the Wason task and in everyday reasoning.
Most people judge themselves to be content with their lives. However, they also judge themselves to be more content than the others in their group, which is a logical impossibility. In line with previous speculations, the authors found in two studies that comparative contentment judgments were highly related to judgments of one’s own contentment but entirely unrelated to judgments of comparison of others’ contentment. That is, comparative contentment judgments are predominantly self-focused. Researchers asking the question, “How content are you relative to your peers?” should be aware that the response might well be to the question “How content are you?”
Results of four studies support the notion that anchoring effects are mediated by mechanisms of hypothesis-consistent testing and semantic priming. According to the suggested Selective Accessibility Model, judges use a hypothesis-consistent test strategy to solve a comparative anchoring task. Applying this strategy selectively increases the accessibility of anchor-consistent knowledge which is then used to generate the subsequent absolute judgment. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that absolute estimates depend on the hypothesis implied in the comparative task, suggesting that a hypothesis-testing strategy is used to solve this task. Study 3 shows that limiting the amount of knowledge generated for the comparative task retards absolute judgments. This suggests that knowledge rendered easily accessible in the comparative judgment is used for the subsequent absolute judgment. Finally, Study 4 suggests that self-generation of knowledge contributes to the robustness of the effect, thus resolving the seeming inconsistency that anchoring effects are at the same time remarkably robust and mediated by typically fragile semantic priming mechanisms.
It was hypothesized that overt movement can either augment or inhibit certain cognitive activities depending on whether the movement has been positively associated with or negatively associated with that cognitive activity in the past. Seventy-two subjects who believed that they were testing headphone sets engaged in either vertical, horizontal, or no-instructed head movements while listening to a simulated radio broadcast. Subjects in the vertical headmovement conditions agreed with the editorial content of the radio broadcast more than did those in the horizontal head-movement conditions. This effect was true for both counterattitudinal and proattitudinal editorial content. A surreptitious behavioral measure indicated that vertical movements in the counterattitudinal message condition and horizontal movements in the proattitudinal message condition were more difficult than vertical movement in the proattitudinal message condition or horizontal movement in the counterattitudinal message condition. The processes involved are compared with context learning wherein: (1) the generation of counterarguments is learned in the context of horizontal head movement with poor transfer to vertical head movement; and (2) the generation of agreement responses is learned in the context of vertical head movement with poor transfer to horizontal head movement.
The effects of group categorization on statistical inference processes and the consequent effects on group stereotyping were examined in 3 experiments. In Exps 1 and 2, male and female Ss made data-based judgments about gender and leadership ability. In Exp 3, Ss were randomly categorized into groups and then made data-based judgments about the groups' relative intelligence. Results from all 3 studies indicate significant effects of group categorization on Ss' judgments and on their strategies of data integration and logical inference. These results support the hypothesis that group members selectively engage in statistical inference strategies as a means of justifying in-group favoritism. Discussion focuses on the implications for understanding group-serving biases, motivated reasoning, and group stereotyping processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
If preference-inconsistent information initiates more effortful cognitive analysis than does preference-consistent information, then people should be more sensitive processors of information they do not want to believe than of information they do want to believe. Three studies supported this prediction. Study 1 found that inferences drawn from favorable interpersonal feedback revealed a correspondence bias, whereas inferences drawn from unfavorable feedback were sensitive to situational constraint. Study 2 showed this sensitivity to the quality of unfavorable feedback to disappear under cognitive load. Study 3 showed that evaluations of the accuracy of favorable medical diagnoses were insensitive to the probability of alternative explanation, whereas evaluations of unfavorable diagnoses were sensitive to probability information. The importance of adaptive considerations in theories of motivated reasoning is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Tested 3 hypotheses concerning people's predictions of task completion times: (1) people underestimate their own but not others' completion times, (2) people focus on plan-based scenarios rather than on relevant past experiences while generating their predictions, and (3) people's attributions diminish the relevance of past experiences. Five studies were conducted with a total of 465 undergraduates. Results support each hypothesis. Ss' predictions of their completion times were too optimistic for a variety of academic and nonacademic tasks. Think-aloud procedures revealed that Ss focused primarily on future scenarios when predicting their completion times. The optimistic bias was eliminated for Ss instructed to connect relevant past experiences with their predictions. Ss attributed their past prediction failures to external, transient, and specific factors. Observer Ss overestimated others' completion times and made greater use of relevant past experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Results of 3 studies support the notion that anchoring is a special case of semantic priming; specifically, information that is activated to solve a comparative anchoring task will subsequently be more accessible when participants make absolute judgments. By using the logic of priming research, in Study 1 the authors showed that the strength of the anchor effect depends on the applicability of activated information. Study 2 revealed a contrast effect when the activated information was not representative for the absolute judgment and the targets of the 2 judgment tasks were sufficiently different. Study 3 demonstrated that generating absolute judgments requires more time when comparative judgments include an implausible anchor and can therefore be made without relevant target information that would otherwise be accessible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three experiments show that information consistent with a preferred conclusion is examined less critically than information inconsistent with a preferred conclusion, and consequently, less information is required to reach the former than the latter. In Study 1, Ss judged which of 2 students was most intelligent, believing they would work closely with the one they chose. Ss required less information to decide that a dislikable student was less intelligent than that he was more intelligent. In Studies 2 and 3, Ss given an unfavorable medical test result took longer to decide their test result was complete, were more likely to retest the validity of their result, cited more life irregularities that might have affected test accuracy, and rated test accuracy as lower than did Ss receiving more favorable diagnoses. Results suggest that a core component of self-serving bias is the differential quantity of cognitive processing given to preference-consistent and preference-inconsistent information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
When people are asked to compare their abilities to those of their peers, they predominantly provide self-serving assessments that appear objectively indefensible. This article proposes that such assessments occur because the meaning of most characteristics is ambiguous, which allows people to use self-serving trail definitions when providing self-evaluations. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that people provide self-serving assessments to the extent that the trait is ambiguous, that is, to the extent that it can describe a wide variety of behaviors. Study 3 more directly implicated ambiguity in these apraisals. As the number of criteria that Ss could use in their evaluations increased, Ss endorsed both positive and negative characteristics as self-descriptive to a greater degree. Study 4 demonstrated that the evidence and criteria that people use in self-evaluations is idiosyncratic. Asking Ss explicitly to list the evidence and criteria they considered before providing self-evaluations did not influence their self-appraisals. However, requiring Ss to evaluate themselves using a list generated by another individual caused them to lower their self-appraisals. Discussion centers on the normative status of these self-serving appraisals, and on potential consequences for social judgment in general.
We hypothesize that there is a general bias, based on both innate predispositions and experience, in animals and humans, to give greater weight to negative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal traits). This is manifested in 4 ways: (a) negative potency (negative entities are stronger than the equivalent positive entities), (b) steeper negative gradients (the negativity of negative events grows more rapidly with approach to them in space or time than does the positivity of positive events, (c) negativity dominance (combinations of negative and positive entities yield evaluations that are more negative than the algebraic sum of individual subjective valences would predict), and (d) negative differentiation (negative entities are more varied, yield more complex conceptual representations, and engage a wider response repertoire). We review evidence for this taxonomy, with emphasis on negativity dominance, including literary, historical, religious, and cultural sources, as well as the psychological literatures on learning, attention, impression formation, contagion, moral judgment, development, and memory. We then consider a variety of theoretical accounts for negativity bias. We suggest that I feature of negative events that make them dominant is that negative entities are more contagious than positive entities.
A review of the literature concerning the phenomenon known as automatic attitude activation is presented. The robustness of the affective priming effect across many different procedural variations, the mediating mechanisms thought to underlie the effect, and the moderating role of associative strength are discussed. The relevance and importance of automatic attitude activation to many fundamental cognitive and social processes also is highlighted. Finally, an overview of the articles included in this Special Issue of Cognition and Emotion, their essential contributions, and their relation to the earlier literature is presented. This Special Issue is devoted to furthering our understanding of a phenomenon known as automatic attitude activation. Essentially, presentation of an attitude object has been shown to automatically activate from memory the evaluation that an individual associates with the object. The editors Jan De Houwer and Dirk Hermans have compiled a collection of interesting articles in which the various contributing authors report investigations relevant to this phenomenon. In this introductory article, I will provide a brief overview of the articles in the special issue, as well as the literature on automatic attitude activation. In so doing, I hope to provide a context for the Special Issue and, even more importantly, an appreciation for the significance of the phenomenon.
This chapter contains section titled:
Affect is considered by most contemporary theories to be postcognitive,
that is, to occur only after considerable cognitive operations have
been accomplished. Yet a number of experimental results on preferences,
attitudes, impression formation, and decision making, as well as
some clinical phenomena, suggest that affective judgments may be
fairly independent of, and precede in time, the sorts of perceptual
and cognitive operations commonly assumed to be the basis of these
affective judgments. Affective reactions to stimuli are often the
very first reactions of the organism, and for lower organisms they
are the dominant reactions. Affective reactions can occur without
extensive perceptual and cognitive encoding, are made with greater
confidence than cognitive judgments, and can be made sooner. Experimental
evidence is presented demonstrating that reliable affective discriminations
(likedislike ratings) can be made in the total absence of recognition
memory (oldnew judgments). Various differences between judgments
based on affect and those based on perceptual and cognitive processes
are examined. It is concluded that affect and cognition are under
the control of separate and partially independent systems that can
influence each other in a variety of ways, and that both constitute
independent sources of effects in information processing. (139 ref)
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Distinctions have been proposed between systems of reasoning for centuries.
This article distills properties shared by many of these distinctions
and characterizes the resulting systems in light of recent findings
and theoretical developments. One system is associative because its
computations reflect similarity structure and relations of temporal
contiguity. The other is "rule based" because it operates on symbolic
structures that have logical content and variables and because its
computations have the properties that are normally assigned to rules.
The systems serve complementary functions and can simultaneously
generate different solutions to a reasoning problem. The rule-based
system can suppress the associative system but not completely inhibit
it. The article reviews evidence in favor of the distinction and
its characterization.
Several lines of investigation have evolved from the initial cognitive model of depression and other disorders. A large number of studies have tested the cognitive model using both clinical and laboratory-based strategies. In general, studies that most closely approximate the clinical conditions from which the theory was derived are supportive of the cognitive model of depression. Studies of anxiety and panic, although fewer, generally support the cognitive model of anxiety and panic. The application to the treatment of clinical problems has been promising and supports the concept of cognitive specificity. The cognitive therapy of depression has led to the utilization of specific cognitive strategies based on the specific conceptualizations of a given disorder to a wide variety of disorders. Study of abnormal reactions has also provided clues to the cognitive structure of normal reactions.
Many prominent theorists have argued that accurate perceptions of the self, the world, and the future are essential for mental health. Yet considerable research evidence suggests that overly positive self-evaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism are characteristic of normal human thought. Moreover, these illusions appear to promote other criteria of mental health, including the ability to care about others, the ability to be happy or contented, and the ability to engage in productive and creative work. These strategies may succeed, in large part, because both the social world and cognitive-processing mechanisms impose filters on incoming information that distort it in a positive direction; negative information may be isolated and represented in as unthreatening a manner as possible. These positive illusions may be especially useful when an individual receives negative feedback or is otherwise threatened and may be especially adaptive under these circumstances.
COLLEGE SS OVERHEARD AN EPILEPTIC SIEZURE. THEY BELIEVED EITHER THAT THEY ALONE HEARD THE EMERGENCY, OR THAT 1 OR 4 UNSEEN OTHERS WERE ALSO PRESENT. AS PREDICTED, THE PRESENCE OF OTHER BYSTANDERS REDUCED THE INDIVIDUAL'S FEELINGS OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND LOWERED HIS SPEED OF REPORTING (P < .01). IN GROUPS OF 3, MALES REPORTED NO FASTER THAN FEMALES, AND FEMALES REPORTED NO SLOWER WHEN THE 1 OTHER BYSTANDER WAS A MALE RATHER THAN A FEMALE. IN GENERAL, PERSONALITY AND BACKGROUND MEASURES WERE NOT PREDICTIVE OF HELPING. BYSTANDER INACTION IN REAL LIFE EMERGENCIES IS OFTEN EXPLAINED BY APATHY, ALIENATION, AND ANOMIE. RESULTS SUGGEST THAT THE EXPLANATION MAY LIE IN THE BYSTANDER'S RESPONSE TO OTHER OS THAN IN HIS INDIFFERENCE TO THE VICTIM.
Previous experiments have shown that educated adults generally fail to show an intuitive appreciation of correlation or contingency when judging the relation between events on the basis of a serial presentation. The effect on judgment of displaying information serially or in a summary form was examined. In contrast with some previous experiments, the events to be judged were identified in a way which should strongly suggest that the operation of chance must be taken into account. The Ss judged the amount of control exerted by cloud seeding over rainfall. The events (seeding or no seeding followed by rain or no rain) were presented to 1 group only serially, to a 2nd group in both ways with the serial display preceding the summary. Only in the group which received the summary without the serial display were the judgments of a majority of Ss more consistent with an appropriate rule of judgment involving a comparison of probabilities than with 1 or another of several inappropriate rules involving the frequency of certain favourable events.
In general, people perceive high consensus for their own attributes (i.e., the false-consensus effect). Depressed and nondepressed college students were asked about the extent to which depression-relevant and depression-irrelevant attributes were true of themselves and true of the "average college student." Subjects were also asked questions assessing the accuracy of their perceptions of others. Depressed subjects showed less false consensus than nondepressed subjects. Although depressives characterized themselves as dissimilar to others, they showed no consistent bias to depreciate themselves relative to others. Nondepressives, on the other hand, consistently enhanced themselves relative to others, although the magnitude of their self-other differences was smaller than that of depressives. Interestingly, the tendency to depreciate themselves relative to others on negative depression-relevant items was a better predictor of severity of depression than self-perceptions or other perceptions alone. Findings regarding the accuracy of perceptions of others were mixed. The study is discussed in terms of its implications for the false-consensus effect, depressive attributional style, nondepressive self-serving biases, and therapy for depression.
Social psychologists can benefit from exploring connectionist or parallel distributed processing models of mental representation and process also can contribute much to connectionist theory in return. Connectionist models involve many simple processing units that send activation signals over connections. At an abstract level, the models can be described as representing concepts (as distributed patterns of activation), operating like schemas to fill in typical values for input information, reconstructing memories based on accessible knowledge rather than retrieving static representations, using flexible and context-sensitive concepts, and computing by satisfying numerous constraints in parallel. This article reviews open questions regarding connectionist models and concludes that social psychological contributions to such topics as cognition-motivation interactions may be important for the development of integrative connectionist model.
In previous anchoring studies people were asked to consider an anchor as a possible answer to the target question or were given informative anchors. The authors predicted that basic anchoring effects can occur, whereby uninformative numerical anchors influence a judgment even when people are not asked to compare this number to the target value. Five studies supported these hypotheses: Basic anchoring occurs if people pay sufficient attention to the anchor value; knowledgeable people are less susceptible to basic anchoring effects; anchoring appears to operate unintentionally and nonconsciously in that it is difficult to avoid even when people are forewarned. The possible mechanisms of basic anchoring and the relation between these mechanisms and other processes of judgment and correction are discussed.
A collective constructionist theory of the self proposes that many psychological processes, including enhancement of the self (pervasive in the United States) and criticism and subsequent improvement of the self (widespread in Japan), result from and support the very ways in which social acts and situations are collectively defined and subjectively experienced in the respective cultural contexts. In support of the theory, 2 studies showed, first, that American situations are relatively conducive to self-enhancement and American people are relatively likely to engage in self-enhancement and, second, that Japanese situations are relatively conducive to self-criticism and Japanese people are relatively likely to engage in self-criticism. Implications are discussed for the collective construction of psychological processes implicated in the self and, more generally, for the mutual constitution of culture and the self.
It is assumed that people seek positive self-regard; that is, they are motivated to possess, enhance, and maintain positive self-views. The cross-cultural generalizability of such motivations was addressed by examining Japanese culture. Anthropological, sociological, and psychological analyses revealed that many elements of Japanese culture are incongruent with such motivations. Moreover, the empirical literature provides scant evidence for a need for positive self-regard among Japanese and indicates that a self-critical focus is more characteristic of Japanese. It is argued that the need for self-regard must be culturally variant because the constructions of self and regard themselves differ across cultures. The need for positive self-regard, as it is currently conceptualized, is not a universal, but rather is rooted in significant aspects of North American culture. Conventional interpretations of positive self-regard are too narrow to encompass the Japanese experience.
Seventy-nine college students completed a personality inventory and then received a bogus psychological profile that included a highly self-descriptive personality description and a diagnosis based on that description. The personality description was identical for all participants. The diagnostic information varied across two dimensions. Half the subjects received favorable diagnostic feedback indicating that they were particularly resistant to future problems; the other half received unfavorable diagnostic feedback indicating that they were particularly prone to future problems. Half the subjects received information indicating that they were resistant (or prone) to future medical problems; the other half were told that they were resistant (or prone) to future psychological problems. Subjects in a control condition received the personality description with no diagnostic information. Compared to those in favorable feedback conditions, subjects in unfavorable feedback conditions (a) rated both their diagnoses and the overall personality description as less accurate, (b) generated fewer reasons to support the accuracy of their diagnoses, and (c) generated more reasons to support the inaccuracy of their diagnosis. Favorable- and unfavorable-feedback participants did not differ in the perceived accuracy of the individual statements making up the personality description, although unfavorable-feedback subjects remembered fewer past behavioral instances consistent with the statements. Both theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.
Many decisions are based on beliefs concerning the likelihood of uncertain events such as the outcome of an election, the guilt of a defendant, or the future value of the dollar. Occasionally, beliefs concerning uncertain events are expressed in numerical form as odds or subjective probabilities. In general, the heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors. The subjective assessment of probability resembles the subjective assessment of physical quantities such as distance or size. These judgments are all based on data of limited validity, which are processed according to heuristic rules. However, the reliance on this rule leads to systematic errors in the estimation of distance. This chapter describes three heuristics that are employed in making judgments under uncertainty. The first is representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event belongs to a class or event. The second is the availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development, and the third is adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available.
Although routinely observed among North Americans, self-enhancing biases have been elusive in studies conducted with Japanese. The authors conducted two studies of relationship-serving biases (RSBs) with Japanese, Asian Canadian, and European Canadian participants. In both studies, members of all three cultural groups viewed their own relationships (with their best friend, their closest family member, and their romantic partner) as more positive than those of their peers, and to roughly the same extent. Of importance, however, (a) RSBs were largely uncorrelated with both self-esteem and self-serving biases and (b) Japanese (but not the other two cultural groups’) RSBs were paralleled by tendencies to view their relationship partners more positively than themselves. The authors suggest that relationship enhancement serves a different function than self-enhancement, aiding the individual’s quest for connection and belongingness with others.
In two longitudinal studies, university students, their roommates, and parents assessed the quality and forecast the longevity of the students’ dating relationships. The longitudinal nature of this research allowed assessment of the relative accuracy of predictions offered by students and observers. Students assessed their relationships more positively, focusing primarily on the strengths of their relationships, and made more optimistic predictions than did parents and roommates. Although students were more confident in their predictions, their explicit forecasts tended to be less accurate than those of the two observer groups. Students, however, possessed information that could have yielded more accurate forecasts: In comparison to parents’ and roommates’ evaluations of relationship quality, students’ assessments of relationship quality were more predictive of stability at 1 year. Implications of these findings for understanding biases and accuracy in prediction are discussed.
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.
Two studies are reported which demonstrate the influence of perceptual or ‘perspective’ variables in mediating attribution processes. In both studies subjects first observed a re‐enactment of Milgram's (1963) experiment of obedience in which a ‘teacher’ obeys an experimenter's request to deliver dangerously high levels of shock. They were then asked to make judgements concerning the magnitude of situational forces acting upon the teacher and also to make inferences about his personality dispositions. Study I showed that passage of time can lead observers to assume more situational control when they were required to think and write about the witnessed re‐enactment of the Milgram situation compared with observers who had no time to contemplate or who were prevented from doing so. Study II did not support the notion that focus of attribution is a simple function of what one pays attention to, or a function of the differing perspectives which actors and observers employ. Both of these results seriously challenge Jones and Nisbett's (1972) contention that the differences in attribution tendencies between actors and observers arise from the difference in perspective, Moreover, considerable evidence suggests that changes in situational and dispositional attributions may not follow a simple ‘zero‐sum’ model, and that subjects seem to be unwilling to treat the two sources of control as if they were inversely correlated.
A survey is given of trends in research on aspiration level since the first experiments around 1930; also suggestions are offered for profitable further work. The level of aspiration is considered in detail in its field-theoretical setting. Bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Focuses on the nature and efficacy of the various cognitive and behavioral interventions for depression. These include not only cognitive therapy and related cognitive-behavioral interventions, but also more traditional behavioral interventions and recent efforts to integrate each within a more interpersonal context. These approaches often overlap in their underlying conceptualizations and actual procedures of operation, but they also often differ in matters of both theory and practice. Whether these differences really matter remains to be seen, but they may have implications for both the nature of patients treated and the ease with which the respective interventions can be disseminated to the larger clinical community. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Tested the hypothesis that the phrasing of a question about the relationship between 2 events can influence what information Ss feel they need to answer the question. 60 college students were presented with 1 of 2 covariation problems (concerning tennis or rainfall) and were asked a question that explicitly mentioned 1 type of instance or a 2nd type of instance (e.g., the effects of practice on winning or on losing a tennis match) or an unbiased question that mentioned all 4 relevant types of instances (e.g., the effects of practice/no practice on winning/losing). As predicted, Ss who were asked a biased question most often requested the frequency of instances mentioned in the question. Ss who were asked an unbiased question most frequently requested positive confirming instances and requested significantly more information to answer the question. The relationship of this study to other studies demonstrating confirmatory hypothesis-testing strategies and implications for conducting research on intuitive judgments about relationships between events are discussed. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent research has investigated the information-gathering strategies that people employ as they attempt to test hypotheses. Three such strategies of information seeking were examined. Two kinds of hypothesis-confirmation strategies were considered. The first of these concerned evidence being sought to the extent that it is more likely under the hypothesis being tested than under the alternative. The second kind of hypothesis-confirmation strategy refers to the tendency to ask questions that will have the effect of making the hypothesis under test appear to be true. In addition, a third kind of strategy is a diagnosing strategy under which people prefer evidence that is most differentially probable under the hypothesis and the alternative. Important changes in methodology from past work were made, and the data supported a predominant diagnosing strategy and a less significant, but nonetheless strong and consistent, tendency to ask hypothesis-confirming questions. In addition, subjects' choice of questions made it likely that they would perceive as confirmed the specific hypotheses they were testing. This occurred even though the questions employed were not constraining. Discussion involves the strategies of information gathering and the reasons underlying them as well as the implications of these strategies for the inferences people make about their predictive abilities.
People tend to overestimate their comparative likelihood of experiencing a rosy future. The present research suggests that one reason for this error is that when people compare their likelihood of experiencing an event with that of the average person, they focus on their own chances of experiencing the event and insufficiently consider the likelihood of the average person experiencing the event. As a consequence, people tend to think that they are more likely than the average person to experience common events and less likely than the average person to experience rare events. This causes unrealistic optimism in the case of common desirable events and rare undesirable events, but unrealistic pessimism in the case of rare desirable events and common undesirable events (Studies 1 and 2). Study 2 further suggests that both egocentrism and focalism underlie these biases. These results suggest that unrealistic optimism is not as ubiquitous as once thought.
The process of hypothesis testing entails both information selection (asking questions) and information use (drawing inferences from the answers to those questions). We demonstrate that although subjects may be sensitive to diagnosticity in choosing which questions to ask, they are insufficiently sensitive to the fact that different answers to the same question can have very different diagnosticities. This can lead subjects to overestimate or underestimate the information in the answers they receive. This phenomenon is demonstrated in two experiments using different kinds of inferences (category membership of individuals and composition of sampled populations). In combination with certain information-gathering tendencies, demonstrated in a third experiment, insensitivity to answer diagnosticity can contribute to a tendency toward preservation of the initial hypothesis. Results such as these illustrate the importance of viewing hypothesis-testing behavior as an interactive, multistage process that includes selecting questions, interpreting data, and drawing inferences.
Social behavior is ordinarily treated as being under conscious (if not always thoughtful) control. However, considerable evidence now supports the view that social behavior often operates in an implicit or unconscious fashion. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that past experience influences judgment in a fashion not introspectively known by the actor. The present conclusion--that attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation--extends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology. Methodologically, this review calls for increased use of indirect measures--which are imperative in studies of implicit cognition. The theorized ordinariness of implicit stereotyping is consistent with recent findings of discrimination by people who explicitly disavow prejudice. The finding that implicit cognitive effects are often reduced by focusing judges' attention on their judgment task provides a basis for evaluating applications (such as affirmative action) aimed at reducing such unintended discrimination.
Cognitive-experiential self-theory integrates the cognitive and the psychodynamic unconscious by assuming the existence of two parallel, interacting modes of information processing: a rational system and an emotionally driven experiential system. Support for the theory is provided by the convergence of a wide variety of theoretical positions on two similar processing modes; by real-life phenomena--such as conflicts between the heart and the head; the appeal of concrete, imagistic, and narrative representations; superstitious thinking; and the ubiquity of religion throughout recorded history--and by laboratory research, including the prediction of new phenomena in heuristic reasoning.
Research indicates that people have a high estimate of their personal ability and assess their vulnerability to personal risk as less than their peers. Even though these judgments have been found to be resistant to change, previous research suggests that making individuals accountable for their judgments may prevent certain illusory self-assessments developing. Two studies investigated whether accountability modifies estimates of personal ability and vulnerability. Results indicated that making participants more accountable for their judgments significantly reduces positive self-assessments. There was also some suggestion that the extent of the accountability effect is proportional to the magnitude of the accountability manipulation.
Like the inhabitants of Garrison Keillor's (1985) fictional community of Lake Wobegon, most people appear to believe that their skills and abilities are above average. A series of studies illustrates one of the reasons why: when people compare themselves with their peers, they focus egocentrically on their own skills and insufficiently take into account the skills of the comparison group. This tendency engenders the oft-documented above-average effect in domains in which absolute skills tend to be high but produces a reliable below-average effect in domains in which absolute skills tend to be low (Studies 1 and 2). In Study 3, cognitive load exacerbated these biases, suggesting that people "anchor" on their assessment of their own abilities and insufficiently "adjust" to take into account the skills of the comparison group. These results suggest that the tendency to see oneself as above average may not be as ubiquitous as once thought.
Several studies have shown that people who engage in ruminative responses to depressive symptoms have higher levels of depressive symptoms over time, after accounting for baseline levels of depressive symptoms. The analyses reported here showed that rumination also predicted depressive disorders, including new onsets of depressive episodes. Rumination predicted chronicity of depressive disorders before accounting for the effects of baseline depressive symptoms but not after accounting for the effects of baseline depressive symptoms. Rumination also predicted anxiety symptoms and may be particularly characteristic of people with mixed anxiety/depressive symptoms.