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A Role for Social Psychology Instruction in Reducing Bias and Conflict
Abstract
Two studies investigated the potential for social psychology instruction to improve interpersonal understanding and to reduce conflict among American undergraduates. In Study 1, in comparison with general-education social science students who received fewer lectures and exercises on the fundamental attribution error (FAE), social psychology students showed: (a) greater openness to their own FAE; (b) less FAE in explaining anti-American terrorism; and (c) less negative feeling and judgment in response to negative behaviour in general. Self-reported understanding of the FAE concept predicted all three of these outcome measures across courses. In Study 2, from pre- to post-instruction periods, social psychology students showed: (a) an increase in openness to their own biases; (b) a decrease in the FAE in judging three of five targets (driver, employee, terrorist); (c) a decrease in negative feelings toward one of four targets (driver); but (d) a slight increase in a self-serving bias. All but one result in Study 2 remained after covarying for social desirability.
... Psychological literacy plays a key role in reducing the FAE as comprehensive FAE education can help to overcome this FAE blind spot. Stalder (2012) found FAE reductions in social psychology students, both compared to general education students and across instruction periods (i.e., before and after completing a social psychology course on biases and the FAE). Enhanced class activities, such as a real-life case study with classroom discussion (Riggio & Garcia, 2009) or an interactive FAE demonstration (Howell & Shepperd, 2011) can reduce the FAE. ...
... We used Stalder's (2012) self-reported FAE understanding scale, composed of four 7-point agreement items (e.g., "How well do you feel you know the definition of the fundamental attribution error?"). Participants in the control condition instead completed three 7-point filler items about the biology passage. ...
... We compared the self-reported FAE understanding of the FAE passage condition participants (M = 5.61, SD = 0.76, n = 110) to undergraduate students from Stalder (2012) who completed the same scale. In Study 1, Stalder (2012) recruited social psychology (FAE discussed in-depth in five textbook chapters with an assignment, n = 61) and general education students (FAE discussed in two textbook chapters in social sciences courses, n = 72). ...
Research suggests that a variety of educational interventions can be effective for reducing cognitive biases such as the fundamental attribution error (FAE). Specifically, comprehensive FAE education, such as social psychology instruction or targeted training interventions, can reduce the FAE. However, most non-experts in social psychology and members of the public are unlikely to receive such comprehensive FAE education. Instead, they would likely learn about the FAE through informal means outside of educational settings, such as through reading on the Internet. In the current study, we tested whether reading a short and accessible educational passage was effective in reducing the FAE in a between-subjects experiment. Two-hundred forty-four adults from the Reddit community r/SampleSize were randomly assigned to read an online educational passage describing the FAE (treatment) or a biology passage (control) before completing a writer attitude attribution task. Preregistered analyses indicated that participants who read the educational passage self-reported greater understanding of the FAE. However, participants committed the FAE, regardless of whether they read the educational passage. Exploratory analyses suggested that reading the educational passage did not increase perceived FAE understanding for participants with pre-existing FAE knowledge. Additionally, when compared to undergraduate students from previous FAE research, participants who read the educational passage reported lower perceived FAE understanding than undergraduate social psychology students but not general education students. We discuss recommendations for science communicators and future research, including designing enriching FAE materials and assessing FAE reductions in context of real-world behavioral changes.
... Despite the pernicious nature of these self-perception biases, there is reason to believe that change can be achieved. Recent research suggests that individuals' bias blind spots vary in strength and that education can reduce susceptibility to self-perception biases Stalder 2008). For example, in Study 5 of Pronin and Kugler's (2007) work, participants were presented with an ostensible Science article titled "Unaware of Our Unawareness" (which was actually created by the researchers for use in the study). ...
Business ethics educators strive to produce graduates who not only grasp the principles of ethical decision-making, but who can apply that business ethics education when faced with real-world challenges. However, this has proven especially difficult, as good intentions do not always translate into ethical awareness and action. Complementing a behavioral ethics approach with insights from social psychology, we developed an interventional class module with both online and in-class elements aimed at increasing students’ awareness of their own susceptibility to unconscious biases and, consequently, unethical behaviors. We deployed this intervention within a problem-based learning course (137 undergraduate students), in which students completed real-world projects for actual business clients. Our results suggest that although students appeared universally aware of the importance of ethical issues in business and generally espoused intentions to act ethically, those who received the intervention were significantly more likely to recognize their own susceptibility to perpetuating unethical business behavior and to identify ethical issues specific to their real-world projects. These results have important implications for behavioral ethics pedagogy and provide a de-biasing interventional approach for bridging classroom knowledge with real-world skills.
هدفت الدراسة الحالية إلى تحديد مستوى كل من التحيز المعرفي ودافعية التعلم لدى طلبة جامعة أم القرى، بالإضافة إلى الكشف عن العلاقة بين التحيز المعرفي ودافعية التعلم. وتكونت عينة الدراسة من (495) طالبـــــًا وطالبة بجامعة أم القرى. وقد تم استخدام المنهج الوصفي الارتباطي، وتم جمع البيانات باستخدام مقياسي التحيز المعرفي (إعداد: العادلي، 2017) والدافعية للتعلم (إعداد: المطيري، 2019). وأشارت النتائج إلى أن مستوى التحيز المعرفي كان متوسطــــًا بينما كان مستوى دافعية التعلم مرتفعــــًا، وبلغ معامل الارتباط بين التحيز المعرفي والدافعية للتعلم (0.17) وهي قيمة تشير إلى علاقة ضعيفة جدًا بين المتغيرين وفي ضوء هذه النتائج أوصت الباحثتان باستخدام الاستراتيجيات والاساليب التي تدعم معالجة المعلومات بشكل موضوعي والتفكير المنطقي للحد من التحيزات المعرفية الناتجة عن التوقعات الذاتية بالإضافة إلى حث الطلبة على النظر إلى الموقف بزوايا مختلفة قبل اتخاذ القرار مع تقبل أفكار الطرف الآخر بالحوار البناء وكذلك حث الوالدين على استخدام أسلوب اعطاء البدائل دون فرض الرأي على أبنائهم للحصول على التأثير البناء.
The author discusses the Situationist Thesis, according to which human actions correlate more strongly with features of the immediate situation than with stable personality traits. He argues that whether we accept the original Situationist Thesis or the alternative related theses, the implications for free will are negative. That is, the implications are that we have less free will than we might otherwise have thought: certain types of situational factor can significantly reduce free will. The author discusses two types of approach to solving the problem, one of which (“nudge” or libertarian paternalism) will not solve it, and the other (being generally aware of situational interferences in freedom) will solve it only partly and unreliably. Finally, he outlines some general desiderata for any solutions to the problem. He argues that the tradition of positive liberty deserves reviving in light of the conclusions about free will reached in the discussion of the Situationist Thesis, and moreover that those conclusions suggest a new way of thinking about the difference between positive and negative liberty. This new way could help to overcome some of the reservations that liberal philosophers typically have about the idea of positive liberty, as well as helping us to think about what is needed to overcome the impediments to free will shown by the situationist literature.
Ethics blind spots, which have become a keystone of the emerging behavioral ethics literature, are essentially biases, heuristics, and psychological traps. Though students typically recognize that ethical challenges exist in the world at large, they often fail to see when they are personally prone to ethics blind spots. This creates an obstacle for ethics education—inducing students to act in an ethical manner when faced with real challenges. Grounded in the social psychology literature, we suggest that a meta-bias, the bias blind spot, should be addressed to facilitate student recognition of real-world ethical dilemmas and their own susceptibility to biases. We present a roadmap for an ethics education training module, developed to incorporate both ethics blind spots and self-perception biases. After completing the module, students identified potential ethical challenges in their real-world team projects and reflected on their susceptibility to ethical transgressions. Qualitative student feedback supports the value of this training module beyond traditional ethics education approaches. Lessons for management and ethics educators include (a) the value of timely, in-context ethics interventions and (b) the need for student self-reflection (more so than emphasis on broad ethical principles). Future directions are discussed.
Developed, on the basis of responses from 608 undergraduate students to the 33-item Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, three short forms of 11, 12, and 13 items. The psychometric characteristics of these three forms and three other short forms developed by Strahan and Gerbasi (1972) were investigated and comparisons made. Results, in the form of internal consistency reliability, item factor loadings, short form with Marlowe-Crowne total scale correlations, and correlations between Marlowe-Crowne short forms and the Edwards Social Desirability Scale, indicate that psychometrically sound short forms can be constructed. Comparisons made between the short forms examined in this investigation suggest the 13-item form as a viable substitute for the regular 33-item Marlowe-Crowne scale.
Among social scientists, social psychologists in particular would seem to be well positioned to shed light on the processes that lead individuals and groups to become perpetrators of genocide. Brehm and Kassin (1996) defined social psychology as "the scientific study of the way individuals think, feel, desire, and act in social situations". One would hope, then, that social-psychological principles could be applied to the thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions of people in social situations involving the systematic murder of other human beings. But at least one recent analysis of the behavior of genocide perpetrators concluded that "social-psychological explanations" are irrelevant to the goal of understanding such behavior. The analysis in question was presented in a book that has done much to promote public debate on genocide in general and the behavior of Holocaust perpetrators in particular. That work is Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996), which is a prominent example of common misconceptions about the social-psychological analysis of the relationship between persons and situations.
The typical classroom illustrates many common social psychology concepts and phenomena, although often with less-than-desirable results. I give examples of self-handicapping, self-serving bias, belief perseverance, the fundamental attribution error, social categorization, and the overjustification effect as they occur in the classroom. It is possible that alerting instructors and students to these principles may lessen their occurrence.
Social psychologists could play major roles in public debates on social problems, but social‐psychological accounts of behavior are often resisted. Replicating past research, when psychologists described research illustrating situational control of wrongdoing, participants believed that the psychologists would attribute less blame and responsibility to wrongdoers than other psychologists arguing for dispositional influences. But psychologists presenting interactionist accounts were not perceived to be similarly exonerating. Participants also preferred interactionist accounts to situational or dispositional ones. Finally, after exposure to interactionist accounts, participants included just as many (if not more) contextual factors in open‐ended explanations of wrongdoing than after exposure to situational accounts. If social psychologists want to influence thinking about human behavior, insisting on strong situationism might be counterproductive.
Developed from 608 undergraduates' responses to the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, (MCSDS) 3 short forms of 11, 12, and 13 items. The psychometric characteristics of these forms and 3 other short forms developed by R. Strahan and K. C. Gerbasi (see record
1973-28133-001) were investigated. Internal consistency reliability, item factor loadings, short form with MCSDS total scale correlations, and correlations between MCSDS short forms and the Edwards Social Desirability Scale were conducted. Results indicate that the 13-item short form can be used as a viable substitute for the regular 33-item MCSDS. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated some important lessons about the power of social situations, settings, and structures to shape and transform behavior. At the time the study was done, the authors scrupulously addressed the issue of whether and how the dispositions or personality traits of the participants might have affected the results. Here the authors renew and reaffirm their original interpretation of the results and apply this perspective to some recent socially and politically significant events.
Two experiments demonstrated that self-perceptions and social perceptions may persevere after the initial basis for such perceptions has been completely discredited. In both studies subjects first received false feedback, indicating that they had either succeeded or failed on a novel discrimination task and then were thoroughly debriefed concerning the predetermined and random nature of this outcome manipulation. In experiment 2, both the initial outcome manipulation and subsequent debriefing were watched and overheard by observers. Both actors and observers showed substantial perseverance of initial impressions concerning the actors' performance and abilities following a standard "outcome" debriefing. "Process" debriefing, in which explicit discussion of the perseverance process was provided, generally proved sufficient to eliminate erroneous self-perceptions. Biased attribution processes that might underlie perserverance phenomena and the implications of the present data for the ethical conduct of deception research are discussed.
One hundred forty-one undergraduates completed a questionnaire designed to assess individualism, collectivism, patriotism, and responses to the September 11th terrorist attacks. Higher scores on the individualism scale were associated with the tendency to make internal attributions for attacks as well as greater desire for military retaliation. Higher scores on the collectivism scale were expected to be positively correlated with external attributions, but were surprisingly positively correlated with internal attributions. Patriotic responses were also positively correlated with the tendency to make internal attributions for the attack as well as increased suspicion of foreigners and a desire for military retaliation. Findings suggest that self identity may offer some understanding concerning how people respond to nationally important events or crises. ©2003 Individual Differences Research Group. All rights reserved.
The fundamental phenomenon of human closed-mindedness is treated in this volume. Prior psychological treatments of closed-mindedness have typically approached it from a psychodynamic perspective and have viewed it in terms of individual pathology. By contrast, the present approach stresses the epistemic functionality of closed-mindedness and its essential role in judgement and decision-making. Far from being restricted to a select group of individuals suffering from an improper socialization, closed-mindedness is something we all experience on a daily basis. Such mundane situational conditions as time pressure, noise, fatigue, or alcoholic intoxication, for example, are all known to increase the difficulty of information processing, and may contribute to one's experienced need for nonspecific closure. Whether constituting a dimension of stable individual differences, or being engendered situationally - the need for closure, once aroused, is shown to produce the very same consequences. These fundamentally include the tendency to 'seize' on early, closure-affording 'evidence', and to 'freeze' upon it thus becoming impervious to subsequent, potentially important, information. Though such consequences form a part of the individual's personal experience, they have significant implications for interpersonal, group and inter-group phenomena as well. The present volume describes these in detail and grounds them in numerous research findings of theoretical and 'real world' relevance to a wide range of topics including stereotyping, empathy, communication, in-group favouritism and political conservatism. Throughout, a distinction is maintained between the need for a nonspecific closure (i.e., any closure as long as it is firm and definite) and needs for specific closures (i.e., for judgments whose particular contents are desired by an individual). Theory and research discussed in this book should be of interest to upper level undergraduates, graduate students and faculty in social, cognitive, and personality psychology as well as in sociology, political science and business administration.
Results from research in social psychology, such as findings about the fundamental attribution error and other situational influences on behaviour, are often used to justify attacking the existence of character traits. From this perspective, character development is an illusion, an impossibility, or both. We offer a different interpretation of how these issues interact with character development concerns. Rather than undermining the very idea of character traits, social psychology actually sheds light on the manner in which character development can occur. It reaffirms Spinozistic and Aristotelian points about character, namely that: (1) knowledge of the fundamental attribution error can help us minimize the influence environment and situation have on our behaviour, and (2) proper habituation only takes place in appropriately structured environments. Acknowledging these important results from social psychology helps us improve some of our character education practices rather than destroying their basis.
A group of undergraduates previously informed as to how social-psychological factors operate to inhibit helping behavior was more likely to help a victim at a later date than was an uninformed group.
Three studies suggest that individuals see the existence and operation of cognitive and motivational biases much more in others than in themselves. Study 1 provides evidence from three surveys that people rate themselves as less subject to various biases than the “average American,” classmates in a seminar, and fellow airport travelers. Data from the third survey further suggest that such claims arise from the interplay among availability biases and self-enhancement motives. Participants in one follow-up study who showed the better-than-average bias insisted that their self-assessments were accurate and objective even after reading a description of how they could have been affected by the relevant bias. Participants in a final study reported their peer’s self-serving attributions regarding test performance to be biased but their own similarly self-serving attributions to be free of bias. The relevance of these phenomena to naïve realism and to conflict, misunderstanding, and dispute resolution is discussed.
The fundamental attribution error (FAE) is the tendency to overestimate dispositional and underestimate situational causes for others' behavior (Ross, 1977). Undergraduate students (N = 155) explained the causes of a person's "bad day." The experimental group completed responses after viewing a documentary on Jonestown and discussing situational factors in that environment; 3 other groups completed responses after a research methods lecture (control) or lectures on the FAE. Participants exposed to the film made significantly fewer dispositional and more situational attributions in explaining the target's bad day compared to control participants and more situational attributions compared to lecture participants. We discuss implications for teaching psychological principles using real-life events.
Past research has demonstrated that people more readily recognize bias in others' perceptions than they do in their own. The current research demonstrates the tenacity of this effect in the context of interpersonal conflicts. In Study 1, participants assumed their own construals of conflict were fair and uninfluenced by affective preferences, whereas those disagreeing with them were seen as unfair and biased. In Study 2, participants were induced to exhibit a liking bias, yet still reported themselves uninfluenced by liking. In Study 3, participants received an explanation of the liking bias and were asked to correct for it. Despite heavy demand characteristics, they failed to do so. Together, these studies suggest that social perceivers are particularly blind to their own biases in conflict situations.
U.S. citizens' reactions to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were examined, including emotional responses, attributions for the cause of the attacks, and policy recommendations. Participants whose emotional reactions were dominated by anger attributed the attacks to the fanaticism of the terrorists and to poor U.S. security and rejected the idea that U.S. foreign policy played a role in the attacks. They endorsed an aggressive military response and rejected humanitarian efforts. Participants whose emotional reactions were dominated by sadness, in contrast, denied that fanaticism and security lapses were to blame, and both sad and fearful participants expressed reservations about a strong military reaction. Path models suggest that the relationship between emotional reactions and policy endorsement was partially mediated by attributions.
Tested the hypothesis that even people informed about the self- serving bias will see themselves as less frequently self-serving in their judgments than the average person. Two forms of a classroom demonstration designed to illustrate this effect are presented. Data from a total of 85 undergraduates indicate that Ss who had been informed of the research on self-serving biases in judgment saw themselves as engaging in such distortions less often than the average person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
To provide evidence of the effects of academic training on causal attributions, undergraduates in social science, commerce, and engineering were compared at different points of their training in terms of their explanations of poverty and unemployment. Analyses showed no field differences in causal attributions at the beginning of the 1st academic year but significant differences at the end of the year, with social science Ss blaming the system more than commerce or engineering Ss. Longitudinal analysis showed that, within a 6-mo interval, causal attributions of the Ss changed significantly as a function of their field of study. Differential employment prospects were related to attributional change. Results confirm the hypothesis that exposure to the culture of the social sciences reinforces a system-blame ideology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated the effectiveness of instruction in attribution processes and practice in empathic perspective taking in deconstructing dispositional bias of counselor trainees. 56 counselor trainees participated. In the 1st intervention Ss reviewed an instructional videotape that discussed correspondent inference theory, fundamental attribution error, the actor–observer effect, its relationship to clinicians' observer and helper roles and a normative attribution model. The 2nd treatment consisted of practice in empathic perspective taking. The attention placebo condition involved instruction in self-processes and behavioral problems. Videotaped stimulus cases and completed a clinical attribution scale were used to assess the treatment effects when compared with a placebo control condition. Results show significant differences among groups. Counselor trainees receiving either of the 2 interventions showed significantly lower dispositional bias in responding to videotaped clinical cases than did their counterparts in the placebo condition. The study points to a need for a paradigm shift from a person-focused to a system-focused approach in counseling practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
It is almost a truism that disagreement produces conflict. This article suggests that perceptions of bias can drive this relationship. First, these studies show that people perceive those who disagree with them as biased. Second, they show that the conflict-escalating approaches that people take toward those who disagree with them are mediated by people's tendency to perceive those who disagree with them as biased. Third, these studies manipulate the mediator and show that experimental manipulations that prompt people to perceive adversaries as biased lead them to respond more conflictually-and that such responding causes those who engage in it to be viewed as more biased and less worthy of cooperative gestures. In summary, this article provides evidence for a "bias-perception conflict spiral," whereby people who disagree perceive each other as biased, and those perceptions in turn lead them to take conflict-escalating actions against each other (which in turn engender further perceptions of bias, continuing the spiral).