Topic:
Social Beliefs and Judgments
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new link as of January 1, 2013
Thin Slices
Decision Making
Reading Faces/Emotions
Counterfactual Thinking
Priming
Other Resources
The Penn State saga - In this blog entry, Sam Sommers connects the sordid issues of Joe Paterno and Penn State to a number of social psych phenomena. [added 1/29/12]Moral disgust leaves a bad taste, literally - Some more interesting embodied cognition research -- "religious beliefs that contradict one's own also leave a bad taste in the mouth, literally." [added 1/29/12]
More willing to help victims of natural than man-made disasters - [added 5/31/11]
Explaining a death - good application of social psychology to explaining reactions to the recent death of a Notre Dame student at a football practice [added 12/21/10]
The Ellen Langer story - interesting article about Ellen Langer and some of her fascinating research [added 3/13/10]
Car crash is over before you realize it - Interesting description of the millisecond-by-millisecond events of a side-impact car crash. This particular crash is "over" at 70ms. You aren't consciously aware that you have even been in a crash until 150-300ms. [added 4/19/09]
"The cognitive neuroscience of eye contact" - [added 4/19/09]
"Out of the ordinary: Finding hidden threats by analyzing unusual behavior" - strategies for identifying important information in intelligence data, from a report from the RAND Corporation [added 12/1/04]
Links to sites concerning bizarre and sometimes dangerous beliefs - David Schneider has put together an excellent set of links on cults, paranormal beliefs and other beliefs. [added 7/16/03]]
"Psychology of Intelligence Analysis" - book from the Central Intelligence Agency by Richards J. Heuer, Jr. - the study of thinking applied to intelligence work
"Body language can indicate socioeconomic status" - Here is another study indicating how much information we can pick up quickly and nonverbally from brief encounters with others. "The results, reported in Psychological Science, reveal that nonverbal cues can give away a person's SES. Volunteers whose parents were from upper SES backgrounds displayed more disengagement-related behaviors compared to participants from lower SES backgrounds. In addition, when a separate group of observers were shown 60 second clips of the videos, they were able to correctly guess the participants' SES background, based on their body language." [added 4/19/09]
Who's the effective CEO? - Research found that even a very brief exposure to the faces of CEOs permitted participants to distinguish between the "the successful and the not-so-successful CEOs." [added 4/6/08]
Snap judgments and politicians - Very interesting study in which participants saw pictures of two candidates running for the same race for as brief as 1/10 of a second. Participants selected the politician (though participants were not told they were politicians) they thought was more competent. When these ratings were compared with the subsequent outcomes of the political race between the two candidates the researchers found that the snap rating of competence was a very good predictor of who would win the political race. [added 12/11/07]
Decision Making and Prediction
"The mechanics of choice" - good essay on recent research on decision making [added 7/5/12]
Better at predicting others' behavior than our own - Clever set of studies found that we more often correctly took into situational factors when predicting how others would behave, but we did not consider those factors in predicting our own behavior. [added 7/5/12]Jumping to a conclusion - Sam Sommers provides a nice description in his blog entry about our tendency to jump to quick conclusions about people based on limited information, using the case of Representative Anthony Weiner as an example. [added 8/21/11]
"How competent are the competency evaluators?" - The research used the court system in the state of Hawaii to look at how often psychologists/psychiatrists agree with each other when evaluating the competency of a defendant to stand trial. "Examining 729 reports authored by 35 evaluators, they found that all three evaluators agreed in just under three out of four -- or 71 percent -- of initial competency referrals. Agreement was a bit lower -- 61 percent -- in cases where defendants were being reevaluated after undergoing competency restoration treatment." [added 5/31/11]
Counteract "to hell with it" with if-then - "You're probably familiar with what could be called the 'to hell with it' effect. It's when (as demonstrated by lots of research) a bad mood causes us to take risky decisions or engage in risky behaviour. Like when you're feeling down and you drive home dangerously fast or go out and get drunk. Now a team led by Thomas Webb at the University of Sheffield says that we can protect ourselves from this effect by forming 'if-then' implementation decisions in advance. These are self-made plans which state that if a certain situation occurs, then I will respond in a pre-specified way." [added 12/21/10]
The Allais paradox and loss aversion - Good essay addressing factors affecting decision-making such as in the Allais paradox: Suppose somebody offered you a choice between two different vacations. Vacation number one gives you a 50 percent chance of winning a three-week tour of England, France and Italy. Vacation number two offers you a one-week tour of England for sure. Which would you pick? [added 12/19/10]
Estimating other people's drunkenness - Can you estimate how good we are at estimating other people's drunkenness? Read the blog entry and see if your prediction is correct. [added 10/29/10]
Predicting when crime occurs on CCTV - "Are experienced CCTV operators better than naive participants at judging from an unfolding scene on CCTV whether or not a crime is about to be committed? The short answer is no, they aren't. Presented with 24 real-life 15-second CCTV clips, and asked to predict which half ended just before a crime was about to be committed (examples included violence and vandalism) and which half were innocuous, 12 experienced CCTV operators managed just 55.5 per cent accuracy - no better than if they'd just been guessing. Twelve naive controls achieved an accuracy of just 46.5 per cent - no worse, in terms of statistical significance, than the CCTV operators." [added 10/29/10]
Rational rejection of expert advice - interesting article about why it might be rational to ignore many of the calls for more careful attention to security on your computers [added 7/19/10]
How do we interpret low-probability, high-impact events? - "A growing body of research indicates that people making decisions interpret the chances of encountering rare events, such as a child developing tragic complications from a vaccine, in dramatically different ways." [added 7/19/10]Do we unconsciously evaluate objects/products? - Here is another study examining whether or not the fMRI can be used to detect consumer preferences. [added 7/17/10]
Whom should we screen at airports? - "The U.S. government is refining its terror-screening policy to focus on specific terror threats and not travelers' nationalities. The new policy replaces a security requirement put in place after the attempted bombing of a jetliner en route to Detroit on Christmas Day that singled out people from 14 countries that have been home to terrorists." Which is better? [added 7/14/10]
"What types of advice do decision-makers prefer?" - Students were presented "with fictional decision-making scenarios, such as choosing which job to apply for. The students were offered various permutations of advice and asked to say how satisfied they'd be if a friend had given them that advice. The different kinds of advice were: which option to go for; which option not to go for; info on how to make the decision (e.g. use a points allocation system); information on one or more of the options; and sympathy about the difficulty of making a decision. "Whilst all forms of advice were positively received," the students' primary "preference was for information about one or more of the options." [added 7/19/10]
U.S. still a "fearful nation" - Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear, claims we are still a fearful nation in this interesting essay, and he discusses the consequences of that. [added 2/13/10]
"Death" warnings increase smoking? - According to this study, for those whose self-esteem is tied to smoking, encountering threatening messages about smoking increases the tendency to smoke. [added 2/13/10]
Do you hang up your diplomas? - "The key finding was that students who saw an office with certificates on the wall rated the therapist not only as more skillful, experienced, better-trained, and more authoritative, but also as more friendly, kinder, welcoming, congenial and interested in clients. Indeed, the more certificates the better. Students who saw an office with four or nine certificates and diplomas rated the therapist as even more friendly and proficient than students who saw an office with just two or no certificates. And when it came to the perceived energy and dynamism of the therapist, nine certificates was better than four." [added 1/18/10]
More on unconscious vs. conscious decision-making - Ap Dijksterhuis and his colleagues are at it again -- testing the question of when unconscious decision-making might be superior to conscious decision-making. In this study, they show "that people with expertise in football (soccer) are better at predicting match outcomes when they spend time not consciously thinking about their predictions." [added 1/18/10]
Emotions affect assessment of risk - We interpret our more immediate emotions as more important. [added 1/18/10]
Is unconscious decision-making better? - A brief but good review of some of the "backlash" against unconscious thought theory and the superiority of unconscious decision-making for some types of decisions. This is a also a good case study of how scientific knowledge evolves. [7/13/09]
Is there a too-much-choice effect? - Remember the too-much-choice effect? It says that sometimes we are more satisfied if we have to choose among 6 options than 24. This more recent research brings that effect into question, looking at variables that may moderate it. Good thing. I was thinking of just cutting down to two or three newsletter entries so you wouldn't be frustrated with me. Now, I'll keep them all in! [7/13/09]
"Why we keep falling for financial scams" - a good article in the line of why smart people do dumb things [added 4/19/09]
Anchoring in credit card rates - Blog entry describing research in which "Hundreds of participants were given a credit-card bill with an outstanding balance of £435.76 and asked how much they could afford to pay off, given their real-life finances. Crucially, half the participants were shown what the minimum compulsory payment was and half weren't. The presence or not of information about a minimum payment didn't affect the proportion of participants who said they'd pay the balance off in full. However, among those 45 per cent of participants who said they'd pay only some of the bill, the presence of information about the minimum required payment had a dramatic effect on how much they said they'd pay." [added 4/19/09]
"How can decision making be improved?" - This paper reviews the literature to examine strategies for improving decision making [added 4/19/09]
Availability heuristic (Sam Sommers' blog entries) - Sam Sommers has recently begun a series of interesting blogs for Psychology Today, applying social psychology to the world around us. One of his most recent entries is a good one on Michael Phelps and the availability heuristic. Worth a look. Good material for your courses. [added 12/21/08]
"CIA guide to optimised thinking" - "The CIA have released the full text of a book on the psychology of analysing surveillance data. While aimed at the CIA's analysts, it's also a great general guide on how to understand complex situations and avoid our natural cognitive biases in reasoning." [6/20/08]
It's how you present the numbers -- "Would you rather support research for a disease that affects 30,000 Americans a year or one that affects just .01 percent of the U.S. population?" Research on how you present the numbers. [6/20/08]
"Why things cost $19.95" - another interesting recap of recent research from Wray Herbert's APS blog "We're only human" [added 4/6/08]
Representative heuristic - Wikipedia comes through with a good explanation of the concept. [added 3/21/08]
Chocolate's influence on course evaluations! - You heard me. What happens if you are offered chocolate (by a complete stranger, not the instructor) before you complete an evaluation of your instructor? See what the study found. [added 12/9/07]
Risky decision-making - a good report from the 2007 APS convention on risky decision-making across the lifespan [added 11/10/07]
"I'll agree to do the right thing...next week" - "When making decisions a person often thinks that she should make certain choices (e.g., increasing savings, reduce gas consumption) but does not want to make them. This intrasubjective tension between 'multiple selves' has been referred to as a 'want/should' conflict. In four experiments we show that people are more likely to choose what they believe they should choose when the choice will be implemented in the future rather than implemented immediately, a tendency we refer to as 'future lock-in.'" [added 7/06/07]
When is more better? - interesting article in the APS Observer (2005) about when we perceive more to be better and by how much [added 1/14/06]
Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System - tracks health risk behavior among young people - from the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion - for example, see recent trends [added 7/19/02]
Jonathan Baron has made a good number of his papers available on the web related to decision-making, and, in particular, maximization of utility (good)
Bounded Rationality - article from ScienceNews (1999) on decision-making heuristics
Why is it so hard to detect lying? - [added 7/5/12]
Does watching Lie to Me make me a better lie detector? - Interesting study finds that watching the show Lie to Me, about people who can use microexpressions to detect lies, actually leads to less accurate lie detection. [added 1/29/12]
"Botox users have trouble reading emotions in others" - an article in Time magazine -- more embodied cognition research [added 8/21/11]
The study of smiling - very interesting story in the APS Observer on the many facets of smiling research and what it all means [added 12/21/10]
Estimating other people's drunkenness - Can you estimate how good we are at estimating other people's drunkenness? Read the blog entry and see if your prediction is correct. [added 10/29/10]
Be a good lie detector? Don't mimic - Fascinating study: "So while the dozens of tricks employed in Lie To Me can help true experts detect lies, this simple study seems to show that simply telling interviewers not to mimic the behavior of the people they are talking to can make them much better at detecting lies." [added 2/13/10]
"Empathic people remember your smell" - "Forty-four female university students were twice tasked with smelling three t-shirts and picking out the one that belonged to their room-mate. The t-shirts had been carefully prepared - worn overnight for an average of eight hours, after the owner had used scent-free toiletries for the previous two days. Based on their performance, the students were arranged in three groups: 21 of them failed both times to pick out the correct t-shirt; 10 of them picked the correct t-shirt once; and 13 of them picked the correct t-shirt both times. The key finding was that the students who both times identified their room-mate's t-shirt by its smell also tended to excel at a test of identifying facial emotional expressions, and at a test of empathy in which they had to say how someone would feel in a range of different situations." What if you can smell your roommate's t-shirt from 20 yards away? [added 1/18/10]
Detecting fraud in the Iranian elections: More 7's than 5's! - Interesting analysis of Iranian vote counts per region -- more totals ended in 7 (e.g., 12,437) than in 5 to a degree greater than expected by chance. [7/13/09]
Can you tell who's speaking from motion cues? - Try out the video quiz from this blog to see if you can detect which person speaks first. While you're there, read about the research. [7/13/09]
Detecting lying - Paul Ekman has received a lot of attention lately for his development of lie detection through microexpressions and its use on the new TV show Lie to Me. [7/13/09]What does a Bob (or Tim) look like? - very interesting study examining how we associate certain names with certain shaped faces, and how if a name does not match a shape it is easier to forget [added 7/19/07]
Reading faces - article on how Americans and Japanese read faces (and emoticons!) differently [added 7/19/07]
Detection of lying - interesting article in ScienceNews on current research on our ability to detect deception [added 12/1/04]
'Counterfactual' thinkers are more motivated and analytical - [added 3/13/10]Counterfactual thinking - research site maintained by Neal Roese
The Bargh/Chen/Burrows failed replication controversy continues - In an earlier issue I pointed you to discussion of a failed replication of the classic priming study in which participants walked more slowly after priming for old age. Emotions have got quite heated as a number of psychologists have entered the fray to debate the merits of the original study and subsequent replications. The first link is to an overview of the controversy. Here is John Bargh's response to it. Here is the original article. Lots of good methodological issues for your students to consider. [added 7/5/12]
The signature effect - This article looks at research studying how writing your signature may prime or activate your identify which can influence later decisions and behaviors. [added 5/31/11]
"Smells like safe sex" - I've mentioned one of my favorite recent students before (Smells like clean spirit...) in which priming with a faint cleaning smell affected participants behavioral intentions and behavior. I imagine we will get quite a few such smell-priming studies. Here is another one in which priming with a putrid smell led more participants to say they would use condoms. This would make a good hypothesis-generating exercise for your students: Can you generate a prediction of how a particular smell might prime particular attitudes, behaviors, or other outcomes? [added 5/31/11]
"Feeling clean makes us harsher moral judges" - "Half the students were asked to clean their hands with an antiseptic wipe so as not to soil the shiny surfaces. Afterwards all the students rated the morality of six societal issues including pornography and littering. Those who'd wiped their hands made far harsher judgments than those who didn't." [added 10/29/10]
Primed for disease makes you less sociable and less extraverted - [added 7/19/10]
Death and a zest for life - These interesting studies asked if exposure to death (priming, in this case) enhances one's valuing of life, and, conversely, if valuing of life enhanced one's focus on death. [added 1/18/10]
Priming of pride - Another interesting priming study in which participants who were primed for pride stood up taller while those primed for disappointment slouched more, consciously unaware of the manipulation [7/13/09]
"Do social psychologists cause priming research, or does priming research cause social psychologists?" - Enjoy! [7/13/09]
A "ripeness bias"? - interesting priming research from the lab of John Bargh [6/20/08]
"Wine labels with animals on them: why they work" - interesting priming research [added 5/20/08]
Primed for spaciousness - A summary of interesting research in which participants were primed for either closeness or spaciousness and then asked to evaluate the aversiveness of different stimuli. Those primed for spaciousness or "distance" from something found the stimuli less aversive. [added 4/26/08]
Priming the unconscious - a New York Times article about the hot area of priming [added 11/10/07]
Fear of death and political preferences - A recent article (click here to read original research) has received a lot of attention in our current (2004) U.S. election climate. Research is finding that when we are exposed to reminders of death or 9/11 we tend to favor "charismatic" leaders such as George Bush. It is also another excellent example of the power of priming. The link above is to a summary of this research recently published in the APS Observer. [added 12/1/04]
We (slightly) prefer the middle option - Below is research on the "last effect" in which participants preferred a fifth chocolate in a taste test better when it was presented as the "last" chocolate as opposed to the "next" chocolate. In an array though, as opposed to a series of experiences, it appears we have a slight preference for the middle item. [added 7/5/12]
When is "an eternity"? - Depends on what you are waiting for, as this cartoon illustrates. I wonder how long 5 seconds seems if you are used to waiting 30 seconds. [added 7/5/12]
When does your unconscious make better decisions? - Apparently, when it has had a hit of sugar. Mr. Pibb, preferably. But that's just me. [added 7/5/12]
"Enclothed" cognition - I was intrigued by this research which investigated how the clothing we are wearing affects our cognitions. For example, participants who were wearing white lab coats committed only half as many errors on the Stroop Test than those wearing their normal clothes. [added 7/5/12]Is the last chocolate better than the next chocolate? - Sam Sommers discusses this clever study in which participants tasted five chocolates. Half of the participants were told the fifth one was the next chocolate, and half were told it was the last chocolate. Those who were told it was the last one liked it better. (I was tempted to begin this issue of the Newsletter by telling you it was the last issue, but the panic and deep despair that would likely follow could send shockwaves through world markets that we just don't need right now.) Ask your students where else this might apply. How could it be used in persuasive attempts? [added 7/5/12]
"Thinking for others can boost your creativity" - [added 5/31/11]
How long does it take for a habit to become automatic? - From this research now we know -- average of 66 days. [added 12/19/10]
Massage leads to oxytocin in bloodstream which leads to trust - Alert: Before reading the above article, have someone massage your shoulders. I wouldn't lie to you. [added 12/18/10]
Processing fluency and judgment - I have shared a number of studies recently which have found that, for example, if instructions are in an easier-to-read font, we assume the task will be easier to complete. The more fluently we can process information the more favorably we respond to it. This article summarizes a lot of that research. [added 2/13/10]
"CCTV cameras don't reassure, they frighten" - "Dave Williams and Jobuda Ahmed presented 120 participants - shoppers in Hatfield - with pictures of a fictional town centre street scene. When the scene contained both a skinhead and a CCTV camera, the participants, aged between 18 to 70 years, reported raised concern about walking in the scene, compared with when the same scene was either empty, contained a woman with or without a CCTV camera, or a skinhead without a camera. In other words, it was specifically the combination of a skinhead and CCTV that provoked fear - neither had any effect on their own." [added 1/18/10]
Social cognition: Warmth and competence - a summary of Susan Fiske's APS Award Address in which she argues that much of social cognition can be boiled down to those two key elements of warmth and competence [added 1/18/10]
"We infer rather than perceive the moment we decided to act" - Free will? Free choice? This clever study attempts to address related questions. "They asked eight Pomona College undergraduates to watch a representation of a clock on a computer screen. While they watched, their hand was on a button that was hidden from their own view. A cursor moved around the clock's dial once every 2.6 seconds. The students were told to press the button whenever they wished, and then report exactly where the cursor was at the moment they made the decision to press the button. This was repeated 160 times for each student. The trick was that as they pressed the button, the computer made a short beep. Unknown to the students, there was a slight delay between when the button was pressed and when the beep sounded. This delay varied randomly between 5 and 60 milliseconds. Did the timing of the beep affect when the students believed they had decided to press the button?" Can we tell when we decided to act, or do we just infer it from other information? [added 1/18/10]
"Finding a scapegoat when epidemics strike" - good review of some historical epidemics and the groups that were blamed for them [added 1/18/10]
"Looking to the future to appreciate the present" - When undergraduates' remaining time in college was framed as brief ("keep in mind that you only have a short amount of time left to spend at UVA. In fact, you have about 1,200 hours left before graduation") they viewed their undergraduate experience more positively than if it was framed as longer ("keep in mind that you have a significant amount of time left to spend at UVA. In fact, you have about 1/10 of a year left before graduation"). Do you look back more favorably on something as it is just about to end? [added 1/18/10]
Reading confusing prose heightens one's search for meaning - This "We're Only Human" column by Wray Herbert summarizes some interesting research in which participants read some Kafka (or less confusing text) and then were asked to identify patterns in a difficult task. Those who read Kafka (and were, thus, more disoriented) appeared more motivated to find meaning and order in the next task. As Herbert notes, we are "irrepressible meaning makers." [added 1/18/10]
Conspiracy theorists - Do they even exist? I have my doubts. [added 1/18/10]
How language shapes the way we think - interesting essay with some cool examples [7/13/09]
Okay, more like "apple judgment" - "We find that 75% of the participants are willing to pay more for organic than for conventional apples given identical appearance. However, at the first sight of any imperfection in the appearance of the organic apples, this segment is significantly reduced. Furthermore, the cosmetic damage has a larger impact on the willingness to pay for organic apples than for conventional apples." [7/13/09]
Does physical warmth promote interpersonal warmth? - This intriguing study looks at the flipside of cold -- warmth, and looks at how temperature affects perception as opposed to the study above in which perception affects perception of temperature. Fascinating stuff. First link is to the research article; second link is to a blog summary of it. [added 4/19/09]
Unconscious vs. conscious; powerful vs. powerless - another We're Only Human column reviewing some research finding that those in a more powerful position can better handle conscious processing of complex decisions [added 4/19/09]
"How voters think" - An op-ed columnist uses social judgment research to analyze voters' thinking. [added 4/6/08]
"Do verbal metaphors affect what we see?" - Very interesting set of studies in which the valence of words affects our perception of shades of gray -- positive words produce "lighter" responses and negative words produce "darker" responses. [added 11/21/07]
"How culture affects the way we think" - a good report from the 2007 APS convention [added 11/10/07]
"Unreason's seductive charms" - The link is to a recent (2003) article in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which David Barash examines the appeal of certain irrationalities. Included is an interesting discussion of Leda Cosmides' research on logical reasoning using the Wason Test, comparing abstract versus social situations (e.g., cheating, deception). Further discussion of her research in an evolutionary context can be found at this site: "Evolutionary psychology: A primer". [added 3/23/04]
Common Sense - discussion of common sense, interactive T/F test on some common misperceptions such as "opposites attract" and fallacies leading to "common sense"
Connectionist Models of social reasoning - preface from a book edited by Read and Miller describing connectionist (neural network) models
Apocalyptic Beliefs - PBS Frontline show on the "evolution of apocalyptic belief and how it shaped the western world"
"We think more rationally in a foreign language" - That explains a lot; I'm monolingual. [added 7/5/12]
Fooled by numbers - essay reviewing research on how we like numbers but are often fooled by them [added 1/29/12]
The original inattentional blindness studies? - Dan Simons uncovers some interesting studies. [added 1/29/12]
Change deafness - First change blindness, and now evidence that we often fail to attend to things we hear. Can change blandness or change stuffedupness be far behind? Yeah, I know that was a reach, but do we have any words for not being able to taste or smell, other than medical terms? [added 1/29/12]Jumping to a conclusion - Sam Sommers provides a nice description in his blog entry about our tendency to jump to quick conclusions about people based on limited information, using the case of Representative Anthony Weiner as an example. [added 8/21/11]
Wishing versus believing - This blog entry describes some interesting, recent research that compared what people wish for versus what they believe. "The study recruited subjects who believed that child home care was superior to day care. Half of the subject were conflicted about the issue and indicated that they intended to use day care for their children. The subjects were motivated to believe that day care was as good as home care. The un-conflicted group indicated that they intended to use only home care. The subjects were given two fictional studies. Half the subjects were led to believe study 1 favored day care and study 2 home care; the other half of the subjects were led to believe the opposite for studies 1 and 2. After reading the studies, the subjects evaluated which of the two studies provided more valid conclusions, listed the strengths and weaknesses and evaluated the persuasiveness of each study. The subjects’ last task was to evaluate which form of childcare would have a better effect on child development. The results of the study dramatically showed subjects were more persuaded by scientific evidence that confirmed what they wished to be true than what they initially believed to be true." [added 8/21/11]
"We believe experts who confirm our beliefs" - "It's our values that determine the credibility that we give to experts,” according to Éric Montpetit and Érick Lachapelle, professors at the Université de Montréal Department of Political Science. “We judge based on our political predispositions. This highlights the limit of rationality when shaping an opinion.” [added 5/31/11]
Border bias - Is an environmental threat that exists 200 miles away within your own state a greater danger than a similar threat 200 miles away across state lines? If you think so, and many of us apparently do, you are exhibiting "border bias." And if the state border on a map is even more distinct you exhibit even more of the bias. [added 12/21/10]
Outsmarting your biases - [added 12/19/10]
Inattentional blindness, driving, and unicycling clowns - "Ira Hyman and colleagues at Western Washington University think a key reason for the adverse cognitive effects of talking on a mobile phone has to do with 'inattentional blindness' - the failure to notice new information in the environment. To circumvent the limitations of the car studies, they've performed a stripped-down, naturalistic study of people walking diagonally 375 feet across their university's Red Square. They noted whether people walking this popular route were talking on a mobile, listening to an iPod, talking with another person who was present, or just walking on their own without any distractions. When these individuals reached the other side of the square, the researchers asked them if they'd noticed the unicycling clown positioned strategically just to the side of the diagonal path." Also, here is a nice page where researchers are keeping track of recent research on inattentional blindness. [added 10/29/10]
"Finding meaning in random sequences" - more on the power and peril of intuition [added 7/19/10]
More human than average? - Research has documented that most of us believe we are better than average, but this research finds that we tend to believe that we are more human than others as well. [added 7/19/10]
Jumping to quick conclusions in the Alabama shooting - Sam Sommers provides some more good social psychological commentary on a current news tragedy. [added 3/13/10]
Confirmation bias - This blog entry provides a nice summary of some confirmation bias research, including a recent one which found that global news consumers selected the news outlet that fit their political attitudes. Interestingly, the study found that "The longer participants had been watching AJE (Al-Jazeera English), the less dogmatic they were in their thinking...The reduced dogmatism applies only to the cognitive levels of thinking, or the way in which people process new information." [added 2/13/10]
"How did economists get it so wrong?" - interesting analysis from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on the many biases that led economists to misforecast the current economic situation [added 1/18/10]
"Interacting with women can impair men's cognitive functioning" - [added 1/18/10]
Too much thinking can impair your prediction for preferences - More research on the question of whether I should trust my conscious or unconscious processes in decision making [7/13/09]
"Why we keep falling for financial scams" - a good article in the line of why smart people do dumb things [added 4/19/09]
Superstitions - Interesting APS Observer article on superstitious thinking [added 4/19/09]
"Why fondness makes us poor judges, but dislike is spot-on" - Interesting study finds the false consensus effect for items we like, but less false consensus when it is about something we dislike. [added 5/20/08]
Magic and misdirection - interesting article from The New York Times about magicians with a particular interest in the cognitive aspects of their work discussing inattentional blindness and other judgment processes and errors [added 11/10/07]
The Monty Hall Problem - I already have one interactive online illustration of the Monty Hall Problem on the Resources website, but here are two more good, animated illustrations and explanations. The second one is also interactive. Remarkably, the answer still remains the same! [added 7/8/07]
Monty Hall Dilemma - interactive site where students can experience the dilemma and have it explained [added 3/23/04]
Confirmation bias - Paper describes how we selectively gather our news from sources that agree with us. I don't, but apparently most of you do! [added 12/31/06]
Political bias affects brain activity - article from MSNBC [added 2/22/06]
Cognitive biases among professional athletes - A research report from the Social Science Research Network entitled, "It's not about the money: The role of preferences, cognitive biases and heuristics among professional athletes" -- scroll to bottom of page to download/view paper [added 1/11/06]
Forensic "science" - I can't recommend this series enough. This five-part series recently published by the Chicago Tribune does a fantastic job of exposing the lack of scientific support for many forensic techniques such as fingerprinting, arson investigation, and firearm and bite mark identification. It also describes quite well how the justice system and juries so easily fall for the claims of supposed "experts," how they became "experts," and why it is so easy for many of them engage in confirmation bias and belief perseverance. [added 12/1/04]
The forgotten origins of the self-serving bias - Probably like most of you, I assumed that the self-serving bias had been part of human nature for as long as, well, we've been humans. But, with a little digging, I discovered it's a relatively new phenomenon! [added 12/1/04]
Superstitions - a very large collection of superstitions [added 12/1/04]
"What do job interviews really tell us?" - informative essay about snap judgments in an interview setting [added 11/20/03]
Errors in business and diplomacy - more examples of judgment errors and overconfidence from mathematician John Allen Paulos [added 11/11/03]
Power of coincidence - interesting essay from David Myers [added 2/4/03]
Extrasensory perception - also from David Myers, a nice research-based analysis of claims of ESP [added 2/4/03]
The hot hand effect - this blog, from Alan Reifman, is devoted to the phenomenon of the "streaky" shooter/hitter - it includes a description of and links to research and researchers of this possible illusion [added 6/13/02]
"Do we Fear the Right Things?" - essay from David Myers published in the APS Observer on judgment biases related to the events of September 11, 2001
"Mass delusions and hysterias" - description of many such cases over the last millennium - from the Skeptical Enquirer
Doubting your doubt = confidence? - If you doubt your doubt you will be more confident than if you are confident in your doubt? So the study says. "For instance, by turning a belief that one is definitely going to fail into a belief that one might fail, a therapist could help inspire a client to overcome the paralysis of hopelessness." [added 3/13/10]
"Why we keep falling for financial scams" - a good article in the line of why smart people do dumb things [added 4/19/09]
"The certainty epidemic" - an article on the neurobiology of belief [added 4/26/08]
"The constructive value of overconfidence" - I knew I was right, being overconfident is not all that bad. Told you. [added 4/6/08]
"The danger of knowing for sure" - excellent essay published the day after the recent terrorist attacks by Peter Bowditch that links these events with certainty of beliefs - also includes a nice distinction between skepticism and cynicism
"Why bad beliefs don't die" - interesting essay on why we are biologically designed to be resistant to change - from the Skeptical Enquirer
Stereotype of the driver with front-end car damage - Sam Sommers shares another personal and enjoyable (for us, at least) anecdote in which he suffers the consequences of driving around in a car that has front end damage. As he notes, if you drive a car with a beat up back bumper other drivers often think the offender was someone who ran into you, but if your front end is damaged.... [added 5/31/11]
Do NBA refs exhibit own race bias? - very interesting story about a study of NBA referees, how the NBA responded, and how the story and research evolved -- H/T to Harry Wallace [added 12/21/10]
Why are there so few female chess champions? - This is a clever study and an excellent example of stereotype threat. "Forty-two male-female pairs, matched for ability, played two chess games via the Internet. When players were unaware of the sex of opponent (control condition), females played approximately as well as males. When the gender stereotype was activated (experimental condition), women showed a drastic performance drop, but only when they were aware that they were playing against a male opponent. When they (falsely) believed to be playing against a woman, they performed as well as their male opponents. In addition, our findings suggest that women show lower chess-specific self-esteem and a weaker promotion focus, which are predictive of poorer chess performance." [added 1/18/10]
Stereotyping people by how much they can satisfy your goals - This blog entry describes some interesting research which suggests we may also categorize people as useful or not useful to our goals. [added 1/18/10]
Stereotypes and chefs - Do you watch the TV show Top Chef? Do you ever see any Black chefs, judges, etc.? Asian? [7/13/09]
Was that BMW going faster than that VW? - "Driver stereotypes affect our memory of how fast a car was travelling." [7/13/09]Boys with unpopular names more likely to be criminals? - This article describes an interesting study which finds "that adolescent boys with unpopular names are likelier than other boys to be referred to the juvenile-justice system for alleged offenses." The article also describes other interesting research about names. [added 4/19/09]
Humor can perpetuate stereotypes and discrimination - [added 12/16/07]
"Behavior detection officers" - Interesting blog about officials "introduced to US airports who have been trained to pick out potential terrorists by analysing, at least in part, facial expressions." [added 11/10/07]
"I can instantly tell whether...blackdar" - an amusing article from the satirical online newspaper The Onion [added 12/31/06]
"Is 'dumb jock' an accurate stereotype?" - The husband and wife team of the excellent blog, "Cognitive Daily," reviews some evidence to answer this question. [added 12/27/06]
Study of violence by former mental health patients - interesting study conducted by the MacArthur Research Network asking "How does the rate of violence by former mental patients compare with the rate of violence by other members of the community?" [added 7/23/03]
Two criminal profiling approaches - interesting article (1999) contrasting the two [added 12/2/02]
Find Hidden Bias - the Southern Poverty Law Center has put together an extensive website (Tolerance.org) that includes this series of Implicit Association Tests revealing possible biases towards Arab Muslims, Asian Americans, body image and more - explore the entire site; a lot of interesting examples and material
"Your memory of events is distorted within seconds" - Blog entry describes some clever studies illustrating how quickly we modify our memories of events. [added 7/5/12]Lie detection through drawings - Very cool study -- "Aldert Vrij's new study involved 31 police and military participants going on a mock mission to pick up a package from another agent before delivering it somewhere else. Afterwards the participants answered questions about the mission. Crucially, they were also asked to draw the scene of the package pick-up. Half the participants acted as truth-tellers, the others played the part of liars. Vrij's team reasoned that clever liars would visualise a location they'd been to, other than where the exchange took place, and draw that. They further reasoned that this would mean they'd forget to include the agent who participated in the exchange. This thinking proved shrewd: liars indeed tended not to draw the agent, whereas truth-tellers did. In fact, 80 per cent of truth tellers and 87 per cent of liars could be correctly classified on the basis of this factor alone." [added 7/19/10]
Planting false memories - Interesting but completely implausible research in which participants were convinced that they "loved to eat cooked asparagus." Are you kidding me? Asparagus? That is a horrible, horrible food. First, it's green. Second.... I don't need a second -- it's green! Sorry, mom. [7/13/09]
Are repressed memories a cultural phenomenon? - This article discusses an investigation of whether reports of repressed memory could even be found in the historical record before 1800. In fact, the researchers posted a $1000 challenge to anyone who could find any such evidence. The article notes that the $1000 was finally awarded to a 1786 account. [added 4/6/08]
Manipulating images affects memory - [added 3/21/08]
Brain waves distinguish false memories from real ones - [added 12/21/07]
"Recent advances in false memory research" - a good report from the 2007 APS convention [added 11/10/07]
"False beliefs about fattening foods can have healthy consequences" - Here is a popular press story of a recently published article by Loftus and colleagues in which they use a false feedback technique to convince dieters that they don't like strawberry ice cream. [added 1/8/06]
False Memory Syndrome Foundation [added 3/23/04]
Guidelines for Psychologists Addressing Recovered Memories - a publication of the Canadian Psychological Association (1996)
"Innocence Lost: The Plea" - PBS Frontline show on the case of preschool workers in North Carolina accused of child sexual abuse
Eyewitness errors - web site associated with PBS' Frontline show "What Jennifer Saw" - interviews, cases and more
Resources for the Teaching of Social Psychology is a part of the CROW Project, Course Resources on the Web. CROW was initially sponsored by the Associated Colleges of Illinois and generously supported by UPS. This site was created by Jon Mueller, Professor of Psychology at North Central College, Naperville, IL. Send comments to Jon.
