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david_g-_myers_social_psychology_10th_editionbookfi.pdf
T E N T H E D I T I O N
David G. Myers
www.mhhe.com/myers10e
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
ISBN 978-0-07-337066-8 MHID 0-07-337066-5
www.mhhe.com
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Social Psychology
David G. Myers Hope College
Holland, Michigan
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About the Author
Since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, David Myers has spent his career at Michigan’s Hope College, where he is the John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology and has taught dozens of social-psychology sections. Hope College students have invited him to be their commencement speaker and voted him “outstanding professor.”
Myers’ scientific articles have appeared in some three dozen scientific books and periodicals, including Science, the American Scientist, Psychological Science, and the American Psychologist.
In addition to his scholarly writing and his text- books, he communicates psychological science to the general public. His writings have appeared in three dozen magazines, from Today’s Education to Scientific American. He also has published general audience books, including The Pursuit of Happiness and Intui tion: Its Powers and Perils.
David Myers has chaired his city’s Human Relations Commission, helped found a thriving assistance cen- ter for families in poverty, and spoken to hundreds of college and community groups. Drawing on his own experience, he also has written articles and a book (A Quiet World) about hearing loss, and he is advocat- ing a revolution in American hearing- assistance tech- nology (hearingloop.org).
He bikes to work year-round and still plays daily pick-up basketball. David and Carol Myers are parents of two sons and a daughter.
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Brief Contents
chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology 2
Part One Social Thinking chapter 2 The Self in a Social World 34 chapter 3 Social Beliefs and Judgments 78 chapter 4 Behavior and Attitudes 122
Part Two Social Influence chapter 5 Genes, Culture, and Gender 156 chapter 6 Conformity and Obedience 190 chapter 7 Persuasion 228 chapter 8 Group Influence 266
Part Three Social Relations chapter 9 Prejudice: Disliking Others 306 chapter 10 Aggression: Hurting Others 352 chapter 11 Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others 392 chapter 12 Helping 440 chapter 13 Conflict and Peacemaking 482
Part Four Applying Social Psychology chapter 14 Social Psychology in the Clinic 524 chapter 15 Social Psychology in Court 532 chapter 16 Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future 590
Epilogue 610
References R-1
Credits C-1
Name Index N-1
Subject Index/Glossary S-1
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Research Methods: How We Do Social Psychology 17 Forming and Testing Hypotheses 17 Correlational Research: Detecting Natural
Associations 18 Experimental Research: Searching for Cause and
Effect 24 Generalizing from Laboratory to Life 28
Postscript: Why I Wrote This Book 30
Part One: Social Thinking
chapter 2 The Self in a Social World 34
Spotlights and Illusions 36 Research Close-Up: On Being Nervous
about Looking Nervous 36
Self-Concept: Who Am I? 39 At the Center of Our Worlds: Our Sense of Self 39 Development of the Social Self 40 Self and Culture 42 The Inside Story: Hazel Markus and
Shinobu Kitayama on Cultural Psychology 46 Self-Knowledge 47
Self-Esteem 52 Self-Esteem Motivation 52 The “Dark Side” of Self-Esteem 53
Perceived Self-Control 56 Self-Efficacy 57 Locus of Control 58 Learned Helplessness versus Self-Determination 59 The Inside Story: Daniel Gilbert on the Benefits
of Irrevocable Commitments 62
Self-Serving Bias 63 Explaining Positive and Negative Events 63 Can We All Be Better than Average? 64 Focus On: Self-Serving Bias—How
Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways 65 Unrealistic Optimism 66 False Consensus and Uniqueness 68 Explaining Self-Serving Bias 69 Reflections on Self-Esteem and Self-Serving Bias 70
Self-Presentation 72 Self-Handicapping 73 Impression Management 73
Postscript: Twin Truths—The Perils of Pride, the Powers of Positive Thinking 76
Table of Contents
chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology 2
What Is Social Psychology? 4
Social Psychology’s Big Ideas 5 We Construct Our Social Reality 5 Our Social Intuitions Are Often Powerful but
Sometimes Perilous 6 Social Influences Shape Our Behavior 7 Personal Attitudes and Dispositions Also Shape
Behavior 8 Social Behavior is Biologically Rooted 8 Social Psychology’s Principles Are Applicable in
Everyday Life 9
Social Psychology and Human Values 10 Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology 10 Not-So-Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology 10
I Knew It All Along: Is Social Psychology Simply Common Sense? 13 Focus On: I Knew It All Along 15
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Contents vii
Focus On: Saying Becomes Believing 134 The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon 134 Evil and Moral Acts 136 Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes 138 Social Movements 138
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? 140 Self-Presentation: Impression Management 140 Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance 141 The Inside Story: Leon Festinger on Dissonance Reduction 144
Self-Perception 145 Comparing the Theories 150
Postscript: Changing Ourselves through Action 152
Part Two: Social Influence
chapter 5 Genes, Culture, and Gender 156
How Are We Influenced by Human Nature and Cultural Diversity? 158 Genes, Evolution, and Behavior 158 Culture and Behavior 160 Focus On: The Cultural Animal 161 Research Close-Up: Passing Encounters,
East and West 164
How Are Gender Similarities and Differences Explained? 168 Independence versus Connectedness 169 Social Dominance 171 Aggression 173 Sexuality 173
Evolution and Gender: Doing What Comes Naturally? 175 Gender and Mating Preferences 176 Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology 178 Focus On: Evolutionary Science and
Religion 179 Gender and Hormones 180
Culture and Gender: Doing as the Culture Says? 181 Gender Roles Vary with Culture 182 Gender Roles Vary over Time 183 Peer-Transmitted Culture 184
What Can We Conclude about Genes, Culture, and Gender? 186 Biology and Culture 186 The Inside Story: Alice Eagly on Gender
Similarities and Differences 187 The power of the Situation and the Person 187
Postscript: Should We View Ourselves as Products or Architects of Our Social Worlds? 189
chapter 3 Social Beliefs and Judgments 78
Perceiving Our Social Worlds 80 Priming 80 Perceiving and Interpreting Events 81 Belief Perseverance 84 Constructing Memories of Ourselves and
Our Worlds 85
Judging Our Social Worlds 88 Intuitive Judgments 88 Overconfidence 90 Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts 94 Counterfactual Thinking 97 Illusory Thinking 98 Moods and Judgments 100
Explaining Our Social Worlds 102 Attributing Causality: To the Person or the
Situation 102 The Fundamental Attribution Error 105
Expectations of Our Social Worlds 112 Focus On: The Self-Fulfilling Psychology of
the Stock Market 113 Teacher Expectations and Student Performance 113 Getting from Others What We Expect 115
Conclusions 117
Postscript: Reflecting on Illusory Thinking 119
chapter 4 Behavior and Attitudes 122
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior? 124 When Attitudes Predict Behavior 125 The Inside Story: Mahzarin R. Banaji on
Discovering Experimental Social Psychology 126
Research Close-Up: You’ve Not Got Mail: Prejudicial Attitudes Predict Discriminatory Behavior 130
When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? 131 Role Playing 132 Saying Becomes Believing 133
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viii Contents
chapter 6 Conformity and Obedience 190
What Is Conformity? 192
What Are the Classic Conformity and Obedience Studies? 193 Sherif’s Studies of Norm Formation 193 Research Close-Up: Contagious
Yawning 195 Focus On: Mass Delusions 197 Asch’s Studies of Group Pressure 197 Milgram’s Obedience Experiments 199 The Ethics of Milgram’s Experiments 200 What Breeds Obedience? 201 Focus On: Personalizing the Victims 203 The Inside Story: Stanley Milgram on
Obedience 205 Reflections on the Classic Studies 205
What Predicts Conformity? 210 Group Size 211 Unanimity 211 Cohesion 213 Status 213 Public Response 214 Prior Commitment 214
Why Conform? 215
Who Conforms? 218 Personality 218 Culture 219 Social Roles 220
Do We Ever Want to Be Different? 222 Reactance 222 Asserting Uniqueness 223
Postscript: On Being an Individual within Community 225
chapter 7 Persuasion 228
What Paths Lead to Persuasion? 231 The Central Route 232 The Peripheral Route 232 Different Paths for Different Purposes 233
What Are the Elements of Persuasion? 234 Who Says? The Communicator 234 Research Close-Up: Experimenting with a
Virtual Social Reality 238 What Is Said? The Message Content 239 How Is It Said? The Channel of Communication 246 To Whom Is It Said? The Audience 250
Extreme Persuasion: How Do Cults Indoctrinate? 254 Attitudes Follow Behavior 256 Persuasive Elements 256 Group Effects 258
How Can Persuasion Be Resisted? 259 Strengthening Personal Commitment 260 The Inside Story: William McGuire on
Attitude Inoculation 261 Real-Life Applications: Inoculation Programs 261 Implications of Attitude Inoculation 264
Postscript: Being Open but Not Naive 265
chapter 8 Group Influence 266
What Is a Group? 268
Social Facilitation: How Are We Affected by the Presence of Others? 268 The Mere Presence of Others 269 Crowding: The Presence of Many Others 270 Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others? 271
Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert Less Effort in a Group? 273 Many Hands Make Light Work 274 Social Loafing in Everyday Life 276
Deindividuation: When Do People Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups? 278 Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone 278 Diminished Self-Awareness 281
Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions? 282 The Case of the “Risky Shift” 283 Do Groups Intensify Opinions? 284 Focus On: Group Polarization 287 Explaining Polarization 288
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Contents ix
What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice? 324 Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat
Theory 325 Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to
Others 325 Motivation to Avoid Prejudice 330
What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice? 331 Categorization: Classifying People into Groups 332 Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand
Out 335 Attribution: Is It a Just World? 339
What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? 342 Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes 342 Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy 344 Stereotype Threat 345 The Inside Story: Claude Steele on
Stereotype Threat 347 Do stereotypes Bias Judgments Of
Individuals? 348
Postscript: Can We Reduce Prejudice? 350
chapter 10 Aggression: Hurting Others 352
What Is Aggression? 355
What Are Some Theories of Aggression? 356 Aggression as a Biological Phenomenon 356 Aggression as a Response to Frustration 359 Aggression as Learned Social Behavior 362
What Are Some Influences on Aggression? 365 Aversive Incidents 365 Arousal 368 Aggression Cues 368 Media Influences: Pornography and Sexual
Violence 370 Media Influences: Television 374 Media Influences: Video Games 379 The Inside Story: Craig Anderson on Video-
Game Violence 382 Group Influences 382 Research Close-Up: When Provoked, Are
Groups More Aggressive Than Individuals? 384
How Can Aggression Be Reduced? 385 Catharsis? 385 A Social Learning Approach 387
Postscript: Reforming a Violent Culture 389
Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions? 290 The Inside Story: Irving Janis on
Groupthink 291 Symptoms of Groupthink 292 Critiquing Groupthink 294 Preventing Groupthink 295 Group Problem Solving 295 The Inside Story: Behind a Nobel Prize:
Two Minds Are Better Than One 297
The Influence of the Minority: How Do Individuals Influence the Group? 299 Consistency 299 Self-Confidence 300 Defections from the Majority 300 Is Leadership Minority Influence? 301 Focus On: Transformational Community
Leadership 303
Postscript: Are Groups Bad for Us? 304
Part Three: Social Relations
chapter 9 Prejudice: Disliking Others 306
What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? 308 Defining Prejudice 308 Prejudice: Subtle and Overt 310 Racial Prejudice 310 Gender Prejudice 315
What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice? 319 Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and
Prejudice 319 Socialization 320 Institutional Supports 322
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x Contents
chapter 11 Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others 392
What Leads to Friendship and Attraction? 396 Proximity 397 Focus On: Liking Things Associated with
Oneself 400 Physical Attractiveness 402 The Inside Story: Ellen Berscheid on
Attractiveness 407 Similarity versus Complementarity 412 The Inside Story: James Jones on Cultural
Diversity 414 Liking Those Who Like Us 415 Focus On: Bad Is Stronger Than Good 416 Relationship Rewards 418
What Is Love? 420 Passionate Love 421 Companionate Love 424
What Enables Close Relationships? 426 Attachment 426 Equity 428 Self-Disclosure 430 Focus On: Does the Internet Create
Intimacy or Isolation? 432
How Do Relationships End? 434 Divorce 434 The Detachment Process 435
Postscript: Making Love 438
chapter 12 Helping 440
Why Do We Help? 443 Social Exchange and Social Norms 443 The Inside Story: Dennis Krebs on Life
Experience and Professional Interests 445 Evolutionary Psychology 452 Comparing and Evaluating Theories of Helping 454 Genuine Altruism 454 Focus On: The Benefits—and the Costs—
of Empathy-Induced Altruism 458
When Will We Help? 459 Number of Bystanders 460 The Inside Story: John M. Darley on
Bystander Reactions 462 Helping When Someone Else Does 464 Time Pressures 465 Similarity 466 Research Close-Up: Ingroup Similarity and
Helping 467
Who Will Help? 469 Personality Traits 469
Gender 470 Religious Faith 470
How Can We Increase Helping? 473 Reduce Ambiguity, Increase responsibility 473 Guilt and Concern for Self-Image 474 Socializing Altruism 475 Focus On: Behavior and Attitudes among
Rescuers of Jews 478
Postscript: Taking Social Psychology into Life 480
chapter 13 Conflict and Peacemaking 482
What Creates Conflict? 484 Social Dilemmas 484 Competition 491 Perceived Injustice 493 Misperception 493 Research Close-Up: Misperception and War 498
How Can Peace Be Achieved? 499 Contact 499 Research Close-Up: Relationships That
Might Have Been 502 The Inside Story: Nicole Shelton and Jennifer
Richeson on Cross-Racial Friendships 503 Cooperation 504 Focus On: Why Do We Care Who Wins? 506 Focus On: Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson,
and the Integration Of Baseball 512 Communication 514 Conciliation 519
Postscript: The Conflict between Individual and Communal Rights 521
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Contents xi
How Do Group Influences Affect Juries? 583 Minority Influence 584 Group Polarization 584 Research Close-Up: Group Polarization
in a Natural Court Setting 585 Leniency 586 Are Twelve Heads Better Than One? 586 Are Six Heads as Good as Twelve? 586 From Lab to Life: Simulated and Real Juries 587
Postscript: Thinking Smart with Psychological Science 589
chapter 16 Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future 590
An Environmental Call to Action 592
Enabling Sustainable Living 595 New Technologies 595 Reducing Consumption 596
The Social Psychology of Materialism and Wealth 598 Increased Materialism 598 Wealth and Well-Being 598 Materialism Fails to Satisfy 602 Focus On: Social Comparison, Belonging,
and Happiness 604 Toward Sustainability and Survival 605 Research Close-Up: Measuring National
Well-Being 607
Postscript: How Does One Live Responsibly in the Modern World? 608
Epilogue 610 References R-1 Credits C-1 Name Index N-1 Subject Index/Glossary S-1
Part Four: Applying Social Psychology
chapter 14 Social Psychology in the Clinic 524
What Influences the Accuracy of Clinical Judgments? 526 Illusory Correlations 527 Hindsight and Overconfidence 528 Self-Confirming Diagnoses 529 Clinical versus Statistical Prediction 529 Implications for Better Clinical Practice 531 Focus On: A Physician’s View 531
What Cognitive Processes Accompany Behavior Problems? 532 Depression 532 The Inside Story: Shelley Taylor on
Positive Illusions 534 Loneliness 536 Anxiety and Shyness 538 Health, Illness, and Death 540
What Are Some Social-Psychological Approaches to Treatment? 544 Inducing Internal Change through External
Behavior 544 Breaking Vicious Circles 545 Maintaining Change through Internal
Attributions for Success 547 Using Therapy as Social Influence 547
How Do Social Relationships Support Health and Well-Being? 549 Close Relationships and Health 549 Close Relationships and Happiness 552
Postscript: Enhancing Happiness 555
chapter 15 Social Psychology in Court 558
How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony? 561 The Power of Persuasive Eyewitnesses 561 When Eyes Deceive 562 The Misinformation Effect 564 Focus On: Eyewitness Testimony 565 Retelling 567 Reducing Error 567 Research Close-Up: Feedback to Witnesses 568
What Other Factors Influence Juror Judgments? 572 The Defendant’s Characteristics 572 The Judge’s Instructions 575 Additional Factors 577
What Influences the Individual Juror? 578 Juror Comprehension 578 Jury Selection 580 “Death-Qualified” Jurors 582
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Preface Regardless of background or major, students will see their world reflected in Social Psychology
Students will see themselves, their families, or
their workplaces within the pages of this text.
In barely a century of formal study, significant
insight has been gained into belief and illusion,
love and hate, conformity and independence—
social behaviors that we encounter virtually every
day in all walks of life. In these pages students
will see themselves and the world in which they
live and love, work and play.
Like the study of Social Psychology, I continue to envision this text as solidly scientific and warmly human, factually rigorous and intellectually provocative. In this edition, social phenomena that are important and relevant to today’s students are revealed throughout the narrative, and in enriching elements such as margin notes and chapter-ending Postscripts.
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Understanding that students majoring in psychology, business, law, teaching, or many other areas may be drawn to the study of Social Psychology, this text is written in the intellectual tradition of the liberal arts. As with great literature, philosophy, and science, liberal arts education seeks to expand our thinking and awareness beyond the confines of the present. By focusing on humanly significant issues I offer the core content in ways that appeal to, and draw on applications from, a wide array of behaviors and experiences.
Social Psychology can now offer partial answers to many questions we face in our homes, communities, and societies:
■ How does our thinking—both conscious and unconscious— drive our behavior?
■ What leads people sometimes to hurt and sometimes to help one another?
■ What kindles social conflict, and how can we transform closed fists into helping hands?
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We humans love to feel good about ourselves, and gen- erally we do. Not only are we prone to self-serving bias (Chapter 2), we also exhibit what Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg, and John Jones (2002) call implicit egotism: We like what we associate with ourselves.
That includes the letters of our name, but also the people, places, and things that we unconsciously con- nect with ourselves (Jones & others, 2002; Koole & others, 2001). If a stranger’s or politician’s face is morphed to include features of our own, we like the new face better (Bailenson & others, 2009; DeBruine, 2004). We are also more attracted to people whose arbitrary experimental code number resembles our birth date, and we are even disproportionately likely to marry someone whose first or last name resembles our own, such as by starting with the same letter (Jones & others, 2004).
Such preferences appear to subtly influence other major life decisions as well, including our locations and careers, report Pelham and his colleagues. Philadelphia, being larger than Jacksonville, has 2.2 times as many men named Jack. But it has 10.4 times as many people named Philip. Likewise, Virginia Beach has a dispropor- tionate number of people named Virginia.
Does this merely reflect the influence of one’s place when naming one’s baby? Are people in Georgia, for example, more likely to name their babies George or Georgia? That may be so, but it doesn’t explain why states tend to have a relative excess of people whose last names are similar to the state names. California, for example, has a disproportionate number of people whose names begin with Cali (as in Califano). Likewise, major Canadian cities tend to have larger-than-expected
numbers of people whose last names overlap with the city names. Toronto has a marked excess of people whose names begin with Tor.
Moreover, women named “Georgia” are dispropor- tionately likely to move to Georgia, as do Virginias to Virginia. Such mobility could help explain why St. Louis has a 49 percent excess (relative to the national propor- tion) of men named Louis, and why people named Hill, Park, Beach, Lake, or Rock are disproportionately likely to live in cities with names (such as Park City) that include their names. “People are attracted to places that resem- ble their names,” surmise Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones.
Weirder yet—I am not making this up—people seem to prefer careers related to their names. Across the United States, Jerry, Dennis, and Walter are equally pop- ular names (0.42 percent of people carry each of these names). Yet America’s dentists are almost twice as likely to be named Dennis as Jerry or Walter. There also are 2.5 times as many dentists named Denise as there are with the equally popular name Beverly or Tammy. People named George or Geoffrey are overrepresented among geoscientists (geologists, geophysicists, and geochem- ists). And in the 2000 presidential campaign, people with last names beginning with B and G were disproportion- ately likely to contribute to the campaigns of Bush and Gore, respectively.
Reading about implicit egotism–based preferences gives me pause: Has this anything to do with why I enjoyed that trip to Fort Myers? Why I’ve written about moods, the media, and marriage? Why I collaborated with Professor Murdoch? If so, does this also explain why it was Suzie who sold seashells by the seashore?
Liking Things Associated with Oneself focus
ON
400 Part Three Social Relations
prefer not only letters from their names but also numbers corresponding to their birth dates. This “name letter effect” reflects more than mere exposure, however— see “ Focus On: Liking Things Associated with Oneself .”
The mere-exposure effect violates the commonsense prediction of boredom— decreased interest—regarding repeatedly heard music or tasted foods (Kahneman & Snell, 1992). Unless the repetitions are incessant (“Even the best song becomes tiresome if heard too often,” says a Korean proverb), familiarity usually doesn’t breed contempt, it increases liking. When completed in 1889, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was mocked as grotesque (Harrison, 1977). Today it is the beloved symbol of Paris.
So, do visitors to the Louvre in Paris really adore the Mona Lisa for the artistry it displays, or are they simply delighted to find a familiar face? It might be both: To know her is to like her. Eddie Harmon-Jones and John Allen (2001) explored this phenomenon experimentally. When they showed people a woman’s face, their
How much do you like your name? In six studies, Jochen Gebauer and his colleagues (2008) report that liking of one’s own name is a reliable indicator of both implicit and explicit self-esteem.
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Engaging research reflects students’ interests and their environment
As we see in the research literature as
well as popular blogs (and, more recently,
“tweets”), social psychology remains a compelling and dynamic area of study.
Readers of this text from around the world have reached out to me, affirming that
this richness is captured in the narrative as well as hallmark features in each chapter.
In addition to part openers, chapter outlines, and summaries, each chapter includes
the following features.
The Inside Story essays capture compel- ling stories of famous researchers in their own words, highlighting the interests and questions that guided—and sometimes misguided—their findings. For example, Chapter 4 offers an essay by Mahzarin R. Banaji on her journey from being a secretarial assistant in India to being a Harvard professor.
Focus On features give students an in-depth explora- tion of a topic presented in the text. The “Focus On” in Chapter 11, for example, describes what Brett Pelham and colleagues call implicit egotism, which is the pre- disposition that we like what we associate ourselves with.
g g
126 Part One Social Thinking
hope, can reveal enough of a microsmile or a microfrown to indicate the partici- pant’s attitude about a given statement. A newer and widely used attitude measure, the implicit association test (IAT), uses reaction times to measure how quickly people associate concepts (Greenwald & others, 2002, 2003). One can, for example, measure implicit racial attitudes by assessing whether White people take longer to associate positive words with Black than with White faces. Across 126 studies, implicit associations measured by the IAT have correlated, on average, a modest .24 with explicit self-reported attitudes (Hofmann & others, 2005). (See “The Inside Story: Mahzarin R. Banaji on Discover- ing Experimental Social Psychology.”) A review of more than 100 studies and of more than 2.5 million IATs completed online reveals that explicit (self-report) and implicit attitudes both help predict peo- ple’s behaviors and judgments (Greenwald & others, 2008; Nosek & others, 2007). Thus, explicit and implicit attitudes may together predict behavior better than either alone (Spence & Townsend, 2007). For attitudes formed early in life, such as racial and gender attitudes, implicit and explicit attitudes frequently diverge, with implicit attitudes often being the bet- ter predictor of behavior. For example, implicit racial attitudes have successfully predicted interracial roommate relationships (Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2006). For other attitudes, such as those related to consumer behavior and support for politi- cal candidates, explicit self-reports are the better predictor.
implicit association test (IAT) A computer-driven assessment of implicit attitudes. The test uses reaction times to measure people’s automatic
associations between attitude objects and evaluative words. Easier pairings (and faster responses) are taken to indicate stronger unconscious associations.
Mahzarin R. Banaji on Discovering Experimental Social Psychology Graduating from high school in India at age 15, I had but a single goal—to leave my well-adjusted and secure fam-ily to live the patently more daring and exciting life of a secretarial assistant. Proficient at typing scores of words a minute, I looked forward to a life of independence that involved living a block away from my parents. My mother, despite not having attended college, persuaded me to try college—but only for a semester, we agreed, after which I would be free to choose my path. The end of my first semester at Nizam College came and went. Mother didn’t ask about my plans. I didn’t have to swallow and tell. Just before one holiday trip home, I bought the five volumes of the 1968 Handbook of Social Psychology for the equivalent of a dollar apiece (it seemed like a lot of book for the money). By the end of a 24-hour train ride home, I had polished off one vol-ume and knew with blunt clarity that this science, which studied social processes experimentally, was something I had to do.
Doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships enabled me to work with three remarkable people early in my career: Tony Greenwald at Ohio State, and Claude Steele and Elizabeth Loftus at the University of Washington. At Yale, while still interested in human memory researchers, I dis-covered that memories come in both explicit (conscious)
and implicit (unconscious) forms. Might this also be true of attitudes, beliefs, and values? Hesitantly, I wrote the words “Implicit Attitudes” as the title of a grant proposal, not knowing it would become such a central part of what my students and I would study for the next two decades. With Tony Greenwald and Brian Nosek, I have enjoyed an extended collaboration on implicit social cognition that few scientists are blessed with. From the hundreds of studies that have used the Implicit Association Test (implicit.harvard.edu) and the millions of tests taken, we now know that people carry knowledge (stereotypes) and feelings (attitudes) of which they are unaware, and which often contrast with their conscious expressions. We know that subcortical brain activity can be an inde-pendent marker of implicit atti-tudes, that people differ in their implicit attitudes, and that suchattitudes and stereotypes pre-dict real-life behavior. Most opti-mistically, we know that implicit attitudes, even old ones, can be modified by experience.
THE inside STORY
Mahzarin Banaji Harvard University
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Postscripts are chapter-ending vignettes that engage students with thought-provoking questions and insights from the chapter. For example, Chapter 8 (“Group Influ- ence”) explores the question, “Are Groups Bad for Us?”
Research Close-Up boxes offer in-depth looks at sci- entific exploration of a fascinating variety of topics, ranging from when people yawn to how pedestrians in different cultures interact. “Research Close-Ups” provide students with a detailed, yet highly accessible understanding of how social psychologists use various research methods,
from laboratory studies, Internet experiments, and creating virtual realities to naturalistic observation and har- vesting archival data. Chapter 12’s “Research Close-up” explores the ingroup similarities and helping behaviors of individuals under certain conditions—one of many “Research Close-Up” topics that generate rich student discourse in classrooms, dorm rooms, or virtual chat rooms.
When I first set out to write this text I engaged the services of Jack Ridl, a poet in residence at Hope College. Little did I know that his guidance, my continual work- ing and re-working of the narrative, and the Liberal Arts foundation upon which it is all built, would lead to a text that continues to be so widely accepted, beyond my wildest dreams. Whether the Internet promotes or hinders social interaction may still be debat- able (see the “Focus On” in Chapter 11!), but it has allowed me to enjoy messages from students around the globe, many expressing genuine surprise at their enjoy- ment in reading a textbook!
Helping Chapter 12 467
Ingroup Similarity and Helping
Likeness breeds liking, and liking elicits helping. So, do people offer more help to others who display similarities to themselves? To explore the similarity-helping relationship, Mark Levine, Amy Prosser, and David Evans at Lancaster University joined with Stephen Reicher at St. Andrews University (2005) to study the behavior of some Lancaster students who earlier had identified themselves as fans of the nearby Manchester United soccer football team. Tak- ing their cue from John Darley and Daniel Batson’s (1973) famous Good Samaritan experiment, they directed each newly arrived participant to the laboratory in an adja- cent building. En route, a confederate jogger—wearing a shirt from either Manchester United or rival Liverpool— seemingly slipped on a grass bank just in front of them, grasped his ankle, and groaned in apparent pain. As Figure 12.8 shows, the Manchester fans routinely paused to offer help to their fellow Manchester supporter but usually did not offer such help to a supposed Liverpool supporter.
But, the researchers wondered, what if we remind Manchester fans of the identity they share with Liverpool supporters—as football fans rather than as detractors
who scorn football fans as violent hooligans? So they repeated the experiment, but with one difference: Before participants witnessed the jogger’s fall, the researcher explained that the study concerned the positive aspects of being a football fan. Given that only a small minority of fans are troublemakers, this research aimed to explore what fans get out of their love for “the beautiful game.” Now a jogger wearing a football club shirt, whether for Manchester or Liverpool, became one of “us fans.” And as Figure 12.9 shows, the grimacing jogger was helped regardless of which team he supported—and more so than if wearing a plain shirt.
The principle in the two cases is the same, notes the Lancaster research team: People are predisposed to help their fellow group members, whether those are defined more narrowly (as “us Manchester fans”) or more inclu- sively (as “us football fans”). If even rival fans can be per- suaded to help one another if they think about what unites them, then surely other antagonists can as well. One way to increase people’s willingness to help others is to promote social identities that are inclusive rather than exclusive.
research CLOSE-UP
FIGURE :: 12.8 Percent of Manchester United Fans Who Helped Victim Wearing Manchester or Liverpool Shirt
FIGURE :: 12.9 Common Fan Identity Condition: Percent of Manchester United Fans Who Helped Victim Wearing Manchester or Liverpool Shirt
Manchester shirt
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0% Liverpool
shirt Manchester
shirt
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0% Liverpool
shirt Plain shirt
• Some studies found a same-race bias (Benson & others, 1976; Clark, 1974; Franklin, 1974; Gaertner, 1973; Gaertner & Bickman, 1971; Sissons, 1981).
• Others found no bias (Gaertner, 1975; Lerner & Frank, 1974; Wilson & Donnerstein, 1979; Wispe & Freshley, 1971).
• Still others—especially those involving face-to-face situations—found a bias toward helping those of a different race (Dutton, 1971, 1973; Dutton & Lake, 1973; Katz & others, 1975).
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304 Part Two Social Influence
When an apt combination of intelligence, skill, determination, self-confidence, and social charisma meets a rare opportunity, the result is sometimes a championship, a Nobel Prize, or a social revolution.
Summing Up: The Influence of the Minority: How Do Individuals Influence the Group? • Although a majority opinion often prevails, some-
times a minority can influence and even overturn a majority position. Even if the majority does not adopt the minority’s views, the minority’s speak- ing up can increase the majority’s self-doubts and prompt it to consider other alternatives, often lead- ing to better, more creative decisions.
• In experiments, a minority is most influential when it is consistent and persistent in its views, when its
actions convey self-confidence, and after it begins to elicit some defections from the majority.
• Through their task and social leadership, formal and informal group leaders exert disproportion- ate influence. Those who consistently press toward their goals and exude a self-confident charisma often engender trust and inspire others to follow.
POSTSCRIPT: Are Groups Bad for Us?
A selective reading of this chapter could, I must admit, leave readers with the impression that, on balance, groups are bad. In groups we become more aroused, more stressed, more tense, more error-prone on complex tasks. Submerged in a group that gives us anonymity, we have a tendency to loaf or have our worst impulses unleashed by deindividuation. Police brutality, lynchings, gang destruc- tion, and terrorism are all group phenomena. Discussion in groups often polarizes our views, enhancing mutual racism or hostility. It may also suppress dissent, cre- ating a homogenized groupthink that produces disastrous decisions. No wonder we celebrate those individuals—minorities of one—who, alone against a group, have stood up for truth and justice. Groups, it seems, are ba-a-a-d.
All that is true, but it’s only half the truth. The other half is that, as social ani- mals, we are group-dwelling creatures. Like our distant ancestors, we depend on one another for sustenance, support, and security. Moreover, when our individual tendencies are positive, group interaction accentuates our best. In groups, runners run faster, audiences laugh louder, and givers become more generous. In self-help groups, people strengthen their resolve to stop drinking, lose weight, and study harder. In kindred-spirited groups, people expand their spiritual consciousness. “A devout communing on spiritual things sometimes greatly helps the health of the soul,” observed fifteenth-century cleric Thomas à Kempis, especially when people of faith “meet and speak and commune together.”
Depending on which tendency a group is magnifying or disinhibiting, groups can be very, very bad or very, very good. So we had best choose our groups wisely and intentionally.
Making the Social Connection In this chapter we discussed group polarization and whether groups intensify opinions. This phenomenon will also be covered in Chapter 15
when we look at juries and how they make decisions. Can you think of other situa- tions where group polarization might be in effect? Go to the Online Learning Cen- ter for this book to view a clip about cliques and the influence of the group.
P.S.
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Updated material in the tenth edition With some 650 new bibliographic citations, David Myers, who subscribes to nearly all English-language social psychology periodicals (including those from Europe), has comprehensively updated Social Psychology. In addition to new margin quotes, photos, and cartoons, new content includes:
Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology • Hindsight bias and the world financial crisis • 2008 U.S. presidential election examples • Framing and nudging organ donation and retirement savings
Chapter 2 The Self in a Social World • Chapter opening example • Section on narcissism • Research on self-esteem and self-serving bias
Chapter 3 Social Beliefs and Judgments • Constructed memories and biased perceptions in politics • Research on unconscious information processing • Data on “probability neglect” in judgments of risk
Chapter 4 Behavior and Attitudes • Enhanced coverage of implicit attitudes and Implicit Association Test • Recent studies and examples of behavior feeding attitudes • Updated coverage of dissonance research
Chapter 5 Genes, Culture, and Gender • Research on social norms and rule-breaking • Group conflict and preference for male leader • International data on gender and sexuality, and gender and social roles
Chapter 6 Conformity and Obedience • Examples of suggestibility, conformity, and obedience • Replication of Milgram obedience experiment • Research on cohesion, conformity, and genocide
Chapter 7 Persuasion • Research on effective anti-smoking ads • Examples of political persuasion • Two-step flow of medical information
Chapter 8 Group Influence • Deindividuation effects on the Internet • Group polarization in liberal and conservative communities • The wisdom of crowds, prediction markets, and “the crowd within”
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Chapter 9 Prejudice: Disliking Others • Contemporary examples and data regarding various forms of prejudice • Recent studies of implicit prejudice • Research on prejudice phenomena, including infrahumanization, own-age
bias, just-world thinking
Chapter 10 Aggression: Hurting Others • Updated information on human aggression, including the Congo and Iraq • Studies of testosterone and aggression • Recent research on media influences
Chapter 11 Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others
• Studies of social exclusion and social pain • Speed dating experiments • Recent evolutionary psychology-based studies of fertility and attraction
Chapter 12 Helping • Examples of heroic altruism • Research on generosity and happiness • Experiments on priming on materialistic versus spiritual concepts
Chapter 13 Conflict and Peacemaking • Experiments on counterproductive effects of punishment • “The Inside Story” (Nicole Shelton and Jennifer Richeson) on cross-racial
friendships • Cross-cultural and political examples of common enemies and superordi-
nate goals
Chapter 14 Social Psychology in the Clinic • The social construction of mental illness • Trends in close relationships, and implications for health • Neuroscience of supportive friends and partners
Chapter 15 Social Psychology in Court • Fresh examples of eyewitness misidentification • The post-identification feedback effect • Juror expectations of forensic evidence in the CSI generation
Chapter 16 Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future • IPCC consensus on global climate change • Data on public opinion about effects of climate change • Prospects for a “new consciousness” that fosters sustainability
For a more detailed list of chapter-by-chapter changes, please contact your local McGraw-Hill sales representative.
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Supplements
For the Student
SocialSense Videos Now available at the Online Learning Center, the SocialSense videos are organized according to the text chapters. There is also a video library available containing all of the videos alphabetically. Taking advantage of McGraw-Hill’s exclusive Dis- covery Channel® licensing arrangement, the video segments chosen illustrate core concepts of social psychology and contemporary applications. Each video includes a pre-test, a post-test, and Web resources.
Online Learning Center for Students The official website for the text (www.mhhe.com/myers10e) contains chapter out- lines, practice quizzes, a practice midterm and final, and Internet Connections and Internet Exercises updated by Jill Cohen of Los Angeles Community College. Also available are Scenarios, Interactivities, and “What Do You Think?” exercises for each chapter.
For the Instructor
Online Learning Center for Instructors The password-protected instructor side of the Online Learning Center www.mhhe .com/myers10e contains the Instructor’s Manual, PowerPoint presentations, Web links, image gallery, and other teaching resources. Ask your McGraw-Hill repre- sentative for your password.
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Supplements xix
Instructor’s Manual Jonathan Mueller, North Central College This manual provides many useful tools to enhance your teaching. For each chap- ter you will find lecture ideas, assignment ideas, suggested class discussion top- ics, classroom demonstrations and demonstration materials, suggested films, and more.
Test Bank Donna Walsh, Beaufort Community College The test bank includes over 100 questions per chapter, including factual, concep- tual, and applied questions. The test bank can be used with McGraw-Hill’s EZ Test, a flexible and easy-to-use electronic testing program allowing instructors to create tests from the test bank as well as their own questions.
PowerPoint Presentations Kim Foreman Available on the instructor side of the Online Learning Center, these presentations cover the key points of each chapter and include charts and graphs from the text. They can be used as is or modified to meet your needs.
Classroom Performance System (CPS) by eInstruction Alisha Janowsky, University of Central Florida CPS, or “clickers,” is a superb way to give interactive quizzes, maximize student participation in class discussions, and take attendance. The CPS content may be used as is or modified to suit your needs.
Image Gallery These files include all the figures from the Myers textbook for which McGraw-Hill holds copyright.
Annual Editions: Social Psychology Karen Duffy of SUNY–Geneseo This annually updated reader is a compilation of current, carefully selected arti- cles from respected journals, magazines, and newspapers. Additional support for the readings can be found on our student website, www.mhcls.com/online. An Instructor’s Manual and the guide Using Annual Editions in the Classroom are avail- able as support materials for instructors.
Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Social Psychology Jason A. Nier, Connecticut College This debate-style reader is designed to introduce students to controversial view- points on the field’s most crucial issues. Each issue is carefully framed for the stu- dent, and the pro and con essays represent the arguments of leading scholars and commentators in their fields.
Film Clips from Films for the Humanities and Social Sciences Depending on adoption size, you may qualify for FREE videos from this resource. View more than 700 psychology-related videos at www.films.com.
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xx Supplements
As a full-service publisher of quality educational products, McGraw-Hill does much more than just sell textbooks to your students. We create and publish an extensive array of print, video, and digital supplements to support instruction on your campus. Orders of new (rather than used) textbooks help us to defray the cost of developing such supplements, which is substantial. We have a broad range of other supplements in psychology that you may wish to tap for your introductory psychology course. Ask your local McGraw-Hill representative about the availabil- ity of these and other supplements that may help you with your course design.
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In Appreciation
Mike Aamodt, Radford University
Robert Arkin, Ohio State University
Robert Armenta, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Jahna Ashlyn, San Diego State University
Nancy L. Ashton, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Steven H. Baron, Montgomery County Community College
Charles Daniel Batson, University of Kansas
Steve Baumgardner, University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire
Susan Beers, Sweet Briar College
George Bishop, National University of Singapore
Galen V. Bodenhausen, Northwestern University
Martin Bolt, Calvin College
Kurt Boniecki, University of Central Arkansas
Amy Bradfield, Iowa State University
Dorothea Braginsky, Fairfield University
Timothy C. Brock, Ohio State University
Jonathon D. Brown, University of Washington
Fred B. Bryant, Loyola University Chicago
Jeff Bryson, San Diego State University
Shawn Meghan Burn, California Poly- technic State University
David Buss, University of Texas
Thomas Cafferty, University of South Carolina
Jerome M. Chertkoff, Indiana University
Nicholas Christenfeld, University of California at San Diego
Russell Clark, University of North Texas
Diana I. Cordova, Yale University
Karen A. Couture, New Hampshire College
Traci Craig, University of Idaho
Cynthia Crown, Xavier University
Jack Croxton, State University of New York at Fredonia
Jennifer Daniels, University of Connecticut
Anthony Doob, University of Toronto
David Dunning, Cornell University
Alice H. Eagly, Northwestern University
Jason Eggerman, Palomar College
Although only one person’s name appears on this book’s cover, the truth is that a whole community of scholars has invested itself in it. Although none of these people should be held responsible for what I have written—nor do any of them fully agree with everything said—their suggestions made this a better book than it could otherwise have been.
A special “thank you” goes to Jean Twenge, San Diego State University, for her contribution to Chapter 2, “The Self in a Social World.” Drawing on her extensive knowledge of and research on the self and cultural changes, Professor Twenge updated and revised this chapter.
This new edition retains many of the improvements contributed by consul- tants and reviewers on the first nine editions. To these esteemed colleagues I therefore remain indebted. I have also benefited from the input of instructors who reviewed the ninth edition in preparation for this revision, rescuing me from occasional mistakes and offering constructive suggestions (and encour- agement). I am indebted to each of these many colleagues:
xxi
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xxii In Appreciation
Leandre Fabrigar, Queen’s University
Philip Finney, Southeast Missouri State University
Carie Forden, Clarion University
Kenneth Foster, City University of New York
Dennis Fox, University of Illinois at Springfield
Robin Franck, Southwestern College
Carrie B. Fried, Winona State University
William Froming, Pacific Graduate School of Psychology
Madeleine Fugere, Eastern Connecticut State University
Stephen Fugita, Santa Clara University
David A. Gershaw, Arizona Western College
Tom Gilovich, Cornell University
Mary Alice Gordon, Southern Method- ist University
Tresmaine Grimes, Iona College
Rosanna Guadagno, University of Alabama
Ranald Hansen, Oakland University
Allen Hart, Amherst College
Elaine Hatfield, University of Hawaii
James L. Hilton, University of Michigan
Bert Hodges, Gordon College
William Ickes, University of Texas at Arlington
Marita Inglehart, University of Michigan
Chester Insko, University of North Carolina
Jonathan Iuzzini, Texas A&M University
Miles Jackson, Portland State University
Bethany Johnsin, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Meighan Johnson, Shorter College
Edward Jones, Princeton University [deceased]
Judi Jones, Georgia Southern College
Deana Julka, University of Portland
Martin Kaplan, Northern Illinois University
Timothy J. Kasser, Knox College
Janice Kelly, Purdue University
Douglas Kenrick, Arizona State University
Jared Kenworthy, University of Texas at Arlington
Norbert Kerr, Michigan State University
Suzanne Kieffer, University of Houston
Charles Kiesler, University of Missouri
Steve Kilianski, Rutgers University– New Brunswick
Robin Kowalski, Clemson University
Marjorie Krebs, Gannon University
Joachim Krueger, Brown University
Travis Langley, Henderson State University
Dianne Leader, Georgia Institute of Technology
Juliana Leding, University of North Florida
Maurice J. Levesque, Elon University
Helen E. Linkey, Marshall University
Deborah Long, East Carolina University
Karsten Look, Columbus State Com- munity College
Amy Lyndon, East Carolina University
Kim MacLin, University of Northern Iowa
Diane Martichuski, University of Colorado
John W. McHoskey, Eastern Michigan University
Daniel N. McIntosh, University of Denver
Rusty McIntyre, Amherst College
Annie McManus, Parkland College
David McMillen, Mississippi State University
Robert Millard, Vassar College
Arthur Miller, Miami University
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In Appreciation xxiii
Daniel Molden, Northwestern University
Teru Morton, Vanderbilt University
Todd D. Nelson, California State University
K. Paul Nesselroade, Jr., Simpson College
Darren Newtson, University of Virginia
Cindy Nordstrom, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
Michael Olson, University of Tennes- see at Knoxville
Stuart Oskamp, Claremont Graduate University
Chris O’Sullivan, Bucknell University
Ellen E. Pastorino, Valencia Commu- nity College
Sandra Sims Patterson, Spelman College
Paul Paulus, University of Texas at Arlington
Terry F. Pettijohn, Mercyhurst College
Scott Plous, Wesleyan University
Greg Pool, St. Mary’s University
Jennifer Pratt-Hyatt, Michigan State University
Michelle R. Rainey, Indiana Universi- ty–Purdue University at Indianapolis
Cynthia Reed, Tarrant County College
Nicholas Reuterman, Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville
Robert D. Ridge, Brigham Young University
Judith Rogers, American River College
Hilliard Rogers, American River College
Paul Rose, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
Gretchen Sechrist, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
Nicole Schnopp-Wyatt, Pikeville College
Wesley Schultz, California State University, San Marcos
Vann Scott, Armstrong Atlantic State University
John Seta, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Robert Short, Arizona State University
Linda Silka, University of Massachusetts–Lowell
Royce Singleton, Jr., College of the Holy Cross
Stephen Slane, Cleveland State University
Christopher Sletten, University of North Florida
Christine M. Smith, Grand Valley State University
Richard A. Smith, University of Kentucky
C. R. Snyder, University of Kansas
Mark Snyder, University of Minnesota
Sheldon Solomon, Skidmore College
Matthew Spackman, Brigham Young University
Charles Stangor, University of Maryland at College Park
Garold Stasser, Miami University
Homer Stavely, Keene State College
Mark Stewart, American River College
JoNell Strough, West Virginia University
Eric Sykes, Indiana University Kokomo
Elizabeth Tanke, University of Santa Clara
Cheryl Terrance, University of North Dakota
William Titus, Arkansas Tech University
Christopher Trego, Florida Commu- nity College at Jacksonville
Tom Tyler, New York University
Rhoda Unger, Montclair State University
Billy Van Jones, Abilene Christian College
Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Eastern College
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xxiv In Appreciation
Ann L. Weber, University of North Carolina at Asheville
Daniel M. Wegner, Harvard University
Gary Wells, Iowa State University
Mike Wessells, Randolph-Macon College
Bernard Whitley, Ball State University
Carolyn Whitney, Saint Michael’s University
David Wilder, Rutgers University– New Brunswick
Kipling Williams, Purdue University
Midge Wilson, DePaul University
Doug Woody, University of Northern Colorado
Elissa Wurf, Muhlenberg College.
Hope College, Michigan, has been wonderfully supportive of these successive editions. Both the people and the environment have helped make the gestation of ten editions of Social Psychology a pleasure. At Hope College, poet Jack Ridl helped shape the voice you will hear in these pages. Kathy Adamski has again contributed her good cheer and secretarial support. And Kathryn Brownson did library research, edited and prepared the manuscript, managed the paper flow, proofed the pages and art, and prepared the bibliography. All in all, she midwifed this book.
Were it not for the inspiration of Nelson Black of McGraw-Hill, writing a textbook never would have occurred to me. Alison Meersschaert guided and encouraged the formative first edition. Publisher Mike Sugarman helped envision the execution of the ninth and tenth editions and their teaching supplements. Augustine Laferrera ably served as editorial coordinator. Sarah Colwell managed the supplements, and production editor Holly Paulsen patiently guided the process of converting the man- uscript into the finished book, assisted by copyeditor Janet Tilden’s fine-tuning.
After hearing countless dozens of people say that this book’s supplements have taken their teaching to a new level, I also pay tribute to Martin Bolt (Calvin College), both for his writing the study guide and for his pioneering the extensive instruc- tor’s resources, with their countless ready-to-use demonstration activities.
How fortunate we are to have as part of our team Jonathan Mueller (North Cen- tral College) as author of the instructor’s resources for the eighth, ninth, and tenth editions. Jon is able to draw on his acclaimed online resources for the teaching of social psychology and his monthly listserv offering resources to social psychology instructors (see jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow).
Kudos also go to Donna Walsh for her gift to the teaching of Social Psychology by authoring the testing resources.
To all in this supporting cast, I am indebted. Working with all these people has made the creation of this book a stimulating, gratifying experience.
David G. Myers davidmyers.org
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Social Psychology
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C H A P T E R Introducing Social Psychology
1
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What is social psychology?
Social psychology’s big ideas
Social psychology and human values
I knew it all along: Is social psychol- ogy simply common sense?
Research methods: How we do social psychology
Postscript: Why I wrote this book
T here once was a man whose second wife was a vain and selfish woman. This woman’s two daughters were similarly vain and selfish. The man’s own daughter, however, was meek and unselfish. This
sweet, kind daughter, whom we all know as Cinderella, learned early
on that she should do as she was told, accept ill treatment and insults,
and avoid doing anything to upstage her stepsisters and their mother.
But then, thanks to her fairy godmother, Cinderella was able to
escape her situation for an evening and attend a grand ball, where she
attracted the attention of a handsome prince. When the love-struck
prince later encountered Cinderella back in her degrading home, he
failed to recognize her.
Implausible? The folktale demands that we accept the power of the
situation. In the presence of her oppressive stepmother, Cinderella was
humble and unattractive. At the ball, Cinderella felt more beautiful—
and walked and talked and smiled as if she were. In one situation, she
cowered. In the other, she charmed.
The French philosopher-novelist Jean-Paul Sartre (1946) would
have had no problem accepting the Cinderella premise. We humans
are “first of all beings in a situation,” he wrote. “We cannot be distin-
guished from our situations, for they form us and decide our possibili-
ties” (pp. 59–60, paraphrased).
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4 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
What Is Social Psychology? Social psychology is a science that studies the influences of our situations, with special attention to how we view and affect one another. More precisely, it is the sci- entific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another ( Figure 1.1 ).
Social psychology lies at psychology’s boundary with sociology. Compared with sociology (the study of people in groups and societies), social psychology focuses more on individuals and uses more experimentation. Compared with personality psychology, social psychology focuses less on individuals’ differences and more on how individuals, in general, view and affect one another.
Social psychology is still a young science. The first social psychology experi- ments were reported barely more than a century ago (1898), and the first social psychology texts did not appear until just before and after 1900 (Smith, 2005). Not until the 1930s did social psychology assume its current form. And not until World War II did it begin to emerge as the vibrant field it is today.
Social psychology studies our thinking, influence, and relationships by asking questions that have intrigued us all. Here are some examples:
How Much of Our Social World Is Just in Our Heads? As we will see in later chapters, our social behavior varies not just with the objective situation but also with how we construe it. Social beliefs can be self-fulfilling. For example, happily married people will attribute their spouse’s acid remark (“Can’t you ever put that where it belongs?”) to something external (“He must have had a frustrating day”). Unhappily married people will attribute the same remark to a mean disposition (“Is he ever hostile!”) and may respond with a coun- terattack. Moreover, expecting hostility from their spouse, they may behave resentfully, thereby eliciting the hostility they expect. Would People Be Cruel If Ordered? How did Nazi Germany conceive and implement the unconscionable slaughter of 6 million Jews? Those evil acts occurred partly because thousands of people followed orders. They put the prisoners on trains, herded them into crowded “showers,” and poisoned them with gas. How could people engage in such horrific actions? Were those individuals normal human beings? Stanley Milgram (1974) wondered. So he set up a situation where people were ordered to administer increasing
social psychology The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.
Throughout this book, sources for information are cited parenthetically. The complete source is provided in the reference section that begins on page R-1.
FIGURE :: 1.1 Social Psychology Is . . .
Social psychology is the scientific study of . . .
Social relations
• Prejudice
• Aggression
• Attraction and intimacy
• Helping
Social influence
• Culture
• Pressures to conform
• Persuasion
• Groups of people
Social thinking
• How we perceive ourselves and others
• What we believe
• Judgments we make
• Our attitudes
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levels of electric shock to someone who was having difficulty learning a series of words. As we will see in Chapter 6, nearly two-thirds of the participants fully complied. To Help? Or to Help Oneself? As bags of cash tumbled from an armored truck one fall day, $2 million was scattered along a Columbus, Ohio, street. Some motorists stopped to help, returning $100,000. Judging from the $1,900,000 that disap- peared, many more stopped to help themselves. (What would you have done?) When similar incidents occurred several months later in San Francisco and Toronto, the results were the same: Passersby grabbed most of the money (Bowen, 1988). What situations trigger people to be helpful or greedy? Do some cultural contexts—perhaps villages and small towns— breed greater helpfulness? A common thread runs through these questions: They all deal
with how people view and affect one another. And that is what social psychology is all about. Social psychologists study attitudes and beliefs, conformity and independence, love and hate.
Social Psychology’s Big Ideas What are social psychology’s big lessons—its overarching themes? In many aca- demic fields, the results of tens of thousands of studies, the conclusions of thou- sands of investigators, and the insights of hundreds of theorists can be boiled down to a few central ideas. Biology offers us principles such as natural selection and adaptation. Sociology builds on concepts such as social structure and organization. Music harnesses our ideas of rhythm, melody, and harmony.
What concepts are on social psychology’s short list of big ideas? What themes, or fundamental principles, will be worth remembering long after you have forgotten most of the details? My short list of “great ideas we ought never to forget” includes these, each of which we will explore further in chapters to come ( Figure 1.2 ).
We Construct Our Social Reality We humans have an irresistible urge to explain behavior, to attribute it to some cause, and therefore to make it seem orderly, predictable, and controllable. You and I may react differently to similar situations because we think differently. How we react to a friend’s insult depends on whether we attribute it to hostility or to a bad day.
A 1951 Princeton-Dartmouth football game provided a classic demonstration of how we construct reality (Hastorf & Cantril, 1954; see also Loy & Andrews, 1981). The game lived up to its billing as a grudge match; it turned out to be one of the roughest and dirtiest games in the history of either school. A Princeton All- American was gang-tackled, piled on, and finally forced out of the game with a broken nose. Fistfights erupted, and there were further injuries on both sides. The whole performance hardly fit the Ivy League image of upper-class gentility.
Not long afterward, two psychologists, one from each school, showed films of the game to students on each campus. The students played the role of scientist- observer, noting each infraction as they watched and who was responsible for it. But they could not set aside their loyalties. The Princeton students, for example, saw twice as many Dartmouth violations as the Dartmouth students saw. The con- clusion: There is an objective reality out there, but we always view it through the lens of our beliefs and values.
Tired of looking at the stars, Professor Mueller takes up social psychology. Reprinted with permission of Jason Love at www.jasonlove.com .
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We are all intuitive scientists. We explain people’s behavior, usually with enough speed and accuracy to suit our daily needs. When someone’s behavior is consistent and distinctive, we attribute that behavior to his or her personality. For example, if you observe someone who makes repeated snide comments, you may infer that this person has a nasty disposition, and then you might try to avoid the person.
Our beliefs about ourselves also matter. Do we have an optimistic outlook? Do we see ourselves as in control of things? Do we view ourselves as relatively supe- rior or inferior? Our answers influence our emotions and actions. How we construe the world, and ourselves, matters.
Our Social Intuitions Are Often Powerful but Sometimes Perilous Our instant intuitions shape our fears (is flying dangerous?), impressions (can I trust him?), and relationships (does she like me?). Intuitions influence presi- dents in times of crisis, gamblers at the table, jurors assessing guilt, and person- nel directors screening applicants. Such intuitions are commonplace.
Indeed, psychological science reveals a fascinating unconscious mind—an intuitive backstage mind—that Freud never told us about. More than psychologists realized until recently, thinking occurs offstage, out of sight. Our intuitive capaci- ties are revealed by studies of what later chapters will explain: “automatic pro- cessing,” “implicit memory,” “heuristics,” “spontaneous trait inference,” instant emotions, and nonverbal communication. Thinking, memory, and attitudes all operate on two levels—one conscious and deliberate, the other unconscious and automatic. “Dual processing,” today’s researchers call it. We know more than we know we know.
Applying social psych olo
gy
Social relations Social thinking
Social influence s
Some Big Ideas in Social Psychology
1. We construct our social reality
2. Our social intuitions are powerful, sometimes perilous
3. Attitudes shape, and are shaped by, behavior
6. Social behavior is also biological behavior
7. Feelings and actions toward people are sometimes negative and sometimes positive
4. Social influences shape behavior
5. Dispositions shape behavior
Social psychology‘s principles are applicable
to everyday life
FIGURE :: 1.2 Some Big Ideas in Social Psychology
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Intuition is huge, but intuition is also perilous. An example: As we cruise through life, mostly on automatic pilot, we intuitively judge the likeli- hood of things by how easily various instances come to mind. Especially since September 11, 2001, we carry readily available mental images of plane crashes. Thus, most people fear flying more than driving, and many will drive great distances to avoid risking the skies. Actually, we’re many times safer (per mile traveled) in a commercial plane than in a motor vehicle (in the United States, air travel was 230 times safer between 2002 and 2005, reports the National Safety Council [2008]).
Even our intuitions about ourselves often err. We intuitively trust our memories more than we should. We misread our own minds; in ex - periments, we deny being affected by things that do influence us. We mispredict our own feelings—how bad we’ll feel a year from now if we lose our job or our romance breaks up, and how good we’ll feel a year from now, or even a week from now, if we win our state’s lottery. And we often mispredict our own future. For example, when selecting clothes, people approaching middle age will still buy snug (“I anticipate shedding a few pounds”); rarely does anyone say, more real- istically, “I’d better buy a relatively loose fit; people my age tend to put on pounds.”
Our social intuitions, then, are noteworthy for both their powers and their perils. By reminding us of intuition’s gifts and alerting us to its pitfalls, social psy- chologists aim to fortify our thinking. In most situations, “fast and frugal” snap judgments serve us well enough. But in others, where accuracy matters—as when needing to fear the right things and spend our resources accordingly—we had best restrain our impulsive intuitions with critical thinking. Our intuitions and uncon- scious information processing are routinely powerful and sometimes perilous.
Social Influences Shape Our Behavior We are, as Aristotle long ago observed, social animals. We speak and think in words we learned from others. We long to connect, to belong, and to be well thought of. Matthias Mehl and James Pennebaker (2003) quantified their University of Texas students’ social behavior by inviting them to wear microcassette recorders and microphones. Once every 12 minutes during their waking hours, the computer- operated recorder would imperceptibly record for 30 seconds. Although the obser- vation period covered only weekdays (including class time), almost 30 percent of the students’ time was spent in conversation. Relationships are a large part of being human.
As social creatures, we respond to our immediate contexts. Sometimes the power of a social situation leads us to act contrary to our expressed attitudes. Indeed, powerfully evil situations sometimes overwhelm good intentions, induc- ing people to agree with falsehoods or comply with cruelty. Under Nazi influence, many decent-seeming people became instruments of the Holocaust. Other situa- tions may elicit great generosity and compassion. After the 9/11 catastrophe, New York City was overwhelmed with donations of food, clothing, and help from eager volunteers.
Social cognition matters. Our behavior is influenced not just by the objective situation, but also by how we construe it. © The New Yorker Collection, 2005, Lee Lorenz, from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
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The power of the situation was also dramatically evident in varying attitudes toward the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Opinion polls revealed that Americans and Israelis overwhelmingly favored the war. Their distant cousins elsewhere in the world overwhelmingly opposed it. Tell me where you live and I’ll make a reason- able guess as to what your attitudes were as the war began. Tell me your edu- cational level and what media you watch and read, and I’ll make an even more confident guess. Our situations matter.
Our cultures help define our situations. For example, our standards regarding promptness, frankness, and clothing vary with our culture.
• Whether you prefer a slim or voluptuous body depends on when and where in the world you live.
• Whether you define social justice as equality (all receive the same) or as equity (those who earn more receive more) depends on whether your ideology has been shaped more by socialism or by capitalism.
• Whether you tend to be expressive or reserved, casual or formal, hinges partly on your culture and your ethnicity.
• Whether you focus primarily on yourself—your personal needs, desires, and morality—or on your family, clan, and communal groups depends on how much you are a product of modern Western individualism.
Social psychologist Hazel Markus (2005) sums it up: “People are, above all, mal- leable.” Said differently, we adapt to our social context. Our attitudes and behavior are shaped by external social forces.
Personal Attitudes and Dispositions Also Shape Behavior Internal forces also matter. We are not passive tumbleweeds, merely blown this way and that by the social winds. Our inner attitudes affect our behavior. Our polit- ical attitudes influence our voting behavior. Our smoking attitudes influence our susceptibility to peer pressures to smoke. Our attitudes toward the poor influence our willingness to help them. (As we will see, our attitudes also follow our behav- ior, which leads us to believe strongly in those things we have committed ourselves to or suffered for.)
Personality dispositions also affect behavior. Facing the same situation, differ- ent people may react differently. Emerging from years of political imprisonment, one person exudes bitterness and seeks revenge. Another, such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, seeks reconciliation and unity with his former enemies. Attitudes and personality influence behavior.
Social Behavior Is Biologically Rooted Twenty-first-century social psychology is providing us with ever-growing insights into our behavior’s biological foundations. Many of our social behaviors reflect a deep biological wisdom.
Everyone who has taken introductory psychology has learned that nature and nurture together form who we are. As the area of a rectangle is determined by both its length and its width, so do biology and experience together create us. As evolutionary psychologists remind us (see Chapter 5), our inherited human nature predisposes us to behave in ways that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. We carry the genes of those whose traits enabled them and their children to survive and reproduce. Thus, evolutionary psychologists ask how natural selection might predispose our actions and reactions when dating and mating, hating and hurting, caring and sharing. Nature also endows us with an
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enormous capacity to learn and to adapt to varied environments. We are sensi- tive and responsive to our social context.
If every psychological event (every thought, every emotion, every behavior) is simultaneously a biological event, then we can also examine the neurobiology that underlies social behavior. What brain areas enable our experiences of love and con- tempt, helping and aggression, perception and belief? How do brain, mind, and behavior function together as one coordinated system? What does the timing of brain events reveal about how we process information? Such questions are asked by those in social neuroscience (Cacioppo & others, 2007).
Social neuroscientists do not reduce complex social behaviors, such as helping and hurting, to simple neural or molecular mechanisms. Their point is this: To understand social behavior, we must consider both under-the-skin (biological) and between-skins (social) influences. Mind and body are one grand system. Stress hor- mones affect how we feel and act. Social ostracism elevates blood pressure. Social support strengthens the disease-fighting immune system. We are bio-psycho-social organisms. We reflect the interplay of our biological, psychological, and social influ- ences. And that is why today’s psychologists study behavior from these different levels of analysis.
Social Psychology’s Principles Are Applicable in Everyday Life Social psychology has the potential to illuminate your life, to make visible the sub- tle influences that guide your thinking and acting. And, as we will see, it offers many ideas about how to know ourselves better, how to win friends and influence people, how to transform closed fists into open arms.
Scholars are also applying social psychological insights. Principles of social thinking, social influence, and social relations have implications for human health and well-being, for judicial procedures and juror decisions in courtrooms, and for influencing behaviors that will enable an environmentally sustainable human future.
As but one perspective on human existence, psychological science does not seek to engage life’s ultimate questions: What is the meaning of human life? What should be our purpose? What is our ultimate destiny? But social psychology does give us a method for asking and answering some exceedingly interesting and important questions. Social psychology is all about life—your life: your beliefs, your attitudes, your relationships.
The rest of this chapter takes us inside social psychology. Let’s first consider how social psychologists’ own values influence their work in obvious and subtle ways. And then let’s focus on this chapter’s biggest task: glimpsing how we do social psy- chology. How do social psychologists search for explanations of social thinking, social influence, and social relations? And how might you and I use these analytical tools to think smarter?
social neuroscience An integration of biological and social perspectives that explores the neural and psychological bases of social and emotional behaviors.
Throughout this book, a brief summary will conclude each major section. I hope these summaries will help you assess how well you have learned the material in each section.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how peo- ple think about, influence, and relate to one another. Its central themes include the following:
• How we construe our social worlds • How our social intuitions guide and sometimes
deceive us
• How our social behavior is shaped by other peo- ple, by our attitudes and personalities, and by our biology
• How social psychology’s principles apply to our everyday lives and to various other fields of study
Summing Up: Social Psychology’s Big Ideas
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Social Psychology and Human Values Social psychologists’ values penetrate their work in ways both obvious and subtle. What are such ways?
Social psychology is less a collection of findings than a set of strategies for answering questions. In science, as in courts of law, personal opinions are inadmis- sible. When ideas are put on trial, evidence determines the verdict.
But are social psychologists really that objective? Because they are human beings, don’t their values —their personal convictions about what is desirable and how people ought to behave—seep into their work? If so, can social psychology really be scientific?
Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology Values enter the picture when social psychologists choose research topics. It was no accident that the study of prejudice flourished during the 1940s as fascism raged in Europe; that the 1950s, a time of look-alike fashions and intolerance of differ- ing views, gave us studies of conformity; that the 1960s saw interest in aggression increase with riots and rising crime rates; that the feminist movement of the 1970s helped stimulate a wave of research on gender and sexism; that the 1980s offered a resurgence of attention to psychological aspects of the arms race; and that the 1990s and the early twenty-first century were marked by heightened interest in how peo- ple respond to diversity in culture, race, and sexual orientation. Social psychology reflects social history (Kagan, 2009).
Values differ not only across time but also across cultures. In Europe, people take pride in their nationalities. The Scots are more self-consciously distinct from
the English, and the Austrians from the Germans, than are similarly adjacent Michiganders from Ohioans. Conse- quently, Europe has given us a major theory of “social iden- tity,” whereas American social psychologists have focused more on individuals—how one person thinks about oth- ers, is influenced by them, and relates to them (Fiske, 2004; Tajfel, 1981; Turner, 1984). Australian social psychologists have drawn theories and methods from both Europe and North America (Feather, 2005).
Values also influence the types of people who are attracted to various disciplines (Campbell, 1975a; Moynihan, 1979). At your school, do the students majoring in the humanities, the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences differ noticeably from one another? Do social psychology and sociology attract people who are—for example—relatively eager to challenge tradition, people more inclined to shape the future than preserve the past?
Finally, values obviously enter the picture as the object of social-psychological analysis. Social psychologists inves- tigate how values form, why they change, and how they in - fluence attitudes and actions. None of that, however, tells us which values are “right.”
Not-So-Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology We less often recognize the subtler ways in which value commitments masquerade as objective truth. Consider three not-so-obvious ways values enter psychology.
Different sciences offer different perspectives. ScienceCartoonsPlus.com
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THE SUBJECTIVE ASPECTS OF SCIENCE Scientists and philosophers now agree: Science is not purely objective. Scientists do not simply read the book of nature. Rather, they interpret nature, using their own mental categories. In our daily lives, too, we view the world through the lens of our preconceptions. Pause a moment: What do you see in Figure 1.3 ? Can you see a Dalmatian sniffing the ground at the picture’s center? Without that preconcep- tion, most people are blind to the Dalmatian. Once your mind grasps the concept, it informs your interpretation of the picture—so much so that it becomes difficult not to see the dog.
This is the way our minds work. While reading these words, you have been unaware that you are also looking at your nose. Your mind blocks from awareness something that is there, if only you were predisposed to perceive it. This tendency to prejudge reality based on our expectations is a basic fact about the human mind.
Because scholars at work in any given area often share a common viewpoint or come from the same culture, their assumptions may go unchallenged. What we take for granted—the shared beliefs that some European social psychologists call our social representations (Augoustinos & Innes, 1990; Moscovici, 1988, 2001)—are often our most important yet most unexamined convictions. Sometimes, however, someone from outside the camp will call attention to those assumptions. During the 1980s feminists and Marxists exposed some of social psychology’s unexam- ined assumptions. Feminist critics called attention to subtle biases—for example, the political conservatism of some scientists who favored a biological interpreta- tion of gender differences in social behavior (Unger, 1985). Marxist critics called attention to competitive, individualist biases—for example, the assumption that conformity is bad and that individual rewards are good. Marxists and feminists, of course, make their own assumptions, as critics of academic “political correctness” are fond of noting. Social psychologist Lee Jussim (2005), for example, argues that progressive social psychologists sometimes feel compelled to deny group differ- ences and to assume that stereotypes of group difference are never rooted in reality but always in racism.
“Science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and our- selves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.”
— WERNER HEISENBERG , PHYSICS AND
PHILOSOPHY, 1958
culture The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
social representations Socially shared beliefs— widely held ideas and values, including our assumptions and cultural ideologies. Our social representations help us make sense of our world.
FIGURE :: 1.3 What Do You See?
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In Chapter 3 we will see more ways in which our preconceptions guide our interpretations. As those Princeton and Dartmouth football fans remind us, what guides our behavior is less the situation-as-it-is than the situation-as-we- construe-it.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS CONTAIN HIDDEN VALUES Implicit in our understanding that psychology is not objective is the realization that psychologists’ own values may play an important part in the theories and judgments they support. Psychologists may refer to people as mature or immature, as well adjusted or poorly adjusted, as mentally healthy or mentally ill. They may talk as if they were stating facts, when they are really making value judgments. Here are some examples:
Defining the Good Life. Values influence our idea of the best way to live our lives. The personality psychologist Abraham Maslow, for example, was known for his sensitive descriptions of “self-actualized” people—people who, with their needs for survival, safety, belonging, and self-esteem satis- fied, go on to fulfill their human potential. Few readers noticed that Maslow himself, guided by his own values, selected the sample of self-actualized people he described. The resulting description of self-actualized person- alities—as spontaneous, autonomous, mystical, and so forth—reflected Maslow’s personal values. Had he begun with someone else’s heroes—say, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and John D. Rockefeller—his resulting description of self-actualization would have differed (Smith, 1978). Professional Advice. Psychological advice also reflects the advice giver’s personal values. When mental health professionals advise us how to get along
with our spouse or our co-workers, when child-rearing experts tell us how to handle our children, and when some psychologists advocate living free of concern for others’ expectations, they are expressing their personal values. (In Western cultures, those val- ues usually will be individualistic—encouraging what feels best for “me.” Non-Western cultures more often encourage what’s best for “we.”) Many people, unaware of those hidden values, defer to the “professional.” But professional psychologists cannot answer questions of ultimate moral obligation, of purpose and direction, and of life’s meaning. Forming Concepts. Hidden values even seep into psychology’s research-based concepts. Pretend you have taken a personality test and the psychologist, after scoring your answers, announces: “You scored high in self-esteem. You are low in anxiety. And you have exceptional ego-strength.” “Ah,” you think, “I sus- pected as much, but it feels good to know that.” Now another psychologist gives you a similar test. For some peculiar reason, this test asks some of the same questions. Afterward, the psy- chologist informs you that you seem defensive, for you scored high in “repressiveness.” “How could this be?” you wonder. “The other psychologist said such nice things about me.” It could be because all these labels describe the same set of responses (a tendency to say nice things about oneself and not to acknowl- edge problems). Shall we call it high self-esteem or defensive- ness? The label reflects the judgment.
Labeling. Value judgments, then, are often hidden within our social- psychological language—but that is also true of everyday language:
• Whether we label a quiet child as “bashful” on “cautious,” as “holding back” or as “an observer,” conveys a judgment.
Hidden (and not-so-hidden) values seep into psycho- logical advice. They permeate popular psychology books that offer guidance on living and loving.
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• Whether we label someone engaged in guerrilla warfare a “terrorist” or a “freedom fi ghter” depends on our view of the cause.
• Whether we view wartime civilian deaths as “the loss of innocent lives” or as “collateral damage” affects our acceptance of such.
• Whether we call public assistance “welfare” or “aid to the needy” refl ects our political views.
• When “they” exalt their country and people, it’s nationalism; when “we” do it, it’s patriotism.
• Whether someone involved in an extramarital affair is practicing “open marriage” or “adultery” depends on one’s personal values.
• “Brainwashing” is social infl uence we do not approve of. • “Perversions” are sex acts we do not practice. • Remarks about “ambitious” men and “aggressive” women convey a
hidden message.
As these examples indicate, values lie hidden within our cultural definitions of mental health, our psychological advice for living, our concepts, and our psycho- logical labels. Throughout this book I will call your attention to additional examples of hidden values. The point is never that the implicit values are necessarily bad. The point is that scientific interpretation, even at the level of labeling phenomena, is a human activity. It is therefore natural and inevitable that prior beliefs and values will influence what social psychologists think and write.
Should we dismiss science because it has its subjective side? Quite the contrary: The realization that human thinking always involves interpretation is precisely why we need researchers with varying biases to undertake scientific analysis. By constantly checking our beliefs against the facts, as best we know them, we check and restrain our biases. Systematic observation and experimentation help us clean the lens through which we see reality.
• Social psychologists’ values penetrate their work in obvious ways, such as their choice of research topics and the types of people who are attracted to various fields of study.
• They also do this in subtler ways, such as their hid- den assumptions when forming concepts, choosing labels, and giving advice.
• This penetration of values into science is not a rea- son to fault social psychology or any other science. That human thinking is seldom dispassionate is precisely why we need systematic observation and experimentation if we are to check our cherished ideas against reality.
Summing Up: Social Psychology and Human Values
I Knew It All Along: Is Social Psychology Simply Common Sense? Do social psychology’s theories provide new insight into the human condition? Or do they only describe the obvious?
Many of the conclusions presented in this book may have already occurred to you, for social psychological phenomena are all around you. We constantly observe people thinking about, influencing, and relating to one another. It pays to discern what a facial expression predicts, how to get someone to do something, or whether to regard another as friend or foe. For centuries, philosophers, novelists, and poets have observed and commented on social behavior.
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Does this mean that social psychology is just common sense in fancy words? Social psychology faces two contradictory criticisms: first, that it is trivial because it documents the obvious; second, that it is dangerous because its findings could be used to manipulate people.
We will explore the second criticism in Chapter 7. For the moment, let’s examine the first objection.
Do social psychology and the other social sciences simply formalize what any amateur already knows intuitively? Writer Cullen Murphy (1990) took that view: “Day after day social scientists go out into the world. Day after day they discover that people’s behavior is pretty much what you’d expect.” Nearly a half-century earlier, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1949), reacted with similar scorn to social scientists’ studies of American World War II soldiers. Sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld (1949) reviewed those studies and offered a sample with interpretive comments, a few of which I paraphrase:
1. Better-educated soldiers suffered more adjustment problems than did less- educated soldiers. (Intellectuals were less prepared for battle stresses than street-smart people.)
2. Southern soldiers coped better with the hot South Sea Island climate than did Northern soldiers. (Southerners are more accustomed to hot weather.)
3. White privates were more eager for promotion than were Black privates. (Years of oppression take a toll on achievement motivation.)
4. Southern Blacks preferred Southern to Northern White officers. (Southern officers were more experienced and skilled in interacting with Blacks.)
As you read those findings, did you agree that they were basically common sense? If so, you may be surprised to learn that Lazarsfeld went on to say, “Every one of these statements is the direct opposite of what was actually found.” In reality, the studies found that less-educated soldiers adapted more poorly. Southerners were not more likely than northerners to adjust to a tropical climate. Blacks were more eager than Whites for promotion, and so forth. “If we had mentioned the actual results of the investigation first [as Schlesinger experienced], the reader would have labeled these ‘obvious’ also.”
One problem with common sense is that we invoke it after we know the facts. Events are far more “obvious” and predictable in hindsight than beforehand. Exper- iments reveal that when people learn the outcome of an experiment, that outcome suddenly seems unsurprising—certainly less surprising than it is to people who are simply told about the experimental procedure and the possible outcomes (Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977).
Likewise, in everyday life we often do not expect something to happen until it does. Then we suddenly see clearly the forces that brought the event about and feel unsurprised. Moreover, we may also misremember our earlier view (Blank & others, 2008). Errors in judging the future’s foreseeability and in remember- ing our past combine to create hindsight bias (also called the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon ).
Thus, after elections or stock market shifts, most commentators find the turn of events unsurprising: “The market was due for a correction.” After the widespread flooding in New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it seemed obvi- ous that public officials should have anticipated the situation: Studies of the levees’ vulnerability had been done. Many residents did not own cars and were too poor to afford transportation and lodging out of town. Meteorologic assessment of the storm’s severity clearly predicted an urgent need to put security and relief supplies in place. As the Danish philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard put it, “Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.”
If hindsight bias is pervasive, you may now be feeling that you already knew about this phenomenon. Indeed, almost any conceivable result of a psychological experiment can seem like common sense— after you know the result.
hindsight bias The tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome, one’s ability to have foreseen how something turned out. Also known as the I-knew-it- all-along phenomenon.
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You can demonstrate the phenomenon yourself. Take a group of people and tell half of them one psychological finding and the other half the opposite result. For example, tell half as follows:
Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends or falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are different from our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying “Opposites attract.”
Tell the other half:
Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends or falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are similar to our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying “Birds of a feather flock together.”
Ask the people first to explain the result. Then ask them to say whether it is “sur- prising” or “not surprising.” Virtually all will find a good explanation for which- ever result they were given and will say it is “not surprising.”
Indeed, we can draw on our stockpile of proverbs to make almost any result seem to make sense. If a social psychologist reports that separation intensifies romantic attraction, John Q. Public responds, “You get paid for this? Everybody knows that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder.’” Should it turn out that separation weakens attraction, John will say, “My grandmother could have told you, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’”
Karl Teigen (1986) must have had a few chuckles when he asked University of Leicester (England) students to evaluate actual proverbs and their opposites. When given the proverb “Fear is stronger than love,” most rated it as true. But so did stu- dents who were given its reversed form, “Love is stronger than fear.” Likewise, the genuine proverb “He that is fallen cannot help him who is down” was rated highly; but so too was “He that is fallen can help him who is down.” My favorites, however, were two highly rated proverbs: “Wise men make proverbs and fools repeat them” (authentic) and its made-up counterpart, “Fools make proverbs and wise men repeat them.” For more dueling proverbs, see “Focus On: I Knew It All Along.”
The hindsight bias cre- ates a problem for many psychology students. Some- times results are genuinely surprising (for example, that Olympic bronze medal- ists take more joy in their achievement than do sil- ver medalists). More often, when you read the results of experiments in your text- books, the material seems easy, even obvious. When you later take a multiple- choice test on which you must choose among sev- eral plausible conclusions, the task may become sur- prisingly difficult. “I don’t know what happened,” the befuddled student later moans. “I thought I knew the material.”
In hindsight, events seem obvious and predictable. ScienceCartoonsPlus.com
Is it more true that . . . Too many cooks spoil the broth. The pen is mightier than the sword. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Blood is thicker than water. He who hesitates is lost. Forewarned is forearmed.
Or that . . . Two heads are better than one. Actions speak louder than words. You’re never too old to learn.
Many kinfolk, few friends. Look before you leap. Don’t cross the bridge until you come to it.
Cullen Murphy (1990), managing editor of the Atlantic, faulted “sociology, psychol- ogy, and other social sciences for too often merely discerning the obvious or confirm- ing the commonplace.” His own casual survey of social science findings “turned up no ideas or conclusions that can’t be found in Bartlett’s or any other encyclopedia of quotations.” Nevertheless, to sift through competing sayings, we need research. Consider some dueling proverbs:
I Knew It All Along focus
ON
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The I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon can have unfortunate consequences. It is conducive to arrogance—an overestimation of our own intellectual powers. More- over, because outcomes seem as if they should have been foreseeable, we are more likely to blame decision makers for what are in retrospect “obvious” bad choices than to praise them for good choices, which also seem “obvious.”
Starting after the morning of 9/11 and working backward, signals pointing to the impending disaster seemed obvious. A U.S. Senate investigative report listed the missed or misinterpreted clues (Gladwell, 2003), which included the follow- ing. The CIA knew that al Qaeda operatives had entered the country. An FBI agent sent a memo to headquarters that began by warning “the Bureau and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civilian aviation universities and colleges.” The FBI ignored that accurate warning and failed to relate it to other reports that terrorists were planning to use planes as weapons. The president received a daily briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States” and stayed on holiday. “The dumb fools!” it seemed to hindsight critics. “Why couldn’t they con- nect the dots?”
But what seems clear in hindsight is seldom clear on the front side of history. The intelligence community is overwhelmed with “noise”—piles of useless infor- mation surrounding the rare shreds of useful information. Analysts must therefore be selective in deciding which to pursue, and only when a lead is pursued does it stand a chance of being connected to another lead. In the six years before 9/11, the FBI’s counterterrorism unit could never have pursued all 68,000 uninvestigated leads. In hindsight, the few useful ones are now obvious.
In the aftermath of the 2008 world financial crisis, it seemed obvious that govern- ment regulators should have placed safeguards against the ill-fated bank lending practices. But what was obvious in hindsight was unforeseen by the chief American regulator, Alan Greenspan, who found himself “in a state of shocked disbelief” at the economic collapse.
We sometimes blame ourselves for “stupid mistakes”—perhaps for not having handled a person or a situation better. Looking back, we see how we should have handled it. “I should have known how busy I would be at the semester’s end and started that paper earlier.” But sometimes we are too hard on ourselves. We forget that what is obvious to us now was not nearly so obvious at the time.
Physicians who are told both a patient’s symptoms and the cause of death (as determined by autopsy) sometimes wonder how an incorrect diagnosis could have been made. Other physicians, given only the symptoms, don’t find the di - agnosis nearly so obvious (Dawson & others, 1988). Would juries be slower to as - sume malpractice if they were forced to take a foresight rather than a hindsight perspective?
What do we conclude—that common sense is usually wrong? Sometimes it is. At other times, conventional wisdom is right—or it falls on both sides of an issue: Does happiness come from knowing the truth, or from preserving illusions? From being with others, or from living in peaceful solitude? Opinions are a dime a dozen. No matter what we find, there will be someone who foresaw it. (Mark Twain jested that Adam was the only person who, when saying a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before.) But which of the many competing ideas best fit reality? Research can specify the circumstances under which a common-sense truism is valid.
The point is not that common sense is predictably wrong. Rather, common sense usually is right— after the fact. We therefore easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we know and knew more than we do and did. And that is precisely why we need science to help us sift reality from illusion and genuine predictions from easy hindsight.
“It is easy to be wise after the event.”
— SHERLOCK HOLMES , IN ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE’S STORY “THE PROBLEM OF
THOR BRIDGE”
“Everything important has been said before.”
— PHILOSOPHER ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
(1861–1947)
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Research Methods: How We Do Social Psychology We have considered some of the intriguing questions social psychology seeks to answer. We have also seen how subjective, often unconscious, processes influence social psychologists’ work. Now let’s consider the scientific methods that make social psychology a science.
In their quest for insight, social psychologists propose theories that organize their observations and imply testable hypotheses and practical predictions. To test a hypothesis, social psychologists may do research that predicts behavior using cor- relational studies, often conducted in natural settings. Or they may seek to explain behavior by conducting experiments that manipulate one or more factors under con- trolled conditions. Once they have conducted a research study, they explore ways to apply their findings to improve people’s everyday lives.
We are all amateur social psychologists. People-watching is a universal hobby. As we observe people, we form ideas about how human beings think about, influ- ence, and relate to one another. Professional social psychologists do the same, only more systematically (by forming theories) and painstakingly (often with experi- ments that create miniature social dramas that pin down cause and effect). And they have done it extensively, in 25,000 studies of 8 million people by one count (Richard & others, 2003).
Forming and Testing Hypotheses We social psychologists have a hard time thinking of anything more fascinat- ing than human existence. As we wrestle with human nature to pin down its secrets, we organize our ideas and findings into theories. A theory is an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events. Theories are a scientific shorthand.
In everyday conversation, “theory” often means “less than fact”—a middle rung on a confidence ladder from guess to theory to fact. Thus, people may, for example, dismiss Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as “just a theory.” Indeed, notes Alan Leshner (2005), chief officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “Evolution is only a theory, but so is gravity.” Peo- ple often respond that gravity is a fact—but the fact is that your keys fall to the ground when dropped. Gravity is the theoretical explanation that accounts for such observed facts.
To a scientist, facts and theories are apples and oranges. Facts are agreed-upon statements about what we observe. Theories are ideas that summarize and explain facts. “Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones,” wrote the French scientist Jules Henri Poincaré, “but a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.”
“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the abil- ity to investigate systemati- cally and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS , MEDITATIONS
theory An integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events.
• Social psychology is criticized for being trivial because it documents things that seem obvious.
• Experiments, however, reveal that outcomes are more “obvious” after the facts are known.
• This hindsight bias (the I-knew-it-all-along phenom- enon ) often makes people overconfident about the validity of their judgments and predictions.
Summing Up: I Knew It All Along: Is Social Psychology Simply Common Sense?
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Theories not only summarize but also imply testable predictions, called hypotheses. Hypotheses serve several purposes. First, they allow us to test a theory by suggesting how we might try to falsify it. Second, predictions give direction to research and some- times send investigators looking for things they might never have thought of. Third, the predictive feature of good theories can also make them practical. A complete theory of aggression, for example, would predict when to expect aggression and how to control it. As the pioneering social psychologist Kurt Lewin declared, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.”
Consider how this works. Say we observe that people who loot, taunt, or attack often do so in groups or crowds.
We might therefore theorize that being part of a crowd, or group, makes individ- uals feel anonymous and lowers their inhibitions. How could we test this theory? Perhaps (I’m playing with this theory) we could devise a laboratory experiment simulating aspects of execution by electric chair. What if we asked individuals in groups to administer punishing shocks to a hapless victim without knowing which member of the group was actually shocking the victim? Would these indi- viduals administer stronger shocks than individuals acting alone, as our theory predicts?
We might also manipulate anonymity: Would people deliver stronger shocks if they were wearing masks? If the results confirm our hypothesis, they might suggest some practical applications. Perhaps police brutality could be reduced by having officers wear large name tags and drive cars identified with large numbers, or by videotaping their arrests—all of which have, in fact, become common practice in many cities.
But how do we conclude that one theory is better than another? A good theory
• effectively summarizes many observations, and • makes clear predictions that we can use to
• confi rm or modify the theory, • generate new exploration, and • suggest practical applications.
When we discard theories, usually it’s not because they have been proved false. Rather, like old cars, they are replaced by newer, better models.
Correlational Research: Detecting Natural Associations Most of what you will learn about social-psychological research methods you will absorb as you read later chapters. But let’s now go backstage and see how social psychology is done. This glimpse behind the scenes should be just enough for you to appreciate findings discussed later. Understanding the logic of research can also help you think critically about everyday social events.
Social-psychological research varies by location. It can take place in the labora- tory (a controlled situation) or in the field (everyday situations). And it varies by
hypothesis A testable proposition that describes a relationship that may exist between events.
field research Research done in natural, real-life settings outside the laboratory.
For humans, the most fascinating subject is people. © The New Yorker Collection, 1987, Warren Miller, from cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved.
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method—whether correlational (asking whether two or more factors are naturally associated) or experimental (manipulating some factor to see its effect on another). If you want to be a critical reader of psychological research reported in newspapers and magazines, it will pay you to understand the difference between correlational and experimental research.
Using some real examples, let’s first consider the advantages of correlational research (often involving important variables in natural settings) and its major disadvantage (ambiguous interpretation of cause and effect). As we will see in Chapter 14, today’s psychologists relate personal and social factors to human health. Among the researchers have been Douglas Carroll at Glasgow Caledonian University and his colleagues, George Davey Smith and Paul Bennett (1994). In search of possible links between socioeconomic status and health, the researchers ventured into Glasgow’s old graveyards. As a measure of health, they noted from grave markers the life spans of 843 individuals. As an indication of status, they measured the height of the pillars over the graves, reasoning that height reflected cost and therefore affluence. As Figure 1.4 shows, taller grave markers were related to longer lives, for both men and women.
Carroll and his colleagues report that other researchers, using contempo- rary data, have confirmed the status-longevity correlation. Scottish postal-code regions having the least overcrowding and unemployment also have the great- est longevity. In the United States, income correlates with longevity (poor and lower-status people are more at risk for premature death). In today’s Britain, occupational status correlates with longevity. One study followed 17,350 Brit- ish civil service workers over 10 years. Compared with top-grade administra- tors, those at the professional-executive grade were 1.6 times more likely to have died. Clerical workers were 2.2 times and laborers 2.7 times more likely to have died (Adler & others, 1993, 1994). Across times and places, the status-health cor- relation seems reliable.
CORRELATION AND CAUSATION The status-longevity question illustrates the most irresistible thinking error made by both amateur and professional social psychologists: When two factors such as sta- tus and health go together, it is terribly tempting to conclude that one is causing the
correlational research The study of the naturally occurring relationships among variables.
experimental research Studies that seek clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) while controlling others (holding them constant).
Low
Age at death
66
65
64
63
62
61
60
59
58 Medium High
Height of grave pillars
Men
Women
FIGURE :: 1.4 Correlating Status and Longevity Tall grave pillars commemorated people who also tended to live longer.
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other. Status, we might presume, some- how protects a person from health risks. But might it be the other way around? Could it be that health promotes vigor and success? Perhaps people who live longer simply have more time to accu- mulate wealth (enabling them to have more expensive grave markers). Or might a third variable, such as diet, be involved (did wealthy and working- class people tend to eat differently)? Correlations indicate a relationship, but that relationship is not necessarily one of cause and effect. Correlational research allows us to predict, but it cannot tell us whether changing one variable (such as social status) will cause changes in anoth er (such as health).
An amusing correlation-causation confusion surfaced during the 2008 presidential campaign when the Asso- ciated Press reported a survey show- ing that most dog owners favored John McCain (who had two dogs) over
Barack Obama (who didn’t own a pet), while those without a dog favored Obama. “The pet owning public seems to have noticed,” noted the writer, inferring that McCain’s dog ownership drew support from fellow dog owners (Schmid, 2008). But had the public noticed and cared who had pets? Or was the pet-preference cor- relation merely a reflection of some “confounded” third factors? For example, the survey also found dog ownership rates much higher among White and married people (who are more often Republicans and therefore McCain’s natural constitu- ency) than among Black and single people.
The correlation-causation confusion is behind much muddled thinking in popu- lar psychology. Consider another very real correlation—between self-esteem and academic achievement. Children with high self-esteem tend also to have high aca- demic achievement. (As with any correlation, we can also state this the other way around: High achievers tend to have high self-esteem.) Why do you suppose that is true ( Figure 1.5 )?
Commemorative markers in Glasgow Cathedral graveyard.
FIGURE :: 1.5 Correlation and Causations When two variables correlate, any combination of three expla- nations is possible. Either one may cause the other, or both may be affected by an underlying “third factor.”
Social status
X
X
Z (3)(2)(1)
Y YXX
Y
Self-esteem
Health
Y
Academic achievement
Correlation
Possible explanations
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Some people believe a “healthy self-concept” contributes to achievement. Thus, boosting a child’s self-image may also boost school achievement. Believing so, 30 U.S. states have enacted more than 170 self-esteem-promoting statutes.
But other people, including psychologists William Damon (1995), Robyn Dawes (1994), Mark Leary (1999), Martin Seligman (1994, 2002), and Roy Baumeister and colleagues (2003, 2005), doubt that self-esteem is really “the armor that pro- tects kids” from underachievement (or drug abuse and delinquency). Perhaps it’s the other way around: Perhaps problems and failures cause low self-esteem. Perhaps self-esteem often reflects the reality of how things are going for us. Perhaps self-esteem grows from hard-won achievements. Do well and you will feel good about yourself; goof off and fail and you will feel like a dolt. A study of 635 Norwegian schoolchildren showed that a (legitimately earned) string of gold stars by one’s name on the spelling chart and accompanying praise from the admiring teacher can boost a child’s self-esteem (Skaalvik & Hagtvet, 1990). Or perhaps, as in a study of nearly 6,000 German seventh-graders, the traffic between self-esteem and academic achievements runs both ways (Trautwein & Lüdtke, 2006).
It’s also possible that self-esteem and achievement correlate because both are linked to underlying intelligence and family social status. That possibility was raised in two studies—one a nationwide sample of 1,600 young American men, another of 715 Minnesota youngsters (Bachman & O’Malley, 1977; Maruyama & others, 1981). When the researchers mathematically removed the predictive power of intelligence and family status, the relationship between self-esteem and achieve- ment evaporated.
Correlations quantify, with a coefficient known as r, the degree of relationship between two factors—from –1.0 (as one factor score goes up, the other goes down) through 0 to +1.0 (the two factors’ scores rise and fall together). Scores on self- esteem and depression tests correlate negatively (about –.6). Identical twins’ intel- ligence scores correlate positively (above +.8). The great strength of correlational research is that it tends to occur in real-world settings where we can examine fac- tors such as race, gender, and social status (factors that we cannot manipulate in the laboratory). Its great disadvantage lies in the ambiguity of the results. This point is so important that even if it fails to impress people the first 25 times they hear it, it is worth repeating a twenty-sixth time: Knowing that two variables change together (correlate) enables us to predict one when we know the other, but correlation does not specify cause and effect.
Advanced correlational techniques can, however, suggest cause-effect rela- tionships. Time-lagged correlations reveal the sequence of events (for example, by indicating whether changed achievement more often precedes or follows changed self- esteem). Researchers can also use statistical techniques that extract the influ- ence of “confounded” variables, as when the correlation between self-esteem and achievement evaporated after extracting intelligence and family status. Recall our earlier mention of a third variable, such as diet. Thus, the Scottish research team wondered whether the status-longevity relationship would survive their remov- ing the effect of cigarette smoking, which is now much less common among those of higher status. It did, which suggested that some other factors, such as increased stress and decreased feelings of control, may also account for poorer people’s ear- lier mortality.
SURVEY RESEARCH How do we measure variables such as status and health? One way is by sur- veying representative samples of people. If survey researchers want to describe a whole population (which for many psychology surveys is not the aim), then they will obtain a representative group by taking a random sample — one in which every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion. With
random sample Survey procedure in which every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion.
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this procedure any subgroup of people—blondes, joggers, liberals—will tend to be represented in the survey to the extent that they are represented in the total population.
It is an amazing fact that whether we survey people in a city or in a whole coun- try, 1,200 randomly selected participants will enable us to be 95 percent confident of describing the entire population with an error margin of 3 percentage points or less. Imagine a huge jar filled with beans, 50 percent red and 50 percent white. Randomly sample 1,200 of these, and you will be 95 percent certain to draw out between 47 percent and 53 percent red beans—regardless of whether the jar con- tains 10,000 beans or 100 million beans. If we think of the red beans as supporters of one presidential candidate and the white beans as supporters of the other can- didate, we can understand why, since 1950, the Gallup polls taken just before U.S. national elections have diverged from election results by an average of less than 2 percent. As a few drops of blood can speak for the whole body, so can a random sample speak for a population.
Bear in mind that polls do not literally predict voting; they only describe public opinion at the moment they are taken. Public opinion can shift. To evaluate sur- veys, we must also bear in mind four potentially biasing influences: unrepresenta- tive samples, question order, response options, and question wording.
UNREPRESENTATIVE SAMPLES How closely the sample represents the popu- lation under study greatly matters. In 1984 columnist Ann Landers accepted a letter writer’s challenge to poll her readers on the question of whether women find affec- tion more important than sex. Her question: “Would you be content to be held close and treated tenderly and forget about ‘the act’?” Of the more than 100,000 women who replied, 72 percent said yes. An avalanche of worldwide publicity followed. In response to critics, Landers (1985, p. 45) granted that “the sampling may not be rep- resentative of all American women. But it does provide honest—valuable—insights from a cross section of the public. This is because my column is read by people from every walk of life, approximately 70 million of them.” Still, one wonders, are the 70 million readers representative of the entire population? And are the 1 in 700 readers who took the trouble to reply to the survey representative of the 699 in 700 who did not?
The importance of representativeness was effectively demonstrated in 1936, when a weekly newsmagazine, Literary Digest, mailed a postcard presidential elec- tion poll to 10 million Americans. Among the more than 2 million returns, Alf
Even exit polls require a random (and therefore representative) sample of voters.
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Landon won by a landslide over Franklin D. Roosevelt. When the actual votes were counted a few days later, Landon carried only two states. The magazine had sent the poll only to people whose names it had obtained from telephone books and automobile registrations—thus ignoring the millions of voters who could afford neither a telephone nor a car (Cleghorn, 1980).
ORDER OF QUESTIONS Given a representative sample, we must also contend with other sources of bias, such as the order of questions in a survey. Americans’ support for civil unions of gays and lesbians rises if they are first asked their opin- ion of gay marriage, compared with which civil unions seem a more acceptable alternative (Moore, 2004a, 2004b).
RESPONSE OPTIONS Consider, too, the dramatic effects of the response op - tions. When Joop van der Plight and his co-workers (1987) asked English voters what percentage of Britain’s energy they wished came from nuclear power, the average preference was 41 percent. They asked other voters what percentage they wished came from (1) nuclear, (2) coal, and (3) other sources. The average prefer- ence for nuclear power among these respondents was 21 percent.
WORDING OF QUESTIONS The precise wording of questions may also influ- ence answers. One poll found that only 23 percent of Americans thought their gov- ernment was spending too much “on assistance to the poor.” Yet 53 percent thought the government was spending too much “on welfare” ( Time, 1994). Likewise, most people favor cutting “foreign aid” and increasing spending “to help hungry people in other nations” (Simon, 1996).
Survey questioning is a very delicate matter. Even subtle changes in the tone of a question can have marked effects (Krosnick & Schuman, 1988; Schuman & Kalton, 1985). “Forbidding” something may be the same as “not allowing” it. But in 1940, 54 percent of Americans said the United States should “forbid” speeches against democracy, and 75 percent said the United States should “not allow” them. Even when people say they feel strongly about an issue, a question’s form and wording may affect their answer.
Order, response, and wording effects enable political manipulators to use sur- veys to show public support for their views. Consultants, advertisers, and physi- cians can have similar disconcerting influences upon our decisions by how they frame our choices. No wonder the meat lobby in 1994 objected to a new U.S. food labeling law that required declaring ground beef, for example, as “30 percent fat,” rather than “70 percent lean, 30 percent fat.” To 9 in 10 college students, a condom
framing The way a question or an issue is posed; framing can influence people’s decisions and expressed opinions.
SRC’s Survey Services Laboratory at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research has interviewing carrels with monitoring stations. Staff and visitors must sign a pledge to honor the strict confidentiality of all interviews.
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seems effective if its protection against the AIDS virus has a “95 percent success rate.” Told that it has a “5 percent failure rate,” only 4 in 10 students say they find it effective (Linville & others, 1992).
Framing research also has applications in the definition of everyday default options:
• Opting in or opting out of organ donation. In many countries, people decide, when renewing their drivers’ license, whether they want to make their body available for organ donation. In countries where the default option is yes, but one can “opt out,” nearly 100 percent of people choose to be donors. In the United States, Britain, and Germany, where the default option is no but one can “opt in,” about 1 in 4 choose to be donors (Johnson & Goldstein, 2003).
• Opting in or opting out of retirement savings. For many years, American employees who wanted to defer part of their compensation to a 401(k) retirement plan had to elect to lower their take-home pay. Most chose not to do so. A 2006 pension law, influenced by framing research, reframed the choice. Now companies are given an incentive to enroll their employ- ees automatically in the plan, and to allow them to opt out (and to raise their take-home pay). The choice was preserved. But one study found that with the “opt out” framing, enrollments soared from 49 to 86 percent (Madrian & Shea, 2001).
The lesson of framing research is told in the story of a sultan who dreamed he had lost all his teeth. Summoned to interpret the dream, the first interpreter said, “Alas! The lost teeth mean you will see your family members die.” Enraged, the sul- tan ordered 50 lashes for this bearer of bad news. When a second dream interpreter heard the dream, he explained the sultan’s good fortune: “You will outlive your whole clan!” Reassured, the sultan ordered his treasurer to go and fetch 50 pieces of gold for this bearer of good news. On the way, the bewildered treasurer observed to the second interpreter, “Your interpretation was no different from that of the first interpreter.” “Ah yes,” the wise interpreter replied, “but remember: What matters is not only what you say, but how you say it.”
Experimental Research: Searching for Cause and Effect The difficulty of discerning cause and effect among naturally correlated events prompts most social psychologists to create laboratory simulations of everyday processes whenever this is feasible and ethical. These simulations are akin to
A young monk was once rebuffed when asking if he could smoke while he prayed. Ask a different question, advised a friend: Ask if you can pray while you smoke (Crossen, 1993).
Survey researchers must be sensitive to subtle and not-so-subtle biases. DOONESBURY © G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
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aeronautical wind tunnels. Aeronautical engineers don’t begin by observing how flying objects perform in various natural environments. The variations in both atmo- spheric conditions and flying objects are too complex. Instead, they construct a simu- lated reality in which they can manipulate wind conditions and wing structures.
CONTROL: MANIPULATING VARIABLES Like aeronautical engineers, social psychologists experiment by constructing social situations that simulate important features of our daily lives. By varying just one or two factors at a time—called independent variables —the experimenter pinpoints their influence. As the wind tunnel helps the aeronautical engineer discover princi- ples of aerodynamics, so the experiment enables the social psychologist to discover principles of social thinking, social influence, and social relations.
Historically, social psychologists have used the experimental method in about three-fourths of their research studies (Higbee & others, 1982), and in two out of three studies the setting has been a research laboratory (Adair & others, 1985). To illustrate the laboratory experiment, consider two experiments that typify research from upcoming chapters on prejudice and aggression. Each suggests possible cause- effect explanations of correlational findings.
CORRELATIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF PREJUDICE AGAINST THE OBESE The first experiment concerns prejudice against people who are obese. People often perceive the obese as slow, lazy, and sloppy (Roehling & others, 2007; Ryckman & others, 1989). Do such attitudes spawn discrimination? In hopes of finding out, Steven Gortmaker and his colleagues (1993) studied 370 obese 16- to 24-year-old women. When they restudied them seven years later, two-thirds of the women were still obese and were less likely to be married and earning high salaries than a comparison group of some 5,000 other women. Even after correcting for any differences in aptitude test scores, race, and parental income, the obese women’s incomes were $7,000 a year below average.
Correcting for certain other factors makes it look as though discrimination might explain the correlation between obesity and lower status. But we can’t be sure. (Can you think of other possibilities?) Enter social psychologists Mark Snyder and Julie Haugen (1994, 1995). They asked 76 University of Minnesota male students to have a get-acquainted phone conversation with 1 of 76 female students. Unknown to the women, each man was shown a photo said to picture his conversational partner. Half were shown an obese woman (not the actual partner); the other half a normal-weight woman. Later analysis of just the women’s side of the conversation revealed that they spoke less warmly and happily if they were pre- sumed obese. Clearly, something in the men’s tone of voice and conversational con- tent induced the supposedly obese women to speak in a way that confirmed the idea that obese women are undesirable. Prejudice and discrimination were having an effect. Recalling the effect of the stepmother’s behavior, perhaps we should call this the “Cinderella effect.”
CORRELATIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF TV VIOLENCE VIEWING As a second example of how experiments clarify causation, consider the correlation between television viewing and children’s behavior. The more vio- lent television children watch, the more aggressive they tend to be. Are children learning and reenacting what they see on the screen? As I hope you now recognize, this is a correlational finding. Figure 1.5 reminds us that there are two other cause-effect interpretations. (What are they?)
Social psychologists have therefore brought television viewing into the labora- tory, where they control the amount of violence the children see. By exposing chil- dren to violent and nonviolent programs, researchers can observe how the amount of violence affects behavior. Chris Boyatzis and his colleagues (1995) showed some elementary school children, but not others, an episode of the most popular—and violent—children’s television program of the 1990s, Power Rangers. Immediately
independent variable The experimental factor that a researcher manipulates.
Future chapters will offer many research-based insights, a few of which will be highlighted in “Research Close-Up” boxes that describe a sample study in depth.
Note: Obesity correlated with marital status and income.
Whom the men were shown—a normal or an overweight woman—was the independent variable.
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after viewing the episode, the viewers committed seven times as many aggressive acts per two-minute interval as the nonviewers. The observed aggressive acts we call the dependent variable. Such experiments indicate that television can be one cause of children’s aggressive behavior.
So far we have seen that the logic of experimentation is simple: By creating and controlling a miniature reality, we can vary one factor and then another and dis- cover how those factors, separately or in combination, affect people. Now let’s go a little deeper and see how an experiment is done.
Every social-psychological experiment has two essential ingredients. We have just considered one— control. We manipulate one or more independent variables while trying to hold everything else constant. The other ingredient is random assignment.
RANDOM ASSIGNMENT: THE GREAT EQUALIZER Recall that we were reluctant, on the basis of a correlation, to assume that obesity caused lower status (via discrimination) or that violence viewing caused aggressive- ness (see Table 1.1 for more examples). A survey researcher might measure and
dependent variable The variable being measured, so called because it may depend on manipulations of the independent variable.
Does viewing violence on TV or in other media lead to imitation, especially among children? Experiments suggest that it does.
TABLE :: 1.1 Recognizing Correlational and Experimental Research
Can Participants Be Randomly Assigned to Condition? Independent Variable Dependent Variable
Are early-maturing children more confident?
No → Correlational
Do students learn more in online or classroom courses?
Yes → Experimental Take class online or in classroom
Learning
Do school grades predict vocational success? No → Correlational
Does playing violent video games increase aggressiveness?
Yes → Experimental Play violent or nonviolent game
Aggressiveness
Do people find comedy funnier when alone or with others?
(you answer)
Do higher-income people have higher self-esteem?
(you answer)
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Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 27
statistically extract other possibly pertinent factors and see if the correlations sur- vive. But one can never control for all the factors that might distinguish obese from nonobese, and viewers of violence from nonviewers. Maybe viewers of violence differ in education, culture, intelligence—or in dozens of ways the researcher hasn’t considered.
In one fell swoop, random assignment eliminates all such extraneous factors. With random assignment, each person has an equal chance of viewing the violence or the nonviolence. Thus, the people in both groups would, in every conceivable way—family status, intelligence, education, initial aggressiveness—average about the same. Highly intelligent people, for example, are equally likely to appear in both groups. Because random assignment creates equivalent groups, any later aggres- sion difference between the two groups will almost surely have something to do with the only way they differ—whether or not they viewed violence ( Figure 1.6 ).
THE ETHICS OF EXPERIMENTATION Our television example illustrates why some conceivable experiments raise ethical issues. Social psychologists would not, over long time periods, expose one group of children to brutal violence. Rather, they briefly alter people’s social experience and note the effects. Sometimes the experimental treatment is a harmless, perhaps even enjoyable, experience to which people give their knowing consent. Sometimes, however, researchers find themselves operating in a gray area between the harm- less and the risky.
Social psychologists often venture into that ethical gray area when they design experiments that engage intense thoughts and emotions. Experiments need not have what Elliot Aronson, Marilynn Brewer, and Merrill Carlsmith (1985) call mundane realism. That is, laboratory behavior (for example, delivering electric shocks as part of an experiment on aggression) need not be literally the same as everyday behavior. For many researchers, that sort of realism is indeed mundane— not important. But the experiment should have experimental realism —it should engage the participants. Experimenters do not want their people consciously play- acting or ho- humming it; they want to engage real psychological processes. Forc- ing people to choose whether to give intense or mild electric shock to someone else can, for example, be a realistic measure of aggression. It functionally simulates real aggression.
Achieving experimental realism sometimes requires deceiving people with a plausible cover story. If the person in the next room actually is not receiving the shocks, the experimenter does not want the participants to know that. That would destroy the experimental realism. Thus, about one-third of social-psychological studies (though a decreasing number) have used deception in their search for truth (Korn & Nicks, 1993; Vitelli, 1988).
random assignment The process of assigning participants to the conditions of an experiment such that all persons have the same chance of being in a given condition. (Note the dis- tinction between random assignment in experiments and random sampling in surveys. Random assignment helps us infer cause and effect. Random sampling helps us generalize to a population.)
mundane realism Degree to which an experiment is superficially similar to everyday situations.
experimental realism Degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants.
deception In research, an effect by which participants are misinformed or misled about the study’s methods and purposes.
Condition
Experimental
Control
Treatment
Violent TV
Nonviolent TV
Measure
Aggression
Aggression
People
FIGURE :: 1.6 Random Assignment Experiments randomly assign people either to a condition that receives the experimental treatment or to a control condi- tion that does not. This gives the researcher confidence that any later difference is somehow caused by the treatment.
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28 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
Experimenters also seek to hide their predictions lest the participants, in their eagerness to be “good subjects,” merely do what’s expected or, in an ornery mood, do the opposite. Small wonder, says Ukrainian professor Anatoly Koladny, that only 15 percent of Ukrainian survey respondents declared themselves “religious” while under Soviet communism in 1990 when religion was oppressed by the government— and that 70 percent declared themselves “religious” in postcommu- nist 1997 (Nielsen, 1998). In subtle ways, too, the experimenter’s words, tone of voice, and gestures may call forth desired responses. To minimize such demand characteristics —cues that seem to “demand” certain behavior—experimenters typ- ically standardize their instructions or even use a computer to present them.
Researchers often walk a tightrope in designing experiments that will be involv- ing yet ethical. To believe that you are hurting someone, or to be subjected to strong social pressure, may be temporarily uncomfortable. Such experiments raise the age- old question of whether ends justify means. The social psychologists’ deceptions are usually brief and mild compared with many misrepresentations in real life, and in some of television’s Candid Camera and reality shows. (One network reality TV series deceived women into competing for the hand of a handsome supposed millionaire, who turned out to be an ordinary laborer.)
University ethics committees review social-psychological research to ensure that it will treat people humanely and that the scientific merit justifies any temporary deception or distress. Ethical principles developed by the American Psychological Association (2002), the Canadian Psychological Association (2000), and the British Psychological Society (2000) mandate investigators to do the following:
• Tell potential participants enough about the experiment to enable their informed consent.
• Be truthful. Use deception only if essential and justified by a significant purpose and not “about aspects that would affect their willingness to participate.”
• Protect participants (and bystanders, if any) from harm and significant discomfort.
• Treat information about the individual participants confidentially. • Debrief participants. Fully explain the experiment afterward, including
any deception. The only exception to this rule is when the feedback would be distressing, such as by making participants realize they have been stupid or cruel.
The experimenter should be sufficiently informative and considerate that people leave feeling at least as good about themselves as when they came in. Better yet, the participants should be compensated by having learned something. When treated respectfully, few participants mind being deceived (Epley & Huff, 1998; Kimmel, 1998). Indeed, say social psychology’s advocates, professors provoke far greater anxiety and distress by giving and returning course exams than researchers pro- voke in their experiments.
Generalizing from Laboratory to Life As the research on children, television, and violence illustrates, social psychology mixes everyday experience and laboratory analysis. Throughout this book we will do the same by drawing our data mostly from the laboratory and our illustrations mostly from life. Social psychology displays a healthy interplay between labora- tory research and everyday life. Hunches gained from everyday experience often inspire laboratory research, which deepens our understanding of our experience.
This interplay appears in the children’s television experiment. What people saw in everyday life suggested correlational research, which led to experimental research. Network and government policymakers, those with the power to make changes, are
demand characteristics Cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected.
informed consent An ethical principle requiring that research participants be told enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate.
debriefing In social psychology, the postexperimental explanation of a study to its participants. Debriefing usually discloses any deception and often queries participants regarding their understandings and feelings.
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Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 29
now aware of the results. The consistency of findings on television’s effects—in the lab and in the field—is true of research in many other areas, including studies of helping, leadership style, depression, and self-efficacy. The effects one finds in the lab have been mirrored by effects in the field. “The psychology laboratory has generally produced psychological truths rather than trivialities,” note Craig Anderson and his colleagues (1999).
We need to be cautious, however, in generalizing from laboratory to life. Although the laboratory uncovers basic dynamics of human existence, it is still a simplified, controlled reality. It tells us what effect to expect of variable X, all other things being equal—which in real life they never are! Moreover, as you will see, the participants in many experiments are college students. Although that may help you identify with them, college students are hardly a random sample of all humanity. Would we get similar results with people of different ages, educational levels, and cultures? That is always an open question.
Nevertheless, we can distinguish between the content of people’s thinking and acting (their attitudes, for example) and the process by which they think and act (for example, how attitudes affect actions and vice versa). The content varies more from culture to culture than does the process. People from various cultures may hold dif- ferent opinions yet form them in similar ways. Consider:
• College students in Puerto Rico have reported greater loneliness than do collegians on the U.S. mainland. Yet in the two cultures the ingredients of loneliness have been much the same—shyness, uncertain purpose in life, low self-esteem (Jones & others, 1985).
• Ethnic groups differ in school achievement and delinquency, but the differ- ences are “no more than skin deep,” report David Rowe and his colleagues (1994). To the extent that family structure, peer influences, and parental education predict achievement or delinquency for one ethnic group, they do so for other groups.
Although our behaviors may differ, we are influenced by the same social forces. Beneath our surface diversity, we are more alike than different.
• Social psychologists organize their ideas and find- ings into theories. A good theory will distill an array of facts into a much shorter list of predictive principles. We can use those predictions to confirm or modify the theory, to generate new research, and to suggest practical application.
• Most social-psychological research is either correla- tional or experimental. Correlational studies, some- times conducted with systematic survey methods, discern the relationship between variables, such as between amount of education and amount of income. Knowing two things are naturally related is valuable information, but it is not a reliable indi- cator of what is causing what—or whether a third variable is involved.
• When possible, social psychologists prefer to con- duct experiments that explore cause and effect. By constructing a miniature reality that is under their
control, experimenters can vary one thing and then another and discover how those things, separately or in combination, affect behavior. We randomly assign participants to an experimental condition, which receives the experimental treatment, or to a control condition, which does not. We can then attri- bute any resulting difference between the two con- ditions to the independent variable ( Figure 1.7 ).
• In creating experiments, social psychologists some- times stage situations that engage people’s emotions. In doing so, they are obliged to follow profes- sional ethical guidelines, such as obtaining people’s informed consent, protecting them from harm, and fully disclosing afterward any temporary decep- tions. Laboratory experiments enable social psychol- ogists to test ideas gleaned from life experience and then to apply the principles and findings to the real world.
Summing Up: Research Methods: How We Do Social Psychology
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30 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
POSTSCRIPT: Why I Wrote This Book I write this text to offer social psychology’s powerful, hard-wrought principles. They have, I believe, the power to expand your mind and enrich your life. If you finish this book with sharpened critical think-
ing skills and with a deeper understanding of how we view and affect one anoth- er—and why we sometimes like, love, and help one another and sometimes dislike, hate, and harm one another—then I will be a satisfied author and you, I trust, will be a rewarded reader.
I write knowing that many readers are in the process of defining their life goals, identities, values, and attitudes. The novelist Chaim Potok recalls being urged by his mother to forgo writing: “Be a brain surgeon. You’ll keep a lot of people from dying; you’ll make a lot more money.” Potok’s response: “Mama, I don’t want to keep people from dying; I want to show them how to live” (quoted by Peterson, 1992, p. 47).
Many of us who teach and write psychology are driven not only by a love for giving psychology away but also by wanting to help students live better lives— wiser, more fulfilling, more compassionate lives. In this we are like teachers and writers in other fields. “Why do we write?” asks theologian Robert McAfee Brown. “I submit that beyond all rewards . . . we write because we want to change things. We write because we have this [conviction that we] can make a difference. The ‘differ- ence’ may be a new perception of beauty, a new insight into self-understanding, a new experience of joy, or a decision to join the revolution” (quoted by Marty, 1988). Indeed, I write hoping to do my part to restrain intuition with critical thinking, refine judgmentalism with compassion, and replace illusion with understanding.
Making the Social Connection As you read this book, you’ll find many interesting connections: con- nections between one researcher’s work and other social psychol-
ogy topics; connections between a concept discussed in one chapter and in other chapters.
I conclude each chapter with a brief reflection on social psychology’s human significance.
FIGURE :: 1.7 Two Methods of Doing Research: Correlational and Experimental
Research methods
Disadvantage
Some important variables cannot be studied with experiments
Advantage
Can explore cause and effect by controlling variables and by random assignment
Disadvantage
Causation often ambiguous
Advantage
Often uses real- world settings
Correlational Experimental
P.S.
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Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 31
Also, you will notice that many concepts introduced in early chapters connect to our everyday lives. Some of these social-psychological concepts are also applicable in clinical psychology, the courtroom, and care for our environment. These applica- tions appear throughout the book and particularly in Part Four: Applying Social Psychology.
So, keep an eye out for each of these connections—to the work of researchers, to other topics in social psychology, and to applications to everyday life.
We make some of these connections for you, right here in Making the Social Con- nection. As a way to broaden your understanding of these connections, you are invited to view a video clip of either an important concept discussed in the chapter or a famous social psychologist discussing what sparked his or her research inter- ests. These short videos offer examples of how social psychology’s topics relate to one another and to everyday experiences.
Go to the Online Learning Center for this text at www.mhhe.com/myers10e to view the video clip “How Dave Myers became a social psychologist.”
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Social Thinking
This book unfolds around its defini- tion of social psychology: the scientific study of how we think about (Part One), influence (Part Two), and relate to (Part Three) one another. Part Four offers additional, focused examples of how the research and the theories of social psychology are applied to real life.
Part One examines the scientific study of how we think about one another (also called social cognition). Each chapter confronts some over- riding questions: How reasonable are our social attitudes, explanations, and beliefs? Are our impressions of our- selves and others generally accurate? How does our social thinking form? How is it prone to bias and error, and how might we bring it closer to reality?
Chapter 2 explores the interplay between our sense of self and our social worlds. How do our social surroundings shape our self-identities? How does self-interest color our social judgments and motivate our social behavior?
Chapter 3 looks at the amazing and sometimes rather amusing ways we form beliefs about our social worlds. It also alerts us to some pitfalls of social thinking and suggests how to avoid them and think smarter.
Chapter 4 explores the links between our thinking and our actions, between our attitudes and our behaviors: Do our attitudes determine our behaviors, or
vice versa? Or does it work both ways?
partone
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The Self in a Social World *
2 C H A P T E R
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A t the center of our worlds, more pivotal for us than anything else, is ourselves. As we navigate our daily lives, our sense of self continually engages the world.
Consider this example: One morning, you wake up to find your
hair sticking up at weird angles on your head. It’s too late to jump in
the shower and you can’t find a hat, so you smooth down the random
spikes of your hair and dash out the door to class. All morning, you’re
acutely self-conscious about your very bad hair day. To your surprise,
your friends in class don’t say anything. Are they secretly laughing to
themselves about how ridiculous you look, or are they too preoccu-
pied with themselves to notice your spiky hair?
Spotlights and illusions
Self-concept: Who am I?
Self-esteem
Perceived self-control
Self-serving bias
Self-presentation
Postscript: Twin truths—The perils of pride, the powers of positive thinking
“There are three things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know one’s self.”
— Benjamin Franklin
* This 10th edition chapter is co-authored by Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University. Professor Twenge’s research on social rejection and on generational changes in personality and the self has been published in many articles and books, including Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before (2006) and The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (with W. Keith Campbell, 2009).
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36 Part One Social Thinking
Spotlights and Illusions From our self-focused perspective, we overestimate our conspicuousness. This spotlight effect means that we tend to see ourselves at center stage, so we intui- tively overestimate the extent to which others’ attention is aimed at us.
Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec, and Kenneth Savitsky (2000) explored the spotlight effect by having individual Cornell University students don embarrass- ing Barry Manilow T-shirts before entering a room with other students. The self- conscious T-shirt wearers guessed that nearly half their peers would notice the shirt. Actually, only 23 percent did.
What’s true of our dorky clothes and bad hair is also true of our emotions: our anxiety, irritation, disgust, deceit, or attraction (Gilovich & others, 1998). Fewer people notice than we presume. Keenly aware of our own emotions, we often suf- fer an illusion of transparency. If we’re happy and we know it, then our face will surely show it. And others, we presume, will notice. Actually, we can be more opaque than we realize. (See “Research Close-Up: On Being Nervous about Look- ing Nervous.” )
spotlight effect The belief that others are paying more attention to one’s appearance and behavior than they really are.
illusion of transparency The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others.
The spotlight effect: overestimating others’ noticing our behavior and appearance. FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE © 2005 Lynn Johnston Productions. Dist. by Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
On Being Nervous about Looking Nervous
Have you ever felt self-conscious when approaching someone you felt attracted to, concerned that your ner- vousness was obvious? Or have you felt yourself trem- bling while speaking before an audience and presumed that everyone was noticing?
Kenneth Savitsky and Thomas Gilovich (2003) knew from their own and others’ studies that people overesti- mate the extent to which their internal states “leak out.” People who are asked to tell lies presume that others
will detect their deceit, which feels so obvious. People who are asked to sample horrid-tasting drinks presume that others notice their disgust, which they can barely suppress.
Many people who find themselves having to make a presentation report being not only nervous but also anxious that they will seem so. And if they feel their knees shaking and hands trembling during their pre- sentation, their presumption that others are noticing
research CLOSE-UP
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The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 37
may compound and perpetuate their anxiety. This is similar to fretting about not falling asleep, which fur- ther impedes one’s falling asleep, or feeling anxious about stuttering, which worsens the stuttering. (As a former stutterer and speech therapy patient, I know this is true.)
Savitsky and Gilovich wondered whether an “illusion of transparency” might surface among inexperienced public speakers—and whether it might disrupt their performance. To find out, they invited 40 Cornell Uni- versity students to their laboratory in pairs. As one per- son stood at a podium with the other seated, Savitsky assigned a topic, such as “The Best and Worst Things About Life Today,” and asked the person to speak for three minutes. Then the two switched positions and the other person gave a three-minute impromptu talk on a different topic. Afterward, each rated how nervous they thought they appeared while speaking (from 0, not at all, to 10, very) and how nervous the other person seemed.
The results? People rated themselves as appearing relatively nervous (6.65, on average). But to their part- ner they appeared not so nervous (5.25), a difference great enough to be statistically significant (meaning that a difference this great, for this sample of people, is very unlikely to have been due to chance varia- tion). Twenty-seven of the 40 participants (68 percent) believed that they appeared more nervous than did their partner.
To check on the reliability of their finding, Savitsky and Gilovich replicated (repeated) the experiment by having people speak before passive audiences that weren’t distracted by their own speech-giving. Once again, speakers overestimated the transparency of their nervousness.
Savitsky and Gilovich next wondered whether informing speakers that their nervousness isn’t so obvious might help them relax and perform bet- ter. They invited 77 more Cornell students to come to the lab and, after five minutes’ preparation, give a three-minute videotaped speech on race relations at their university. Those in one group—the control condition—were given no further instructions. Those in the reassured condition were told that it was natural to feel anxious but that “You shouldn’t worry much about what other people think. . . . With this in mind you should just relax and try to do your best. Know that if you become nervous, you probably shouldn’t worry about it.” To those in the informed condition he explained the illusion of transparency. After telling them it was natural to feel anxious, the experimenter added that “Research has found that audiences can’t pick up on your anxiety as well as you might expect. . . . Those speaking feel that their nervousness is transparent, but in reality their feelings are not so apparent. . . . With this in mind, you should just relax and try to do your best. Know that if you become ner- vous, you’ll probably be the only one to know.”
After the speeches, the speakers rated their speech quality and their perceived nervousness (this time using a 7-point scale), and were also rated by the observers. As Table 2.1 shows, those informed about the illusion-of- transparency phenomenon felt better about their speech and their appearance than did those in the control and reassurance conditions. What’s more, the observers con- firmed the speakers’ self-assessments.
So, the next time you feel nervous about looking nervous, pause to remember the lesson of these experi- ments: Other people are noticing less than you might suppose.
TABLE :: 2.1 Average Ratings of Speeches by Speakers and Observers on a 1 to 7 Scale
Type of Rating Control Condition Reassured Condition Informed Condition
Speakers’ self-ratings
Speech quality 3.04 2.83 3.50*
Relaxed appearance 3.35 2.69 4.20*
Observers’ ratings
Speech quality 3.50 3.62 4.23*
Composed appearance 3.90 3.94 4.65*
*Each of these results differs by a statistically significant margin from those of the control and reassured condition.
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38 Part One Social Thinking
We also overestimate the visibility of our social blunders and public mental slips. When we trigger the library alarm or accidentally insult someone, we may be mortified (“Everyone thinks I’m a jerk”). But research shows that what we agonize over, others may hardly notice and soon forget (Savitsky & others, 2001).
The spotlight effect and the related illusion of transparency are but two of many examples of the interplay between our sense of self and our social worlds. Here are more examples:
• Social surroundings affect our self-awareness. When we are the only member of our race, gender, or nationality in a group, we notice how we differ and how others are reacting to our difference. A White American friend once told me how self-consciously White he felt while living in a rural village in Nepal; an hour later, an African American friend told me how self-consciously Ameri- can she felt while in Africa.
• Self-interest colors our social judgment. When problems arise in a close relation- ship such as marriage, we usually attribute more responsibility to our part- ners than to ourselves. When things go well at home or work or play, we see ourselves as more responsible.
• Self-concern motivates our social behavior. In hopes of making a positive impression, we agonize about our appearance. Like savvy politicians, we also monitor others’ behavior and expectations and adjust our behavior accordingly.
• Social relationships help define our self. In our varied relationships, we have varying selves, note Susan Andersen and Serena Chen (2002). We may be one self with Mom, another with friends, another with teachers. How we think of ourselves is linked to the person we’re with at the moment.
As these examples suggest, the traffic between ourselves and others runs both ways. Our ideas and feelings about ourselves affect how we respond to others. And others help shape our sense of self.
No topic in psychology today is more heavily researched than the self. In 2009 the word “self” appeared in 6,935 book and article summaries in PsycINFO (the online archive of psychological research)—more than four times the number that appeared in 1970. Our sense of self organizes our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Our sense of self enables us to remember our past, assess our present, and project our future—and thus to behave adaptively.
In later chapters we will see that much of our behavior is not consciously con- trolled, but rather, automatic and unself-conscious. However, the self does enable long-term planning, goal-setting, and restraint. It imagines alternatives, compares itself with others, and manages its reputation and relationships. Moreover, as Mark Leary (2004a) has noted, the self can sometimes be an impediment to a satisfying life. Its egocentric preoccupations are what religious meditation practices seek to prune, by quieting the self, reducing its attachments to material pleasures, and redi- recting it. “Mysticism,” adds fellow psychologist Jonathan Haidt (2006), “every- where and always, is about losing the self, transcending the self, and merging with something larger than the self.”
In the remainder of this chapter, we will take a look at self-concept (how we come to know ourselves) and at the self in action (how our sense of self drives our attitudes and actions).
“No topic is more interesting to people than people. For most people, moreover, the most interesting person is the self.”
—ROY F. BAUMEISTER, THE SELF IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, 1999
• Concerned with the impression we make on oth- ers, we tend to believe that others are paying more attention to us than they are (the spotlight effect).
• We also tend to believe that our emotions are more obvious than they are (the illusion of transparency).
Summing Up: Spotlights and Illusions
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Self-Concept: Who Am I? How, and how accurately, do we know ourselves? What determines our self- concept?
You have many ways to complete the sentence “I am _____ .” (What five answers might you give?) Taken together, your answers define your self-concept.
At the Center of Our Worlds: Our Sense of Self The most important aspect of yourself is your self. You know who you are, your gender, whose feelings and memories you experience.
To discover where this sense of self arises, neuroscientists are exploring the brain activity that underlies our constant sense of being oneself. Some studies suggest an important role for the right hemisphere. Put yours to sleep (with an anesthetic to your right carotid artery) and you likely will have trouble recogniz- ing your own face. One patient with right hemisphere damage failed to recognize that he owned and was controlling his left hand (Decety & Sommerville, 2003). The “medial prefrontal cortex,” a neuron path located in the cleft between your brain hemispheres just behind your eyes, seemingly helps stitch together your sense of self. It becomes more active when you think about yourself (Zimmer, 2005). The elements of your self-concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yourself, are your self-schemas (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Schemas are mental tem- plates by which we organize our worlds. Our self -schemas—our perceiving our- selves as athletic, overweight, smart, or whatever—powerfully affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate other people and ourselves. If athletics is cen- tral to your self- concept (if being an athlete is one of your self-schemas), then you will tend to notice others’ bod- ies and skills. You will quickly recall sports-related experiences. And you will welcome infor- mation that is consistent with your self-schema (Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984). The self-schemas that make up our self-concepts help us organize and retrieve our experiences.
POSSIBLE SELVES Our self-concepts include not only our self-schemas about who we currently are but also who we might become—our possible selves. Hazel Markus and her colleagues (Inglehart & others, 1989; Markus & Nurius, 1986) note that our possible selves include our visions of the self we dream of becoming—the rich self, the thin self, the passion- ately loved and loving self. They also include the self we fear
self-concept A person’s answers to the question, “Who am I?”
self-schema Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information.
possible selves Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future.
Oprah Winfrey’s imagined possible selves, including the dreaded overweight self, the rich self, and the helpful self, motivated her to work to achieve the life she wanted.
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becoming—the underemployed self, the unloved self, the academically failed self. Such possible selves motivate us with a vision of the life we long for.
Development of the Social Self The self-concept has become a major social-psychological focus because it helps organize our thinking and guide our social behavior ( Figure 2.1 ). But what deter- mines our self-concepts? Studies of twins point to genetic influences on personality and self-concept, but social experience also plays a part. Among these influences are the following:
• the roles we play • the social identities we form • the comparisons we make with others • our successes and failures • how other people judge us • the surrounding culture
THE ROLES WE PLAY As we enact a new role—college student, parent, salesperson—we initially feel self- conscious. Gradually, however, what begins as playacting in the theater of life is absorbed into our sense of self. For example, while playing our roles we may sup- port something we haven’t really thought much about. Having made a pitch on behalf of our organization, we then justify our words by believing more strongly in it. Role playing becomes reality (see Chapter 4).
SOCIAL COMPARISONS How do we decide if we are rich, smart, or short? One way is through social com- parisons (Festinger, 1954). Others around us help to define the standard by which we define ourselves as rich or poor, smart or dumb, tall or short: We compare our- selves with them and consider how we differ. Social comparison explains why stu- dents tend to have a higher academic self-concept if they attend a high school with mostly average students (Marsh & others, 2000), and how that self-concept can be threatened after graduation when a student who excelled in an average high school goes on to an academically selective university. The “big fish” is no longer in a small pond.
social comparison Evaluating one’s abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others.
FIGURE :: 2.1 The Self
The Self
Self-knowledge
How can I explain and predict myself?
Self-esteem
My sense of self-worth
Social self
My roles as a student, family member, and
friend; my group identity
Self-concept
Who am I?
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Much of life revolves around social comparisons. We feel handsome when oth- ers seem homely, smart when others seem dull, caring when others seem callous. When we witness a peer’s performance, we cannot resist implicitly comparing our- selves (Gilbert & others, 1995; Stapel & Suls, 2004). We may, therefore, privately take some pleasure in a peer’s failure, especially when it happens to someone we envy and when we don’t feel vulnerable to such misfortune ourselves (Lockwood, 2002; Smith & others, 1996).
Social comparisons can also diminish our satisfaction. When we experience an increase in affluence, status, or achievement, we “compare upward”—we raise the standards by which we evaluate our attainments. When climbing the ladder of success, we tend to look up, not down; we compare ourselves with others doing even better (Gruder, 1977; Suls & Tesch, 1978; Wheeler & others, 1982). When facing competition, we often protect our shaky self-concept by perceiving the competitor as advantaged. For example, college swimmers believed that their competitors had better coaching and more practice time (Shepperd & Taylor, 1999).
SUCCESS AND FAILURE Self-concept is fed not only by our roles, our social identity, and our comparisons but also by our daily experiences. To undertake challenging yet realistic tasks and to succeed is to feel more competent. After mastering the physical skills needed to repel a sexual assault, women feel less vulnerable, less anxious, and more in control (Ozer & Bandura, 1990). After experiencing academic success, students believe they are better at school, which often stimulates them to work harder and achieve more (Felson, 1984; Marsh & Young, 1997). To do one’s best and achieve is to feel more confident and empowered.
As noted in Chapter 1, the success-feeds-self-esteem principle has led several research psychologists to question efforts to boost achievement by raising self- esteem with positive messages (“You are somebody! You’re special!”). Self-esteem comes not only from telling children how wonderful they are but also from hard- earned achievements. Feelings follow reality.
Low self-esteem does sometimes cause problems. Compared with those with low self-esteem, people with a sense of self-worth are happier, less neurotic, less troubled by insomnia, less prone to drug and alcohol addictions, and more persis- tent after failure (Brockner & Hulton, 1978; Brown, 1991; Tafarodi & Vu, 1997). But as we will see, critics argue that it’s at least as true the other way around: Problems and failures can cause low self-esteem.
OTHER PEOPLE’S JUDGMENTS When people think well of us, it helps us think well of ourselves. Children whom others label as gifted, hardworking, or helpful tend to incorporate such ideas into their self-concepts and behavior (see Chapter 3). If minority students feel threat- ened by negative stereotypes of their academic ability, or if women feel threatened by low expectations for their math and science performance, they may “disiden- tify” with those realms. Rather than fight such prejudgments, they may identify their interests elsewhere (Steele, 1997, and see Chapter 9).
The looking-glass self was how sociologist Charles H. Cooley (1902) described our use of how we think others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves. Fel- low sociologist George Herbert Mead (1934) refined this concept, noting that what matters for our self-concepts is not how others actually see us but the way we imag- ine they see us. People generally feel freer to praise than to criticize; they voice their compliments and restrain their gibes. We may, therefore, overestimate others’ appraisal, inflating our self-images (Shrauger & Schoeneman, 1979).
Self-inflation, as we will see, is found most strikingly in Western countries. Shinobu Kitayama (1996) reports that Japanese visitors to North America are rou- tinely struck by the many words of praise that friends offer one another. When he
“Make no comparisons!” —KING CHARLES I, 1600–1649
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and his colleagues asked people how many days ago they last complimented some- one, the most common American response was one day. In Japan, where people are socialized less to feel pride in personal achievement and more to feel shame in failing others, the most common response was four days.
Our ancestors’ fate depended on what others thought of them. Their survival was enhanced when protected by their group. When perceiving their group’s dis- approval, there was biological wisdom to their feeling shame and low self-esteem. As their heirs, having a similar deep-seated need to belong, we feel the pain of low self-esteem when we face social exclusion, notes Mark Leary (1998, 2004b). Self- esteem, he argues, is a psychological gauge by which we monitor and react to how others appraise us.
Self and Culture How did you complete the “I am _____ ” statement on page 39? Did you give infor- mation about your personal traits, such as “I am honest,” “I am tall,” or “I am outgo- ing”? Or did you also describe your social identity, such as “I am a Pisces,” “I am a MacDonald,” or “I am a Muslim”?
For some people, especially those in industrialized Western cultures, individ- ualism prevails. Identity is self-contained. Adolescence is a time of separating from parents, becoming self-reliant, and defining one’s personal, independent self. One’s identity—as a unique individual with particular abilities, traits, values, and dreams—remains fairly constant.
The psychology of Western cultures assumes that your life will be enriched by believing in your power of personal control. Western literature, from The Iliad to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, celebrates the self-reliant individual. Movie plots feature rugged heroes who buck the establishment. Songs proclaim “I Gotta Be Me,” declare that “The Greatest Love of All” is loving oneself (Schoeneman, 1994) and state without irony that “I Believe the World Should Revolve Around Me.” Individualism flourishes when people experience affluence, mobility, urban- ism, and mass media (Freeman, 1997; Marshall, 1997; Triandis, 1994).
Most cultures native to Asia, Africa, and Central and South America place a greater value on collectivism. They nurture what Shinobu Kitayama and Hazel Markus (1995) call the interdependent self. In these cultures, people are more self- critical and have less need for positive self-regard (Heine & others, 1999). Malay- sians, Indians, Japanese, and traditional Kenyans such as the Maasai, for example, are much more likely than Australians, Americans, and the British to complete the “I am” statement with their group identities (Kanagawa & others, 2001; Ma & Schoeneman, 1997). When speaking, people using the languages of collectivist countries say “I” less often (Kashima & Kashima, 1998, 2003). A person might say “Went to the movie” rather than “I went to the movie.”
Pigeonholing cultures as solely individualist or collectivist oversimplifies, because within any culture individualism varies from person to person (Oyserman & others, 2002a, 2002b). There are individualist Chinese and collectivist Ameri- cans, and most of us sometimes behave communally, sometimes individualistically (Bandura, 2004). Individualism-collectivism also varies across a country’s regions and political views. In the United States, Hawaiians and those living in the deep South exhibit greater collectivism than do those in Mountain West states such as Oregon and Montana (Vandello & Cohen, 1999). Conservatives tend to be eco- nomic individualists (“don’t tax or regulate me”) and moral collectivists (“legislate against immorality”). Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be economic collectiv- ists (supporting national health care) and moral individualists (“keep your laws off my body”). Despite individual and subcultural variations, researchers continue to regard individualism and collectivism as genuine cultural variables (Schimmack & others, 2005).
individualism The concept of giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.
collectivism Giving priority to the goals of one’s groups (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly.
interdependent self Construing one’s identity in relation to others.
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GROWING INDIVIDUALISM Cultures can also change over time, and many seem to be growing more indi- vidualistic. China’s young people have acquired the label “The Me Generation,” and new economic opportunities have challenged traditional collectivistic ways in India. Chinese citizens under 25 are more likely than those over 25 to agree with individualistic statements such as “make a name for yourself” and “live a life that suits your tastes” (Arora, 2005). In the United States, younger genera- tions report significantly more positive self-feelings than young people did in the 1960s and 1970s (Gentile & others, 2009; Twenge & Campbell, 2001).
Even your name might show the shift toward individualism: American parents are now less likely to give their children common names and more likely to help them stand out with an unusual name. While nearly 20 percent of boys born in 1990 received one of the 10 most common names, only 9 percent received such a com- mon name by 2007 (Twenge & others, 2009). Today, you don’t have to be the child of a celebrity to get a name as unique as Shiloh, Suri, Knox, or Apple.
These changes demonstrate something that goes deeper than a name: The inter- action between individuals and society. Did the culture focus on uniqueness first and cause the parents’ name choices, or did individual parents decide they wanted their children to be unique, thus creating the culture? The answer, though not yet fully understood, is probably both.
CULTURE AND COGNITION In his book The Geography of Thought (2003), social psychologist Richard Nisbett contends that collectivism also results in different ways of thinking. Consider: Which two—of a panda, a monkey, and a banana—go together? Perhaps a monkey and a panda, because they both fit the category “animal”? Asians more often than Ameri- cans see relationships: monkey eats banana. When shown an animated underwater scene ( Figure 2.2 ), Japanese spontaneously recalled 60 percent more background features than did Americans, and they spoke of more relationships (the frog beside the plant). Americans look more at the focal object, such as a single big fish, and less at the surroundings (Chua & others, 2005; Nisbett, 2003), a result duplicated in studies examining activation in differ- ent areas of the brain (Goh & others, 2007; Lewis & others, 2008). When shown drawings of groups of children, Japanese students took the facial expres- sions of all of the children into account when rating the happi- ness or anger of an individual
FIGURE :: 2.2 Asian and Western Thinking When shown an underwater scene, Asians often describe the environment and the relation- ships among the fish. Americans attend more to a single big fish (Nisbett, 2003).
© The New Yorker Collection, 2000, Jack Ziegler, from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
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child, whereas Americans focused on only the child they were asked to rate (Masuda & others, 2008). Nisbett and Takahido Masuda (2003) conclude from such studies that East Asians think more holistically—perceiving and thinking about objects and people in relationship to one another and to their environment.
If you grew up in a Western culture, you were probably told to “express
yourself”—through writing, the choices you make, and the products you buy, and perhaps through your tattoos or piercings. When asked about the purpose of lan- guage, American students were more likely to explain that it allows self-expression, whereas Korean students focused on how language allows communication with others. American students were also more likely to see their choices as expressions of themselves and to evaluate their choices more favorably (Kim & Sherman, 2007). The individualized latté—“decaf, single shot, skinny, extra hot”—that seems just right at a North American espresso shop would seem strange in Seoul, note Heejung Kim and Hazel Markus (1999). In Korea, people place less value on expressing their uniqueness and more on tradition and shared practices (Choi & Choi, 2002, and Figure 2.3 ). Korean advertisements tend to feature people together; they seldom highlight personal choice or freedom (Markus, 2001; Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008).
With an interdependent self, one has a greater sense of belonging. If they were uprooted and cut off from family, colleagues, and loyal friends, interdependent people would lose the social connections that define who they are. They have not one self but many selves: self-with-parents, self-at-work, self-with-friends (Cross & others, 1992). As Figure 2.4 and Table 2.2 suggest, the interdependent self is embed- ded in social memberships. Conversation is less direct and more polite (Holtgraves, 1997), and people focus more on gaining social approval (Lalwani & others, 2006). The goal of social life is to harmonize with and support one’s communities, not—as it is in more individualistic societies—to enhance one’s individual self.
Even within one culture, personal history can influence self-views. People who have moved from place to place are happier when people understand their con- stant, personal selves; people who have always lived in the same town are more pleased when someone recognizes their collective identity (Oishi & others, 2007). Our self-concepts seem to adjust to our situation: If you interact with the same peo- ple all your life, they are more important to your identity than if you are uprooted every few years and must make new friends. Your self becomes your constant com- panion (echoing the nonsensical but correct statement “Wherever you go, there you are”).
FIGURE :: 2.3 Which Pen Would You Choose? When Heejun Kim and Hazel Markus (1999) invited people to choose one of these pens, 77 percent of Americans but only 31 percent of Asians chose the uncommon color (regardless of whether it was orange, as here, or green). This result illustrates differing cultural preferences for uniqueness and conformity, note Kim and Markus.
FIGURE :: 2.4 Self-Construal as Independent or Interdependent The independent self acknowl- edges relationships with others. But the interdependent self is more deeply embedded in others (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
Co-worker
FatherMother
Friend
Friend
Sibling
Father Mother
Friend
Friend
Sibling
Self
Co-worker
Self
Independent view of self Interdependent view of self
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CULTURE AND SELF-ESTEEM Self-esteem in collectivist cultures correlates closely with “what others think of me and my group.” Self-concept is malleable (context-specific) rather than stable (enduring across situations). In one study, four in five Canadian students but only one in three Chinese and Japanese students agreed that “the beliefs that you hold about who you are (your inner self) remain the same across different activity domains” (Tafarodi & others, 2004).
For those in individualistic cultures, self-esteem is more personal and less rela- tional. Threaten our personal identity and we’ll feel angrier and gloomier than when someone threatens our collective identity (Gaertner & others, 1999). Unlike Japa- nese, who persist more on tasks when they are failing (wanting not to fall short of others’ expectations), people in individualistic countries persist more when suc- ceeding, because success elevates self-esteem (Heine & others, 2001). Western indi- vidualists like to make comparisons with others that boost their self-esteem. Asian collectivists make comparisons (often upward, with those doing better) in ways that facilitate self-improvement (White & Lehman, 2005).
So when, do you suppose, are university students in collectivist Japan and individualist United States most likely to report positive emotions such as hap- piness and elation? For Japanese students, happiness comes with positive social engagement—with feeling close, friendly, and respectful. For American students, it more often comes with disengaged emotions—with feeling effective, superior, and proud (Kitayama & Markus, 2000). Conflict in collectivist cultures often takes place between groups; individualist cultures breed more conflict (and crime and divorce) between individuals (Triandis, 2000).
When Kitayama (1999), after ten years of teaching and researching in America, visited his Japanese alma mater, Kyoto University, graduate students were “astounded” when he explained the Western idea of the independent self. “I per- sisted in explaining this Western notion of self-concept—one that my American students understood intuitively—and finally began to persuade them that, indeed, many Americans do have such a disconnected notion of self. Still, one of them, sighing deeply, said at the end, ‘Could this really be true?’”
When East meets West—as happens, for example, thanks to Western influences in urban Japan and to Japanese exchange students visiting Western countries—does the self-concept become more individualized? Are the Japanese influenced when exposed to Western promotions based on individual achievement, with admonitions to “believe in one’s own possibilities,” and with movies in which the heroic individual police officer catches the crook despite others’ interference? They seem to be, report Steven Heine and his co-researchers (1999). Personal self-esteem increased among Japanese exchange students after spending seven months at the University of British Columbia. In Canada individual self-esteem is also higher among long-term Asian immigrants than among more recent immigrants (and than it is among those living in Asia).
“One needs to cultivate the spirits of sacrificing the little me to achieve the benefits of the big me.”
—CHINESE SAYING
TABLE :: 2.2 Self-Concept: Independent or Interdependent
Independent Interdependent
Identity is Personal, defined by individual traits and goals
Social, defined by connections with others
What matters Me—personal achievement and fulfilment; my rights and liberties
We—group goals and solidarity; our social responsi- bilities and relationships
Disapproves of Conformity Egotism
Illustrative motto “To thine own self be true” “No one is an island”
Cultures that support Individualistic Western Collectivistic Asian and Third World
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Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama on Cultural Psychology
We began our collaboration by wondering out loud. Shi- nobu wondered why American life was so weird. Hazel countered with anecdotes about the strangeness of Japan. Cultural psychology is about making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Our shared cultural encounters astonished us and convinced us that when it comes to psychological functioning, place matters.
After weeks of lecturing in Japan to students with a good command of English, Hazel wondered why the stu- dents did not say anything—no questions, no comments. She assured students she was interested in ideas that were different from hers, so why was there no response? Where were the arguments, debates, and signs of critical thinking? Even if she asked a straightforward question, “Where is the best noodle shop?” the answer was invari- ably an audible intake of air followed by, “It depends.” Didn’t Japanese students have preferences, ideas, opin- ions, and attitudes? What is inside a head if it isn’t these things? How could you know someone if she didn’t tell you what she was thinking?
Shinobu was curious about why students shouldn’t just listen to a lecture and why American students felt the need to be constantly interrupting each other and talk- ing over each other and the professor. Why did the com- ments and questions reveal strong emotions and have a competitive edge? What was the point of this arguing? Why did intelligence seem to be associated with getting the best of another person, even within a class where people knew each other well?
Shinobu expressed his amazement at American hosts who bombard their guests with choices. Do you want wine or beer, or soft drinks or juice, or coffee or tea? Why burden the guest with trivial decisions? Surely the host knew what would be good refreshment on this occasion and could simply provide something appropriate.
Choice as a burden? Hazel wondered if this could be the key to one particularly humiliating experience in Japan. A group of eight was in a French restaurant, and everyone was following the universal restaurant script and was studying the menu. The waiter approached and stood nearby. Hazel announced her choice of appetizer
and entrée. Next was a tense conversation among the Japanese host and the Japanese guests. When the meal was served, it was not what she had ordered. Everyone at the table was served the same meal. This was deeply dis- turbing. If you can’t choose your own dinner, how could it be enjoyable? What was the point of the menu if every- body is served the same meal?
Could a sense of sameness be a good or a desirable feeling in Japan? When Hazel walked around the grounds of a temple in Kyoto, there was a fork in the path and a sign that read: “ordinary path.” Who would want to take the ordinary path? Where was the special, less traveled path? Choosing the non-ordinary path may be an obvi- ous course for Americans, but in this case it led to the temple dump outside the temple grounds. The ordinary path did not denote the dull and unchallenging way, but meant the appropriate and the good way.
These exchanges inspired our experimental stud- ies and remind us that there are ways of life beyond the ones that each of us knows best. So far, most of psychol- ogy has been produced by psychologists in middle-class White American settings studying middle-class White American respondents. In other sociocultural contexts, there can be different ideas and practices about how to be a person and how to live a meaningful life, and these differences have an influence on psychological function- ing. It is this realization that fuels our continuing interest in collaboration and in cultural psychology.
THE inside STORY
Hazel Rose Markus, Stanford University
Shinobu Kitayama, University of Michigan
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Self-Knowledge “Know thyself,” admonished an ancient Greek oracle. We certainly try. We readily form beliefs about ourselves, and we in Western cultures don’t hesitate to explain why we feel and act as we do. But how well do we actually know ourselves?
“There is one thing, and only one in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation,” noted C. S. Lewis (1952, pp. 18–19). “That one thing is [ourselves]. We have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know.” Indeed. Yet sometimes we think we know, but our inside infor- mation is wrong. That is the unavoidable conclusion of some fascinating research.
EXPLAINING OUR BEHAVIOR Why did you choose where to go to college? Why did you lash out at your room- mate? Why did you fall in love with that special person? Sometimes we know. Some- times we don’t. Asked why we have felt or acted as we have, we produce plausible answers. Yet, when causes are subtle, our self-explanations are often wrong. We may dismiss factors that matter and inflate others that don’t. People may misattrib- ute their rainy-day gloom to life’s emptiness (Schwarz & Clore, 1983). And people routinely deny being influenced by the media, which, they readily acknowledge, affects others.
Also thought provoking are studies in which people recorded their moods every day for two or three months (Stone & others, 1985; Weiss & Brown, 1976; Wilson & others, 1982). They also recorded factors that might affect their moods: the day of the week, the weather, the amount they slept, and so forth. At the end of each study, the people judged how much each factor had affected their moods. Even with their attention on their daily moods, there was little relationship between their per- ceptions of how well a factor predicted their mood and how well it really did. For example, people thought they would experience more negative moods on Mondays, but in fact their moods were no more negative on Mondays than other weekdays. This raises a disconcerting question: How much insight do we really have into what makes us happy or unhappy? As Daniel Gilbert notes in Stumbling on Happiness (2007), not much: We are remarkably bad predictors of what will make us happy.
“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.” —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE
MERCHANT OF VENICE, 1596
Collectivism in action: Following the 2004 tsunami, people acted together to help one another.
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PREDICTING OUR BEHAVIOR People also err when predicting their behavior. Dating couples tend to predict the longevity of their relationships through rose-colored glasses. Their friends and family often know better, report Tara MacDonald and Michael Ross (1997). Among University of Waterloo students, their roommates were better predictors of whether their romances would survive than they were. Medical residents weren’t very good at predicting whether they would do well on a surgical skills exam, but their peers in the program predicted each others’ performance with startling accuracy (Lutsky & others, 1993). So if you’re in love and want to know whether it will last, don’t listen to your heart—ask your roommate. And if you want to predict your routine daily behaviors—how much time you will spend laughing, on the phone, or watch- ing TV, for example—your close friends’ estimates will likely prove at least as accu- rate as your own (Vazire & Mehl, 2008).
One of the most common errors in behavior prediction is underestimating how long it will take to complete a task (called the planning fallacy. ) The Big Dig free- way construction project in Boston was supposed to take 10 years and actually took 20 years. The Sydney Opera House was supposed to be completed in 6 years; it took 16. In one study, college students writing a senior thesis paper were asked to predict when they would complete the project. On average, students finished three weeks later than their “most realistic” estimate—and a week later than their “worst-case scenario” estimate (Buehler & others, 2002)! However, friends and teachers were able to predict just how late these papers would be. Just as you should ask your friends how long your relationship is likely to survive, if you want to know when you will finish your term paper, ask your roommate or your mom. You could also do what Microsoft does: Managers automatically add 30 percent onto a software developer’s estimate of completion—and 50 percent if the project involves a new operating system (Dunning, 2006).
So, how can you improve your self-predictions? The best way is to be more real- istic about how long tasks took in the past. Apparently people underestimate how long something will take because they misremember previous tasks as taking less time (Roy & others, 2005).
Or you can try predicting someone else’s actions. A month before a presiden- tial election, Nicholas Epley and David Dunning (2006) asked students to predict whether they would vote. Almost all (90 percent) predicted they would vote, but only 69 percent did—virtually identical to the 70 percent who predicted that a peer would vote. So if the students had only considered what their peers were likely to do, they would have predicted their own behavior very accurately. If Lao-tzu was right that “he who knows others is learned. He who knows him- self is enlightened,” then most people, it would seem, are more learned than enlightened.
PREDICTING OUR FEELINGS Many of life’s big decisions involve predicting our future feelings. Would mar- rying this person lead to lifelong contentment? Would entering this profes- sion make for satisfying work? Would going on this vacation produce a happy experience? Or would the likelier results be divorce, job burnout, and holiday disappointment?
Sometimes we know how we will feel—if we fail that exam, win that big game, or soothe our tensions with a half-hour jog. We know what exhilarates us and what makes us anxious or bored. Other times we may mispredict our responses. Asked how they would feel if asked sexually harassing questions on a job interview, most women studied by Julie Woodzicka and Marianne LaFrance (2001) said they would feel angry. When actually asked such questions, however, women more often expe- rienced fear.
Studies of “affective forecasting” reveal that people have greatest difficulty pre- dicting the intensity and the duration of their future emotions (Wilson & Gilbert,
planning fallacy The tendency to under- estimate how long it will take to complete a task.
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2003). People have mispredicted how they would feel some time after a romantic breakup, receiving a gift, losing an election, winning a game, and being insulted (Gilbert & Ebert, 2002; Loewenstein & Schkade, 1999). Some examples:
• When male youths are sexually aroused by erotic photographs, then exposed to a passionate date scenario in which their date asks them to “stop,” they admit that they might not stop. If not shown sexually arousing pictures first, they more often deny the possibility of being sexually aggressive. When not aroused, one easily mispredicts how one will feel and act when aroused—a phenomenon that leads to unexpected professions of love during lust, to unintended pregnancies, and to repeat offenses among sex abusers who have sincerely vowed “never again.”
• Hungry shoppers do more impulse buying (“Those doughnuts would be delicious!”) than do shoppers who have just enjoyed a quarter-pound blue- berry muffin (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000). When we are hungry, we mispredict how gross those deep-fried doughnuts will seem when we are sated. When stuffed, we may underestimate how yummy a doughnut might be with a late-night glass of milk—a purchase whose appeal quickly fades when we have eaten one or two.
• Undergraduates who experienced a romantic breakup were less upset afterward than they predicted they would be (Eastwick & others, 2007). Their distress lasted just about as long as they thought it would, but the heartbroken students were not as hard-hit as they imagined they would be. European track athletes similarly overestimated how badly they would feel if they failed to reach their goal in an upcoming meet (van Dijk & oth- ers, 2008).
• When natural disasters like hurricanes occur, people predict that their sad- ness will be greater if more people are killed. But after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, students’ sadness was similar when it was believed that 50 people had been killed or 1,000 had been killed (Dunn & Ashton-James, 2008). What did influence how sad people felt? Seeing pictures of victims. No wonder poignant images on TV have so much influence on us after disasters.
• People overestimate how much their well-being would be affected by warmer winters, weight loss, more television channels, or more free time. Even extreme events, such as winning a state lottery or suffering a paralyz- ing accident, affect long-term happiness less than most people suppose.
Our intuitive theory seems to be: We want. We get. We are happy. If that were true, this chapter would have fewer words. In reality, note Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson (2000), we often “miswant.” People who imagine an idyl- lic desert island holiday with sun, surf, and sand may be disappointed when they discover “how much they require daily structure, intellectual stimulation, or regular infusions of Pop Tarts.” We think that if our candidate or team wins we will be delighted for a long while. But study after study reveals our vulnerability to impact bias —overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events. Faster than we expect, the emotional traces of such good tidings evaporate.
Moreover, we are especially prone to impact bias after negative events. When Gilbert and his colleagues (1998) asked assistant professors to predict their happiness a few years after achieving tenure or not, most believed
“When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone.”
—GEORGE MACDONALD, WHAT’S MINE’S MINE, 1886
Predicting behavior, even one’s own, is no easy matter, which may be why some people go to tarot card readers in hope of help.
impact bias Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events.
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a favorable outcome was important for their future happiness: “Losing my job would crush my life’s ambitions. It would be terrible.” Yet when surveyed sev- eral years after the event, those denied tenure were about as happy as those who received it. Impact bias is important, say Wilson and Gilbert (2005), because people’s “affective forecasts”—their predictions of their future emotions—in- fluence their decisions. If people overestimate the intensity and the duration of the pleasure they will gain from purchasing a new car or undergoing cosmetic surgery, then they may make ill-advised investments in that new Mercedes or extreme makeover.
Let’s make this personal. Gilbert and Wilson invite us to imagine how we might feel a year after losing our nondominant hands. Compared with today, how happy would you be?
Thinking about that, you perhaps focused on what the calamity would mean: no clapping, no shoe tying, no competitive basketball, no speedy keyboard- ing. Although you likely would forever regret the loss, your general happiness some time after the event would be influenced by “two things: (a) the event, and (b) everything else” (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000). In focusing on the negative event, we discount the importance of everything else that contributes to happiness and so overpredict our enduring misery. “Nothing that you focus on will make as much difference as you think,” write researchers David Schkade and Daniel Kahneman (1998).
Moreover, say Wilson and Gilbert (2003), people neglect the speed and the power of their psychological immune system, which includes their strategies for rationalizing, discounting, forgiving, and limiting emotional trauma. Being largely ignorant of our psychological immune system (a phenomenon Gilbert and Wilson call immune neglect ), we adapt to disabilities, romantic breakups, exam failures, tenure denials, and personal and team defeats more readily than we would expect. Ironically, as Gilbert and his colleagues report (2004), major negative events (which activate our psychological defenses) can be less enduringly distressing than minor irritations (which don’t activate our defenses). We are, under most circumstances, amazingly resilient.
THE WISDOM AND ILLUSIONS OF SELF-ANALYSIS To a striking extent, then, our intuitions are often dead wrong about what has influenced us and what we will feel and do. But let’s not overstate the case. When the causes of our behavior are conspicuous and the correct explanation fits our intuition, our self-perceptions will be accurate (Gavanski & Hoffman, 1987). When the causes of behavior are obvious to an observer, they are usually obvious to us as well.
As Chapter 3 will explore further, we are unaware of much that goes on in our minds. Perception and memory studies show that we are more aware of the results of our thinking than of its process. For example, we experience the results of our mind’s unconscious workings when we set a mental clock to record the passage of time or to awaken us at an appointed hour, or when we somehow achieve a spontaneous creative insight after a problem has unconsciously “incu- bated.” Similarly, creative scientists and artists often cannot report the thought processes that produced their insights, although they have superb knowledge of the results.
Timothy Wilson (1985, 2002) offers a bold idea: The mental processes that con- trol our social behavior are distinct from the mental processes through which we explain our behavior. Our rational explanations may therefore omit the uncon- scious attitudes that actually guide our behavior. In nine experiments, Wilson and his colleagues (1989, 2008) found that the attitudes people consciously expressed toward things or people usually predicted their subsequent behavior reasonably well. Their attitude reports became useless, however, if the participants were
“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
—PSALM 30:5
immune neglect The human tendency to underestimate the speed and the strength of the “psychological immune system,” which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen.
“Self-contemplation is a curse That makes an old confusion worse.”
—THEODORE ROETHKE, THE COLLECTED POEMS
OF THEODORE ROETHKE, 1975
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first asked to analyze their feelings. For example, dating couples’ level of hap- piness with their relationship accurately predicted whether they would still be dating several months later. But participants who first listed all the reasons they could think of why their relationship was good or bad before rating their happiness were misled—their happiness ratings were useless in predicting the future of the relationship! Apparently, the process of dissecting the relationship drew attention to easily verbalized factors that were actually not as important as harder-to-verbalize happiness. We are often “strangers to ourselves,” Wilson concluded (2002).
Such findings illustrate that we have a dual attitude system, say Wilson and his colleagues (2000). Our automatic implicit attitudes regarding someone or something often differ from our consciously controlled, explicit attitudes (Gawronski & Boden- hausen, 2006; Nosek, 2007). From childhood, for example, we may retain a habitual, automatic fear or dislike of people for whom we now consciously verbalize respect and appreciation. Although explicit attitudes may change with relative ease, notes Wilson, “implicit attitudes, like old habits, change more slowly.” With repeated practice, however, new habitual attitudes can replace old ones.
Murray Millar and Abraham Tesser (1992) have argued that Wilson overstates our ignorance of self. Their research suggests that, yes, drawing people’s attention to reasons diminishes the usefulness of attitude reports in predicting behaviors that are driven by feelings. They argue that if, instead of having people analyze their romantic relationships, Wilson had first asked them to get more in touch with their feelings (“How do you feel when you are with and apart from your partner?”), the attitude reports might have been more insightful. Other decisions people make—say, choosing which school to attend based on considerations of cost, career advancement, and so forth—seem more cognitively driven. For these, an analysis of reasons rather than feelings may be most useful. Although the heart has its rea- sons, sometimes the mind’s own reasons are decisive.
This research on the limits of our self-knowledge has two practical implications. The first is for psychological inquiry. Self-reports are often untrustworthy. Errors in self-understanding limit the scientific usefulness of subjective personal reports.
The second implication is for our everyday lives. The sincerity with which people report and interpret their experiences is no guarantee of the validity of those reports. Personal testimonies are powerfully persuasive (as we will see in Chapter 15, Social Psychology in Court). But they may also be wrong. Keeping this potential for error in mind can help us feel less intimidated by others and be less gullible.
dual attitudes Differing implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and persuasion; implicit attitudes change slowly, with practice that forms new habits.
• Our sense of self helps organize our thoughts and actions. When we process information with reference to ourselves, we remember it well (the self-reference effect). Self-concept consists of two elements: the self-schemas that guide our process- ing of self-relevant information, and the possible selves that we dream of or dread.
• Cultures shape the self, too. Many people in indi- vidualistic Western cultures assume an indepen- dent self. Others, often in collectivistic cultures, assume a more interdependent self. As Chapter 5 will further explain, these contrasting ideas con- tribute to cultural differences in social behavior.
• Our self-knowledge is curiously flawed. We often do not know why we behave the way we do. When influences upon our behavior are not con- spicuous enough for any observer to see, we, too, can miss them. The unconscious, implicit pro- cesses that control our behavior may differ from our conscious, explicit explanations of it. We also tend to mispredict our emotions. We underesti- mate the power of our psychological immune sys- tems and thus tend to overestimate the durability of our emotional reactions to significant events.
Summing Up: Self-Concept: Who Am I?
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Self-Esteem People desire self-esteem, which they are motivated to enhance. But inflated self- esteem also has a dark side.
Is self-esteem —our overall self-evaluation—the sum of all our self-schemas and possible selves? If we see ourselves as attractive, athletic, smart, and destined to be rich and loved, will we have high self-esteem? Yes, say Jennifer Crocker and Connie Wolfe (2001)—when we feel good about the domains (looks, smarts, or whatever) important to our self-esteem. “One person may have self-esteem that is highly con- tingent on doing well in school and being physically attractive, whereas another may have self-esteem that is contingent on being loved by God and adhering to moral standards.” Thus, the first person will feel high self-esteem when made to feel smart and good looking, the second person when made to feel moral.
But Jonathon Brown and Keith Dutton (1994) argue that this “bottom-up” view of self-esteem is not the whole story. The causal arrow, they believe, also goes the other way. People who value themselves in a general way—those with high self- esteem—are more likely to value their looks, abilities, and so forth. They are like new parents who, loving their infant, delight in the baby’s fingers, toes, and hair: The parents do not first evaluate their infant’s fingers or toes and then decide how much to value the whole baby.
Specific self-perceptions do have some influence, however. If you think you’re good at math, you will be more likely to do well at math. Although general self- esteem does not predict academic performance very well, academic self-concept— whether you think you are good in school—does predict performance (Marsh & O’Mara, 2008). Of course, each causes the other: Doing well at math makes you think you are good at math, which then motivates you to do even better. So if you want to encourage someone (or yourself!), it’s better if your praise is specific (“you’re good at math”) instead of general (“you’re great”) and if your kind words reflect true ability and performance (“you really improved on your last test”) rather than unrealistic optimism (“You can do anything”). Feedback is best when it is true and specific (Swann & others, 2007).
Imagine you’re getting your grade back for the first test in a psychology class. When you see your grade, you groan—you’re hovering somewhere between a D and an F. But then you get an encouraging e-mail with some review questions for the class and this message: “Students who have high self-esteem not only get bet- ter grades, but they remain self-confident and assured. . . . Bottom line: Hold your head—and your self-esteem—high.” Another group of students instead get a mes- sage about taking personal control of their performance, or receive review ques- tions only. So how would each group do on the final exam? To the surprise of the researchers in one study, the students whose self-esteem was boosted did by far the worst on the final—in fact, they flunked it (Forsyth & others, 2007). Poor students told to feel good about themselves, the researchers muse, may have thought, “I’m already great—why study?”
Self-Esteem Motivation Abraham Tesser (1988) reported that a “self-esteem maintenance” motive predicts a variety of interesting findings, even friction among brothers and sisters. Do you have a sibling of the same gender who is close to you in age? If so, people probably compared the two of you as you grew up. Tesser presumes that people’s perceiving one of you as more capable than the other will motivate the less able one to act in ways that maintain self-esteem. (Tesser thinks the threat to self-esteem is greatest for an older child with a highly capable younger sibling.) Men with a brother with markedly different ability levels typically recall not getting along well with him; men with a similarly able brother are more likely to recall very little friction.
self-esteem A person’s overall self- evaluation or sense of self- worth.
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Self-esteem threats occur among friends, whose success can be more threatening than that of strangers (Zuckerman & Jost, 2001). And they can occur among married partners, too. Although shared interests are healthy, identical career goals may pro- duce tension or jealousy (Clark & Bennett, 1992). When a partner outperforms us in a domain important to both our identities, we may reduce the threat by affirming our relationship, saying, “My capable partner, with whom I’m very close, is part of who I am” (Lockwood & others, 2004).
What underlies the motive to maintain or enhance self-esteem? Mark Leary (1998, 2004b, 2007) believes that our self-esteem feelings are like a fuel gauge. Rela- tionships enable surviving and thriving. Thus, the self-esteem gauge alerts us to threatened social rejection, motivating us to act with greater sensitivity to others’ expectations. Studies confirm that social rejection lowers our self-esteem and makes us more eager for approval. Spurned or jilted, we feel unattractive or inadequate. Like a blinking dashboard light, this pain can motivate action—self-improvement and a search for acceptance and inclusion elsewhere.
Jeff Greenberg (2008) offers another perspective. If self-esteem were only about accep- tance, he counters, why do “people strive to be great rather than to just be accepted”? The reality of our own death, he argues, motivates us to gain recognition from our work and values. There’s a worm in the apple, however: Not everyone can achieve such recognition, which is exactly why it is valuable, and why self-esteem can never be wholly unconditional (“You’re special just for being you” is an example of self-esteem being granted unconditionally). To feel our lives are not in vain, Greenberg maintains, we must continually pursue self-esteem by meeting the standards of our societies.
The “Dark Side” of Self-Esteem People with low self-esteem often have problems in life—they make less money, abuse drugs, and are more likely to be depressed (Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 2007; Trzesniewski & others, 2006). As you learned in Chapter 1, though, a correlation between two variables is sometimes caused by a third factor. Maybe people low in self-esteem also faced poverty as children, experienced sexual abuse, or had par- ents who used drugs, all possible causes of later struggling. Sure enough, a study that controlled for these factors found that the link between self-esteem and nega- tive outcomes disappeared (Boden & others, 2008). In other words, low self-esteem was not the cause of these young adults’ problems—the seeming cause, instead, was that many could not escape their tough childhoods.
Among sibling relationships, the threat to self-esteem is greatest for an older child with a highly capable younger brother or sister.
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High self-esteem does have some benefits—it fosters initiative, resilience, and pleasant feelings (Baumeister & others, 2003). Yet teen males who engage in sexual activity at an “inappropriately young age” tend to have higher than average self- esteem. So do teen gang leaders, extreme ethnocentrists, terrorists, and men in prison for committing violent crimes (Bushman & Baumeister, 2002; Dawes, 1994, 1998). “Hitler had very high self-esteem,” note Baumeister and his co-authors (2003).
NARCISSISM: SELF-ESTEEM’S CONCEITED SISTER High self-esteem becomes especially problematic if it crosses over into narcissism, or having an inflated sense of self. Most people with high self-esteem value both individual achievement and relationships with others. Narcissists usually have high self-esteem, but they are missing the piece about caring for others (Campbell & others, 2002). Although narcissists are often outgoing and charming early on, their self-centeredness often leads to relationship problems in the long run (Camp- bell, 2005). The link between narcissism and problematic social relations led Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams (2002) to include narcissism in “The Dark Triad” of negative traits. The other two are Machiavellianism (manipulativeness) and antiso- cial psychopathy.
In a series of experiments conducted by Brad Bushman and Roy Baumeister (1998), undergraduate volunteers wrote essays and received rigged feedback that said, “This is one of the worst essays I’ve read!” Those who scored high on narcis- sism were much more likely to retaliate, blasting painful noise into the headphones of the student they believed had criticized them. Narcissists weren’t aggressive toward someone who praised them (“great essay!”). It was the insult that set them off. But what about self-esteem? Maybe only the “insecure” narcissists—those low in self-esteem—would lash out. But that’s not how it turned out—instead, the students high in both self-esteem and narcissism were the most aggressive. The same was true in a classroom setting—those who were high in both self-esteem and narcissism were the most likely to retaliate against a classmate’s criticism by giving him or her a bad grade (Bushman & others, 2009; Figure 2.5 ). Narcissists can be charming and entertaining. But as one wit has said, “God help you if you cross them.”
“After all these years, I’m sorry to say, my recommen- dation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline. Recent work suggests this would be good for the individual and good for society.”
—ROY BAUMEISTER, 2005
FIGURE :: 2.5 Narcissism, Self- Esteem, and Aggression Narcissism and self-esteem interact to influence aggression. In an experiment by Brad Bush- man and colleagues (2009), the recipe for retaliation against a critical classmate required both narcissism and high self-esteem.
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
−0.5 Low narcissism High narcissism
A gg
re ss
io n
High self-esteem
Low self-esteem
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Some studies have found small correlations between low self-esteem and antiso- cial behavior, even when IQ and family income were taken into account (Donnellan & others, 2005; Trzesniewski & others, 2006). However, another study found that the link between low self-esteem and antisocial behavior disappeared when things like sexual abuse and earlier behavioral problems were considered (Boden & oth- ers, 2007). So kids aren’t acting aggressively because they have low self-esteem, but because they were hurt in the past. “The enthusiastic claims of the self-esteem movement mostly range from fantasy to hogwash,” says Baumeister (1996), who suspects he has “probably published more studies on self-esteem than anybody else. . . . The effects of self-esteem are small, limited, and not all good.” Folks with high self-esteem, he reports, are more likely to be obnoxious, to interrupt, and to talk at people rather than with them (in contrast to the more shy, modest, self- effacing folks with low self-esteem). “My conclusion is that self-control is worth 10 times as much as self-esteem.”
What about the idea that an overinflated ego is just a cover for deep-seated inse- curity? Do narcissistic people actually hate themselves “deep down inside?” Recent studies show that the answer is no. People who score high on measures of narcissis- tic personality traits also score high on measures of self-esteem. In case narcissists were claiming high self-esteem just for show, researchers also asked undergradu- ates to play a computer game where they had to press a key as quickly as possible to match the word “me” with words like good, wonderful, great, and right, and words like bad, awful, terrible, and wrong. High scorers on the narcissism scale were faster than others to associate themselves with good words, and slower than others to pair themselves with bad words (Campbell & others, 2007). And narcissists were even faster to identify with words like outspoken, dominant, and assertive. Although it might be comforting to think that an arrogant classmate is just covering for his insecurity, chances are that deep down inside he thinks he’s awesome.
NARCISSISM ON THE RISE There was one area where narcissists were only average—though still not insecure. Narcissism had no effect on pairing words like kind, friendly, and affectionate with self words. This is consistent with the idea that narcissists love being winners, but aren’t as concerned with being emotionally close to others. There also seem to be more narcissists. After tracking self-importance across the last several decades, psy- chologist Jean Twenge (2006; Twenge & others, 2008) reports that today’s young generation— Generation Me, she calls it—express more narcissism (by agreeing with statements such as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place” or “I think I am a special person”). Agreement with narcissistic items correlates with materialism, desire to be famous, inflated expectations, fewer committed relationships and more “hooking up,” more gambling, and more cheating, all of which have also risen as narcissism has increased.
Another data set on narcissism over time showed the influence of both time and ethnicity. Narcissism did not change among samples of University of California students over time (Trzesniewski & others, 2008), possibly because more Asian American students—from a culture that discourages self-importance—enrolled over the years. When analyzed separately by ethnicity and campus, these data showed increases in narcissism across all ethnic groups (Twenge & Foster, 2008). Although Asian American students scored lower on narcissism, on average, than White students, both groups increased in narcissism over time as American culture presumably became more accepting of self-importance.
LOW VERSUS SECURE SELF-ESTEEM The findings linking a highly positive self-concept with negative behavior exist in tension with the findings that people expressing low self-esteem are more vulnera- ble to assorted clinical problems, including anxiety, loneliness, and eating disorders.
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When feeling bad or threatened, low-self-esteem people often take a negative view of everything. They notice and remember others’ worst behaviors and think their partners don’t love them (Murray & others, 1998, 2002; Ybarra, 1999). Although there is no evidence that low-self-esteem people choose less desirable partners, they are quick to believe that their partners are criticizing or rejecting them. Perhaps as a result, low-self-esteem people are less satisfied with their relationships (Fincham & Bradbury, 1993). They may also be more likely to leave those relationships. Low- self-esteem undergraduates decided not to stay with roommates who saw them in a positive light (Swann & Pelham, 2002).
Secure self-esteem—one rooted more in feeling good about who one is than in grades, looks, money, or others’ approval—is conducive to long-term well-being (Kernis, 2003; Schimel & others, 2001). Jennifer Crocker and her colleagues (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) confirmed this in studies with University of Michigan students. Those whose self-worth was most fragile—most contingent on external sources— experienced more stress, anger, relationship problems, drug and alcohol use, and eating disorders than did those whose sense of self-worth was rooted more in inter- nal sources, such as personal virtues.
Ironically, note Crocker and Lora Park (2004), those who pursue self-esteem, per- haps by seeking to become beautiful, rich, or popular, may lose sight of what really makes for quality of life. Moreover, if feeling good about ourselves is our goal, then we may become less open to criticism, more likely to blame than empathize with others, and more pressured to succeed at activities rather than enjoy them. Over time, such pursuit of self-esteem can fail to satisfy our deep needs for competence, relationship, and autonomy, note Crocker and Park. To focus less on one’s self- image, and more on developing one’s talents and relationships, eventually leads to greater well-being.
• Self-esteem is the overall sense of self-worth we use to appraise our traits and abilities. Our self- concepts are determined by multiple influences, including the roles we play, the comparisons we make, our social identities, how we perceive others appraising us, and our experiences of success and failure.
• Self-esteem motivation influences our cognitive processes: Facing failure, high-self-esteem people
sustain their self-worth by perceiving other people as failing, too, and by exaggerating their superior- ity over others.
• Although high self-esteem is generally more ben- eficial than low, researchers have found that peo- ple high in both self-esteem and narcissism are the most aggressive. Someone with a big ego who is threatened or deflated by social rejection is poten- tially aggressive.
Summing Up: Self-Esteem
Perceived Self-Control Several lines of research point to the significance of our perceived self-control. What concepts emerge from this research?
So far we have considered what a self-concept is, how it develops, and how well (or poorly) we know ourselves. Now let’s see why our self-concepts matter, by viewing the self in action.
The self’s capacity for action has limits, note Roy Baumeister and his colleagues (1998, 2000; Muraven & others, 1998). Consider:
• People who exert self-control—by forcing themselves to eat radishes rather than chocolates, or by suppressing forbidden thoughts—subsequently quit faster when given unsolvable puzzles.
• People who have tried to control their emotional responses to an upsetting movie exhibit decreased physical stamina.
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• People who have spent their willpower on tasks such as controlling their emotions during an upsetting film later become more aggressive and more likely to fight with their partners (de Wall & others, 2007; Finkel & Campbell, 2001). They also become less restrained in their sexual thoughts and behav- iors. In one study, students who depleted their willpower by focusing their attention on a difficult task were later, when asked to express a comfort- able level of intimacy with their partner, more likely to make out and even remove some clothing (Gailliot & Baumeister, 2007).
Effortful self-control depletes our limited willpower reserves. Our brain’s “cen- tral executive” consumes available blood sugar when engaged in self-control (Gail- liot, 2008). Self-control therefore operates similarly to muscular strength, conclude Baumeister and Julia Exline (2000): Both are weaker after exertion, replenished with rest, and strengthened by exercise.
Although the self’s energy can be temporarily depleted, our self-concepts do influence our behavior (Graziano & others, 1997). Given challenging tasks, people who imagine themselves as hardworking and successful outperform those who imagine themselves as failures (Ruvolo & Markus, 1992). Envision your positive possibilities and you become more likely to plan and enact a successful strategy.
Self-Efficacy Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura (1997, 2000, 2008) captured the power of pos- itive thinking in his research and theorizing about self-efficacy (how competent we feel on a task). Believing in our own competence and effectiveness pays dividends (Bandura & others, 1999; Maddux and Gosselin, 2003). Children and adults with strong feelings of self-efficacy are more persistent, less anxious, and less depressed. They also live healthier lives and are more academically successful.
In everyday life, self-efficacy leads us to set challenging goals and to persist. More than a hundred studies show that self-efficacy predicts worker productivity (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). When problems arise, a strong sense of self-efficacy leads workers to stay calm and seek solutions rather than ruminate on their inade- quacy. Competence plus persistence equals accomplishment. And with accomplish- ment, self-confidence grows. Self-efficacy, like self-esteem, grows with hard-won achievements.
Even subtle manipulations of self-efficacy can affect behavior. Becca Levy (1996) discovered this when she subliminally exposed 90 older adults to words that evoked (primed) either a negative or a positive stereotype of aging. Some subjects viewed .066-second presentations of negative words such as “decline,” “forgets,” and “senile,” or of positive words such as “sage,” “wise,” and “learned.” At the conscious level, the participants perceived only a flash of light. Yet being given the positive words led to heightened “memory self-efficacy” (confidence in one’s mem- ory) and better memory performance. Viewing the negative words had the opposite effect. We can observe a similar phenomenon outside the laboratory: Older adults in China, where positive images of aging prevail and memory self-efficacy may be greater, seem to suffer less memory decline than is commonly observed in Western countries (Schacter & others, 1991).
If you believe you can do something, will that belief necessarily make a differ- ence? That depends on a second factor: Do you have control over your outcomes? You may, for example, feel like an effective driver (high self-efficacy), yet feel endan- gered by drunken drivers (low control). You may feel like a competent student or worker but, fearing discrimination based on your age, gender, or appearance, you may think your prospects for success are dim.
Many people confuse self-efficacy with self-esteem. If you believe you can do something, that’s self-efficacy. If you like yourself overall, that’s self-esteem. When you were a child, your parents may have encouraged you by saying things like, “You’re special!” (intended to build self-esteem) instead of “I know you can do it!”
self-efficacy A sense that one is competent and effective, distinguished from self- esteem, which is one’s sense of self-worth. A bombardier might feel high self-efficacy and low self-esteem.
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(intended to build self-efficacy). One study showed that self-efficacy feedback (“You tried really hard”) led to better performance than self-esteem feedback (“You’re really smart”). Children told they were smart were afraid to try again—maybe they wouldn’t look so smart next time. Those praised for working hard, however, knew they could exert more effort again (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). If you want to encour- age someone, focus on their self-efficacy, not their self-esteem.
Locus of Control “I have no social life,” complained a 40-something single man to student therapist Jerry Phares. At Phares’s urging, the patient went to a dance, where several women danced with him. “I was just lucky,” he later reported. “It would never happen again.” When Phares reported this to his mentor, Julian Rotter, it crystallized an idea he had been forming. In Rotter’s experiments and in his clinical practice, some people seemed to persistently “feel that what happens to them is governed by external forces of one kind or another, while others feel that what happens to them is governed largely by their own efforts and skills” (quoted by Hunt, 1993, p. 334).
What do you think about your own life? Are you more often in charge of your destiny, or a victim of circumstance? Rotter called this dimension locus of control. With Phares, he developed 29 paired statements to measure a person’s locus of con- trol. Imagine taking this test. Which statements do you more strongly believe?
a. In the long run, people get the respect they deserve in this world.
or b. Unfortunately, people’s worth pass- es unrecognized no matter how hard they try.
a. What happens to me is my own doing.
or b. Sometimes I feel that I don’t have enough control over the direction my life is taking.
a. The average person can have an influence in government decisions.
or b. This world is run by the few peo- ple in power, and there is not much the little guy can do about it.
If your answers to these questions (from Rotter, 1973) were mostly “a,” you probably believe you control your own destiny ( internal locus of control). If your answers were mostly “b,” you probably feel chance or outside forces determine your fate ( external locus of control, as in Figure 2.6 ). Those who see themselves as internally controlled are more likely to do well in school, successfully stop smok- ing, wear seat belts, deal with marital problems directly, earn a substantial income, and delay instant gratification to achieve long-term goals (Findley & Cooper, 1983; Lefcourt, 1982; Miller & others, 1986).
How much control we feel is related to how we explain setbacks. Perhaps you have known students who view themselves as victims—who blame poor grades on things beyond their control, such as their feelings of stupidity or their “poor” teach- ers, texts, or tests. If such students are coached to adopt a more hopeful attitude—to believe that effort, good study habits, and self-discipline can make a difference— their academic performance tends to go up (Noel & others, 1987; Peterson & Barrett, 1987). In general, students who feel in control—who, for example, agree that “I am good at resisting temptation”—get better grades, enjoy better relation- ships, and exhibit better mental health (Tangney & others, 2004). They are also less likely to cheat: Students who were told that free will is an illusion—that what hap- pened to them is outside their control—peeked at answers and paid themselves more money for mediocre work (Vohs & Schooler, 2008).
When faced with a setback, successful people are likely to see it as a fluke or to think, “I need a new approach.” New life insurance sales representatives who view failures as controllable (“It’s difficult, but with persistence I’ll get better”) sell more policies. They are only half as likely as their more pessimistic colleagues to quit
locus of control The extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally controllable by their own efforts or as externally controlled by chance or outside forces.
“If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it. Down with dope! Up with hope! I am somebody!” —JESSE JACKSON, THE MARCH
ON WASHINGTON, 1983
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during their first year (Seligman & Schulman, 1986). Among college swim team members, those with an optimistic “explanatory style” are more likely than pes- simists to perform beyond expectations (Seligman & others, 1990). As the Roman poet Virgil said in the Aeneid, “They can because they think they can.”
Some people, however, have taken these ideas a little too far. The popular book The Secret, for example, claims that thinking positive thoughts causes positive things to happen to you (“The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts”). So let’s not help those poor Zimbabweans—all they need to do is think happy thoughts. And if you are sick, your thoughts just aren’t positive enough—despite the thou- sands of cancer patients who desperately want to get well. Obviously, there are limits to the power of positive thinking. Being optimistic and feeling in control can reap great benefits, but poverty and sickness can happen to anyone.
Learned Helplessness versus Self-Determination The benefits of feelings of control also appear in animal research. Dogs confined in a cage and taught that they cannot escape shocks will learn a sense of helpless- ness. Later, these dogs cower passively in other situations when they could escape punishment. Dogs that learn personal control (by successfully escaping their first shocks) adapt easily to a new situation. Researcher Martin Seligman (1975, 1991) noted similarities to this learned helplessness in human situations. Depressed or oppressed people, for example, become passive because they believe their efforts have no effect. Helpless dogs and depressed people both suffer paralysis of the will, passive resignation, even motionless apathy ( Figure 2.7 ).
On the other hand, people benefit by training their self-control “muscles.” That’s the conclusion of studies by Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng (2006) at Sydney’s Macquarie University. For example, students who were engaged in practicing self- control by daily exercise, regular study, and time management became more capable of self-control in other settings, both in the laboratory and when taking exams. If you develop your self-discipline in one area of your life, it may spill over into other areas as well.
Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin (1976) tested the importance of personal con- trol by treating elderly patients in a highly rated Connecticut nursing home in
“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.”
—RICHARD BACH, ILLUSIONS: ADVENTURES OF A RELUCTANT
MESSIAH, 1977
learned helplessness The sense of hopelessness and resignation learned when a human or animal perceives no control over repeated bad events.
FIGURE :: 2.6 Locus of Control
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one of two ways. With one group, the benevolent caregivers emphasized “our responsibility to make this a home you can be proud of and happy in.” They gave the patients their normal well-intentioned, sympathetic care and allowed them to assume a passive care-receiving role. Three weeks later, most of these patients were rated by themselves, by interviewers, and by nurses as further debilitated. Langer and Rodin’s other treatment promoted personal control. It emphasized opportunities for choice, the possibilities for influencing nursing-home policy, and the person’s responsibility “to make of your life whatever you want.” These patients were given small decisions to make and responsibilities to fulfill. Over the ensuing three weeks, 93 percent of this group showed improved alertness, activity, and happiness.
Studies confirm that systems of governing or managing people that promote personal control will indeed promote health and happiness (Deci & Ryan, 1987). Here are some additional examples:
• Prisoners given some control over their environments—by being able to move chairs, control TV sets, and operate the lights—experience less stress, exhibit fewer health problems, and commit less vandalism (Ruback & others, 1986; Wener & others, 1987).
• Workers given leeway in carrying out tasks and making decisions experience improved morale (Miller & Monge, 1986). So do telecommuting workers who have more flexibility in balancing their work and personal life (Valcour, 2007).
• Institutionalized residents allowed choice in matters such as what to eat for breakfast, when to go to a movie, whether to sleep late or get up early, may live longer and certainly are happier (Timko & Moos, 1989).
• Homeless shelter residents who perceive little choice in when to eat and sleep, and little control over their privacy, are more likely to have a passive, helpless attitude regarding finding housing and work (Burn, 1992).
• In all countries studied, people who perceive them- selves as having free choice experience greater satisfac- tion with their lives ( Figure 2.8 ). And countries where people experience more freedom have more satisfied citizens (Inglehart & others, 2008).
THE COSTS OF EXCESS CHOICE Can there ever be too much of a good thing such as free- dom and self-determination? Barry Schwartz (2000, 2004) contends that individualistic modern cultures indeed have “an excess of freedom,” causing decreased life satisfac- tion and increased rates of clinical depression. Too many choices can lead to paralysis, or what Schwartz calls “the tyranny of freedom.” After choosing from among 30 kinds of jams or chocolates, people express less satisfaction with their choices than those choosing from among 6 options (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). Making choices is also tiring. Stu- dents who chose which classes they would take during the upcoming semester— versus those who simply read over the course catalog—were later less likely to study for an important test and more likely to procrastinate by playing
“Yes, we can.” —BARACK OBAMA, NOVEMBER 4, 2008
FIGURE :: 2.7 Learned Helplessness When animals and people experi- ence uncontrollable bad events, they learn to feel helpless and resigned.
Uncontrollable bad events
Perceived lack of control
Learned helplessness
Personal control: Inmates of Spain’s modern Valencia prison have, with work and appropriate behavior, gained access to classes, sports facilities, cultural opportunities, and money in an account that can be charged for snacks.
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video games and reading magazines. In another study, students who chose among an array of consumer products were later less able to consume an unsavory but healthy drink (Vohs & others, 2008). So after choosing among the 19,000 possible beverage combinations at Starbucks or the 40,000 items at the average supermarket, you might be less satisfied with your choices and more likely to go home and eat the ice cream straight from the container.
Christopher Hsee and Reid Hastie (2006) illustrate how choice may enhance regret. Give employees a free trip to either Paris or Hawaii and they will be happy. But give them a choice between the two and they may be less happy. People who choose Paris may regret that it lacks the warmth and the ocean. Those who choose Hawaii may regret the lack of great museums. Something like that may explain why the seniors from 11 colleges in one recent study who spent the most time seek- ing and assessing various job possibilities ended up with higher starting salaries but lower satisfaction (Iyengar & others, 2006).
In other experiments, people have expressed greater satisfaction with irrevoca- ble choices (such as those made in an “all purchases final” sale) than with reversible choices (as when allowing refunds or exchanges). Ironically, people like and will pay for the freedom to reverse their choices. Yet, note Daniel Gilbert and Jane Ebert (2002), that same freedom “can inhibit the psychological processes that manufac- ture satisfaction.”
That principle may help explain a curious social phenomenon (Myers, 2000a): National surveys show that people expressed more satisfaction with their marriages several decades ago when marriage was more irrevocable (“all purchases final”). Today, despite greater freedom to escape bad marriages and try new ones, people tend to express somewhat less satisfaction with the marriage that they have.
Research on self-control gives us greater confidence in traditional virtues such as perseverance and hope. Bandura (2004) acknowledges that self-efficacy is fed by social
FIGURE :: 2.8 Correlations between individuals’ perceived free choice and their self-reported life satisfaction, for each of 73 countries (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005).
Sub-Saharan African Societies Nigeria
New Zeald. Germany
Canada U.S.A.
Australia G.B.
Sweden Finland Iceland Norway
Denmark Netherld.
Greece N. Ireland
France Spain
Ireland Luxemb.
Austria Belgium
Switzerld. Portugal
Italy
Uruguay Mexico
Argentina Chile
El Salvad. Brazil
Colombia Dominican R.
Peru Philippines Venezuela
Croatia Germany (E.)
Slovania Czech R.
Estonia Slovakia
Poland Hungary
Latvia Lithuania
Bosnia Albania Algeria
Iran Azerbaij.
Jordan Morocco
Serbia Bulgaria
Macedonia Armenia Ukraine
Romania Russia
Belarus Georgia Moldova
Taiwan China Japan
South Korea Vietnam
Indonesia Bangladesh
India
South Africa Zimbabwe
Uganda
South Asian Societies
Confucian Societies
Societies
Islamic Societies
Protestant Societies
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
Societies
Societies
Latin America
Western Catholic
Western Ex-communist
Eastern Ex-communist
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persuasion (“you have what it takes to succeed”) and by self-persuasion (“I think I can, I think I can”). Modeling— seeing similar others succeed with effort— helps, too. But the biggest source of self- efficacy, he says, is mastery experiences. “Successes build a robust belief in one’s effi- cacy.” If your initial efforts to lose weight, stop smoking, or improve your grades suc- ceed, your self-efficacy increases.
A team of researchers led by Roy Baumeister (2003) concurs. “Praising all the children just for being themselves,” they contend, “simply devalues praise.” Better to praise and bolster self-esteem “in recognition of good performance. . . . As the person performs or behaves bet- ter, self-esteem is encouraged to rise, and the net effect will be to reinforce both good behavior and improvement. Those outcomes are conducive to both the hap- piness of the individual and the better- ment of society.”
Confidence and feelings of self-efficacy grow from successes. © The New Yorker Collection, 1983, Edward Koren, from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
• Several lines of research show the benefits of a sense of self-efficacy and feelings of control. People who believe in their own competence and effec- tiveness, and who have an internal locus of control, cope better and achieve more than others.
• Learned helplessness often occurs when attempts to improve a situation have proven fruitless;
self-determination, in contrast, is bolstered by experiences of successfully exercising control and improving one’s situation.
• When people are given too many choices, they may be less satisfied with what they have than when offered a smaller range of choices.
Summing Up: Perceived Self-Control
Daniel Gilbert on the Benefits of Irrevocable Commitments
In 2002 I changed my mind about the benefit of being able to change my mind.
Jane Ebert and I discovered that people are gen- erally happier with decisions when they can’t undo them. When participants in our experiments were able to undo their decisions they tended to consider both the positive and negative features of the decisions they had made. When they couldn’t undo their decisions they tended to concentrate on the good features and ignore the bad. As such, they were more satisfied when they made irrevocable than revocable decisions. Ironi- cally, subjects did not realize this would happen and strongly preferred to have the opportunity to change their minds.
Now, up until this point I had always believed that love causes marriage. But these experiments suggested to me that marriage would also cause love. If you take data seri- ously you act on it, so when these results came in I went home and proposed to the woman I was living with. She said yes, and it turned out that the right were right: I love my wife more than I loved my girl - friend. (Excerpted with per- mission from edge.org)
Daniel Gilbert, Harvard University
THE inside STORY
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Self-Serving Bias As we process self-relevant information, a potent bias intrudes. We readily excuse our failures, accept credit for our successes, and in many ways see ourselves as bet- ter than average. Such self-enhancing perceptions enable most people to enjoy the bright side of high self-esteem, while occasionally suffering the dark side.
Most of us have a good reputation with ourselves. In studies of self-esteem, even low-scoring people respond in the midrange of possible scores. (A low-self- esteem person responds to statements such as “I have good ideas” with a qualify- ing adjective, such as “somewhat” or “sometimes.”) In a study of self-esteem across 53 nations, the average self-esteem score was above the midpoint in every single country (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). One of social psychology’s most provocative yet firmly established conclusions concerns the potency of self-serving bias.
Explaining Positive and Negative Events Many dozens of experiments have found that people accept credit when told they have succeeded. They attribute the success to their ability and effort, but they attri- bute failure to external factors such as bad luck or the problem’s inherent “impos- sibility” (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999). Similarly, in explaining their victories, athletes commonly credit themselves, but they attribute losses to something else: bad breaks, bad referee calls, or the other team’s super effort or dirty play (Grove & others, 1991; Lalonde, 1992; Mullen & Riordan, 1988). And how much responsi- bility do you suppose car drivers tend to accept for their accidents? On insurance forms, drivers have described their accidents in words such as these: “An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished”; “As I reached an intersec- tion, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision, and I did not see the other car”; “A pedestrian hit me and went under my car” ( Toronto News, 1977).
Situations that combine skill and chance (games, exams, job applications) are especially prone to the phenomenon. When I win at Scrabble, it’s because of my verbal dexterity; when I lose, it’s because “Who could get anywhere with a Q but no U? ” Politicians similarly tend to attribute their wins to themselves (hard work, constituent service, reputation, and strategy) and their losses to factors beyond their control (their district’s party makeup, their opponent’s name, political trends) (Kingdon, 1967). When corporate profits are up, the CEOs welcome big bonuses for their managerial skill. When profits turn to losses, well, what could you expect in a down economy? This phenomenon of self-serving attributions (attributing positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to something else) is one of the most potent of human biases (Mezulis & others, 2004).
Self-serving attributions contribute to marital discord, worker dissatisfaction, and bargaining impasses (Kruger & Gilovich, 1999). Small wonder that divorced people usually blame their partner for the breakup (Gray & Silver, 1990), or that managers often blame poor performance on workers’ lack of ability or effort (Imai, 1994; Rice, 1985). (Workers are more likely to blame something external— inadequate supplies, excessive workload, difficult co-workers, ambiguous assignments.) Small wonder, too, that people evaluate pay raises as fairer when they receive a bigger raise than most of their co-workers (Diekmann & others, 1997).
We help maintain our positive self-images by associating ourselves with success and distancing ourselves from failure. For example, “I got an A on my econ test” versus “The prof gave me a C on my history exam.” Blaming failure or rejection on something external, even another’s prejudice, is less depressing than seeing oneself as undeserving (Major & others, 2003). We will, however, acknowledge our distant past failings—those by our “former” self, note Anne Wilson and Michael Ross (2001). Describing their old precollege selves, their University of Waterloo students offered
self-serving bias The tendency to perceive oneself favorably.
self-serving attributions A form of self-serving bias; the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors.
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nearly as many negative as positive statements. When describing their present selves, they offered three times more positive statements. “I’ve learned and grown, and I’m a better person today,” most people surmise. Chumps yesterday, champs today.
Ironically, we are even biased against seeing our own bias. People claim they avoid self-serving bias themselves, but readily acknowledge that others commit this bias (Pronin & others, 2002). This “bias blind spot” can have serious consequences during conflicts. If you’re negotiating with your roommate over who does house- hold chores and you believe your roommate has a biased view of the situation, you’re much more likely to become angry (Pronin & Ross, 2006). Apparently we see ourselves as objective and everyone else as biased. No wonder we fight, because we’re each convinced we’re “right” and free from bias. As the T-shirt slogan says, “Everyone is entitled to my opinion.”
Is the self-serving bias universal, or are people in collectivistic cultures immune? People in collectivistic cultures associate themselves with positive words and valued traits (Gaertner & others, 2008; Yamaguchi & others, 2007). However, in some studies, collectivists are less likely to self-enhance by believing they are bet- ter than others (Heine & Hamamura, 2007), particularly in individualistic domains (Sedikides & others, 2003).
Can We All Be Better than Average? Self-serving bias also appears when people compare themselves with others. If the sixth-century b.c. Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu was right that “at no time in the world will a man who is sane over-reach himself, over-spend himself, over-rate himself,” then most of us are a little insane. For on subjective, socially desirable, and common dimensions, most people see themselves as better than the average per- son. Compared with people in general, most people see themselves as more ethical, more competent at their job, friendlier, more intelligent, better looking, less preju- diced, healthier, and even more insightful and less biased in their self-assessments. (See “Focus On: Self-Serving Bias—How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways.” )
Every community, it seems, is like Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Many people believe that they will become even more above average in the future—if I’m good now, I will be even better soon, they seem to think (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). One of Freud’s favorite jokes was the husband who told his wife, “If one of us should die, I think I would go live in Paris.”
Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly (1979) observed a marital version of self-serving bias. They found that young married Canadians usually believed they took more responsibility for such activities as cleaning the house and caring for the children than their spouses credited them for. In a more recent study of 265 U.S. married cou- ples with children, husbands estimated they did 42 percent of the housework. The wives estimated their husbands did 33 percent. When researchers tracked actual housework (by sampling participants’ activity at random times using beepers),
DILBERT © Scott Adams. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
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they found husbands actually carrying 39 percent of the domestic workload (Lee & Waite, 2005). The general rule: Group members’ estimates of how much they contribute to a joint task typically sum to more than 100 percent (Savitsky & others, 2005).
My wife and I used to pitch our laundry at the foot of our bedroom clothes ham- per. In the morning, one of us would put it in. When she suggested that I take more responsibility for this, I thought, “Huh? I already do it 75 percent of the time.” So I asked her how often she thought she picked up the clothes. “Oh,” she replied, “about 75 percent of the time.”
But what if you had to estimate how often you performed rare household chores, like cleaning the oven? Here, you’re likely to say that you do this less than 50 percent of the time (Kruger & Savitsky, 2009). Apparently this occurs because
“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background,” notes columnist Dave Barry (1998), “is that deep down inside, we all believe that we are above average drivers.” We also believe we are above average on most any other subjective and desirable trait. Among the many faces of self-serving bias are these:
• Ethics. Most business people see themselves as more ethical than the average business person (Baumhart, 1968; Brenner & Molander, 1977). One national sur- vey asked, “How would you rate your own morals and values on a scale from 1 to 100 (100 being perfect)?” Fifty percent of people rated themselves 90 or above; only 11 percent said 74 or less (Lovett, 1997).
• Professional competence. In one survey, 90 percent of business managers rated their performance as supe- rior to their average peer (French, 1968). In Australia, 86 percent of people rated their job performance as above average, 1 percent as below average (Headey & Wearing, 1987). Most surgeons believe their patients’ mortality rate to be lower than average (Gawande, 2002).
• Virtues. In the Netherlands, most high school stu- dents rate themselves as more honest, persistent, original, friendly, and reliable than the average high school student (Hoorens, 1993, 1995).
• Intelligence. Most people perceive themselves as more intelligent, better looking, and much less preju- diced than their average peer (Public Opinion, 1984; Wylie, 1979). When someone outperforms them, peo- ple tend to think of the other as a genius (Lassiter & Munhall, 2001).
• Tolerance. In a 1997 Gallup Poll, only 14 percent of White Americans rated their prejudice against Blacks as 5 or higher on a 0 to 10 scale. Yet Whites perceived high prejudice (5 or above) among 44 percent of other Whites.
• Parental support. Most adults believe they support their aging parents more than do their siblings (Lerner & others, 1991).
• Health. Los Angeles residents view themselves as healthier than most of their neighbors, and most col- lege students believe they will outlive their actuarially predicted age of death by about 10 years (Larwood, 1978; C. R. Snyder, 1978).
• Insight. Others’ public words and deeds reveal their natures, we presume. Our private thoughts do the same. Thus, most of us believe we know and under- stand others better than they know and understand us. We also believe we know ourselves better than others know themselves (Pronin & others, 2001).
• Attractiveness. Is it your experience, as it is mine, that most photos of you seem not to do you justice? One experiment showed people a lineup of faces— one their own, the others being their face morphed into those of less and more attractive faces (Epley & Whitchurch, 2008). When asked which was their actual face, people tended to identify an attractively enhanced version of their face.
• Driving. Most drivers—even most drivers who have been hospitalized for accidents—believe themselves to be safer and more skilled than the average driver (Guerin, 1994; McKenna & Myers, 1997; Svenson, 1981). Dave Barry was right.
Self-Serving Bias—How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways focus
ON
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we have more knowledge about our behavior than about someone else’s, and we assume that other people’s behavior will be less extreme than ours (Kruger & others, 2008; Moore & Small, 2007). If you can remember cleaning an oven only a few times, you might assume you are unusual and that your partner must do this more often. Same for a trivia contest: Students say they have only a small chance of winning if the questions are about the history of Mesopotamia, apparently not rec- ognizing that their fellow students are probably equally clueless about this subject area (Windschitl & oth- ers, 2003). When people receive more information about others’ actions, the discrepancy disappears.
Within commonly considered do - mains, subjective behavioral dimen- sions (such as “disciplined”) trigger even greater self-serving bias than ob - servable behavioral dimensions (such
as “punctual”). Subjective qualities give us leeway in constructing our own defini - tions of success (Dunning & others, 1989, 1991). Rating my “athletic ability,” I pon- der my basketball play, not the agonizing weeks I spent as a Little League baseball player hiding in right field. Assessing my “leadership ability,” I conjure up an image of a great leader whose style is similar to mine. By defining ambiguous criteria in our own terms, each of us can see ourselves as relatively successful. In one Col- lege Entrance Examination Board survey of 829,000 high school seniors, none rated themselves below average in “ability to get along with others” (a subjective, desir- able trait), 60 percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent, and 25 percent saw themselves among the top 1 percent!
Researchers have wondered: Do people really believe their above-average self-estimates? Is their self-serving bias partly a function of how the questions are phrased (Krizan & Suls, 2008)? When Elanor Williams and Thomas Gilovich (2008) had people bet real money when estimating their relative performance on tests, they found that, yes, “people truly believe their self-enhancing self- assessments.”
Unrealistic Optimism Optimism predisposes a positive approach to life. “The optimist,” notes H. Jackson Brown (1990, p. 79), “goes to the window every morning and says, ‘Good morning, God.’ The pessimist goes to the window and says, ‘good God, morning.’” Studies of more than 90,000 people across 22 cultures reveal that most humans are more disposed to optimism than pessimism (Fischer & Chalmers, 2008). Indeed, many of us have what researcher Neil Weinstein (1980, 1982) terms “an unrealistic opti- mism about future life events.” Partly because of their relative pessimism about others’ fates (Hoorens & others, 2008; Shepperd, 2003), students perceive them- selves as far more likely than their classmates to get a good job, draw a good salary, and own a home. They also see themselves as far less likely to experience negative events, such as developing a drinking problem, having a heart attack before age 40, or being fired.
“Views of the future are so rosy that they would make Pollyanna blush.”
—SHELLEY E. TAYLOR, POSITIVE ILLUSIONS, 1989
© Jean Sorensen.
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Parents extend their unrealistic optimism to their children, assuming their child is less likely to drop out of college, become depressed, or get lung cancer than the average child, but more likely to complete college, remain healthy, and stay happy (Lench & others, 2006).
Illusory optimism increases our vulnerability. Believing ourselves immune to misfortune, we do not take sensible precautions. Sexually active undergraduate women who don’t consistently use contraceptives perceive themselves, compared with other women at their university, as much less vulnerable to unwanted preg- nancy (Burger & Burns, 1988). Elderly drivers who rated themselves as “above average” were four times more likely than more modest drivers to flunk a driving test and be rated “unsafe” (Freund & others, 2005). Students who enter university with inflated assessments of their academic ability often suffer deflating self-esteem and well-being and are more likely to drop out (Robins & Beer, 2001).
Unrealistically optimistic people are also more likely to select credit card offers with low annual fees but high interest rates—a poor choice for the average bor- rower whose interest charges far exceed the difference of a few dollars in the annual fee (Yang & others, 2007). Because the main source of profit for credit card issuers is interest charges, unrealistic optimism means more profit for them—and more money out of the pockets of those surrounded by a rosy glow.
Those who cheerfully run up credit card debt, deny the effects of smoking, and stumble into ill-fated relationships remind us that blind optimism, like pride, may go before a fall. When gambling, optimists persist longer than pessimists, even when piling up losses (Gibson & Sanbonmatsu, 2004). If those who deal in the stock market or in real estate perceive their business intuition as superior to that of their competitors, they, too, may be in for disappointment. Even the seventeenth-cen- tury economist Adam Smith, a defender of human economic rationality, foresaw that people would overestimate their chances of gain. This “absurd presumption in their own good fortune,” he said, arises from “the overweening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities” (Spiegel, 1971, p. 243).
Unrealistic optimism appears to be on the rise. In the 1970s, half of American high school seniors predicted that they would be “very good” workers as adults— the highest rating available, and thus the equivalent of giving themselves five stars out of five. By 2006, two-thirds of teens believed they would achieve this stellar outcome—placing themselves in the top 20 percent (Twenge & Campbell, 2008)! Even more striking, half of high school seniors in 2000 believed that they would earn a graduate degree—even though only 9 percent were likely to actually do so (Reynolds & others, 2006). Although aiming high has benefits for success, those who aim too high may struggle with depression as they learn to adjust their goals to more realistic heights (Wrosch & Miller, 2009).
Optimism definitely beats pessimism in promoting self-efficacy, health, and well-being (Armor & Taylor, 1996; Segerstrom, 2001). Being natural optimists, most people believe they will be happier with their lives in the future—a belief that surely helps create happiness in the present (Robinson & Ryff, 1999). If our
“O God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”
—REINHOLD NIEBUHR, THE SERENITY PRAYER, 1943
NON SEQUITUR © 1999 Wiley Miller. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
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optimistic ancestors were more likely than their pessimistic neighbors to sur- mount challenges and survive, then small wonder that we are disposed to optimism (Haselton & Nettle, 2006).
Yet a dash of realism—or what Julie Norem (2000) calls defensive pessimism —can save us from the perils of unrealistic optimism. Defensive pes- simism anticipates problems and moti- vates effective coping. As a Chinese proverb says, “Be prepared for danger while staying in peace.” Students who exhibit excess optimism (as many stu- dents destined for low grades do) can benefit from having some self-doubt, which motivates study (Prohaska, 1994; Sparrell & Shrauger, 1984). Students
who are overconfident tend to under- prepare, whereas their equally able but less confident peers study harder and
get higher grades (Goodhart, 1986; Norem & Cantor, 1986; Showers & Ruben, 1987). Viewing things in a more immediate, realistic way often helps. Students in one experiment were wildly optimistic in predicting their test performance when the test was hypothetical, but surprisingly accurate when the test was imminent (Armor & Sackett, 2006). Believing you’re great when nothing can prove you wrong is one thing, but with an evaluation fast approaching, best not to look like a bragging fool.
It’s also important to be able to listen to criticism. “One gentle rule I often tell my students,” writes David Dunning (2006), “is that if two people independently give them the same piece of negative feedback, they should at least consider the possi- bility that it might be true.” In other words, don’t audition for American Idol if you can’t sing. Simple advice, but the laughably bad singers who populate the opening episodes every season prove that unrealistic optimism is alive and well.
There is a power to negative as well as positive thinking. The moral: Success in school and beyond requires enough optimism to sustain hope and enough pessi- mism to motivate concern.
False Consensus and Uniqueness We have a curious tendency to enhance our self-images by overestimating or under- estimating the extent to which others think and act as we do. On matters of opin- ion, we find support for our positions by overestimating the extent to which others agree—a phenomenon called the false consensus effect (Krueger & Clement, 1994; Marks & Miller, 1987; Mullen & Goethals, 1990). Those who have favored a Cana- dian referendum or supported New Zealand’s National Party wishfully overesti- mated the extent to which others would agree (Babad & others, 1992; Koestner, 1993). The sense we make of the world seems like common sense.
When we behave badly or fail in a task, we reassure ourselves by thinking that such lapses also are common. After one person lies to another, the liar begins to perceive the other person as dishonest (Sagarin & others, 1998). They guess that others think and act as they do: “I lie, but doesn’t everyone?” If we cheat on our income taxes or smoke, we are likely to overestimate the number of other people who do likewise. If we feel sexual desire toward another, we may overestimate the other’s reciprocal desire. As former Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff admit- ted, “I have had Botox. Everyone has!” Four recent studies illustrate:
defensive pessimism The adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one’s anxiety to motivate effective action.
false consensus effect The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors.
Illusory optimism: Most couples marry feeling confident of long-term love. Actually, in individualistic cultures, half of marriages fail.
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• People who sneak a shower during a shower ban believe (more than non- bathers) that lots of others are doing the same (Monin & Norton, 2003).
• Those thirsty after hard exercise imagine that lost hikers would become more bothered by thirst than by hunger. That’s what 88 percent of thirsty postexer- cisers guessed in a study by Leaf Van Boven and George Lowenstein (2003), compared with 57 percent of people who were about to exercise.
• As people’s own lives change, they see the world changing. Protective new parents come to see the world as a more dangerous place. People who go on a diet judge food ads to be more prevalent (Eibach & others, 2003).
• People who harbor negative ideas about another racial group presume that many others also have negative stereotypes (Krueger, 1996, 2007). Thus, our perceptions of others’ stereotypes may reveal something of our own.
“We don’t see things as they are,” says a proverb. “We see things as we are.” Dawes (1990) proposes that this false consensus may occur because we general-
ize from a limited sample, which prominently includes ourselves. Lacking other information, why not “project” ourselves; why not impute our own knowledge to others and use our responses as a clue to their likely responses? Most people are in the majority; so when people assume they are in the majority they are usually right. Also, we’re more likely to spend time with people who share our attitudes and behaviors and, consequently, to judge the world from the people we know.
On matters of ability or when we behave well or successfully, however, a false uniqueness effect more often occurs (Goethals & others, 1991). We serve our self- image by seeing our talents and moral behaviors as relatively unusual. For exam- ple, those who use marijuana but use seat belts will overestimate (false consensus) the number of other marijuana users and underestimate (false uniqueness) the num- ber of other seat belt users (Suls & others, 1988). Thus, we may see our failings as relatively normal and our virtues as relatively exceptional.
To sum up, self-serving bias appears as self-serving attributions, self-congrat- ulatory comparisons, illusory optimism, and false consensus for one’s failings ( Figure 2.9 ).
Explaining Self-Serving Bias Why do people perceive themselves in self-enhancing ways? One explanation sees the self-serving bias as a by-product of how we process and remember informa- tion about ourselves. Comparing ourselves with others requires us to notice, assess, and recall their behavior and ours. Thus, there are multiple opportunities for flaws
“Everybody says I’m plastic from head to toe. Can’t stand next to a radiator or I’ll melt. I had (breast) implants, but so has every single person in L.A.”
—ACTRESS PAMELA LEE ANDERSON (QUOTED BY
TALBERT, 1997)
false uniqueness effect The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful behaviors.
FIGURE :: 2.9 How Self-Serving Bias Works
Self-serving bias
Attributing one’s success to ability and effort, failure to luck and things external
Example
I got the A in history because I studied hard. I got the D in sociology because the exams were unfair.
Comparing oneself favorably to others I do more for my parents than my sister does.
Unrealistic optimism Even though 50% of marriages fail, I know mine will be enduring joy.
False consensus and uniqueness I know most people agree with me that global warming threatens our future.
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in our information processing (Chambers & Windschitl, 2004). Recall the study in which married people gave them- selves credit for doing more housework than their spouses did. Might that not be due, as Michael Ross and Fiore Sic- oly (1979) believed, to our greater recall for what we’ve actively done and our lesser recall for what we’ve not done or merely observed our partner doing? I could easily pic- ture myself picking up the laundry off the bedroom floor, but I was less aware of the times when I absentmindedly overlooked it.
Are the biased perceptions, then, simply a perceptual error, an emotion-free glitch in how we process informa- tion? Or are self-serving motives also involved? It’s now clear from research that we have multiple motives. Quest- ing for self-knowledge, we’re motivated to assess our com- petence (Dunning, 1995). Questing for self-confirmation, we’re motivated to verify our self-conceptions (Sanitioso &
others, 1990; Swann, 1996, 1997). Questing for self-affirmation, we’re especially motivated to enhance our self-image (Sedikides, 1993). Self-esteem motivation, then, helps power our self-serving bias. As social psychologist Daniel Batson (2006) sur- mises, “The head is an extension of the heart.”
Reflections on Self-Esteem and Self-Serving Bias If you are like some readers, by now you are finding the self-serving bias either depressing or contrary to your own occasional feelings of inadequacy. Even the people who exhibit the self-serving bias may feel inferior—to specific individuals, especially those who are a step or two higher on the ladder of success, attractive- ness, or skill. Moreover, not everyone operates with a self-serving bias. Some peo- ple do suffer from low self-esteem. Positive self-esteem does have some benefits.
THE SELF-SERVING BIAS AS ADAPTIVE Self-esteem has its dark side, but also its bright side. When good things happen, people with high self-esteem are more likely to savor and sustain the good feelings (Wood & others, 2003). “Believing one has more talents and positive qualities than one’s peers allows one to feel good about oneself and to enter the stressful circum- stances of daily life with the resources conferred by a positive sense of self,” note Shelley Taylor and her co-researchers (2003).
Self-serving bias and its accom- panying excuses also help protect people from depression (Snyder & Higgins, 1988; Taylor & others, 2003). Nondepressed people usu- ally exhibit self-serving bias. They excuse their failures on labora- tory tasks or perceive themselves as being more in control than they are. Depressed people’s self- appraisals and their appraisals of how others really view them are not inflated (more on this in Chapter 14).
Self-serving bias addition- ally helps buffer stress. George Bonanno and colleagues (2005) assessed the emotional resiliency
© The New Yorker Collection, 1996, Mike Twohy, from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
Can we all be better than average? © 2009 William Haefeli from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
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of workers who escaped from the World Trade Center or its environs on September 11, 2001. They found that those who displayed self-enhancing tendencies were the most resilient.
In their “terror management theory,” Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski (1997; Greenberg, 2008) propose another reason why positive self-esteem is adaptive: It buffers anxiety, including anxiety related to our certain death. In childhood we learn that when we meet the standards taught us by our parents, we are loved and protected; when we don’t, love and protection may be withdrawn. We therefore come to associate viewing ourselves as good with feeling secure. Greenberg and colleagues argue that positive self-esteem—viewing oneself as good and secure—even protects us from feeling terror over our eventual death. Their research shows that reminding people of their mortality (say, by writing a short essay on dying) motivates them to affirm their self-worth. When facing such threats, self-esteem buffers anxiety. In 2004, a year after the U.S. invasion, Iraqi teens who felt their country was under threat reported the highest self-esteem (Carlton- Ford & others, 2008).
As research on depression and anxiety suggests, there is practical wisdom in self-serving perceptions. It may be strategic to believe we are smarter, stronger, and more socially successful than we are. Cheaters may give a more convincing display of honesty if they believe themselves honorable. Belief in our superiority can also motivate us to achieve—creating a self-fulfilling prophecy—and can sustain our hope through difficult times (Willard & Gramzow, 2009).
THE SELF-SERVING BIAS AS MALADAPTIVE Although self-serving pride may help protect us from depression, it can also be maladaptive. People who blame others for their social difficulties are often unhap- pier than people who can acknowledge their mistakes (C. A. Anderson & others, 1983; Newman & Langer, 1981; Peterson & others, 1981).
Research by Barry Schlenker (1976; Schlenker & Miller, 1977a, 1977b) has also shown how self-serving perceptions can poison a group. As a rock band guitarist during his college days, Schlenker noted that “rock band members typically over- estimated their contributions to a group’s success and underestimated their contri- butions to failure. I saw many good bands disintegrate from the problems caused by these self-glorifying tendencies.” In his later life as a University of Florida social psychologist, Schlenker explored group members’ self-serving perceptions. In nine experiments, he had people work together on some task. He then falsely informed them that their group had done either well or poorly. In every one of those stud- ies, the members of successful groups claimed more responsibility for their group’s performance than did members of groups that supposedly failed at the task.
If most group members believe they are underpaid and underappreciated rela- tive to their better-than-average contributions, disharmony and envy are likely. College presidents and academic deans will readily recognize the phenomenon. Ninety percent or more of college faculty members have rated themselves as supe- rior to their average colleague (Blackburn & others, 1980; Cross, 1977). It is therefore inevitable that when merit salary raises are announced and half receive an average raise or less, many will feel themselves victims of injustice.
Self-serving biases also inflate people’s judgments of their groups, a phenomenon called group-serving bias. When groups are comparable, most people consider their own group superior (Codol, 1976; Jourden & Heath, 1996; Taylor & Doria, 1981).
• Most university sorority members perceive those in their sorority as far less likely to be conceited and snobbish than those in other sororities (Biernat & others, 1996).
• Fifty-three percent of Dutch adults rate their marriage or partnership as bet- ter than that of most others; only 1 percent rate it as worse than most (Buunk & van der Eijnden, 1997).
“Victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.”
—COUNT GALEAZZO CIANO, THE CIANO DIARIES, 1938
“Other men’s sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our back.”
—SENECA, DE IRA, A.D. 43
group-serving bias Explaining away outgroup members’ positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions (while excusing such behavior by one’s own group).
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• Sixty-six percent of Ameri- cans give their oldest child’s public school a grade of A or B. But nearly as many—64 percent—give the nation’s public schools a grade of C or D (Whitman, 1996).
• Most entrepreneurs over- predict their own firms’ pro- ductivity and growth (Kidd & Morgan, 1969; Larwood & Whittaker, 1977).
That people see themselves and their groups with a favor- able bias is hardly new. The tragic flaw portrayed in ancient Greek drama was hubris, or pride. Like the subjects of our
experiments, the Greek tragic figures were not self-consciously evil; they merely thought too highly of themselves. In literature, the pitfalls of pride are por- trayed again and again. In theology, pride has long been first among the “seven deadly sins.”
If pride is akin to the self-serving bias, then what is humility? Is it self-contempt? Humility is not handsome people believing they are ugly and smart people trying to believe they are slow-witted. False modesty can actually be a cover for pride in one’s better-than-average humility. (James Friedrich [1996] reports that most stu- dents congratulate themselves on being better than average at not thinking them- selves better than average!) True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false modesty. It leaves us free to rejoice in our special talents and, with the same hon- esty, to recognize the talents of others.
“False humility is the pre- tence that one is small. True humility is the consciousness of standing in the presence of greatness.”
—JONATHAN SACKS, BRITAIN’S CHIEF RABBI, 2000
Self-serving pride in group settings can become especially dangerous. © The New Yorker Collection, 1983, Dana Fradon, from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
• Contrary to the presumption that most people suffer from low self-esteem or feelings of inferior- ity, researchers consistently find that most people exhibit a self-serving bias. In experiments and everyday life, we often take credit for our successes while blaming failures on the situation.
• Most people rate themselves as better than average on subjective, desirable traits and abilities.
• We exhibit unrealistic optimism about our futures. • We overestimate the commonality of our opinions
and foibles (false consensus) while underestimating
the commonality of our abilities and virtues (false uniqueness).
• Such perceptions arise partly from a motive to maintain and enhance self-esteem, a motive that protects people from depression but contributes to misjudgment and group conflict.
• Self-serving bias can be adaptive in that it allows us to savor the good things that happen in our lives. When bad things happen, however, self-serving bias can have the maladaptive effect of causing us to blame oth- ers or feel cheated out of something we “deserved.”
Summing Up: Self-Serving Bias
Self-Presentation Humans seem motivated not only to perceive themselves in self-enhancing ways but also to present themselves favorably to others. How might people’s tactics of “impression management” lead to false modesty or to self-defeating behavior?
So far we have seen that the self is at the center of our social worlds, that self- esteem and self-efficacy pay some dividends, and that self-serving bias influences
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self-evaluations. Perhaps you have wondered: Are self-enhancing expressions always sincere? Do people have the same feelings privately as they express publicly? Or are they just putting on a positive face even while living with self- doubt?
Self-Handicapping Sometimes people sabotage their chances for success by creating impediments that make success less likely. Far from being deliberately self-destructive, such behav- iors typically have a self-protective aim (Arkin & others, 1986; Baumeister & Scher, 1988; Rhodewalt, 1987): “I’m really not a failure—I would have done well except for this problem.”
Why would people handicap themselves with self-defeating behavior? Recall that we eagerly protect our self-images by attributing failures to external factors. Can you see why, fearing failure, people might handicap themselves by partying half the night before a job interview or playing video games instead of studying before a big exam? When self-image is tied up with performance, it can be more self-deflating to try hard and fail than to procrastinate and have a ready excuse. If we fail while handicapped in some way, we can cling to a sense of competence; if we succeed under such conditions, it can only boost our self-image. Handicaps protect both self-esteem and public image by allowing us to attribute failures to something temporary or external (“I was feeling sick”; “I was out too late the night before”) rather than to lack of talent or ability.
Steven Berglas and Edward Jones (1978) confirmed this analysis of self- handicapping. One experiment was announced as concerning “drugs and intel- lectual performance.” Imagine yourself in the position of their Duke University participants. You guess answers to some difficult aptitude questions and then are told, “Yours was one of the best scores seen to date!” Feeling incredibly lucky, you are then offered a choice between two drugs before answering more of these items. One drug will aid intellectual performance and the other will inhibit it. Which drug do you want? Most students wanted the drug that would supposedly disrupt their thinking, thus providing a handy excuse for anticipated poorer performance.
Researchers have documented other ways people self-handicap. Fearing failure, people will
• reduce their preparation for important individual athletic events (Rhodewalt & others, 1984) .
• give their opponent an advantage (Shepperd & Arkin, 1991) . • perform poorly at the beginning of a task in order not to create unreachable
expectations (Baumgardner & Brownlee, 1987) . • not try as hard as they could during a tough, ego-involving task (Hormuth,
1986; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987; Riggs, 1992; Turner & Pratkanis, 1993).
Impression Management Self-serving bias, false modesty, and self-handicapping reveal the depth of our con- cern for self-image. To varying degrees, we are continually managing the impres- sions we create. Whether we wish to impress, intimidate, or seem helpless, we are social animals, playing to an audience.
Self-presentation refers to our wanting to present a desired image both to an external audience (other people) and to an internal audience (ourselves). We work at managing the impressions we create. We excuse, justify, or apologize as neces- sary to shore up our self-esteem and verify our self-images (Schlenker & Weigold, 1992). Just as we preserve our self-esteem, we also must make sure not to brag too much and risk the disapproval of others (Anderson & others, 2006). Social interac- tion is a careful balance of looking good while not looking too good.
“With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation.” —WILLIAM JAMES, PRINCIPLES
OF PSYCHOLOGY, 1890
self-handicapping Protecting one’s self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure.
“If you try to fail, and suc- ceed, what have you done?”
—ANONYMOUS
After losing to some younger rivals, tennis great Martina Navratilova confessed that she was “afraid to play my best. . . . I was scared to find out if they could beat me when I’m playing my best because if they can, then I am finished” (Frankel & Snyder, 1987).
self-presentation The act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one’s ideals.
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In familiar situations, self- presentation happens without conscious effort. In unfamiliar situations, perhaps at a party with people we would like to impress or in conversation with someone we have romantic interest in, we are acutely self- conscious of the impressions we are cre- ating and we are therefore less modest than when among friends who know us well (Leary & others, 1994; Tice & oth- ers, 1995). Preparing to have our pho- tographs taken, we may even try out different faces in a mirror. We do this even though active self-presentation depletes energy, which often leads to diminished effectiveness—for example, to less persistence on a tedious experi- mental task or more difficulty stifling emotional expressions (Vohs & others, 2005). The upside is that self-presenta- tion can unexpectedly improve mood. People felt significantly better than they thought they would after doing their best to “put their best face forward”
and concentrate on making a positive impression on their boyfriend or girlfriend. Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues conclude that “date nights” for long-term cou- ples work because they encourage active self-presentation, which improves mood (Dunn & others, 2008).
Social networking sites such as Facebook provide a new and sometimes intense venue for self-presentation. They are, says communications professor Joseph Walther, “like impression management on steroids” (Rosenbloom, 2008). Users make careful decisions about which pictures, activities, and interests to highlight in their profiles. Some even think about how their friends will affect the impres- sion they make on others; one study found that those with more attractive friends were perceived as more attractive themselves (Walther & others, 2008). Given the concern with status and attractiveness on social networking sites, it is not surpris- ing that people high in narcissistic traits thrive on Facebook, tallying up more friends and choosing more attractive pictures of themselves (Buffardi & Camp- bell, 2008).
Given our concern for self-presentation, it’s no wonder that people will self- handicap when failure might make them look bad. It’s no wonder that people take health risks—tanning their skin with wrinkle- and cancer-causing radiation; having piercings or tattoos done without proper hygiene; becoming anorexic; yielding to peer pressures to smoke, get drunk, and do drugs (Leary & others, 1994). It’s no wonder that people express more modesty when their self-flattery is vulnerable to being debunked, perhaps by experts who will be scrutinizing their self-evaluations (Arkin & others, 1980; Riess & others, 1981; Weary & others, 1982). Professor Smith will likely express more modesty about the significance of her work when presenting it to professional colleagues than when presenting it to students.
For some people, conscious self-presentation is a way of life. They continu- ally monitor their own behavior and note how others react, then adjust their social performance to gain a desired effect. Those who score high on a scale of self- monitoring tendency (who, for example, agree that “I tend to be what peo- ple expect me to be”) act like social chameleons—they adjust their behavior in
self-monitoring Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one’s performance to create the desired impression.
© 2008 by P. S. Mueller
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response to external situations (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000; Snyder, 1987). Having attuned their behavior to the situation, they are more likely to espouse attitudes they don’t really hold (Zanna & Olson, 1982). Being conscious of others, they are less likely to act on their own attitudes. As Mark Leary (2004b) observed, the self they know often differs from the self they show. As social chameleons, those who score high in self-monitoring are also less committed to their relationships and more likely to be dissatisfied in their marriages (Leone & Hawkins, 2006).
Those who score low in self-monitoring care less about what others think. They are more internally guided and thus more likely to talk and act as they feel and believe (McCann & Hancock, 1983). For example, if asked to list their thoughts about gay couples, they simply express what they think, regardless of the attitudes of their anticipated audience (Klein & others, 2004). As you might imagine, someone who is extremely low in self-monitoring could come across as an insensitive boor, whereas extremely high self-monitoring could result in dishonest behavior worthy of a con artist. Most of us fall somewhere between those two extremes.
Presenting oneself in ways that create a desired impression is a delicate balancing act. People want to be seen as able but also as modest and honest (Carlston & Shovar, 1983). In most social situations, modesty cre- ates a good impression, unsolicited boasting a bad one. Hence the false modesty phenom- enon: We often display lower self-esteem than we privately feel (Miller & Schlenker, 1985). But when we have obviously done extremely well, the insincerity of a disclaimer (“I did well, but it’s no big deal”) may be evident. To make good impressions—to appear modest yet competent—requires social skill.
“Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.”
—BERTRAND RUSSELL, THE CONQUEST
OF HAPPINESS, 1930
© Mike Marland
Group identity. In Asian countries, self-presentation is restrained. Children learn to identify themselves with their groups.
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• As social animals, we adjust our words and actions to suit our audiences. To varying degrees, we note our performance and adjust it to create the impres- sions we desire.
• Such tactics explain examples of false modesty, in which people put themselves down, extol future competitors, or publicly credit others while pri- vately crediting themselves.
• Sometimes people will even self-handicap with self-defeating behaviors that protect self-esteem by providing excuses for failure.
• Self-presentation refers to our wanting to present a favorable image both to an external audience (other people) and to an internal audience (our- selves). With regard to an external audience, those who score high on a scale of self-monitoring adjust their behavior to each situation, whereas those low in self-monitoring may do so little social adjusting that they seem insensitive.
Summing Up: Self-Presentation
POSTSCRIPT: Twin Truths—The Perils of Pride, the Powers of Positive Thinking
This chapter offered two memorable truths—the truth of self-efficacy and the truth of self-serving bias. The truth concerning self-efficacy encourages us not to resign ourselves to bad situations. We need to persist despite initial failures and to exert effort without being overly distracted by self-doubts. Secure self-esteem is likewise adaptive. When we believe in our positive possibilities, we are less vulnerable to depression and we feel less insecure.
Thus, it’s important to think positively and try hard, but not to be so self-confi- dent that your goals are illusory or you alienate others with your narcissism. Taking self-efficacy too far leads to blaming the victim: If positive thinking can accomplish anything, then we have only ourselves to blame if we are unhappily married, poor, or depressed. For shame! If only we had tried harder, been more disciplined, less stupid. This viewpoint fails to acknowledge that bad things can happen to good people. Life’s greatest achievements, but also its greatest disappointments, are born of the highest expectations.
These twin truths—self-efficacy and self-serving bias—remind me of what Pas- cal taught 300 years ago: No single truth is ever sufficient, because the world is complex. Any truth, separated from its complementary truth, is a half-truth.
Making the Social Connection This chapter’s discussion of self and culture explored the idea of self- concept and suggested that the view of the self can be interdependent
and/or independent; we also read Hazel Markus’s thoughts on the self and culture. Go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/myers10e to watch videos on these topics.
P.S.
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C H A P T E R Social Beliefs and Judgments
3
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Perceiving our social worlds
Judging our social worlds
Explaining our social worlds
Expectations of our social worlds
Conclusions
Postscript: Reflecting on illusory thinking
A s U.S. senators, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama each adopted positions of apparent conscience. In 2001, McCain voted against President Bush’s proposed tax cut, say-
ing “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many
of the benefits go to the most fortunate.” In 2008, when McCain was
campaigning for the Republican nomination and then for president,
he supported and favored extending the cuts that he earlier had
opposed.
Barack Obama in 2007 declared himself a “longtime advocate” of
public financing of presidential elections and pledged to accept public
financing should he win the Democratic nomination for president. But
when he won the nomination, supported by unprecedented campaign
contributions, he rejected public financing of his own campaign.
For Democrats, McCain’s reversal displayed not moral courage and
an openness to changing one’s mind in the light of new information,
but rather expedience and hypocrisy as McCain sought to pick up
contributions and votes from wealthy conservatives.
For Republicans, Obama’s reversal likewise displayed not a tem-
porary strategy en route to reforming election financing, but rather
hypocrisy and the same old do-what-you-can-to-get-elected politics.
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As the candidates debated, most McCain partisans were impressed by the reason-
ableness and power of his straight-talk arguments, while being underwhelmed by the
force and cogency of Obama’s performance. Most Obama partisans experienced a
mirror-image reaction, feeling cheered by what they perceived as their candidate’s
superior charisma, intelligence, and vision.
These differing reactions, which have been replicated in political perceptions
across the world, illustrate the extent to which we construct social perceptions and
beliefs as we
• perceive and recall events through the filters of our own assumptions;
• judge events, informed by our intuition, by implicit rules that guide our snap
judgments, and by our moods;
• explain events by sometimes attributing them to the situation, sometimes to
the person; and
• expect certain events, which sometimes helps bring them about.
This chapter therefore explores how we perceive, judge, and explain our social
worlds, and how—and to what extent—our expectations matter.
Perceiving Our Social Worlds Striking research reveals the extent to which our assumptions and prejudgments guide our perceptions, interpretations, and recall.
Chapter 1 noted a significant fact about the human mind: our preconceptions guide how we perceive and interpret information. We construe the world through belief-tinted glasses. “Sure, preconceptions matter,” people will agree; yet they fail to realize how great the effect is.
Let’s consider some provocative experiments. The first group of experiments examines how predispositions and prejudgments affect how we perceive and inter- pret information. The second group plants a judgment in people’s minds after they have been given information to see how after-the-fact ideas bias recall. The over- arching point: We respond not to reality as it is but to reality as we construe it.
Priming Unattended stimuli can subtly influence how we interpret and recall events. Imagine yourself, during an experiment, wearing earphones and concentrating on ambigu- ous spoken sentences such as “We stood by the bank.” When a pertinent word ( river or money ) is simultaneously sent to your other ear, you don’t consciously hear it. Yet the word “primes” your interpretation of the sentence (Baars & McGovern, 1994).
Our memory system is a web of associations, and priming is the awakening or activating of certain associations. Experiments show that priming one thought, even without awareness, can influence another thought, or even an action. John Bargh and his colleagues (1996) asked people to complete a sentence containing words such as “old,” “wise,” and “retired.” Shortly afterward, they observed these people
priming Activating particular associations in memory.
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walking more slowly to the elevator than did those not primed with aging- related words. Moreover, the slow walkers had no awareness of their wal- king speed or of having just viewed words that primed aging.
Often our thinking and acting are subtly primed by unnoticed events. Rob Holland and his colleagues (2005) observed that Dutch students exposed to the scent of an all-purpose cleaner were quicker to identify cleaning- re lated words. In follow-up exper i - ments, other students exposed to a cleaning scent recalled more cleaning- related activities when describing their day’s activities and even kept their desk cleaner while eating a crumbly cookie. Moreover, all these effects occurred without the participants’ conscious awareness of the scent and its influence.
Priming experiments (Bargh, 2006) have their counterparts in everyday life:
• Watching a scary movie alone at home can activate emotions that, without our realizing it, cause us to interpret furnace noises as a possible intruder.
• Depressed moods, as this chapter explains later, prime negative associations. Put people in a good mood and suddenly their past seems more wonderful, their future brighter.
• Watching violence primes people to interpret ambiguous actions (a shove) and words (“punch”) as aggressive.
• For many psychology students, reading about psychological disorders primes how they interpret their own anxieties and gloomy moods. Reading about disease symptoms similarly primes medical students to worry about their congestion, fever, or headache.
In a host of studies, priming effects surface even when the stimuli are presented subliminally—too briefly to be perceived consciously. What’s out of sight may not be completely out of mind. An electric shock that is too slight to be felt may increase the perceived intensity of a later shock. An imperceptibly flashed word, “bread,” may prime people to detect a related word such as “butter” more quickly than they detect an unrelated word such as “bottle” or “bubble.” A subliminal color name facilitates speedier identification when the color appears on the computer screen, whereas an unseen wrong name delays color identification (Epley & others, 1999; Merikle & others, 2001). In each case, an invisible image or word primes a response to a later task.
Studies of how implanted ideas and images can prime our interpretations and recall illustrate one of this book’s take-home lessons from twenty-first-century social psychology: Much of our social information processing is automatic. It is uninten- tional, out of sight, and happens without our conscious awareness.
Perceiving and Interpreting Events Despite some startling and oft-confirmed biases and logical flaws in how we perceive and understand one another, we’re mostly accurate (Jussim, 2005). Our first impressions of one another are more often right than wrong. Moreover, the better we know people, the more accurately we can read their minds and feelings.
Posting the second sign may prime customers to be dissatisfied with the handling of their complaints at the first window. www.CartoonStock.com
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But on occasion our prejudgments err. The effects of prejudgments and expecta- tions are standard fare for psychology’s introductory course. Recall the Dalmatian photo in Chapter 1. Or consider this phrase:
A BIRD
IN THE THE HAND
Did you notice anything wrong with it? There is more to perception than meets the eye. The same is true of social perception. Because social perceptions are very much in the eye of the beholder, even a simple stimulus may strike two people quite differently. Saying Britain’s Gordon Brown is “an okay prime minister” may sound like a put-down to one of his ardent admirers and like praise to someone who regards him with contempt. When social information is subject to multiple interpretations, preconceptions matter (Hilton & von Hippel, 1990).
An experiment by Robert Vallone, Lee Ross, and Mark Lepper (1985) reveals just how powerful preconceptions can be. They showed pro-Israeli and pro-Arab stu- dents six network news segments describing the 1982 killing of civilian refugees at two camps in Lebanon. As Figure 3.1 illustrates, each group perceived the networks as hostile to its side.
The phenomenon is commonplace: Sports fans perceive referees as partial to the other side. Political candidates and their supporters nearly always view the news media as unsympathetic to their cause (Richardson & others, 2008). In the 2008 U.S. presidential race, supporters of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain all noted instances when the media seemed biased against their candidate, some- times because of seeming prejudice related to gender, race, or age.
But it’s not just fans and politicians. People everywhere perceive mediators and media as biased against their position. “There is no subject about which people are less objective than objectivity,” noted one media commentator (Poniewozik, 2003). Indeed, people’s perceptions of bias can be used to assess their attitudes (Saucier & Miller, 2003). Tell me where you see bias, and you will signal your attitudes.
Our assumptions about the world can even make contradictory evidence seem supportive. For example, Ross and Lepper assisted Charles Lord (1979) in asking two groups of students to evaluate the results of two supposedly new research studies. Half the students favored capital punishment and half opposed it. Of the
“Once you have a belief, it influences how you perceive all other relevant information. Once you see a country as hostile, you are likely to inter- pret ambiguous actions on their part as signifying their hostility.”
—POLITICAL SCIENTIST ROBERT JERVIS (1985)
FIGURE :: 3.1 Pro-Israeli and pro-Arab stu- dents who viewed network news descriptions of the “Beirut mas- sacre” believed the coverage was biased against their point of view. Source: Data from Vallone, Ross, & Lepper, 1985.
Pro-Israeli students
Pro-Arab students
Perception of media bias
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Pro-Israel
Anti-Israel
Neutral
Members of each side perceived bias against their view
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studies they evaluated, one confirmed and the other disconfirmed the students’ beliefs about the deterrent effect of the death penalty. The results: Both propo- nents and opponents of capital punish - ment readily accepted evidence that con - firmed their belief but were sharply critical of disconfirming evidence. Showing the two sides an identical body of mixed evi- dence had not lessened their disagreement but increased it.
Is that why, in politics, religion, and sci- ence, ambiguous information often fuels conflict? Presidential debates in the United States have mostly reinforced predebate opinions. By nearly a 10-to-1 margin, those who already favored one candidate or the other perceived their candidate as hav- ing won (Kinder & Sears, 1985). Thus, report Geoffrey Munro and his colleagues (1997), people on both sides may become even more supportive of their respective candidates after viewing a presidential debate. Moreover, at the end of the Republican presidency of Ronald Reagan (during which inflation fell), only 8 percent of Democrats perceived that inflation had fallen. Republicans—47 percent of whom correctly perceived that it had—were similarly inaccurate and negative in their perceptions at the end of the Democratic Clinton presidency (Brooks, 2004). Partisanship predisposes perceptions.
In addition to these studies of people’s preexisting social and political attitudes, researchers have manipulated people’s preconceptions—with astonishing effects upon their interpretations and recollections.
Myron Rothbart and Pamela Birrell (1977) had University of Oregon students assess the facial expression of a man ( Figure 3.2 ). Those told he was a Gestapo leader responsible for barbaric medical experiments on concentration camp inmates intui- tively judged his expression as cruel. (Can you see that barely suppressed sneer?) Those told he was a leader in the anti-Nazi underground movement whose courage saved thousands of Jewish lives judged his facial expression as warm and kind. (Just look at those caring eyes and that almost smiling mouth.)
Filmmakers control people’s percep- tions of emotion by manipulating the set- ting in which they see a face. They call this the “Kulechov effect,” after a Russian film director who would skillfully guide viewers’ inferences by manipulating their assumptions. Kulechov demonstrated the phenomenon by creating three short films that presented identical footage of the face of an actor with a neutral expression after viewers had first been shown one of three different scenes: a dead woman, a dish of soup, or a girl playing. As a result, in the first film the actor seemed sad, in the sec- ond thoughtful, and in the third happy.
Construal processes also color others’ perceptions of us. When we say some- thing good or bad about another, people
“The error of our eye directs our mind: What error leads must err.” —SHAKESPEARE, TROILUS AND
CRESSIDA, 1601–1602
FIGURE :: 3.2 Judge for yourself: Is this per- son’s expression cruel or kind? If told he was a Nazi, would your reading of his face differ?
Some circumstances make it difficult to be unbiased. © The New Yorker Collection, 2003, Alex Gregory, from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
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spontaneously tend to associate that trait with us, report Lynda Mae, Donal Carlston, and John Skowronski (1999; Carlston & Skowronski, 2005)—a phe- nomenon they call spontaneous trait trans- ference. If we go around talking about others being gossipy, people may then unconsciously associate “gossip” with us. Call someone a jerk and folks may later construe you as one. Describe some- one as sensitive, loving, and compassion- ate, and you may seem more so. There is, it appears, intuitive wisdom in the childhood taunt, “I’m rubber, you’re glue; what you say bounces off me and sticks to you.”
The bottom line: We view our social worlds through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values. That is one reason our beliefs are so important; they shape our interpretation of every thing else.
Belief Perseverance Imagine a grandparent who decides, du - ring an evening with a crying infant, that
bottle feeding produces colicky babies: “Come to think of it, cow’s milk obviously suits calves better than babies.” If the infant turns out to be suffering a high fever, will the sitter nevertheless persist in believing that bottle feeding causes colic (Ross & Anderson, 1982)? To find out, Lee Ross, Craig Anderson, and their colleagues planted a falsehood in people’s minds and then tried to discredit it.
Their research reveals that it is surprisingly difficult to demolish a falsehood, once the person conjures up a rationale for it. Each experiment first implanted a belief, either by proclaiming it to be true or by showing the participants some anecdotal evidence. Then the participants were asked to explain why it is true. Finally, the researchers totally discredited the initial information by telling the participants the truth: The information was manufactured for the experiment, and half the partici- pants in the experiment had received opposite information. Nevertheless, the new belief survived about 75 percent intact, presumably because the participants still retained their invented explanations for the belief. This phenomenon, called belief perseverance, shows that beliefs can grow their own legs and survive the discredit- ing of the evidence that inspired them.
An example: Anderson, Lepper, and Ross (1980) asked participants to decide whether individuals who take risks make good or bad firefighters. One group con- sidered a risk-prone person who was a successful firefighter and a cautious person who was unsuccessful. The other group considered cases suggesting the opposite conclusion. After forming their theory that risk-prone people make better or worse firefighters, the participants wrote explanations for it—for example, that risk-prone people are brave or that cautious people have fewer accidents. Once each explana- tion was formed, it could exist independently of the information that initially cre- ated the belief. When that information was discredited, the participants still held their self-generated explanations and therefore continued to believe that risk-prone people really do make better or worse firefighters.
These experiments suggest that the more we examine our theories and explain how they might be true, the more closed we become to information that challenges
belief perseverance Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, as when the basis for one’s belief is discredited but an expla- nation of why the belief might be true survives.
Supporters of a particular candidate or cause tend to see the media as favoring the other side.
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our beliefs. Once we consider why an accused person might be guilty, why an offending stranger acts that way, or why a favored stock might rise in value, our explanations may survive challenges (Davies, 1997; Jelalian & Miller, 1984).
The evidence is compelling: Our beliefs and expectations powerfully affect how we mentally construct events. Usually, we benefit from our preconceptions, just as scientists benefit from creating theories that guide them in noticing and inter- preting events. But the benefits sometimes entail a cost: We become prisoners of our own thought patterns. Thus, the supposed Martian “canals” that twentieth- century astronomers delighted in spotting turned out to be the product of intel- ligent life—an intelligence on Earth’s side of the telescope. As another example, Germans, who widely believed that the introduction of the Euro currency led to increased prices, overestimated such price increases when comparing actual restau- rant menus—the prior menu with German Mark prices and a new one with Euro prices (Traut-Mattausch & others, 2004). As an old Chinese proverb says, “Two- thirds of what we see is behind our eyes.”
Belief perseverance may have important consequences, as Stephan Lewandowsky and his international collaborators (2005) discovered when they explored implanted and discredited information about the Iraq war that began in 2003. As the war unfolded, the Western media reported and repeated several claims—for example, that Iraqi forces executed coalition prisoners of war—that later were shown to be false and were retracted. Alas, having accepted the information, which fit their pre- existing assumptions, Americans tended to retain the belief (unlike most Germans and Australians, who had questioned the war’s rationale).
Is there a remedy for belief perseverance? There is: Explain the opposite. Charles Lord, Mark Lepper, and Elizabeth Preston (1984) repeated the capital punishment study described earlier and added two variations. First, they asked some of their participants, when evaluating the evidence, to be “as objective and unbiased as pos- sible.” That instruction accomplished nothing; whether for or against capital pun- ishment, those who had received the plea made evaluations as biased as those who had not.
The researchers asked a third group to consider the opposite—to ask themselves “whether you would have made the same high or low evaluations had exactly the same study produced results on the other side of the issue.” After imagining an opposite finding, these people were much less biased in their evaluations of the evidence for and against their views. In his experiments, Craig Anderson (1982; Anderson & Sechler, 1986) consistently found that explaining why an opposite theory might be true—why a cautious rather than a risk-taking person might be a better firefighter—reduces or eliminates belief perseverance. Indeed, explaining any alternative outcome, not just the opposite, drives people to ponder various pos- sibilities (Hirt & Markman, 1995).
Constructing Memories of Ourselves and Our Worlds Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Memory can be likened to a storage chest in the brain into which we deposit material and from which we can withdraw it later if needed. Occasionally, something is lost from the “chest,” and then we say we have forgotten.
About 85 percent of college students said they agreed (Lamal, 1979). As one maga- zine ad put it, “Science has proven the accumulated experience of a lifetime is pre- served perfectly in your mind.”
Actually, psychological research has proved the opposite. Our memories are not exact copies of experiences that remain on deposit in a memory bank. Rather, we construct memories at the time of withdrawal. Like a paleontologist inferring the appearance of a dinosaur from bone fragments, we reconstruct our distant past
“We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.”
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 1817–1862
“No one denies that new evi- dence can change people’s beliefs. Children do eventu- ally renounce their belief in Santa Claus. Our contention is simply that such changes gen- erally occur slowly, and that more compelling evidence is often required to alter a belief than to create it.”
—LEE ROSS & MARK LEPPER (1980)
“Memory isn’t like reading a book: It’s more like writ- ing a book from fragmentary notes.”
—JOHN F. KIHLSTROM, 1994
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by using our current feelings and expectations to combine information fragments. Thus, we can easily (though unconsciously) revise our memories to suit our current knowledge. When one of my sons complained, “The June issue of Cricket never came,” and was then shown where it was, he delightedly responded, “Oh good, I knew I’d gotten it.”
When an experimenter or a therapist manipulates people’s presumptions about their past, a sizable percentage of people will construct false memories. Asked to imagine vividly a made-up childhood experience in which they ran, tripped, fell, and stuck their hand through a window, or knocked over a punch bowl at a wed- ding, about one-fourth will later recall the fictitious event as something that actually happened (Loftus & Bernstein, 2005). In its search for truth, the mind sometimes constructs a falsehood.
In experiments involving more than 20,000 people, Elizabeth Loftus (2003, 2007) and her collaborators have explored our mind’s tendency to construct memories. In the typical experiment, people witness an event, receive misleading informa- tion about it (or not), and then take a memory test. The repeated finding is the misinformation effect. People incorporate the misinformation into their memories: They recall a yield sign as a stop sign, hammers as screwdrivers, Vogue magazine as Mademoiselle, Dr. Henderson as “Dr. Davidson,” breakfast cereal as eggs, and a clean-shaven man as a fellow with a mustache. Suggested misinformation may even produce false memories of supposed child sexual abuse, argues Loftus.
This process affects our recall of social as well as physical events. Jack Croxton and his colleagues (1984) had students spend 15 minutes talking with someone. Those who were later informed that this person liked them recalled the person’s behavior as relaxed, comfortable, and happy. Those informed that the person dis- liked them recalled the person as nervous, uncomfortable, and not so happy.
RECONSTRUCTING OUR PAST ATTITUDES Five years ago, how did you feel about nuclear power? About your country’s presi- dent or prime minister? About your parents? If your attitudes have changed, what do you think is the extent of the change?
Experimenters have explored such questions, and the results have been unnerv- ing. People whose attitudes have changed often insist that they have always felt much as they now feel. Daryl Bem and Keith McConnell (1970) conducted a sur- vey among Carnegie-Mellon University students. Buried in it was a question con- cerning student control over the university curriculum. A week later the students agreed to write an essay opposing student control. After doing so, their attitudes shifted toward greater opposition to student control. When asked to recall how they had answered the question before writing the essay, the students “remem- bered” holding the opinion that they now held and denied that the experiment had affected them.
After observing Clark University students similarly denying their former atti- tudes, researchers D. R. Wixon and James Laird (1976) commented, “The speed, magnitude, and certainty” with which the students revised their own histories “was striking.” As George Vaillant (1977) noted after following adults through time, “It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all.”
The construction of positive memories brightens our recollections. Terence Mitchell, Leigh Thompson, and their colleagues (1994, 1997) report that people often exhibit rosy retrospection —they recall mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced them. College students on a three-week bike trip, older adults on a guided tour of Austria, and undergraduates on vacation all reported enjoying their experiences as they were having them. But they later recalled such experi- ences even more fondly, minimizing the unpleasant or boring aspects and remem- bering the high points. Thus, the pleasant times during which I have sojourned in Scotland I now (back in my office facing deadlines and interruptions) romanticize
misinformation effect Incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event, after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it.
“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”
—JONATHAN SWIFT, THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS
SUBJECTS, 1711
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as pure bliss. The mist and the midges are but dim memories. The spectacular scen- ery and the fresh sea air and the favorite tea rooms are still with me. With any posi- tive experience, some of our pleasure resides in the anticipation, some in the actual experience, and some in the rosy retrospection.
Cathy McFarland and Michael Ross (1985) found that as our relationships change, we also revise our recollections of other people. They had university students rate their steady dating partners. Two months later, they rated them again. Students who were more in love than ever had a tendency to recall love at first sight. Those who had broken up were more likely to recall having recognized the partner as somewhat selfish and bad-tempered.
Diane Holmberg and John Holmes (1994) discovered the phenomenon also oper- ating among 373 newlywed couples, most of whom reported being very happy. When resurveyed two years later, those whose marriages had soured recalled that things had always been bad. The results are “frightening,” say Holmberg and Holmes: “Such biases can lead to a dangerous downward spiral. The worse your current view of your partner is, the worse your memories are, which only further confirms your negative attitudes.”
It’s not that we are totally unaware of how we used to feel, just that when memo- ries are hazy, current feelings guide our recall. When widows and widowers try to recall the grief they felt on their spouse’s death five years earlier, their current emo- tional state colors their memories (Safer & others, 2001). When patients recall their previous day’s headache pain, their current feelings sway their recollections (Eich & others, 1985). Parents of every generation bemoan the values of the next genera- tion, partly because they misrecall their youthful values as being closer to their cur- rent values. And teens of every generation recall their parents as—depending on their current mood—wonderful or woeful (Bornstein & others, 1991).
RECONSTRUCTING OUR PAST BEHAVIOR Memory construction enables us to revise our own histories. The hindsight bias, described in Chapter 1, involves memory revision. Hartmut Blank and his col- leagues (2003) showed this when inviting University of Leipzig students, after a surprising German election outcome, to recall their voting predictions from two months previous. The students misrecalled their predictions as closer to the actual results.
Our memories reconstruct other sorts of past behaviors as well. Michael Ross, Cathy McFarland, and Garth Fletcher (1981) exposed some University of Waterloo students to a message convincing them of the desirability of toothbrushing. Later, in a supposedly different experiment, these students recalled brushing their teeth more often during the preceding two weeks than did students who had not heard the message. Likewise, people who are surveyed report smoking many fewer ciga- rettes than are actually sold (Hall, 1985). And they recall casting more votes than were actually recorded (Census Bureau, 1993).
Social psychologist Anthony Greenwald (1980) noted the similarity of such find- ings to happenings in George Orwell’s novel 1984 —in which it was “necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner.” Indeed, argued Green- wald, we all have “totalitarian egos” that revise the past to suit our present views. Thus, we underreport bad behavior and overreport good behavior.
Sometimes our present view is that we’ve improved—in which case we may misrecall our past as more unlike the present than it actually was. This tendency resolves a puzzling pair of consistent findings: Those who participate in psycho- therapy and self-improvement programs for weight control, antismoking, and exercise show only modest improvement on average. Yet they often claim con- siderable benefit (Myers, 2010). Michael Conway and Michael Ross (1986) explain why: Having expended so much time, effort, and money on self-improvement, people may think, “I may not be perfect now, but I was worse before; this did me a lot of good.”
“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”
—PAUL THEROUX, IN THE OBSERVER
“Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.”
—NOVELIST JOSEPH CONRAD, 1857–1924
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In Chapter 14 we will see that psychiatrists and clinical psychologists are not immune to these human tendencies. We all selectively notice, interpret, and recall events in ways that sustain our ideas. Our social judgments are a mix of observa- tion and expectation, reason and passion.
• Our preconceptions strongly influence how we interpret and remember events. In a phenom- enon called priming, people’s prejudgments have striking effects on how they perceive and inter- pret information.
• Other experiments have planted judgments or false ideas in people’s minds after they have been given information. These experiments reveal that as before- the-fact judgments bias our perceptions and interpre- tations, so after-the-fact judgments bias our recall.
• Belief perseverance is the phenomenon in which peo- ple cling to their initial beliefs and the reasons why a belief might be true, even when the basis for the belief is discredited.
• Far from being a repository for facts about the past, our memories are actually formed when we retrieve them, and subject to strong influence by the attitudes and feelings we hold at the time of retrieval.
Summing Up: Perceiving Our Social Worlds
Judging Our Social Worlds As we have already noted, our cognitive mechanisms are efficient and adaptive, yet occasionally error-prone. Usually they serve us well. But sometimes clinicians misjudge patients, employers misjudge employees, people of one race misjudge peo- ple of another, and spouses misjudge their mates. The results can be misdiagnoses, labor strife, prejudices, and divorces. So, how—and how well—do we make intui- tive social judgments?
When historians describe social psychology’s first century, they will surely record 1980–2010 as the era of social cognition. By drawing on advances in cogni- tive psychology—in how people perceive, represent, and remember events—social psychologists have shed welcome light on how we form judgments. Let’s look at what that research reveals of the marvels and mistakes of our social intuition.
Intuitive Judgments What are our powers of intuition—of immediately knowing something without rea- soning or analysis? Advocates of “intuitive management” believe we should tune into our hunches. When judging others, they say, we should plug into the nonlogi- cal smarts of our “right brain.” When hiring, firing, and investing, we should listen to our premonitions. In making judgments, we should follow the example of Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker by switching off our computer guidance systems and trust- ing the force within.
Are the intuitionists right that important information is immediately available apart from our conscious analysis? Or are the skeptics correct in saying that intu- ition is “our knowing we are right, whether we are or not”?
Priming research suggests that the unconscious indeed controls much of our behavior. As John Bargh and Tanya Chartrand (1999) explain, “Most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes that are put into motion by features of the environment and that operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance.” When the light turns red, we react and hit the brake before consciously deciding to do so. Indeed, reflect Neil Macrae and Lucy Johnston (1998), “to be able to do just about anything at all (e.g., driving, dating, dancing), action initiation needs to be decoupled from the
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inefficient (i.e., slow, serial, resource-consuming) workings of the conscious mind, otherwise inaction inevitably would prevail.”
THE POWERS OF INTUITION “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know,” observed seventeenth- century philosopher-mathematician Blaise Pascal. Three centuries later, scientists have proved Pascal correct. We know more than we know we know. Studies of our unconscious information processing confirm our limited access to what’s going on in our minds (Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Strack & Deutsch, 2004). Our thinking is partly controlled (reflective, deliberate, and conscious) and— more than psychologists once supposed—partly automatic (impulsive, effortless, and without our awareness). Automatic, intuitive thinking occurs not “on-screen” but off-screen, out of sight, where reason does not go. Consider these examples of automatic thinking:
• Schemas are mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our percep- tions and interpretations. Whether we hear someone speaking of religious sects or sex depends not only on the word spoken but also on how we auto- matically interpret the sound.
• Emotional reactions are often nearly instantaneous, happening before there is time for deliberate thinking. One neural shortcut takes information from the eye or the ear to the brain’s sensory switchboard (the thalamus) and out to its emotional control center (the amygdala) before the thinking cortex has had any chance to intervene (LeDoux, 2002). Our ancestors who intuitively feared a sound in the bushes were usually fearing nothing. But when the sound was made by a dangerous predator they became more likely to survive to pass their genes down to us than their more deliberative cousins.
• Given sufficient expertise, people may intuitively know the answer to a prob- lem. Master chess players intuitively recognize meaningful patterns that novices miss and often make their next move with only a glance at the board, as the situation cues information stored in their memory. Similarly, without knowing quite how, we recognize a friend’s voice after the first spoken word of a phone conversation.
• Faced with a decision but lacking the expertise to make an informed snap judg- ment, our unconscious thinking may guide us toward a satisfying choice. That’s what University of Amsterdam psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis and his co-workers (2006a, 2006b) discovered after showing people, for example, a dozen pieces of information about each of four potential apartments. Compared to people who made instant decisions or were given time to analyze the information, the most satisfying decisions were made by those who were distracted and unable to focus consciously on the problem. Although these findings are controversial (González-Vallejo & others, 2008; Newell & others, 2008), this much seems true: When facing a tough decision it often pays to take our time—even to sleep on it—and to await the intuitive result of our out-of-sight information processing.
Some things—facts, names, and past experiences—we remember explicitly (con- sciously). But other things—skills and conditioned dispositions—we remember implicitly, without consciously knowing or declaring that we know. It’s true of us all but most strikingly evident in people with brain damage who cannot form new explicit memories. One such person never could learn to recognize her physician, who would need to reintroduce himself with a handshake each day. One day the physician affixed a tack to his hand, causing the patient to jump with pain. When the physician next returned, he was still unrecognized (explicitly). But the patient, retaining an implicit memory, would not shake his hand.
Equally dramatic are the cases of blindsight. Having lost a portion of the visual cortex to surgery or stroke, people may be functionally blind in part of their field of
controlled processing “Explicit” thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious.
automatic processing “Implicit” thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness, roughly corresponds to “intuition.”
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vision. Shown a series of sticks in the blind field, they report seeing nothing. After correctly guessing whether the sticks are vertical or horizontal, the patients are astounded when told, “You got them all right.” Like the patient who “remembered” the painful handshake, these people know more than they know they know.
Consider your own taken-for-granted capacity to recognize a face. As you look at it, your brain breaks the visual information into subdimensions such as color, depth, movement, and form and works on each aspect simultaneously before reas- sembling the components. Finally, using automatic processing, your brain com- pares the perceived image with previously stored images. Voilà! Instantly and effortlessly, you recognize your grandmother. If intuition is immediately knowing something without reasoned analysis, then perceiving is intuition par excellence.
Subliminal stimuli may, as we have already noted, prime our thinking and react- ing. Shown certain geometric figures for less than 0.01 second each, people may deny having seen anything more than a flash of light yet express a preference for the forms they saw.
So, many routine cognitive functions occur automatically, unintentionally, with- out awareness. We might remember how automatic processing helps us get through life by picturing our minds as functioning like big corporations. Our CEO—our con- trolled consciousness—attends to many of the most important, complex, and novel issues, while subordinates deal with routine affairs and matters requiring instant action. This delegation of resources enables us to react to many situations quickly and efficiently. The bottom line: Our brain knows much more than it tells us.
THE LIMITS OF INTUITION We have seen how automatic, intuitive thinking can “make us smart” (Gigerenzer, 2007). Elizabeth Loftus and Mark Klinger (1992) nevertheless speak for other cogni- tive scientists in having doubts about the brilliance of intuition. They report “a gen- eral consensus that the unconscious may not be as smart as previously believed.” For example, although subliminal stimuli can trigger a weak, fleeting response— enough to evoke a feeling if not conscious awareness—there is no evidence that commercial subliminal tapes can “reprogram your unconscious mind” for success. In fact, a significant body of evidence indicates that they can’t (Greenwald, 1992).
Social psychologists have explored not only our error-prone hindsight judgments but also our capacity for illusion—for perceptual misinterpretations, fantasies, and constructed beliefs. Michael Gazzaniga (1992, 1998, 2008) reports that patients whose brain hemispheres have been surgically separated will instantly fabricate— and believe—explanations of their own puzzling behaviors. If the patient gets up and takes a few steps after the experimenter flashes the instruction “walk” to the patient’s nonverbal right hemisphere, the verbal left hemisphere will instantly pro- vide the patient with a plausible explanation (“I felt like getting a drink”).
Illusory thinking also appears in the vast new literature on how we take in, store, and retrieve social information. As perception researchers study visual illusions for what they reveal about our normal perceptual mechanisms, social psychologists study illusory thinking for what it reveals about normal information processing. These researchers want to give us a map of everyday social thinking, with the haz- ards clearly marked.
As we examine some of these efficient thinking patterns, remember this: Dem- onstrations of how people create counterfeit beliefs do not prove that all beliefs are counterfeit (though, to recognize counterfeiting, it helps to know how it’s done).
Overconfidence So far we have seen that our cognitive systems process a vast amount of informa- tion efficiently and automatically. But our efficiency has a trade-off; as we inter- pret our experiences and construct memories, our automatic intuitions sometimes err. Usually, we are unaware of our flaws. The “intellectual conceit” evident in
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judgments of past knowledge (“I knew it all along”) extends to estimates of current knowledge and predictions of future behavior. We know we’ve messed up in the past. But we have more positive expectations for our future performance in meet- ing deadlines, managing relationships, following an exercise routine, and so forth (Ross & Newby-Clark, 1998).
To explore this overconfidence phenomenon, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979) gave people factual statements and asked them to fill in the blanks, as in the following sentence: “I feel 98 percent certain that the air distance between New Delhi and Beijing is more than______ miles but less than______ miles.” Most individuals were overconfident: About 30 percent of the time, the correct answers lay outside the range they felt 98 percent confident about.
To find out whether overconfidence extends to social judgments, David Dunning and his associates (1990) created a little game show. They asked Stanford Univer- sity students to guess a stranger’s answers to a series of questions, such as “Would you prepare for a difficult exam alone or with others?” and “Would you rate your lecture notes as neat or messy?” Knowing the type of question but not the actual questions, the participants first interviewed their target person about background, hobbies, academic interests, aspirations, astrological sign—anything they thought might be helpful. Then, while the targets privately answered 20 of the two-choice questions, the interviewers predicted their target’s answers and rated their own confidence in the predictions.
The interviewers guessed right 63 percent of the time, beating chance by 13 percent. But, on average, they felt 75 percent sure of their predictions. When guessing their own roommates’ responses, they were 68 percent correct and 78 percent confident. More- over, the most confident people were most likely to be overconfident. People also are markedly overconfident when judging whether someone is telling the truth or when estimating things such as the sexual history of their dating partner or the activity pref- erences of their roommates (DePaulo & others, 1997; Swann & Gill, 1997).
Ironically, incompetence feeds overconfidence. It takes competence to recognize what competence is, note Justin Kruger and David Dunning (1999). Students who score at the bottom on tests of grammar, humor, and logic are most prone to overes- timating their gifts at such. Those who don’t know what good logic or grammar is are often unaware that they lack it. If you make a list of all the words you can form out of the letters in “psychology,” you may feel brilliant—but then stupid when
overconfidence phenomenon The tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs.
The air distance between New Delhi and Beijing is 2,500 miles.
DOONESBURY © 2000 G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
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a friend starts naming the ones you missed. Deanna Caputo and Dunning (2005) recreated this phenomenon in experiments, confirming that our ignorance of our ignorance sustains our self-confidence. Follow-up studies indicate that this “igno- rance of one’s incompetence” occurs mostly on relatively easy-seeming tasks, such as forming words out of “psychology.” On really hard tasks, poor performers more often appreciate their lack of skill (Burson & others, 2006).
Ignorance of one’s incompetence helps explain David Dunning’s (2005) startling conclusion from employee assessment studies that “what others see in us . . . tends to be more highly correlated with objective outcomes than what we see in our- selves.” In one study, participants watched someone walk into a room, sit, read a weather report, and walk out (Borkenau & Liebler, 1993). Based on nothing more than that, their estimate of the person’s intelligence correlated with the person’s intelligence score about as well as did the person’s own self-estimate (.30 vs. .32)! If ignorance can beget false confidence, then—yikes!—where, we may ask, are you and I unknowingly deficient?
In Chapter 2 we noted that people overestimate their long-term emotional responses to good and bad happenings. Are people better at predicting their own behavior? To find out, Robert Vallone and his colleagues (1990) had college students predict in September whether they would drop a course, declare a major, elect to live off campus next year, and so forth. Although the students felt, on average, 84 percent sure of those self-predictions, they were wrong nearly twice as often as they expected to be. Even when feeling 100 percent sure of their predictions, they erred 15 percent of the time.
In estimating their chances for success on a task, such as a major exam, people’s confidence runs highest when the moment of truth is off in the future. By exam day, the possibility of failure looms larger and confidence typically drops (Gilovich & oth- ers, 1993; Shepperd & others, 2005). Roger Buehler and his colleagues (1994, 2002, 2003, 2005) report that most students also confidently underestimate how long it will take them to complete papers and other major assignments. They are not alone:
• The “planning fallacy.” How much free time do you have today? How much free time do you expect you will have a month from today? Most of us overestimate how much we’ll be getting done, and therefore how much free time we will have (Zauberman & Lynch, 2005). Professional planners, too, routinely underestimate the time and expense of projects. In 1969, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau proudly announced that a $120 million stadium with a retractable roof would be built for the 1976 Olympics. The roof was com- pleted in 1989 and cost $120 million by itself. In 1985, officials estimated that Boston’s “Big Dig” highway project would cost $2.6 billion and take until 1998. The cost ballooned to $14.6 billion and the project took until 2006.
• Stockbroker overconfidence. Investment experts market their services with the confident presumption that they can beat the stock market average, forget- ting that for every stockbroker or buyer saying “Sell!” at a given price, there is another saying “Buy!” A stock’s price is the balance point between those mutually confident judgments. Thus, incredible as it may seem, economist Burton Malkiel (2007) reports that mutual fund portfolios selected by invest- ment analysts have not outperformed randomly selected stocks.
• Political overconfidence. Overconfident decision makers can wreak havoc. It was a confident Adolf Hitler who from 1939 to 1945 waged war against the rest of Europe. It was a confident Lyndon Johnson who in the 1960s invested U.S. weapons and soldiers in the effort to salvage democracy in South Vietnam. It was a confident Saddam Hussein who in 1990 marched his army into Kuwait and in 2003 promised to defeat invading armies. It was a confi- dent George W. Bush who proclaimed that peaceful democracy would soon prevail in a liberated and thriving Iraq, with its alleged weapons of mass destruction newly destroyed.
“The wise know too well their weakness to assume infal- libility; and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON, WRITINGS
Regarding the atomic bomb: “That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.” —ADMIRAL WILLIAM LEAHY TO
PRESIDENT TRUMAN, 1945
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What produces overconfidence? Why doesn’t experience lead us to a more real- istic self-appraisal? For one thing, people tend to recall their mistaken judgments as times when they were almost right. Philip Tetlock (1998, 1999, 2005) observed this after inviting various academic and gov- ernment experts to project—from their viewpoint in the late 1980s—the future governance of the Soviet Union, South Africa, and Canada. Five years later com- munism had collapsed, South Africa had become a multiracial democracy, and Canada’s French-speaking minority had not seceded. Experts who had felt more than 80 percent confident were right in predicting these turns of events less than 40 percent of the time. Yet, reflecting on their judgments, those who erred believed they were still basically right. I was “almost right,” said many. “The hardliners almost succeeded in their coup attempt against Gorbachev.” “The Quebecois separatists almost won the secessionist referendum.” “But for the coincidence of de Klerk and Mandela, there would have been a much bloodier transition to black majority rule in South Africa.” The Iraq war was a good idea, just badly executed, excused many of those who had supported it. Among political experts—and also stock market forecasters, mental health workers, and sports prognosticators—overconfidence is hard to dislodge.
CONFIRMATION BIAS People also tend not to seek information that might disprove what they believe. P. C. Wason (1960) demonstrated this, as you can, by giving participants a sequence of three numbers—2, 4, 6—that conformed to a rule he had in mind. (The rule was simply any three ascending numbers. ) To enable the participants to discover the rule, Wason invited each person to generate additional sets of three numbers. Each time, Wason told the person whether or not the set conformed to his rule. As soon as par- ticipants were sure they had discovered the rule, they were to stop and announce it.
The result? Seldom right but never in doubt: 23 of the 29 participants convinced themselves of a wrong rule. They typically formed some erroneous belief about the rule (for example, counting by twos) and then searched for confirming evidence (for example, by testing 8, 10, 12) rather than attempting to disconfirm their hunches. We are eager to verify our beliefs but less inclined to seek evidence that might disprove them, a phenomenon called the confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias helps explain why our self-images are so remarkably stable. In experiments at the University of Texas at Austin, William Swann and Stephen Read (1981; Swann & others, 1992a, 1992b, 2007) discovered that students seek, elicit, and recall feedback that confirms their beliefs about themselves. People seek as friends and spouses those who bolster their own self views—even if they think poorly of themselves (Swann & others, 1991, 2003).
Swann and Read (1981) liken this self-verification to how someone with a domi- neering self-image might behave at a party. Upon arriving, the person seeks those guests whom she knows will acknowledge her dominance. In conversation she then
“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; this is knowledge.”
—CONFUCIUS, ANALECTS
confirmation bias A tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions.
President George W. Bush after the American invasion of Iraq. Overconfidence, as exhibited by presidents and prime ministers who have committed troops to failed wars, underlies many blunders.
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presents her views in ways that elicit the respect she expects. After the party, she has trouble recalling conversations in which her influence was minimal and more easily recalls her persuasiveness in the conversations that she dominated. Thus, her experience at the party confirms her self-image.
REMEDIES FOR OVERCONFIDENCE What lessons can we draw from research on overconfidence? One lesson is to be wary of other people’s dogmatic statements. Even when people are sure they are right, they may be wrong. Confidence and competence need not coincide.
Three techniques have successfully reduced the overconfidence bias. One is prompt feedback (Lichtenstein & Fischhoff, 1980). In everyday life, weather forecast- ers and those who set the odds in horse racing both receive clear, daily feedback. And experts in both groups do quite well at estimating their probable accuracy (Fischhoff, 1982).
To reduce “planning fallacy” overconfidence, people can be asked to unpack a task —to break it down into its subcomponents—and estimate the time required for each. Justin Kruger and Matt Evans (2004) report that doing so leads to more realis- tic estimates of completion time.
When people think about why an idea might be true, it begins to seem true (Koehler, 1991). Thus, a third way to reduce overconfidence is to get people to think of one good reason why their judgments might be wrong; that is, force them to consider disconfirming information (Koriat & others, 1980). Managers might fos- ter more realistic judgments by insisting that all proposals and recommendations include reasons why they might not work.
Still, we should be careful not to undermine people’s reasonable self-confidence or to destroy their decisiveness. In times when their wisdom is needed, those lack- ing self-confidence may shrink from speaking up or making tough decisions. Over- confidence can cost us, but realistic self-confidence is adaptive.
Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts With precious little time to process so much information, our cognitive system is fast and frugal. It specializes in mental shortcuts. With remarkable ease, we form impressions, make judgments, and invent explanations. We do so by using heuristics —simple, efficient thinking strategies. Heuristics enable us to live and make routine decisions with minimal effort (Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008). In most situations, our snap generalizations—“That’s dangerous!”—are adaptive. The speed of these intuitive guides promotes our survival. The biological purpose of thinking is less to make us right than to keep us alive. In some situations, however, haste makes error.
THE REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC University of Oregon students were told that a panel of psychologists interviewed a sample of 30 engineers and 70 lawyers and summarized their impressions in thumbnail descriptions. The following description, they were told, was drawn at random from the sample of 30 engineers and 70 lawyers:
Twice divorced, Frank spends most of his free time hanging around the country club. His clubhouse bar conversations often center around his regrets at having tried to fol- low his esteemed father’s footsteps. The long hours he had spent at academic drudg- ery would have been better invested in learning how to be less quarrelsome in his rela- tions with other people.
Question: What is the probability that Frank is a lawyer rather than an engineer?
Asked to guess Frank’s occupation, more than 80 percent of the students surmised he was one of the lawyers (Fischhoff & Bar-Hillel, 1984). Fair enough. But how do
heuristic A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments.
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you suppose those estimates changed when the sample description was given to another group of students, modified to say that 70 percent were engineers? Not in the slightest. The students took no account of the base rate of engineers and law- yers; in their minds Frank was more representative of lawyers, and that was all that seemed to matter.
To judge something by intuitively comparing it to our mental representation of a category is to use the representativeness heuristic. Representativeness (typical- ness) usually is a reasonable guide to reality. But, as we saw with “Frank” above, it doesn’t always work. Consider Linda, who is 31, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy in college. As a student she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues, and she participated in antinuclear demon- strations. Based on that description, would you say it is more likely that
a. Linda is a bank teller. b. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.
Most people think b is more likely, partly because Linda better represents their image of feminists (Mellers & others, 2001). But ask yourself: Is there a better chance that Linda is both a bank teller and a feminist than that she’s a bank teller (whether feminist or not)? As Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1983) reminded us, the conjunction of two events cannot be more likely than either one of the events alone.
THE AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC Consider the following: Do more people live in Iraq or in Tanzania? (See page 96.)
You probably answered according to how readily Iraqis and Tanzanians come to mind. If examples are readily available in our memory—as Iraqis tend to be—then we presume that other such examples are commonplace. Usually this is true, so we are often well served by this cognitive rule, called the availability heu- ristic ( Table 3.1 ). Said simply, the more easily we recall something, the more likely it seems.
But sometimes the rule deludes us. If people hear a list of famous people of one sex (Jennifer Lopez, Venus Williams, Hillary Clinton) intermixed with an equal- size list of unfamous people of the other sex (Donald Scarr, William Wood, Mel Jasper), the famous names will later be more cognitively available. Most people will subsequently recall having heard more (in this instance) women’s names (McKelvie, 1995, 1997; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Vivid, easy-to-imagine events, such as shark attacks or diseases with easy-to-picture symptoms, may likewise seem more likely to occur than harder-to-picture events (MacLeod & Campbell, 1992; Sherman & others, 1985).
representativeness heuristic The tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member.
availability heuristic A cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace.
Heuristic Definition Example But May Lead to
Representativeness Snap judgments of whether someone or something fits a category
Deciding that Carlos is a librar- ian rather than a trucker because he better represents one’s image of librarians
Discounting other important information
Availability Quick judgments of likelihood of events (how available in memory)
Estimating teen violence after school shootings
Overweighting vivid instances and thus, for example, fearing the wrong things
TABLE :: 3.1 Fast and Frugal Heuristics
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Even fictional happenings in novels, television, and movies leave images that later penetrate our judgments (Gerrig & Prentice, 1991; Green & others, 2002; Mar & Oatley, 2008). The more absorbed and “transported” the reader (“I could easily picture the events”), the more the story affects the reader’s later beliefs (Diekman & others, 2000). Readers who are captivated by romance novels, for example, may gain readily available sexual scripts that influence their own sexual attitudes and behaviors.
Our use of the availability heuristic highlights a basic principle of social think- ing: People are slow to deduce particular instances from a general truth, but they are remarkably quick to infer general truth from a vivid instance. No wonder that after hearing and reading stories of rapes, robberies, and beatings, 9 out of 10 Cana- dians overestimated—usually by a considerable margin—the percentage of crimes that involved violence (Doob & Roberts, 1988). And no wonder that South Africans, after a series of headline-grabbing gangland robberies and slayings, estimated that violent crime had almost doubled between 1998 and 2004, when actually it had decreased substantially (Wines, 2005).
The availability heuristic explains why powerful anecdotes can nevertheless be more compelling than statistical information and why perceived risk is therefore often badly out of joint with real risks (Allison & others, 1992). We fret over swine flu (H1N1) but don’t bother to get vaccinated for common flu, which kills tens of thousands. We fret over extremely rare child abduction, even if we don’t buckle our children in the backseat. We fear terrorism, but are indifferent to global climate change—“Armageddon in slow motion.” In short, we worry about remote possibil- ities while ignoring higher probabilities, a phenomenon that Cass Sunstein (2007b) calls our “probability neglect.”
Because news footage of airplane crashes is a readily available memory for most of us—especially since September 11, 2001—we often suppose we are more at risk traveling in commercial airplanes than in cars. Actually, from 2003 to 2005, U.S. travelers were 230 times more likely to die in a car crash than on a commercial flight covering the same distance (National Safety Council, 2008). In 2006, reports the Flight Safety Foundation, there was one airliner accident for every 4.2 million flights by Western-built commercial jets (Wald, 2008). For most air travelers, the most dangerous part of the journey is the drive to the airport.
Shortly after 9/11, as many people abandoned air travel and took to the roads, I estimated that if Americans flew 20 percent less and instead drove those unflown miles, we could expect an additional 800 traffic deaths in the ensuing year (Myers, 2001). It took a curious German researcher (why didn’t I think of this?) to check that prediction against accident data, which confirmed an excess of some 350 deaths in the last three months of 2001 compared with the three-month average in the pre- ceding five years (Gigerenzer, 2004). The 9/11 terrorists appear to have killed more people unnoticed—on America’s roads—than they did with the 266 fatalities on those four planes.
By now it is clear that our naive statistical intuitions, and our resulting fears, are driven not by calculation and reason but by emotions attuned to the availability heuristic. After this book is published, there likely will be another dramatic natural or terrorist event, which will again propel our fears, vigilance, and resources in a new direction. Terrorists, aided by the media, may again achieve their objective of capturing our attention, draining our resources, and distracting us from the mun- dane, undramatic, insidious risks that, over time, devastate lives, such as the rota- virus that each day claims the equivalent of four 747s filled with children (Parashar & others, 2006). But then again, dramatic events can also serve to awaken us to real risks. That, say some scientists, is what happened when hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 began to raise concern that global warming, by raising sea levels and spawning extreme weather, is destined to become nature’s own weapon of mass destruction.
“Most people reason dramat- ically, not quantitatively.”
—JURIST OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR., 1841–1935
Answer to Question on page 95: Tanzania’s 40 million people greatly outnumber Iraq’s 28 million. Most people, having more vivid images of Iraqis, guess wrong.
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Counterfactual Thinking Easily imagined (cognitively available) events also influence our experiences of guilt, regret, frustration, and relief. If our team loses (or wins) a big game by one point, we can easily imagine how the game might have gone the other way, and thus we feel regret (or relief). Imagining worse alternatives helps us feel better. Imagining better alternatives, and pondering what we might do differently next time, helps us prepare to do better in the future (Epstude & Roese, 2008).
In Olympic competition, athletes’ emotions after an event reflect mostly how they did relative to expectations, but also their counterfactual thinking —their mentally simulating what might have been (McGraw & others, 2005; Medvec & others, 1995). Bronze medalists (for whom an easily imagined alternative was finishing without a medal) exhibited more joy than silver medalists (who could more easily imagine having won the gold). On the medal stand, it has been said, happiness is as simple as 1-3-2. Similarly, the higher a student’s score within a grade category (such as B ! ), the worse they feel (Medvec & Savitsky, 1997). The B ! student who misses an A " by a point feels worse than the B ! student who actually did worse and just made a B ! by a point.
Such counterfactual thinking occurs when we can easily picture an alternative outcome (Kahneman & Miller, 1986; Markman & McMullen, 2003):
• If we barely miss a plane or a bus, we imagine making it if only we had left at our usual time, taken our usual route, not paused to talk. If we miss our con- nection by a half hour or after taking our usual route, it’s harder to simulate a different outcome, so we feel less frustration.
• If we change an exam answer, then get it wrong, we will inevitably think “If only . . .” and will vow next time to trust our immediate intuition—although, contrary to student lore, answer changes are more often from incorrect to correct (Kruger & others, 2005).
• The team or the political candidate that barely loses will simulate over and over how they could have won (Sanna & others, 2003).
“Testimonials may be more compelling than mountains of facts and figures (as moun- tains of facts and figures in social psychology so compel- lingly demonstrate).”
—MARK SNYDER (1988)
counterfactual thinking Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t.
Vivid, memorable—and therefore cognitively available—events influence our perception of the social world. The resulting “probability neglect” often leads people to fear the wrong things, such as fearing flying or terrorism more than smoking, driving, or climate change. If four jumbo jets filled with children crashed every day—approximating the number of childhood diarrhea deaths resulting from the rotavirus—something would have been done about it. Illustration by Dave Bohn.
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Counterfactual thinking underlies our feel- ings of luck. When we have barely escaped a bad event—avoiding defeat with a last-minute goal or standing nearest a falling icicle—we easily imagine a negative counterfactual (losing, being hit) and therefore feel “good luck” (Teigen & others, 1999). “ Bad luck” refers to bad events that did happen but easily might not have.
The more significant the event, the more intense the counterfactual thinking (Roese & Hur, 1997). Bereaved people who have lost a spouse or a child in a vehicle accident, or a child to sudden infant death syndrome, commonly report replay- ing and undoing the event (Davis & others, 1995, 1996). One friend of mine survived a head-on collision with a drunk driver that killed his wife, daughter, and mother. He recalled, “For months I turned the events of that day over and over in my mind. I kept reliving the day, changing the order of events so that the accident wouldn’t occur” (Sittser, 1994).
Across Asian and Western cultures most peo- ple, however, live with less regret over things done than over things they failed to do, such as, “I wish I had been more serious in college” or “I should have told my father I loved him before he died” (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994; Rajagopal & oth- ers, 2006). In one survey of adults, the most com- mon regret was not taking their education more seriously (Kinnier & Metha, 1989). Would we live with less regret if we dared more often to reach
beyond our comfort zone—to venture out, risking failure, but at least having tried?
Illusory Thinking Another influence on everyday thinking is our search for order in random events, a tendency that can lead us down all sorts of wrong paths.
ILLUSORY CORRELATION It’s easy to see a correlation where none exists. When we expect to find signifi- cant relationships, we easily associate random events, perceiving an illusory cor- relation. William Ward and Herbert Jenkins (1965) showed people the results of a hypothetical 50-day cloud-seeding experiment. They told participants which of the 50 days the clouds had been seeded and which days it rained. That information was nothing more than a random mix of results: Sometimes it rained after seeding; sometimes it didn’t. Participants nevertheless became convinced—in conformity with their ideas about the effects of cloud seeding—that they really had observed a relationship between cloud seeding and rain.
Other experiments confirm that people easily misperceive random events as con- firming their beliefs (Crocker, 1981; Jennings & others, 1982; Trolier & Hamilton, 1986). If we believe a correlation exists, we are more likely to notice and recall con- firming instances. If we believe that premonitions correlate with events, we notice and remember the joint occurrence of the premonition and the event’s later occur- rence. If we believe that overweight women are unhappier, we perceive that we have witnessed such a correlation even when we have not (Viken & others, 2005). We seldom notice or remember all the times unusual events do not coincide. If, after
illusory correlation Perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists.
Counterfactual thinking: When Deal or No Deal game show contestants deal too late (walking away with a lower amount than they were previously offered) or too early (foregoing their next choice, which would have led to more money) they likely experience counterfactual thinking— imagining what might have been.
People are more often apologetic about actions than inactions (Zeelenberg & others, 1998).
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we think about a friend, the friend calls us, we notice and remem- ber that coincidence. We don’t notice all the times we think of a friend without any ensuing call or receive a call from a friend about whom we’ve not been thinking.
ILLUSION OF CONTROL Our tendency to perceive random events as related feeds an illusion of control —the idea that chance events are subject to our influence. This keeps gamblers going and makes the rest of us do all sorts of unlikely things.
GAMBLING Ellen Langer (1977) demonstrated the illusion of control with experiments on gambling. Compared with those given an assigned lottery num- ber, people who chose their own number demanded four times as much money when asked if they would sell their ticket. When playing a game of chance against an awkward and nervous person, they bet significantly more than when playing against a dapper, confident oppo- nent. Being the person who throws the dice or spins the wheel increases people’s confidence (Wohl & Enzle, 2002). In these and other ways, more than 50 experi- ments have consistently found people acting as if they can predict or control chance events (Presson & Benassi, 1996; Thompson & others, 1998).
Observations of real-life gamblers confirm these experimental findings. Dice players may throw softly for low numbers and hard for high numbers (Henslin, 1967). The gambling industry thrives on gamblers’ illusions. Gamblers attribute wins to their skill and foresight. Losses become “near misses” or “flukes,” or for the sports gambler, a bad call by the referee or a freakish bounce of the ball (Gilovich & Douglas, 1986).
Stock traders also like the “feeling of empowerment” that comes from being able to choose and control their own stock trades, as if their being in control can enable them to outperform the market average. One ad declared that online investing “is about control.” Alas, the illusion of control breeds overconfidence and frequent losses after stock market trading costs are subtracted (Barber & Odean, 2001).
REGRESSION TOWARD THE AVERAGE Tversky and Kahneman (1974) noted another way by which an illusion of control may arise: We fail to recognize the sta- tistical phenomenon of regression toward the average. Because exam scores fluctu- ate partly by chance, most students who get extremely high scores on an exam will get lower scores on the next exam. If their first score is at the ceiling, their second score is more likely to fall back (“regress”) toward their own average than to push the ceiling even higher. That is why a student who does consistently good work, even if never the best, will sometimes end a course at the top of the class. Con- versely, the lowest-scoring students on the first exam are likely to improve. If those who scored lowest go for tutoring after the first exam, the tutors are likely to feel effective when the student improves, even if the tutoring had no effect.
Indeed, when things reach a low point, we will try anything, and whatever we try—going to a psychotherapist, starting a new diet-exercise plan, reading a self- help book—is more likely to be followed by improvement than by further deteriora- tion. Sometimes we recognize that events are not likely to continue at an unusually
illusion of control Perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one’s control or as more controllable than they are.
regression toward the average The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward one’s average.
FAMILY CIRCUS © Bil Keane, Inc. King Features Syndicate.
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good or bad extreme. Experience has taught us that when everything is going great, something will go wrong, and that when life is dealing us terrible blows, we can usually look forward to things get- ting better. Often, though, we fail to rec- ognize this regression effect. We puzzle at why baseball’s rookie of the year often has a more ordinary second year—did he become overconfident? Self-conscious? We forget that exceptional performance tends to regress toward normality.
By simulating the consequences of using praise and punishment, Paul Schaffner (1985) showed how the illu- sion of control might infiltrate human relations. He invited Bowdoin College students to train an imaginary fourth- grade boy, “Harold,” to come to school by 8:30 each morning. For each school day of a three-week period, a computer displayed Harold’s arrival time, which
was always between 8:20 and 8:40. The students would then select a response to Harold, ranging from strong praise to strong reprimand. As you might expect, they usually praised Harold when he arrived before 8:30 and reprimanded him when he arrived after 8:30. Because Schaffner had programmed the computer to display a random sequence of arrival times, Harold’s arrival time tended to improve (to regress toward 8:30) after he was reprimanded. For example, if Harold arrived at 8:39, he was almost sure to be reprimanded, and his randomly selected next-day arrival time was likely to be earlier than 8:39. Thus, even though their reprimands were having no effect, most students ended the experiment believing that their repri- mands had been effective.
This experiment demonstrates Tversky and Kahneman’s provocative conclu- sion: Nature operates in such a way that we often feel punished for rewarding oth- ers and rewarded for punishing them. In actuality, as every student of psychology knows, positive reinforcement for doing things right is usually more effective and has fewer negative side effects.
Moods and Judgments Social judgment involves efficient, though fallible, information processing. It also involves our feelings: Our moods infuse our judgments. We are not cool computing machines; we are emotional creatures. The extent to which feeling infuses cognition appears in new studies comparing happy and sad individuals (Myers, 1993, 2000b). Unhappy people—especially those bereaved or depressed—tend to be more self- focused and brooding. A depressed mood motivates intense thinking—a search for information that makes one’s environment more understandable and controllable (Weary & Edwards, 1994).
Happy people, by contrast, are more trusting, more loving, more responsive. If people are made temporarily happy by receiving a small gift while mall-shopping, they will report, a few moments later on an unrelated survey, that their cars and TV sets are working beautifully—better, if you took their word for it, than those belonging to folks who replied after not receiving gifts.
Moods pervade our thinking. To West Germans enjoying their team’s World Cup soccer victory (Schwarz & others, 1987) and to Australians emerging from
Regression to the average. When we are at an extremely low point, anything we try will often seem effective. “Maybe a yoga class will improve my life.” Events seldom continue at an abnormal low.
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a heartwarming movie (Forgas & Moylan, 1987), people seem good-hearted, life seems wonderful. After (but not before) a 1990 football game between rivals Alabama and Auburn, victorious Alabama fans deemed war less likely and poten- tially devastating than did the gloomier Auburn fans (Schweitzer & others, 1992). When we are in a happy mood, the world seems friendlier, decisions are easier, good news more readily comes to mind (DeSteno & others, 2000; Isen & Means, 1983; Stone & Glass, 1986).
Let a mood turn gloomy, however, and thoughts switch onto a different track. Off come the rose-colored glasses; on come the dark glasses. Now the bad mood primes our recollections of negative events (Bower, 1987; Johnson & Magaro, 1987). Our relationships seem to sour. Our self-images take a dive. Our hopes for the future dim. And other people’s behavior seems more sinister (Brown & Taylor, 1986; Mayer & Salovey, 1987).
University of New South Wales social psychologist Joseph Forgas (1999, 2008) had often been struck by how moody people’s “memories and judgments change with the color of their mood.” To understand this “mood infusion” he began to experiment. Imagine yourself in one such study. Using hypnosis, For- gas and his colleagues (1984) put you in a good or a bad mood and then have you watch a videotape (made the day before) of yourself talking with someone. If made to feel happy, you feel pleased with what you see, and you are able to detect many instances of your poise, interest, and social skill. If you’ve been put in a bad mood, viewing the same tape seems to reveal a quite different you—one who is stiff, nervous, and inarticulate ( Figure 3.3 ). Given how your mood colors your judgments, you feel relieved at how things brighten when the experimenter switches you to a happy mood before leaving the experiment. Curiously, note Michael Ross and Garth Fletcher (1985), we don’t attribute our changing perceptions to our mood shifts. Rather, the world really seems different.
Our moods color how we judge our worlds partly by bringing to mind past experiences associated with the mood. When we are in a bad mood, we have more depressing thoughts. Mood-related thoughts may distract us from complex think- ing about something else. Thus, when emotionally aroused—when angry or even in a very good mood—we become more likely to make snap judgments and eval- uate others based on stereotypes (Bodenhausen & others, 1994; Paulhus & Lim, 1994).
FIGURE :: 3.3 A temporary good or bad mood strongly influenced people’s rat- ings of their videotaped behavior. Those in a bad mood detected far fewer positive behaviors. Source: Forgas & others, 1984.
Negative behaviors detected
Positive behaviors detected
Percent perceived behaviors
People put in a bad mood
People put in a good mood
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
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Explaining Our Social World s People make it their business to explain other people, and social psychologists make it their business to explain people’s explanations. So, how—and how accurately—do people explain others’ behavior? Attribution theory suggests some answers.
Our judgments of people depend on how we explain their behavior. Depending on our explanation, we may judge killing as murder, manslaughter, self-defense, or heroism. Depending on our explanation, we may view a homeless person as lacking initiative or as victimized by job and welfare cutbacks. Depending on our explanation, we may interpret someone’s friendly behavior as genuine warmth or as ingratiation.
Attributing Causality: To the Person or the Situation We endlessly analyze and discuss why things happen as they do, especially when we experience something negative or unexpected (Bohner & others, 1988; Weiner, 1985). If worker productivity declines, do we assume the workers are getting lazier? Or has their workplace become less efficient? Does a young boy who hits his class- mates have a hostile personality? Or is he responding to relentless teasing? Amy Holtzworth-Munroe and Neil Jacobson (1985, 1988) found that married people often analyze their partners’ behaviors, especially their negative behaviors. Cold hostility, more than a warm hug, is likely to leave the partner wondering why?
Spouses’ answers correlate with marriage satisfaction. Unhappy couples usually offer distress-maintaining explanations for negative acts (“she was late because she doesn’t care about me”). Happy couples more often externalize (“she was late because of heavy traffic”). With positive partner behavior, their explanations simi- larly work either to maintain distress (“he brought me flowers because he wants sex”) or to enhance the relationship (“he brought me flowers to show he loves me”) (Hewstone & Fincham, 1996; McNulty & others, 2008; Weiner, 1995).
Antonia Abbey (1987, 1991; Abbey & Ross, 1998) and her colleagues have repeat- edly found that men are more likely than women to attribute a woman’s friendli- ness to mild sexual interest. That misreading of warmth as a sexual come-on—an example of misattribution —can contribute to behavior that women regard as sex- ual harassment or even rape (Farris & others, 2008; Kolivas & Gross, 2007; Pryor &
misattribution Mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source.
• We have an enormous capacity for automatic, effi- cient, intuitive thinking. Our cognitive efficiency, though generally adaptive, comes at the price of occa- sional error. Since we are generally unaware of those errors entering our thinking, it is useful to identify ways in which we form and sustain false beliefs.
• First, we often overestimate our judgments. This overconfidence phenomenon stems partly from the much greater ease with which we can imagine why we might be right than why we might be wrong. Moreover, people are much more likely to search for information that can confirm their beliefs than for information that can disconfirm them.
• Second, when given compelling anecdotes or even useless information, we often ignore useful
base-rate information. This is partly due to the later ease of recall of vivid information (the avail- ability heuristic ).
• Third, we are often swayed by illusions of correla- tion and personal control. It is tempting to perceive correlations where none exist ( illusory correlation ) and to think we can predict or control chance events (the illusion of control ).
• Finally, moods infuse judgments. Good and bad moods trigger memories of experiences associated with those moods. Moods color our interpreta- tions of current experiences. And by distracting us, moods can also influence how deeply or superfi- cially we think when making judgments.
Summing Up: Judging Our Social World
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others, 1997). Many men believe women are flattered by repeated requests for dates, which women more often view as harassment (Rotundo & others, 2001).
Misattribution is particularly likely when men are in positions of power. A manager may misinterpret a subordinate woman’s submissive or friendly behavior and, full of himself, see her in sexual terms (Bargh & Raymond, 1995). Men more often than women think about sex (see Chapter 5). Men also are more likely than women to assume that others share their feelings (recall from Chapter 2 the “false consensus effect”). Thus, a man may greatly overesti- mate the sexual significance of a woman’s courtesy smile (Levesque & others, 2006; Nelson & LeBoeuf, 2002).
Such misattributions help explain the greater sexual assertiveness exhibited by men across the world and the greater tendency of men in various cultures, from Boston to Bombay, to justify rape by arguing that the victim consented or implied consent (Kanekar & Nazareth, 1988; Muehlenhard, 1988; Shotland, 1989). Women more often judge forcible sex as mer- iting conviction and a stiff sentence (Schutte & Hosch, 1997). Misattributions also help explain why the 23 percent of American women who say they have been forced into unwanted sexual behavior is eight times greater than the 3 percent of American men who say they have ever forced a woman into a sexual act (Laumann & others, 1994).
Attribution theory analyzes how we explain people’s behavior. The variations of attribution theory share some common assumptions. As Daniel Gilbert and Pat- rick Malone (1995) explain, each “construes the human skin as a special boundary that separates one set of ‘causal forces’ from another. On the sunny side of the epi- dermis are the external or situational forces that press inward upon the person, and on the meaty side are the internal or personal forces that exert pressure outward. Sometimes these forces press in conjunction, sometimes in opposition, and their dynamic interplay manifests itself as observable behavior.”
attribution theory The theory of how people explain others’ behavior—for example, by attributing it either to internal dispositions (enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or to external situations.
A misattribution? Date rape sometimes results from a man’s misreading a woman’s warmth as a sexual come-on.
ScienceCartoonsPlus.com.
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Attribution theory pioneer Fritz Heider (1958) and others after him analyzed the “commonsense psychology” by which people explain everyday events. They con- cluded that when we observe someone acting intentionally, we sometimes attribute that person’s behavior to internal causes (for example, the person’s disposition) and sometimes to external causes (for example, something about the person’s situation). A teacher may wonder whether a child’s underachievement is due to lack of moti- vation and ability (a dispositional attribution ) or to physical and social circum- stances (a situational attribution ). Also, some of us are more inclined to attribute behavior to stable personality; others tend more to attribute behavior to situations (Bastian & Haslam, 2006; Robins & others, 2004).
INFERRING TRAITS Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) noted that we often infer that other people’s actions are indicative of their intentions and dispositions. If I observe Rick making a sarcastic comment to Linda, I infer that Rick is a hostile person. Jones and Davis’s “theory of correspondent inferences” specified the conditions under which people infer traits. For example, normal or expected behavior tells us less about the person than does unusual behavior. If Samantha is sarcastic in a job interview, where a person would normally be pleasant, that tells us more about Samantha than if she is sarcastic with her siblings.
The ease with which we infer traits—a phenomenon called spontaneous trait inference —is remarkable. In experiments at New York University, James Uleman (1989; Uleman & others, 2008) gave students statements to remember, such as “The librarian carries the old woman’s groceries across the street.” The students would instantly, unintentionally, and unconsciously infer a trait. When later they were helped to recall the sentence, the most valuable clue word was not “books” (to cue librarian) or “bags” (to cue groceries) but “helpful”—the inferred trait that I suspect you, too, spontaneously attributed to the librarian. Given even just 1/10th of a sec- ond exposure to someone’s face, people will spontaneously infer some personality traits (Willis & Todorov, 2006).
COMMONSENSE ATTRIBUTIONS As the theory of correspondent inferences suggests, attributions often are rational. Pioneering attribution theorist Harold Kelley (1973) described how we explain behavior by using information about “consistency,” “distinctiveness,” and “con- sensus” ( Figure 3.4 ).
dispositional attribution Attributing behavior to the person’s disposition and traits.
situational attribution Attributing behavior to the environment.
spontaneous trait inference An effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone’s behavior.
To what should we attribute a student’s sleepiness? To lack of sleep? To boredom? Whether we make internal or external attributions depends on whether we notice her consistently sleeping in this and other classes, and on whether other students react as she does to this particular class.
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Consistency: How consistent is the person’s behavior in this situation? Distinctiveness: How specific is the person’s behavior to this particular situation? Consensus: To what extent do others in this situation behave similarly?
When explaining why Edgar is having trouble with his computer, most people use information concerning consistency (Is Edgar usually unable to get his computer to work?), distinctiveness (Does Edgar have trouble with other computers, or only this one?), and consensus (Do other people have similar problems with this make of computer?). If we learn that Edgar alone consistently has trouble with this and other computers, we likely will attribute the troubles to Edgar, not to defects in this computer.
So our commonsense psychology often explains behavior logically. But Kel- ley also found that people often discount a contributing cause of behavior if other plausible causes are already known. If we can specify one or two sufficient rea- sons a student might have done poorly on an exam, we often ignore or discount alternative possibilities (McClure, 1998). Or consider this: Would you guess that people would overestimate or underestimate the frequency of a very famous name, such as “Bush,” in the American population? It surprised me—you, too?—to read Daniel Oppenheimer’s (2004) discovery that people under estimate the frequency of hyperfamous names such as Bush relative to an equally common name such as Stevenson. They do so because their familiarity with the name can be attributed to President Bush, which leads them to discount other reasons for their familiarity with “Bush.”
The Fundamental Attribution Error Social psychology’s most important lesson concerns the influence of our social environment. At any moment, our internal state, and therefore what we say and do, depends on the situation as well as on what we bring to the situation. In exper- iments, a slight difference between two situations sometimes greatly affects how people respond. As a professor, I have seen this when teaching the same subject at both 8:30 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. Silent stares would greet me at 8:30; at 7:00 I had to break up a party. In each situation some individuals were more talkative than others, but the difference between the two situations exceeded the individual differences.
Attribution researchers have found a common problem with our attributions. When explaining someone’s behavior, we often underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the extent to which it reflects the individual’s traits and attitudes. Thus, even knowing the effect of the time of day on classroom
FIGURE :: 3.4 Harold Kelley’s Theory of Attributions Three factors—consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus— influence whether we attribute someone’s behavior to internal or external causes. Try creating your own examples, such as: If Mary and many others criticize Steve (with consensus), and if Mary isn’t critical of others (high distinctiveness), then we make an external attribution (it’s some- thing about Steve). If Mary alone (low consensus) criticizes Steve, and if she criticizes many other people, too (low distinctiveness), then we are drawn to an internal attribution (it’s something about Mary).
Consistency:
External attribution
(to the person's situation)
Internal attribution
(to the person's
disposition)
Consensus: Do others behave
similarly in this situation?
Distinctiveness: YES
YES
Does this person usually behave this way in this situation? (If yes, we seek an explanation.)
NO
NO
YES
Does this person behave differently in this
situation than in others?
YES (high consensus) (low
co nse
nsu s)
(high distinctiveness)
(low distinctiveness)
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conversation, I found it terribly tempting to assume that the people in the 7:00 p.m. class were more extraverted than the “silent types” who came at 8:30 a.m. Likewise, we may infer that people fall because they’re clumsy, rather than because they were tripped; that people smile because they’re happy rather than faking friendliness; that people speed past us on the highway because they’re aggressive rather than late for an important meeting.
This discounting of the situation, dubbed by Lee Ross (1977) the fundamental attribution error, appears in many experiments. In the first such study, Edward Jones and Victor Harris (1967) had Duke University students read debaters’ speeches supporting or attacking Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro. When told that the debater chose which position to take, the students logically enough assumed it reflected the person’s own attitude. But what happened when the students were told that the debate coach had assigned the position? People who are merely feigning a position write more forceful statements than you’d expect (Allison & others, 1993; Miller & others, 1990). Thus, even knowing that the debater had been told to take a pro- or anti-Castro position did not prevent students from inferring that the debater in fact had the assigned leanings ( Figure 3.5 ). People seemed to think, “Yeah, I know he was assigned that position, but, you know, I think he really believes it.”
The error is so irresistible that even when people know they are causing someone else’s behavior, they still underestimate external influences. If individuals dictate an opinion that someone else must then express, they still tend to see the person as actually holding that opinion (Gilbert & Jones, 1986). If people are asked to be either self-enhancing or self-deprecating during an interview, they are very aware of why they are acting so. But they are un aware of their effect on another person. If Juan acts modestly, his naive partner Bob is likely to exhibit modesty as well. Juan will easily understand his own behavior, but he will think that poor Bob suffers from low self-esteem (Baumeister & others, 1988). In short, we tend to presume that others are the way they act. Observing Cinderella cowering in her oppressive home, people (ignoring the situation) infer that she is meek; dancing with her at the ball, the prince sees a suave and glamorous person.
The discounting of social constraints was evident in a thought-provoking experi- ment by Lee Ross and his collaborators (Ross & others, 1977). The experiment re-created Ross’s firsthand experience of moving from graduate student to profes- sor. His doctoral oral exam had proved a humbling experience as his apparently brilliant professors quizzed him on topics they specialized in. Six months later,
fundamental attribution error The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others‘ behavior. (Also called correspondence bias, because we so often see behavior as corresponding to a disposition.)
FIGURE :: 3.5 The Fundamental Attribution Error When people read a debate speech supporting or attack- ing Fidel Castro, they attributed corresponding attitudes to the speechwriter, even when the debate coach assigned the writer’s position. Source: Data from Jones & Har- ris, 1967.
Chose to give a Castro speech
Attitude attributed
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Pro-Castro
Anti-Castro Assigned to give a
Castro speech
Pro-Castro speeches
Anti-Castro speeches
Anti-Castro attitudes attributed to anti-Castro debaters
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Dr. Ross was himself an examiner, now able to ask penetrating questions on his favorite topics. Ross’s hapless student later confessed to feeling exactly as Ross had a half-year before—dissatisfied with his ignorance and impressed with the appar- ent brilliance of the examiners.
In the experiment, with Teresa Amabile and Julia Steinmetz, Ross set up a simu- lated quiz game. He randomly assigned some Stanford University students to play the role of questioner, some to play the role of contestant, and others to observe. The researchers invited the questioners to make up difficult questions that would demonstrate their wealth of knowledge. Any one of us can imagine such questions using one’s own domain of competence: “Where is Bainbridge Island?” “How did Mary, Queen of Scots, die?” “Which has the longer coastline, Europe or Africa?” If even those few questions have you feeling a little uninformed, then you will appre- ciate the results of this experiment. *
Everyone had to know that the questioner would have the advantage. Yet both contestants and observers (but not the questioners) came to the erroneous con- clusion that the questioners really were more knowledgeable than the contestants ( Figure 3.6 ). Follow-up research shows that these misimpressions are hardly a reflection of low social intelligence. If anything, intelligent and socially competent people are more likely to make the attribution error (Block & Funder, 1986).
In real life, those with social power usually initiate and control conversations, which often leads underlings to overestimate their knowledge and intelligence. Medical doctors, for example, are often presumed to be experts on all sorts of ques- tions unrelated to medicine. Similarly, students often overestimate the brilliance of their teachers. (As in the experiment, teachers are questioners on subjects of their special expertise.) When some of these students later become teachers, they are usu- ally amazed to discover that teachers are not so brilliant after all.
To illustrate the fundamental attribution error, most of us need look no further than our own experiences. Determined to make some new friends, Bev plasters a smile on her face and anxiously plunges into a party. Everyone else seems quite relaxed and happy as they laugh and talk with one another. Bev wonders to herself, “Why is everyone always so at ease in groups like this while I’m feeling shy and
When viewing a movie actor playing a “good-guy” or a “bad-guy” role, we find it difficult to escape the illusion that the scripted behavior reflects an inner disposition. Perhaps that is why Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock in the original “Star Trek” series, titled one of his books I Am Not Spock.
* Bainbridge Island is across Puget Sound from Seattle. Mary was ordered beheaded by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. Although the African continent is more than double the area of Europe, Europe’s coastline is longer. (It is more convo- luted, with lots of harbors and inlets, a geographical fact that contributed to its role in the history of maritime trade.)
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tense?” Actually, everyone else is feeling nervous, too, and making the same attri- bution error in assuming that Bev and the others are as they appear —confidently convivial.
WHY DO WE MAKE THE ATTRIBUTION ERROR? So far we have seen a bias in the way we explain other people’s behavior: We often ignore powerful situational determinants. Why do we tend to underestimate the
situational determinants of others’ behavior but not of our own?
PERSPECTIVE AND SITUATIONAL AWARENESS Actor versus Observer Perspectives? Attribution theorists pointed out that we observe others from a different per- spective than we observe ourselves (Jones, 1976; Jones & Nisbett, 1971). When we act, the environment commands our attention. When we watch another person act, that per- son occupies the center of our attention and the environ- ment becomes relatively invisible. Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Höss (1959), while acting as a good SS officer “who could not show the slightest trace of emotion,” pro- fessed inner anguish over his genocidal actions, saying he felt “pity so great that I longed to vanish from the scene.” Yet he inferred that his similarly stoic Jewish inmates were uncaring—a “racial characteristic,” he presumed—as they led fellow inmates to the gas chambers.
From his analysis of 173 studies, Bertram Malle (2006) concluded that the actor-observer difference is minimal. When our action feels intentional and admirable, we attri- bute it to our own good reasons, not to the situation. It’s only when we behave badly that we’re more likely to attri- bute our behavior to the situation, while someone observing us may spontaneously infer a trait.
FIGURE :: 3.6 Both contestants and observ- ers of a simulated quiz game assumed that a person who had been randomly assigned the role of questioner was far more knowledgeable than the contes- tant. Actually the assigned roles of questioner and contestant simply made the questioner seem more knowledgeable. The failure to appreciate this illustrates the fundamental attribution error. Source: Data from Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977.
Questioners perceived as knowledgeable
Contestants’ ratings
Rating of general knowledge
100
90
80
70
60
50
30
10
40
20
0 Observers’
ratings
Questioner
Average student
Contestant
People often attribute keen intelligence to those, such as teachers and quiz show hosts, who test others’ knowledge.
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The Camera Perspective Bias. In some experiments, people have viewed a videotape of a suspect confessing during a police interview. If they viewed the confession through a camera focused on the suspect, they perceived the confession as genuine. If they viewed it through a camera focused on the detective, they perceived it as more coerced (Lassiter & others, 1986, 2005, 2007). The camera perspective influ- enced people’s guilt judgments even when the judge instructed them not to allow this to happen (Lassiter & others, 2002).
In courtrooms, most confession videotapes focus on the confessor. As we might expect, noted Daniel Lassiter and Kimberly Dudley (1991), such tapes yield a nearly 100 percent conviction rate when played by prosecutors. Aware of this research, reports Lassiter, New Zealand has made it a national policy that police interroga- tions be filmed with equal focus on the officer and the suspect, such as by filming them with side profiles of both.
Perspectives Change with Time. As the once-visible person recedes in their memory, observers often give more and more credit to the situation. As we saw above in the groundbreaking attribution error experiment by Edward Jones and Victor Harris (1967), immediately after hearing someone argue an assigned position, people assume that’s how the person really felt. Jerry Burger and M. L. Palmer (1991) found that a week later they are much more ready to credit the situational constraints. The day after a presidential election, Burger and Julie Pavelich (1994) asked voters why the election turned out as it did. Most attrib- uted the outcome to the candidates’ personal traits and positions (the winner from the incumbent party was likable). When they asked other voters the same question a year later, only a third attributed the verdict to the candidates. More people now credited circumstances, such as the country’s good mood and the robust economy.
Let’s make this personal: Are you generally quiet, talkative, or does it depend on the situation? “Depends on the situation” is a common answer. But when asked to describe a friend—or to describe what they were like five years ago—people more often ascribe trait descriptions. When recalling our past. we become like observers of someone else, note researchers Emily Pronin and Lee Ross (2006). For most of us, the “old you” is someone other than today’s “real you.” We regard our distant past selves (and our distant future selves) almost as if they were other people occupying our body.
“And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. . . . But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no lon- ger, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.”
—LEO TOLSTOY, THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH, 1886
The fundamental attribution error: observers underestimating the situation. Driving into a gas station, we may think the person parked at the second pump (blocking access to the first) is inconsiderate. That person, having arrived when the first pump was in use, attributes her behavior to the situation.
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Self-Awareness. Circumstances can also shift our perspective on ourselves. Seeing ourselves on television redirects our attention to ourselves. Seeing ourselves in a mirror, hearing our tape-recorded voices, having our pictures taken, or filling out biographical questionnaires similarly focuses our attention inward, making us self - conscious instead of situation -conscious. Looking back on ill-fated relationships that once seemed like the unsinkable Titanic, people can more easily see the icebergs (Berscheid, 1999).
Robert Wicklund, Shelley Duval, and their collaborators have explored the effects of self-awareness (Duval & Wicklund, 1972; Silvia & Duval, 2001). When our attention focuses upon ourselves, we often attribute responsibility to ourselves. Allan Fenigstein and Charles Carver (1978) demonstrated this by having students imagine themselves in hypothetical situations. Some students were made self- aware by thinking they were hearing their own heartbeats while pondering the situation. Compared with those who thought they were just hearing extraneous noises, the self-aware students saw themselves as more responsible for the imag- ined outcome.
Some people are typically quite self-conscious. In experiments, people who report themselves as privately self-conscious (who agree with statements such as “I’m generally attentive to my inner feelings”) behave similarly to people whose attention has been self-focused with a mirror (Carver & Scheier, 1978). Thus, peo- ple whose attention focuses on themselves—either briefly during an experiment or because they are self-conscious persons—view themselves more as observers typically do; they attribute their behavior more to internal factors and less to the situation.
All these experiments point to a reason for the attribution error: We find causes where we look for them. To see this in your own experience, consider: Would you say your social psychology instructor is a quiet or a talkative person?
My guess is you inferred that he or she is fairly outgoing. But consider: Your attention focuses on your instructor while he or she behaves in a public context that demands speaking. The instructor also observes his or her own behavior in many different situations—in the classroom, in meetings, at home. “Me talkative?” your instructor might say. “Well, it all depends on the situation. When I’m in class or with good friends, I’m rather outgoing. But at conventions and in unfamiliar situa- tions I feel and act rather shy.” Because we are acutely aware of how our behavior varies with the situation, we see ourselves as more variable than other people (Bax- ter & Goldberg, 1987; Kammer, 1982; Sande & others, 1988). “Nigel is uptight, Fiona is relaxed. With me it varies.”
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES Cultures also influence attribution error (Ickes, 1980; Watson, 1982). A Western world- view predisposes people to assume that people, not situations, cause events. Internal explanations are more socially approved (Jellison & Green, 1981). “You can do it!” we are assured by the pop psychology of positive- thinking Western culture. You get what you deserve and deserve what you get.
As children grow up in Western cul- ture, they learn to explain behavior in terms of the other’s personal charac- teristics (Rholes & others, 1990; Ross, 1981). As a first-grader, one of my sons brought home an example. He
self-awareness A self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself. It makes people more sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions.
Focusing on the person. Would you infer that your professor for this course, or the professor shown here, is naturally outgoing?
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unscrambled the words “gate the sleeve caught Tom on his” into “The gate caught Tom on his sleeve.” His teacher, applying the Western cultural assumptions of the curriculum materials, marked that wrong. The “right” answer located the cause within Tom: “Tom caught his sleeve on the gate.”
The fundamental attribution error occurs across varied cultures (Krull & oth- ers, 1999). Yet people in Eastern Asian cultures are somewhat more sensitive to the importance of situations. Thus, when aware of the social context, they are less inclined to assume that others’ behavior corresponds to their traits (Choi & others, 1999; Farwell & Weiner, 2000; Masuda & Kitayama, 2004).
Some languages promote external attributions. Instead of “I was late,” Spanish idiom allows one to say, “The clock caused me to be late.” In collectivist cultures, people less often perceive others in terms of personal dispositions (Lee & others, 1996; Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988). They are less likely to spontaneously interpret a behavior as reflecting an inner trait (Newman, 1993). When told of someone’s actions, Hindus in India are less likely than Americans to offer dispositional expla- nations (“She is kind”) and more likely to offer situational explanations (“Her friends were with her”) (Miller, 1984).
The fundamental attribution error is fundamental because it colors our explana- tions in basic and important ways. Researchers in Britain, India, Australia, and the United States have found that people’s attributions predict their attitudes toward the poor and the unemployed (Furnham, 1982; Pandey & others, 1982; Skitka, 1999; Wagstaff, 1983; Zucker & Weiner, 1993). Those who attribute poverty and unem- ployment to personal dispositions (“They’re just lazy and undeserving”) tend to adopt political positions unsympathetic to such people ( Figure 3.7 ). This disposi- tional attribution ascribes behavior to the person’s disposition and traits. Those who make situational attributions (“If you or I were to live with the same overcrowding, poor education, and discrimination, would we be any better off?”) tend to adopt political positions that offer more direct support to the poor.
Can we benefit from being aware of the attribution error? I once assisted with some interviews for a faculty position. One candidate was interviewed by six of us at once; each of us had the opportunity to ask two or three questions. I came away thinking, “What a stiff, awkward person he is.” The second candidate I met pri- vately over coffee, and we immediately discovered we had a close, mutual friend. As we talked, I became increasingly impressed by what a “warm, engaging, stimu- lating person she is.” Only later did I remember the fundamental attribution error
FIGURE :: 3.7 Attributions and Reactions How we explain someone’s nega- tive behavior determines how we feel about it.
Negative behavior (A man is rude to his
colleague.)
Dispositional attribution (The man is a
hostile person.)
Situational attribution (The man was unfairly
evaluated.)
Unfavorable reaction
(I don’t like this man.)
Sympathetic reaction
(I can understand.)
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and reassess my analysis. I had attributed his stiffness and her warmth to their dis- positions; in fact, I later realized, such behavior resulted partly from the difference in their interview situations.
WHY WE STUDY ATTRIBUTION ERRORS This chapter, like the one before it, explains some foibles and fallacies in our social thinking. Reading about these may make it seem, as one of my students put it, that “social psychologists get their kicks out of playing tricks on people.” Actu- ally, the experiments are not designed to demonstrate “what fools these mortals be” (although some of the experiments are rather amusing). Rather, their purpose is to reveal how we think about ourselves and others.
If our capacity for illusion and self-deception is shocking, remember that our modes of thought are generally adaptive. Illusory thinking is often a by-product of our mind’s strategies for simplifying complex information. It parallels our per- ceptual mechanisms, which generally give us useful images of the world but some- times lead us astray.
A second reason for focusing on thinking biases such as the fundamental attri- bution error is humanitarian. One of social psychology’s “great humanizing mes- sages,” note Thomas Gilovich and Richard Eibach (2001), is that people should not always be blamed for their problems. “More often than people are willing to acknowledge,” they conclude, “failure, disability, and misfortune are . . . the prod- uct of real environmental causes.”
A third reason for focusing on biases is that we are mostly unaware of them and can benefit from greater awareness. As with other biases, such as the self-serving bias (Chapter 2), people see themselves as less susceptible than others to attribution errors (Pronin, 2008). My hunch is that you will find more surprises, more chal- lenges, and more benefit in an analysis of errors and biases than you would in a string of testimonies to the human capacity for logic and intellectual achievement. That is also why world literature so often portrays pride and other human failings. Social psychology aims to expose us to fallacies in our thinking in the hope that we will become more rational, more in touch with reality. The hope is not in vain: Psychology students explain behavior less simplistically than similarly intelligent natural science students (Fletcher & others, 1986).
“Most poor people are not lazy. . . . They catch the early bus. They raise other people’s children. They clean the streets. No, no, they’re not lazy.”
—THE REVEREND JESSE JACKSON, ADDRESS TO THE
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CON- VENTION, JULY 1988
• Attribution theory involves how we explain people’s behavior. Misattribution—attributing a behavior to the wrong source—is a major factor in sexual harassment, as a person in power (typically male) interprets friendliness as a sexual come-on.
• Although we usually make reasonable attributions, we often commit the fundamental attribution error (also called correspondence bias ) when explaining
other people’s behavior. We attribute their behav- ior so much to their inner traits and attitudes that we discount situational constraints, even when those are obvious. We make this attribution error partly because when we watch someone act, that person is the focus of our attention and the situation is relatively invis- ible. When we act, our attention is usually on what we are reacting to—the situation is more visible.
Summing Up: Explaining Our Social World
Expectations of Our Social Worlds Having considered how we explain and judge others—efficiently, adaptively, but sometimes erroneously—we conclude this chapter by pondering the effects of our social judgments. Do our social beliefs matter? Do they change reality?
Our social beliefs and judgments do matter. They influence how we feel and act, and by so doing may help generate their own reality. When our ideas lead us to act
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in ways that produce their apparent confirmation, they have become what sociolo- gist Robert Merton (1948) termed self-fulfilling prophecies —beliefs that lead to their own fulfillment. If, led to believe that their bank is about to crash, its custom- ers race to withdraw their money, then their false perceptions may create reality, noted Merton. If people are led to believe that stocks are about to soar, they will indeed. (See “Focus On: The Self-Fulfilling Psychology of the Stock Market.”)
In his well-known studies of experimenter bias, Robert Rosenthal (1985, 2006) found that research participants sometimes live up to what they believe experi- menters expect of them. In one study, experimenters asked individuals to judge the success of people in various photographs. The experimenters read the same instructions to all their participants and showed them the same photos. Neverthe- less, experimenters who expected their participants to see the photographed people as successful obtained higher ratings than did those who expected their partici- pants to see the people as failures. Even more startling—and controversial—are reports that teachers’ beliefs about their students similarly serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. If a teacher believes a student is good at math, will the student do well in the class? Let’s examine this.
Teacher Expectations and Student Performance Teachers do have higher expectations for some students than for others. Perhaps you have detected this after having a brother or sister precede you in school, or after receiving a label such as “gifted” or “learning disabled,” or after being tracked with “high-ability” or “average-ability” students. Perhaps conversation in the teachers’ lounge sent your reputation ahead of you. Or perhaps your new teacher scrutinized
self-fulfilling prophecy A belief that leads to its own fulfillment.
Rosenthal (2008) recalls submitting a paper describing his early experiments on experimenter bias to a leading journal and to an American Association for the Advancement of Science prize competition. On the same day, some weeks later, he received a letter from the journal rejecting his paper, and from the association naming it the year’s best social science research. In science, as in everyday life, some people appreciate what others do not, which is why it often pays to try and, when rebuffed, to try again.
On the evening of January 6, 1981, Joseph Granville, a popular Florida investment adviser, wired his clients: “Stock prices will nosedive; sell tomorrow.” Word of Gran- ville’s advice soon spread, and January 7 became the heaviest day of trading in the previous history of the New York Stock Exchange. All told, stock values lost $40 billion.
Nearly a half-century ago, John Maynard Keynes likened such stock market psychology to the popular beauty contests then conducted by London newspa- pers. To win, one had to pick the six faces out of a hun- dred that were, in turn, chosen most frequently by the other newspaper contestants. Thus, as Keynes wrote, “Each competitor has to pick not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors.”
Investors likewise try to pick not the stocks that touch their fancy but the stocks that other investors will favor. The name of the game is predicting others’ behavior. As one Wall Street fund manager explained, “You may or may not agree with Granville’s view—but that’s usually beside the point.” If you think his advice will cause oth- ers to sell, then you want to sell quickly, before prices
drop more. If you expect others to buy, you buy now to beat the rush.
The self-fulfilling psychology of the stock market worked to an extreme on Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 20 percent. Part of what happens during such crashes is that the media and the rumor mill focus on whatever bad news is available to explain them. Once reported, the explana- tory news stories further diminish people’s expectations, causing declining prices to fall still lower. The process also works in reverse by amplifying good news when stock prices are rising.
In April of 2000, the volatile technology market again demonstrated a self-fulfilling psychology, now called “momentum investing.” After two years of eagerly buy- ing stocks (because prices were rising), people started frantically selling them (because prices were falling). Such wild market swings—“irrational exuberance” fol- lowed by a crash—are mainly self-generated, noted economist Robert Shiller (2000). In 2008 and 2009, the market psychology headed south again as another bub- ble burst.
The Self-Fulfilling Psychology of the Stock Market focus
ON
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your school file or discovered your family’s social status. It’s clear that teachers’ evaluations correlate with student achievement: Teachers think well of students who do well. That’s mostly because teachers accurately perceive their students’ abilities and achievements (Jussim, 2005).
But are teachers’ evaluations ever a cause as well as a consequence of student performance? One correlational study of 4,300 British schoolchildren by William Crano and Phyllis Mellon (1978) suggested yes. Not only is high performance fol- lowed by higher teacher evaluations, but the reverse is true as well.
Could we test this “teacher-expectations effect” experimentally? Pretend we gave a teacher the impression that Dana, Sally, Todd, and Manuel—four randomly selected students—are unusually capable. Will the teacher give special treatment to these four and elicit superior performance from them? In a now-famous experi- ment, Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) reported precisely that. Randomly selected children in a San Francisco elementary school who were said (on the basis of a fictitious test) to be on the verge of a dramatic intellectual spurt did then spurt ahead in IQ score.
That dramatic result seemed to suggest that the school problems of “disadvan- taged” children might reflect their teachers’ low expectations. The findings were soon publicized in the national media as well as in many college textbooks. How- ever, further analysis—which was not as highly publicized—revealed the teacher- expectations effect to be not as powerful and reliable as this initial study had led many people to believe (Spitz, 1999). By Rosenthal’s own count, in only about 4 in 10 of the nearly 500 published experiments did expectations significantly affect per- formance (Rosenthal, 1991, 2002). Low expectations do not doom a capable child, nor do high expectations magically transform a slow learner into a valedictorian. Human nature is not so pliable.
High expectations do, however, seem to boost low achievers, for whom a teach- er’s positive attitude may be a hope-giving breath of fresh air (Madon & others, 1997). How are such expectations transmitted? Rosenthal and other investigators report that teachers look, smile, and nod more at “high-potential students.” Teach- ers also may teach more to their “gifted” students, set higher goals for them, call on them more, and give them more time to answer (Cooper, 1983; Harris & Rosenthal, 1985, 1986; Jussim, 1986).
In one study, Elisha Babad, Frank Bernieri, and Rosenthal (1991) videotaped teachers talking to, or about, unseen students for whom they held high or low expectations. A random 10-second clip of either the teacher’s voice or the teacher’s face was enough to tell viewers—both children and adults—whether this was a good or a poor student and how much the teacher liked the student. (You read that right: 10 seconds.) Although teachers may think they can conceal their feelings and behave impartially toward the class, students are acutely sensitive to teachers’ facial expressions and body movements ( Figure 3.8 ).
Reading the experiments on teacher expectations makes me wonder about the effect of students’ expectations upon their teachers. You no doubt begin many of your courses having heard “Professor Smith is interesting” and “Professor Jones is a bore.” Robert Feldman and Thomas Prohaska (1979; Feldman & Theiss, 1982)
To judge a teacher or professor’s overall warmth and enthusiasm also takes but a thin slice of behavior— mere seconds (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1992, 1993).
FIGURE :: 3.8 Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Teacher expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies. But for the most part, teachers’ expectations accurately reflect reality (Jussim & Harber, 2005).
Teacher‘s behavior
Smiling more at Rena, teaching her more, calling on her more, giving more time to answer.
Teacher‘s expectation
“Rena‘s older brother was brilliant. I bet she is, too.”
Student‘s behavior
Rena responds enthusiastically.
Confirming
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found that such expectations can affect both student and teacher. Students in a learning experiment who expected to be taught by an excellent teacher perceived their teacher (who was unaware of their expectations) as more competent and inter- esting than did students with low expectations. Furthermore, the students actu- ally learned more. In a later experiment, women who were led to expect their male instructor to be sexist had a less positive experience with him, performed worse, and rated him as less competent than did women not given the sexist expectation (Adams & others, 2006).
Were these results due entirely to the students’ perceptions, or also to a self- fulfilling prophecy that affected the teacher? In a follow-up experiment, Feldman and Prohaska videotaped teachers and had observers rate their performances. Teachers were judged most capable when assigned a student who nonverbally con- veyed positive expectations.
To see whether such effects might also occur in actual classrooms, a research team led by David Jamieson (1987) experimented with four Ontario high school classes taught by a newly transferred teacher. During individual interviews, they told students in two of the classes that both other students and the research team rated the teacher very highly. Compared with the control classes, students who were given positive expectations paid better attention during class. At the end of the teaching unit, they also got better grades and rated the teacher as clearer in her teaching. The attitudes that a class has toward its teacher are as important, it seems, as the teacher’s attitude toward the students.
Getting from Others What We Expect So the expectations of experimenters and teachers, though usually reasonably accu- rate, occasionally act as self-fulfilling prophecies. How widespread are self- fulfilling prophecies? Do we get from others what we expect of them? Studies show that self- fulfilling prophecies also operate in work settings (with managers who have high or low expectations), in courtrooms (as judges instruct juries), and in simulated police contexts (as interrogators with guilty or innocent expectations interrogate and pressure suspects) (Kassin & others, 2003; Rosenthal, 2003, 2006).
Do self-fulfilling prophecies color our personal relationships? There are times when negative expectations of someone lead us to be extra nice to that person, which induces him or her to be nice in return—thus dis confirming our expectations. But a more common finding in studies of social interaction is that, yes, we do to some extent get what we expect (Olson & others, 1996).
In laboratory games, hostility nearly always begets hostility: People who perceive their opponents as noncooperative will readily induce them to be noncooperative (Kelley & Stahelski, 1970). Each party’s perception of the other as aggressive, resent- ful, and vindictive induces the other to display those behaviors in self-defense, thus creating a vicious self-perpetuating circle. In another experiment, people antici- pated interacting with another person of a different race. When led to expect that the person disliked interacting with someone of their race, they felt more anger and displayed more hostility toward the person (Butz & Plant, 2006). Likewise, whether I expect my wife to be in a bad mood or in a loving mood may affect how I relate to her, thereby inducing her to confirm my belief.
So, do intimate relationships prosper when partners idealize each other? Are positive illusions of the other’s virtues self-fulfilling? Or are they more often self- defeating, by creating high expectations that can’t be met? Among University of Waterloo dating couples followed by Sandra Murray and her associates (1996a, 1996b, 2000), positive ideals of one’s partner were good omens. Idealization helped buffer conflict, bolster satisfaction, and turn self-perceived frogs into princes or princesses. When someone loves and admires us, it helps us become more the per- son he or she imagines us to be.
When dating couples deal with conflicts, hopeful optimists and their partners tend to perceive each other as engaging constructively. Compared to those with
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more pessimistic expectations, they then feel more supported and more satisfied with the outcome (Srivastava & others, 2006). Among married couples, too, those who worry that their partner doesn’t love and accept them interpret slight hurts as rejections, which motivates them to devalue the partner and distance themselves. Those who presume their partner’s love and acceptance respond less defensively, read less into stressful events, and treat the partner better (Murray & others, 2003). Love helps create its presumed reality.
Several experiments conducted by Mark Snyder (1984) at the University of Min- nesota show how, once formed, erroneous beliefs about the social world can induce others to confirm those beliefs, a phenomenon called behavioral confirmation. In a classic study, Snyder, Elizabeth Tanke, and Ellen Berscheid (1977) had male stu- dents talk on the telephone with women they thought (from having been shown a picture) were either attractive or unattractive. Analysis of just the women’s com- ments during the conversations revealed that the supposedly attractive women spoke more warmly than the supposedly unattractive women. The men’s errone- ous beliefs had become a self-fulfilling prophecy by leading them to act in a way that influenced the women to fulfill the men’s stereotype that beautiful people are desirable people.
Behavioral confirmation also occurs as people interact with partners holding mistaken beliefs. People who are believed lonely behave less sociably (Rotenberg & others, 2002). Men who are believed sexist behave less favorably toward women (Pinel, 2002). Job interviewees who are believed to be warm behave more warmly.
Imagine yourself as one of the 60 young men or 60 young women in an experi- ment by Robert Ridge and Jeffrey Reber (2002). Each man is to interview one of the women to assess her suitability for a teaching assistant position. Before doing so, he is told either that she feels attracted to him (based on his answers to a biographical questionnaire) or not attracted. (Imagine being told that someone you were about to meet reported considerable interest in getting to know you and in dating you, or none whatsoever.) The result was behavioral confirmation: Applicants believed to feel an attraction exhibited more flirtatiousness (and without being aware of doing so). Ridge and Reber believe that this process, like the misattribution phenomenon we discussed earlier, may be one of the roots of sexual harassment. If a woman’s behavior seems to confirm a man’s beliefs, he may then escalate his overtures until
behavioral confirmation A type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations.
Behavioral confirmation. When English soccer fans came to France for the 1998 World Cup, they were expected to live up to their reputation as aggressive “hooligans.” Local French youth and police, expecting hooligan behavior, reportedly displayed hosility toward the English, who retaliated, thus confirming the expectation (Klein & Snyder, 2003).
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they become sufficiently overt for the woman to recognize and interpret them as inappropriate or harassing.
Expectations influence children’s behavior, too. After observing the amount of litter in three classrooms, Richard Miller and his colleagues (1975) had the teacher and others repeatedly tell one class that they should be neat and tidy. This persua- sion increased the amount of litter placed in wastebaskets from 15 to 45 percent, but only temporarily. Another class, which also had been placing only 15 percent of its litter in wastebaskets, was repeatedly congratulated for being so neat and tidy. After eight days of hearing this, and still two weeks later, these children were fulfilling the expectation by putting more than 80 percent of their litter in wastebas- kets. Tell children they are hardworking and kind (rather than lazy and mean), and they may live up to their labels.
These experiments help us understand how social beliefs, such as stereotypes about people with disabilities or about people of a particular race or sex, may be self- confirming. How others treat us reflects how we and others have treated them.
A note of caution: As with every social phenomenon, the tendency to confirm others’ expectations has its limits. Expectations often predict behavior simply because they are accurate (Jussim, 2005).
“The more he treated her as though she were really very nice, the more Lotty expanded and became really very nice, and the more he, affected in his turn, became really very nice himself; so that they went round and round, not in a vicious but in a highly virtuous circle.” —ELIZABETH VON ARNIM, THE
ENCHANTED APRIL, 1922
• Our beliefs sometimes take on lives of their own. Usually, our beliefs about others have a basis in reality. But studies of experimenter bias and teacher expectations show that an erroneous belief that certain people are unusually capable (or incapable) can lead teachers and research- ers to give those people special treatment. This may elicit superior (or inferior) performance and,
therefore, seem to confirm an assumption that is actually false.
• Similarly, in everyday life we often get behavioral confirmation of what we expect. Told that someone we are about to meet is intelligent and attractive, we may come away impressed with just how intel- ligent and attractive he or she is.
Summing Up: Expectations of Our Social World
Conclusions Social cognition studies reveal that our information-processing powers are impressive for their efficiency and adaptiveness (“in apprehension how like a god!” exclaimed Shakespeare’s Hamlet). Yet we are also vulnerable to predictable errors and misjudg- ments (“headpiece filled with straw,” said T. S. Eliot). What practical lessons, and what insights into human nature, can we take home from this research?
We have reviewed reasons why people sometimes form false beliefs. We cannot easily dismiss these experiments: Most of their participants were intelligent people, often students at leading universities. Moreover, people’s intelligence scores are uncorrelated with their vulnerability to many different thinking biases (Stanovich & West, 2008). One can be very smart and exhibit seriously bad judgment.
Trying hard also doesn’t eliminate thinking biases. These predictable distortions and biases occurred even when payment for right answers motivated people to think optimally. As one researcher concluded, the illusions “have a persistent qual- ity not unlike that of perceptual illusions” (Slovic, 1972).
Research in cognitive social psychology thus mirrors the mixed review given humanity in literature, philosophy, and religion. Many research psychologists have spent lifetimes exploring the awesome capacities of the human mind. We are smart enough to have cracked our own genetic code, to have invented talking computers, to have sent people to the moon. Three cheers for human reason.
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Well, two cheers—because the mind’s premium on efficient judgment makes our intuition more vulnerable to misjudgment than we suspect. With remarkable ease, we form and sustain false beliefs. Led by our preconceptions, feeling over- confident, persuaded by vivid anecdotes, perceiving correlations and control even where none may exist, we construct our social beliefs and then influence others to confirm them. “The naked intellect,” observed novelist Madeleine L’Engle, “is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.”
But have these experiments just been intellectual tricks played on hapless par- ticipants, thus making them look worse than they are? Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross (1980) contended that, if anything, laboratory procedures overestimate our intuitive powers. The experiments usually present people with clear evidence and warn them that their reasoning ability is being tested. Seldom does real life say to us: “Here is some evidence. Now put on your intellectual Sunday best and answer these questions.”
Often our everyday failings are inconsequential, but not always so. False impres- sions, interpretations, and beliefs can produce serious consequences. Even small biases can have profound social effects when we are making important social judg- ments: Why are so many people homeless? unhappy? homicidal? Does my friend love me or my money? Cognitive biases even creep into sophisticated scientific thinking. Human nature has hardly changed in the 3,000 years since the Old Testa- ment psalmist noted that “no one can see his own errors.”
Is this too cynical? Leonard Martin and Ralph Erber (2005) invite us to imagine that an intelligent being swooped down and begged for information that would help it understand the human species. When you hand it this social psychology text, the alien says “thank you” and zooms back off into space. After (I’d like to presume) resolving your remorse over giving up this book, how would you feel about having offered social psychology’s analysis? Joachim Krueger and David Funder (2003a, 2003b) wouldn’t feel too good. Social psychology’s preoccupation with human foibles needs balancing with “a more positive view of human nature,” they argue.
Fellow social psychologist Lee Jussim (2005) agrees, adding, “Despite the oft- demonstrated existence of a slew of logical flaws and systematic biases in lay judgment and social perception, such as the fundamental attribution error, false consensus, over-reliance on imperfect heuristics, self-serving biases, etc., people’s perceptions of one another are surprisingly (though rarely perfectly) accurate.” The elegant analyses of the imperfections of our thinking are themselves a tribute to human wisdom. Were one to argue that all human thought is illusory, the assertion would be self-refuting, for it, too, would be but an illusion. It would be logically equivalent to contending “All generalizations are false, including this one.”
As medical science assumes that any given body organ serves a function, so behavioral scientists find it useful to assume that our modes of thought and behav- ior are adaptive (Funder, 1987; Kruglanski & Ajzen, 1983; Swann, 1984). The rules of thought that produce false beliefs and striking deficiencies in our statistical intu- ition usually serve us well. Frequently, the errors are a by-product of our mental shortcuts that simplify the complex information we receive.
Nobel laureate psychologist Herbert Simon (1957) was among the modern researchers who first described the bounds of human reason. Simon contends that to cope with reality, we simplify it. Consider the complexity of a chess game: The number of possible games is greater than the number of particles in the uni- verse. How do we cope? We adopt some simplifying rules—heuristics. These heu- ristics sometimes lead us to defeat. But they do enable us to make efficient snap judgments.
Illusory thinking can likewise spring from useful heuristics that aid our survival. In many ways, heuristics “make us smart” (Gigerenzer, 2007). The belief in our power to control events helps maintain hope and effort. If things are sometimes sub- ject to control and sometimes not, we maximize our outcomes by positive thinking.
“In creating these problems, we didn’t set out to fool peo- ple. All our problems fooled us, too.”
—AMOS TVERSKY (1985)
“The purposes in the human mind are like deep water, but the intelligent will draw them out.”
—PROVERBS 20:5
“Cognitive errors . . . exist in the present because they led to survival and reproductive advantages for humans in the past.”
—EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLO- GISTS MARTIE HASELTON AND
DAVID BUSS (2000)
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Optimism pays dividends. We might even say that our beliefs are like scientific theories—sometimes in error yet useful as generalizations. As social psychologist Susan Fiske (1992) says, “Thinking is for doing.”
As we constantly seek to improve our theories, might we not also work to reduce errors in our social thinking? In school, math teachers teach, teach, teach until the mind is finally trained to process numerical information accurately and automati- cally. We assume that such ability does not come naturally; otherwise, why bother with the years of training? Research psychologist Robyn Dawes (1980)—who was dismayed that “study after study has shown [that] people have very limited abilities to process information on a conscious level, particularly social information”—sug- gested that we should also teach, teach, teach how to process social information.
Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross (1980) believe that education could indeed reduce our vulnerability to certain types of error. They offer the following recommenda- tions:
• Train people to recognize likely sources of error in their own social intuition. • Set up statistics courses geared to everyday problems of logic and social
judgment. Given such training, people do in fact reason better about every- day events (Lehman & others, 1988; Nisbett & others, 1987).
• Make such teaching more effective by illustrating it richly with concrete, vivid anecdotes and examples from everyday life.
• Teach memorable and useful slogans, such as “It’s an empirical question,” “Which hat did you draw that sample out of?” or “You can lie with statistics, but a well-chosen example does the job better.”
“The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of lib- erty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.” —LEARNED HAND, “THE SPIRIT
OF LIBERTY,” 1952
Research on social beliefs and judgments reveals how we form and sustain beliefs that usually serve us well but sometimes lead us astray. A balanced social psychology will therefore appreciate both the powers and the perils of social thinking.
Summing Up: Conclusions
POSTSCRIPT: Reflecting on Illusory Thinking
Is research on pride and error too humbling? Surely we can acknowledge the hard truth of our human limits and still sympathize with the deeper message that people are more than machines. Our subjective experiences are the stuff of our humanity— our art and our music, our enjoyment of friendship and love, our mystical and reli- gious experiences.
The cognitive and social psychologists who explore illusory thinking are not out to remake us into unfeeling logical machines. They know that emotions enrich human experience and that intuitions are an important source of creative ideas. They add, however, the humbling reminder that our susceptibility to error also makes clear the need for disciplined training of the mind. The American writer Norman Cousins (1978) called this “the biggest truth of all about learning: that its purpose is to unlock the human mind and to develop it into an organ capable of thought— conceptual thought, analytical thought, sequential thought.”
Research on error and illusion in social judgment reminds us to “judge not”—to remember, with a dash of humility, our potential for misjudgment. It also encour- ages us not to feel intimidated by the arrogance of those who cannot see their own potential for bias and error. We humans are wonderfully intelligent yet fallible crea- tures. We have dignity but not deity.
“Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him also of his happiness.”
—HENRIK IBSEN, THE WILD DUCK, 1884
P.S.
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Such humility and distrust of human authority is at the heart of both religion and science. No wonder many of the founders of modern science were religious people whose convictions predisposed them to be humble before nature and skeptical of human authority (Hooykaas, 1972; Merton, 1938). Science always involves an inter- play between intuition and rigorous test, between creative hunch and skepticism. To sift reality from illusion requires both open-minded curiosity and hard-headed rigor. This perspective could prove to be a good attitude for approaching all of life: to be critical but not cynical; curious but not gullible; open but not exploitable.
Making the Social Connection The Online Learning Center for this book includes a video on each of three important topics from this chapter. First is the manner in which
context influenced public perceptions of the televised campaign speech given by presidential candidate Howard Dean after the Iowa Caucus in 2000. In the second video, leading memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus explores the misinformation effect and the way it distorts our memories. Finally, Lee Ross discusses the funda- mental attribution error, a concept he formed based on his observations of how peo- ple perceive and interpret events. Keep these concepts in mind as you read future chapters, and notice the ways in which you tend to explain others’ behavior.
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C H A P T E R Behavior and Attitudes
4
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“The ancestor of every action is a thought.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series, 1841
How well do our attitudes predict our behavior?
When does our behavior affect our attitudes?
Why does our behavior affect our attitudes?
Postscript: Changing ourselves through action
W hat is the relationship between what we are (on the inside) and what we do (on the outside)? Philosophers, theologians, and educators have long speculated about the connections between
attitude and action, character and conduct, private word and public
deed. Underlying most teaching, counseling, and child rearing is an
assumption: Our private beliefs and feelings determine our public
behavior, so if we wish to change behavior we must first change hearts
and minds.
In the beginning, social psychologists agreed: To know people’s
attitudes is to predict their actions. As demonstrated by genocidal kill-
ers and by suicide bombers, extreme attitudes can produce extreme
behavior. But in 1964 Leon Festinger concluded that the evidence
showed that changing people’s attitudes hardly affects their behavior.
Festinger believed the attitude-behavior relation works the other way
around. As Robert Abelson (1972) put it, we are “very well trained and
very good at finding reasons for what we do, but not very good at
doing what we find reasons for.” This chapter explores the interplay of
attitudes and behavior.
When social psychologists talk about someone’s attitude, they refer
to beliefs and feelings related to a person or an event and the resulting
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behavior tendency. Taken together, favorable or unfavorable evaluative reactions
toward something—often rooted in beliefs and exhibited in feelings and inclinations
to act—define a person’s attitude (Eagly & Chaiken, 2005). Thus, a person may have
a negative attitude toward coffee, a neutral attitude toward the French, and a positive
attitude toward the next-door neighbor. Attitudes provide an efficient way to size up
the world. When we have to respond quickly to something, the way we feel about
it can guide how we react. For example, a person who believes a particular ethnic
group is lazy and aggressive may feel dislike for such people and therefore intend to
act in a discriminatory manner.
The study of attitudes is close to the heart of social psychology and was one of
its first concerns. For much of the last century, researchers wondered how much
our attitudes affect our actions. You can remember these three dimensions as the
ABCs of attitudes: a ffect (feelings), b ehavior tendency, and c ognition (thoughts)
( Figure 4.1 ).
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior? To what extent, and under what conditions, do the attitudes of the heart drive our outward actions? Why were social psychologists at first surprised by a seemingly small connection between attitudes and actions?
A blow to the supposed power of attitudes came when social psychologist Allan Wicker (1969) reviewed several dozen research studies covering a wide variety of people, attitudes, and behaviors. Wicker offered a shocking conclusion: People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behaviors.
• Student attitudes toward cheating bore little relation to the likelihood of their actually cheating.
• Attitudes toward the church were only modestly linked with church atten- dance on any given Sunday.
• Self-described racial attitudes provided little clue to behaviors in actual situations.
An example of the disjuncture between attitudes and actions is what Daniel Batson and his colleagues (1997, 2001, 2002; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2007, 2008)
call “moral hypocrisy” (appearing moral while avoiding the costs of being so). Their studies presented people with an appealing task (where the participant could earn raffle tickets toward a $30 prize) and a dull task with no rewards. The participants had to assign them- selves to one of the tasks and a sup- posed second participant to the other. Only 1 in 20 believed that assigning the
attitude A favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone (often rooted in one’s beliefs, and exhibited in one’s feelings and intended behavior).
FIGURE :: 4.1 The ABCs of Attitudes
Behavior
Affect Cognition
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”
—BUDDHA, 563 B.C.–483 B.C. DHAMMA-PADA
“Thought is the child of action.”
—BENJAMIN DISRAELI, VIVIAN GRAY, 1926
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positive task to themselves was the more moral thing to do, yet 80 percent did so. In follow-up experiments on moral hypocrisy, participants were given coins they could flip privately if they wished. Even if they chose to flip, 90 percent assigned themselves to the positive task! (Was that because they could specify the consequences of heads and tails after the coin toss?) In another experiment, Batson put a sticker on each side of the coin, indicating what the flip outcome would signify. Still, 24 of 28 people who made the toss assigned themselves to the positive task. When morality and greed were put on a collision course, greed won.
If people don’t walk the same line that they talk, it’s little wonder that attempts to change behavior by changing attitudes often fail. Warnings about the dangers of smoking affect only minimally those who already smoke. Increasing public awareness of the desensitizing and brutalizing effects of television violence has stimulated many people to voice a desire for less violent programming—yet they still watch media murder as much as ever. Sex education programs have often influenced attitudes toward abstinence and condom use without affecting long-term abstinence and condom use behaviors. We are, it seems, a population of hypocrites.
All in all, the developing picture of what controls behavior emphasized external social influences, such as others’ behavior and expectations, and played down inter- nal factors, such as attitudes and personality. Thus, the original thesis that attitudes determine actions was countered during the 1960s by the antithesis that attitudes determine virtually nothing.
Thesis. Antithesis. Is there a synthesis? The surprising finding that what peo- ple say often differs from what they do sent social psychologists scurrying to find out why. Surely, we reasoned, convictions and feelings must sometimes make a difference.
Indeed. In fact, what I am about to explain now seems so obvious that I wonder why most social psychologists (myself included) were not thinking this way before the early 1970s. I must remind myself, however, that truth never seems obvious until it is known.
When Attitudes Predict Behavior The reason—now obvious—why our behavior and our expressed attitudes differ is that both are subject to other influences. Many other influences. One social psychol- ogist counted 40 factors that complicate their relationship (Triandis, 1982; see also Kraus, 1995). Our attitudes do predict our behavior when these other influences on what we say and do are minimal, when the attitude is specific to the behavior, and when the attitude is potent.
WHEN SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON WHAT WE SAY ARE MINIMAL Unlike a physician measuring heart rate, social psychologists never get a direct reading on attitudes. Rather, we measure expressed attitudes. Like other behaviors, expressions are subject to outside influences. Sometimes, for example, we say what we think others want to hear. In late 2002, many U.S. legislators, sensing their coun- try’s post-9/11 fear, anger, and patriotic fervor, publicly voted support for President Bush’s planned war against Iraq while privately having reservations (Nagourney, 2002). On the roll-call vote, strong social influence—fear of criticism—had distorted the true sentiments.
Today’s social psychologists have some clever means at their disposal for mini- mizing social influences on people’s attitude reports. Some of these complement traditional self-report measures of explicit (conscious) attitudes with measures of implicit (unconscious) attitudes. One such test measures facial muscle responses to various statements (Cacioppo & Petty, 1981). Those measurements, the researchers
“It may be desirable to abandon the attitude concept.”
—ALLAN WICKER (1971)
“I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.”
—PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH
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hope, can reveal enough of a microsmile or a microfrown to indicate the partici- pant’s attitude about a given statement.
A newer and widely used attitude measure, the implicit association test (IAT), uses reaction times to measure how quickly people associate concepts (Greenwald & others, 2002, 2003). One can, for example, measure implicit racial attitudes by assessing whether White people take longer to associate positive words with Black than with White faces. Across 126 studies, implicit associations measured by the IAT have correlated, on average, a modest .24 with explicit self-reported attitudes (Hofmann & others, 2005). (See “The Inside Story: Mahzarin R. Banaji on Discover- ing Experimental Social Psychology.”)
A review of more than 100 studies and of more than 2.5 million IATs completed online reveals that explicit (self-report) and implicit attitudes both help predict peo- ple’s behaviors and judgments (Greenwald & others, 2008; Nosek & others, 2007). Thus, explicit and implicit attitudes may together predict behavior better than either alone (Spence & Townsend, 2007).
For attitudes formed early in life, such as racial and gender attitudes, implicit and explicit attitudes frequently diverge, with implicit attitudes often being the bet- ter predictor of behavior. For example, implicit racial attitudes have successfully predicted interracial roommate relationships (Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2006). For other attitudes, such as those related to consumer behavior and support for politi- cal candidates, explicit self-reports are the better predictor.
implicit association test (IAT) A computer-driven assessment of implicit attitudes. The test uses reaction times to measure people’s automatic associations between attitude objects and evaluative words. Easier pairings (and faster responses) are taken to indicate stronger unconscious associations.
Mahzarin R. Banaji on Discovering Experimental Social Psychology
Graduating from high school in India at age 15, I had but a single goal—to leave my well-adjusted and secure fam- ily to live the patently more daring and exciting life of a secretarial assistant. Proficient at typing scores of words a minute, I looked forward to a life of independence that involved living a block away from my parents. My mother, despite not having attended college, persuaded me to try college—but only for a semester, we agreed, after which I would be free to choose my path.
The end of my first semester at Nizam College came and went. Mother didn’t ask about my plans. I didn’t have to swallow and tell. Just before one holiday trip home, I bought the five volumes of the 1968 Handbook of Social Psychology for the equivalent of a dollar apiece (it seemed like a lot of book for the money). By the end of a 24-hour train ride home, I had polished off one vol- ume and knew with blunt clarity that this science, which studied social processes experimentally, was something I had to do.
Doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships enabled me to work with three remarkable people early in my career: Tony Greenwald at Ohio State, and Claude Steele and Elizabeth Loftus at the University of Washington. At Yale, while still interested in human memory researchers, I dis- covered that memories come in both explicit (conscious)
and implicit (unconscious) forms. Might this also be true of attitudes, beliefs, and values? Hesitantly, I wrote the words “Implicit Attitudes” as the title of a grant proposal, not knowing it would become such a central part of what my students and I would study for the next two decades.
With Tony Greenwald and Brian Nosek, I have enjoyed an extended collaboration on implicit social cognition that few scientists are blessed with. From the hundreds of studies that have used the Implicit Association Test (implicit.harvard.edu) and the millions of tests taken, we now know that people carry knowledge (stereotypes) and feelings (attitudes) of which they are unaware, and which often contrast with their conscious expressions. We know that subcortical brain activity can be an inde- pendent marker of implicit atti- tudes, that people differ in their implicit attitudes, and that such attitudes and stereotypes pre- dict real-life behavior. Most opti- mistically, we know that implicit attitudes, even old ones, can be modified by experience.
THE inside STORY
Mahzarin Banaji Harvard University
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Recent neuroscience studies have identified brain centers that produce our auto- matic, implicit reactions (Stanley & others, 2008). One area deep in the brain (the amygdala, a center for threat perception) is active as we automatically evaluate social stimuli. For example, White people who show strong unconscious racial bias on the IAT also exhibit high amygdala activation when viewing unfamiliar Black faces. Other frontal lobe areas are involved in detecting and regulating implicit attitudes.
A word of caution: Despite much excitement over these recent studies of implicit attitudes hiding in the mind’s basement, the implicit associations test has detractors (Arkes & Tetlock, 2004; Blanton & others, 2006, 2007). They note that, unlike an aptitude test, the IAT is not reliable enough for use in assessing and comparing individuals. Moreover, a score that suggests some relative bias doesn’t distinguish a positive bias for one group (or greater familiarity with one group) from a negative bias against another. The critics also wonder whether compassion and guilt rather than latent hostility might slow one’s speed in associating Blacks with positive words. Regardless, the existence of distinct explicit and implicit attitudes confirms one of twenty-first-century psychology’s biggest lessons: our “dual processing” capacity for both controlled (deliberate, conscious, explicit) and automatic (effortless, habitual, implicit) thinking.
WHEN OTHER INFLUENCES ON BEHAVIOR ARE MINIMAL On any occasion, it’s not only our inner attitudes that guide us but also the situ- ation we face. As Chapters 5 to 8 will illustrate again and again, social influences can be enormous—enormous enough to induce people to violate their deepest con- victions. So, would averaging many occasions enable us to detect more clearly the impact of our attitudes? Predicting people’s behavior is like predicting a baseball or cricket player’s hitting. The outcome of any particular turn at bat is nearly impos- sible to predict, because it is affected not only by the batter but also by what the pitcher throws and by a host of chance factors. When we aggregate many times at bat, we neutralize those complicating factors. Knowing the players, we can predict their approximate batting averages.
To use a research example, people’s general attitude toward religion poorly pre- dicts whether they will go to worship services during the coming week (because attendance is also influenced by the weather, the worship leader, how one is feel- ing, and so forth). But religious attitudes predict quite well the total quantity of religious behaviors over time (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974; Kahle & Berman, 1979). The findings define a principle of aggregation: The effects of an attitude become more apparent when we look at a person’s aggregate or average behavior than when we consider isolated acts.
WHEN ATTITUDES SPECIFIC TO THE BEHAVIOR ARE EXAMINED Other conditions further improve the predictive accuracy of attitudes. As Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein (1977, 2005) point out, when the measured attitude is a general one—say, an attitude toward Asians—and the behavior is very specific— say, a decision whether to help a particular Asian in a particular situation—we should not expect a close correspondence between words and actions. Indeed, report Fishbein and Ajzen, in 26 out of 27 such research studies, attitudes did not predict behavior. But attitudes did predict behavior in all 26 studies they could find in which the measured attitude was directly pertinent to the situation. Thus, attitudes toward the general concept of “health fitness” poorly predict spe- cific exercise and dietary practices, but an individual’s attitudes about the costs and benefits of jogging are a fairly strong predictor of whether he or she jogs regularly.
Better yet for predicting behavior, says Ajzen in his and Fishbein’s “theory of planned behavior,” is knowing people’s intended behaviors, and their perceived
“There are still barriers out there, often unconscious.” —SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM
CLINTON, PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN CONCESSION
SPEECH, 2008
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
—WALT WHITMAN, SONG OF MYSELF, 1855
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self-efficacy and control ( Figure 4.2 ). Moreover, four dozen experimental tests con- firm that inducing new intentions induces new behavior (Webb & Sheeran, 2006). Even simply asking people about their intentions to engage in a behavior increases its likelihood (Levav & Fitzsimons, 2006). Ask people if they intend to floss their teeth in the next two weeks or to vote in an upcoming election, they will become more likely to do so.
Further studies—more than 700 studies with 276,000 participants—confirmed that specific, relevant attitudes do predict intended and actual behavior (Armit- age & Conner, 2001; Six & Eckes, 1996; Wallace & others, 2005). For example, attitudes toward condoms strongly predict condom use (Albarracin & others, 2001). And attitudes toward recycling (but not general attitudes toward envi- ronmental issues) predict participation in recycling (Oskamp, 1991). To change habits through persuasion, we had best alter people’s attitudes toward specific practices.
So far we have seen two conditions under which attitudes will predict behavior: (1) when we minimize other influences upon our attitude statements and on our behavior, and (2) when the attitude is specifically relevant to the observed behav- ior. There is a third condition: An attitude predicts behavior better when the atti- tude is potent.
WHEN ATTITUDES ARE POTENT Much of our behavior is automatic. We act out familiar scripts without reflecting on what we’re doing. We respond to people we meet in the hall with an automatic “Hi.” We answer the restaurant cashier’s question “How was your meal?” by say- ing, “Fine,” even if we found it tasteless.
Such mindlessness is adaptive. It frees our minds to work on other things. For habitual behaviors—seat belt use, coffee consumption, class attendance—conscious intentions hardly are activated (Ouellette & Wood, 1998). As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead argued, “Civilization advances by extending the number of oper- ations which we can perform without thinking about them.”
FIGURE :: 4.2 The Theory of Planned Behavior Icek Ajzen, working with Martin Fishbein, has shown that one’s (a) attitudes, (b) perceived social norms, and (c) feelings of control together determine one’s intentions, which guide behavior. Compared with their general attitudes toward a healthy lifestyle, people’s specific attitudes regarding jogging predict their jogging behavior much better.
Attitude toward the behavior
“I’m for physical fitness.”
Subjective norms
“My neighbors seem to be jogging and going to the gym.”
Perceived control
“I could easily do this.”
Behavior intention
“I’m going to start next week.”
Behavior
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BRINGING ATTITUDES TO MIND. If we were prompted to think about our attitudes before acting, would we be truer to ourselves? Mark Snyder and William Swann (1976) wanted to find out. Two weeks after 120 of their Univer- sity of Minnesota students indicated their attitudes toward affirmative-action employment policies, Snyder and Swann invited them to act as jurors in a sex- discrimination court case. The participants’ attitudes predicted verdicts only for those who were first induced to remember their attitudes—by giving them “a few minutes to organize your thoughts and views on the affirmative-action issue.” Our attitudes become potent if we think about them.
Self-conscious people usually are in touch with their attitudes (Miller & Grush, 1986). That suggests another way to induce people to focus on their inner convic- tions: Make them self-aware, perhaps by having them act in front of a mirror (Carver & Scheier, 1981). Maybe you, too, can recall suddenly being acutely aware of your- self upon entering a room with a large mirror. Making people self-aware in this way promotes consistency between words and deeds (Froming & others, 1982; Gibbons, 1978).
Edward Diener and Mark Wallbom (1976) noted that nearly all college students say that cheating is morally wrong. But will they follow the advice of Shakespeare’s Polonius, “To thine own self be true”? Diener and Wallbom set University of Wash- ington students to work on an anagram-solving task (which, they were told, was to predict IQ) and told them to stop when a bell in the room sounded. Left alone, 71 percent cheated by working past the bell. Among students made self-aware—by working in front of a mirror while hearing their own tape-recorded voices—only 7 percent cheated. It makes one wonder: Would eye-level mirrors in stores make people more self-conscious of their attitudes about stealing?
Remember Batson’s studies of moral hypocrisy described on page 124? In a later experiment, Batson and his colleagues (1999) found that mirrors did bring behavior into line with espoused moral attitudes. When people flipped a coin while facing a mirror, the coin flip became scrupulously fair. Exactly half of the self-conscious participants assigned the other person to the positive task.
FORGING STRONG ATTITUDES THROUGH EXPERIENCE. The attitudes that best predict behavior are accessible (easily brought to mind) as well as stable (Glasman & Albarracin, 2006). And when attitudes are forged by experi- ence, not just by hearsay, they are more accessible, more enduring, and more likely to guide actions. In one study, university students all expressed negative attitudes about their school’s response to a housing shortage. But given oppor- tunities to act—to sign a petition, solicit signatures, join a committee, or write a letter—only those whose attitudes grew from direct experience acted (Regan & Fazio, 1977).
“Thinking is easy, acting difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action, the most difficult thing in the world.”
—GERMAN POET GOETHE, 1749–1832
“Without doubt it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together.”
—MONTAIGNE, ESSAYS, 1588
“It is easier to preach virtue than to practice it.”
—LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, MAXIMS, 1665
Summing Up: How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior? • How do our inner attitudes (evaluative reactions
toward some object or person, often rooted in beliefs) relate to our external behavior? Although popular wisdom stresses the impact of attitudes on behavior, in fact, attitudes are often poor pre- dictors of behaviors. Moreover, changing people’s attitudes typically fails to produce much change in their behavior. These findings sent social psycholo- gists scurrying to find out why we so often fail to play the game we talk.
• The answer: Our expressions of attitudes and our behaviors are each subject to many influences. Our attitudes will predict our behavior (1) if these “other influences” are minimized, (2) if the attitude corresponds very closely to the predicted behav- ior (as in voting studies), and (3) if the attitude is potent (because something reminds us of it, or because we acquired it by direct experience). Under these conditions what we think and feel predicts what we do.
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You’ve Not Got Mail: Prejudicial Attitudes Predict Discriminatory Behavior
We have seen that strongly held attitudes predict specific actions, especially when the actions are unconstrained by social pressures. After 9/11, some people formed strongly felt attitudes regarding Arabs. That led Univer- sity of Michigan social psychologist Brad Bushman and his co-researcher Angelica Bonacci (2004) to wonder how strongly attitudes toward Arab Americans might influence unconstrained behavior toward them. They wanted to assess the race-relevant attitudes of univer- sity students and then, some time later, to correlate their expressed attitudes with their natural behavior in a situa- tion offering anonymity. (Any ideas as to how you might have done that?)
Their strategy was, first, to embed eleven attitude statements about Arab Americans in a set of question- naires administered to nearly 1,000 introductory psy- chology students early in their spring 2002 semester. Using a 1 (“strongly disagree”)-to-10 (“strongly agree”) scale, the students responded to statements such as these:
• “A major fault of Arab Americans is their conceit, their overbearing pride, and their idea that they are a chosen ethnic group.”
• “If there are too many Arab Americans in America, our country will be less safe.”
• “If I knew I had been assigned to live in a dorm room with an Arab American, I would ask to change rooms.”
Among the many other questions the students answered was one asking if they would be willing to par- ticipate later in an “unsolicited e-mail study.” With their attitudes now measured, and their informed consent granted, more than 500 of these students (all European American) would, two weeks later, unwittingly partici- pate in a clever experiment. Each person received an e-mail addressed to an individual with an Arabic name (Mohammed Hameed for male participants and Hassan Hameed for female participants) or to a European name (Peter Brice or Jullianna Brice). Half the students received
an e-mail stating that the intended recipient had received a prestigious scholarship that required acceptance within 48 hours:
Thank you for applying for a Glassner Foundation Scholarship. These scholarships are highly competi- tive and are given only to a few select individuals. They cover tuition for four years. . . . Because of the large number of applicants, this year we are late in sending out these notices. . . . We are happy to inform you that you have been selected to receive a Glass- ner Foundation Scholarship. Congratulations! . . . We ask that you respond to this e-mail within 48 hours to inform us whether you will formally accept our schol- arship offer. [If not] we would like to extend offers to other students on our waiting list. . . .
The other half were told the bad news: They did not receive the scholarship (but were welcome to respond if they wanted to be on the waiting list).
Had you received such a misdirected e-mail, without knowing you were actually participating in an experi- ment, would you have returned the e-mail to the sender, noting the error so that it could be re-sent? Some 26 per- cent of women but only 16 percent of men did so. And did it matter who the intended recipient was?
As Figure 4.3 shows, it did indeed. The partici- pants (who generally expressed stronger feelings of prejudice toward Arab Americans than toward Afri- can Americans, Asian Americans, or Hispanic Ameri- cans) were less likely to reconvey the good news of the scholarship award to intended recipients with Arabic names. This discriminatory behavior was most strik- ingly evident among those students who had earlier expressed higher-than-average prejudice toward Arab Americans. Moreover, as Figure 4.4 shows, the stu- dents with highly prejudicial attitudes also were more willing than were those low in prejudice to reconvey bad news to Arabs. Thus, in the months after 9/11, prejudicial attitudes did indeed predict subtle but rel- evant discriminatory behavior.
research CLOSE-UP
(continued )
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Low Prejudicial Attitude
Percent
40
30
10
20
0 High
European target
Conveying Good News
Arab target
FIGURE :: 4.3 Effect of Prejudicial Attitudes on the Rate of Reconveying Good News to Those with European and Arabic Names
FIGURE :: 4.4 Effect of Prejudicial Attitudes on the Rate of Reconveying Bad News to Those with European and Arabic Names
Low Prejudicial Attitude
Percent
40
30
10
20
0 High
Conveying Bad News
European target Arab target
When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? If social psychology has taught us anything during the last 25 years, it is that we are likely not only to think ourselves into a way of acting but also to act ourselves into a way of thinking. What evidence supports that assertion?
Now we turn to the more startling idea that behavior determines attitudes. It’s true that we sometimes stand up for what we believe. But it’s also true that we come to believe in what we stand up for. Social-psychological theories inspired much of the research that underlies that conclusion. Instead of beginning with these theo- ries, however, let’s first see what there is to explain. As we engage the evidence that behavior affects attitudes, speculate why actions affect attitudes and then compare your ideas with social psychologists’ explanations.
Consider the following incidents:
• Sarah is hypnotized and told to take off her shoes when a book drops on the floor. Fifteen minutes later a book drops, and Sarah quietly slips out of her loafers. “Sarah,” asks the hypnotist, “why did you take off your shoes?” “Well . . . my feet are hot and tired,” Sarah replies. “It has been a long day.” The act produces the idea.
• George has electrodes temporarily implanted in the brain region that controls his head movements. When neurosurgeon José Delgado (1973) stimulates the elec- trodes by remote control, George always turns his head. Unaware of the remote stimulation, he offers a reasonable explanation for his head turning: “I’m looking for my slipper.” “I heard a noise.” “I’m restless.” “I was looking under the bed.”
• Carol’s severe seizures were relieved by surgically separating her two brain hemispheres. Now, in an experiment, psychologist Michael Gazzaniga (1985) flashes a picture of a nude woman to the left half of Carol’s field of vision and thus to her nonverbal right brain hemisphere. A sheepish smile spreads
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over her face, and she begins chuckling. Asked why, she invents—and apparently believes—a plausible explanation: “Oh—that funny machine.” Frank, another split-brain patient, has the word “smile” flashed to his non- verbal right hemisphere. He obliges and forces a smile. Asked why, he explains, “This experiment is very funny.”
The mental aftereffects of our behavior also appear in many social psychological phenomena. The following examples illustrate such self-persuasion. As we will see over and over, attitudes follow behavior.
Role Playing The word role is borrowed from the theater and, as in the theater, refers to actions expected of those who occupy a particular social position. When enacting new social roles, we may at first feel phony. But our unease seldom lasts.
Think of a time when you stepped into some new role—perhaps your first days on a job or at college. That first week on campus, for example, you may have been supersensitive to your new social situation and tried valiantly to act mature and to suppress your high school behavior. At such times you may have felt self-conscious. You observed your new speech and actions because they weren’t natural to you. Then one day something amazing happened: Your pseudo-intellectual talk no lon- ger felt forced. The role began to fit as comfortably as your old jeans and T-shirt.
In one study, college men volunteered to spend time in a simulated prison con- structed in Stanford’s psychology department by Philip Zimbardo (1971; Haney & Zimbardo, 1998, 2009). Zimbardo wanted to find out: Is prison brutality a product of evil prisoners and malicious guards? Or do the institutional roles of guard and prisoner embitter and harden even compassionate people? Do the people make the place violent? Or does the place make the people violent?
By a flip of a coin, Zimbardo designated some students as guards. He gave them uniforms, billy clubs, and whistles and instructed them to enforce the rules. The oth-
er half, the prisoners, were locked in cells and made to wear hu mil- iat ing hospital-gown-like out fits. After a jovial first day of “playing” their roles, the guards and the pris- oners, and even the experiment- ers, got caught up in the situation. The guards began to disparage the prisoners, and some devised cru- el and degrading routines. The prisoners broke down, rebelled, or became apathetic. There devel- oped, reported Zimbardo (1972), a “growing confusion between reality and illusion, between role- playing and self-identity. . . . This prison which we had created . . . was absorbing us as creatures of its own reality.” Observing the emerg- ing social pathology, Zimbardo was forced to call off the planned two-week simulation after only six days.
The point is not that we are powerless to resist imposed roles. In Zimbardo’s prison simulation,
role A set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to behave.
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewil- dered as to which may be true.”
—NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1850
Guards and prisoners in the Stanford prison simulation quickly absorbed the roles they played.
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in Abu Ghraib Prison (where guards degraded Iraq war prisoners), and in other atrocity-producing situations, some people become sadistic and others do not (Haslam & Reicher, 2007; Mastroianni & Reed, 2006; Zimbardo, 2007). In water, salt dissolves and sand does not. So also, notes John Johnson (2007), when placed in a rotten barrel, some people become bad apples and others do not. Behavior is a product of both the individual per- son and the situation, and the prison study appears to have attracted volun- teers who were prone to aggressiveness (McFarland & Carnahan, 2009).
The deeper lesson of the role- playing studies is not that we are powerless machines. Rather, it concerns how what is unreal (an artificial role) can subtly evolve into what is real. In a new career, as teacher, soldier, or businessperson, we enact a role that shapes our attitudes.
Imagine playing the role of slave— not just for six days but for decades. If a few days altered the behavior of those in Zimbardo’s “prison,” then imagine the corrosive effects of decades of sub- servient behavior. The master may be even more profoundly affected, because the master’s role is chosen. Frederick Douglass, a former slave, recalls his new owner’s transformation as she absorbed her role:
My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. . . . I was utterly astonished at her goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. . . . The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music. But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon. (Douglass, 1845, pp. 57–58)
Saying Becomes Believing People often adapt what they say to please their listeners. They are quicker to tell people good news than bad, and they adjust their message toward their listener’s position (Manis & others, 1974; Tesser & others, 1972; Tetlock, 1983). When induced to give spoken or written support to something they doubt, people will often feel bad about their deceit. Nevertheless, they begin to believe what they are saying— - provided they weren’t bribed or coerced into doing so. When there is no compelling external explanation for one’s words, saying becomes believing (Klaas, 1978).
Tory Higgins and his colleagues (Higgins & McCann, 1984; Higgins & Rholes, 1978) illustrated how saying becomes believing. They had university students read a personality description of someone and then summarize it for someone else, who was believed either to like or to dislike that person. The students wrote a more posi- tive description when the recipient liked the person. Having said positive things,
After the Abu Ghraib degradation of Iraqi prisoners, Philip Zimbardo (2004a, 2004b) noted “direct and sad parallels between similar behavior of the ‘guards’ in the Stanford Prison Experiment.” Such behavior, he contends, is attributable to a toxic situation that can make good people into perpetrators of evil. “It’s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches.”
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University of Oregon psychologist Ray Hyman (1981) described how acting the role of a palm reader convinced him that palmistry worked.
I started reading palms when I was in my teens as a way to supplement my income from doing magic and mental shows. When I started I did not believe in palmistry. But I knew that to “sell” it I had to act as if I did. After a few years I became a firm believer in palmistry. One day the late Stanley Jaks, who
was a professional mentalist and a man I respected, tactfully suggested that it would make an inter- esting experiment if I deliberately gave readings opposite to what the lines indicated. I tried this out with a few clients. To my surprise and horror my readings were just as successful as ever. Ever since then I have been interested in the powerful forces that convince us, [palm] reader and client alike, that something is so when it really isn’t. (p. 86)
Saying Becomes Believing focus
ON
they also then liked the person more themselves. Asked to recall what they had read, they remembered the description as more positive than it was. In short, people tend to adjust their messages to their listeners, and, having done so, to believe the altered message.
The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon Most of us can recall times when, after agreeing to help out with a project or an organization, we ended up more involved than we ever intended, vowing that in the future we would say no to such requests. How does this happen? In keeping with the “attitude follows behavior” principle, experiments suggest that if you want people to do a big favor for you, an effective strategy is to get them to do a small favor first. In the best-known demon- stration of this foot-in-the-door phenomenon, research- ers posing as drive-safely volunteers asked Californians to permit the installation of huge, poorly lettered “Drive Carefully” signs in their front yards. Only 17 percent consented. Others were first approached with a small
request: Would they display three-inch “Be a safe driver” window signs? Nearly all readily agreed. When approached two weeks later to allow the large, ugly signs in their front yards, 76 percent consented (Freedman & Fraser, 1966). One project helper who went from house to house later recalled that, not know- ing who had been previously visited, “I was simply stunned at how easy it was to convince some people and how impossible to convince others” (Ornstein, 1991).
Other researchers have confirmed the foot-in-the-door phenomenon with altru- istic behaviors.
• Patricia Pliner and her collaborators (1974) found 46 percent of Toronto suburbanites willing to give to the Canadian Cancer Society when approached directly. Others, asked a day ahead to wear a lapel pin publiciz- ing the drive (which all agreed to do), were nearly twice as likely to donate.
• Angela Lipsitz and others (1989) report that ending blood-drive reminder calls with, “We’ll count on seeing you then, OK? [pause for response],” increased the show-up rate from 62 to 81 percent.
foot-in-the-door phenomenon The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.
Impression management: In expressing our thoughts to others, we sometimes tailor our words to what we think the others will want to hear. © The New Yorker Collection, 1984, Joseph Farris, from cartoonbank.com . All Rights Reserved.
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• In Internet chat rooms, Paul Markey and his colleagues (2002) requested help (“I can’t get my e-mail to work. Is there any way I can get you to send me an e-mail?”). Help increased—from 2 to 16 percent—by including a smaller prior request (“I am new to this whole computer thing. Is there any way you can tell me how to look at someone’s profile?”).
• Nicolas Guéguen and Céline Jacob (2001) tripled the rate of French Internet users contributing to child land-mine victims organizations (from 1.6 to 4.9 percent) by first inviting them to sign a petition against land mines.
Note that in these experiments, as in many of the 100 ! other foot-in-the-door experiments, the initial compliance—wearing a lapel pin, stating one’s intention, signing a petition—was voluntary (Burger & Guadagno, 2003). We will see again and again that when people commit themselves to public behaviors and perceive those acts to be their own doing, they come to believe more strongly in what they have done.
Social psychologist Robert Cialdini [chal-DEE-nee] is a self-described “patsy.” “For as long as I can recall, I’ve been an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers, fund-raisers, and operators of one sort or another.” To better understand why one person says yes to another, he spent three years as a trainee in various sales, fund- raising, and advertising organizations, discovering how they exploit “the weapons of influence.” He also put those weapons to the test in simple experiments. In one, Cialdini and his collaborators (1978) explored a variation of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon by experimenting with the low-ball technique, a tactic reportedly used by some car dealers. After the customer agrees to buy a new car because of its bargain price and begins completing the sales forms, the salesperson removes the price advantage by charging for options or by checking with a boss who disallows the deal because “we’d be losing money.” Folklore has it that more low-balled cus- tomers now stick with the higher-priced purchase than would have agreed to it at the outset. Airlines and hotels use the tactic by attracting inquiries with great deals available on only a few seats or rooms, then hoping the customer will agree to a higher-priced option.
Cialdini and his collaborators found that this technique indeed works. When they invited introductory psychology students to participate in an experiment at 7:00 A.M., only 24 percent showed up. But if the students first agreed to participate without knowing the time and only then were asked to participate at 7:00 A.M., 53 percent came.
Marketing researchers and salespeople have found that the principle works even when we are aware of a profit motive (Cialdini, 1988). A harmless initial
“You will easily find folk to do favors if you cultivate those who have done them.”
—PUBLILIUS SYRUS, 42 B.C.
low-ball technique A tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante. People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply with it.
The foot-in-the-door phenomenon. BLONDIE © King Features Syndicate.
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commitment—returning a postcard for more information and a “free gift,” agree- ing to listen to an investment possibility—often moves us toward a larger com- mitment. Because salespeople sometimes exploited the power of those small commitments by trying to bind people to purchase agreements, many states now have laws that allow customers a few days to think over their purchases and cancel. To counter the effect of these laws, many companies use what the sales-training program of one company calls “a very important psychologi- cal aid in preventing customers from backing out of their contracts” (Cialdini, 1988, p. 78). They simply have the customer, rather than the salesperson, fill out the agreement. Having written it themselves, people usually live up to their commitment.
The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is a lesson worth remembering. Someone try- ing to seduce us—financially, politically, or sexually—will often use this technique to create a momentum of compliance. The practical lesson: Before agreeing to a small request, think about what may follow.
Evil and Moral Acts The attitudes-follow-behavior principle works with immoral acts as well. Evil sometimes results from gradually escalating commitments. A trifling evil act can
whittle down one’s moral sensitivity, making it easier to perform a worse act. To paraphrase La Rochefoucauld’s Max- ims (1665), it is not as difficult to find a person who has never succumbed to a given temptation as to find a person who has succumbed only once. After telling a “white lie” and thinking, “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” the person may go on to tell a bigger lie.
Another way in which evil acts influ- ence attitudes is the paradoxical fact that we tend not only to hurt those we dislike but also to dislike those we hurt. Several studies (Berscheid & others, 1968; Davis & Jones, 1960; Glass, 1964) found that harming an innocent victim—by uttering hurtful comments or delivering electric
The low-ball technique. The Born Loser © Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Cruel acts, such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, tend to breed even crueler and more hate-filled attitudes.
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shocks—typically leads aggressors to disparage their victims, thus helping them jus- tify their cruel behavior. This is especially so when we are coaxed into it, not coerced. When we agree to a deed voluntarily, we take more responsibility for it.
The phenomenon appears in wartime. Prisoner-of-war camp guards would sometimes display good manners to captives in their first days on the job, but not for long. Soldiers ordered to kill may initially react with revulsion to the point of sickness over their act. But not for long (Waller, 2002). Often they will denigrate their enemies with dehumanizing nicknames.
Attitudes also follow behavior in peacetime. A group that holds another in slavery will likely come to perceive the slaves as having traits that justify their oppression. Prison staff who participate in executions experience “moral disen- gagement” by coming to believe (more strongly than do other prison staff) that their victims deserve their fate (Osofsky & others, 2005). Actions and attitudes feed each other, sometimes to the point of moral numbness. The more one harms another and adjusts one’s attitudes, the easier harm-doing becomes. Conscience is corroded.
To simulate the “killing begets killing” process, Andy Martens and his col- laborators (2007) asked University of Arizona students to kill some bugs. They wondered: Would killing initial bugs in a “practice” trial increase students’ will- ingness to kill more bugs later? To find out, they asked some students to look at one small bug in a container, then to dump it into the coffee grinding machine shown in Figure 4.5 , and then to press the “on” button for 3 seconds. (No bugs were actually killed. An unseen stopper at the base of the insert tube prevented the bug from actually entering the opaque killing machine, which had torn bits of paper to simulate the sound of a killing.) Others, who initially killed five bugs (or so they thought), went on to “kill” significantly more bugs during an ensuing 20-second period.
Harmful acts shape the self, but so, thankfully, do moral acts. Our charac- ter is reflected in what we do when we think no one is looking. Researchers have tested character by giving children temptations when it seems no one is watching. Consider what happens when children resist the temptation. In a dramatic experiment, Jonathan Freedman (1965) introduced elementary school children to an enticing battery-controlled robot, instructing them not to play with it while he was out of the room. Freedman used a severe threat with half the children and a mild threat with the others. Both were sufficient to deter the children.
Several weeks later a different re - searcher, with no apparent relation to the earlier events, left each child to play in the same room with the same toys. Of the children who had been given the severe threat, three-fourths now freely played with the robot; but two-thirds of those who had been given the mild deterrent still resisted playing with it. Apparently, the deter- rent was strong enough to elicit the desired behavior yet mild enough to leave them with a sense of choice. Hav- ing earlier chosen consciously not to play with the toy, the mildly deterred children apparently internalized their de cisions. Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced, affects mor al thinking.
“Our self-definitions are not constructed in our heads; they are forged by our deeds.”
—ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN, CREATIVE DISLOCATION: THE MOVEMENT OF GRACE, 1980
FIGURE :: 4.5 Killing Begets Killing. Students who initially perceived themselves as killing several bugs, by dropping them in this apparent killing machine, later killed an increased number of bugs during a self-paced killing period. (In reality, no bugs were harmed.)
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Moreover, positive behavior fosters liking for the person. Doing a favor for an experimenter or another participant, or tutoring a student, usually increases liking of the person helped (Blanchard & Cook, 1976). It is a lesson worth remembering: If you wish to love someone more, act as if you do.
In 1793 Benjamin Franklin tested the idea that doing a favor engenders liking. As clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, he was disturbed by opposition from another important legislator. So Franklin set out to win him over:
I did not . . . aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him but, after some time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book I wrote a note to him expressing my desire of perusing that book and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately and I return’d it in about a week, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. (quoted by Rosenzweig, 1972, p. 769)
Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes If moral action feeds moral attitudes, will positive interracial behavior reduce racial prejudice—much as mandatory seat belt use has produced more favorable seat belt attitudes? That was part of social scientists’ testimony before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to desegregate schools. Their argument ran like this: If we wait for the heart to change—through preaching and teaching—we will wait a long time for racial justice. But if we legislate moral action, we can, under the right con- ditions, indirectly affect heartfelt attitudes.
That idea runs counter to the presumption that “you can’t legislate morality.” Yet attitude change has, as some social psychologists predicted, followed desegre- gation. Consider:
• Following the Supreme Court decision, the percentage of White Americans favoring integrated schools jumped and now includes nearly everyone. (For other examples of old and current racial attitudes, see Chapter 9.)
• In the 10 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the percentage of White Americans who described their neighborhoods, friends, co-workers, or other students as all-White declined by about 20 percent for each of those mea- sures. Interracial behavior was increasing. During the same period, the per- centage of White Americans who said that Blacks should be allowed to live in any neighborhood increased from 65 percent to 87 percent ( ISR Newsletter, 1975). Attitudes were changing, too.
• More uniform national standards against discrimination were followed by decreasing differences in racial attitudes among people of differing religions, classes, and geographic regions. As Americans came to act more alike, they came to think more alike (Greeley & Sheatsley, 1971; Taylor & others, 1978).
Social Movements We have now seen that a society’s laws and, therefore, its behavior can have a strong influence on its racial attitudes. A danger lies in the possibility of employ- ing the same idea for political socialization on a mass scale. For many Germans
“We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them.”
—LEO TOLSTOY, WAR AND PEACE, 1867–1869
“We become just by the practice of just actions, self- controlled by exercising self- control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.”
—ARISTOTLE
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during the 1930s, participation in Nazi rallies, displaying the Nazi flag, and especially the public greeting “Heil Hitler” established a profound incon- sistency between behavior and belief. Historian Richard Grunberger (1971) reports that for those who had their doubts about Hitler, “the ‘German greeting’ was a powerful conditioning device. Having once decided to intone it as an outward token of conformity, many experienced . . . discomfort at the contradiction between their words and their feelings. Prevented from say- ing what they believed, they tried to establish their psychic equilibrium by consciously making themselves be lieve what they said” (p. 27).
The practice is not limited to totalitar- ian regimes. Political rituals—the daily flag salute by schoolchildren, singing the national anthem—use public con- formity to build a private belief in patri- otism. I recall participating in air-raid drills in my elementary school not far from the Boeing Company in Seattle. After we acted repeatedly as if we were the targets of Russian attack, many of us came to fear the Russians.
Many people assume that the most potent social indoctrination comes through brainwashing, a term coined to describe what happened to American pris- oners of war (POWs) during the 1950s Korean War. Although the “thought- control” program was not as irresistible as this term suggests, the results still were discon- certing. Hundreds of prisoners cooperated with their captors. Twenty-one chose to remain after being granted permission to return to America. And many of those who did return came home believing “although communism won’t work in America, I think it’s a good thing for Asia” (Segal, 1954).
Edgar Schein (1956) interviewed many of the POWs during their journey home and reported that the captors’ methods included a gradual escalation of demands. The captors always started with trivial requests and gradually worked up to more significant ones. “Thus after a prisoner had once been ‘trained’ to speak or write out trivia, statements on more important issues were demanded.” Moreover, they always expected active participation, be it just copying some- thing or participating in group discussions, writing self-criticism, or uttering public confessions. Once a prisoner had spoken or written a statement, he felt an inner need to make his beliefs consistent with his acts. That often drove pris- oners to persuade themselves of what they had done wrong. The “start- small- and-build” tactic was an effective application of the foot-in-the-door technique, and it continues to be so today in the socialization of terrorists and torturers (Chapter 6).
Now let me ask you, before reading further, to play theorist. Ask yourself: Why in these studies and real-life examples did attitudes follow behavior? Why might playing a role or making a speech influence your attitude?
“You can use small com- mitments to manipulate a person’s self-image; you can use them to turn citizens into ‘public servants,’ prospects into ‘customers,’ prisoners into ‘collaborators.’”
—ROBERT CIALDINI, INFLUENCE, 1988
Our political rituals—the daily flag salute by schoolchildren, singing the national anthem—use public conformity to build private allegiance.
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Summing Up: When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? • The attitude-action relation also works in the reverse
direction: We are likely not only to think ourselves into action but also to act ourselves into a way of thinking. When we act, we amplify the idea under- lying what we have done, especially when we feel responsible for it. Many streams of evidence con- verge on this principle. The actions prescribed by social roles mold the attitudes of the role players.
• Similarly, what we say or write can strongly influ- ence attitudes that we subsequently hold.
• Research on the foot-in-the-door phenomenon reveals that committing a small act makes people more willing to do a larger one later.
• Actions also affect our moral attitudes: That which we have done, even if it is evil, we tend to justify as right.
• Similarly, our racial and political behaviors help shape our social consciousness: We not only stand up for what we believe, we also believe in what we have stood up for.
• Political and social movements may legislate behavior designed to lead to attitude change on a mass scale.
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? What theories help explain the attitudes-follow-behavior phenomenon? How does the contest between these competing theories illustrate the process of scientific explanation?
We have seen that several streams of evidence merge to form a river: the effect of actions on attitudes. Do these observations contain any clues to why action affects attitude? Social psychology’s detectives suspect three possible sources. Self- presentation theory assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us appear consistent. Cognitive dissonance theory assumes that to reduce discomfort, we justify our actions to ourselves. Self-perception theory assumes that our actions are self-revealing (when uncertain about our feelings or beliefs, we look to our
behavior, much as anyone else would). Let’s examine each explanation.
Self-Presentation: Impression Management The first explanation for why actions affect attitudes began as a simple idea that you may recall from Chapter 2. Who among us does not care what people think? We spend countless dollars on clothes, diets, cosmetics, and now plastic surgery—all because of our fretting over what others think. We see making a good impres- sion as a way to gain social and material rewards, to feel better about ourselves, even to become more secure in our social identities (Leary, 1994, 2001, 2004b, 2007).
No one wants to look foolishly incon- sistent. To avoid seeming so, we express © The New Yorker Collection, 2009, Jack Ziegler, from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
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attitudes that match our actions. To appear consistent, we may pretend those atti- tudes. Even if that means displaying a little insincerity or hypocrisy, it can pay off in managing the impression we are making. Or so self-presentation theory suggests.
Does our feigning consistency explain why expressed attitudes shift toward consistency with behavior? To some extent, yes—people exhibit a much smaller attitude change when a fake lie detector inhibits them from trying to make a good impression (Paulhus, 1982; Tedeschi & others, 1987).
But there is more to attitudes than self-presentation, for people express their changed attitudes even to someone who has no knowledge of their earlier behav- ior. Two other theories explain why people sometimes internalize their self- presentations as genuine attitude changes.
Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance One theory is that our attitudes change because we are motivated to maintain con- sistency among our cognitions. That is the implication of Leon Festinger’s (1957) famous cognitive dissonance theory. The theory is simple, but its range of applica- tion is enormous, making “cognitive dissonance” part of the vocabulary of today’s educated people. It assumes that we feel tension, or a lack of harmony (“disso- nance”), when two simultaneously accessible thoughts or beliefs (“cognitions”) are psychologically inconsistent. Festinger argued that to reduce this unpleasant arousal, we often adjust our thinking. This simple idea, and some surprising pre- dictions derived from it, have spawned more than 2,000 studies (Cooper, 1999).
Dissonance theory pertains mostly to discrepancies between behavior and atti- tudes. We are aware of both. Thus, if we sense some inconsistency, perhaps some hypocrisy, we feel pressure for change. That helps explain why British and U.S. cig- arette smokers have been much less likely than nonsmokers to believe that smoking is dangerous (Eiser & others, 1979; Saad, 2002).
After the 2003 Iraq War, noted the director of the Program of International Pol- icy Attitudes, some Americans struggled to reduce their “experience of cognitive dissonance” (Kull, 2003). The war’s main premise had been that Saddam Hussein, unlike most other brutal dictators whom the world was tolerating, had weapons of mass destruction that threatened U.S. and British security. As the war began, only 38 percent of Americans said the war was justified even if Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction (Gallup, 2003). Nearly four in five Americans believed their invading troops would find such, and a similar percentage supported the just- launched
