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62
The case for motivated reasoning
- Psychological Bulletin
, 1990
"... It is proposed that motivation may affect reasoning through reliance on a biased set of cognitive processes—that is, strategies for accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs. The motivation to be accurate enhances use of those beliefs and strategies that are considered most appropriate, wherea ..."
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Cited by 687 (3 self)
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It is proposed that motivation may affect reasoning through reliance on a biased set of cognitive processes—that is, strategies for accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs. The motivation to be accurate enhances use of those beliefs and strategies that are considered most appropriate, whereas the motivation to arrive at particular conclusions enhances use of those that are considered most likely to yield the desired conclusion. There is considerable evidence that people are more likely to arrive at conclusions that they want to arrive at, but their ability to do so is constrained by their ability to construct seemingly reasonable justifications for these conclusions. These ideas can account for a wide variety of research concerned with motivated reasoning. The notion that goals or motives affect reasoning has a long and controversial history in social psychology. The propositions that motives may affect perceptions (Erdelyi, 1974), attitudes (Festinger, 1957), and attributions (Heider, 1958) have been put forth by some psychologists and challenged by others. Al-though early researchers and theorists took it for granted that motivation may cause people to make self-serving attributions
Ego depletion: is the active self a limited resource
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 1998
"... Choice, active response, self-regulation, and other volition may all draw on a common inner resource. In Experiment 1, people who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates subsequently quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than people who had not had to exert self-control over eat ..."
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Cited by 379 (13 self)
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Choice, active response, self-regulation, and other volition may all draw on a common inner resource. In Experiment 1, people who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates subsequently quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than people who had not had to exert self-control over eating. In Experiment 2, making a meaningful personal choice to perform attitude-relevant behavior caused a similar decrement in persistence. In Experiment 3, suppressing emotion led to a subsequent drop in performance of solvable anagrams. In Experiment 4, an initial task requiring high self-regulation made people more passive (i.e., more prone to favor the passive-response option). These results suggest that the self's capacity for active volition is limited and that a range of seemingly different, unrelated acts share a common resource. Many crucial functions of the self involve volition: making choices and decisions, taking responsibility, initiating and inhibiting behavior, and making plans of action and carrying out those plans. The self exerts control over itself and over the external world. To be sure, not all human behavior involves planful or deliberate control by the self, and, in fact, recent work
Accounting for the effects of accountability
- Psychological Bulletin
, 1999
"... This article reviews the now extensive research literature addressing the impact of accountability on a wide range of social judgments and choices. It focuses on 4 issues: (a) What impact do various accountability ground rules have on thoughts, feelings, and action? (b) Under what conditions will ac ..."
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Cited by 223 (5 self)
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This article reviews the now extensive research literature addressing the impact of accountability on a wide range of social judgments and choices. It focuses on 4 issues: (a) What impact do various accountability ground rules have on thoughts, feelings, and action? (b) Under what conditions will accountability attenuate, have no effect on, or amplify cognitive biases? (c) Does accountability alter how people think or merely what people say they think? and (d) What goals do accountable decision makers seek to achieve? In addition, this review explores the broader implications of accountability research. It highlights the utility of treating thought as a process of internalized dialogue; the importance of documenting social and institutional boundary conditions on putative cognitive biases; and the potential to craft empirical answers to such applied problems as how to structure accountability relationships in organizations. Accountability is a modern buzzword. In education (Fairchild &
Social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability: conformity, complexity, and bolstering
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 1989
"... This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people k ..."
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Cited by 104 (3 self)
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This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will rely on the low-effort acceptability heuristic and simply shift their views toward those of the prospective audi-ence, (b) when people do not know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commit-ments, they will be motivated to think in relatively flexible, multidimensional ways (preemptive self-criticism), and (c) when people are accountable for positions to which they feel committed, they will devote the majority of their mental effort to justifying those positions (defensive bolstering). The experiment yielded results supportive of these 3 predictions. The study also revealed some evidence of individual differences in social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability. Many writers have criticized cognitive social psychology for its apparent indifference to the interpersonal and institutional settings within which people make judgments and choices (e.g., Gergen, 1982; Sampson, 1981). Although these critiques make
Social-functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: The intuitive politician, theologian, and prosecutor
- Psychological Review
, 2002
"... Research on judgment and choice has been dominated by functionalist assumptions that depict people as either intuitive scientists animated by epistemic goals or intuitive economists animated by utilitarian ones. This article identifies 3 alternative social functionalist starting points for inquiry: ..."
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Cited by 64 (2 self)
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Research on judgment and choice has been dominated by functionalist assumptions that depict people as either intuitive scientists animated by epistemic goals or intuitive economists animated by utilitarian ones. This article identifies 3 alternative social functionalist starting points for inquiry: people as pragmatic politicians trying to cope with accountability demands from key constituencies in their lives, principled theologians trying to protect sacred values from secular encroachments, and prudent prosecutors trying to enforce social norms. Each functionalist framework stimulates middle-range theories that specify (a) cognitive–affective–behavioral strategies of coping with adaptive challenges and (b) the implications of these coping strategies for identifying empirical and normative boundary conditions on judgmental tendencies classified as errors or biases within the dominant research programs. Once an esoteric specialty of a small cadre of cognitive psychologists, experimental research on judgment and choice has—to judge just by citation counts—become psychology’s leading intellectual export to the social sciences as well as to a host of applied fields. The influence of this research program has spread (critics might say “metastasized”) into such diverse domains as
Effect of Temporal Perspective on Subjective Confidence
"... Four studies examined whether people tend to lose confidence in their prospects for success the closer they are to the "moment of truth. " Study 1 found that students think they will do better on their midterm exams when asked on the 1st day of class than when asked on the day of the exam. ..."
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Cited by 48 (3 self)
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Four studies examined whether people tend to lose confidence in their prospects for success the closer they are to the "moment of truth. " Study 1 found that students think they will do better on their midterm exams when asked on the 1st day of class than when asked on the day of the exam. Studies 2 and 4 replicated this finding under controlled conditions. Study 3 demonstrated that the same effect holds retrospectively: People are more confident that they would have performed well at a task long after the time to perform has passed. Data are presented indicating that these results stem from a tendency for people to feel more "accountable " for their assessments, and thus focus less on the causes of success and more on the causes of failure, as the time to perform approaches. Implications for the experience of regret are discussed. As those who spend time in academic environments know too well, many students routinely excel on exams and yet, just before taking a test, are convinced they will do poorly. Similarly, the sports world is full of boastful fans who generally view their teams as infallible and yet, as play begins, are filled with worries about how their heroes might lose. Furthermore, there
Human resources management: Some new directions
- Journal of Management
, 1999
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THE IMPACT OF “NO OPINION” RESPONSE OPTIONS ON DATA QUALITY NON-ATTITUDE REDUCTION OR AN INVITATION TO SATISFICE?
"... Abstract According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinion option should reduce the pressure to give substantive responses felt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast, the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinion options may discourage some respondent ..."
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Cited by 35 (5 self)
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Abstract According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinion option should reduce the pressure to give substantive responses felt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast, the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinion options may discourage some respondents from doing the cognitive work necessary to report the true opinions they do have. We address these arguments using data from nine experiments carried out in three household surveys. Attraction to no-opinion options was found to be greatest among respondents lowest in cognitive skills (as measured by educational attainment), among respondents answering secretly instead of orally, for questions asked later in a survey, and among respondents who devoted little effort to the reporting process. The quality of attitude reports obtained (as measured by over-time consistency and responsiveness to a question manipulation) was not compromised by the omission of noopinion options. These results suggest that inclusion of no-opinion options in attitude measures may not enhance data quality and instead may preclude measurement of some meaningful opinions. jon a. krosnick is professor of psychology and political science at Ohio State University and
Counterfactuals as behavioral primes: priming the simulation heuristic and consideration of alternatives
- Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
, 2000
"... We demonstrate that counterfactuals prime a mental simulation mind-set in which relevant but potentially converse alternatives are considered and that this mind-set activation has behavioral consequences. This mind-set is closely related to the simulation heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). Pa ..."
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Cited by 26 (5 self)
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We demonstrate that counterfactuals prime a mental simulation mind-set in which relevant but potentially converse alternatives are considered and that this mind-set activation has behavioral consequences. This mind-set is closely related to the simulation heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). Participants primed with a counterfactual were more likely to solve the Duncker candle problem (Experiment 1), suggesting that they noticed an alternative function for one of the objects, an awareness that is critical to solving the problem. Participants primed with a counterfactual were more likely to simultaneously affirm the consequent and select the potentially falsifying card, but without selecting the irrelevant card, in the Wason card selection task, suggesting that they were testing both the stated conditional and its reverse (Experiment 2). The increased affirmations of the consequent decreased correct solutions on the task—thus, the primed mind-set can bias or debias thought and action. Finally, Experiment 3 provides further evidence that counterfactual primes increase the accessibility of relevant alternatives. Counterfactual primes attenuated the confirmation bias in a trait hypothesis testing context by increasing the selection of questions designed to elicit hypothesis-disconfirming answers, but without increasing the selection of neutral questions. The nature of priming effects and the role of counterfactual thinking in biasing and debiasing thought and action are
Trying hard or hardly trying: An analysis of context effects in choice
- Journal of Consumer Psychology
, 2000
"... Several studies have shown that consumer choice is often influenced by the context or the set of alternatives under consideration. Context effects have largely been explained in terms of con-structive preferences that are consistent with 2 theoretical accounts—effort minimization and perceptual cont ..."
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Cited by 24 (0 self)
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Several studies have shown that consumer choice is often influenced by the context or the set of alternatives under consideration. Context effects have largely been explained in terms of con-structive preferences that are consistent with 2 theoretical accounts—effort minimization and perceptual contrast—that emphasize different underlying motivations. We propose that the ef-fect of time pressure on context effects can be used as a moderating variable to determine which of the 2 motives is supported. Specifically, if context effects bias preferences due to effort minimization, time pressure should increase the magnitude of such effects. In contrast, if con-text effects arise due to an excessive focus on the relational characteristics of the alternatives provided, time pressure should reduce the magnitude of such effects. We examine this proposi-tion in relation to the compromise effect and a choice between an extreme and an all-average op-tion. We find that the compromise effect and the preference for an all-average alternative are both reduced under time pressure. A study using Mouselab provides additional support for the underlying decision mechanisms. We discuss the theoretical implications of this research and explore its consequences for marketers. A major focus in the decision-making literature has been on
