Five unusual cognitive biases that stop us thinking clearly.

It seems logical that we should have evolved to perceive the world accurately, think clearly and make sound decisions. However research in Cognitive and Social Psychology has demonstrated that we’re really a very biased bunch.

Take a look at the Wikipedia article “List of cognitive biases”; there are literally hundreds of biases which we all engage in on a nearly daily basis. It’s an interesting topic, so I would like to give an outline of my favourite five most fascinating cognitive biases which we’re are all guilty of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

1.       The Illusion of argument justification.

Have you ever found yourself in an argument where you’re the calm, rational speaker, making clear, logical arguments? Yet your sound logic falls on deaf ears, only to be returned with absolute nonsense from the other side. That might be because of the illusion of argument justification. Perhaps both sides’ arguments were just as rational or irrational as the other. 

People are terribly bad at rating the credibility of their own arguments. “When arguing for their own position, participants inaccurately assessed their ability to present quality arguments” (Fisher & Keil, 2013). So we might feel like we're making a very clever and logical argument, when in fact we are not. In fact, the effect is even stronger when we try to justify a position we feel particularly strongly about. So next time you’re in an argument that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, this is a good reminder to take a step back, and take an objective look at both points of view.

Fisher, M., & Keil, F. C. (2013, March 18). The Illusion of Argument Justification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication.

2.       The Dunning Kruger effect.

If you are an expert at something, such as playing the piano, or knowing a lot about Psychology, you are more likely to rate yourself as lacking competence in that skill. It makes sense to a degree; those who are very good at something are also very good at noticing their own flaws. 

However, those who are completely incompetent at a skill believe they are in fact quite good at it. This is probably because they can’t detect their own mistakes. In 2000, Dunning and Kruger were awarded with the Ig-Nobel prize for their paper which discovered this effect.

http://www.improbable.com/ig/

Dunning, D., Johnson, K., Ehrlinger, J., & Kruger, J. (2003). Why people fail to recognize their own incompetence. Current directions in Psychological science, 12, 3, 83-87.

3.       Self-serving bias.

The self-serving bias is a well-studied phenomenon which we’ve all engaged in at one time or another, knowingly or not. It’s the tendency to take more responsibility for good things that happen to us, but to shirk responsibility for the bad things. It’s caused by our attributional style – the way we explain the causes of everyday ambiguous events.

Different people might attribute a different locus of control depending on their outlook. Imagine two students who both did really well on an exam, but they have different attributional styles. One might say that it was because they studied really hard and deserved their grade, whereas the other might believe that, despite them studying, they were just given easy questions, or had a lot of lucky guesses.

Miller, D. T., & Michael, R. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 2, 213-225.

4.       The Google effect.

This one is likely the result of our ever increasing access to any and all information on demand. It’s the tendency to not bother remembering information if you can just look it up, and it’s one that I’m certainly guilty of. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing though. There’s a quote by Albert Einstein (which I just had to find on Google): “Never memorize something you can look up”.

Sparrow, B., et al. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333, 776-778.

5.       The Just world belief.

The ‘just world’ theory proposes that people are disposed  towards believing that the world is a just and fair place in which to live (Lerner, 1980).  In other words, when we see bad things happen to good people, we rationalise it to maintain a sense of justice.  For example “…people may, at times, derogate an innocent victim’s character to maintain a sense of justice (Lerner & Simmons, 1966)”.

We jump through a series of mental hoops to maintain this belief, such as biasing our recollection of past events (Callan et al 2009), and perceiving the latter lives of victims as better (Anderson, Kay & Fitzsimons, 2010).

A tragic example of where the just world bias went wrong was in the well-known Fort Lauderdale rape trial, in 1989. During the trial for the rape of a 22 year old girl, the defendant was acquitted. The jury argued that "We all feel she asked for it [by] the way she was dressed" because she was wearing “a white lace miniskirt, a green tank top, and no underwear” at the time of the assault.

Anderson, J. E., Kay, A. C., & Fitzsimons, G. M. (2010). In search of the silver lining: The justice motive fosters perceptions of benefits in the later lives of tragedy victims. Psychological Science, 21, 1599-1604.

Callan, M. J., Kay, A. C., Davidenko, N., & Ellard, J. H. (2009). The effects of justice motivation on memory for self- and other-relevant events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 614-623.

Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York, NY: Plenum Press.

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n2/justworld.html

The threat of Neuroscience in the courtroom

How much responsibility can we give ourselves for our actions? The question of free will is a long standing one within philosophy and neuroscience, yet in recent years it has found itself creeping into the word of law as well.

2009 was the first year for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to be used as evidence in court when Brian Dugan pleaded for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) for murder. His defence supplied a scan of his brain which they used to argue that Dugan was not in complete control of his actions as the result of a mental illness – Psychopathy. Dugan was placed in the 99^th percentile on the diagnostic checklist for psychopathy, with the neuroimaging to support this.  This was the first case to involve fMRI as evidence in a courtroom; however there have been concerns and criticisms over the use of ‘neuro-evidence’ in court, and whether it should be used at all.

The first concern arises from the fact that neuroimages, such as those produced by fMRI, may have undue influence over the jury’s decision while making a verdict. For example presenting a brain scan which supposedly shows a person has psychopathic personality disorder may have more influence on the jury than a psychological report which tells them the exact same thing. This could potentially stem from the belief that neuroscience is a ‘harder’ science, and therefore may be given more credibility than it deserves. There is also a large gap in lay peoples understanding of what fMRI actually shows – it shows changes in blood oxygen levels, not direct neural activity as is commonly misconceived.

These concerns are grounded in scientific research as well, for example people gave more credence to scientific summaries which were accompanied by neuroimages than ones which were accompanied by graphs (McCabe & Caste, 2008). Likewise, mock jurors who were presented with anatomical brain images were more likely to reach a verdict of NGRI (Gurly & Markus, 2008), and execution rates of psychopaths were lower when the jury was given neuroimaging evidence (Greene & Cahill, 2011). This is likely due to a false understanding of how imaging works; with the participants putting neuroimaging on a pedestal above other forms of evidence.

Another aspect to the controversy is the use of functional brain imagining as lie detectors. In another mock trial, lie detection using fMRI was much more persuasive to the jury than the use of other, much better established, technologies such as polygraphs (McCabe et al., 2011). This may be down to the participants beliefs that neuroscience is able to ‘see directly inside the brain’ and measure the neural activity going on, which really isn’t the case. There are also those who are pushing for fMRI lie detection to be used as evidence in courts, and there are even now two companies (No Lie MRI Inc and Cephos Corporation) offering the service of lie detection using fMRI. The problem is that within the scientific community, the reliability of fMRI to detect a truth or a lie is still hotly debated, and therefore it most likely isn’t ready for commercialisation yet.

Despite the controversy, it is clear that the neuro-evidence is becoming ever more pervasive within courtrooms. As a result the future will require a better understanding of neuroscience on the part of juror’s and judges. Is neuroscience safe to use in the courtroom? Amongst those attempting to answer that question, the jury is still out.

References

Greene, E. & Cahill, B. (2011). Effects of neuroimaging evidence onmock juror decision making. Behav. Sci. Law 30, 280–296.

Gurley, J. R., & Marcus, D. K. (2008). The effects of neuroimaging and brain injury on insanity defences. Behav. Sci. Law, 26, 85-97.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/11/fmri-evidence-u.html

http://www.cephoscorp.com/

http://www.noliemri.com/

McCabe, D. P., & Castel, A. C (2008). Seeing is believing: the effect of brain images on judgements of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107, 343-352.

McCabe, D.P. et al. (2011). The influence of fMRI lie detection evidence on juror decision making.  Behav. Sci. Law 577, 566–577

Roskies, A. L., Schweitzer, N. J., & Saks, M. J. (2013). Neuroimaging in court: less biasing than feared. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 3, 99-101.

The sinister side of generosity

Let’s play a game! First, I’ll give you an envelope which was left by the previous player. The previous player was given $6 and told to keep as much, or as little as they like, but to leave the rest in the envelope for you. I’ll then give you another $6 – you can take as much as you like, but you must put the rest in another envelope for the following player. Thus the game consists of a long chain of players who first act as a receiver, opening an envelope to find some money, and then as a splitter, sharing money between themselves and the following player.  

How do you think you would play this game? Would you keep all of the money for yourself, knowing that you’ll never meet any of the other players in the game? Or maybe you’d split it fairly evenly, considering the previous player left some money for you? 

That’s what a recent paper in the Journal of experimental psychology (Gray, Ward, & Norton, 2012) has investigated. They wanted to know if the amount of money left in the envelope (which was actually controlled by the experimenter) had any effect on the amount that people would pay forward to the next ‘player’ (again the experimenter). The technical name of the phenomenon they were investigating is generalised reciprocity - the pro-social behaviour of helping others after having been helped by someone else, aka ‘paying it forward’.

The researchers found that when the previous player acted greedily, i.e. the participant’s envelope was left without any money; they also acted greedily towards the following player. However, if their envelope contained $3, a fair and equitable amount, they tended to also pay forward fair and equal amounts ($3.38 on average). The surprising finding occurred when participants received a very generous amount of $6. When the participants believed they were receiving $6 from the previous player, they would not pay forward the same level of generosity; they paid forward no more than those who had received a fair split.

This highlights the sinister side of generosity – greed propagates more than generosity. The amount of generosity passed on in a chain of good behaviours dissipates with each step, whereas greed is paid forward in equal measure at every stage. Therefore, the authors suggest that if you want to create a chain of kind acts like in the story “pay it forward”, people should focus on treating others equally and fairly, rather than giving over the top random acts of kindness.

The authors gave a bit of context to their findings, by providing a real world example of this phenomenon:

 “The person who awakes to gratefully find his long driveway cleared of snow may feel that he has paid forward the generous act by brushing off a bit of snow from a nearby car, but this discount rate is sufficiently high that the perpetuation of goodwill likely ends there. On the other hand, the person who awakes to find his driveway completely blocked from an errant snowplough may pile all that extra snow onto another car, thereby creating a significantly longer chain of ill will.”

However, there is something good to be said of human nature from this study. The game in their experiment was played completely anonymously, yet people still acted fairly, and somewhat generously. This was unexpected considering the current understanding of generalised reciprocity. It was previously believed that people only pay forward kind acts when the recipients are in the same community, are known by the giver, or are genetically related to them, yet this does not seem to be the case.

References

Gray, K., Ward, A. F., & Norton, M. I. (2012). Paying it forward: Generalized reciprocity and the limits of generocity. Journal f experimental Psychology: General, 17, 1-8.  

Rituals Alleviate Grieving for Loved Ones, Lovers, and Lotteries

In 1934 two caves were discovered in the mountains of Palestine which contained the remains of over two dozen ancient human skeletons. Around both sites archaeologists discovered sea shells with holes through them as if they had been strung on a necklace, a series of hearths, animal bones and lumps of red ochre, a type of iron ore which can be used as a dye. The researchers dated the remains between 96,000 and 115,000 years old.

How was this discovery particular relevant to Psychology? The Skhul and Qazfeh caves contained the oldest remains of a ritual burial. Before this humans didn't have the capacity for symbolic thought, and didn't feel the need to bury their dead in a ritualistic manner. The finding tells us about a time when a tremendous leap occurred in the evolution of the human species, when we began to engage in symbolic and ritualistic behaviour. Since then rituals have stayed with us and have been practiced throughout human history. But the question remains: what is the psychological benefit of engaging in these rituals? One recent study hopes to help in providing an answer to this question.

Norton & Gino (2013) had participants taking part in their study in groups of up to fifteen people at a time. The participants were told that they’ll be taking part in a lottery, where one person out of the fifteen will win $200 and be allowed to leave the study early. The rest had to stick around and actually take part in the experiment. One lucky person was chosen at random, given their prize and allowed to leave. The remaining participants were then split into two groups. One group was asked to spend two minutes drawing on a piece of paper about how they felt, while another group was told to engage in a specific and rather arbitrary ritual:

Step 1: Please draw how you currently feel on the piece of paper on your desk for two  minutes.
Step 2: Please sprinkle a pinch of salt on the paper with your drawing.

Step 3: Please tear up the piece of paper.
Step 4: Now please count up to ten in your head five times.

The participants who took part in the ritual later reported higher feelings of control over their situation, as well as lower feelings of grief abut not winning in the lottery. Interestingly, this effect was also found for people who didn't even believe in the effect of rituals.

The authors believed that the mechanism at play was that engaging in rituals gives people a stronger sense of control, which is a psychological need when people find themselves in an upsetting situation over which they have little control.

In a pilot study they asked participants to reflect on times when either a relationship ended or they had lost a loved one. They asked some of their participants to write about the types of rituals they engaged in at the time, and found that people engaged in a wide variety of rituals which helped them cope with the loss:

“I looked for all the pictures we took together during the time we dated. I then destroyed them into small pieces (even the ones I really liked!), and then burnt them in the park where we first kissed.”

“I wrote a letter expressing my feelings and I never mailed it. I destroyed the letter and let me painful feelings go”.

The participants who spent time recalling their personal rituals reported stronger feelings of control at the time of using those rituals.

Negative life events, such as losing a loved one tend to be events with which we have little control. Death of a significant other is rated as one of the most stressful life events we can experience, shortly followed by divorce and marital separation (Holmes & Rahe, 1967).  Apparently taking part in ritualistic behaviour increase a person’s sense of control which helps them cope with their lack of control. So, pouring salt on a piece of paper and ripping it up might not improve your chances of winning  a lottery you've already lost, but it might make you feel a little bit better about it.

References

Shells and ochre in Middle Paleolithic Qafzeh Cave, Israel: indications for modern behavior Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, Bernard Vandermeersch and Ofer Bar-Yosef Journal of Human Evolution Volume 56, Issue 3, March 2009, Pages 307-314.

Holmes TH, Rahe RH (1967). "The Social Readjustment Rating Scale". J Psychosom Res 11 (2): 213–8.

Norton, M. I., & Gino, F. (2013, February 11). Rituals Alleviate Grieving for Loved Ones, Lovers, and Lotteries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Heavy packs lead to lighter snacks (When feeling guilty).

Have you ever worried about something so much that it becomes a burden, and then felt like a weight has been lifted after hearing some good news? In every day speech, we use these types of linguistic metaphors to describe how we feel, by connecting emotional states to physical sensations. Have you ever felt the "heavy burden of guilt" after doing something you shouldn't have? In a recent paper from the Journal of experimental Psychology (Gino & Jami, 2013), researchers have proposed the idea that we actually embody physical sensations like weight when experiencing emotions like guilt.

In Gino and Jami’s paper, they asked some of their volunteers to carry a heavy back pack, and others to carry a light one. They then asked them to recall a time in the past when they've felt guilty about something, and to report how strong their feelings of guilt were. Surprisingly, they found that the participants carrying the heavy backpack self-reported stronger feelings of guilt than those carrying a light backpack.

Arguably self-reports are not a scientifically rigorous method of data collection. So, in follow up experiments, participants were given choices of healthy or non-healthy (supposedly guilt-inducing) snacks. When given a choice, the heavy backpack carriers tended to opt for the healthy option. It was as if the weight of the backpack was affecting how strongly they felt guilty for eating unhealthy snacks.

However carrying around heavy backpacks all day won’t make you eat any healthier – they only found the effect when participants wrote about an event in the past when they'd felt guilty. If they wrote about a neutral event, such as going to buy groceries, the weight of the backpack had no mediating effect on their behaviour.

So what does this mean? It supports an idea known as embodied cognition – which is that the way we process emotional information is closely tied to our senses and actions.

So in the context of this study, the participants recalling a guilty event were primed into the same bodily state that they experienced at the time of the event. Supposedly when they felt guilty, they also felt to some degree the sensation of carrying a weight. So providing them with an actual weight helped to facilitate and increase their feelings of guilt.

Based on their findings, the authors believe that heaviness may be an integral part of the human experience of feeling guilt, and the reasons for this may be due to our emotional development. When we first learn about abstract concepts like guilt, we need to tie it to something more concrete which we've already experienced earlier in our development, such as the physical experience of weight.

References

Kouchaki, M., Gino, F., & Jami, A. (2013, February 11). The Burden of Guilt: Heavy

Backpacks, Light Snacks, and Enhanced Morality. Journal of Experimental Psychology:

General