normal human misperception: why good advice doesn ’ t always work

Normal Human Misperception:Why Good Advice Doesn’t

Always Work

Bob Mossman, Ed.S., NCSPrmossman@bloomfield.org

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When people find it easy to imagine an event they overestimate the likelihood it will occur. People spend 12% of time thinking about the future, one out of every 8 hours. (Singer, 1997).

Why do we imagine and predict this way?

So we feel a sense of control!

Feelings of being in control are essential to feeling OK. Feeling out of control is essential for anxiety, depression, etc.

At IEPs we are in control of the information, and parents are more likely the one’s fearing a lack of control.

Misremembering

This happens more often than we believe. One of the most powerful personal beliefs are our own experiences and a memory is a personal experience, like our first day of kindergarten.

But memories are influenced in ways we are only beginning to document.

Read these words to yourself.

• bed• rest• awake• tired• dream• wake• snooze

• blanket• doze• slumber• snore• nap• peace• yawn• drowsy

Speaking from the Gut.

We automatically predict based on little information. This is also called jumping to conclusions. Our brains do this so often and so fast, we hardly realize it’s happening.

Our predictions are highly influenced by our momentary feelings. These feelings steer our thinking. When talking to parents and teachers, we can be picturing a “learning disability” in entirely different ways than they are picturing it.

There is a natural tendency to ignore absences of information even though this information influences everyone’s cause/effect predictions and conclusions. Absence of information means the same as asking the question “What’s missing here?”

Trigrams: Deduction Game

SXYGTR BCG EVX

Average # of trials to learn = 34 sets

What’s More Important?Candy or Answers

Geography questions: What are the capitals ofIran

Australia Argentina

PeruFinland

Do people really know why

they do what they do?

The research suggests that they don’t.

Economics & Psychology

Standard Economics: People make rational decisions.

Behavioral Economics: People are highly influenced by non-rational factors.

Try This:

Take the last 3 numbers of your phone number.

Add 400.

In what year did Attila the Hun cross the Rhine river to attack what is now France?

Choose One

Cost for a new LCD TV

36 inch LCD is $690.0042 inch LCD is $850.0050 inch LCD is $1480.00

What do most people choose?

Math Problem

A candy bar and a piece of gum together cost $1.10.

The candy bar cost $1.00 more than the gum.

How much does the gum cost?

Free

Something for free makes us feel that we have nothing to lose. In most transactions there is an upside and a downside. But for free, it feels as though there is no downside.

Stereotypical Threat

Stereotypical threat is a standard predicament of life.

Miniature Golf Studies

White Students: “Natural Athletic Ability”

Black Students: “Sports Strategic intelligence.”

Women, Math andStereotypical Threat

A study about women and math.

Women and men with strong math skills.

Women told, “You may have heard that women don’t do as well as men in standardized math tests.”

A Motivation Study

Task: Drag circles using computer a mouse

1. low pay - 50 cents (total = 101)2. high pay - $5.00 dollars (total = 159)3. social favor - nothing (total = 168)

Task: Drag circles using computer mouse

Experiment in Ethics Kwame Anthony Appiah

3 Studies

1. Help picking up papers if just found a dime

2. Princeton Seminary students reflecting on the Good Samaritan

3. Change for a dollar standing outside fragrant bakery versus neutral-smelling drug store

Correspondence Bias

The tendency to be unaware the role of context in determining behavior and to suppose that what people do is best explained by their character rather than their circumstance.

Example

1. Getting pushed while standing in line

Correspondence Bias

Example

2. Liberals thought of George W. Bush as a liar. George W. Bush describes himself as making tough decisions, standing up for democracy.

Trolleyology

Think of the runaway trolley hurdling down a San Francisco street

What would people do?

Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger)

The engine of self-justification

State of tension occurs when a person holds 2 inconsistent ideas, attitudes, or beliefs.

Example

A two pack per day smokerSelf-justifications:

1. The smoker tries to not think about consequences 2. The smoker quits3. Convince oneself that smoking isn’t harmful4. Prevents weight gain5. Smoking helps individual to relax

Fraternity study

The more emotionally and physically demanding a fraternity’s initiation rituals, the more the new members thought it was worthwhile.

Confirmation Bias

In 1960 the Presidential candidates had the first televised debate. Each side thought their guy won.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

2003 study by The Knowledge Network.

50% of Republicans thought such weapons had been found.

Drew Westen, Ph.D.

MRI scans of Republicans and Democrats listening to Bush or Kerry 2004.

Capital Punishment

Lord, Ross, Lepper, 1979Subjects who either favored or opposed capital punishment were read emotionally charged articles on whether capital punishment deters violent crimes.

One article concludes that capital punishment did deter crime. One article concludes that capital punishment did not deter crime.

Emotions = Plumbing

Catharsis: “Damn It Doll”

The idea that using a punching bag relieves anger by getting the angry out is one of the most entrenched convictions in our society.

Catharsis Study 1966

Freudian oriented Michael Kahn, Harvard clinical psychology graduate student, took polygraph and blood pressure of subjects while acting annoyed and made insulting remakes to the subjects about their mother.

Political Experts

Phillip Tetlock (2005)

“Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?”

Schnooks

How to maintain one’s low self esteem

Consider a success as a fluke

Israeli/Palestinian Study

(2005)

Israeli Proposals renamed Palestinian Proposals

Palestinian Proposals renamed Israeli Proposals

Party Over Policy

Democrats and Republicans2003

Social Psychologist Anthony Greenwald

The self is ruled by a “totalitarian ego” that ruthlessly destroys information it doesn’t want to hear to help us justify our actions

and make us look and feel good about ourselves.

The Wonderful O

Carol Tavris has fond memories of her father reading a book to her as a young girl.

A band of pirates take over an island and forbade the locals to speak any word containing the letter O. She has vivid memories of him reading to her, joking with her about what the O stood for.

But her memory fooled her.

Psychologist Daniel Offer

Long-Term Study

1962: interviewed 73 fourteen-year-old boys about their lives: sexuality, home life, religion, parents, parental discipline and other emotional issues.

1996: Interviewed almost all again.

Conclusion: The adult men’s memorial of the adolescent attitudes was no better than chance.

Bob Mossman, Ed.S., NCSPBloomfield Hills Schools

rmossman@bloomfield.org