6- Judgement and Decision Making (Egocentric and Confirmatory Biases)

Hastorf & Cantril (1954) "They Saw a Game"

Dartmouth vs. Princeton, view of game differed by school

Dearborn and Simon (1958) Business Executives

analysis of cases differed by their departments

Motivated Reasoning Physiological Evidence (Westen, 2006)

contradiction for one's party candidate was associated with increased brain activity (emotion, not reasoning, reward)

Examples of egocentric bias

couples housework estimates, game turning points, grad students estimates of undergrad thesis contributions

our explanations have much less

detail, coherence, and depth than we think

Lord, L.Ross, Lepper

factual information that did or did not support capital punishment (evidence supporting one's own position viewed more credibly, support for original position strengthened)

Extension to attitude extremity (Fernbach, 20012)

initial extreme positions (how policy works) but less confidence and more moderate positions after trying to explain how something works

Self-serving bias

more dispositional attributions for positive outcomes and more situational attributions for negative outcomes

Egocentric Bias (M.Ross and Sicoly)

people estimate their own contribution to joint tasks as greater than others would estimate for them

Biased Assimilation

people find evidence that supports their view to be more convincing than evidence that contradicts it

Illusion of explanatory depth

people overestimate their understanding of complex phenomena (Rosenblit and Keil 2002)

Hostile Media effect (Vallone, L. Ross, Leper)

people perceive media is biased against their side of an issue (anything along with their belief trusted, against, journalist had an agenda or was biased)

Bias Blind Spot (Pronin, L. Ross, 2002)

people recognize cognitive and motivational biases in others but fail to see them in themselves

Confirmation Bias

people seek information to support a claim more extensively than information that would refute that claim

Synder and Cantor, 1979

used different information from a candidate's description when evaluating them for sales or library job

Selective perception

what people perceive and remember is influenced by their own position (in group, favoritism)