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Why Food-fights happen.
Thursday, November 22, 2012 5:51
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| Robert Trivers. Deceit and Self-deception: Fooling-Yourself The Better to Fool Others |
Steve Novella offers a keen insight into food-fights and other disagreements that are based on radically different starting viewpoints of the opposing protagonists:
There is a tendency, however, to make self-serving assumptions about people with whom you disagree – their motivations or their reasoning. This is partly due to what psychologists call the “fundamental attribution error,” which is the tendency to interpret the actions of others on internal factors while we generously interpret our own actions based upon external factors. So one’s own opinions are fact-driven, while the opinions of others are driven by their dubious motivations and numerous intellectual failings.
This psychological insight about the “fundamental attribution error” leads down interesting paths:
Temporal view of the costs and benefits of self-deception
Zoë Chance, Michael I. Norton, Francesca Gino, and Dan Ariely
Abstract
Researchers have documented many cases in which individuals rationalize their regrettable actions. Four experiments examine situations in which people go beyond merely explaining away their misconduct to actively deceiving themselves. We find that those who exploit opportunities to cheat on tests are likely to engage in self-deception, inferring that their elevated performance is a sign of intelligence. This short-term psychological benefit of self-deception, however, can come with longer-term costs: when predicting future performance, participants expect to perform equally well—a lack of awareness that persists even when these inflated expectations prove costly. We show that although people expect to cheat, they do not foresee self-deception, and that factors that reinforce the benefits of cheating enhance self-deception. More broadly, the findings of these experiments offer evidence that debates about the relative costs and benefits of self-deception are informed by adopting a temporal view that assesses the cumulative impact of self-deception over time.
hindsight bias lying motivated reasoning self-enhancement
The Fundamental Attribution Error in Detecting Deception: The Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf Effect
Maureen O’Sullivan
University of San Francisco, [email protected]
Abstract
Most people are unable to detect accurately when others are lying. Many explanations for this inability have been suggested but the cognitive heuristics involved in lie detection have received little attention. The present study offers evidence from two experiments, based on two different groups of observers, judging two different kinds of lies, presented in two different testing situations, that the fundamental attribution error significantly undermines the ability to detect honesty and deception accurately. Trait judgments of trustworthiness were highly correlated with state judgments of truthfulness, leading, as predicted, to positive correlations with honest detection accuracy and negative correlations with deception detection accuracy. More accurate lie detectors were significantly more likely than less accurate lie detectors to separate state and trait judgments of honesty. The effect of other biases, such as the halo effect and the truthfulness bias, also are examined. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Paul W Andrews
Theory of mind is the field devoted to understanding how organisms discern the mental states of others. Because mental states are not directly observable, they can only be inferred from observable features of the actor (such as behavior) and the situational context that the actor is in. Social psychologists, who study theory of mind processes under the rubric of attribution research, have shown that people often make a logical error of inference: The “fundamental attribution error” (FAE) is the tendency to assume that an actor’s behavior and mental state correspond to a degree that is logically unwarranted by the situation. The social environment in which theory of mind capacities evolved may have influenced attributional processing in ways that could explain the error. In particular, the error could be caused by a psyche that is designed (1) to consider only those noncorresponding mental states (such as deception) that could have fitness consequences to the mind reader; (2) to bias inferences in a way that reduces the costs of erroneous inferences; or (3) to bias inferences in a way that yields reputational benefits. The existing literature is reviewed in light of these hypotheses.
2012-11-22 05:41:49
Source: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2012/11/why-food-fights-happen.html
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