Wishful Thinking and Source Monitoring
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Rational Wishful Thinking
Rational self-deception Eli Spiegelman a Jan 31, 2018 a CEREN, EA 7477, Burgundy School of Business - Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 29 rue Sambin, Dijon 21000, France. [email protected] Keywords: Wishful thinking; self-deception; beliefs; choice theory; experiment; regret theory; ambiguity JEL D8, D9 Funding This research benefitted from funding from LESSAC, Burgundy School of Business. Abstract This note presents a model of wishful thinking as manipulation of prior beliefs, and a novel experimental test. The theoretical context is a three-period model, in which the agent is faced with a state-contingent optimal action, in which one state yields a higher payoff. In period 0 she observes the objective prior probability that each state will occur, but may alter her beliefs about these probabilities (self-deceive). The beliefs she chooses in period 0 determine her action in period 1 as a standard maximization procedure. In period 2, a signal yields information about the state of the world. A key assumption is that this signal may not be perfectly revealing. It is shown that the objective prior is optimal if and only if the signal in period 2 is perfectly revealing. Predictions of the theory are tested in a bet-choice experiment. I then present an experimental test designed to investigate the model’s predictions. Subjects choose to play a bet or pass it up for another, and the experimental control varies whether learn about the second bet upon taking the first. The results of the experiment are also compared to the literature on regret theory and ambiguity aversion. -
Motivated Reasoning in a Causal Explore-Exploit Task by Zachary A. Caddick B.A. in Psychology, California State University
Motivated Reasoning in a Causal Explore-Exploit Task by Zachary A. Caddick B.A. in Psychology, California State University, San Bernardino, 2013 M.A. in Experimental and Research Psychology, San José State University, 2016 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science University of Pittsburgh 2020 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This thesis was presented by Zachary A. Caddick It was defended on March 17, 2020 and approved by Timothy J. Nokes-Malach, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Psychology Kevin R. Binning, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology Thesis Advisor: Benjamin M. Rottman, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Psychology ii Copyright © by Zachary A. Caddick 2020 iii Motivated Reasoning in a Causal Explore-Exploit Task Zachary A. Caddick, M.S. University of Pittsburgh, 2020 The current research investigates how prior preferences affect causal learning. Participants were tasked with repeatedly choosing policies (e.g., increase vs. decrease border security funding) in order to maximize the economic output of an imaginary country, and inferred the influence of the policies on the economy. The task was challenging and ambiguous, allowing participants to interpret the relations between the policies and the economy in multiple ways. In three studies, we found evidence of motivated reasoning despite financial incentives for accuracy. For example, participants who believed that border security funding should be increased were more likely to conclude that increasing border security funding actually caused a better economy in the task. -
The Art of Thinking Clearly
For Sabine The Art of Thinking Clearly Rolf Dobelli www.sceptrebooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Sceptre An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton An Hachette UK company 1 Copyright © Rolf Dobelli 2013 The right of Rolf Dobelli to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. eBook ISBN 978 1 444 75955 6 Hardback ISBN 978 1 444 75954 9 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH www.sceptrebooks.co.uk CONTENTS Introduction 1 WHY YOU SHOULD VISIT CEMETERIES: Survivorship Bias 2 DOES HARVARD MAKE YOU SMARTER?: Swimmer’s Body Illusion 3 WHY YOU SEE SHAPES IN THE CLOUDS: Clustering Illusion 4 IF 50 MILLION PEOPLE SAY SOMETHING FOOLISH, IT IS STILL FOOLISH: Social Proof 5 WHY YOU SHOULD FORGET THE PAST: Sunk Cost Fallacy 6 DON’T ACCEPT FREE DRINKS: Reciprocity 7 BEWARE THE ‘SPECIAL CASE’: Confirmation Bias (Part 1) 8 MURDER YOUR DARLINGS: Confirmation Bias (Part 2) 9 DON’T BOW TO AUTHORITY: Authority Bias 10 LEAVE YOUR SUPERMODEL FRIENDS AT HOME: Contrast Effect 11 WHY WE PREFER A WRONG MAP TO NO -
Polarization and Media Usage: Disentangling Causality
Polarization and Media Usage: Disentangling Causality Abstract: This chapter examines the literature concerning media choice and partisan polarization. The past few decades have seen enormous growth in the number of television and internet news sources, giving consumers dramatically increased choices. Previous research has suggested two distinct links between media choice and partisan polarization: partisan media as a reflection of polarization, as partisans self-select into media that conforms with their preexisting views, or as a cause of polarization, when outlets present one-sided stories that persuade people to adopt more extreme views. This chapter discusses how the literature in these two research traditions has diverged, as well as more recent research attempting to bridge this divide. Using novel methods, these studies have drawn together both self-selection and causal research designs to provide a more complete picture of media choice effects, and expanded the literature to more recent mediums, including the internet and social media. Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, Harvard University and Northeastern University ([email protected]) Matthew A. Baum, Harvard University ([email protected])* Adam J. Berinsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ([email protected]) Keywords: media choice, polarization, self-selection, persuasion, causality *corresponding author In recent years, pundits, politicians, and ordinary citizens have expressed growing concern over political polarization in the United States. A great deal of this outcry has focused on the rise of partisan news media, and how its growth has allowed people to choose the media that they consume. The typical U.S. household now receives about 190 television channels, more than a tenfold increase since 1980 and up by nearly half since 2008.i The options for different news sources on the internet are even more numerous. -
Why So Confident? the Influence of Outcome Desirability on Selective Exposure and Likelihood Judgment
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by The University of North Carolina at Greensboro Archived version from NCDOCKS Institutional Repository http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/ Why so confident? The influence of outcome desirability on selective exposure and likelihood judgment Authors Paul D. Windschitl , Aaron M. Scherer a, Andrew R. Smith , Jason P. Rose Abstract Previous studies that have directly manipulated outcome desirability have often found little effect on likelihood judgments (i.e., no desirability bias or wishful thinking). The present studies tested whether selections of new information about outcomes would be impacted by outcome desirability, thereby biasing likelihood judgments. In Study 1, participants made predictions about novel outcomes and then selected additional information to read from a buffet. They favored information supporting their prediction, and this fueled an increase in confidence. Studies 2 and 3 directly manipulated outcome desirability through monetary means. If a target outcome (randomly preselected) was made especially desirable, then participants tended to select information that supported the outcome. If made undesirable, less supporting information was selected. Selection bias was again linked to subsequent likelihood judgments. These results constitute novel evidence for the role of selective exposure in cases of overconfidence and desirability bias in likelihood judgments. Paul D. Windschitl , Aaron M. Scherer a, Andrew R. Smith , Jason P. Rose (2013) "Why so confident? The influence of outcome desirability on selective exposure and likelihood judgment" Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 120 (2013) 73–86 (ISSN: 0749-5978) Version of Record available @ DOI: (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.10.002) Why so confident? The influence of outcome desirability on selective exposure and likelihood judgment q a,⇑ a c b Paul D. -
Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Engelmann, Jan; Lebreton, Maël; Schwardmann, Peter; van der Weele, Joël J.; Chang, Li-Ang Working Paper Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, No. TI 2019-042/I Provided in Cooperation with: Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam Suggested Citation: Engelmann, Jan; Lebreton, Maël; Schwardmann, Peter; van der Weele, Joël J.; Chang, Li-Ang (2019) : Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, No. TI 2019-042/I, Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/205332 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under -
Wishful Thinking Final
A Framework for Understanding Wishful Thinking Daniel J. Hicks Science and Technology Policy Fellowships American Association for the Advancement of Science [email protected] Kevin C. Elliott Department of Philosophy Michigan State University [email protected] Abstract While the science and values literature has seen recurrent concerns about wishful thinking, there have been few efforts to characterize this phenomenon. Based on a review of varieties of wishful thinking involved in climate skepticism, we argue that instances of wishful thinking can be fruitfully characterized in terms of the mechanisms that generate them and the problems associated with them. We highlight the array of mechanisms associated with wishful thinking, as well as the fact that it can be evaluated both from epistemic and ethical perspectives. We argue that it is doubtful that a single unified definition of wishful thinking can be developed. Moreover, the concept of wishful thinking can problematically focus excessive attention on individual and epistemic problems in science, to the exclusion of social and ethical problems. A Framework for Understanding Wishful Thinking 1. Introduction In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, a generation of feminist philosophers of science and epistemologists produced a series of critiques of the ideal of value-free science — the view that non-epistemic values have no legitimate role to play in evaluating scientific hypotheses. In the 1990s, a number of critics put forward countercharges, defenses of the value-free ideal. Wishful thinking and cognate concepts were prominent in these countercharges. As Elisabeth Lloyd noted at the time, "There are several interrelated pronouncements that materialize with mystifying but strict regularity whenever 'feminism' and 'science' are used in the same breath. -
Rethinking the Link Between Cognitive Sophistication and Politically Motivated Reasoning
RETHINKING SOPHISTICATION AND MOTIVATED REASONING 1 Rethinking the link between cognitive sophistication and politically motivated reasoning Ben M. Tappin 1, Gordon Pennycook 2, David G. Rand 1,3 1 Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2 Hill/Levene School of Business, University of Regina 3 Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Author note This article contains supplementary information accessible at https://osf.io/yt3kd/. We are grateful to Antonio Arechar for assistance with data collection, and to Dan Kahan and Philip Hanser for comments on and discussion regarding an earlier draft. We acknowledge funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative of the Miami Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Cogito Foundation. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ben Tappin, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, United States of America. Email: [email protected] RETHINKING SOPHISTICATION AND MOTIVATED REASONING 2 Abstract Partisan disagreement over policy-relevant facts is a salient feature of contemporary American politics. Perhaps surprisingly, such disagreements are often the greatest among opposing partisans who are the most cognitively sophisticated. -
Motivated Reasoning Without Partisanship? Fake News in the 2018 Brazilian Elections
Motivated Reasoning Without Partisanship? Fake News in the 2018 Brazilian Elections Frederico Batista Pereira1, Natália S. Bueno2, Felipe Nunes3, and Nara Pavão4 1Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 2Assistant Professor, Emory University 3Assistant Professor, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 4Assistant Professor, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco Abstract Studies suggest that rumor acceptance is driven by motivated reasoning and that people’s desire to conclude what is suggested by their partisanship undermines the effectiveness of corrective information. This paper explores this process in a context where party attachments are weaker and less stable than elsewhere. We conducted a survey experiment during the 2018 elections in Brazil to examine the extent of rumor acceptance and the effectiveness of fact-checking corrections to fake news stories disseminated about the country’s most important political group. We find that about a third of our respondents believe the rumors used in the study and that, just like what is found in developed nations, belief in misinformation in Brazil is correlated with (anti)partisan attitudes. However, fact-checking corrections are particularly weak in Brazil compared to the developed world. While weak parti- sanship reduces the rates of rumor acceptance in Brazil, ineffective corrections are unlikely to prevent the circulation of fake news in the country. Please do not quote or cite without permission Fake news, understood as false information whose purpose is to generate and reinforce misperceptions of reality, is a growing concern in politics, due to its potential to distort public debate and disrupt elections (Lazer et al. 2018). The vast majority of the knowl- edge we currently have about political misperceptions comes from research conducted in the developed world, particularly in the United States (Walter and Murphy 2018; Nieminen and Rapeli 2019). -
The Evidence for Motivated Reasoning in Climate Change Preference Formation
REVIEW ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0360-1 The evidence for motivated reasoning in climate change preference formation James N. Druckman * and Mary C. McGrath Despite a scientific consensus, citizens are divided when it comes to climate change — often along political lines. Democrats or liberals tend to believe that human activity is a primary cause of climate change, whereas Republicans or conservatives are much less likely to hold this belief. A prominent explanation for this divide is that it stems from directional motivated reason- ing: individuals reject new information that contradicts their standing beliefs. In this Review, we suggest that the empirical evidence is not so clear, and is equally consistent with a theory in which citizens strive to form accurate beliefs but vary in what they consider to be credible evidence. This suggests a new research agenda on climate change preference formation, and has implications for effective communication. widely discussed explanation for the public divide in beliefs Our starting point is a standing (or prior) belief. This belief about climate change is that people engage in ‘directional can be any climate change-relevant construct, such as beliefs that A motivated reasoning’1–4. According to this explanation, indi- climate change is occurring, that climate change is anthropogenic, viduals skeptical about climate change reject ostensibly credible about a scientific consensus on climate change, about a conspir- scientific information because it counters their standing beliefs. acy with regard to climate change, about who is responsible for Considering the threat that such a tendency poses to effectual sci- causing and/or addressing climate change, about the efficacy of entific communication, scholars and practitioners have focused on mitigation policies, about risks from climate change, about the identifying conditions that curtail or counteract directional moti- impact of climate-relevant behaviours (such as biking instead of vated reasoning5,6. -
1 How Is Wishful Seeing Like Wishful Thinking? Susanna Siegel * Draft For
How is wishful seeing like wishful thinking? Susanna Siegel * draft for Rutgers Epistemology Conference REC readers: If this paper is too long for you, you can shorten the journey in any of these ways: - skip sections 3-5 on responsive dispositions (pp. 9-15) - skip Part II (pp. 15-29) - skip all Part III (pp. 29-end) A Simple Argument It is a commonplace that beliefs can be epistemically appropriate or epistemically inappropriate. Suppose Frank wishfully believes that today, all his best features are evident even to the most casual observation. Passers-by who greet him with neutral expressions are holding back their appreciation of him, because they’re embarrassed to show it. Anyone who seems displeased with him is feeling inadequate in the face of his many assets. These interpretations make sense to Frank given his original wishful belief, but they are unreasonable, and that belief is the source of their unreasonableness. Can a perceptual experience ever be a source of unreasonableness, because of its dependence on a desire? Could wishful seeing compromise the rational support offered by experience, just as wishful thinking compromises the rational support offered by Frank’s wishful belief? Here is a simple argument that it could. Premise: Beliefs can be ill-founded by wishful thinking. Premise: Wishful seeing is possible. Conclusion. Experiences can be ill-founded by wishful seeing. What kinds of considerations could possibly support such a conclusion? The argument’s conceit is that wishful seeing and wishful thinking are sufficiently analogous that they both have ill-founding effects. There are many places to probe the argument, starting with whether the idea of wishful seeing makes sense to begin with. -
Motivated Reasoning and Policy Information: Politicians Are More Resistant to Debiasing Interventions Than the General Public
Behavioural Public Policy, Page 1 of 22 © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/bpp.2020.50 Motivated reasoning and policy information: politicians are more resistant to debiasing interventions than the general public JULIAN CHRISTENSEN* Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark DONALD P. MOYNIHAN McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA Abstract: A growing body of evidence shows that politicians use motivated reasoning to fit evidence with prior beliefs. In this, they are not unlike other people. We use survey experiments to reaffirm prior work showing that politicians, like the public they represent, engage in motivated reasoning. However, we also show that politicians are more resistant to debiasing interventions than others. When required to justify their evaluations, politicians rely more on prior political attitudes and less on policy information, increasing the probability of erroneous decisions. The results raise the troubling implication that the specialized role of elected officials makes them more immune to the correction of biases, and in this way less representative of the voters they serve when they process policy information. Introduction Proponents of evidence-based policymaking hope that enhanced access to policy information will help politicians make better decisions, leading to improved societal outcomes (Davies et al., 2000). Governments have accord- ingly built policy information infrastructures, including appointments of chief scientific advisors, establishment of scientific advisory committees (Doubleday & Wilsdon, 2012) and statutory requirements to report data on bureaucratic performance (Moynihan & Beazley, 2016).