II. Biases in Intuition and Perception

Why not rely only on intuition?

A. Introduction• Where does intuition/common sense start?

– Perceptions - Noticing, attending to, interpreting, remembering stimuli...experiences YOU encounter

– Are these carbon copies of “reality”?

• Consider this:– How many stimuli could you focus on at this

moment?– 50,000 facts about every topic!– 500 times the Encyclopedia Britannica!

B. Perceiving our world

• How do we manage to navigate our perceptions?

• 1. Tendency to categorize– a. Schemas:

Cognitive structures that represent knowledge about a concept, event, person, etc,

Categories then make us efficient – but...

B. Perceiving our world.

• Folk

• Croak

• Soak

• Folk

• Croak

• Soak

B. Perceiving our world.

• Can lead to biases...• 2. Biases in perceptions and thinking:

Importance of expectations.“filter” or “lens”a. Assimilation: Interpreting new information in terms of our existing beliefs.– “Rebellion is a good thing”

B. Perceiving our world.• Quick demo….

• b. Confirmation Bias:

Tendency to search for information that confirms our preconceptions (expectations).– Darley & Gross (1983): “Hannah Study”

B. Perceiving our World

• d. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:

People’s expectations lead them to act in ways that cause others to confirm those expectations.– Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968):

“Bloomers Study”

B. Perceiving our world• e. Belief Perseverance:

Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, even when they are proved incorrect.– Anderson et al., (1980): Firefighter Study

• Conclude: Why is intuition problematic?

• Based on perceptions - which can be biased due to our tendency to be efficient processors of stimuli (i.e. we use “short cuts’ - categories and expectations)

C. Can we accurately infer our own behavior?

• Nisbett & Wilson (1977):

“Pantyhose Study”

D. Problem Solving

• 1. Algorithm:

Step-by-step exhaustive procedure, using trial and error to solve problems.

• 2. Heuristics:

Simple, rule-of-thumb strategies for solving problems.

C. Problem Solving

• 2. Heuristics

• HHTTHTTH HHHHTTTT

George…

a. Representativeness: Making a judgement about something based on how similar it is to a typical case in its category.

- may lead to ignoring base-rate information.

• 2. Heuristics

Which is more common or more likely?...

b. Availability: Judge the likelihood of something happening in terms of how easy examples come to mind.

• Important to think critically about psychology and how we interpret our world– Can’t rely ONLY on intuition, common sense, or folk

wisdom...

– When perceiving our own and others’ behavior, we are vulnerable to biases.

• However, those biases serve us well most of the time.

• Make us capable of dealing with the enormous amount of stimuli and information we encounter.

Conclusions.....

• Psychology is:– Very broad and diverse.– Findings/conclusions not always obvious.– A science (more on this to come)

• Why not rely on intuition and individual observations/common sense?

Conclusions from yesterday...• People’s perceptions are biased.

- To be able to navigate through our social worlds, we need short-cuts (for efficiency)

- or - categories (e.g., schemas) - to quickly make sense of stimuli.

- Expectations provide powerful “short-cuts” that influence:

- what (how) we notice, interpret, and remember information.

- how we solve problems.