Week 4 - Biases & Expertise vs Intuition Flashcards
The central route
- Hovland et al.: Persuaded when we attend to, comprehend, and retain an argument in memory
- McGuire: Distinguished between the reception of a message and its later acceptance
- Greenwald: Elaboration is an important, intermediate step
Assumptions of the central route
The recipient is attentive, active, critical and thoughtful
* Assumption is correct only some of the time
* When it is correct, the persuasiveness of the message depends on the strength of the message’s content
The central route is a thoughtful process
* But not necessarily an objective one
The Peripheral route
People are persuaded on the basis of superficial, peripheral cues
* Message is evaluated through the use of simple-minded heuristics
People are also influenced by attitude-irrelevant factors
Sleeper effect
When people receive a communication associated with a discounting cue, such as a noncredible source
This has a high impact on people that already have high-credibility but not on people with low-credibility
What makes a persuasive source?
- Believable sources must be credible sources
- To be seen as credible, the source must have two distinct characteristics
* Competence or expertise
* Thrustworthiness
* Confidence
What influences the likeability of a source?
- The similarity between the source and the audience
- The physical attractiveness of the source
Halo effect
A tendency for positive impressions of a person in one area to positively influence one’s opinion about this person or feelings in other areas
Halo Effect in Job Interviews
Interviewing has mixed effects:
* Live interviews may actually diminish the tendency to make simple stereotyped judgements
* But one source of bias may be physical attractiveness
Halo effect in Marketing
- Other products by same company
- Celebrity endorsement
- Product placement
- Flagships
* Halo cars
Hindsight bias (knew-it-all-allong)
The tendency to perceive past events as more predictable than they really were
False sense of control
People often forget their initial opinion
Outcome bias
Bad outcome = Bad decision
Good outcome = Good decision
Basing the quality of the decision on the outcome (event in the process was bad/good)
Illusion of Validity
A bias in which people tend to overestimate their ability to interpret and predict the outcome when analyzing a set of data
Dunning-Kruger effect
A cognitive bias in which incompetent or unaware subjects overestimate their knowledge or expertise, considering themselves as more adept than they really are
On the other hand, high-ability individuals underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others
Sunk Cost Principle
People often violate the sunk cost principle of economics
* The principle that only future costs and benefits, not past commitments, should be considered in making a decision
Economic decisions are biased by past investments of time and money, and effort
Are expert better at detecting Truth or Deception?
Accuracy rate:
* Students: 52.82%
* CIA,FBI, and Military: 55.67%
* Police investigators: 55.79%
* Trial Judges: 56.73%
* Psychiatrists: 57.61%
* U.S. Secret Service Agents: 64.12%
Why do we have difficulty detecting deception
- Mismatch between the behavioral cues that actually signal deception and the ones used to detect deception
- Four channels of communication provide relevant information:
* Words: Cannot be trusted
* Face: Controllable
* Body: Somewhat more revealing than face
* Voice: Most revealing cue
* Perceivers tune in to the wrong channels
Why is there hostility against algorithms?
- Rooting for humans
- Moral dimensions
* Called “unreal, incomplete, unholistic, dead, pedantic, sterile, rigid, blind” = “the horror of being denied treatment due to some cold algorithm” - Whereas the ‘clinical method’ (interviews and such) “dynamic, global, meaningful, holistic, genuine, sensitive, understanding” = “the horror of making a mistake due to intuition-based decisions”
- Perhaps also fear of losing status as expert
Expertise
A collection of mini skills within a domain
True experts know the limits of their knowledge
Intuition
Knowing something without know how/why
Expert intuition could be related to experience
* Situation provided a cue, that gives the expert access to information in memory which provides the answer
* Kahneman: “it is nothing more and nothing less than recognition”
The inside view
The inside view is the idea you have about your own direct circumstances (WYSIATI)
* Fails to allow for unknown unknowns
* Divorce, illnesses, bureaucracy
* “people who have information about an individual case don’t feel the need to know the statistics of the class the case belongs too”
Planning fallacy
Plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios
* Could be improved by the outside view
Competition neglect
WYSIATI causes entrepeneurs to take an inside view
* Focus on their plans and actions and most immediate threats and opportunities
* Fail to focus on the competition and how they fit in the plan = Sometimes floods the market so the avg. income becomes very low
* Overestimate the influence of effort on their success (80%)
Are people too optimistic or negative when starting a business?
Too optimistic
Dispositional Optimism
Tendency to expect positive outcomes
- Biologically: blood samples show optimists exhibit stronger immune response to stress
- Behavioral: explanatory style (cope different with negative outcomes)
- More happy
Hopelesness and Death
High hopelessness = high risk cardiovascular disease and cancer
