Copyright: 1993
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 0-87722-913-9
If you read many books about behavioral economics or cognitive psychology, you will come across concepts that Scott Plous covers in The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making. In about 300 pages, Plous covers so much ground that the book could easily be a textbook and yet it reads quickly and easily. Where many authors cover these topics with almost a sense of wonderment and amazement, Plous is pragmatic in both his presentation of the evidence and his analysis thereof. Because of the exhaustive nature of the book, the author was able to put each concept in context, a small price to pay for the brevity of his matter-of-fact style.
Perception and Reality
What we think of as reality is actually what we perceive through the filter of our mind. For this reason psychologists look at things that can distort our perception. One such distortion is selective perception. Anyone with children knows what selective hearing is and selective perception isn't much different, although we don't always recognize the phenomenon.
Essentially we see what we want to see. Or more accurately we perceive what we expect to perceive so that in the case of incongruity, we "fill in the blanks" and distort reality. There are four categories of selective perception and they vary slightly in how they distort reality:
- Dominance is when we enter perceptual denial. We replace what we see with what we expected to see.
- Compromise is when our perception blends what we expected with what we actually saw.
- Disruption is when our perception puts out mind in a troubled state because we can't make sense of what we saw.
- Recognition is when we see the incongruity for what it is, but we don't always see where the problem lies.
The third case reminded me of a passage in The Survivor's Club where the author talks about plane crash victims' reaction. Often they will be physically capable of getting out of the burning fuselage but will sit there in stunned disbelief at what is happening. The author argues that this is a result of the human brain being unable to comprehend the sights and sounds being fed through the senses and it simply gets stuck in a loop.
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is another time when perception and reality are at odds. Cognitive dissonance is the motivation of your brain to reduce psychological inconsistencies. Predecisional dissonance can influence your future behavior. In some psychological studies, students were reminded of their latent stereotypical thinking much to their chagrin. Their reaction was quite often to change future behavior to over-compensate for this type of thinking and prove their open-mindedness.
Post-decisional dissonance can occur after you make a purchase and realize that the expected benefit doesn't match the actual benefit. In such cases you might begin to change your mind about the factors that went into the decision in order to reduce this inconsistency.
Post-decisional dissonance is similar to another phenomenon called hindsight bias. This bias is the "I knew it all along" effect where you begin to perceive past events as inevitable and obvious. You begin to think of past events through the filter of the current state of things and you reconstruct your knowledge at the time. One way of avoiding this bias is to explicitly consider how things might have turned out differently. This forces your brain to consider other possibilities and recognize the unknowns that previously existed.
Attitudinal Inconsistency
Another interesting inconsistency is attitudinal inconsistency. This is where our attitude towards principles don't always match our attitude towards the derived practices. As an example consider these three principles:
- Public officials should be chosen by majority vote.
- Every citizen should have an equal chance to influence government policy.
- The minority should be free to criticize majority decisions.
Now consider this statement:
"If an admitted Communist wanted to make a speech in this city favoring Communism, he should be allowed to speak."
While it is easy in America to find a consensus on the three principles that are outlined, it is very difficult to reach a consensus on the derived practice outlined by the statement. This is attitudinal inconsistency.
One side effect of this phenomenon is that quite often public opinion polls are measuring the wrong thing. We can't always arrive at a conclusion about the principles driving people simply by measuring their attitude towards actions. As Plous says "Measuring an attitude, opinion, or preference is not so simple as asking a question."
Other Notes
Two other things I want to bring out here in my notes are preference reversals and group think.
Preference reversals refers to the fact that sometimes you can get people to change their preference by changing things that shouldn't affect their preference. For instance when an experimenter phrases a question in terms of winning a bet, respondents most often focus on the probability of winning. If they rephrase the question to be in terms of choosing a price that they would pay to play, respondents begin to focus on the size of the payoff. By changing this focus, it is possible to set up two scenarios with different wording but similar outcomes and get quite different results from the same group.
Group think comes when a group of people are making a decision and the group is highly cohesive and isolated from the outside. There is a deterioration of mental efficiency and the moral judgment of the group wanes due to the pressure of the group. This is commonly seen in the corporate world and should be recognized and avoided by managers if possible. Some tips on avoiding group think are:
- Leaders should encourage dissent
- Leaders shouldn't state their position first
- Allow other groups to independently consider the same question
- Members should discuss the deliberations with others outside the group
- Groups should invite outside influences
Conclusion
If you have an interest in cognitive psychology or decision theory, this book is a valuable asset. Many of the books I have read recently draw from ideas outlined in this book. Even though the book is almost 2 decades old, the concepts are still quite relevant today and can be foundational in your understanding of the field.