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Inspiring Science

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Tag Archives: social science

Hindsight bias: Inventing memories & blaming victims

18 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by sedeer in Humans, Mind

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

animals, Hindsight bias, People, Popular science, psychology, rape, science, social science, Victims

It’s not unusual for people to think that an outcome was inevitable after the fact, a phenomenon known as “hindsight bias”. This remains the case even when test subjects are instructed to ignore their knowledge of the outcome and rate the likeliness of several possible outcomes. Once an outcome is known, people tend to see causal links in antecedents (the events preceding the outcome); this builds into a causal chain that makes the outcome seem an inevitable consequence of the antecedents. Studies have shown that, in addition to constructing such links, people also tend to exercise selective memory, preferentially remembering details that are consistent with the seemingly inevitable outcome.  Linda Carli (of Wellesley College) conducted a study extending these findings even further. She found that people will “misremember” additional antecedents that are stereotypically associated with a given outcome; these novel memories reinforce the hindsight bias – their perception that the outcome is inevitable – which affects their judgement of the behaviour and character of the individuals involved. These findings shed light on how & why we judge that people “get what they deserve”, often over-simplistically attributing credit for success and unfairly blaming victims. Continue reading →

How we lie to ourselves: cognitive dissonance

27 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by sedeer in Humans, Mind

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Cognitive dissonance, doomsday, People, Popular science, pyschology, science, social science

In December 1954, a doomsday cult was awaiting the arrival of a UFO which would rescue the faithful.  Leon Festinger, a social psychologist, had infiltrated the cult to see how they would respond when the UFO failed to appear and the world didn’t end.  Remarkably, the cult emerged from their failed prediction with renewed strength, convinced that they had “spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.”. Cognitive dissonance is a phrase coined by Festinger in 1956 to explain this sort of response.  It refers to the discomfort we feel when trying to simultaneously hold two contradictory ideas in our mind; we reflexively try to resolve this discomfort, often pre-consciously.  It’s a striking and elegant idea which can explain aspects of a wide range of seemingly strange human behaviours, from doomsday cults and initiation ceremonies to post-purchase rationalizations.

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