Chapter 5Making JudgmentsSnapshot of an episode from Cupid.docx

Chapter 5:
Making Judgments
Snapshot of an episode from "Cupid's Arrow." A woman sits on
one side of a partition and talks to men whom she cannot see on
the other side of the partition.
©2012 NBCUniversal Media, LLC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
Images/NBCUinversal/Getty Images
Learning Objectives
By the end of the chapter you should be able to:
Contrast conscious and automatic processes
Define schemas and scripts and discuss their importance
Describe the value of heuristics
Identify and explain the availability heuristic,
representativeness heuristic, and affect heuristic
Describe how the conjunction fallacy and the base rate fallacy
contribute to errors in judgment
Define belief perseverance, confirmation bias, and illusion of
control
Describe how the self-fulfilling prophecy can affect behavior
Chapter Outline
5.1 Conscious and Automatic Processes
5.2 Schemas and Scripts
Schemas
Scripts
5.3 Heuristics

Availability Heuristic
Representativeness Heuristic
Affect Heuristic
5.4 Errors in Judgment
Belief Perseverance
Confirmation Bias
Illusion of Control
5.5 Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Chapter Summary
* * *
Many a disastrous date is doomed from the beginning. A few
minutes on a blind date can often be enough to determine
whether a second date is warranted. In the 1990s, Rabbi Yaacov
Deyo was working as the educational director for a Jewish
resource group and wanted to encourage the single men and
women he worked with to get married, but the traditional one-
on-one dinner and a movie seemed cumbersome and time
consuming. His solution was to introduce a large number of men
and women to one another, and to limit their interaction to 7
minutes (Deyo & Deyo, 2003). And thus, speed dating was born.
Speed dating had the advantage of introducing a large number
of men to a large number of women and to weed out unlikely
pairings without either party investing a great deal of time.
From the more routine to the more specific situations of our
daily life, we need to make a number of decisions and
judgments. Our cognitive systems are built to help us make
those decisions efficiently, though, at times, those efficiencies

lead us to errors. In this chapter, we will discuss both the
conscious processing of information we all engage in and the
unconscious, automatic processing our cognitive systems allow
for. Some of our quick assessments of objects and events, and
our quick decision making, rely on the work of unconscious
systems. But such judgments lead to errors and can influence
how others respond.
5.1 Conscious and Automatic Processes
When you make a decision do you weigh your options, carefully
sorting out pros from cons? Have you ever made a decision
because you had a gut feeling? Psychologists believe that our
cognitive processes operate at two levels: the conscious and the
automatic. The thought processes we are aware of and tend to
direct are on the conscious level. We might involve conscious
thought when we make a decision by carefully weighing our
options. Processes that are done without our intention or
awareness, such as when we make a decision based on our gut
feeling, occur on the automatic level. Researchers have called
these principles a variety of names, but they all focus on some
kind of rational, conscious process and another more emotional
or experientially-based unconscious process (Epstein, 1994;
Kahneman, 2003; Peters, Hess, Vastfjall, & Auman, 2007;
Reyna, 2004).
Table 5.1 summarizes the basic differences between these
systems. As you can see from the table, the processing of the
automatic system is something that we are generally not aware
of. It processes or interprets stimuli that come from our
environment, and when it has completed processing or gets
stuck, something researchers call disfluency, it alerts the
conscious system (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre, 2007).
The capacity of the conscious system is much smaller than that
of the automatic system but it is a system we can direct. The
unconscious system may be processing something you are not

interested in working on; it is only the conscious system that
allows you to deliberately focus on a particular idea, situation,
or problem.
Table 5.1: Characteristics of the automatic and conscious
systems
Automatic System Conscious System
Fast Slow
Outside of conscious awareness Within conscious awareness
Effortless Effortful
Large capacity Limited capacity
May do many tasks at once Limited to very few tasks at once
Imprecise, general responses Nuanced responses
Sometimes these systems conflict with one another. An example
of the conscious and the unconscious system working against
one another can be seen in the Stroop Color–Word Task
(Stroop, 1935). In this task, people are asked to identify the
color in which letters or words are printed. When the letters are
meaningless, such as the lines of Xs in Column 1 of Table 5.2,
the task is easy and people go through the list quickly.
However, when the letters spell a color that is not the same as
the color of the ink, people tend to stumble. The time it takes
someone to go through the second list is much longer than the
time it takes to go through the first list. The reason for this is
the fact that reading color words is a well-practiced skill for
most adults; most of us read the word whether we want to or
not. When the two do not match, there is a fight between the
automatic system, which says "Green! The word is green!" and
the conscious system, which focuses on the color of the blue ink
(although, not everyone agrees with this interpretation; see
Besner, Stolz, & Boutilier, 1997). This slower response when
dealing with two conflicting stimuli is called the Stroop effect.
The Stroop effect was named after J. R. Stroop who developed
the task in the 1930s and wrote about the phenomenon. Since
then, a variety of other tasks have been developed that have
similar findings (MacLeod, 1991).

Table 5.2: The Stroop color–word task
For each column identify the color of the ink in which the
letters are written. For example, in the first column the first set
of letters is red.
Column 1 Column 2
XXXX Green
XXXX Blue
XXXX Red
XXXX Blue
XXXX Brown
XXXX Red
XXXX Green
Expand Your Knowledge:
Stroop Effect
To try out the Stroop effect for yourself by clicking here. The
program will time you as you identify the ink color in two
different tasks. You can compare those times to see if naming
an ink color in a contrasting color word slows you down.
The conscious and automatic systems do work together at times.
Imagine you are at a busy and boisterous bar and are talking
with a small group of people. Suddenly, in the next group over
you hear your name being spoken. You were not actively
listening for your name and were engrossed in your
conversation, yet, you somehow heard it. This often occurs
when we recognize our own name or other self-relevant
information amidst other distracting stimuli without consciously
listening for it (Moray, 1959; Wood & Cowan, 1995). In this
scenario, our conscious system is oblivious to what those in the
other group are talking about, but your automatic system is
monitoring what is going on around you. When your name is
spoken, your unconscious system alerts the conscious system to
pay attention and suddenly you are straining to hear what is
being said about you (Alexopoulos, Muller, Ric, & Marendaz,
2012; MacLeod, 1998). Similarly, our own faces jump out at us

from a sea of others faces; you may have noticed this
phenomenon if you have ever looked at a group picture and
quickly noticed your own face (Tacikowski & Nowicka, 2010).
Test Yourself
Click on each question below to reveal the answer.
What are some characteristics of the conscious system?
What are some characteristics of the unconscious system?
5.2 Schemas and Scripts
Our automatic system allows us to make shortcuts and come to
conclusions without taxing the conscious system (Shah &
Oppenheimer, 2008). In fact, when our resources are depleted
we are more likely to use the shortcuts offered by the automatic
system (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008). The automatic system
has two ways of doing this; one focuses on things like objects
or people, while the other focuses on events, what they include,
and how they are sequenced.
Schemas
Figure 5.1: Schemas
Illustration showing what a person's schema for a baseball game
might include. The words "baseball game" sit to the left of an
outline of a human head. An arrow points from the words to the
head, and within the head are drawings of a baseball diamond, a
hand holding an U.S. flag, and peanuts.
Your schema for a baseball game may include a baseball
diamond, a salute to the American flag, and peanuts.
Dorling Kindersley RF/Thinkstock, iStockphoto/Thinkstock,
iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Chapter 2 introduced the idea of schemas as knowledge
structures that organize what we know and that can affect how

we process information. Self-schemas are knowledge structures
about the self, but we can have schemas about many other
things in our world, such as animals, objects, places, and
concepts (see Figure 5.1). When we are making judgments,
schemas may affect those judgments. For example, a boss might
have a schema about an employee as a good, reliable worker. If
that employee is late one day, the boss makes a different
judgment about that employee than she would if the boss had a
schema about that employee as lazy and irresponsible. Because
of the positive schema about her employee, the boss might also
quickly remember the employee's contributions to past projects,
eventually concluding that the employee had a good reason to
be late. While schemas can help us remember things by
organizing them into preconceived structures, they may also
create false memories for us (Lampinen, Copeland, &
Neuschatz, 2001). If you were to sit in a professor's office for
several minutes and then, outside of the office hours later were
asked what you saw in that office, your schema could help you
answer. You expect to see bookshelves with books, a desk, a
computer, a stapler, and some pens in a professor's office. As
you remember what was in the office, your existing schema
might help you remember that you saw a bookshelf. But the
schema may lead you to remember something that was not there.
If you expected to see a stapler, you might report that a stapler
was there, even if it was not.
Schemas
How schemas influence behavior.
Critical Thinking Questions
Why are schemas considered a fundamental part of social
psychology?
How does a victim's schema put people at a higher risk of
being victimized?
Schemas can also help us remember items because they violate a

schema. If you were to see a stuffed teddy bear in a professor's
office, you might remember and recall it because it was outside
of your typical professor's-office schema. This type of effect
may have serious consequences when we examine the role of
schemas in eyewitness testimony in court. Researchers have
found that schemas for crimes can influence the details people
remember about crimes they witness (Tuckey & Brewer, 2003).
For example, you would expect a bank robbery to include a thief
with a bag; a bag is a schema-consistent element. You would
not expect the thief to wear bright clothing; bright clothing is a
schema-inconsistent element. People tend to be accurate about
schema-relevant and schema-inconsistent information.
Information that is irrelevant to the schema is most likely to be
forgotten.
Schemas can be fairly broad, applicable in a wide variety of
situations or with a wide variety of objects or people, or
relatively narrow, being very specific to one or two objects,
people, or situations. Broader schemas take us longer to learn,
as we encounter different ways to think about and view a
particular entity or problem. But these broader schemas may
allow us to be more flexible (Chen & Mo, 2004). For example,
as a child you might have learned the concept of sharing toys
and applied it when playing at home with friends. But, if you
were provided with examples of a variety of ways to share over
the course of your life, including sharing resources and time
with others, you may be more able to recognize when someone
needed your help and know how to provide it.
Scripts
How do you know what to do when you go into a restaurant?
How do you know what is expected on a first date? In our lives
it is helpful to know how to act and respond in social situations.
Psychologists call expected series of events scripts, like the
scripts in a movie or play that tell the actors what is going to
occur next. Scripts can be very helpful to us. When a restaurant

follows a script, both the server and the diner know what to do
and what is expected of them without having to discuss the
process. If you have ever lived or traveled in a different
country, or if you are part of a distinctive subculture in your
own country, you know that others do things differently. For
example, in Chinese culture when someone shows admiration
for something done well, the appropriate response in the
Chinese social script is to respond with modesty. According to
the script, the admirer's next response should show even greater
admiration for the accomplishment (Han, 2011). If you are new
to a culture or situation, you may find yourself confused and
unsure. In those kinds of situations you may feel like everyone
knows what is going on but you—you do not know the script.
Three images displayed in a row. The first is of a man shopping
for radishes, the second is of the same man walking in the
produce department with groceries in his basket, and the third is
a large question mark.
©Getty Images/Hemera
Technologies/AbleStock.com/Thinkstock
Adhering to your script of grocery shopping, what might occur
next in the sequence of events? What next event would violate
your script for grocery shopping?
In a dating scenario between a heterosexual couple, it is likely
the man will pick the woman up at her home for the first date,
they will go to a restaurant, talk about their lives, hope to
impress one another, and perhaps then attend a movie. The man
will likely offer to pay for both the dinner and the movie. Not
all first dates follow this pattern, but many do (Eaton & Rose,
2012; Laner & Ventrone, 2000). Like schemas, we use scripts to
make sense of and organize our experience. Schemas involve
our expectations for things or concepts, while scripts involve
our expectations for events or sequences of events.

Dating scripts can be quite detailed and can include behaviors
that are different for men and women. In a 1989 study,
undergraduate students listed 19 different actions that women
would engage in and 27 different actions for men. Most of these
students agreed on what belonged in the script, indicating that
scripts are shared within a culture (Rose & Frieze, 1989).
Students noted that certain foods were date foods and others
were not; foods that could be eaten neatly, foods that were not
too smelly, and foods that were not likely to cause bad breath
were suggested date foods (Amiraian & Sobal, 2009). Dating
scripts go beyond the first date, implicating how a relationship
should develop over time. When partners share a script for how
the relationship should develop, they show greater relationship
satisfaction (Holmberg & MacKenzie, 2002). For example, if
both partners expect to call one another daily and go out on a
date every Friday night, each will be more satisfied than if one
is expecting only a couple phone calls a week and a date every
other Saturday night.
The effects of scripts on our lives are not always benign or
helpful. A script that supports risky sexual behavior, such as not
using a condom, may lead to high-risk behavior and, therefore,
increased rates of infection with sexually transmitted diseases
(Bowleg, Lucas, & Tschann, 2004; Hussen, Bowleg,
Sangaramoorthy, & Malebranche, 2012). Sexual scripts come
from parents, peers, school, television and the movies, as well
as pornography (Hussen, et al., 2012). Sexual scripts might also
be learned from romance novels. Such novels generally have
very similar sexual scripts and these scripts have changed little
over the last 20 years (Menard & Cabrera, 2011). A sexual
script includes when and where a couple has sex. For example,
some might expect sex after a few dates while others may need
to know their partner for months or be engaged or married
before engaging in sexual intercourse. Partners might expect to
have sex in a bed in one of their bedrooms or in some other
location in their living space, their car, or in a hotel. The script

will also include elements of the encounter itself such as who
initiates sex, length of foreplay, type of activities expected in
foreplay, and the use of condoms or other barriers that reduce
the risk of sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy.
The ability to describe a script or put events in a script in the
correct order seems to lie in the frontal lobe of the brain,
directly behind the forehead. People with brain damage to this
part of the brain sometimes show difficulties with scripts
(Grafman, 1989). Our ability to work with scripts can also be
influenced by age. Older adults had more difficulty correctly
ordering extensive scripts than younger adults (Allain et al.,
2007). For example, an older adult may have more difficulty
accurately describing the sequence of events needed to change a
flat tire.
Test Yourself
How are schemas and scripts similar?
How might schemas lead to false or mistaken memories?
5.3 Heuristics
Quick processing is a theme of our cognitive systems. As
discussed, schemas help us keep information organized and can
help in memory, and scripts help us know what to do without
expending a lot of energy trying to figure out what is
appropriate in a given situation. When making judgments we
also attempt to get quick answers. The shortcuts we use in
making judgments are heuristics. If you were having trouble
answering an abstract problem, you might try to think about it
concretely, or draw a picture in an attempt to answer the
question quickly, without further taxing your cognitive system.
Just as schemas and scripts can be helpful to us, heuristics can
also be helpful—we are likely to quickly come up with a pretty

good answer. But just as schemas can cause us to remember
something was there when it was not, heuristics can lead to
incorrect judgments. Researchers who evaluate heuristics most
often focus on what happens when heuristics fail us and we
make incorrect judgments. Despite the problems they sometimes
create, heuristics quickly provide us with a good-enough answer
most of the time.
Heuristics
Heuristics and their impact on our lives.
How do heuristics function in daily life?
How are heuristics studied in social psychology?
Availability Heuristic
Are there more words in the English language that begin with
the letter "R," or that have the letter "R" as the third letter of
the word? Tversky and Kahneman (1973) asked participants in
their study to respond to this question. Most people responded
that there are more words with "R" as the first letter, estimating
that there are about twice as many with "R" as the first letter
than with "R" as the third letter. How do people make this
judgment? If you solved this like most people do, you thought
briefly about how many words you knew that had "R" as the
first letter (relatives, rainbow, rich, run). Then you thought
about how many words you knew that had "R" as the third letter
(park, more, marshmallow). As you made those calculations,
you realized that you were able to come up with many more
words with "R" as the first letter than "R" as the third letter.
Words starting with "R" were more available to you in your
memory.
Making a judgment this way, you and the research participants
were using the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic

involves the tendency to make judgments about the frequency of
something or the likelihood of an event occurring by
considering how available it was in memory. Instances that
come more easily to mind, and thus are more available, are
judged to be more likely. As noted earlier, these strategies often
get us the right answer, but in the case of the position of the "R"
our judgment is wrong. There are actually more words in the
English language with "R" as the third letter than "R" as the
first letter. Often this type of judgment will provide you with
the right answer, but, as in this instance, there is room for error.
We can apply this to other realms and other experiences. How
successful is online dating? Many people will tell you about a
cousin or coworker who met and is happily married to someone
found on an online dating site. You may have such a story
yourself. But how often do you hear the stories about
unsuccessful searchers who gave up on online dating in
frustration? Occasionally, perhaps, but because we hear more of
the happily-ever-after stories and fewer stories of frustration,
many of us assume online dating is successful for the majority
of those who engage in it.
Test Yourself
Click on the question below to reveal the answer.
Why does the availability heuristic have the word availability
in its name?
Representativeness Heuristic
"Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She
majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned
with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also
participated in antinuclear demonstrations" (Tversky &
Kahneman, 1983, p. 297). Which of the following is more
likely?

Linda is a bank teller.
Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.
If you are like most people you chose answer b. Why? Most
people say they chose b because Linda sounds to them like
someone who would be active in the feminist movement who
happens to be a bank teller rather than just a stereotypical bank
teller. If you answered this way, for this reason, you were using
something called the representativeness heuristic. The
representativeness heuristic involves making decisions based on
how similar someone or something is to the typical, or
representative, person or situation. Because Linda seems like
your typical vision of someone in the feminist movement, you
choose b.
Heuristic Simulation
Want to think more about the representativeness and availability
heuristics? You can participate in simulations of heuristics at
http://cat.xula.edu/thinker/decisions/heuristics/. Other heuristics
are described as well. After making your own judgments, you
can read about usual answers and explanations for these
answers.
The representativeness heuristic will often get you to the right
answer when you are making quick decisions. But in the above
example, Linda is more likely to be just a bank teller than to be
both a bank teller and active in the feminist movement. There
are more bank tellers than there are bank tellers who are active
in the feminist movement. When we rate two things occurring
together as more likely than one of those things occurring alone,
we engage in the conjunction fallacy. The conjunction fallacy is
the error of believing that two events occurring together are
more likely than either of those events occurring by themselves.
It is a fallacy because logic dictates a single event is more

likely than that same event happening with another event.
Another piece of faulty reasoning that may be behind these
heuristics is the base rate fallacy (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973).
Consider the following: Walter is a 47-year-old man who reads
poetry, watches PBS, and plays golf in his spare time. Which is
more likely: that Walter is an Ivy League professor or that
Walter is a truck driver? For most of us, Walter sounds like an
Ivy League professor. Using the representativeness heuristic, we
solve this problem by thinking about whether Walter is more
like a typical Ivy League professor than a typical truck driver.
But Walter is more likely to be a truck driver. Why? According
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2012) 1.6 million heavy and
tractor-trailer truck drivers are employed in the United States,
to say nothing of elsewhere in the world. Consider how many
Ivy League professors there are. With only eight Ivy League
schools, with between a little under 1,000 faculty (Dartmouth
and Brown) to just over 4,000 (Pennsylvania and Columbia) per
school, there are about 19,500 Ivy League professors. Given the
very large number of truck drivers and relatively small number
of Ivy League professors, it is much more likely that Walter is
among the large group than the small group. When we make a
decision about the likelihood of something and ignore the
number of instances of that in the population (of people,
actions, diagnoses, etc.) we are victims of the base rate fallacy.
Test Yourself
Why is the conjunction fallacy called a fallacy?
How does the base rate fallacy contribute to making an
incorrect judgment when using the representativeness heuristic?
Affect Heuristic
Affect Heuristic

Research on how people understand numbers shows that while
frequencies and percentages are easily understood, absolute
frequencies are given greater weight. Absolute frequencies are
perceived to be larger than equivalent frequencies or
percentages. Although there may be other things going on, the
text explains this as at least partly due to the affect heuristic.
We connect emotionally to absolute frequencies (30 people with
cancer) in a way we do not with percentages (30% of the group
has cancer). Click here for an article explaining the research
"Numerical Information Can Be Persuasive or Informative
Depending on How it's Presented."
Source: Science Daily/University of Toronto.
Imagine you are on a parole board deciding whether to parole an
inmate. You are told that 20 in every 100 people released under
similar circumstances as this inmate go on to commit a violent
crime. Would you parole the person or deny parole? What if you
were told that 20% of people released who are like this inmate
go on to commit a violent crime? Research participants have
been asked similar questions. Those given information using
relative frequency, the first form of question, believed there was
greater danger than those with information in statistical form
(Slovic, Monahan, & MacGregor, 2000). Rationally, we know
that 20 out of every 100 people is equivalent to 20%, but we
process these bits of information differently. When this
information is presented in relative frequency form, in this case
the number of instances out of 100, people imagine 20
perpetrators of violent crimes—a disturbing image. These
images lead to a gut-level negative emotional reaction. The
statistical form, a percentage in this case, seems to separate us
from that image, and therefore reduces the negative affect
(emotional reaction). We use our gut-level reactions to help us
make decisions (Slovic, Peters, Finucane, & MacGregor, 2005).
This tendency to use affective reactions (gut-level emotional

reactions) as information to make judgments is called the affect
heuristic. Someone looking for a home might use the affect
heuristic. Although price, square footage, school district, and
neighborhood may all be part of the judgment, if the affect
heuristic is in play homebuyers might report that the home they
chose just felt right.
These heuristics are not just a novelty of research studies. They
can affect our lives. In a study of women who were being tested
for genetic vulnerability for breast and ovarian cancer,
researchers found extensive use of the availability heuristic and
the representativeness heuristic (Kenen, Ardern-Jones & Eeles,
2003). The women described vivid stories of others they knew
who had been treated for or died of cancer, which affected how
vulnerable these women felt in terms of their cancer risk. The
representativeness heuristic caused the women to judge their
own cancer risk by how similar they felt they were to others
who had died of cancer.
Test Yourself
Why would information about a new literacy program that
helps 60 out of every 100 children sound better to people than if
the new literacy program were described as helping 60% of
children?
Social Psychology in Depth: Heuristics and Politics
When you vote, do you spend all the time and energy required
to consider all the issues for all the candidates? If not, you are
not alone. Voters often use heuristics to make judgments about
political candidates. The time required to find, sort through, and
evaluate information on all the candidates is more than many
people can afford. How, then, does that affect the decisions
themselves?

R. R. Lau and D. P. Redlawsk (2001) note that voters often use
party affiliation or candidate ideology to make quick decisions
in voting. Most of the time such decision-making strategies get
the voters what they want, but there are times when party
affiliation or ideology can lead a voter astray. A candidate
might be categorized incorrectly. For example, the media may
say that a candidate for governor is a conservative when she is
actually more of a moderate in her policies. Candidates may
also differ from the party line. A voter may assume that because
the candidate is Republican she is pro-life, but she may actually
be pro-choice.
Beyond party affiliation and ideology, a voter might also use
endorsements to make decisions. If a favorite celebrity shows
support for a particular candidate, that voter might choose to
vote for that candidate. Endorsements may come from
individuals one trusts, like a close friend or a celebrity, or from
organizations one believes in, like the National Rifle
Association or the National Organization for Women.
Polling data also provides a simple cue to a voter. When a
particular candidate is ahead in the polls, voters might vote for
that candidate because that candidate is popular or because they
perceive that candidate will win. Candidate appearance can also
influence voters.
The researchers found that less sophisticated voters made
poorer decisions when they relied on these heuristics. These
voters would have been better served if they had examined the
issues the candidates stood for and made a logical, rational
choice rather than relying on heuristics. Using a shortcut was
detrimental to decision making. More sophisticated voters,
those with greater interest and knowledge of the political
system, made good decisions while using heuristics. This
finding is somewhat ironic given that sophisticated voters are

least likely to need heuristics, but they were the ones whose
decisions making did not suffer from using them.
5.4 Errors in Judgment
Heuristics often get us the correct answer and do so quickly. At
times, however, our cognitive systems use shortcuts that make it
more difficult for us to find the right answer. These ways of
thinking create and perpetuate errors by leading us to keep
believing in something even after our reasons for believing have
been disconfirmed. The cognitive shortcuts might also cause us
to ignore or discount information that goes against our beliefs.
When we believe we have more control than we actually do, we
are making an error in our judgment.
Belief Perseverance
Imagine you were presented with evidence that firefighters who
are risk takers are better firefighters. These firefighters are
willing to do risky things like climb up tall ladders and run into
burning buildings. Their risk-taking tendencies also help them
to find new and inventive ways to fight fires. After you have
seen this evidence you are then told it is completely false. There
is no relationship better firefighters' ability to fight fires and
their risk-taking tendencies. Would you continue to believe
what you were told? Researchers found that research
participants presented with evidence did continue to believe,
even after the researchers told them they had falsified the data.
They continued to believe it when the researchers checked with
them one week later (Anderson, 1983). Maybe because the idea
that risk taking is needed in firefighting is so self-evident, it is
the logical thing to believe, even when the story is debunked.
The problem with this conclusion is that the researchers only
told half of the participants that good firefighters are risk
takers. The other half were told that risk aversion was a good
quality in firefighters. Firefighters need to carefully analyze
situations and only go into a burning building when they know
the risks, so they can get themselves and others out safely. The

participants told about the positive effects of risk avoidance
continued to believe the story they had been told even after they
found out it was fabricated.
The tendency to believe something even after the initial reasons
for that belief are discredited is called belief perseverance.
Belief perseverance can be problematic in many situations. For
example, if your romantic interest becomes secretive, you might
suspect him or her of cheating on you. Even when you find out
the secretiveness was part of planning a romantic surprise for
you, your suspicion might remain. Students who come to
believe they lack a certain ability may persevere with that belief
despite evidence that their poor performance is a result of poor
instruction, rather than inability (Lepper, Ross, & Lau, 1986).
One way to counteract belief perseverance is to come up with
explanations that are opposite of that belief. When research
participants had to explain why risk-averse firefighters might be
good firefighters, the opposite of their initial belief, they
showed less belief perseverance (Anderson, 1982). However, if
people try to come up with an alternative for their initial belief
and find it difficult to do so, they come to hold their initial
belief more strongly. When using the availability heuristic,
people assume that an explanation that is difficult to think of is
an unlikely explanation. Another, counterintuitive way to fight
against belief perseverance is to ask people to come up with a
large number of explanations for the initial belief (Nestler,
2010). If it is difficult to develop 10 reasons why risk-taking
firefighters might be better firefighters, then people come to
believe that conclusion less.
Confirmation Bias
Once a belief is established, people tend to search for
information that will confirm that belief, a phenomenon called
the confirmation bias. This is not something people do
consciously or deliberately (Gibson, Sanbonmatsu, & Posavac,

1997). Nonetheless, when information is presented, the material
that supports a preexisting belief is seen as convincing while
material that refutes a belief is examined closely and criticized
(Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979). For example, a professor might
evaluate a student paper whose argument is in line with his
beliefs on economic policy very favorably. However, he might
attack the logic or arguments of a paper that goes against his
position on economic policy, even if it is as well-written as the
other paper.
Black and white photo of a newspaper stand holding two
different newspapers from the same day. The first displays the
headline "Ike Ignores M'Carthy" and the second displays the
headline "Ike Answers McCarthy."
©Bettman/Corbis/AP Images
A person's pre-existing belief might be confirmed by reading a
newspaper that supports his or her opinions.
This tendency might be particularly dangerous in criminal
cases. When someone commits a crime, police and lawyers need
to find the person responsible and make a case against that
person. If the police and prosecutors believe a particular person
is guilty they are likely to search for information that confirms
that belief and may discount or ignore information that goes
against their belief. If they are correct in the guilt of the person,
belief perseverance is not too problematic. It is when an
innocent person is accused that belief perseverance is most
dangerous. For example, early identification of a particular
suspect colors perceptions of later evidence, even when that
identification was made with little confidence in its accuracy
(O'Brien, 2009). Police officers might push harder in
interrogation for someone they believe to be guilty than
someone they are less sure of and see evidence of someone's
innocence as less reliable (Ask, Rebelius, & Granhag, 2008;
Kassin, Goldstein, & Savitsky, 2003; Kerstholt, & Eikelboom,

2007). Also, when a potentially guilty suspect has been
identified, fewer alternative avenues may be pursued (O'Brien,
2009; Rassin, Eerland, & Kuijpers, 2010).
Keep in mind that this is an unconscious process. Serious, well-
meaning, and ethical police and lawyers may fall victim to this
general human tendency. Individuals in other professions are
just as likely to experience belief perseverance. Psychiatrists,
for example, may seek information to confirm a certain
diagnosis they believe to be true (Mendel, et al., 2011). One
technique that can be helpful to fight against the confirmation
bias is to deliberately discuss evidence both for the belief and
against it (O'Brien, 2009). Arguing against a belief can help
make people aware of other possibilities and explanations.
Illusion of Control
Our cognitive shortcuts do not only allow us to maintain and
persevere in our beliefs—even when reasons behind our beliefs
are no longer valid, they also cause us to make errors in our
judgments about the control we have in situations that involve
chance. Despite knowledge to the contrary, we treat many
chance situations as circumstances in which our choice, skill, or
hard work will make a difference—a phenomenon shown in
Ellen Langer's studies of illusion of control. In the 1970s, Ellen
Langer did a series of studies investigating the amount of
control people believe they have in situations involving chance.
In one of these studies, Langer asked people if they would like
to buy a $1 card to participate in a $50 lottery. Half of the
participants were allowed to choose the card from a deck of
cards, the other half were handed a card from that same deck.
When Langer came back later to ask if they would be willing to
sell the card they owned, those who had chosen their card
wanted an average of $8.67 for the card. Those who were
handed a card said they would sell for $1.96. Why the
difference? Langer proposed that choice gave people a sense
that they had some control over the outcome of the lottery, even

though all cards were equally likely to win.
When people participate in a game of chance and believe that
their actions somehow influence the outcome, they have an
illusion of control. An illusion of control occurs any time we
approach a situation believing and acting as though we have
more control that we actually have. This is true when we have
no control and act as though we have some control, or when we
have some control and act as though we have more control than
we do (Presson & Benassi, 1996). The illusion is greater when
people are more involved in the task and when the task or
aspects of it are more familiar (Langer, 1975; Thompson, 1999;
Wohl & Enzle, 2002). A state lottery that allows you to choose
your own numbers is using both of these to increase your sense
of control. By choosing your own numbers you are more
involved. Many people who play the lottery play with familiar,
sometimes much loved, numbers such as birth dates or wedding
anniversaries. Success at a task also increases illusion of
control. When people get the outcome they desire, particularly
at the beginning of a string of outcomes, their illusion of
control is greater (Langer & Roth, 1975; Thompson, 1999). For
example, if someone was playing a slot machine and had a
string of wins early on, that person would have a stronger
illusion of control and may, with that illusion, be more likely to
continue to play.
Test Yourself
While doing an Internet search on the topic of gun control,
Andy quickly zeroes in on a story that is consistent with his
views, and ignores a different story that goes against his point
of view. Which of the concepts discussed in this section best
describes Andy's behavior?
Before rolling the dice in a game, Sue always blows on the
dice and whispers what she wants them to be. Which of the

concepts above best describes Sue's behavior?
5.5 Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Painting of Oedipus killing his biological father.
DeAgostini/SuperStock
Self-fulfilling prophecy is even prevalent in ancient mythology.
Oedipus, a Greek king, was told that he would one day kill his
biological father and marry his biological mother. This dated
painting depicts Oedipus killing his father.
Can our judgments about another person affect that person's
behavior? In other words, can one person's expectations affect
how another person acts? This was a question investigated by
Robert Rosenthal in a study involving teachers and students
(Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1966). After giving students what
appeared to be a test of intelligence, Rosenthal told teachers
that certain students were predicted to "bloom" over the school
year; that is, these students were expected to make great
intellectual gains. In reality these students' names were
randomly chosen from each classroom. The students were not
told anything about the tests or what their teachers expected of
them. When the researchers returned at the end of the school
year, they found that these randomly chosen students did indeed
make gains. The researchers concluded that because the students
were no different from their classmates at the beginning of the
study, it must have been the teachers' expectations that affected
the students' performance.
This tendency for our expectations to affect the behaviors of
others is called the self-fulfilling prophecy. We "prophesy"
someone else's behavior, that is, we believe something will
happen, and through our actions resulting from that belief, we
make it come true (see Figure 5.2). The behaviors we engage in
to make these prophecies come true is behavioral confirmation.

Left alone, the prophesied behavior would likely not have
happened; these students would not have made the gains they
did. Because of the prophecy and the teacher's subsequent
behavior, the teacher managed to create a situation where the
prophecy would come true. The teachers called on the students
they expected to make gains more often, gave them more
feedback, and created a generally more welcoming learning
environment. Researchers themselves can fall victim to the self-
fulfilling prophecy. When doing an experiment a researcher has
expectations for how the study will turn out, stated in the
hypothesis for the study. If controls are not put in place, the
researcher might act in a way that leads the participants to
behave in a way that fulfills the experimenter's expectations.
Figure 5.2: The self-fulfilling prophecy
A square-shaped flow chart showing the cycle of the self-
fulfilling prophecy (outer portion of the figure) with an example
(inner portion of the figure). The top of the other square is
labeled "our actions towards others" and an arrow labeled
"impact" points right and down to the right side of the square
labeled "others beliefs about us." An arrow labeled "cause"
points down and to the left to the bottom portion of the square
labeled "others actions toward us." An arrow labeled "reinforce"
points to the left and up to the left side of the square labeled
"our beliefs about ourselves." An arrow labeled "influence"
points up and to the right to the top portion of the square,
completing the chart. The inner portion of the figure illustrates
an example of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Starting at the top of
the square and moving clockwise to the right, bottom, and left
of the square are the following sentences: " Monica's belief:
Men never want to talk to me because I am not attractive. I have
nothing to offer."; "Monica's action: I do not initiate or engage
in conversations with men and I do not take care of myself
physically."; "Jarrod's belief: She is not interested in getting to
know me and does not want to talk."; "Jarrod's action: Jarrod
does not initiate or engage in conversation with Monica."

The self-fulfilling prophecy demonstrates that our beliefs about
others and subsequent actions toward them can influence the
beliefs and actions of others.
One theory that helps explain how individuals come to behave
in ways others expect them to is self-verification theory.
According to self-verification theory people want to confirm or
verify what they believe to be true about themselves (Swann,
1987). Even when our beliefs about ourselves are negative we
desire to confirm those beliefs because it allows for a stable
self-concept and a predictable social world (North & Swann,
2009). For example, if you believed you were awkward in social
situations, you would want others to acknowledge that because
then you would not have to change your self-concept and others
would not expect you to be suave and self-confident in social
situations. Self-verification interacts with self-fulfilling
prophecy when the behaviors of the person making the prophecy
lead the person to internalize those beliefs and then work to
fulfill that sense of self. For example, in a longitudinal study of
teens and their mothers, Madon et al. (2008) found that a
mother's beliefs about her child's future drinking behavior
influenced the child's belief about his or her future drinking
behavior. The child's belief lead to self-verification behaviors
and, therefore, the fulfillment of the mother's drinking
prophecies.
Self-fulfilling prophecies have multifarious effects. As noted,
parent's beliefs about their child's underage drinking can create
a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to greater or lesser drinking
later on depending on the prophecy (Madon, Guyll, Spoth,
Cross, & Hilbert, 2003; Madon, Willard, Guyll, Trudeau, &
Spoth, 2006). Within relationships, researchers found that
women with high rejection sensitivity—in other words, those
who expect that the other person will reject them—act in ways
that lead to rejecting responses. These women prophesied
rejection and, by their actions, created rejection in their

romantic partners (Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, & Khouri,
1998). Self-fulfilling prophecy has even been proposed as
partially responsible for the extreme violence found in the
Pelican Bay State Prison, a super-maximum security prison for
extremely violent and dangerous prisoners (King, Steiner, &
Breach, 2008). Researchers argue that the expectation of
prisoners to be very violent in the prison environment creates
behavior that leads to a fulfillment of that prophecy.
The self-fulfilling prophecy may influence our experiences of
pain or illness. Teens who believed they would have more pain
after surgery ended up feeling more pain and using more pain
medication than those who believed their pain would be
minimal (Logan & Rose, 2005). It may be that the teens who
were expecting pain were more anxious and paid more attention
to every twinge of discomfort, leading to a more severe
experience of pain. In a similar way, naval cadets who believed
they would experience less sea sickness and any sea sickness
they experienced would be unlikely to affect their work did
better when at sea (Eden & Zuk, 1995). In neither of these
situations did the prophecy eliminate the pain or sickness, but it
did make it better for both.
Test Yourself
How is it that self-fulfilling prophecies come true?
Conclusion
Our cognitive systems are designed to work as efficiently as
possible, with the automatic system taking over as much as it
can, while the conscious system deals with the nuanced and
difficult problems that the automatic system cannot handle. The
use of schemas and heuristics helps make this possible. These
mental shortcuts can be helpful to us, but, at times, do lead to

errors.
Chapter Summary
Conscious and Automatic Processes
The human cognitive system operates on two levels, a conscious
level and an automatic level. The conscious system is directed
by the individual and works slowly and deliberately on
problems to provide nuanced answers. The automatic system
works outside of conscious awareness and without intention.
The automatic system works quickly, is largely effortless, and
provides general answers.
Schemas and Scripts
Schemas are knowledge structures that allow for organization of
information. Schemas can be helpful in memory but can also
provide misleading cues when something we expect because of
our schema is not present. Scripts are knowledge structures
about events. Scripts can be helpful by allowing individuals to
predict what will happen and to, therefore, engage in expected
behavior.
Heuristics
The automatic system allows us to make quick judgments
through the use of mental shortcuts called heuristics. When we
use the availability heuristic, we judge the likelihood of an
event based on how available that event is in memory. The
representativeness heuristic involves judging the likelihood of
an event based on how closely it resembles the typical case.
When we make errors in judgments using these heuristics it may
be due, in part, to the conjunction fallacy or the base rate
fallacy. With the conjunction fallacy, we judge the likelihood of
two things occurring together as more likely than one of those
occurring alone. When we ignore the rate of events and make
judgments that suggest the unlikely event is more likely, we
have engaged in the base rate fallacy. The affect heuristic
occurs when we make judgments based on gut-level emotional

reactions to events.
Errors in Judgment
Particular ways of thinking can contribute to errors in judgment.
When we engage in belief perseverance we continue to believe
in something even after our reasons for believing have been
disconfirmed. Confirmation bias occurs when we ignore or
discount information that goes against our beliefs and search for
and pay attention to information that fits with our beliefs. When
we believe we have more control in a situation we have an
illusion of control.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Others' expectations of us can influence our behavior.
Researchers have found that prophecies for behavior—in other
words, what people think others will do—can become self-
fulfilling when individuals act in ways that elicit that behavior
from the other.
How might schemas be helpful and harmful in one's life?
What might your life be like if there were no scripts?
Consider a time when you might have used the availability,
representativeness, or affect heuristic in making a judgment.
How did that affect the accuracy of your judgment?
Although the examples in the chapter concern times when
heuristics lead us to incorrect answers, why are heuristics
helpful and used regularly by us?
What might you do to recognize and fight against belief
perseverance and confirmation bias?
Have self-fulfilling prophecies ever affected your life?
Key Terms
Click on each key term to reveal the definition.

affect heuristic
automatic system
availability heuristic
base rate fallacy
behavioral confirmation
belief perseverance
confirmation bias
conjunction fallacy
conscious system
heuristics
illusion of control
representativeness heuristic
schema
scripts
self-fulfilling prophecy
self-verification theory
Stroop effect

Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Amos Tversky; Daniel Kahneman
Science, New Series, Vol. 185, No. 4157. (Sep. 27, 1974), pp.
1124-1131.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-
8075%2819740927%293%3A185%3A4157%3C1124%3AJUUH
AB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M
Science is currently published by American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of
JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and
Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have
obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a
journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content
in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this
work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/aaas.html.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the
same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated

to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For
more information regarding JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]
http://www.jstor.org
Wed Jan 31 14:08:38 2007
8075%2819740927%293%3A185%3A4157%3C1124%3AJUUH
AB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html
http://www.jstor.org/journals/aaas.html
You have printed the following article:
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Amos Tversky; Daniel Kahneman
Science, New Series, Vol. 185, No. 4157. (Sep. 27, 1974), pp.
1124-1131.
Stable URL:

8075%2819740927%293%3A185%3A4157%3C1124%3AJUUH
AB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M
This article references the following linked citations. If you are
trying to access articles from an
off-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your
library web site to access JSTOR. Please
visit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about
options for remote access to JSTOR.
References and Notes
11 The Assessment of Prior Distributions in Bayesian Analysis
Robert L. Winkler
Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 62, No.
319. (Sep., 1967), pp. 776-800.
Stable URL:
1459%28196709%2962%3A319%3C776%3ATAOPDI%3E2.0.C
O%3B2-E
http://www.jstor.org
LINKED CITATIONS
- Page 1 of 1 -
NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been
maintained in this citation list.
8075%2819740927%293%3A185%3A4157%3C1124%3AJUUH
AB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M&origin=JSTOR-pdf

1459%28196709%2962%3A319%3C776%3ATAOPDI%3E2.0.C
O%3B2-E&origin=JSTOR-pdf

Chapter 5Making JudgmentsSnapshot of an episode from Cupid.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Chapter 5Making JudgmentsSnapshot of an episode from Cupid.docx

Similar to Chapter 5Making JudgmentsSnapshot of an episode from Cupid.docx (19)

More from christinemaritza

More from christinemaritza (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Chapter 5Making JudgmentsSnapshot of an episode from Cupid.docx