{"id":3182,"date":"2012-08-11T21:08:07","date_gmt":"2012-08-11T20:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=3182"},"modified":"2012-08-11T21:08:07","modified_gmt":"2012-08-11T20:08:07","slug":"some-quotes-from-giving-debiasing-away-can-psychological-research-on-correcting-cognitive-errors-promote-human-welfare-scott-o-lilienfeld-rachel-ammirati-and-kristin-landfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2012\/08\/some-quotes-from-giving-debiasing-away-can-psychological-research-on-correcting-cognitive-errors-promote-human-welfare-scott-o-lilienfeld-rachel-ammirati-and-kristin-landfield\/","title":{"rendered":"Some quotes from Giving Debiasing Away: Can Psychological Research on Correcting Cognitive Errors Promote Human Welfare? (Scott O. Lilienfeld, Rachel Ammirati, and Kristin Landfield)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some quotes from Giving Debiasing Away: Can Psychological Research on Correcting Cognitive Errors Promote Human Welfare?<\/em><\/a> by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Rachel Ammirati, and Kristin Landfield.<\/p>\n

I was happy to learn that Lilienfeld is part of the neorational movement! I have already read one of his books, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior<\/em>, and plan on reading another of them: Science and pseudoscience in clinical<\/em> psychology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ABSTRACT\u2014Despite Miller\u2019s (1969) now-famous clarion<\/span><\/p>\n

call to \u2018\u2018give psychology away\u2019\u2019 to the general public, sci-<\/span><\/p>\n

enti\ufb01c psychology has done relatively little to combat fes-<\/span><\/p>\n

tering problems of ideological extremism and both inter-<\/span><\/p>\n

and intragroup con\ufb02ict. After proposing that ideological<\/span><\/p>\n

extremism is a signi\ufb01cant contributor to world con\ufb02ict and<\/span><\/p>\n

that con\ufb01rmation bias and several related biases are sig-<\/span><\/p>\n

ni\ufb01cant contributors to ideological extremism, we raise a<\/span><\/p>\n

crucial scienti\ufb01c question: Can debiasing the general<\/span><\/p>\n

public against such biases promote human welfare by<\/span><\/p>\n

tempering ideological extremism? We review the knowns<\/span><\/p>\n

and unknowns of debiasing techniques against con\ufb01rma-<\/span><\/p>\n

tion bias, examine potential barriers to their real-world<\/span><\/p>\n

ef\ufb01cacy, and delineate future directions for research on<\/span><\/p>\n

debiasing. We argue that research on combating extreme<\/span><\/p>\n

con\ufb01rmation bias should be among psychological science\u2019s<\/span><\/p>\n

most pressing priorities.<\/span><\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Second, the term bias blind spot (Pronin, Gilovich, & Ross,<\/span><\/p>\n

2004), more informally called the \u2018\u2018not me fallacy\u2019\u2019 (Felson,<\/span><\/p>\n

2002), refers to the belief that others are biased but that we are<\/span><\/p>\n

not. Research shows that people readily recognize con\ufb01rmation<\/span><\/p>\n

bias and related biases in others, but not in themselves (Pronin<\/span><\/p>\n

et al., 2004). The bias blind spot, which we can think of as a<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018\u2018meta-bias,\u2019\u2019 leads us to believe that only others, not ourselves,<\/span><\/p>\n

interpret evidence in a distorted fashion.<\/span><\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Second, many individuals may be unreceptive to debiasing<\/span><\/p>\n

efforts because they do not perceive these efforts as relevant to<\/span><\/p>\n

their personal welfare. Research suggests that at least some<\/span><\/p>\n

cognitive biases may be reduced by enhancing participants\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

motivation to examine evidence thoughtfully (e.g., by increasing<\/span><\/p>\n

their accountability to others), thereby promoting less per-<\/span><\/p>\n

functory processing of information (Arkes, 1991; Tetlock&Kim,<\/span><\/p>\n

1987). Therefore, some debiasing efforts may succeed only if<\/span><\/p>\n

participants can be persuaded that their biases result in poor<\/span><\/p>\n

decisions of real-world consequence to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Surely this is correct.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Fifth, researchers must be cognizant of the possibility that<\/span><\/p>\n

efforts to combat con\ufb01rmation bias may occasionally back\ufb01re<\/span><\/p>\n

(Wilson, Centerbar, & Brekke, 2002). Researchers have ob-<\/span><\/p>\n

served a back\ufb01re effect in the literature on hindsight bias<\/span><\/p>\n

(Sanna, Schwarz, & Stocker, 2002), in which asking participants<\/span><\/p>\n

to generate many alternative outcomes for an event paradoxi-<\/span><\/p>\n

cally increases their certainty that the original outcome was<\/span><\/p>\n

inevitable. This effect may arise because participants asked to<\/span><\/p>\n

think of numerous alternative outcomes \ufb01nd doing so dif\ufb01cult,<\/span><\/p>\n

leading them (by means of the availability heuristic; Tversky &<\/span><\/p>\n

Kahneman, 1973) to conclude that there weren\u2019t so many al-<\/span><\/p>\n

ternative outcomes after all. Whether similar back\ufb01re effects<\/span><\/p>\n

could result from efforts to debias participants against con\ufb01r-<\/span><\/p>\n

mation bias by encouraging them to consider alternative view-<\/span><\/p>\n

points is unclear. Moreover, because research on attitude<\/span><\/p>\n

inoculation (McGuire, 1962) suggests that exposure to weak<\/span><\/p>\n

versions of arguments may actually immunize people against<\/span><\/p>\n

these arguments, exposing people to alternative positions may<\/span><\/p>\n

be effective only to the extent that these arguments are pre-<\/span><\/p>\n

sented persuasively.<\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some quotes from Giving Debiasing Away: Can Psychological Research on Correcting Cognitive Errors Promote Human Welfare? by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Rachel Ammirati, and Kristin Landfield. I was happy to learn that Lilienfeld is part of the neorational movement! I have already read one of his books, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1652,1653],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-thinking-meta-thinking","category-psychology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3183,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182\/revisions\/3183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}