Seeing approach motivation in the avoidance behavior of others: Implications for an understanding of pluralistic ignorance.

Abstract

Four studies tested the hypothesis that observers tend to interpret others' actions as approach motivated even when they recognize that their own identical choices were motivated by avoidance. Study 1 found that voters in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election who chose a candidate primarily because of their aversion to the alternative thought that others who voted for the same candidate liked him more than they themselves did. In Studies 2, 3, and 4 participants who learned that others made the same choice as themselves between 2 unappealing flavors of soda orjelly beans estimated that the others would pay more than they would for their common choice. The relevance of these findings for an understanding of pluralistic ignorance is discussed.

Motive attribution asymmetry for love vs. hate drives intractable conflict

“…This pattern of relative visibility between love and hate resembles the lack of awareness that drives other biases, such as the bias blind spot (24) and naive realism (1). Related to this misperception is the tendency for people to interpret others' actions as approachmotivated even when recognizing their own actions to be avoidance-motivated (because approach motives seem more salient) (25). When people evaluate their enemies, they apparently link enemy actions to approach motives (toward the ingroup) rather than avoidance motives to protect their own.…”

How dynamic can organizational capabilities be? Towards a dual‐process model of capability dynamization

“…Social psychological research stresses the tendency to act in favor of the consented current thought and to avoid confrontation with deviating negative feedback and signals (Miller and Nelson, 2002;Tripsas and Gavetti, 2000). One of the bestknown effects in this context is groupthink (Esser, 1998;Janis, 1982), which is likely to commit the group to their perspectives once developed.…”

The Role of (Dis)similarity in (Mis)predicting Others’ Preferences

“…People readily observe one another's choices-the cars they drive, the food they eat, the clothes they wear-and unfailingly conclude that others like the options they choose: if a consumer chooses Widget A, the consumer must like Widget A. This intuition is robust and unyielding, and persists even when the chosen option is objectively undesirable (e.g., Jones and Harris 1967;Miller and Nelson 2002). In essence, observers use others' known choices as meaningful benchmarks against which unchosen options are compared.…”

“…When we observe others make a choice, we consistently assume they like the option they chose (Miller and Nelson 2002), but make more nuanced inferences about their preferences for unchosen options. As this paper demonstrates, people make different predictions about a forgone option depending on whether it is similar-or dissimilar-to a chosen option; simply put, people expect others to like similar options and to dislike dissimilar ones.…”