The Influence of Instructions to Correct for Bias on Social Judgments

Khan, Saera R.; Dang, Tzipporah; Mack, A.H.

doi:10.1080/01973533.2014.971157

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…People do rely on oversimplified rules to interpret the ambiguous, uncertain behavior of others to fill in on missing pieces of information (Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977; Kahn, Dang, & Mack, 2014; Kelley, 1950; Widmeyer & Loy, 1988). But when there is more individuating information available, there is less reliance on generalized stereotypic knowledge (Kunda, Davies, Adams, & Spencer, 2002; Lick & Johnson, 2014; see also Woolley & Ghossainy, 2013; Yzerbyt, Schadron, Leyens, & Rocher, 1994).…”

Section: Integrating Individuating Cues With Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People do rely on oversimplified rules to interpret the ambiguous, uncertain behavior of others to fill in on missing pieces of information (Higgins, Rholes & Jones, 1977;Kahn, Dang & Mack, 2014;Kelley, 1950;Widmeyer & Loy, 1988 Woolley & Ghossainy, 2013;Yzerbyt, Schadron, Leyens & Rocher, 1994). Similarly, base rates provide a useful overview of the current situation.…”

Section: Integrating Individuating Cues With Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

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ALIED: Humans as adaptive lie detectors.

Street¹

2015

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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People make for poor lie detectors. They have accuracy rates comparable to a coin toss, and come with a set of systematic biases that sway the judgment. This pessimistic view stands in contrast to research showing that people make informed decisions that adapt to the context they operate in. The current article proposes a new theoretical direction for lie detection research. I argue that lie detectors make informed, adaptive judgments in a low-diagnostic world. This Adaptive Lie Detector People have little idea of when they are being lied to, with accuracy rates only marginally above chance (Bond & DePaulo, 2006;Kraut, 1980). They seem to have the wrong beliefs about what cues give away liars (The Global Deception Research Team, 2006), and even with training there is only a modest increase in accuracy (Frank & Feeley, 2003;Hauch, Sporer, Michael & Meissner, 2014). What is more, there is a robust bias to take what others say at face value and believe it is the truth, dubbed the 'truth bias' (Bond & DePaulo, 2006;McCornack & Parks, 1986), which some have taken as evidence that people are gullible (Buller & Burgoon, 1996;O'Sullivan, 2003) and not in control of this bias (Gilbert, 1991). This pessimistic view has been dominant in the field for some time (e.g., Bond & DePaulo, 2006;Kraut, 1980;Mandelbaum, 2014;Vrij, Granhag & Porter, 2010). The current article takes a new position. I draw on recent advances and present a more optimistic view of the lie detector: as one who makes informed judgments in a low diagnostic world. In particular, I take a more Brunswikian point of view and argue that people adapt their judgment strategies based on the nature of the information available (see Brunswik, 1952). This is referred to as the Adaptive Lie Detector account (ALIED). Overview of the AccountThe ALIED account is inspired by advances in the decision-making literature, in particular the adaptive decision making perspective (Gigerenzer & Selten, 2001; Gigerenzer, Todd & The ABC Group, 1999;Platzer & Bröder, 2012;Simon, 1990).In an information-limited world and with a finite cognitive capacity, people can arrive at satisfactorily accurate judgments. By adapting to the context, one can put those limited resources to best use. Simplified strategies such as recognition and heuristics allow for 'satisficing' inferences to be made (Gigerenzer & Selten, 2001;Simon, 1956Simon, , 1990. Notably, people do not default to leaning on their contextual knowledge, 4 but vicariously adapt what information they use in order to make an informed judgment (Brunswik, 1952). These simplified context-general rules help form decisions under uncertainty (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011;Simon, 1990).ALIED proposes that people attempt to form a judgment about a specific statement by using information that pertains directly to that specific statement. For instance, a confession that the statement is false is an individuating piece of information that can help us decide whether this particular statement is true or false.Similarly, verbal cues...

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