The transparency of denial: Briefing in the debriefing paradigm.

Wegner, Daniel M.; Coulton, Gary F.; Wenzlaff, Richard M.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.49.2.338

Cited by 126 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…A great number of studies demonstrates that negations slow down cognition (Wason, 1959) and are prone to error (Fiedler, Armbruster, Nickel, Walther, & Asbeck, 1996;Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard, 1975;Wegner, Coulton, & Wenzlaff, 1985). Gilbert's (1991) sequential model of negating describes how negations may be represented in memory.…”

Section: Representing What Is Not the Case: Negations And The Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Reflective and Impulsive Determinants of Social Behavior

Strack¹,

Deutsch

2004

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

3,307

120

2,159

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This article describes a 2-systems model that explains social behavior as a joint function of reflective and impulsive processes. In particular, it is assumed that social behavior is controlled by 2 interacting systems that follow different operating principles. The reflective system generates behavioral decisions that are based on knowledge about facts and values, whereas the impulsive system elicits behavior through associative links and motivational orientations. The proposed model describes how the 2 systems interact at various stages of processing, and how their outputs may determine behavior in a synergistic or antagonistic fashion. It extends previous models by integrating motivational components that allow more precise predictions of behavior. The implications of this reflective-impulsive model are applied to various phenomena from social psychology and beyond. Extending previous dual-process accounts, this model is not limited to specific domains of mental functioning and attempts to integrate cognitive, motivational, and behavioral mechanisms.In the history of attempts to discover the causes of human behavior, the most widespread explanations are based on the assumption that human beings do what they believe is good for them. Thus, they are construed as "rational animals" capable of recognizing the value or utility of their actions.At the same time, however, it is obvious that human beings do not always act this way; that is, under certain circumstances people behave in ways that do not reflect their values. To account for this phenomenon, to which the Greek philosophers gave the name akrasia (e.g., Mele, 1992), several strategies have been pursued. The first strategy assumes ignorance or lack of knowledge on the part of the actor. Socrates, for example, claimed that if people only knew what is good for them, they would act accordingly. A similar position is held by modern economists who imply that irrational decisions reflect a lack of appropriate information (Friedman, 1976). The second strategy postulates more than one set of principles that may control human action. For example, a behavior may occur mindlessly (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978) or automatically; that is, without directing much attention to the utility of an outcome, a person may act the way he or she has acted many times before. Such habitual behaviors were the focus of many psychological theories in which the frequency and recency of previous executions of a given behavior were seen as primary determinants (e.g., Hull, 1943). The third strategy has been to understand human behavior as a function of drives. In particular, basic needs that are biologically rooted, such as hunger, thirst, or reproduction, are seen as major forces. Their strength may override considerations of utility and determine behavior in an immediate fashion.Although most psychological theories have focused on one of these aspects, some have acknowledged that behaviors may be multiply determined. Most prominently, Freud (e.g., 1933/1949 described human behavior ...

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Section: Representing What Is Not the Case: Negations And The Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Reflective and Impulsive Determinants of Social Behavior

Strack¹,

Deutsch

2004

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

3,307

120

2,159

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…With the distinction in hand between a--rational and rationally assessable etiologies for belief, we can define an analogous distinction for experiences as follows: 35 Mandelbaum, "Thinking is Believing" (in preparation) argues that a wide range of beliefs are formed and maintained a--rationally, drawing on belief perseverance studies (Wegner et al 1985) as well as the Anchoring heuristic discussed by Tversky and Kahneman. Subjects who are asked to give numerical estimates (about how old Gandhi was when he died, for example) incorporate numerical information that they know to be irrelevant (such as their social security number) when the irrelevant information is salient.…”

Section: Etiologies Of Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

The epistemic impact of the etiology of experience

Siegel

2012

Philos Stud

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“…After all, why should one deny something unless this was in fact a possibility? The denial of criminality then (e.g., P is not a criminal) may itself prove incriminating (Wegner, et al, 1981;Wegner, Coulton & Wenzlaff, 1985; for related evidence see Christie et al 2001;Gilbert, Tafarodi & Malone, 1993;Gilbert, Krull & Malone, 1990;Grant, Malaviya, Sternthal, 2004;Hasson & Glucksberg, 2006;Kaup, Ludtke & Zwaan, 2006;Paradis &Willners, 2006). These findings demonstrate the consequences of using The negation bias 39 negations, rather than affirmations, in person description, and highlight the importance of the negation bias.…”

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confidence: 99%

The negation bias: When negations signal stereotypic expectancies.

Beukeboom¹,

Finkenauer²,

Wigboldus³

2010

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

110

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Research on linguistic biases shows that stereotypic expectancies are implicitly reflected in language and thereby subtly communicated to message recipients. We examined whether these findings extend to the use of negations (e.g., not smart instead of stupid). We hypothesized that people use more negations in descriptions of stereotype inconsistent behavior than in descriptions of stereotype consistent behavior. In three studies, participants either judged the applicability of experimentally controlled person descriptions, or spontaneously produced person descriptions themselves. Results provided support for this hypothesis. Moreover, a fourth study demonstrated that negations have communicative consequences. When a target person's behavior was described with negations, message recipients inferred that this behavior was an exception to the rule, and that it was more likely caused by situational circumstances than by dispositional factors. These findings indicate that by using negations people implicitly communicate stereotypic expectancies, and that negations play a subtle but powerful role in stereotype maintenance. The negation bias 3The Negation Bias: When Negations Signal Stereotypic ExpectanciesWhen people describe others' behaviors they can choose different words and formulations.For example, people can describe a person's dim comment as Harry was stupid or Harry was not smart. Which description they choose seems arbitrary at first sight. Both sentences adequately describe the event and people do not seem to give their choice of words muchthought. Yet, research shows that rather than being arbitrary, people's choice of words and language use is driven by systematic and implicit social cognitive processes. For instance, research on linguistic biases shows that people's prior expectancies and stereotypes influence their choice of words in describing others. That is, people use more abstract predicates to describe stereotype consistent behaviors than stereotype inconsistent behaviors. This biased language use not only reflects a speaker's stereotypic expectancies about a person, but, importantly, also transmits these expectancies to recipients. In this way, biased language use is one of the predominant means of stereotype maintenance at an interpersonal level (Maass, 1999;Maass, Salvi, Arcuri & Semin, 1989;Sekaquaptewa et al., 2003;Wigboldus, Semin & Spears, 2000).To extend our knowledge on linguistic biases, the present paper introduces the negation bias. Negation descriptions contain a negation marker such as not or no to deny the truth value of a particular proposition (e.g., Harry was not smart). We will refer to descriptions of others' behavior that include such negation markers as negations. Conversely, affirmation descriptions assert the truth value of a particular proposition and may be used to describe the same behavioral event (e.g., Harry was stupid). In the present research, we investigate whether the use of negations is influenced by people's stereotypic expectancies and whether negations...

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The transparency of denial: Briefing in the debriefing paradigm.

Cited by 126 publications

References 33 publications

Reflective and Impulsive Determinants of Social Behavior

Reflective and Impulsive Determinants of Social Behavior

The epistemic impact of the etiology of experience

The negation bias: When negations signal stereotypic expectancies.

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