38. L. Festinger, “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes,” Human Relations 7: 117–40 (1954); A. Tesser, M. Millar, and J. Moore, “Some Affective Consequences of Social Comparison and Reflection Processes: The Pain and Pleasure of Being Close,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54: 49–61 (1988); S. E. Taylor and M. Lobel, “Social Comparison Activity Under Threat: Downward Evaluation and Upward Contacts,” Psychological Review 96: 569–75 (1989); and T. A. Wills, “Downward Comparison Principles in Social Psychology,” Psychological Bulletin 90: 245–71 (1981).
39. T. Pyszczynski, J. Greenberg, and J. LaPrelle, “Social Comparison After Success and Failure: Biased Search for Information Consistent with a Self-Servicing Conclusion,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 21: 195–211 (1985).
40. J. V. Wood, S. E. Taylor, and R. R. Lichtman, “Social Comparison in Adjustment to Breast Cancer,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49: 1169–83 (1985).
41. S. E. Taylor et al., “Social Support, Support Groups, and the Cancer Patient,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 54: 608–15 (1986).
42. A. Tesser and J. Smith, “Some Effects of Task Relevance and Friendship on Helping: You Don’t Always Help the One You Like,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 16: 582–90 (1980).
43. A. H. Hastorf and H. Cantril, “They Saw a Game: A Case Study,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49: 129–34 (1954).
44. L. Sigelman and C. K. Sigelman, “Judgments of the Carter-Reagan Debate: The Eyes of the Beholders,” Public Opinion Quarterly 48: 624–28 (1984); R. K. Bothwell and J. C. Brigham, “Selective Evaluation and Recall During the 1980 Reagan-Carter Debate,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 13: 427–42 (1983); J. G. Payne et al., “Perceptions of the 1988 Presidential and Vice-Presidential Debates,” American Behavioral Scientist 32: 425–35 (1989); and G. D. Munro et al., “Biased Assimilation of Sociopolitical Arguments: Evaluating the 1996 U.S. Presidential Debate,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 24: 15–26 (2002).
45. R. P. Vallone, L. Ross, and M. R. Lepper, “The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the Beirut Massacre,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49: 577–85 (1985).
46. C. G. Lord, L. Ross, and M. R. Lepper, “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37: 2098–109 (1979).
47. It is no consolation that in subsequent studies, both established scientists and scientists in training showed the same tendency to favor techniques that produced favored conclusions. See J. J. Koehler, “The Influence of Prior Beliefs on Scientific Judgments of Evidence Quality,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 56: 28–55 (1993).
48. T. Pyszczynski, J. Greenberg, and K. Holt, “Maintaining Consistency Between Self-Serving Beliefs and Available Data: A Bias in Information Evaluation,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 11: 179–90 (1985).
49. P. H. Ditto and D. F. Lopez, “Motivated Skepticism: Use of Differential Decision Criteria for Preferred and Nonpreferred Conclusions,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63: 568–84 (1992).
50. Ibid.
51. T. Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life (New York: Free Press, 1991).
52. This tendency can have disastrous consequences. For example, in 2004, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the CIA had provided the White House with incorrect information about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which led the United States to invade Iraq. According to that report, the tendency to cook facts “led Intelligence Community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs.” K. P. Shrader, “Report: War Rationale Based on CIA Error,” Associated Press, 9 July 2004.
53. Agence-France-Presse, “Italy: City Wants Happier Goldfish,” New York Times, 24 July 2004, A5.
Chapter 9: Immune to Reality
1. T. D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); and J. A. Bargh and T. L. Chartrand, “The Unbearable Automaticity of Being,” American Psychologist 54: 462–79 (1999).
2. R. E. Nisbett and T. D. Wilson, “Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes,” Psychological Review 84: 231–59 (1977);D. J. Bem, “Self-Perception Theory,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. L. Berkowitz, vol. 6 (New York: Academic Press, 1972), 1–62; M. S. Gazzaniga, The Social Brain (New York: Basic Books, 1985); and D. M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).
3. E. T. Higgings, W. S. Rholes, and C. R. Jones, “Category Accessibility and Impression Formation,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 13: 141–54 (1977).
4. J. Bargh, M. Chen, and L. Burrows. “Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71: 230–44 (1996).
5. A. Dijksterhuis and A. van Knippenberg, “The Relation Between Perception and Behavior, or How to Win a Game of Trivial Pursuit,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74: 865–77 (1998).
6. Nisbett and Wilson, “Telling More Than We Can Know.”
7. J. W. Schooler, D. Ariely, and G. Loewenstein, “The Pursuit and Assessment of Happiness Can Be Self-Defeating,” in The Psychology of Economic Decisions: Rationality and Well-Being, ed. I. Brocas and J. Carillo, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
8. K. N. Ochsner et al., “Rethinking Feelings: An fMRI Study of the Cognitive Regulation of Emotion,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14: 1215–29 (2002).
9. D. M. Wegner, R. Erber, and S. Zanakos, “Ironic Processes in the Mental Control of Mood and Mood-Related Thought,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 1093–104 (1993); and D. M. Wegner, A. Broome, and S. J. Blumberg, “Ironic Effects of Trying to Relax Under Stress,” Behaviour Research and Therapy 35: 11–21 (1997).
10. D. T. Gilbert et al., “Immune Neglect: A Source of Durability Bias in Affective Forecasting,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75: 617–38 (1998).
11. Ibid.
12. D. T. Gilbert et al., “Looking Forward to Looking Backward: The Misprediction of Regret,” Psychological Science 15: 346–50 (2004).
13. M. Curtiz, Casablanca, Warner Bros., 1942.
14. T. Gilovich and V. H. Medvec, “The Experience of Regret: What When, and Why,” Psychological Review 102: 379–95 (1995); N. Roese, If Only: How to Turn Regret into Opportunity (New York: Random House 2004); G. Loomes and R. Sugden, “Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice Under Uncertainty,” Economic Journal 92: 805–24 (1982); and D. Bell, “Regret in Decision Making Under Uncertainty,” Operations Research 20: 961–81 (1982).
15. I. Ritov and J. Baron, “Outcome Knowledge, Regret, and Omission Bias,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 64: 119–27 (1995); I. Ritov and J. Baron, “Probability of Regret: Anticipation of Uncertainty Resolution in Choice: Outcome Knowledge, Regret, and Omission Bias,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 66: 228–36 (1996); and M. Zeelenberg, “Anticipated Regret, Expected Feedback and Behavioral Decision Making,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 12: 93–106 (1999).
16. M. T. Crawford et al., “Reactance, Compliance, and Anticipated Regret,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38: 56–63 (2002).
17. I. Simonson, “The Influence of Anticipating Regret and Responsibility on Purchase Decisions,” Journal of Consumer Research 19: 105–18 (1992).
18. V. H. Medvec, S. F. Madey, and T. Gilovich, “When Less Is More: Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction Among Olympic Medalists,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69: 603
–10 (1995); and D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, “Variants of Uncertainty,” Cognition 11: 143–57 (1982).
19. D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, “The Psychology of Preferences,” Scientific American 246: 160–73 (1982).
20. Gilovich and Medvec, “The Experience of Regret.”
21. T. Gilovich, V. H. Medvec, and S. Chen, “Omission, Commission, and Dissonance Reduction: Overcoming Regret in the Monty Hall Problem,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21: 182–90 (1995).
22. H. B. Gerard and G. C. Mathewson, “The Effects of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group: A Replication,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2: 278–87 (1966).
23. P. G. Zimbardo, “Control of Pain Motivation by Cognitive Dissonance,” Science 151: 217–19 (1966).
24. See also E. Aronson and J. Mills, “The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 59: 177–81 (1958); J. L. Freedman, “Long-Term Behavioral Effects of Cognitive Dissonance,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 1: 145–55 (1965); D. R. Shaffer and C. Hendrick, “Effects of Actual Effort and Anticipated Effort on Task Enhancement,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 7: 435–47 (1971); H. R. Arkes and C. Blumer, “The Psychology of Sunk Cost,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 35: 124–40 (1985); and J. T. Jost et al. “Social Inequality and the Reduction of Ideological Dissonance on Behalf of the System: Evidence of Enhanced System Justification Among the Disadvantaged,” European Journal of Social Psychology 33: 13–36 (2003).
25. D. T. Gilbert et al., “The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad,” Psychological Science 15: 14–19 (2004).
26. D. Frey et al., “Re-evaluation of Decision Alternatives Dependent upon the Reversibility of a Decision and the Passage of Time,” European Journal of Social Psychology 14: 447–50 (1984); and D. Frey, “Reversible and Irreversible Decisions: Preference for Consonant Information as a Function of Attractiveness of Decision Alternatives,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 7: 621–26 (1981).
27. S. Wiggins et al., “The Psychological Consequences of Predictive Testing for Huntington’s Disease,” New England Journal of Medicine 327: 1401–5 (1992).
28. D. T. Gilbert, and J. E. J. Ebert, “Decisions and Revisions: The Affective Forecasting of Changeable Outcomes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82: 503–14 (2002).
29. J. W. Brehm, A Theory of Psychological Reactance (New York: Academic Press, 1966).
30. R. B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1985).
31. S. S. Iyengar and M. R. Lepper, “When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79: 995–1006 (2000); and B. Schwartz, “Self-Determination: The Tyranny of Freedom,” American Psychologist 55: 79–88 (2000).
32. J. W. Pennebaker, “Writing About Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process,” Psychological Science 8: 162–66 (1997).
33. J. W. Pennebaker, T. J. Mayne, and M. E. Francis, “Linguistic Predictors of Adaptive Bereavement,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72: 863–71 (1997).
34. T. D. Wilson et al., “The Pleasures of Uncertainty: Prolonging Positive Moods in Ways People Do Not Anticipate,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 5–21 (2005).
35. B. Fischoff, “Hindsight =/= foresight: The Effects of Outcome Knowledge on Judgment Under Uncertainty,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 1: 288–99 (1975); and C. A. Anderson, M. R. Lepper, and L. Ross, “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39: 1037–49 (1980).
36. B. Weiner, “ ‘Spontaneous’ Causal Thinking,” Psychological Bulletin 97: 74–84 (1985); and R. R. Hassin, J. A. Bargh, and J. S. Uleman, “Spontaneous Causal Inferences,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38: 515–22 (2002).
37. B. Zeigarnik, “Das Behalten erledigter und unerledigter Handlungen,” Psychologische Forschung 9: 1–85 (1927); and G. W. Boguslavsky, “Interruption and Learning,” Psychological Review 58: 248–55 (1951).
38. Wilson et al., “Pleasures of Uncertainty.”
39. J. Keats, letter to Richard Woodhouse, 27 October 1881, in Selected Poems and Letters by John Keats, ed. D. Bush (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959).
Chapter 10: Once Bitten
1. D. Wirtz et al., “What to Do on Spring Break? The Role of Predicted, On-line, and Remembered Experience in Future Choice,” Psychological Science 14: 520–24 (2003); and S. Bluck et al., “A Tale of Three Functions: The Self-Reported Use of Autobiographical Memory,” Social Cognition 23: 91–117 (2005).
2. A. Tversky and D. Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judgment Frequency and Probability,” Cognitive Psychology 5: 207–32 (1973).
3. L. J. Sanna and N. Schwarz, “Integrating Temporal Biases: The Interplay of Focal Thoughts and Accessibility Experiences,” Psychological Science 15: 474–81 (2004).
4. R. Brown and J. Kulik, “Flashbulb Memories,” Cognition 5: 73–99 (1977); and P. H. Blaney, “Affect and Memory: A Review,” Psychological Bulletin 99: 229–46 (1986).
5. D. T. Miller and B. R. Taylor, “Counterfactual Thought, Regret and Superstition: How to Avoid Kicking Yourself,” in What Might Have Been: The Social Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking, ed. N. J. Roese and J. M. Olson (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995), 305–31; and J. Kruger, D. Wirtz, and D. T. Miller, “Counterfactual Thinking and the First Instinct Fallacy,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 725–35 (2005).
6. R. Buehler and C. McFarland, “Intensity Bias in Affective Forecasting: The Role of Temporal Focus,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27: 1480–93 (2001).
7. C. K. Morewedge, D. T. Gilbert, and T. D. Wilson, “The Least Likely of Times: How Memory for Past Events Biases the Prediction of Future Events,” Psychological Science 16: 626–30 (2005).
8. B. L. Fredrickson and D. Kahneman, “Duration Neglect in Retrospective Evaluations of Affective Episodes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 45–55 (1993); and D. Ariely and Z. Carmon, “Summary Assessment of Experiences: The Whole Is Different from the Sum of Its Parts,” in Time and Decision, ed. G. Loewenstein, D. Read, and R. F. Baumeister (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003), 323–49.
9. W. M. Lepley, “Retention as a Function of Serial Position,” Psychological Bulletin 32: 730 (1935); B. B. Murdock, “The Serial Position Effect of Free Recall,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 64: 482–88 (1962); and T. L. White and M. Treisman, “A Comparison of the Encoding of Content and Order in Olfactory Memory and in Memory for Visually Presented Verbal Materials,” British Journal of Psychology 88: 459–72 (1997).
10. N. H. Anderson, “Serial Position Curves in Impression Formation,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 97: 8–12 (1973).
11. D. Kahneman et al., “When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better Ending,” Psychological Science 4: 401–5 (1993).
12. J. J. Christensen-Szalanski, “Discount Functions and the Measurement of Patients’ Values: Women’s Decisions During Childbirth,” Medical Decision Making 4: 47–58 (1984).
13. D. Holmberg and J. G. Holmes, “Reconstruction of Relationship Memories: A Mental Models Approach,” in Autobiographical Memory and the Validity of Retrospective Reports, ed. N. Schwarz and N. Sudman (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994), 267–88; and C. McFarland and M. Ross, “The Relation Between Current Impressions and Memories of Self and Dating Partners,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 13: 228–38 (1987).
14. William Shakespeare, King Richard II, act 2, scene 1 (1594–96; London: Penguin Classics, 1981).
15. D. Kahneman, “Objective Happiness,” in Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, ed. D. Kahneman, E. Diener, and N. Schwarz (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), 3–25.
16. See “Well-Being and Time,”
in J. D. Velleman, The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
17. E. Diener, D. Wirtz, and S. Oishi, “End Effects of Rated Quality of Life: The James Dean Effect,” Psychological Science 12: 124–28 (2001).
18. M. D. Robinson and G. L. Clore, “Belief and Feeling: Evidence for an Accessibility Model of Emotional Self-Report,” Psychological Bulletin 128: 934–60 (2002); and L. J. Levine and M. A. Safer, “Sources of Bias in Memory for Emotions,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 11: 169–73 (2002).
19. M. D. Robinson and G. L. Clore, “Episodic and Semantic Knowledge in Emotional Self-Report: Evidence for Two Judgment Processes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83: 198–215 (2002).
20. M. D. Robinson, J. T. Johnson, and S. A. Shields, “The Gender Heurristic and the Database: Factors Affecting the Perception of Gender-Related Differences in the Experience and Display of Emotions,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 20: 206–19 (1998).
21. C. McFarland, M. Ross, and N. DeCourville, “Women’s Theories of Menstruation and Biases in Recall of Menstrual Symptoms,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57: 522–31 (1981).
22. S. Oishi, “The Experiencing and Remembering of Well-Being: A Cross-Cultural Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28: 1398–1406 (2002).
23. C. N. Scollon et al., “Emotions Across Cultures and Methods,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 35: 304–26 (2004).
24. M. A. Safer, L. J. Levine, and A. L. Drapalski, “Distortion in Memory for Emotions: The Contributions of Personality and Post-Event Knowledge,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28: 1495–1507 (2002); and S. A. Dewhurst and M. A. Marlborough, “Memory Bias in the Recall of Pre-exam Anxiety: The Influence of Self-Enhancement,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 17: 695–702 (2003).
25. T. R. Mitchell et al., “Temporal Adjustments in the Evaluation of Events: The ‘Rosy View,’ ” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 33: 421–48 (1997).
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