Intuition Chapter 2

Social Intuition

Thin Slicing

How much can those fleeting first impressions really tell us? How much of people's personality is it possible to intuit within a few seconds, or minutes, of meeting them?

Video

History of Thin slicing

Norman and Goldberg (1966) asked University of Michigan students to rate their peers' personalities on the first day of class, before the students had had a chance to interact. They found that the students' ratings of one another tended to agree with their self-ratings, particularly on the traits "sociable" and "responsible."

Thin Slicing of Personality Traits

(Kenny et al., 1988) Groups of four strangers rated each other on the five personality traits. Then, the strangers met in pairs and were videotaped talking to each other. Later, judges watched the extensive videotapes and rated each subject's extroversion, based on the amount of time he or she spent talking, the number of arm movements and other factors. The strangers' first-impression ratings of extroversion strongly correlated with people's rated levels of extroversion as seen on the videotape.

Replications

Overall, the studies have indicated that people are good at sensing a stranger's level of extroversion or sociability. Some studies suggest that people can sense the other four traits as well (particularly conscientiousness and agreeableness), but those results mixed and less conclusive.

Teacher Effectiveness

Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) videotaped 13 graduate teaching fellows as they taught their classes. She then took three random 10-second clips from each tape, combined them into one 30-second clip for each teacher and showed the silent clips to students who did not know the teachers. The student judges rated the teachers on 13 variables, such as "accepting," "active," "competent" and "confident.“

Ambady combined these individual scores into one global rating for each teacher and then correlated that rating with the teachers' end-of-semester evaluations from actual students (r = 0.76)

Individual DifferencesA Caveat

When we talk about accuracy, we're not looking at single judgments, we're looking at the average of a lot of judgments. “People do vary in their social intelligence. There are dunces among us who just never get it.” (Bernieri, 2005)

Mood Effects

Ambady (2002) found that people who were induced into a happy mood by watching a scene from a happy movie were able to more accurately predict a teacher's effectiveness from a thin-slice video clip than were people who were induced into a sad mood. Ambady thinks that this might be because people who are in a sad mood don't trust their snap judgments--they might come to the same immediate first impression as someone in a happy mood, but then doubt themselves and start second-guessing.

Noncounsious Learning

Lewicki (1986)Method• during a pre-experimental interview, participant was either insulted

by the interviewer or treated in a neutral manner.• Participants were then asked to go into another room and select

whichever of two experimenter was free to administer the rest of the experiment.

• because both experimenters were actually free, subjects had to make a choice about which experimenter to choose

• one of the two experimenters physically resembled the interviewer who had insulted the subject

Lewicki (continued)

Results• 80% of subjects who had previously been insulted

chose the experimenter who did not look like the interviewer.

• 43% of subjects who had not been insulted choose the experimenter who did not look like the interviewer.

• in a subsequent questionnaire, almost all subjects indicated that their choice was completely random.

Dual Attitude System

Perception consist of two stages:Automatic (unconscious) Stage• Uses minimal cognitive resources• Can co-occur with other tasks• Parallel (i.e., not vulnerable to information

overload, time pressure or distractors).

Controlled (Conscious) Stage• Intentional•Conscious•Controllable•Effortful

Fast automatic judgments were often accurate predictors of future attitudes.When asked to analysis their feeling, attitude reports were no longer good.

The Body’s Wisdom.

The AmygdalaWe can process threatening information in milliseconds, without conscious awareness. The Low Road – fast connections to the amygdala (emotional control center) by-Passes the cortex. Acts as our minds alarmSystem.

Two routes to emotional reactions

Through the amygdala our brains are “hard-wired” to respond to threats, make split decisions and respond to threats.

Emotional Decision Making

When individuals make decisions, they must assess the incentive value of the choices available to them, using cognitive and emotional processes. When individuals face complex and conflicting choices, they may be unable to decide using only cognitive processes, which may become overloaded.

Damasio (1977) studied biasing steps (intuitions) that uses neural systems operate below the level of consciousness.

These biasing steps are referred to as Somatic markers. These are strong, learned associations between reinforcing stimuli and an emotional reaction (i.e., gut reactions).

Somatic markers (memories) are stored in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC).

Gambling Task Study (Damasio)

Normal participants and patients with VMPFC damage performed a gambling task. Subjects have to choose between decks of cards that yield high immediate gain but larger future loss (risky), and decks that yield lower immediate gain but a smaller future loss (non-risky).

Skin conductance responses (SCRs) are used as an index of somatic state activation. (i.e., somatic markers)

Control Group

Controls began to choose advantageously before they realized which strategy worked best, whereas prefrontal patients continued to choose disadvantageously even after they knew the correct strategy. Moreover, controls began to generate anticipatory skin conductance responses (SCRs) whenever they pondered a choice that turned out to be risky, before they knew explicitly that it was a risky choice.

PFVMC Patients

Patients with PFVMC lesions choose disadvantageously in this task because they never developed anticipatory SCRs, although some eventually realized which choices were risky.The results suggest that, in normal individuals, nonconscious biases guide behavior before conscious knowledge does.

Classical Conditioning

Stimulus generalization.

Abused Children study – stronger and longer lasting emotional reactions to pictures of angry faces.

Social Intuitions

Several lines of evidence show that intuitive responses often occur before rational ones.• Mere exposure effect• Spontaneous trait inference• Moral intuition• Contagious moods• Empathetic accuracy • Lie detection

Women’s Intuitions

Hall's Meta Analysis.Females surpass males at decoding emotional messages. • Females are more expressive than males in

almost two-thirds of the studies surveyed.Sex or other related factors - e.g., lower social power, traditional roles.

Chapter 3 Expertise and Creativity

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very

narrow field.” Niels Bohr

Intuitive Expertise

Noncounscious Learning Examples.• Language acquisition• Tulsa experiments (Lewicki)

– complex patterns of movement on computer screen.– No one consciously guessed the pattern ($100.00 reward)– with experience they were able to track the movement.– replicated with professors and got the same effect.

Intuitive Stereotypes

• Computer Altered faces (Lewicki) - presented unfair (lengthened) and fair

professors (shortened) - asked to guess about new set of professors - participants claimed they were guessing, but

they categorized according to the learned pattern.

Learned ExperticeChicken Sexers

Separate female and male chicks as soon as possible, because each sex has different diets and endgames (most males are just destroyed).

The mystery is that when you look at the vent in the chick’s rear, some people just know which are female. It is impossible to explain, so the Japanese figured out how to teach this unexplainable knowledge. The student would pick up a chick, examine its rear, and toss it into a bin. The master would then say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ based on his generally correct observation. After a few weeks, the student’s brain was trained to masterful levels.

Dirty Jobs video

Level Stage Characteristics How knowledge is

treated

Recognitionof relevance

Howcontext isassessed

Decision-making

1 Novice Rigid adherence to taught rules or plans. Little situational perception.No discretionary judgment.

Withoutreference to

context

None

Analytically

Rational

2 Advancedbeginner

Guidelines for action based on attributes or aspects .Situational perception still limitedAll attributes and aspects are treated separately and given equal importance.

In context3 Competent Now sees actions at least partially in terms of

longer-term goals.Conscious, deliberate planningStandardized and routinized procedures

Present4 Proficient Sees situations holistically rather than in terms of aspectsSees what is most important in a situation.Perceives deviations from the normal pattern.Decision-making less laboredUses maxims for guidance, whose meanings vary according to the situation Holistically

5 Expert No longer relies on rules, guidelines or maxims.Intuitive grasp of situations based on deep tacit understanding.Analytic approaches used only in novel situations or when problems occur.Vision of what is possible

Intuitive

Adapted from: Dreyfus, S. E. (1981)

Learned Expertise

• Tacit Knowledge – learned with experience but without intention.

• Intuition is “hard-earned”– Hours of practice– With feedback

Creativity

Component 1 – Expertise “Chance favors the prepared mind”Component 2 – Imaginative thinking skillsComponent 3 – Venturesome personalityComponent 4 - Intrinsic MotivationComponent 5 – Creative environment

Video (start at 3.15)

Creativity