Tag Archives: Psychology

Freud on the “Freudian Slip”

23 Tuesday Feb 2021

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The previous look at The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is found here.

            The “Freudian slip” is the most famous of all concepts from Freud. It occurs when someone reveals a hidden motivation by substituting the “wrong” word. As he begins this essay, Freud reviews the work done by Meringer and Mayor, and then the observations of Wundt. 

Freud underscores an element from Wundt – an element which Freud will enforce at the end of this essay: These slips of the tongue take place when there is a “suspension of the attention that it would inhibit it, the uninhibited flow of associations is activated and may be said, even more definitely, to do so through that suspension.” (60) As he says toward the end of the essay, “I do not think anyone would make a slip of the tongue [examples given], in short in all those cases where, as one may say, the mind is really concentrated on the matter in hand.” (96)

Freud rejects the argument that slips of the tongue are merely the result of confusing or substituting sounds of words. He does not deny that sounds of words can have an effect upon errors, and indeed may be the cause of some errors:

But they do not seem to me strong enough to impair correct speech by their own influence alone. In those cases that I have studied closely and of which I can claim some understanding, they merely represent an existing mechanism that can easily be used by a remote psychic motive without its binding itself to the sphere of influence of those connections. In a great many substitutions, a slip of the tongue occurs quite regardless of such laws of phonetics. (79)

Freud explains that he uses these slips to “resolve and track down neurotic symptoms.” (78) Patients “may try to conceal the subject, but cannot help revealing it unintentionally in many different ways.” 

He contends that his theory “will stand up to examination even in its minor details.” (95)

To support his contention, he notes dozens of instances where someone substitutes one word for another, and thereby discloses a secret they had hoped to conceal. 

I found most compelling the example he gave from the novel Egoist by George Meredith (I cannot agree with Freud that Meredith is the “greatest English novelist”). Without rehearsing the entire nature of the example, the proposition is that a woman in the novel, by a confusion of names reveals a secret hope and desire she tries to keep concealed – but cannot. Why I found this example compelling is that is an independent attestation by someone other than Freud (or a professional psychologist/psychiatrist) of the same idea.  Now, since Meredith was a rough contemporary of Freud, it is possible that such ideas “were in the air.” 

However, Freud provides an example from Shakespeare where Portia discloses herself by a slip.

Let’s take his concept seriously, that people sometimes say what they mean to conceal. I would think that best explained by the fact that a person is intently thinking about two things and is speaking with the hope of not saying something but the thoughts get the better of the tongue – we can’t concentrate on two things at once. For instance, Freud gives an example of where he is attempting to defend himself from a conflict with his wife and thus discloses something he did not wish to say.

But Freud has a rather different theory of what happens: He puts the emphasis on the unintended nature of the disclosure. In his theory, the concealed fact just finds a way out because sufficient control is not being brought to bear upon the speech so the unconscious makes a break for it. 

Yet, I think his examples could easily be re-read as not an unconscious escape but rather the conflict of multiple thoughts. 

For instance, he gives the example of where a soldier on trial for burglary used the word Diebstellung – position as thief – when he meant to use the word Dienstellung – military service.  The soldier made this blunder while testifying in Court. But it is in just such a circumstance that Freud said a slip would not occur, “in a speech made in defense of his name and honor before a sworn jury” (96). The soldier was trying to explain that he could not have committed the crime because he was still in the military: but he would at the same time be thinking of what he had been accused. 

If there are revealing substitutions, I don’t think he proves a subversive unconscious but rather a confusion of thoughts. 

Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic 4.2

14 Tuesday Jul 2020

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(In Defense of the Analytic Attitude)

In the remainder of the chapter, Rieff distinguishes Freud from what came after.  The distinction which Rieff draws is between Freudian “freedom” and a “cure.” Freud offers no solution, only a “technology” which will allow one to understand the working of their subconscious. The end game, as seemingly proposed by Rieff would be the freedom from the “residues of religious compulsion.” (79) This may be achievable with a combination of Freudian analysis and behavioral technique. (Ibid.)

Freudian analysis “is the aim of science – power; in this case a transformative technology of the inner life….This is ultimate technology.” (79)

The purpose of “faith” is to mitigate suffering: “all religions have a therapeutic function.” (76) Jung sought to scoop up all religions with his theory of archtypes. An interesting observation is how Rieff sees Jung and Freud as inversions of one another. Freud understood “erotic instinctual forces” sublimate themselves into the “highest ethical and religious interests of man.” While Jung saw the process going in the other direction. (77)

Freud’s aim of “freedom” comes at a cost:

“What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely that sense of being chosen, which encourages them, in their gratitude, to take their subsequent choices seriously. Put in another way, this means: Freedom does not exist without responsibility.” (79)

This freedom is of course something which is at issue. It is taken by everyone that Freud’s theories of pscyho-social development and dream analysis and slips of the tongue – however interesting – are unquestionably not “scientific.” His technology is simply untrue. 

What is strange is that his basic proposition that your sensation of ethical constraint is a trick society has played upon, that restraint is what is holding you back, mixed with Rousseau and Hegel and whatnot and developed by his followers (some who – as we shall see – were criminally insane) has become a default argument over against the “illusion” of religion and God. It is a curious sort of position to occupy. 

But on the same ground, by what basis do Hegel’s thesis-antithesis, Rousseau’s sociology, Marx’s economic history still have currency? It seems that people pick bits and pieces of ideas without ever well-understanding either what they believe or why. They could never articulate their axioms much less their conclusions. 

We live too easily in cages built of the thought of others. Freud in his effort to bring a technology of freedom foisted insupportable conceits upon the world. When his conceits proved to be nonsense, the conceits remained.  

The Squirrel! Theory of Anxiety Management

20 Wednesday May 2020

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Distraction as a Means of Relief

A 2005 series of studies published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that perhaps people deal with threats by thinking about something else. This is essentially the Squirrel! Theory of stress management. That is perhaps too glib a summary and certainly not academic, I think it is fair.

The article, itself, is remarkably dense and considers a number of seemingly disparate concepts. The idea initially under consideration is the fact that people – particularly under some threat – exaggerate the extent to which others hold their personal views on any number of subjects.

They first note three major theories for this observed condition: (1) It might generate social support; you get others to like you. (2) Cognitive closure: there’s nothing to think about here, everyone has the same opinion. (3) Since threats undermine confidence in myself, exaggerating social consensus makes me feel better about myself.

They then went about threatening college students to see whether the third theory proved itself. They focused upon “defensively proud individuals”. While there are variants in the way in which this is expressed, “The common theme is that they all involve an explicit focus on an ostensible self-strength, which appears to mask vulnerability. Thus we see the three forms as manifestation of a latent defensive pride construct and, in the present research, expect them to be related to arrogant self-righteousness in the face of threats.” Ian McGregor et al., “Defensive Pride and Consensus: Strength in Imaginary Numbers,” Journal of Psychology and Social Psychology 89, no. 6 (2005): 978-96.
In the first study they gave two groups of psychology students a section to read on statistics. One paper was impenetrable; the other a simple explain of the importance of statistics. They were both told that the paper was something everyone knew (a “popular tool”). For those with the difficult page, the effect would be “you’re stupid.” They then asked them questions on moral issues such as abortion and capital punishment. Those who were humiliated by the researchers over estimated the number of people who held their particular views on the various issues.
A second study asked two groups of students to either vividly describe themselves in a frightening circumstance or a comfortable and securable place. They were then asked the moral questions. The frightened students again over-estimated the number of people who held their personal views on moral issues.
A third study threatened all of the students; but following the threat some students received praise. The students were then given two articles supposed written by a student who visited the United States from a foreign country. One version praised the US; one version complained and condemned. Being praised after being threatened resulted in less negative evaluation of the condemning “foreigner.”
A fourth study was conducted to determine whether the exaggeration of consensus was from “reflected glory” of the group or mere consensus with a group.
In the end, the researchers were left with the observation that under stress people can alleviate that stress by being affirmed personally or by imagining the whole world is on their side.
They then compared their findings to a number of other studies, and in particular to the results of terror management theory. But whereas terror management theory suggests that the defensive nature of such consensus under threat was ultimately as a means of protecting one against the fear of death, the various findings of terror management – and other studies – is we can only think about one thing at a time.

We propose that all of these findings can be economically explained from a thought-control perspective According to Wegner (1992), thought suppression begins with the search for distracting thoughts. The “distractor search brings a series of thoughts to mind until one is selected that absorbs attention,” at which point, “attention is drawn from the controlled distractor search to the absorbing distractor itself.” (991)

Since thoughts about oneself are easily available, they can act as useful “distractors” when faced with fearful conditions. The researchers suggest various neurological bases for this conclusion. But in the end, it means that one way to deal with anxiety is to distract yourself.
From a persuasion perspective, it might seem that fear will be an effective means of persuasion with coupled with consensus: First you introduce a disturbing matter then you offer up your product or service wrapped up in a consensus: Everyone loves X!
But the research is a bit more-tricky: If the affirmative is on a ground too closely related to the threat, it “fails to quell the threat because they [the affirmations] remind the participants of the threat.”
In their research, the authors of these studies argued that affirmations and consensus functioned the same way by distracting the one under anxiety. Thus, what applies to consensus would apply to affirmations.
But there is another possibility here: A product or service which resolves the threat (rather than merely distract from thinking about the threat) might be sufficient even if the threat and the consensus-approved product concern exactly the same thing.
In conflict, distraction is well known as a means of deflating a threat.
A final element of the article struck a theological note which the authors may not have considered:

PWe propose that threatened people may have turned to consensus in the present research for the same reason [diminish ruminations about threats]. Imagining widespread agreement with one’s own convictions may be self-soothing because self-righteousness is an appealing fantasy that can capture attention, make threats seem more remote, and allow them to fade from salience. (987)

Although the quoted language contains the clause “capture the attention”, the argument is not in distraction but in diffusion. The threat against me is not real, but I am righteous. But how could my righteousness have anything to do with the reality of a threat? The connection here is not apparent in the article.

In Romans 1, Paul makes a sustained argument from verse 18-31. It begins with the proposition that human beings know ourselves to be under judgment, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness.” In turn, human beings act to suppress subjective knowledge of that threat. The act of suppression then leads to a number of perversions and distortions of the human being in a whole catalogue of insanity and sin. The argument concludes with the observation that human beings not only do these unrighteous things, “they give hearty approval” to those who practice the same things.

Under the most profound existential threat, human beings respond with a forced consensus. However, the argument made in the quotation above, and by Paul, is not that the consensus acts to distract us; rather it acts to deny the fact of the threat. The more people who believe a thing, the more “objective” it in fact is. If all of us deny or believe some X then it is true. The threat is thus believed into non-existence.

Persuasion and Education

14 Thursday May 2020

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Karen Murphy and Patricia A. Alexander, “Persuasion as a Dynamic, Multidimensional Process: An Investigation of Intraindividual Differences,” American Educational Research Journal41, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 337-63.

In a study published in 2004, Professors Murphy and Alexander considered the relationship between persuasion and education research. As they note, “persuasion is neither inherently good nor evil, but a catalyst for thinking analytically about the messages encountered by individuals.”

The study consisted of 234 college students, primarily undergraduates who were given three articles from the popular press to read. The topics were likely to provoke emotional responses, assisted suicide, AIDS and school integration.

The students were examined for perceived and actual knowledge of these topics, prior to reading the articles. The students were then examined after reading the articles to determine the persuasive effects upon the students. Specifically, the researchers wanted to see how knowledge, interest and belief prior to reading the articles effected their beliefs after reading the articles.

One of the most unusual features of their research was a finding that the students with a high degree of knowledge about the topic and a high (to moderate) interest in the topic “were associated with low beliefs levels at prereading and post-reading.” That is the more they were interested and knowledgeable, the less they had firm positions (I assume that is the meaning of “belief”) on the topics.

Here is an example of something interesting which may not tell us much at all.

Consider:

A person considers life precious in all circumstances. Such a person may have a very strong position on assisted suicide and think it always wrong. Having determined that assisted suicide is wrong, the person then decides not to read many arguments on the subject and has relatively little interest in subject.

Another example, I am firmly convinced that racism is wrong and thus I don’t really intend to spend any time reading arguments in favor of racism. I have little “knowledge”  (in the sense of an extended body of research) and strong belief.

Or consider another person who has thoroughly studied a subject for years: Say a professional medical ethicist. The ethicist has a very high degree of knowledge and a high degree of interest – and likely has rather firm conclusions about the topic.

The subjects of this experiment were undergraduates. They are being introduced to all sorts of new ideas in college. Their high degree of knowledge and interest is likely not all that “high”. They may know more than they did in high school, but it is unlikely they have any profound understanding.

Consider this: the articles they were reading were from the newspapers and popular magazines — not academic journals. That does not make the articles bad, but the articles are certainly not exhaustive explorations of the topics. By nature of the medium, the information is will be limited to a few hundred words.

What the researchers discovered is that making education more interesting made education more effective.

They also discovered that what works for one person may not work for another. As they note, the existing studies on the topic show that “persuasion is a multidimensional process that is influenced by individual and intraindividual differences in learners and how they interact with varied texts.”

Different Strategies Work for Different Customers (Persuasion)

08 Friday May 2020

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A study published in 2006 sought to examine the effectiveness of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion to examine various artificial intelligence responses to online consumers.

The putative consumers were categorized into four groups. First, they were arranged by their “need for cognition.” Some people were determined to have a “high need for cognition”; some had a “low need.” Second, they were arranged in terms of their prior knowledge concerning the product.

The underlying premise was the two routes to decision making: central route, which is primarily cognition; and peripheral route, in which a purchaser puts more concern on emotional responses to the product or the salesperson.

These four groups of people were presented with two distinct sales interactions: One variant was the Product-Attribute-Relevant (PAR) sales pitch. This variant provided data about the product. In the experiment, they were selling cars. This would be quality, features, et cetera. A second variant  Product-Attribute-Irrelevant (PAI) strategy: this would be all of the “tricks” of the sales personnel. For example, “foot-in-the-door”:  This happens when you are presented with a small request by the seller. For example, when you call into a company and they ask you for your name and an alternative telephone number. If you have learned the persuasion categories made famous by Cialdini, then you know these non-cognitive techniques.

You have created this minor relationship status which creates some future willingness to concede further.

The results of the experiment were what one would expect.

For people with a “low need for cognition,” the increase in data did not effectively persuade them. Interpreted in light of the ELM model, that means that such people “do not have enough motivation or ability to process messages about product features.” Stated otherwise, they simply did not care. Not surprisingly, they sales-technique strategy was effective with these peripheral route processors.

Conversely, those who wanted cognition, wanted data.

But something interesting was observed: the sale-technique strategy (PAI) had about the same effectiveness on high-and-low-need-for-cognition purchasers. In line with the ELM theory, the non-cognitive techniques are easiest to process and thus everyone processed such information.

Another interesting result concerned the degree of change among various purchasers. The PAR strategy had a greater effect upon the high-need-for cognition or prior knowledge purchasers, than did the PAI strategy on the low-need-for-cognition or no-prior knowledge purchasers.

But what does one do with these results? How does a sales-agent determine the need-for-cognition of a customer quickly and without arousing suspicion that this a sales-technique?

A second experiment concerned bargaining procedure. This experiment used two bargaining techniques a tough attitude (start high, give small concession) or a moderate strategy. The purchasers had either a low or degree of prior knowledge as to what the ending price should be.

For purchasers who had little prior knowledge, the tough strategy was most effective and it did not produce a negative attitude in the purchaser. However, for the purchaser with a high degree of knowledge, the tough strategy did produce a negative attitude in the purchaser and was not more successful than the moderate strategy.

 

Huang Shiu-li, Lin Fu-ren, and Yuan Yufei, “Understanding Agent-Based On-Line Persuasion and Bargaining Strategies: An Empirical Study,” International Journal of Electronic Commerce 11, no. 1 (Fall 2006

Distinctions and Similarities Among Positive Emotions

02 Saturday May 2020

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Distinctions and Similarities Among Positive Emotions

A study published in 2013 (Belinda Campos et al., “What Is Shared, What Is Different? Core Relational Themes and Expressive Displays of Eight Positive Emotions,” Cognition and Emotion 27, no. 1 (2013): 37-52) sought to determine which aspects of eight positive emotions (amusement, awe, contentment, gratitude, interest, joy, love, and pride).

There were actually two separate studies. The first study asked the undergraduates (for course credit) to describe one of the eight positive emotions

in a short narrative. The students were also given a series of prompt questions. The information was then encoded for content. The goal was to determine what aspects of these various positive emotions remained common among all the eight, and which aspects differed.

They found things such as love and gratitude tended to go together. That positive emotions came more readily when one experienced safety or reward. Contentment was the least distinct.

Those who described awe also correlated this with the feeling of smallness, which was a trait not shared with other positive emotions. Although not part of the study, I imagine that “smallness” is likely associated also with certain negative emotions, because a feeling of vulnerability could lead on to feel unsafe.

A second study sought to correlate facial expressions with positive emotions.  It was already understood that negative emotions presented significant distinct elements. The question for the researchers was whether positive emotions would display unique elements.

I especially appreciated the quite formal description of a smile:

The Duchenne smile, which involves the simultaneous lifting of the lip corners and contractions of the orbicularis oculi muscles around the eyes, is regarded as the key marker of ‘happiness,’ the global term for displayed positive emotions.

While I appreciate the need for exactitude when discussing a subject, I did have to smile in response to this description of smiling while happy.

What was discovered was that most positive emotions were coupled with common facial displays, except for gratitude.

In the end, positive emotions are not an undifferentiated blog, but rather there are distinct elements of the emotions. Some emotions have a relationship to other positive emotions; some do not. Emotions – at least among the undergraduates studied – tend to show distinct physical expression.

The study leaves one the extent to which these findings apply to anyone beyond undergraduates at American universities.

The Cognitive Learning Approach to Persuasion

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

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The Cognitive Learning Theory of Persuasion seeks to explain persuasion in terms of ideas.  It is a theory that persuasion takes place as the modification of ideas:

[T]he cognitive response analysis assumes that attitude change can be achieved by modification, through learning, of the recipient’s repertory of attitude relevant cognitions.

Anthony G. Greenwald, “Cognitive Learning, Cognitive Response to Persuasion, and Attitude Change,” in Psychological Foundations of Attitudes, ed. A.G. Greewald, T.C. Brock, and T.M. Ostrom (New York: Academic Press, 1968), 151. Being a learning-theory, it has its origin in classical conditioning models of learning. Greewald understood the relationship to conditioning learning theory as analogous, not direct. Ibid.

Richard Petty, the psychologist not the racecar driver, published a study which considered the effect of cognition on persuasion. In a series of experiments, he wanted to determine whether the ease of thinking or the ease of not-thinking effected the persuasiveness of a message.

Not surprisingly, distraction alone made strong arguments weaker – but it also made weak arguments stronger. Body posture also mattered: standing made one more resistant; why lying down made one more compliant:

The present series of experiments was designed to show the importance of a recipient’s cognitive responses in persuasion situations. By employing manipulations designed to increase negative cognitive responses (such as forewarning, or simply asking a person to stand up) we were able to produce resistance to a persuasive communication. By employing manipulations designed to decrease negative cognitive responses (such as distraction, or simply asking a person to lie down), we were able to enhance the persuasiveness of a communication.

Richard E. Petty (1977) ,”The Importance of Cognitive Responses in Persuasion”, in NA – Advances in Consumer Research Volume 04, eds. William D. Perreault, Jr., Atlanta, GA : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 357-362. (accessed online at https://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/5689)

Writing of the cognitive approach Myers-Levy and Malaviya found that it had “been reasonably supported by data,” but, the “theory is silent about many issues”. Joan Myers-Levy and Prashat Malaviya, “Consumer’s Processing of Persuasive Advertisements: An Integrative Framework of Persuasion Theories,” Journal of Marketing 63 (1999): 45-60, p. 47.

 

How to Manipulate with the truth

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Look at this thread:

It is a simple demonstration of how the angle of a photograph changes the meaning:

Image

Multiple examples of such manipulation are given in the comments. Note that there is no “lie” precisely. There is no photoshop. There is no misattribution of the location — only a change in perspective.

I remember perhaps the first time I noticed how perspective so easily changes meaning. I saw a protest which turned violent. Protesters attacked the police. The police arrested the quite reluctant to be arrested protesters. I saw the story on two news reports. One showed the attack; the other showed the arrests. Same event; no one manufacturing information, but a deliberate selection of information.

We have this bad habit of assuming that we know the correct context in which to place a fact. We assume that we are looking at the event from the “objective” or “true” point of view.

But meaning is never just there in an event: meaning is the relationship of an event, of a fact to a larger context. Facts alone are meaningless. Facts only have meaning as they relate to other facts. We view events from a context: our perspective is one of the facts at issue.

 

 

Does Forewarning Affect Persuasion?

27 Monday Apr 2020

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A study published in 1991 by psychologists at the University of Florida, Changing Personal Beliefs: Effects of Forewarning, Argument Quality, Prior Bias, and Personal Exploration (Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, vol. 10, no. 1, 1991, pp. 1-20) found being well-prepared to respond to an argument can keep one being persuaded.

They performed a series of three experiments on undergraduates on the issue of whether one should be completely honest in a relationship. They sought to investigate the way in which a counterargument, such as might be raised in counseling, would affect one.  For instance, you are a counselor. A counselee comes to you and has relationship problems. You tell the counselee to be completely honest in the relationship, which is not the counselee’s belief. How successful will you be in convincing the counselee?

In the first experiment, they presented strong and weak arguments to two sets of people. In one group, they warned the student that they would be hearing an argument which challenged in their belief. They gave these students a short time to prepare for hearing their counter arguments. A second set of students was not forewarned.  The groups were further divided into hearing “strong” or “weak” arguments.

They expected that forewarning the student would cause the students to be more resistant to the arguments. Instead, they found no significant difference between the two groups: the only thing which mattered was the strength of the argument. Strangely, they discovered that for some students, the forewarning actually increased the effect of the argument.

The hypothesis ran as follows: If I had good reasons for my position & if I had time to prepare, when I heard the counter argument I would be ready to respond. But, if I really had no good reason for my positions, few or no arguments – and those arguments weak – when I was presented with counterarguments the effect would be to collapse: In effect the poorly prepared but forewarned student realized that he really didn’t have any good reason for his position.

I can vouch for this from a position of being raised a Christian. As a kid, I had various questions about this or that. The answer was always along the lines of, It is bad to ask questions. So when I was confronted with counter arguments, I concluded, well I guess I don’t really have any good reasons for my position.

To test that idea, they sorted the students again – but this time they looked for evidence that a student had arguments to back up the “bias”.  The more arguments the student had for his side, the stronger the bias. This was a bit problematic, because one could have one very strong argument or three weak arguments.

Their idea was that one with more arguments would be more easily able to access any arguments which presented with the counter.

It turned out that forewarning a student with an array of counter arguments made it easier to access the counter arguments and made them more resistant to agreement.

In a third experiment, they learned that one could increase the increase their resistance by being preparing them to “explore” their position. This found a slight increase in resistance for “low bias” individuals.

“One provocative implication of the data concerns the potentially undesirable impact of directed exploration and attitude clarification in counseling. The effects of reviewing and articulating self-relevant attitudes may be to render them more resistant to subsequent change.”

There is an additional way to understand the findings of this research. It is not that one is staking up arguments one against the other. Another way to understand this research is to consider the possibility that the “subject” of the experiment is not paying attention:

When a person receives a communication and is faced with the decision of accepting or rejecting the persuasion, he may be expected to attempt to relate the new information to his existing attitudes, knowledge, feelings, etc. In the course of doing this, he likely rehearses substantial cognitive content beyond that of the persuasive message itself.

Anthony G. Greenwald, “Cognitive Learning, Cognitive Response to Persuasion, and Attitude Change,” in Psychological Foundations of Attitudes, ed. A.G. Greewald, T.C. Brock, and T.M. Ostrom (New York: Academic Press, 1968), 149.The author then goes on to quote a 1949 publication:

There is reason to suspect that those audience members who are already opposed to the point of view being presented may be distracted [from the content of the communication] by “rehearsing” their own arguments while the topic is being presented and will be antagonized by the omission of the arguments on their side.

Ibid.

How to Negate the Influence of a Persuasive Bias

24 Friday Apr 2020

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One of the great difficulties in understanding persuasion comes due to many variables which do or which potentially affect the outcome. One possible way to analyze the elements is to try and divide up the degree to which one likes the speaker  from the quality of the argument the speaker presented.

In the Spring 1998 volume of Social Cognition, we find an example of one such experiment. It begins like most psychological experiments by deceiving college undergraduates. College undergraduates are used because they have free time and are available to professors. Deception is used, because if the subjects know that they are being tested for X they may distort their responses.

In the first test, the students were asked to evaluate the quality of an argument given by someone whom the students would find “likeable” or “unlikable.” The speaker advocated for an examination policy. There were two versions of the argument: in one the speaker gave “strong” arguments; in the other, “weak” arguments.

All of the students were told that prior to evaluating the quality of the argument to indicate their personal opinion about that exam policy. A sub-group was told to make sure they did not let their opinion about the likability of the speaker to influence their conclusion.

This is what they happened. The students who heard the argument from a likable source were more likely to accept the argument. But if they were told to let their opinion of his likability to influence them, they found the argument weaker. The mirror image happened with the unlikable speaker. Without the instruction about not letting likability be influence, the students did not find the arguments persuasive. But when they were told to not let their personal opinion about the speaker influence their decision, they found the speaker more persuasive.

They repeated the experiment with this twist: some of the students were told that exam policy would not be implemented for 10 years, and thus the policy was not relevant to them personally. They were also asked to memorize a seven digit code as part of completing their questionnaire.

A second group was told the policy might take place next year. Also, they were asked only to memorize a single digit.

For the students who were told the exam wouldn’t apply to them, their preference was markedly based upon the likability of the speaker. But when they were told to not let likability affect their decision, the strength of likability significantly diminished.

It was the last group that was the most interesting to the researchers: if the policy applied to you personally, would that factor alone overcome the strength of likability? Would someone “automatically” filter out likability and get to the strength of the argument standing alone?

The answer is “no.” The students disliked the argument from the dislikable speaker. But when they were told you can’t let likability affect your decision, the students were able to factor that out and raised their valuation the argument itself.

And so they were able to demonstrate that people could distinguish between variables.

The psychologists were busy considering variables and testing theories. But the trouble with psychological theories is they can often illuminate as well as obscure.

Let’s think about this test in more practical terms. We all tend to ignore or disregard people we dislike or find unattractive. It’s easier to do.  How many people have ignored someone they disliked speaking.

If you don’t pay much attention, the argument will not be very persuasive.

But there is more, we give more grace to people we like. We give them the benefit of the doubt. It makes us feel better about giving more attention.

The students were students. They are people who are good at doing what they are told. This is merely a factor among all people to want to do what is “right” based upon whatever rubric they consider salient. When an authority told them be careful you don’t let likability affect your decision, they “knew” that they were probably doing that and they discounted that aspect.

What is interesting is that in both experiments, the degree of “correction” was greatest for those students who had a dislikable speaker and who were told they should let that influence them. One might even see this as an overcorrection for their bias.

There is a practical takeaway here. For instance, when a lawyer stands before a jury, and the lawyer has a dislikable client, he should tell the jury that the law considers the truth alone. We cannot allow personal feelings about a party to influence a decision. Done well, these experiments seem to indicate that the jury would overcompensate to avoid their bias.

A caveat: This experiment only concerned a rather weak bias: How much could you irrationally dislike a speaker whom you had to bear with for only short time? What would have happened if the students had to deal with this dislikable speaker for weeks? What if the bias was based upon something which evokes greater passion in the subject, particularly if that bias were informed and supported by some considerable matrix of culture or education or a peer group?

Flexible Correction Processes in Social Judgment: Implications for Persuasion

Richard Petty, Duane T. Wegner, and Paul H. White

Social Cognition, Spring 1998.