Category: Social psychology

Critical thinking skills are difficult to acquire because the mind is a believing machine, as this classic psychology study demonstrates.

What is the mind’s default position to critical thinking: are we naturally critical or naturally gullible?

As a species do we have a tendency to behave like Agent Mulder from the X-Files who always wanted to believe in mythical monsters and alien abductions?

Or are we like his partner Agent Scully who applied critical thinking, generating alternative explanations, trying to understand and evaluate the strange occurrences they encountered rationally?

Do we believe what the TV, the newspapers, blogs even, tell us at first blush or do we use critical thinking processes?

Can we ignore the claims of adverts, do we lap up what politicians tell us, do we believe our lover’s promises?

It’s not just that some people do think critically and some people don’t think critically; in fact all our minds are built with the same first instinct, the same first reaction to new information.

But what is it: do we believe first or do we first understand, so that belief (or disbelief) comes later?

Critical thinking skills: Descartes vs. Spinoza

This argument about whether belief is automatic when we are first exposed to an idea or whether belief is a separate process that follows understanding has been going on for at least 400 years.

The French philosopher, mathematician and physicist René Descartes (below, right) argued that understanding and believing are two separate processes.

First, people take in some information by paying attention to it, then they decide what to do with that information, which includes believing or disbelieving it.

Descartes’ view is intuitively attractive and seems to accord with the way our minds work, or at least the way we would like our minds to work.

The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, a contemporary of Descartes, took a quite different view.

He thought that the very act of understanding information was believing it.

We may, he thought, be able to change our minds afterwards, say when we come across evidence to the contrary, but until that time we believe everything.

Spinoza’s approach is unappealing because it suggests we have to waste our energy using critical thinking to root out falsities that other people have randomly sprayed in our direction, whether by word of mouth, TV, the internet or any other medium of communication.

So who was right, Spinoza or Descartes?

Research on critical thinking skills

Daniel Gilbert and colleagues put these two theories head-to-head in a series of experiments to test whether understanding and belief operate together or whether belief (or disbelief) comes later (Gilbert et al., 1993).

In their classic social psychology experiment on critical thinking, seventy-one participants read statements about two robberies then gave the robber a jail sentence.

Some of the statements were designed to make the crime seem worse, for example the robber had a gun, and others to make it look less serious, for example the robber had starving children to feed.

The twist was that only some of the statements were true, while others were false.

Participants were told that all the statements that were true would be displayed in green type, while the false statement would be in red.

Here’s the clever bit: half the participants where purposefully distracted while they were reading the false statements while the other half weren’t.

In theory, if Spinoza was correct, then those who were distracted while reading the false statements wouldn’t have time to process the additional fact that the statement was written in red and therefore not true, and consequently would be influenced by it in the jail term they gave to the criminal.

On the other hand, if Descartes was right then the distraction would make no difference as participants wouldn’t have time to believe or not believe the false statements so it wouldn’t make any difference to the jail term.

The reason critical thinking is difficult

The results showed that when the false statements made the crime seem much worse rather than less serious, the participants who were interrupted gave the criminals almost twice as long in jail, up from about 6 years to around 11 years.

In contrast, the group in which participants hadn’t been interrupted managed to ignore the false statements.

Consequently, there was no significant difference between jail terms depending on whether false statements made the crime seem worse or less serious.

This meant that only when given time to think about it did people behave as though the false statements were actually false.

On the other hand, without time for reflection, people simply believed what they read.

Gilbert and colleagues carried out further experiments to successfully counter some alternative explanations of their results.

These confirmed their previous findings and led them to the rather disquieting conclusion that Descartes was in error and Spinoza was right.

Believing is not a two-stage process involving first understanding then believing.

Instead understanding is believing, a fraction of a second after reading it, you believe it until some other critical faculty kicks in to change your mind.

We really do want to believe, just like Agent Mulder and naturally lack the critical thinking skills of Agent Scully.

Believe first, ask questions later

Not only that, but their conclusions, and those of Spinoza, also explain other behaviours that people regularly display:

• The fundamental attribution error: this is people’s assumption that others’ behaviour reflects their personality, when really it reflects the situation.
• Truthfulness bias: people tend to assume that others are telling the truth, even when they are lying.
• The persuasion effect: when people are distracted it increases the persuasiveness of a message.
• Denial-innuendo effect: people tend to positively believe in things that are being categorically denied.
• Hypothesis testing bias: when testing a theory, instead of trying to prove it wrong people tend to look for information that confirms it. This, of course, isn’t very effective hypothesis testing!

When looked at in light of Spinoza’s claim that understanding is believing, these biases and effects could result from our tendency to believe first and ask questions later.

Take the fundamental attribution error: when meeting someone who is nervous we may assume they are a nervous person because this is the most obvious inference to make.

It only occurs to us later, when applying critical thinking skills, that they might have been worried because they were waiting for important test results.

If all this is making your feel rather uncomfortable then you’re not alone.

Gilbert and colleagues concede that our credulous mentality seems like bad news.

It may even be an argument for limiting freedom of speech.

After all, if people automatically believe everything they see and hear, we have to be very careful about what people see and hear.

Disadvantages of too much critical thinking

Gilbert and colleagues counter this by arguing that too much critical thinking or even cynicism is not a good thing.

Minds working on a Descartian model would only believe things for which they had hard evidence.

Everything else would be neither believed or not believed, but in a state of limbo.

The problem is that a lot of the information we are exposed to is actually true, and some of it is vital for our survival.

If we had to go around applying critical thinking to our beliefs all the time, we’d never get anything done and miss out on some great opportunities.

Minds that work on a Spinozan model, however, can happily believe as a general rule of thumb, then check out anything that seems dodgy later.

Yes, they will often believe things that aren’t true, but it’s better to believe too much and be caught out once in a while than be too cynical and fail to capitalise on the useful and beneficial information that is actually true.

Or maybe by going along with this argument I’m being gullible and the harsh truth is that it’s a basic human failing that we are all too quick to take things at face value and too slow to engage our critical thinking.

I’ll leave you to ponder that one.

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Group polarization is the finding in psychology that group decisions tend towards the extreme rather than averaging out the preferences of participants.

The definition of group polarization in psychology is that there is a trend to extreme decision-making in groups.

For example, say you put 10 people in a room and asked them to design a car.

Would they design something average or something wacky?

Would they be more likely to come up with a standard looking Ford or ‘The Homer’, designed by Homer Simpson in this classic episode of The Simpsons?

To help you decide, it’s handy to know that ‘The Homer’ has a number of forward-thinking design features including three horns, all of which play “La Cucaracha”, optional restraints and muzzles for the children and an engine noise that will make people think “the world is coming to an end”.

And the cost? A mere $82,000.

We tend to think that group decisions average out the preferences of participants so they would come up with something closer to a standard Ford.

But the psychological research doesn’t support this conclusion.

Definition of group polarization

In fact group discussions tend to polarize groups so that, rather than people’s views always being averaged, their initial preferences can become exaggerated and their final position is often more extreme than it was initially.

In an early set of studies on group polarization all about risk, decision-making was shown to shift either towards the cautious or the risky depending on the type of problem (Stoner, 1968).

Since then hundreds of studies from around the world have shown the phenomenon of group polarization in action.

For example, after a group discussion, people already supportive of a war become more supportive, people with an initial tendency towards racism become more racist and a group with a slight preference for one job candidate will come out with a much stronger preference.

Naturally this shift towards the extreme seen in group polarization has all sorts of implications for government, religion, commerce and the justice system.

A real-world example

In fact one of the neatest pieces of real-world group polarization research examines the US legal system.

Main and Walker (1973) analysed the decisions of Federal district court judges sitting either alone or in groups of three to see if group discussions were a factor.

In the 1,500 cases where judges sat alone they took an extreme course of action only 30 percent of the time.

However when sitting in a group of 3 this figure more than doubled to 65 percent.

It seems even trained, professional decision-makers are subject to the forces of group polarization.

Explaining group polarization

Psychologists have three main theories for why group polarization occurs — persuasion, comparison and differentiation — but all of them have much the same cause.

In any group trying to make a decision there is likely to be an initial preference in one particular direction.

Those who don’t initially agree with that decision are likely to change their mind to agree with the majority.

The processes involved, though, are different:

1. Persuasion: people change their mind as a result of the rational arguments presented by others.
2. Comparison: people change their mind to conform with group norms as in the Asch conformity experiment, especially when those norms are socially desirable.
3. Differentiation: a variation on comparison where people change their mind to fit in with their view of the sort of decisions their group should make.

As you can see these are all slightly different mechanisms involved in group polarization, each which probably operates independently, for producing much the same effect: decisions are pushed further towards the extreme.

Avoid group polarization

It’s worth pointing out that not all groups do polarize in this way and, indeed, a few of the studies have not observed the polarizing effect of groups on decision-making.

Well-established groups probably suffer less from group polarization, as do groups discussing problems that are well-known to them.

That said, though, where groups are relatively newly formed and tasks are novel, group polarization can emerge as an important factor in decision-making.

Psychologists have been less keen to offer ‘solutions’ to group polarization than they have other phenomena in group decision-making such as groupthink or the failure of groups to share information.

However, because groupthink has similar causes to group polarization, much the same approach can be used.

This is all about nurturing dissent in a group by encouraging the discussion of multiple perspectives and critical viewpoints.

Indeed research conducted by Fishkin and Luskin (1999) has shown that diverse groups do not polarize.

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Eye contact is so important: psychologist have found that it can signal love, hate, intelligence, creepiness, persuasion, sarcasm and sometimes lies.

The stories of Bill Clinton’s charisma are legend.

Much of that charisma was communicated through eye contact.

Those who have met him say that when he looks at you, it’s a very intimate experience.

His eye contact is said to be deep and personal, almost mesmerising; it’s as though there are only two people in the room: him and you.

And he doesn’t just seduce women, he seduces everyone.

Clearly the eyes have enormous power, such that they can have an almost magical effect on other people.

Of course you can’t just go around staring deeply into everyone’s eyes; like smiling, it sends all sorts of signals depending on content and context.

You’ve got to know how to use it…

1. The normal amount of eye contact

The amount of direct eye contact that’s normal depends on the situation.

For example, people usually make more direct eye contact when talking one-to-one than in groups.

In groups people tend to look directly at another person for about 3-5 seconds, but when it’s one-to-one this increases to 7-10 seconds before they glance away.

There’s also the percentage of time spent looking at someone, compared with looking away from them.

Using self-tracking technologies, it seems the normal amount is anything between 30 percent to 60 percent.

It will generally be more when you are listening and less when you are talking.

If you’re looking less than that, perhaps you’re not showing enough interest, if it’s more maybe you’re showing too much!

2. Deep eye contact for love

When someone stares at you, without the context it can be difficult to know if they love you or want to kill you.

Prolonged eye contact displays an intense feeling, but on its own you can’t tell which one.

That’s one of the great mysteries of body language: so much depends on context.

Often, though, the context will be obvious.

Couples making deep eye contact with each other over a candlelit dinner are (usually) not about to kill each other.

Indeed research shows that couples who are in love tend to make deep eye contact for longer than those who aren’t.

3. Too much eye contact

In the wrong context, though, a hopeful lover’s long eye contact can turn into creepy staring.

In one study, while participants were given an unrelated test, the researcher stared intently into their eyes.

People found it so off-putting that their test performance plummeted.

Whether eye contact is creepy or even aggressive also depends on culture.

East Asians, for example, typically expect less eye contact.

One recent study found that:

“…individuals from an East Asian culture perceive another’s face as being angrier, unapproachable, and unpleasant when making eye contact as compared to individuals from a Western European culture.” (Akechi et al., 2013)

The Japanese, for example, see the avoidance of eye contact as a sign of respect, whereas Westerners might interpret it as shifty or untrustworthy.

Westerners do not have the monopoly on high levels of eye contact, though: in some Arab countries people often look much more intently into each other’s eyes than many Westerners would.

4. Eye contact for confidence, leadership and aggression

Although there are cultural differences, people make all kinds of judgements about others based on their eye contact.

Westerners usually see those who make more eye contact as confident (as long as it’s not the creepy variety).

They also tend to associate greater eye contact with stronger leadership abilities, greater aggression and strength (Brooks et al., 1985).

On top of that, they’re seen as less anxious and more intelligent.

Indeed, it’s those with higher self-esteem and more power who are more likely to hold eye contact, rather than break it (Vandromme et al., 2009).

5. Using eye contact to persuade

Perhaps partly because of all the positive characteristics we associate with people who keep our eye contact, we find them more persuasive.

A whole raft of research shows the persuasive power of looking into someone’s eyes when making a request for compliance.

Just one example is Guegeun and Jacob (2010) who found people were more likely to agree to a marketing survey if looked in the eye.

However, too much eye contact can make other people more resistant to persuasion (Chen et al., 2013).

People in the study were even less persuaded by eye contact when they held particularly strong opposing views.

The results of this study fly in the face of the common advice to make strong eye contact with another person when you want to persuade them.

People in the study were even less persuaded by eye contact when they held particularly strong opposing views.

The study’s lead author, Frances Chen, said:

“There is a lot of cultural lore about the power of eye contact as an influence tool.

But our findings show that direct eye contact makes skeptical listeners less likely to change their minds, not more, as previously believed.”

6. Eye contact and lying

The old folk wisdom goes that you can tell when someone is lying because they avoid eye contact.

Psychological research has found this is not true, or at least it’s not a reliable sign for everyone.

Not only is the folk wisdom wrong, it’s positively misleading as sometimes people look at you more when they are lying.

According to this study, it’s because they want to monitor your face to see if you believe the tales they are telling (Jundi et al., 2013):

“Liars took some money from a purse, and were asked to pretend that instead of taking the money, they had been to a nearby restaurant together for lunch. Pairs of liars […] displayed more eye contact with the interviewer than pairs of truth tellers.”

7. Looking away signals sarcasm

While the connections between eye contact and lying are fraught with difficulties, one study has found a clear link with sarcasm.

When making sarcastic statements, participants were more likely to look away from their conversational partner than if the statements were sincere (Williams et al., 2009).

It’s another clue that looking directly at someone signals sincerity.

8. Appear smarter

Maintaining eye contact while talking is one of the easiest ways to appear smarter, research finds (Murphy, 2007).

The handy tip comes from a study in which people were recorded while trying to act smart discussing an assigned topic.

Maintaining eye contact while speaking was rated as giving the smartest appearance.

Indeed, intelligence tests revealed that people who maintained eye contact were actually smarter.

The study’s authors concluded:

“Looking while speaking was a key behavior: It significantly correlated with IQ, was successfully manipulated by impression-managing targets, and contributed to higher perceived intelligence ratings.”

9. Eye contact vs verbal signals

The power of nonverbal signals like eye contact in general is demonstrated by one study which pitted verbal against nonverbal signals.

This found that when they contradict each other, we are five times more likely to believe the nonverbal signal (Argyle et al., 1971):

“When verbal and non-verbal signals were inconsistent, the performance was rated as insincere, unstable and confusing.”

Not only do our eyes sometimes send stronger signals than what we say, they can also be as informative as the whole of the rest of our face put together.

Baron-Cohen et al., (1997) had individuals trying to read emotions from photographs, sometimes seeing the whole face and sometimes just the eyes:

“For complex mental states, seeing the eye alone produced significantly better performance than seeing the mouth alone, and was as informative as the rest of the face.”

(All that said, though, beware the oft-repeated myth that 93% of communication is nonverbal.)

10. Eyeball action

There’s little doubt that being able to maintain the right level of eye contact in the right situation is crucial to making the best impression on others.

In my experience most people could do with upping their eye contact a little.

As we’ve seen, too much is creepy, but looking into other people’s eyes has so many benefits that a little more eyeball action is no bad thing.

→ Find out more about what dilated pupils means.

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Psychologists reveal why nice people sometimes get punished with meanness for their good behaviour.

People who are generous and cooperative can get punished by others for being ‘too good’, research finds.

Humans in all cultures can be suspicious of those who appear nicer or better than the rest.

Also, the top co-operators and nicest people make others look bad, so bringing them down a peg or two by being mean can be attractive to them.

That is why some of the nicest people can attract social punishment, meanness and even hatred.

The effect is even more pronounced in a competitive environment, like the workplace, the researchers found, where being shown up could have financial consequences.

Professor Pat Barclay, study co-author, said:

“Most of the time we like the cooperators, the good guys.

We like it when the bad guys get their comeuppance, and when non-cooperators are punished.

But some of the time, cooperators are the ones that get punished.

People will hate on the really good guys.

This pattern has been found in every culture in which it has been looked at.”

Why people are mean

Even relatively egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate this phenomenon: the top hunters are socially targeted to stop them dominating the group.

Professor Barclay said:

“In a lot of these societies, they defend their equal status by bringing down somebody who could potentially lord things over everybody else.

You can imagine within an organization today the attitude, ‘Hey, you’re working too hard and making the rest of us look bad.’

In some organizations people are known for policing how hard others work, to make sure no one is raising the bar from what is expected.”

The results come from a study in which people played a cooperation game.

The top co-operators got ‘punished’ the most to avoid making the others look bad, the scientists found.

Professor Barclay thinks that being mean to co-operators may hinder people in protecting the environment or changing the status quo:

“It is a way of bringing those people back down, and stopping them from looking better than oneself in their attempts to protect the environment or address social inequality.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Pleasant & Barclay, 2018).