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Journal Article
Psychology, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy
Marketing Letters
On Amir, Dan Ariely, Alan Cooke, David Dunning, Nicholas Epley, Uri Gneezy, Botond Koszegi
2005
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Citation
Amir, O., Ariely, D., Cooke, A., Dunning, D., Epley, N., Gneezy, U., Koszegi, B., Lichtenstein, D., Mazar, N., Mullainathan, S., Prelec, D., Shafir, E., & Silva, J. (2005). Psychology, behavioral economics, and public policy. Marketing Letters, 16, 443-454.
Abstract
Economics has typically been the social science of choice to inform public policy and policymakers. In the current paper we contemplate the role behavioral science can play in enlightening policymakers. In particular, we provide some examples of research that has and can be used to inform policy, reflect on the kind of behavioral science that is important for policy, and approaches for convincing policy-makers to listen to behavioral scientists. We suggest that policymakers are unlikely to invest the time translating behavioral research into its policy implications, and researchers interested in influencing public policy must therefore invest substantial effort, and direct that effort differently than in standard research practices
Book Chapter
Shallow thoughts about the self: The automatic components of self-assessment
The Self in Social Perception
Thomas Gilovich, Nicholas Epley, Karlene Hanko
2005
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Citation
Gilovich, T., Epley, N., & Hanko, K. (2005). Shallow thoughts about the self: The automatic components of self-assessment. To appear in M. Alicke, D. Dunning, & J. Krueger (Eds.), The Self in Social Perception (pp. 67-84). New York: Taylor & Francis.
Abstract
It is not our intent to coin a new term, but any review of the pertinent social psychological literature leads to the conclusion that people are prone to an illusion of personal strength. That is, people's assessments of their own abilities to meet various challenges exceed the best dispassionate analyses of those abilities. People read about Milgram's obedience experiments and come away convinced that they, unlike the majority of actual participants in those studies, would be strong enough to stand their ground and disobey the experimenter (Bierbrauer, 1979). People read about the various bystander (non)intervention studies and likewise remain convinced that they would have sufficient strength to overcome the fear of embarrassment and come to the rescue. And people's assessments of their own traits and abilities have been shown, time and time again, to be overly optimistic (see Alicke & Govorun, this volume). Our aim in this chapter is to shed light on why people are prone to such an illusion of personal strength. This aim is likely to make some readers wonder whether we are prone to the illusion of personal strength ourselves. After all, there are already perfectly satisfactory explanations of the various manifestations of this illusion. Do we really have anything useful to add? Is another perspective likely to advance our discipline's understanding of these phenomena? Does the discipline really need yet another explanation of the above average effect? We believe there is still much to be learned about the processes that give rise to the various manifestations of the illusion of personal strength.
Journal Article
Perspective taking in children and adults: Equivalent egocentrism but differential correction
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Nicholas Epley, Carey K. Morewedge, Boaz Keysar
2004
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Epley, N., Morewedge, C., & Keysar, B. (2004). Perspective taking in children and adults: Equivalent egocentrism but differential correction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 760-768.
Abstract
Children generally behave more egocentrically than adults when assessing another's perspective. We argue that this difference does not, however, indicate that adults process information less egocentrically than children, but rather that adults are better able to subsequently correct an initial egocentric interpretation. An experiment tracking participants' eye movements during a referential communication task indicated that children and adults were equally quick to interpret a spoken instruction egocentrically but differed in the speed with which they corrected that interpretation and looked at the intended (i.e., non-egocentric) object. The existing differences in egocentrism between children and adults therefore seems less a product of where people start in their perspective taking process than where they stop, with lingering egocentric biases among adults produced by insufficient correction of an automatic moment of egocentrism. We suggest that this pattern of similarity in automatic, but not controlled, processes may explain between-group differences in a variety of dual-process judgments.
Journal Article
Perspective Taking as Egocentric Anchoring and Adjustment
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Nicholas Epley, Boaz Keysar, Leaf Van Boven, Thomas Gilovich
2004
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Citation
Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 327-339.
Abstract
The authors propose that people adopt others' perspectives by serially adjusting from their own. As predicted, estimates of others' perceptions were consistent with one's own but differed in a manner consistent with serial adjustment (Study 1). Participants were slower to indicate that another's perception would be different from--rather than similar to--their own (Study 2). Egocentric biases increased under time pressure (Study 2) and decreased with accuracy incentives (Study 3). Egocentric biases also increased when participants were more inclined to accept plausible values encountered early in the adjustment process than when inclined to reject them (Study 4). Finally, adjustments tend to be insufficient, in part, because people stop adjusting once a plausible estimate is reached (Study 5).
Journal Article
Egocentric Ethics
Social Justice Research
Nicholas Epley, Eugene M. Caruso
2004
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Citation
Epley, N., & Caruso, E. (2004). Egocentric ethics. Social Justice Research, 17, 171-187.
Abstract
Ethical judgments are often egocentrically biased, such that moral reasoners tend to conclude that self-interested outcomes are not only desirable but morally justifiable. Although such egocentric ethics can arise from deliberate self-interested reasoning, we suggest that they may also arise through unconscious and automatic psychological mechanisms. People automatically interpret their perceptions egocentrically, automatically evaluate stimuli on a semantic differential as positive or negative, and base their moral judgments on affective reactions to stimuli. These three automatic and unconscious features of human judgment can help to explain not only why ethical judgments are egocentrically biased, but also why such subjective perceptions can appear objective and unbiased to moral reasoners themselves.
Journal Article
Are Adjustments Insufficient?
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Nicholas Epley, Thomas Gilovich
2004
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Citation
Epley, N., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Are adjustments insufficient?Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30,447-460.
Abstract
Many judgmental biases are thought to be the product of insufficient adjustment from an initial anchor value. Nearly all existing evidence of insufficient adjustment, however, comes from an experimental paradigm that evidence indicates does not involve adjustment at all. In this article, the authors first provide further evidence that some kinds of anchors (those that are self-generated and known to be incorrect but close to the correct answer) activate processes of adjustment, whereas others (uncertain anchors provided by an external source) do not. It is then shown that adjustment from self-generated anchors does indeed tend to be insufficient, both by comparing the estimates of participants starting from different anchor values and by comparing estimates with actual answers. Thus, evidence is provided of adjustment-based anchoring effects similar to the accessibility-based anchoring effects observed in the traditional anchoring paradigm, supporting theories of social judgment that rely on mechanisms of insufficient adjustment.
Journal Article
Balance where it really counts
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Nicholas Epley, Leaf Van Boven, Eugene M. Caruso
2004
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Epley, N., Van Boven, L., & Caruso, E. (2004). Balance where it really counts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,27, 33.
Abstract
A balanced approach that considers human strengths and weaknesses will lead to a more flattering set of empirical findings, but will distract researchers from focusing on the mental processes that produce such findings and will diminish the practical implications of their work. Psychologists ought to be doing research that is theoretically informative and practically relevant, exactly as they are doing.
Book Chapter
A tale of tuned decks? Anchoring as accessibility and anchoring as adjustment
Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making
Nicholas Epley
2004
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Citation
Epley, N. (2004). A Tale of Tuned Decks? Anchoring as accessibility and anchoring as adjustment. In D.J. Koehler, & N. Harvey (Eds.), The Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making (pp. 240-256). Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishers.
Abstract
This chapter is intended to add one of the most widely studied biases in human judgment to this list of psychological "tuned decks"--judgmental anchoring. Across ever-expanding domains, people's estimates of uncertain qualities are biased in the direction of a salient comparison value or "anchor." Although easy to demonstrate, such anchoring biases have not been so easy to explain (Strack & Mussweiler, 1997). One reason for this difficulty, it appears, is that psychologists have been seeking a single solution. In fact, judgmental anchoring is not a single mental trick but a set of tricks. How many tricks? At least two.
Journal Article
The unpacking effect in evaluative judgments: When the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Leaf Van Boven, Nicholas Epley
2003
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Van Boven, L., & Epley, N. (2003). The unpacking effect in evaluative judgments: When the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 263-269.
Abstract
Any category or event can be described in more or less detail. Although these different descriptions can reflect the same event objectively, they may not reflect the same event subjectively. Research on Support Theory led us to predict that more detailed descriptions would produce more extreme evaluations of categories or events than less detailed descriptions. Four experiments demonstrated this unpacking effect when people were presented with (Experiments 1 and 4), generated (Experiment 2), or were primed with (Experiment 3) more rather than less detailed descriptions of events. This effect was diminished when the details were less personally relevant (Experiment 4). We discuss several psychological mechanisms, moderators, and extensions of the unpacking effect.
Journal Article
Empathy Neglect: Reconciling the Spotlight Effect and the Correspondence Bias
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Nicholas Epley, Kenneth Savitsky, Thomas Gilovich
2002
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Citation
Epley, N., Savitsky, K., & Gilovich, T. (2002). Empathy Neglect: Reconciling the spotlight effect and the correspondence bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 300-312.
Abstract
When people commit an embarrassing blunder, they typically overestimate how harshly they will be judged by others. This tendency can seem to fly in the face of research on the correspondence bias, which has established that observers are, in fact, quite likely to draw harsh dispositional inferences about others. These seemingly inconsistent literatures are reconciled by showing that actors typically neglect to consider the extent to which observers will moderate their correspondent inferences when they can easily adopt an actor's perspective or imagine being in his or her shoes. These results help to explain why actors can overestimate the strength of observers' dispositional inferences even when, as the literature on the correspondence bias attests, observers are notoriously prone to drawing those very inferences.
Journal Article
Putting Adjustment Back in the Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic: Differential Processing of Self-Generated and Experimenter-Provided Anchors
Psychological Science
Nicholas Epley, Thomas Gilovich
2001
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Epley, N., & Gilovich, T. (2001). Putting adjustment back in the anchoring and adjustment heuristic: Divergent processing of self-generated and experimenter-provided anchors. Psychological Science, 12, 391-396.
Abstract
People's estimates of uncertain quantities are commonly influenced by irrelevant values. These anchoring effects were originally explained as insufficient adjustment away from an initial anchor value. The existing literature provides little support for the postulated process of adjustment, however, and a consensus that none takes place seems to be emerging. We argue that this conclusion is premature, and we present evidence that insufficient adjustment produces anchoring effects when the anchors are self-generated. In Study 1, participants' verbal reports made reference to adjustment only, from self-generated anchors. In Studies 2 and 3, participants induced to accept values by nodding their heads gave answers that were closer to an anchor (i.e., they adjusted less) than participants induced to deny values by shaking their heads--again, only when the anchor was self-generated. These results suggest it is time to reintroduce anchoring and adjustment as an explanation for some judgments under uncertainty.
Journal Article
Do Others Judge Us as Harshly as We Think? Overestimating the Impact of Our Failures, Shortcomings, and Mishaps
JPSP
Kenneth Savitsky, Nicholas Epley, Thomas Gilovich
2001
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Citation
Savitsky, K., Epley, N., & Gilovich, T. (2001). Do others judge us as harshly as we think? Overestimating the impact of our failures, shortcomings, and mishaps. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 44-56.
Abstract
When people suffer an embarrassing blunder, social mishap, or public failure, they often feel that their image has been severely tarnished in the eyes of others. Four studies demonstrate that these fears are commonly exaggerated. Actors who imagined committing one of several social blunders (Study 1), who experienced a public intellectual failure (Studies 2 and 3), or who were described in an embarrassing way (Study 4) anticipated being judged more harshly by others than they actually were. These exaggerated fears were produced, in part, by the actors' tendency to be inordinately focused on their misfortunes and by their resulting failure to consider the wider range of situational factors that tend to moderate onlookers' impressions. Discussion focuses on additional mechanisms that may contribute to overly pessimistic expectations as well as the role of such expectations in producing unnecessary social anxiety.
Journal Article
Feeling "Holier Than Thou": Are Self-Serving Assessments Produced by Errors in Self- or Social Prediction?
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Nicholas Epley, David Dunning
2000
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Citation
Epley, N., & Dunning, D. (2000). Feeling “Holier than thou”: Are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self or social prediction?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 861-875.
Abstract
People typically believe they are more likely to engage in selfless, kind, and generous behaviors than their peers, a result that is both logically and statistically suspect. However, this oft-documented tendency presents an important ambiguity. Do people feel "holier than thou" because they harbor overly cynical views of their peers (but accurate impressions of themselves) or overly charitable views of themselves (and accurate impressions of their peers)? Four studies suggested it was the latter. Participants consistently overestimated the likelihood that they would act in generous or selfless ways, whereas their predictions of others were considerably more accurate. Two final studies suggest this divergence in accuracy arises, in part, because people are unwilling to consult population base rates when predicting their own behavior but use this diagnostic information more readily when predicting others'.
Journal Article
Just Going Along: Nonconscious Priming and Conformity to Social Pressure
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Nicholas Epley, Thomas Gilovich
1999
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Citation
Epley, N., & Gilovich, T. (1999). Just going along: Nonconscious priming and conformity to social pressure. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 578-589.
Abstract
This research investigates whether conformity can be elicited or suppressed by nonconscious priming. In Experiment 1, participants were primed for either conformity or nonconformity using a scrambled sentences task and later placed into a conformity situation. As predicted, participants primed with conformity expressed views that were more similar to those of experimental confederates than did participants primed with nonconformity. To investigate whether the influence of the primes was symmetric, Experiment 2 included a neutral prime condition. Participants primed with conformity again tended to conform more than those in the other two groups, but the nonconformity primes did not induce participants to rebel against the group norm. Discussion focuses on the asymmetry in the effectiveness of the conformity and nonconformity primes.
Journal Article
What Every Skeptic Should Know About Subliminal Persuasion
Skeptical Inquirer
Nicholas Epley, Kenneth Savitsky, Robert A. Kachelski
1999
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Citation
Epley, N., Savitsky, K., & Kachelski, R.A. (1999). What every skeptic should know about subliminal persuasion.Skeptical Inquirer, 23, 40-45,58.
Abstract
Classic research by cognitive and social psychologists suggests that subliminally presented stimuli can be perceived and can influence individuals’ low-level cognitions. More recent investigations suggest that such stimuli can also affect individuals’ high-level cognitive processes, including attitudes, preferences, judgments, and even their behavior.
Journal Article
Suspicion, Affective Response, and Educational Benefit as a Result of Deception in Psychology Research
Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
Nicholas Epley, Chuck Huff
1998
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Epley, N., & Huff, C. (1998). Suspicion, affective response, and educational benefit as a result of deception in psychology research. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 759-768.
Abstract
This research evaluated participants' reactions to deception in experiments by having them participate in a replication of a deception experiment. Half of the participants were made aware of this deception immediately, whereas the other half were not. Participants reported little negative impact from being deceived, but significant negative effects were reported on the basis of receiving negative feedback (a manipulation in the deception experiment). Furthermore, participants who were informed of the deception became more suspicious than uninformed participants, and this effect lasted for 3 months after the initial experience. Thus, deception may not be as costly to participants as commonly believed. From a cost-benefit standpoint, other issues (e.g., suspicion and negative stimuli in experiments) should be of greater concern.
