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Abstract How do people come to opposite causal judgments about societal problems, such as whether a public health policy reduced COVID‐19 cases? The current research tests an understudied cognitive mechanism in which people may agree about whatactuallyhappened (e.g., that a public health policy was implemented and COVID‐19 cases declined), but can be made to disagree about the counterfactual, or whatwould havehappened otherwise (e.g., whether COVID‐19 cases would have declined naturally without intervention) via comparison cases. Across two preregistered studies (totalN= 480), participants reasoned about the implementation of a public policy that was followed by an immediate decline in novel virus cases. Study 1 shows that people's judgments about the causal impact of the policy could be pushed in opposite directions by emphasizing comparison cases that imply different counterfactual outcomes. Study 2 finds that people recognize they can use such information to influence others. Specifically, in service of persuading others to support or reject a public health policy, people systematically showed comparison cases implying the counterfactual outcome that aligned with their position. These findings were robust across samples of U.S. college students and politically and socioeconomically diverse U.S. adults. Together, these studies suggest that implied counterfactuals are a powerful tool that individuals can use to manufacture others’ causal judgments and warrant further investigation as a mechanism contributing to belief polarization.
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The effects of tool comparisons when estimating the likelihood of task success.
People often use tools for tasks, and sometimes there is uncertainty about whether a given task can be completed with a given tool. This project explored whether, when, and how people’s optimism about successfully completing a task with a given tool is affected by the contextual salience of a better or worse tool. In six studies, participants were faced with novel tasks. For each task, they were assigned a tool but also exposed to a comparison tool that was better or worse in utility (or sometimes similar in utility). In some studies, the tool comparisons were essentially social comparisons, because the tool was assigned to another person. In other studies, the tool comparisons were merely counterfactual rather than social. The studies revealed contrast effects on optimism, and the effect worked in both directions. That is, worse comparison tools boosted optimism and better tools depressed optimism. The contrast effects were observed regardless of the general type of comparison (e.g., social, counterfactual). The comparisons also influenced discrete decisions about which task to attempt (for a prize), which is an important finding for ruling out superficial scaling explanations for the contrast effects. It appears that people fail to exclude irrelevant tool-comparison information from consideration when assessing their likelihood of success on a task, resulting in biased optimism and decisions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1851738
- PAR ID:
- 10216392
- Editor(s):
- Baron, J.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Judgment and decision making
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1930-2975
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 165-200
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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