Evaluate the Extent to Which Our Judgments and Decisions are Influenced by the Way We See and Interpret the World

黄智敏

Every person has to make countless decisions and judgments during his entire life. Some decisions and judgments are correct， whereas some are incorrect. This is because people's ways to perceive the events are limited by context-dependence. Therefore， people cannot always hold objective attitudes to analyze events. As Tversky and Sattath （2003） states， people make decisions based on the contexts of alternatives. Moreover， it is obvious that some factors including experience， past memories and background also can influence the decisions and judgments people made. Hence， more and more people have concern that how judgments and decisions are affected by the way to cope with information. The aim of this report is to discuss about what extent that the way to see and interpret the data affect the people's decisions. This report is divided into four parts to discuss how the four factors including selective perception， cognitive dissonance， memory and hindsight bias and context influence the decisions and judgments of people.

Selective perception

Selective perception process

The available information plays a vital role during the process of making decisions and judgments. However， the information becomes more and increasingly complex due to the development of technology and economies， which makes it difficult for people to deal with growth in these sectors. Therefore， they are willing to select certain information to perceive consciously or unconsciously. Klapper（1960） claims that selective perception means people only consider carefully part of information they received and/or perceive， based on their own way and they reject to spend a lot of time and energy to deal with the unimportant data they'vethought. Therefore， when people make the judgments and decisions， they just depend on the part of information rather than all of the information which can contribute to the best judgments and decisions. It can be seen from this process that people are willing to select the information to perceive， based on their needs and desire so that the available information is consistent with their own view and their current way of thinking. In other word， all the decisions and judgments people made are based on selective information， which in turn make it different forpeople to make objectivedecisions and judgments.

Expectation

People's expectations are also a factor

which can affect their accurate perception. When the people come across some questionable information， they would perceive the information in the way they want to see and expect， rather than they actually see. As Weiten （1992） says， expectation can manipulate the way people perceive the information. Moreover， Bruner and Postman（1949） carried out an experiment to prove this opinion. They mixed the normal cards and trick cards to ask one group of subjects to distinguish the difference between them. The times of the group of subjects watched was varied from ten milliseconds to one second. Researchers found out that the time spent by subjects to recognize a trick card was more than four times of the time which was spent on recognizing a normal card.

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is another factor which can affect people's judgments and decisions. According to Festinger（1962）， dissonance is when new behaviors or cognitions of people conflict with their initial beliefs， it makes them feel unhappy and uncomfortable. Therefore， if people want to decrease this unhappy feeling， they will do something to change this dissonance. After this process of reducing the dissonance， it is possible for people to change or even give up their initial beliefs so that their new beliefs are in accordance with their behaviors. It can be seen the decision people have made， already changed even became total different with their initial beliefs. Furthermore， Festinger and Carlsmith（1959） held an experiment to prove this phenomenon. They required the subjects to do an extremely boring task， and when they completed， the researchers asked them to lie to the other subjects and told them this task was interesting. For this lie， the subjects could get from 1 dollar to 20 dollars based on the experimental condition. At the end of experiment， the subjects were required to rank how interesting this task was. The result was astonishing. The subjects who got 1 dollar rated the task much more interesting than the subjects who got twenty dollars. This strange phenomenon was explained by researchers. They believed that the cognitive dissonance was the reason. This is because the conflict between their lies （one-dollar owner'） and the little pay （one dollar） leads to the unpleasant feelings of the subjects who earned one dollar. The subject had to convince themselves that the task was interesting so that their behaviors and beliefs were consistent. Therefore， the subjects who earned one dollar changed the judgments of this task at the end of experiment.

In addition， Plous（1993） states that pre-decisional dissonance and post-decisional dissonance can explain the process of perception changing. When the people have not done something to deal with cognitive dissonance， it is hard for them to choose one of them to outweigh the other. However， as long as they made this decision to cope with cognitive dissonance， they could change their past attitude about these different beliefs. They are conscious to select to perceive the strength of the things they have chosen and the weakness of the things they have rejected， which can cause the attitude about these opposite beliefs are different obviously. When people change the opinions about one thing， their values will have a corresponding change. Therefore， their related decisions also are affected accordingly.

Memory and Hindsight Bias

Memory

People always depend on their past experience and historical data to make a decision， this makes it important for the memory to be accurate and makes it a crucial factor for making the right judgments and decisions. However， Payne and Blackwell （1998） claim that when people recall one thing， they restructure a whole and logic inference based on the existing memory and the common knowledge. However， the inference is not the copy of past experience. Robinson and Roediger （1997） state associated events are possible to lead to the false memory of people. Furthermore， people also can remember something which never happened. Hyman and Pentland（1996） held an experiment to test the childhood memory of adults. During the process， the childhood memories of participants were not accurate. Some of them actuary occurred， whereas some of them never happened. The results showed that the imagination can cause that the participants remember the events which never happened. Therefore， they claim that people would like to accept the information from the others or restructured by themselves to fill the gap of memory after long time so that errors perhaps occur.

Hindsight Bias

Hindsight bias phenomenon illusions that

people are willing to restructure their memories so that the past memories are consist with their new judgments and decision. Fischhoff and Beyth （1975） conducted the research for this phenomenon. They selected the subjects and asked them to forecast the outcome the trip about the President Nixon visit China and Soviet Union. And after the trip， they required them to recall their prediction under the condition that the participants already knew the outcomes. However， the results found out that the prediction which was recalled was more accurate than the actual predictions. Two reasons can explain this situation. Stahlberg and Maass（1998） believe that if the subjects forget their past prediction and they already know the outcome， they will guess and believe that their prediction is similar with the true outcomes， based on the outcomes. Moreover， Bazerman and Moore（2009） hold an opinion that self-serving motivation can make the people to give the false response deliberately or unconsciously. It can be seen the memories about judgments and decisions which were made under uncertainty， they are easier to be changed as long as people know the actual answers.

Illustrations of Context Dependence

Context is another factor which can affect the people's judgments and decisions. For people it is possible to see and interpret the same thing in different way because the context is changed. Some illustrations can explain this phenomenon.

The Contrast Effect

Contrast effect can illustrate that when a same object appears in different contexts， the visual perception of people about this object will change. Gleitman（1995） used two photographs to show this effect. One of these two photographs showed that there are two different sized men in a picture and the ration is three to one. However， because the smaller man is three time farther away the bigger man， they are perceived as the same size by people. In the other pictures， the smaller sized man is moved next to the bigger sized man through cutting the distance. People are obvious to perceive that the sizes of two men are different. Therefore， the smaller man is put in the different position， the people would perceive in different way.

Order Effect

When people perceive a series of information， the order of them can affect their judgment. Asch （1946） carried out a research to determine that how order can influence the people's judgments. He gave half of subjects about a series of traits of someone and gave the other half subjects these traits in the opposite order to ask all of them their impression about this people. Through this research， Asch found out that the traits which appear early have much more impact on the judgments of subjects. This phenomenon called primacy effect. However， there are recency effect which also can illustrate the importance about the order of information. Plous（1993） states that recency effect means some final information has more important influence than the information which present early. It can be seen that the series of information which is presented in the different order， the judgments of people are different.

Halo effect

Halo effect refers to when people make the judgments about one thing or one person， they firstly judge the object according to their likes and dislikes. Then they would conjecture the other traits of the person or thing depend on these judgments. If the cognitive object is believed good， he or it will be given all good characters. Contrarily， all of their characters are believed bad. In addition， Dion， Berscheid and Walster（1972） claim that most people believe that the physically beautiful people are easier to obtain the opportunities for happiness， high occupational status， marriage and own more desirable personality than the average-looking or unattractive people. Therefore， halo effect shows that people cannot perceive a people or thing objectively.

Conclusion

This report has presented how the decisions and judgments are affected by the way people perceive the information. Selective perception， cognitive dissonance， memory and hindsight and context dependence are the main four factors. Firstly， the selective perception can affect their accurate perception. People always base on part of information rather than all information to perceive and make the judgments and decisions. Moreover， their expectation also can influence their perception. Secondly， cognitive dissonance has more important impact on the situation that the past judgments and decisions of people are changed. When cognitive dissonance occurs， people would feel unhappy. This feeling force them to change the attitude of something to reduce this dissonance， which causes people change their initial judgments and decisions. Thirdly， memory and hindsight bias can influence the judgments and decisions of people. Memory is believed as the fundament to help the people to make the decisions and judgments. However， memory is not the cope of past experience. Some deliberate and unconscious motivation can lead to some errors which exist in the memories of people. Finally， the changes of context also can affect the perception of people， it can be seen from the illustrations which include contrast effect， order effect and halo effect. Therefore， the way people to see and interpret the world can affect their judgments and decision at a large extent.

Reference

[1]Asch ， S. E. （1946）. Forming Impressions of Personality， Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Volume 41. pp. 258 - 290.

[2]Bruner， J.S. & Postman， L.J.（1949）. On

the perception of Incongruity： A Paradigm. Journal of Personality. Volume.18. pp.206-223.

[3]Bazerman， M.H.& Moore，D. A.（2009）.

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making. John Wiley and Sons Inc.

（作者單位：信阳农业高等专科学校）