PSYC2020 in-class experiments

Generally helpful materials:

• Dan Ariely flashcards about irrationality biases Collection1 / Collection2

Resources:

1. Course reading: Book chapter: Replication Crisis in Psychology

1. Hindsight bias
   1. Takeaways:
      1. We think we knew the answer all along even when we didn't/don't.
2. Why do people cheat?
   1. Video: Comfortable cheating
   2. How we study cheating
      1. Video: The Matrix Experiment
      2. Video: The Corruption Experiment
   3. Takeaways:
      1. You can study unethical behavior in the lab
      2. There are some fascinating findings in behavioral ethics social psychology studies.
3. Who cheats more?
   1. Video: Who Cheats More: Bankers or Politicians?
      1. Takeaways:
         1. We all cheat
         2. We all cheat about the same
4. Cheating behaviors (you versus average HKU student)
   1. Video: The Fudge Factor
   2. Takeaways:
      1. We lie and yet still think of ourselves as good honest people
      2. Justifying own unethical behavior
5. Experiment: Employee versus manager manipulation
   1. Unethical judgments depend on context/perspective and individual differences
   2. You need to understand the social context
6. Morality in every day life
   1. Takeaways:
      1. Understanding morality is very important for everyday life, in everything we do
   2. Fundamental attribution error bias
7. Morality of self-driving car
   1. Takeaways:
      1. Understanding morality is very important for everyday life, in everything we do
      2. We make moral decisions all the time, even when not realizing it
      3. A good example, is when faced with having to articulate decision for a machine, very uncomfortable and confusing
      4. Website: Moral machines project

Resources:

• Book: The honest truth about dishonesty
• Movie: Honesty, the truth about lies
• Dan Ariely's TED talk: Why we think it's OK to cheat and steal (sometimes)
• Dan Ariely's youtube videos

1. Cognitive illusions
   1. Akiyoshi Kitaoka
      1. Website
      2. Twitter account
   2. The McGurk Effect
2. Judgment and decision making cognitive biases
   1. Free money experiment
      1. Bias: Escalation of commitment
      2. Cooperation versus self-interest
   2. Heuristics: Availability Heuristic
   3. Heuristics: Representative Heuristic Bias
   4. Bias: The decoy effect
   5. Bias: Ease of Recall Bias
   6. Bias: Retrievability Bias
   7. Bias: Framing effects (Prospect Theory)
   8. Bias: Anchoring effect
   9. Bias: Action effect
   10. Theory: Norm Theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986)

Resources:

1. Course reading: Book chapter: Judgment and Decision Making
2. Book: Predictably irrational by Dan Ariely
3. Book: Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman
4. Book: Judgment in managerial decision making by Max H. Bazerman

1. Stereotypes and consistency
   1. Riddles experiment
      1. Riddle Me This (Skorinko, 2018, PLT)
      2. The case of stumpers (Bar-Hillel etal, 2018, JDM)
      3. Takeaways:
         1. We can study this in the lab using simple (fun) experiments.
         2. We all have these biases.
   2. Implicit association test
      1. Website: Project implicit
      2. Takeaways:
         1. Difference between explicit and implicit jugdments.
         2. There are tools to study either.
         3. They don't always correlate, both not always strongly correlate to behavior.
   3. Country face detection
      1. Website: Alllooksame
      2. Website: Face research
      3. Takeaways:
         1. Stereotypes don't always work and can lead to wrong judgments.
         2. People generally randomly guess country of origin.
         3. On average, the variations in appearance are very subtle, and all judged as attractive.
2. Lie detection
   1. Takeaways:
      1. There are some behaviors we associate with lying
      2. We are generally very bad at detecting lies
      3. If we are to make evaluations, we need to know the baseline (person) well and rely on objective quantifiable measures.
      4. Bias: Truth bias, we are inclined to believing others and trusting.
3. Intuitions about life/physics/math
   1. Takeaways:
      1. Are often biased and wrong. Again, we need objective reliable trustworthy sources rather than our intuitions.

Resources:

1. Course reading: Book chapter: Social cognition and attitudes

1. Influence tactics
   1. The 6 influence tactics by Robert Cialdini
   2. Effects
      1. Contrast Effect
      2. Scarcity Principle - importance of loss aversion and competition
      3. Consensus Principle - importance of similarity
      4. Consistency Principle - importance of active and public commitment
      5. Reciprocity Principle - importance of tailored, significant, and unexpected
2. Manipulation techniques
   1. Foot-in-the-door [FITD] (Freedman & Fraser, 1966)
   2. Door-in-the-face [DITF] (Cialdini)
   3. Low-balling [LB] (Cialdini)
   4. That’s not all [TNL](Burger, 1986, 1999)
   5. Creating similarity [CS]
3. Nudging
   1. Defaults (Opt in opt out in organ donations)
   2. Focusing attention (urinals)
   3. Perception and context (plate size)
   4. Social information (tax compliance)
   5. Video from Richard Thaler

Resources:

1. Course reading: Book chapter: Persuasion
2. Book: Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman
3. Book: Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

1. Economic games
   1. The homo-economicos hypothesis - actors are fully rational
   2. Game theory games to study economics and show deviation from the neo-classic economics hypothesis
      1. Dictator game
         1. Dictator (giving) game (the classic)
         2. Social change 1: Dictator (taking) game
         3. Social change 2: Dictator (giving) game (the classic), but public
         4. Social change 2: Dictator (taking) game, but public
      2. Ultimatum game
         1. Social change: Ultimatum game, but public
      3. Trust game
      4. Prisoner's dilemma
         1. Social change 1: Prisoner's dilemma, but with a judge
         2. Social change 2: Multiple rounds (learning, adjusting)
   3. Demos
      1. Psychology professor who did this in class
         1. Example of one analysis, there are many others: An Awesomely Evil Test Question And Its Mathematical Answer – Game Theory Tuesdays
      2. Live demonstration in class

Resources:

1. Course reading: Book chapter: Cooperation

1. Misalignment between what we expect from society/others and ourselves
2. Misalignment between causes of deaths (people affected) and funding to address.
3. Differences in helping between countries - not what you thought
4. Ruining a 1000US$ suit to help a drowning child versus donating 1000US$ to save a girl from South America
   1. The importance of relatability, statistics versus faces/names/people
5. Risking your life to help others
6. The bystander effect (Darley & Latané, 1968)
   1. Hurdles to helping those in crisis
7. Biases
   1. Identifiability
   2. Compassion fade & psychic numbing (Slovic, 2007; Västfjäll, Slovic, Mayorga, & Peters, 2014);
   3. Scope neglect (Desvousges, Johnson, Dunford, Boyle, Hudson, Wilson, 1992)
   4. Proportion over number (Slovic et al., 2002)
   5. Futility thinking (Fetherstonhaugh, Slovic, Johnson, & Friedrich, 1997)
8. Videos:
   1. Trump says he would have run unarmed into Florida school