PSYC 213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Introspection Illusion, Confabulation, Peanut Butter
11 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Elizabeth Dutemple TTA
Decision Making (Jay’s guest lecture)
Favourite hypnosis story
- Hypnotised a client
- “Snap my fingers, you will pick up plant, put it down on sofa, wrap it in a blanket, bow down to
it, and hug it”
- “You will forget” but follow it out anyways
- Why did you do that?
o “I saw the plant and I figured it was cold, so I took it and wrapped it in the blanket… I
also really respected it, so I bowed down to it…”
Story is an example of CONFABULATION
- Post hoc rationalization (after the fact) of why you did something
- Usually false
- (e.g. real reason: hypnotic suggestion)
- Confabulation and rationalization at the core of decision making
o Happens every day to everyone
How to study confabulation?
- Researchers in Sweden
- Two faces, sample of men
- Faces of women in black and white
- “Which one do you find more attractive”
- Pushes forward brunette “why her?”
- Would swap the faces with a magic trick “why her?”
- Participants didn’t notice! they confabulate based on the image that they are now seeing
- Are explaining a decision they didn’t even make!
- Vast majority of people of people don’t notice (80-90%)
- People’s verbal preferences has nothing to do with behaviour (e.g. who you want to date (a man
with a stable job) and who you actually date (a poor student))
- Jam example:
o Two jars of jam: had participants choose their favourite swaped them “Take another
taste and tell me why you preferred it?”
o They confabulate again! Based on the one they did not choose!
- (Pattern is similar across modalities)
These studies look at CHOICE blindness
- Has to do with outcome of choice being changed
- E.g. choosing face, and the face changes; choosing jam, jam changes
Choice blindness blindness
- If you explain choice blindness and ask people if they would notice “Of course I would
notice!”
o Nope!
Elizabeth Dutemple TTA
- SUBSET of introspective blindness when you don’t know what’s happening in your head
o You confabulate, fill something in
- The majority of decisions we make in a day are based on confabulation we don’t know why
we really make these decisions
o Ashley and Brendan story
o He gets in a fight even when she asked him not to! On her 21st birthday!
o She’s surrounded by her girlfriends
▪ “He’s such an ass!” “I know you should drop him!”
▪ “He’s such a gentleman when sober!” “I know, he’s so sweet!”
o We all have a “group of girlfriends” in our heads to rationalize our decisions
- Useful?
o To avoid cognitive dissonance
o E.g. why peanut butter? When oatmeal better? better not to have to think of every
single decision or looks silly when you have no answer in social situations
- We usually don’t know when we’re confabulating
Best part of being a researcher, you can study whatever you want…
- Fall 2016
o Trump hadn’t been elected yet (Hold that thought… Nice, right?)
o A lot of angry people
o They’re both a risk to national security! The world will end if either is elected!
o Parties would not sleep with each other
o Very, very polarized
o Interesting time to study decision making
▪ Snuck onto campus for the Presidential debate
▪ Asked people to fill out short questionnaire
▪ Scale (Leadership, courageousness, intelligence…) of relative skillset
▪ “Rate the relative distance between them”
▪ While they were answering, Jay would make a fake (decoy) questionnaire with
responses in the middle
▪ He swapped the questionnaires
▪ Extremely polarized people BUT asked to explain a response they didn’t make
They confabulate and don’t notice!! Even the Trump supporter with the
stuffed animal and tattoo on his cheek
▪ Media organization member (CNN – let’s pretend it’s Anderson Cooper)
didn’t notice!!
• “Balance things for my viewers…”
• But choice blindness and confabulation works on them!
▪ Often when people are polarized, they perhaps haven’t thought about it much…
▪ They could change their voting intentions! (e.g. the current Facebook and
Cambridge Analytica scandal)
▪ Would hold the same modified views for at least two weeks! (Ethics doesn’t
permit for longer)
