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Lecture 13
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When belief creates reality
Example of this is a wonderful life
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Bank run: people worry that the
bank will run out of money and a
bunch of people keep doing this
because they are influenced by
others.
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The bank eventually cannot pay
everyone and eventually runs out
of money
○
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Self fulfilling Prophecy
Merton, 1948
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A false definition of the situation of
the situation evoking a new
behaviour which makes the
originally false conception come
true.
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The prophet will cite the actual
course of events as proof that he
was right from the very beginning.
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You believed it, then you acted
upon it and then that lead to it
becoming true like the movie
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Clever Hans (the horse)
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Taught arithmetic by owner
Wilhelm Von Osten 1900
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He tried it with many animals but it
seemed like the horse was the best
at this
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Showed this to other people in
other towns and became world
famous
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lecture 13
Thursday, October 17, 2019
2:35 PM
Only pages 1-2 are available for preview. Some parts have been intentionally blurred.
famous
They checked out the horse and
wrote a report and said it was true
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Turns out it wasn’t true and a
psychologist proved it to not be
true, what they found was the
horse looked at the questioner to
see if he was doing the right thing
(cues of expectancy)
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We know about the belief-
confirming effects of schemas,
confirmation bias, and motivated
cognition
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Rosenthal and Lawson (1964):
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Had undergraduate students in a
research class run studies with rats
Half were told they had smart rats
and the other half were told it was
dumb
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The bright rats ended up
performing batter
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Students who had been told their
rats were bright were more
interested and enthusiastic, and
handled their rats more
○
When the study was explained in
debriefing, students with dull rats
did not believe their rats were not
in fact bred for dullness
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When you explain the study to
people they don’t believe you
○
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Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968):
Measured kids IQ at start of year
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Told teachers that some kids were
late bloomers (these kids were
picked at random and it was not
true)
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These kids actually ended up with
higher IQ scores at the end of the
year
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