Reasoning and decision making as social activities
Office hours: Thursday, 4:30pm - 6:30pm (right after the class). I can also take appointments, contact me by email (hugo.mercier "at" gmail.com).
We can’t deny that the social context has an influence on our behavior. The seminar will explore the idea that it has a larger impact than we usually care to admit. More specifically, we will see that abilities that are generally thought of as being very personal, such as reasoning and decision making, are in fact heavily influenced by the social context. To that end, this seminar will review some research in the fields of reasoning and decision making, as well as social psychology.
Click here to view some non technical books that are related to this seminar.
Course requirements
Each student will prepare one presentation, based on one or a couple of papers. This will represent approximately a quarter the grade. A share of the grade will also be based on participation during the class.
Most of the grade will be based on a paper, due at the end of the semester that should be more than 6,000 words long (approx. 20 pages) (bibliographical references not included). Topics will be chosen with the students.
The slides of the presentations will be available by clicking on the title of the class.
Here are a sample of papers that might be discussed during the class, depending on the time available and the interests of the students.
First class: Introduction
The methodology of experimental psychology will be very quickly described. A few core concepts, such as unconscious and modularity will also be introduced.
Slides
Methods
Classic experiments
The cognitive unconscious
Modularity
Principles of evolutionary psychology
Second class: Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychologists are cognitive psychologists who think of human psychology in evolutionary terms. In this class, we will introduce the main concepts of evolutionary psychology that will recur throughout the seminar.
Paper to be discussed
Cosmides & Tooby 1997 Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer
Other references
Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (Eds.). (1992). The Adapted Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Waal, F. B. M. (1982). Chimpanzee Politics. New York: Harper & Row.
Slides
Emotions and feelings
Even though we have a strong sense of emotions and feelings as being very private, they often have social causes (someone upsets us) and social consequences (we fight with our friend). In this class the psychology of emotions and feelings will be briefly introduced from an evolutionary perspective. Then we will stress the role of specifically social emotions—from anger to shame—as well as the surprising social aspects of our feelings.
Paper to be discussed
Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2001). Social functions of emotions. Emotions: Current issues and future directions, 192–213.
Schwarz, N. (2004). Metacognitive experiences in consumer judgment and decision making. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 14(4), 332-348.
How we use our feelings to make decisions. Some very funny and counterintuive results.
Other references
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2000). Evolutionary psychology and the emotions. Handbook of emotions, 91–115.
Koriat, A. (2008) Subjective confidence in one's answers: the consensuality principle. Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition. 34(4), 945-959.
Reveals that our confidence judgments are not based on whether our answers are correct, but on whether they are consensual.
Slides
Memory
Even though memory serves a primarily individual function, it has been twisted during our evolution to better serve us in our primarily social environment—some new memory systems may even have been designed along the way.
Paper to be discussed
Hirst, W., & Echterhoff, G. (2008). Creating shared memories in conversation: Toward a psychology of collective memory. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 75(1), 183–216.
Other references
Cuc, A., Koppel, J., & Hirst, W. (2007). Silence is not golden: A case for socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting. Psychological Science, 18(8), 727.
Echterhoff, G., Higgins, E. T., Kopietz, R., & Groll, S. (2008). How communication goals determine when audience tuning biases memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(1), 3.
Hirst, W., Phelps, E. A., Buckner, R. L., Budson, A. E., Cuc, A., Gabrieli, J. D. E., et al. (2009). Long-term memory for the terrorist attack of September 11: Flashbulb memories, event memories, and the factors that influence their retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138(2), 161–176.
Klein, S. B., Cosmides, L., Gangi, C. E., Jackson, B., Tooby, J., & Costabile, K. A. (2009). Evolution and episodic memory: An analysis and demonstration of a social function of episodic recollection. Social Cognition, 27(2), 283–319.
Kopietz, R., Echterhoff, G., Niemeier, S., Hellmann, J. H., & Memon, A. (2009). Audience-congruent biases in eyewitness memory and judgment: Influences of a co-witness’ liking for a suspect. Social Psychology, 40(3), 138–149.
Roediger, H. L., Meade, M. L., & Bergman, E. T. (2001). Social contagion of memory. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 8(2), 365–371.
Sedikides, C., Green, J. D., & Pinter, B. (2004). Self-protective memory. The self and memory, 161–179.
Slides
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of the way we interpret communication. Given that the psychology of decision making is based on verbal questions, it is crucial that we understand how people interpret these questions.
Papers to be discussed
Druckman, J. N. (2004). Political preference formation: Competition, deliberation, and the (ir) relevance of framing effects. American Political Science Review, 98(04), 671–686.
Sher, S., & McKenzie, C. R. M. (2008). Framing effects and rationality. The probabilistic mind: Prospects for Bayesian cognitive science, 79.
Other references
Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. 2006. Pragmatics. in F. Jackson and M. Smith eds., Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language. 2006
Politzer, G. (2004). Reasoning, judgement and pragmatics. Experimental pragmatics, 94–115.
Kahneman, Daniel. 2003. Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics. American Economic Review, 93(5): 1449–75.
A review of the heuristic and biases framework, by it's most famous proponent.
Levinson, S. C.1995. Interactional biases in human thinking. In Social intelligence and interaction, edited by E. Goody, 221-60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Slides
Theory of mind
Theory of mind is the name psychologists give to the cognitive mechanisms that allow us to understand other people. In this class, we will briefly explain how they work and what kind of biases they can lead to.
Paper to be discussed
Nickerson, R. S. (1999). How we know-and sometimes misjudge-what others know: Imputing one's own knowledge to others. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 737–759.
Other references
Gilovich, T., Savitsky, K., & Medvec, V. H. (1998). The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others' ability to read one's emotional states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 332–346.
Ross, L., & Ward, A. (1996). Naive realism in everyday life: Implications for social conflict and misunderstanding. Values and knowledge, 103–135.
Slides
Impression management
We are always striving to look good in other peoples’ eyes. This fundamental drive is essential to our social lives and has a large impact on our decisions.
Paper to be discussed
Ariely, D, & Norton, M. Conceptual consumption, Annual review of psychology 60, 475–499.
Other references
Schlenker, B. R. (1980). Impression management: The self-concept, social identity, and interpersonal relations: Brooks/Cole Monterey, CA.
Veblen, T., & Howells, W. D. (1965). The theory of the leisure class: Aakar Books.
Slides
Trust and epistemic vigilance
We don’t take what other people tell for granted. On the contrary, we use different mechanisms to evaluate what we should believe, and to tailor our own communication to the circumstances.
Paper to be discussed
Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mercier, H., Origgi, G., et al. (Submitted). Epistemic vigilance.
Gambetta, D. (2009). Codes of the Underworld. Princeton, Princeton University Press
Other references
Gambetta, D., & others. (1990). Trust: Making and breaking cooperative relations: Basil Blackwell New York.
Slides
Reasoning
Even though reasoning is usually seen as a purely individual mechanism, I will try to convince you that it is in fact a profoundly social mechanism, shaped by the need to convince other people and only be convinced when it is appropriate.
Paper to be discussed
Mercier, H., Sperber, D. (Submitted) “Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory”.
Other references
Billig, M. (1996). Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480-498.
Shafir, E., Simonson, I., & Tversky, A. (1993). Reason-based choice. Cognition, 49(1-2), 11-36.
Review article on reason-based choice.
Slides
Group reasoning and decision making
Many of our decisions are made in group. We will try to understand why groups sometimes lead to worse and sometimes to better decisions.
Paper to be discussed
Mercier, H., & Landemore, H. (Submitted). Reasoning is for arguing: Consequences for deliberative democracy.
Other references
Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink (2nd Rev. ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Michaelsen, L. K., Watson, W. E., & Black, R. H. (1989). A realistic test of individual versus group consensus decision making. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(5), 834-839.
Sunstein, C. R. (2002). The law of group polarization. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10(2), 175-195.
Shows that reasoning in group can lead to stronger (but not better) beliefs or actions.
Slides
Morality
Our intuitions about what is fair or not are crucial in our dealings with other individuals. In this class, we will try to understand their evolutionary origins and the interplay between these intuitions and moral reasoning.
Paper to be discussed
Baumard, N. (Submitted) “Fair enough!” The distribution of resources in experimental games fits better with market selection than with group selection
Baumard, N. (Submitted) Moral intuitions: A test case for evolutionary theories of human cooperation
Other references
Gibbard, A. (1990). Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814-834.
When moral judgments are made on the basis of intuitions -- and reasoning has nothing to say about it.
Slides
Self-control
As its name indicates, self-control is typically thought of as a purely individual mechanism. However, there is also an old strand in psychology that relates self-control to social pressures. In this class we will review evidence showing that indeed our ability to self-control is deeply influenced by our social surroundings.
Paper to be discussed
Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106, 3-19.
A dual process model of temporal discounting and impulse control.
Other references
Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1990). Crime and deviance over the life course: The salience of adult social bonds. American Sociological Review, 55(5), 609–627.
Slides
Cross-cultural psychology
Even thought they tend to be understudied in decision making, there are sometimes wide variations in behavior and cognition between cultures. This class will give a brief overview of these differences in the domains reviewed previously, and try to explain their origin.
Paper to be discussed
Henrich, J., Heine, S., & Norenzayan, A. (In press). The weirdest people in the world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Other references
Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sperber, D., & Hirschfeld, L. (1999). Culture, cognition, and evolution. The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, cxi-xxxii.
Sperber, D., & Hirschfeld, L. A. (2004). The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(1), 40-46.
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., McElreath, R., Alvard, M., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Henrich, N., Hill, K., Gil-White, F., Gurven, M., Marlowe, F. W., Patton, J. Q. & Tracer, D. (2005) 'Economic Man' in Cross-cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies. Behavioral & Brain Sciences 28: 795-815.
Slides