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Monkeys and Cognitive Dissonance
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Nov 07, 2007 10:00 PM
from the when-you're-right-you're-right dept.
from the when-you're-right-you're-right dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "People deal with cognitive dissonance — the clashing of conflicting thoughts — by eliminating one of the thoughts. Psychologists have suggested we hone our skills of rationalization in order to impress others, reaffirm our "moral integrity" and protect our "self-concept" and feeling of "global self-worth." Now experimenters at Yale have demonstrated that other primates employ the same psychological mechanism. In one experiment, a monkey was observed to show an equal preference for three colors of M&M's and was given a choice between two of them. If he chose red over blue, his preference changed and he downgraded blue. When he was subsequently given a choice between blue and green, it was no longer an even contest — he was now much more likely to reject the blue. Rationalization is thought to have an evolutionary utility; once a decision has been made, second-guessing may just interfere with more important business. "We tend to think people have an explicit agenda to rewrite history to make themselves look right, but that's an outsider's perspective. This experiment shows that there isn't always much conscious thought going on," said one researcher."
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I'm no behavioral researcher... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm no behavioral researcher... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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That would be the desire to not be wrong.....
if we make a choice, then are presented with the same choice, under the same circumstances (cravings, often based on current nutrient requirements don't count) we are prone to validate, rather than invalidate our previous choice by a very real urge to be "right"
Re:I'm no behavioral researcher... (Score:4, Insightful)
People make an arbitrary decision. And then they just stick with it.
It's very hard to overcome their position with facts because it is not a logical decision. It is usually better to argue with the emotionally. If you can shift their emotions, they are more likely to shift their position.
With facts they
1) Request more facts
2) Request impossible to gather amount of facts
3) Keep forgetting or misunderstanding facts they do not "like"
4) Discount facts (you have a total sales they dislike, they question the entire methodology for calculating the total).
Parent
Re:I'm no behavioral researcher... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Noooo (Score:3, Funny)
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Tell that to van halen [snopes.com]
Re:I'm no behavioral researcher... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. I wish the monkey could tell them, 'You know what? Did it ever occur to you I just don't like blue fucking M&M's? They're just unnatural.'
Parent
TFA says (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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That's the GPs point. You wouldn't stop and decide. If you know they are both equally as good, then the first time you would take either path, doesn't matter which one.
The second time, you would take the one you took last time (saves you having to stop and think about it) because you survived by going down that one last time. Re-enforcement.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What's really interesting here is the implications on other aspects of life. Republican vs. Democrat? Creationism vs. Evolution? To war or not to war? Sports team mentality (choosing a side for no particularly good reason, but
I'm no monkey but ... (Score:3, Interesting)
If my boss makes me choose a color of mm, then I'm sure as heck going to develop a preference real quick, without any need for rationalizing my decision. Boss says I like blue better now? Okay, I like blue better now, just don't stop the paycheck.
Really, Leon Festinger didn't prove cognitive dissonance to me, all he showed is that experience teaches people to appreciate what they are most familiar with. Cognitive dissonance on the other hand, is about having reason to believe that something you already bel
Perhaps also a wrong interpretation (Score:3, Interesting)
It is just as likely that rather than the blue M&M b
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Re:I'm no behavioral researcher... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'm no behavioral researcher... (Score:5, Insightful)
The theory is that the monkey eliminated "blue" as a possibility in the first half of the experiment, and so continued to eliminate it in the second half. This is despite the fact that the monkey has obtained *no* information on blue or green M&Ms at that point. Green could be utterly lethal, while blue was always safe. Simple evolution is not the reason the monkey kept choosing "not blue".
Parent
This just isn't true... (Score:3, Informative)
not-good(x) = good(not-x) ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a mathematical function "f". It's obvious to all of us that -f(x) does not mean the same thing as f(-x). With modal logical operators such as the "necessity" or "obligation" operators, this holds as well: "it is necessary that not-x" means "it is impossible that x", but "it is not necessary that x" means "it is possible that not-x"; and "it is obligatory that not-x" means "it is prohibited that x", but "it is not obligatory that x" means "it is permissible that x".
However, when it comes to assertions of straightforward truth and goodness, as opposed to the stronger notions of necessity and obligation, people suddenly lose the ability to think in such modal categories, if they ever had it at all. With necessity and obligation, we have four categories each: f(x), -f(x), f(-x), and -f(-x); those translating to necessity/contingency/impossibility/possibility and obligation/supererogatoriety/prohibition/permission, respectively. But when we speak of truth and goodness, these categories collapse: it -f(x), i.e. it's not true that x , we say f(-x), i.e. it's true that not x; and likewise with not-good being taken to mean good-not.
But that doesn't follow. While in the proper modal logics f(-x) does entail -f(x), the other way around is not so. It seems to me that we should use the same logic when speaking of straightforward truth and goodness too; just being non-true does not make something false (it could be nonsense or otherwise carry no truth value), even though being false makes something non-true; and just being non-good does not make something bad (it could be morally irrelevant), even though being bad makes something non-good. But most people don't seem to think in those terms; everything is either true or false, good or bad, no middle ground. (And before someone screams "principle of bivalence", note that using modal notation like this, you can express such concepts while keeping bivalent functionality in your logic).
Which brings us back on topic. The monkeys in this experiment were given the choice of red and blue and, choosing red but not-choosing blue (i.e. judging good(red) and not-good(blue)), in the same act chose not-blue (taking not-good(blue) to entail good(not-blue)), when they didn't logically have to to so. So later, presented with blue and green, they remained consistant with their earlier opinion that good(not-blue), when if they had been logical earlier they would have just seen a color they had not-chosen and another color they had not-chosen, rather than a color they had not-chosen and a color they had chosen-not.
I guess this kind of flaw runs pretty deep in the psyche, which explains why it pops up in human reasoning so often...
Parent
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The High Road (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:The High Road (Score:4, Funny)
Indeed. I don't know whether this is a conscience effort or subconscious. Take a gander at the catch-phrases in it:
* monkey
* cognitive dissonance
* the clashing of conflicting thoughts -- by eliminating one of the thoughts.
* skills of rationalization in order to impress others
* protect our "self-concept"
* much more likely to reject the blue [as in "blue States"]
* rationalization
* once a decision has been made, second-guessing may just interfere
* rewrite history to make themselves look right
And the clincher:
* isn't always much conscious thought going on
Parent
Surprised? (Score:3, Funny)
Heck, one look at drivers, TV, and movies today could've told ya that for a LOT less money.
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Heck, one look at drivers, TV, and movies today could've told ya that for a LOT less money.
M&Ms (Score:4, Funny)
Color vision... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Color vision... (Score:5, Informative)
Mods - if you must agree with the parent, rank it "Funny" or at least "Insightful"... but there is nothing informative about it.
Parent
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Re:Color vision... (Score:5, Informative)
Did you mean maybe that these monkeys diverged from humans' evolutionary branch before the red and green cones differentiated from the older, yellow cone? If that were the case, they still should have no trouble distinguishing red from blue.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you mean maybe that these monkeys diverged from humans' evolutionary branch before the red and green cones differentiated from the older, yellow cone? If that were the case, they still should have no trouble distinguishing red from blue.
Yes, they would have no trouble distinguishing red from blue. But they would have trouble telling red and green apart, especially if not shown next to each other, as was the case in this experiment.
After the first test, the monkey made the choice that he preferred yellow (in his eyes...) over blue.
So, after the second test, it was perfectly logical for the monkey to prefer a slightly different shade of yellow (again, in his eyes...) over blue.
Good Question, but... (Score:5, Informative)
The M&M (and sticker choices) were different across subjects, so it is unlikely that a systematic bias could result from visual perception of the items. The M&M choices chosen for the subjects were determined by relatively equal preference in a pretraining phase of the experiment. Given the fact that they find an effect, it's unlikely that it's due to an inability to tell the items apart.
Specifically:
We first assessed the monkeys' existing preferences for M&M's of different colors by timing how long they took to retrieve individual M&M's. For each monkey, preferences for at least nine different M&M colors were assessed. As each preference test began, the monkey was inside its home cage, just outside a testing chamber, and was allowed to watch as the experimenter placed one colored M&M on a tray outside the other side of the chamber. The door to the testing chamber was opened, and the monkey was allowed to enter when it wished to retrieve the M&M. We measured how quickly the monkey entered the testing chamber to retrieve the M&M. Preferences for each color were assessed across 20 trials per monkey; trials for each color spanned two experimental sessions.
After preference testing, we performed analyses of variance to determine whether each monkey had statistically significant preferences. We identified triads of equally preferred colors (all ps >
**By the way, I've been reading your slashdot comments for quite some time, and so don't take this as a personal affront or anything. =) I think you're probably one of the better scientist/posters on the site. =)
Parent
Ah, not everyone eliminates cognitive dissonance! (Score:2)
Unconvinced (Score:4, Insightful)
There isn't always much conscious thought going on (Score:2, Interesting)
I defer to the late Mr Heinlein.... (Score:5, Interesting)
- Robert A. Heinlein
Leap of faith (Score:2)
In other words we get use to what we prefer (Score:5, Interesting)
The blue M&M was not preferred. The monkey felt bad about being given what it didn't prefer. This bad feeling became associated with the blue M&M and the monkey therefore preferred any other colour.
Reminds me of what happens when I've bought bad buggy software. After a while even if there are improvements, if you've been disappionted enough you'd rather use any other piece of software that does the same job.
In other words, for some slashdotters, Windows is the blue M&M.
What exactly is new here?
My research on Slashdot backs this up... (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally some answers (Score:3, Funny)
And here I thought that they were just stupid.
Cruelty, animal torture! (Score:4, Funny)
First paragraph of article. (Score:3, Interesting)
Who eats blue, anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
Blue food barely exists in nature. There are two foods which are blue. Blue Berries and nasty French Cheese.
And how many blue berries grow in the jungle, anyway? --Of course, jungles are filled with all kinds of weird and un-cataloged beasties and plants, some of which may indeed be blue, but they could just as likely be toxic and bitter tasting. . . My point here is. . , my point. . .
Well, what I'm saying is that maybe there were other processes at work in the test subject's decision-making process. Heck, I don't even like blue smarties, and I don't have hair on my bum.
And anyway, I thought cognitive dissonance was the psychological result of believing one thing while evidence to the opposite exists right in your face. That's the more entertaining take on it, anyway. Nobody is going to throw a fit over blue M&M's. But reality versus sacred cows. . . Man, you can start wars over stuff like that! Cuz, you know, some things really are true while others really are not. Everything else is opinion. Funny how wrong people with strong opinions are generally the first to start shooting.
Say. . . Did they ever try selling boxes of all red Smarties?
I bet if they did, it flopped. Life, after all, is all about making decisions. When the decisions have all been made, you're better off dead.
-FL
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You forgot to end the summary (Score:3, Funny)
Over-interpreting (Score:3, Interesting)
But talking about 'moral integrity' and 'global self-worth' is far-fetched. For one thing, I can't see that it is necessary to explain it any further than I have outlined above. I think there may be reasons to believe that animals other than humans have something like a sense of morality and self-worth, but this has nothing to do with it. I wish researchers (or perhaps it is the reporter?) would stop this kind of nonsense - it makes people lose respect for the genuine and valuable research that goes on into understanding the other animals on the planet, because they get associations of bunnies in waist-coats drinking tea.