How Pictures Skew Our Judgment 141
An article at Ars summarizes a study into how simply seeing pictures can alter what we believe, even if the pictures don't provide any information about the topic at hand (abstract). Researchers asked true-or-false questions to a group of test subjects about whether a minor celebrity was still alive. When they provided a picture of the celebrity, more people evaluated the statement as 'true' than when no picture was provided. The researchers then switched the question, asking whether it was true or false that the celebrity was dead. Again, the subjects shown a picture were more likely to respond with 'true.' Experiments also showed this phenomenon wasn't limited to questions about people, but general knowledge as well.
"The authors spend a bit of time discussing why this sort of truth bias might arise. In cases where we have rich information—a photo or detailed description of something—it's easier to pull additional information out of our memory. So, even if a photo doesn't tell us much about whether the person is alive, it does make it easier to retrieve relevant information on them—if they're wearing a suit in the photo, we might reason they're a political or financial figure, etc. When the information flows that readily, we're more likely to conclude that we're familiar with the question that's being posed, and will then tend to conclude it's true."
The cake is a lie! (Score:3)
seriously -
we perceive stuff though our eyes and the brain makes up a lot of stuff...
put people in a darkened room and ask the same questions
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Pictures skew judgement, you say... (Score:2)
*starts up PhotoShop to create a "couple" photograph of me and Olivia Wilde*
Anyone know her address?
Is this true? (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of Critical Thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
Class in college .. here's a photo. Everyone looks at it.
There's a young man in a cap and gown with what appears to be a diploma. A smiling man is standing to one side, a smiling woman to the other and in the forground is a girl about 12 looking bored.
Assertions, true or false: The father is proud of his son. The graduate's younger sister wants an ice cream. The mother is very happy.
The first assertion is not necessarily true (therefore false), how do we know the smiling man is father, uncle, family friend, whatever?
The second assertion is not necessarily true, how do you know she is related to the graduate? Where does it say anything about ice-cream? She could potentially be a young boy with long hair in girls clothing.
The third assertion, mother? How do we know the woman has children? How do we know any of those present is related. It's also false.
Quite fasciniating watching the light go on (perhaps for the first time in their lives) of my classmates. I challenged the assertions immediately because, being a rather literal programmer, I didn't see any statements of fact with the photo, so everything had to be assumptions (and who codes on assumptions? Ok.. lots of people do, that's why we have so many security problems, lack of useful feedback when things don't work and poor interfaces.)
Now consider there are tens of millions of people who haven't even had an introduction to Critical Thinking and they are influenced by advertising, politcal speeches,much of the garbage on talk radio and those evil stinkers who talk young men and women into committing atrocities.
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exactly - but who needs that pesky critical thinking stuff anyway, it gets in the way of me believing what I want to believe.
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Agreed. Critical thinking classes should be in high school, and mandatory.
Re:Reminds me of Critical Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Critical thinking classes should be in high school, and mandatory.
Critical Thinking is seen as a threat to a lot of groups, as well as some parents. I think this is why such a simple, yet neglected concept is left to college, where it's at the option of the student to take the class, rather than have kids coming home challenging their parents, church and community leaders.
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High school students brains are definitely developed enough to handle a few critical thinking classes. The point of it wouldn't even be to generate a pass/fail grade or anything. Just to get them questioning things and force them to use whatever intelligence they may have.
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He is about to engage in a dangerous, life threatening activity.
In that case, you stop him. That's vastly different than telling them to listen to you all the time. That just creates brainless drones.
I want him to know that when I yell stop
It doesn't work that way. Anyone can be wrong at any time, and no one should go unquestioned. You might be able to convince him, but if need be, physical intervention might be necessary.
Anyone who thinks they won't be questioned (at least to some degree) is living in a dream world, though.
My point isn't that you shouldn't try to save them from dangerous situations; my point
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Math teaches much more about critical thinking than bullshit philosophy.
Re:Reminds me of Critical Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
not necessarily true (therefore false)
I'm not clear on this bit...
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not necessarily true (therefore false)
I'm not clear on this bit...
Abosolutes. There is either True or False, not being proven to be True is therefore false. Inserting grey area in between is interesting, to explore possibilities, but when asked True or False, there can be only one.
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"Not (yet?) proven true" is not "false".
In logic, it's trivial to flip any statement so that your default presumption of falsehood becomes the exact opposite given a different statement
"John is a liar" -> False, he must be an honest man!
"John is an honest man" -> False, he must be a liar!
Same rule, opposite outcomes based on a completely arbitrary starting point.
When asked to evaluate a true/false statement, a person has 3 options, not 2. True, False, and "I Don't Know". Asserting a true
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There are even more options, including "True but only if you make certain assumptions", "I reject the premise that this is a true/false question", "True right now but will be false if you ask it again", etc.
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Your first and last exceptions are both subsets of "True". Your second exception is irrelevant because the scenario was explicitly restricted to true/false statements.
In any case, the point was to make accurate evaluations, which the presumptive claim of falsehood does not.
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When asked to evaluate a true/false statement, a person has 3 options, not 2. True, False, and "I Don't Know".
Have you stopped beating your wife?
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1: "True, have stopped beating wife"
2: "False, no wife", or "False, do not beat wife". (tricky loaded question has two ways to be false)
"I don't know" is silly in this context, since I would know if I have a wife, and if I had been beating her. But if you shifted the statement to be about a 3rd party where ignorance is a reasonable possibility, then "I Don't Know" would again become a valid response.
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1. Yes, I used to beat her but now I have stopped.
2. No, I am still beating her
3. No, I can not stop what was never started.
4. Yes, but the woman I am beating now is not my wife.
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not necessarily true (therefore false)
It's not necessarily true that I'll be alive in the morning, but that doesn't mean I should start making funeral arrangements.
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That makes no sense. Suppose the following statements had been made:
"The father is proud of his son"
"The father is not proud of his son"
How can both of those statements be false? If they are both false, then they are both true, because they are opposites of each other.
The correct answer is not "false", it is "I don't know".
Hopefully, the actual statements we something along the lines of "We know from this picture that the father is proud of his son". That one IS false, because we do not know.
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You should be a little more critical of what is taught in the critical thinking class methink.
"Critical Thinking" idiots (Score:3)
not necessarily true (therefore false)
I'm not clear on this bit...
That's because it's wrong. This statement is not valid [wikipedia.org]. It may be true or false.
From the GP:
Now consider there are tens of millions of people who haven't even had an introduction to Critical Thinking and they are influenced by advertising, politcal speeches,much of the garbage on talk radio and those evil stinkers who talk young men and women into committing atrocities.
"Critical Thinking" is the security theater equivalent of thinking. Call it "Thinking Theater" if you will: it makes a show of thought while being utterly uninformed and mindless. The grandparent is a perfect example. I suggest a rigorous study of logic [wikipedia.org] (both formal and informal) so you can actually analyze statements, and rhetoric [wikipedia.org], so you can be aware of the communication techniques you will encounter.
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Until they do, you must assume they are false.
You're heterosexual.
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People who make statements need to provide evidence that they are true. Until they do, you must assume they are false.
Why should I assume they are false? To assume anything is foolish, particularly in the given example where it is more likely the statements are true. The correct answer to the question of whether any of those statements is true is "Probably". Claiming something is false because you don't have all the facts is just as bad as claiming it's true.
This "critical thinking" you espouse sounds more like simple contrariness.
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What? That makes no sense particularly in the binary true false answer scenario. If you are told that some celebrity you have never heard of before is dead but no proof is given (and lets assume for some reason you have no reason to either believe or disbelieve the person talking to you) then you must NOT just assume that the opposite is truth. Believing false or the opposite is no better than believing true or some arbitrary statement.
You might say it is 50-50 and cannot tell with any certainty that it is
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People who make statements need to provide evidence that they are true. Until they do, you must assume they are false.
No, people are free to assume whatever the hell way they want. If they're aware of the limits of their assumption, all the better. That notwithstanding, you weren't talking about assuming. You were declaring a statement to false based on the lack of 100% iron-clad proof.
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As far as I know there are no scientific studies that jumping out of an airplane (flying, not standing on the ground) witho
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Somewhere in the world a father is proud of his son, a graduate's sister wants an ice-cream, and a mother is happy. I challenge your assumption that the statements are referring to the people in the picture, and conclude that all the statements are true with extremely high probability.
Argued like a lawyer. Well done. But the jury has been instructed to decide not on a preponderance of circumstatial evidence, but on facts.
Re:Reminds me of Critical Thinking (Score:4, Funny)
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There is a second half to critical thinking many people don't consider.
I see people who question stuff all the time, that is first half.
The second half, I see less often, is knowing when to stop when a valid argument is made. Instead these people just keep going on inventing even more ridiculous possibilities.
Occam's Razor people.
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The second assertion is not necessarily true, how do you know she is related to the graduate?
So, the assumption that the man holding the "diploma" is indeed a graduate goes unquestioned? Anyways, the problem with your example is that the picture is actually most probably (though of course not definitely) of a graduate with his proud father, mother, and bored sister. Since those assumptions are probable, they are perfectly reasonable and if not given further information, there is no reason to assume otherwise since those would, also, be further assumptions. Indeed, it would be unreasonable not to fo
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if the picture is described as such, then it is what it's representing in that use - should the picture be staged that's another thing... but it's still a picture of whatever was described for the use, a picture of Mulder and Scully is still a picture of Mulder and Scully even if it's Duchovny and Anderson who posed for the picture to be taken.
I wonder how this guy does critical thinking in a bar setting deciding if someone is really a hot female or a trap and how he came to conclusion that he should care.
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Would that not still make it a false assertion? When someone wins the lottery, I don't call it a correct guess, or accurate luck.
It seems the only true answer for something of pure guesswork would fairly be 0.
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No, it is still not a false assertion. No assertion can be made either way.
If the statement "the father is proud of his son" is false, then the statement "the father is not proud of his son" must be true. But it isn't - we simply don't know.
The only way any of those statements could be asserted to be either 'true' or 'false' is if they are prefixed with something along the lines of "We know from this picture that...". Now your true or false statements are not about the happiness of the father, but wheth
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Class in college .. here's a photo. Everyone looks at it.
There's a young man in a cap and gown with what appears to be a diploma. A smiling man is standing to one side, a smiling woman to the other and in the forground is a girl about 12 looking bored.
Assertions, true or false: The father is proud of his son. The graduate's younger sister wants an ice cream. The mother is very happy.
Which would be an accurate description of tens or hundreds of millions of graduation photographs. It would be trivial exercise to find similar examples in your own family albums across several generations.
It can be easy to recognize dissonance.
The "son" doesn't resemble his "parents." The "father's" suit is crisply pressed and expensive. The "mother's" dress cheap and worn. Not Sunday-best as you would expect for the occasion.
She could potentially be a young boy with long hair in girls clothing.
She could be, but, realistically, what are the chances a long haired boy will be
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People are constantly being bombarded with various messages that are most often false or wrong.
A politician kissing babies is just one of those things. Political advertising campaigns are using pictures from sites like istockphoto.com while pretending that the people in the pictures have anything to do with reality.
Actually any type of advertising shouldn't be taken literally, it's all a figure of speech, a sleight of hand, cherry picking, etc.
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Paradigm Shift (Score:1)
What is interesting about this example was pointed out to me in a presentation about Paradigms. While it is 100% true that the photo here does not prove the truth of any of the associated statements, none the less if you came across this scene in real life and began interacting with the people in question, you would probably be money ahead assuming the statements are true rather than guessing you have no idea what is going on.
Basically Paradigms allow us to take mental shortcuts that often, but not always,
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The first assertion is <strong>not necessarily true (therefore false)</strong>, how do we know the smiling man is father, uncle, family friend, whatever?
The second assertion is not necessarily true, how do you know she is related to the graduate? Where does it say anything about ice-cream? She could potentially be a young boy with long hair in girls c
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Have you ever heard "Ask a stupid question and get a stupid answer?" I would say that applies here.
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critical thinking died 10 years ago, guess you missed the funeral.
I think that' was Irony's Funeral. They're still nailing Critical Thinking into a coffin.
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OK, so you are an AC, and probably a troll, but I can't help myself.
What universe are you in where "if it ain't true, it's false" is an incorrect statement?
Of course, that is not the statement the OP is making. He is making the statement "if it is not known to be true, it is false". Which is just bullshit.
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Yes, that is what I said. If you know the state, then it is either true or false. But it is not false just because you don't know the state.
Yeah well..... (Score:2)
Most people are idiots. They immediately jump to a conclusion based upon flimsy evidence like photos (never thinking maybe the photo has been doctored), or something they read at FOX or MSNBC.com, or were told on facebook. (See my sig for examples of these idiots.)
Re:Yeah well..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people are idiots. They immediately jump to a conclusion based upon flimsy evidence like photos (never thinking maybe the photo has been doctored), or something they read at FOX or MSNBC.com, or were told on facebook. (See my sig for examples of these idiots.)
My favorite quote on the subject: There are people who will doubt a panel of highly educated experts who have gathered evidence, studied, assembled the facts and presented them in a thoughtful manner, but will accept for indesputable fact the word of a blowhard on the radio, TV or internet, who has nothing at all to back up their assertions.
do you believe it?
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While the radio gives the opinion ready for consumption (without you having to think about it, thanks God!) and he is "part" of your social group and is accepted by you as "leader".
In short, most people are too stupid to accept logical and rational arguments, they need a third person "to
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Yes, and you proposing that statement didn't change my belifs at all.
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I believe it, but only because I've read the work of highly educated experts on the subject, and first-hand confirmation of this idea. Obviously, if all I had to go on was the wisdom of ackthpt, I'd not believe it.
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You're sig is wrong. You can't get an equal PC and Mac mini. the Mac mini comes with different software.
did you get your i7 into the same form factor? I didn't think so.
Is you i7 as quite as a mac mini? I didn't think so.
So, different hard ware, different form factor, different software.
Not really a valid comparison.
So, but only taking a tiny amount of data into account, not looking at the over picture and varies needs, you are an idiot who immediately jumped to a conclusion without considering any other f
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>>>the Mac mini comes with different software.
You're right! The Mac software won't let me run Microsoft Visio or ModelSim to do my job, whereas the PC will. Thanks for pointing that out. I'd forgotten. (whew). I almost blew $1300 on a computer that won't let me run the software I need to do my work! Good thing I'm a cheapass and stumbled on the right tool for the job by accident.
BTW the form factor has come-up a lot. If I wanted a PCmini in the same size as the MacMini there are plenty out t
Powerful brainwashing knowledge (Score:5, Funny)
This combined with the power of the Baskerville font will empower you to crush the free will of others, MUAHAHAHA!
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Considering that free will does not actually exist, there is nothing real to crush (maybe the sense of free will, but that's not real either).
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Given that the universe is not deterministic, it is pretty hard to justify free will does not exist.
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We are constrained by the physical laws of the universe. We have no more free will than a rock. We just happen to be more mobile.
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I am compelled to disagree.
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This combined with the power of the Baskerville font will empower you to crush the free will of others, MUAHAHAHA!
Fortunately, facebook's Timeline format will make your efforts unintelligible and people will rapidly lose interest in ... OH, LOOK! SHINY!
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basically the entire basis of montage theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Filmmakers noticed early on that juxtaposing images had significant effects on perception, with the Kuleshov Effect [wikipedia.org] being one famous demonstration.
Re:basically the entire basis of montage theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Responding to self after tracking down a copy of the paper:
One interesting thing they suggest is that, since in this study the "truthiness" effect happened in both directions, or even with unrelated images, previous studies showing that images produce a bias might need to be re-run with control images that are unrelated, i.e. placebo images.
For example, the paper mentions a 2008 paper [nih.gov] that found public trust in neuroscience findings was higher if accompanied by an image of a brain scan. That article speculated that "part of the fascination, and the credibility, of brain imaging research lies in the persuasive power of the actual brain images themselves". But the authors of this paper point out that perhaps it was just the presence of any image at all: what would happen if you re-represented the same articles, not with brain scans, but with just photos of the neuroscientists, or of the MRI machine? The authors hypothesize that you might get more people believing in the results in those cases, too, in which case it wouldn't actually be that the brain-scan images are serving any persuasive or evidentiary role in and of themselves.
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I think I notice something of this affect when I'm reading online news.
If an article is just words, my mind is less engaged, but if there's a photo or even a diagram, somehow my brain engages more readily.
Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that written language is such a new concept in terms of our evolution, whereas the image is hard-coded into us from almost our very beginnings.
Truth bias? Really? (Score:2)
The English language is a complicated beast. Often things are implied, but not outright stated in English. If you ask "Is this person alive?" with no picture, people assume you are talking about the actual person, so it is clear and they will tend to answer as you'd expect.
However, if you say "Is this person alive?" and show the
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I hate those montages they start doing on TV around a new year showing all the noteworthy things that happened during the previous year.
Or the ones where they play sappy music and show bits from a long running sitcom. They universally make me feel like I'm wasting my life away. Perhaps internally it's as if I'm saying "You watched 20 episodes of this crap??" "No I didn't! Honest it's just a montage!"
A stretch at best (Score:1)
I've seen enough hentai... (Score:2)
all the GWB photos from the last decade (Score:2)
have professional photogs take hundreds of photos of the president
choose the worst one due to facial shape or mouth while he was talking or doing something
have the blogs call him an idiot and back it up by bad looking pictures
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Trust me, you didn't need a picture of the guy to consider him an idiot.
Some celebrities... (Score:2)
Researchers asked true-or-false questions to a group of test subjects about whether a minor celebrity was still alive. When they provided a picture of the celebrity, more people evaluated the statement as 'true' than when no picture was provided. The researchers then switched the question, asking whether it was true or false that the celebrity was dead.
And the picture of this guy: http://i.imgur.com/C4j2T.jpg [imgur.com] made everyone say "yeah, he's dead."
--
BMO
Unless one has Aspergers? (Score:3)
But if you're going to ask me T/F if say... Richard Simmons is dead; I simply can't answer true or false on that one. Show me a picture and... well that's not relevant to the question.
*Gets up, leaves testing room*
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
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You're understanding of Asperger's syndrome makes me want to punch you in the head.
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You ought to punch your spelling in the head.
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Aside from the typical over diagnosis that comes with something "new" not everybody in the same group as you will act the same way you do. Autism may have no connection; right now some traits are in common so it appears that most are lumping them together and thinking of it as various degrees of autism. The two have their own DSM entries. More research will decide if the two are actually related.
How the study sets up the experiment is crucial; you could be placed into a situation where you come out no di
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That's too bad as it's simply another ruleset to learn and master. Some manage to pull it off quite well. For me the trick was realizing that people are more important than computers. I quit programming, got a "people" job and brute-forced my way to apparent neuro-typical behavior.
Bones and Big Bang Theory were quite therapeutic as well. "Stop acting like Sheldon"
I still have a hard time taking a shower though!
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Stop watching TV shit; it makes you stupid no matter what your initial condition. Especially idiotic sitcoms who never get anything correct and give the public bad ideas. Getting along with normals is ok to a degree but they need to learn to get along with true diversity more than you need to adapt to them. The only benefit idiotic tv shows seem to have is in making people more tolerant of "odd" characters -- which seems to be a fad in recent years from the look of it. (not that I have a TV but from what
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Read Slashdot for a week or two, and you'll notice that geeks, except on fanboi topics, are really no different than normal people..
Those properly diagnosed with autism, or those self diagnosed? I.E., you pretty much fail your own claim that geeks are somehow better than normal people - because you've already
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You're right you totally know me better than I do, no logically fallacy there. A single post is all YOU need to diagnose someone.
Different, not better.
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I apologize, my response was unnecessarily rude.
Duh... (Score:3)
They must be alive... I just saw a picture of them.
Missing control group. (Score:2)
Bad Title (Score:3)
The title should be, "How not having an, "I don't know" option on true/false research tests will cause people to guess, frequently invalidating the results of the research that would be quite different with the third option."
But then, that doesn't fit into a short title block.
Truthiness by Colbert (Score:1)
More data? (Score:2)
Completely pointless. Providing a picture provides more data. If the celebrity they show is someone that looks young and healthy you're obviously more likely to think they would still be alive; likewise if they look like Mel Gibson after yet another bender, or a pic of Lindsey Lohan during one of her heavily coked-out phases you'd probably figure they were dead by now.
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It's not pointless, you just lack the cognitive skills to understand.
Easily explained (Score:2)
The study fails to mention which celebrity [geekcantina.com] they were asking about. Look at the picture and it will be obvious why the study got the results it did.
Common use in Media outlets. (Score:5, Interesting)
I really hate to bring this up, but I hope we can focus on the topic, and not skew off to debate the court/political side of things....
Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman news coverage.
When the news story first reported most of the newspapers and news agencies showed the picture of Trayvon in the red shirt and George in an orange jumper. There were other pictures available, so somebody chose these pictures.
Trayvon's picture was of when he was 12 years old. The picture has a very happy looking kid, with a big smile. Eyes are bright, and the picture is very friendly, very innocent.
George's picture is of a old mug shot, he was heavy, unshaven, the picture could be lightened or darkened (I've seen lighter and darker pictures, unsure what the original looked like). George is not smiling, unhappy, depressing.
Now there is a headline "Man kills teen" and phrase "Man kills in self-defense"
With the images provided we make assumptions.
The Trayvon is 12 years old. False, Trayvon is 17.
George is a convicted felon/criminal. False, George was arrested, but charges were dropped (yes I know there is some claims on this, but the charges were dropped.).
George is white, Trayvon is black, this is racism. False, George is Hispanic. George is known for tutoring black children for free on the weekends, and was the only person to come to the defense of a homeless black man. The FBI investigated George and found no evidence that he is racist in any way.
So, the images and headline imply the idea: "White racist convicted felon kills innocent happy black child."
Other shading comes from the text - small example: Using "Trayvon" and "Zimmerman" for names. "Trayvon" is a very "black-sounding" name. Zimmerman is a common German name (Germans aren't known for any racists right?).
And the damage is done. People have picked sides and have dug themselves in. Even now when we have up-to-date pictures (few are using the old red-shirt/orange jumper pics), the original images have set themselves in the minds of the people. What would have the story been like if the media outlets used the up-to-date pictures, rather than the kid/convict pictures?
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People forget (Score:2)
that a picture is just a snapshot of time taken out of context. As such, you can often read what you want into the pictures. i.e. build your own context. The context you build can be so strong, that when presented with facts pointing you are wrong, some people still own't believe the truth over there made up context.
Always interesting but nothing new (Score:2)
Priming to Think Differently (East vs. West) (Score:2)
That settles it (Score:2)
I'm writing all my essays in Baskerville with included pictures from now on. I'm sure that will go down really well for my next funding application -- do graphs count as pictures?
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Pics, even if it didn't happen.
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In Soviet Russia, total bollocks talks timecube!
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If we can determine how memory works advertisers and government agencies can use that information to exploit a person's emotions to the maximum. This is just an important piece of information that can then be applied in different ways to make life easier to manipulate and control.
FTFY