Cognitive Misers Research Articles

The brain in your pocket: Evidence that Smartphones are used to supplant thinking

With the advent of Smartphone technology, access to the internet and its associated knowledge base is at one’s fingertips. What consequences does this have for human cognition? We frame Smartphone use as an instantiation of the extended mind—the notion that our cognition goes beyond our brains—and in so doing, characterize a modern form of cognitive miserliness. Specifically, that people typically forego effortful analytic thinking in lieu of fast and easy intuition suggests that individuals may allow their Smartphones to do their thinking for them. Our account predicts that individuals who are relatively less willing and/or able to engage effortful reasoning processes may compensate by relying on the internet through their Smartphones. Across three studies, we find that those who think more intuitively and less analytically when given reasoning problems were more likely to rely on their Smartphones (i.e., extended mind) for information in their everyday lives. There was no such association with the amount of time using the Smartphone for social media and entertainment purposes, nor did boredom proneness qualify any of our results. These findings demonstrate that people may offload thinking to technology, which in turn demands that psychological science understand the meshing of mind and media to adequately characterize human experience and cognition in the modern era.

Why a nudge is not enough: A social identity critique of governance by stealth

AbstractPolicy makers can use four different modes of governance: ‘hierarchy’, ‘markets’, ‘networks’ and ‘persuasion’. In this article, it is argued that ‘nudging’ represents a distinct (fifth) mode of governance. The effectiveness of nudging as a means of bringing about lasting behaviour change is questioned and it is argued that evidence for its success ignores the facts that many successful nudges are not in fact nudges; that there are instances when nudges backfire; and that there may be ethical concerns associated with nudges. Instead, and in contrast to nudging, behaviour change is more likely to be enduring where it involves social identity change and norm internalisation. The article concludes by urging public policy scholars to engage with the social identity literature on ‘social influence’, and the idea that those promoting lasting behaviour change need to engage with people not as individual cognitive misers, but as members of groups whose norms they internalise and enact.

Clinical Reasoning and Case-Based Decision Making: The Fundamental Challenge to Veterinary Educators

Confusion about the nature of human reasoning and its appropriate application to patients has hampered veterinary students' development of these skills. Expertise is associated with greater ability to deploy pattern recognition (type 1 reasoning), which is aided by progressive development of data-driven, forward reasoning (in contrast to scientific, backward reasoning), analytical approaches that lead to schema acquisition. The associative nature of type 1 reasoning makes it prone to bias, particularly in the face of "cognitive miserliness," when clues that indicate the need for triangulation with an analytical approach are ignored. However, combined reasoning approaches, from the earliest stages, are more successful than one approach alone, so it is important that those involved in curricular design and delivery promote student understanding of reasoning generally, and the situations in which reasoning goes awry, and develop students' ability to reason safely and accurately whether presented with a familiar case or with a case that they have never seen before.

Bats, balls, and substitution sensitivity: cognitive misers are no happy fools

Influential work on human thinking suggests that our judgment is often biased because we minimize cognitive effort and intuitively substitute hard questions by easier ones. A key question is whether or not people realize that they are doing this and notice their mistake. Here, we test this claim with one of the most publicized examples of the substitution bias, the bat-and-ball problem. We designed an isomorphic control version in which reasoners experience no intuitive pull to substitute. Results show that people are less confident in their substituted, erroneous bat-and-ball answer than in their answer on the control version that does not give rise to the substitution. Contrary to popular belief, this basic finding indicates that biased reasoners are not completely oblivious to the substitution and sense that their answer is questionable. This calls into question the characterization of the human reasoner as a happy fool who blindly answers erroneous questions without realizing it.

"Accountability and Discretion in Complex, Non-routine Financial Services"

Integrating accountability and job autonomy theories, we propose that task complexity and task non-routineness trigger employees' adaptive behavior and unethical behavior concurrently during customer service co-production. Customer control moderates these relationships by shifting accountability to customers and reducing employee job autonomy. To provide a person-situation interactional view, we also examine the three-way effects of employees' self-monitoring trait. Using the experience sampling methodology, we collected 798 service episodes from 62 financial service employees working in the banks of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Our survey results indicated that task complexity and task non-routineness relate to both adaptive behavior and unethical behaviors concurrently. Moreover, task complexity interacts with customer control and self-monitoring to jointly affect adaptive behavior, whereas task non-routineness interacts with customer control and self-monitoring to jointly affect unethical behavior. In complex tasks, for example, supposedly chameleon-like high self-monitors behave uncharacteristically like opportunistic cognitive misers in the face of high customer control.

Two Worlds of Trust for Potential E-Commerce Users: Humans as Cognitive Misers

In this paper we consider the impact of trust on a new visitor's intention to revisit a website, but instead of using the typical expectancy-value theories as our conceptual basis, we look at the issue from the perspective of cognitive complexity and “humans as cognitive misers.” Starting with the suggestion that it is cognitively taxing to distrust, we propose that in order to conserve on cognitive resources, once a new visitor has convinced him or herself that a website is “trustworthy enough,” that user will drop trustworthiness from their concerns and only consider other characteristics of the website (e.g., task-technology fit, aesthetic appeal, etc.) in determining their revisit intention. This leads to what we call a “trust tipping point” and two different worlds of trust. Above the tipping point revisit intention is constructed in one way, and below the trust tipping point it is constructed in a quite different way. This perspective results in very different recommendations for website designers as to the likely payoff from improving task-technology fit, aesthetic appeal, or trustworthiness, depending upon where their existing website stands relative to the trust tipping point. To test our hypotheses we used data from 314 student website users, and expanded a technique called piecewise regression (Neter et al. Applied Linear Statistical Models, 4th ed.) to allow us to analyze data as two different linear surfaces, joined at the tipping point. We found good support for our assertions that users operate differently above and below a trust tipping point.

About Our Authors

About Our Authors

Impression Formation Online

Sensations of physical temperature can serve as a peripheral cue when some individuals interact with communication technology, but this phenomenon has been shown to occur only when individuals were engaged in peripheral-route associative processing. In an experiment (N = 211) with physical temperature and Web page color as between-subjects factors and need for cognition as a measured independent variable, participants viewed an organization’s Web page. Cognitive misers who experienced physical cold (versus warmth) reported less favorable attitudes toward the Web page. This interaction disappeared, however, when they viewed a Web page that featured a red color scheme, as red seemed to have stimulated an increase in central-route analytic cognitive processing. This pattern of results illustrates the utility of the elaboration likelihood model in studying impression formation in online contexts.

Texts of Memory and Texts of History

Author(s): Wertsch, James V. | Abstract: Starting with the observation that the terms “memory” and “history” are used almost interchangeably in everyday discourse and professional academic discussion, I argue that they can and should be distinguished. Drawing on longstanding debates about nations and nationalism, it is possible to trace the roots of this distinction and see how it has taken on new significance in contemporary memory studies. I outline a few assumptions about humans as meaning makers, users of cultural tools, and “cognitive misers” and then turn to oppositions that have been drawn between collective memory and formal history. These concern the degree of subjectivity or objectivity involved, the source of authority for narrative tools, and the willingness to sacrifice evidence to preserve a narrative account about the past or vice versa. In order to translate these oppositions into more concrete means for discussing memory and history, I introduce a distinction between “specific narratives” and “narrative templates,” and I examine the source of “ethnocentric narcissism” that characterizes memory to a greater degree than history. Insight into this issue can be derived from drawing out William James’s comments on the “me-ness” of individual human memory to examine the “us-ness” of collective memory.

Knowing You Beyond Race: The Importance of Individual Feature Encoding in the Other-Race Effect

Knowing You Beyond Race: The Importance of Individual Feature Encoding in the Other-Race Effect

The cognitive miser's perspective: Social comparison as a heuristic in self-judgements

The metaphor of the cognitive miser is a milestone in the development of social cognitive research. It highlights the limited cognitive resources of the social thinker and the demand for fast and efficient processing of information. In marked contrast to the impact of this metaphor on social cognition research in general, it has so far been mostly overlooked in research on social comparison. In this article we want to lay out the potential of social comparison research if one takes on the perspective of a cognitive miser. Specifically, we consider social comparison as a heuristic for evaluating the self. First, we look for evidence for the ease of comparative self-evaluations. Second, we analyse the standard selection process and identify routine standards that facilitate the comparison process. Third, we investigate the cognitive mechanisms in social comparisons and suggest that comparison mechanisms leading to assimilation are more efficient than mechanisms leading to contrast effects.

Coping with uncertainty: Assessing nanotechnologies in a citizen panel in Switzerland

The policy shift towards “upstream public engagement” requires dealing with a lack of individual and stabilized scientific knowledge that accompanies any early stage of research and development. This article examines how actors cope with this epistemic uncertainty when deliberating emerging technologies. Analyzing the arguments of the participants in a Swiss citizen panel on nanotechnology, the article explores how actors form their opinions in an epistemically nonstabilized situation. The article shows how actors develop a strategy to handle this situation: analogies, such as to other risk technologies or “nature,” and personal experiences as patients and consumers are used as interpretive patterns and serve as tools to cope with the unknown. Focusing on the ways uncertainty is handled, this approach is differentiated from other models to explain public attitudes toward emerging technologies, such as the “scientific literacy model” or the “cognitive miser model.”

Understanding the Schematic Representation of Pain and General Symptomatology: The Contribution of the Cognitive Miser Perspective

In this study we aimed to investigate the contribution of a model of schema use originally from social psychology, the cognitive miser perspective, to understanding pain and illness representations. Recall of pain and general symptom information was tested under either conditions of cognitive load or no load. If the cognitive miser perspective were to be applicable, schematic information would be better recalled under load, and aschematic information better recalled under no load. This was the case for pain information. However, for general symptom information cognitive load did not influence recall. It was concluded that processing pain information may be better understood from the cognitive miser perspective, but the meaning model of schema use may be more applicable to general symptoms.

Intent and Ordinary Bias: Unintended Thought and Social Motivation Create Casual Prejudice

Social psychologists have addressed stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination for nearly a century. Everyday prejudices first seemed to lodge in abnormal personalities, pathological bigots who were exceptional (“bad apples”), but Freudian explanations proved inadequate. Purely cognitive explanations took their place, arguing that bias inevitably results from normal processes of categorization and association, often automatic. But this so-called cognitive miser account denies the role of intent, which does influence the activation and use of stereotypes and prejudices. People are more realistically “motivated tacticians” who display more cognitive bias under particular social motivations. The author's continuum of impression formation, proceeding from initial categorization to possible moderation by motives, illustrates this view. Plausible social motives include belonging, understanding, controlling, self-enhancing, and trusting, all known to influence ordinary bias. Social neuroscience is beginning to show that motivation and cognition mix at the earliest stages of ordinary bias.

Another Peek Inside the Cognitive Toolbox: The Grapes of Roath

"Another Peek Inside the Cognitive Toolbox: The Grapes of Roath." Psychological Inquiry, 14(3-4), pp. 275–276

Mapping Evidence Law

This paper advances a contextualist approach to empirical legal research, arguing that legal scholars should seek to map behavioral regularities in discrete legal contexts rather than develop a broad theory of legal judgment. The need for this cartographic approach to legal behavior, and the inadequacy of a strictly nomothetic approach, is illustrated through discussion of recent applications of heuristics and biases research to evidence law. Arguments for broad reforms of evidence law based on a cognitive miser view of legal judgment fail to recognize the contextual limitations on this model of human judgment and fail to provide the kinds of evidence that would justify reforms to evidence law. A set of key research questions and strategies for future studies of legal judgment and decision-making is proposed, with an emphasis on developing information about the practical significance and superability of judgmental biases and errors.

The differential processing of price in gains and losses: the effects of frame and need for cognition

Perhaps the most fundamental principle of decision theory is that more money is preferred to less: the principle of desired wealth. Based on this and other principles such as reference dependence and loss aversion, researchers have derived and demonstrated mental accounting (MA) rules for multiple outcome situations. Experiment 1 tested the invariance of the desired wealth principle and two mental accounting rules (mixed gain, e.g. $100 gain and a $50 loss; mixed loss, e.g. $100 loss and a $50 gain) across types of decision maker and frame. The desired wealth principle and the MA rule for mixed gains were found to vary depending upon (1) the thoughtfulness of the decision maker (need for cognition, NC), and (2) the frame used to describe gains and losses (e.g. a gain of $x versus a gain of y%). The MA rule for mixed losses, however, was found to be immune to framing effects, even among people who are generally less thoughtful. The differential processing of gains and losses across frames (dollar versus percentage) and individuals (less versus more thoughtful) was tested further in Experiment 2 where evaluations of mixed losses were made at the level of the gestalt as well as the constituent (the gain and the loss being evaluated separately). Framing effects were evidenced only among subjects lower in NC and only when the constituent gain was evaluated. Evaluations of the overall mixed loss and the constituent loss were comparable across situation and individual, suggesting that losses motivate greater processing among people otherwise inclined toward cognitive miserliness. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The differential processing of price in gains and losses: the effects of frame and need for cognition

Perhaps the most fundamental principle of decision theory is that more money is preferred to less: the principle of desired wealth. Based on this and other principles such as reference dependence and loss aversion, researchers have derived and demonstrated mental accounting (MA) rules for multiple outcome situations. Experiment 1 tested the invariance of the desired wealth principle and two mental accounting rules (mixed gain, e.g. $100 gain and a $50 loss; mixed loss, e.g. $100 loss and a $50 gain) across types of decision maker and frame. The desired wealth principle and the MA rule for mixed gains were found to vary depending upon (1) the thoughtfulness of the decision maker (need for cognition, NC), and (2) the frame used to describe gains and losses (e.g. a gain of $x versus a gain of y%). The MA rule for mixed losses, however, was found to be immune to framing effects, even among people who are generally less thoughtful. The differential processing of gains and losses across frames (dollar versus percentage) and individuals (less versus more thoughtful) was tested further in Experiment 2 where evaluations of mixed losses were made at the level of the gestalt as well as the constituent (the gain and the loss being evaluated separately). Framing effects were evidenced only among subjects lower in NC and only when the constituent gain was evaluated. Evaluations of the overall mixed loss and the constituent loss were comparable across situation and individual, suggesting that losses motivate greater processing among people otherwise inclined toward cognitive miserliness.

Deep thinkers, cognitive misers, and moral responsibility

Deep thinkers, cognitive misers, and moral responsibility Get access Bruce N. Waller Bruce N. Waller Youngstown State UniversityYoungstown, Ohio 44555, USAfr230201@ysub.ysu.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Analysis, Volume 59, Issue 4, October 1999, Pages 223–229, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/59.4.223 Published: 01 October 1999

Deep thinkers, cognitive misers, and moral responsibility

Moral responsibility is running out of room. Scientific naturalism destroyed the realm of godlike transcendent powers, and recent research on learned helplessness (Martin Seligman, 1975) dragged will power down from the miracle working sphere of moral responsibility and anchored it squarely within the natural environment that shapes our fortitude and lassitude. Now moral responsibility has retreated to its ultimate citadel: the reflective mind. There, with the support of such philosophers as Daniel Dennett and Charles Taylor, moral responsibility has made stubborn stand.