Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Conflicts are antagonistic states where the actions taken by one party may cause direct and obvious harm to the other party. Therefore, conflicts may lead to interpersonal tensions. Rejections, raising different views, and competitions are instances that may induce conflicts. Effective conflict management can help to reduce negative impacts of conflicts and bring out potential positive impacts. However, the prevalence of misprediction hinders conflict management. Therefore, it is imperative to explore mispredictions in conflicts to facilitate effective conflict management. Extant researches have mainly shed light on mispredictions in non-conflicts from an information-driven perspective. In this line of researches, mispredictions are regarded as biases or even mistakes caused by cognitive constraints and the negative consequences of misprediction are mainly discussed. Although research on misprediction in non-conflicts is fruitful, misprediction in conflicts was largely ignored. In conflicts, people are more motivated to protect themselves and avoid interpersonal harm. To satisfy these motivations, people may strategically make mispredictions. Thus, mispredictions in conflicts may have motivational accounts. From this perspective, these mispredictions are not totally biases but sometimes adaptive because they help satisfy people’s needs. In this project, we will investigate mispredictions in conflicts and their mechanisms and consequences. Specifically, the aim of this project is fourfold. First, we will contrast mispredictions in conflicts and non-conflicts to explore the uniqueness of mispredictions in conflicts. We propose the bias-amplification effect of conflicts: mispredictions will be larger in conflicts than in non-conflicts. For instance, the opinion responders who have raised a different view to opinion proposers will mispredict the reactions of opinion proposers more than the opinion responders who have raised a similar view. Second, on the basis of motivated reasoning theory, we will investigate the negativity-driving mechanism of the bias-amplification effect. Since people worry about negative consequences of conflicts, they will process the potential outcomes of conflicts during the cognitive process (including attention, perception, and thinking) toward the negative direction to prepare for the worst results. Third, we will examine the consequences of mispredictions in conflicts such as interpersonal withdrawals or inactions. Last, we will develop effective and feasible de-biasing interventions to eliminate these mispredictions in conflicts. The mispredictions should be attenuated if people are less motivated to protect themselves and avoid harm others. This project will establish a new theoretical model of mispredictions in conflicts. This model, based on motivated-reasoning theory, reveals the bias-amplification effect of conflicts and extends the negative bias theory to interpersonal interactions. It also shifts from the cognitive constraint perspective to the motivational perspective and shows the impact of motivated reasoning on interpersonal interactions. In addition, this model contributes to the idea of ecological rationality and analyzes the adaptive functions of mispredictions. In sum, our work combines theories of mispredictions, negative bias, and motivated reasoning to establish a comprehensive theoretical framework. This project helps to extend theories on behavioral decision making as well as guide the public and social governors to make accurate predictions about others, to improve conflict management, and to reach high-quality decisions.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： In many social comparisons, people know exactly how they and others do. These comparisons induce a self-other gap. A variety of important decisions are made on the basis of judgments of the gap between ourselves and other people. Existing research indicates biased judgments of self-other gaps, with unknown absolute performance of others. However, the question we are interested in is whether judgments of a self-other gap will be accurate when both absolute performance of oneself and others are specified. This research investigated how the self-other gap was shaped by absolute and relative performances. We proposed the generalization effect, in which individuals generalized their absolute performance to rate their relative position to others though the actual self-other gap was specified. We conducted seven studies (N = 2766) to test our proposed generalization effect on perceived self-other gap. Study 1 adopted a 2 (absolute performance: gain or loss) × 2 (relative performance: gain or loss) between-subjects design. The participants, who were informed their performance as well as their classmate's performance in a test, rated the gap between themselves and the classmate. The result indicated that absolute gain caused a larger perceived self-other gap for relative gain (“I am far ahead of her”) than for relative loss (“I am not far behind her”). Conversely, absolute loss caused a larger perceived self-other gap for relative loss (“I am far behind her”) than for relative gain (“I am not far behind her”). Studies 2 and 3 replicated the results in Study 1 with investment and social media scenarios. Besides, Study 2a excluded the influence of information order and Study 2b excluded the effect of emotion. Studies 3a and 3b ruled out the alternative explanations of numeric size. Study 4 tested the association mechanism by cutting off the associations between multiple dimensions. We adopted a 2 (association: cutting-off or control) × 2 (absolute performance: gain or loss) × 2 (relative performance: gain or loss) between-subjects design. In the cutting-off condition, we designed a debiasing intervention where general associations among multiple dimensions were cut off. As a result, the effect found in Studies 1 to 3 persisted in the control condition but disappeared in the cutting-off condition where associations among multiple dimensions were cut off. The result indicated that generalization among dimensions accounted for the effect we found. The result also ruled out the explanations of egocentrism and focalism.Study 5 manipulated the reference point in social comparison and found a null effect for reference point on the generalization effect, which ruled out the explanation of reference point.We reveal that assessments of relative performance are biased even when people have sufficient information about their own and others' absolute performances because people generalize their absolute performance to relative performance. The generalization effect reflects the overgeneralization bias in social comparison. People fail to realize that absolute performances are not necessarily related to relative performances. Moreover, the current research offers a feasible approach to reduce such a bias.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2021-12-25
Abstract： The prevalence of misprediction hinders conflict management. Therefore, it is imperative to explore mispredictions in conflicts to facilitate effective conflict management. However, research has mainly shed light on mispredictions in non-conflicts and neglected the uniqueness of conflicts. This project investigates mispredictions in conflicts and their mechanisms and consequences. Specifically, the aim of this project is fourfold. First, it explores mispredictions in conflicts and proposes the bias-amplification effect of conflicts. Second, it investigates the negativity driving mechanism of the bias-amplification effect. Third, it examines consequences of the mispredictions in conflicts. Last, it develops effective and feasible interventions to eliminate these mispredictions in conflicts. This project is intended to establish a theoretical model of mispredictions in conflicts. The results help to extend theories on behavioral decision making as well as guide the public and social governance to make accurate predictions about others, to improve conflict management, and to reach high-quality decisions."
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-08-14
Abstract： In many social comparisons, people know exactly how they and others do. These comparisons induce a self–other gap. A variety of important decisions are made on the basis of judgments of the gap between ourselves and other people. Existing research indicates biased judgments of self–other gaps, with unknown absolute performance of others. However, the question we are interested in is whether judgments of a self–other gap will be accurate when both absolute performance of oneself and others are specified. This research investigated how the self–other gap was shaped by absolute and relative performances. We proposed the generalization effect, in which individuals generalized their absolute performance to rate their relative position to others though the actual self–other gap was specified. We conducted seven studies (N = 2766) to test our proposed generalization effect on perceived self–other gap. Study 1 adopted a 2 (absolute performance: gain or loss) × 2 (relative performance: gain or loss) between-subjects design. The participants, who were informed their performance as well as their classmate’s performance in a test, rated the gap between themselves and the classmate. The result indicated that absolute gain caused a larger perceived self–other gap for relative gain (“I am far ahead of her”) than for relative loss (“I am not far behind her”). Conversely, absolute loss caused a larger perceived self–other gap for relative loss (“I am far behind her”) than for relative gain (“I am not far behind her”). Studies 2 and 3 replicated the results in Study 1 with investment and social media scenarios. Besides, Study 2a excluded the influence of information order and Study 2b excluded the effect of emotion. Studies 3a and 3b ruled out the alternative explanations of numeric size. Study 4 tested the association mechanism by cutting off the associations between multiple dimensions. We adopted a 2 (association: cutting-off or control) × 2 (absolute performance: gain or loss) × 2 (relative performance: gain or loss) between-subjects design. In the cutting-off condition, we designed a debiasing intervention where general associations among multiple dimensions were cut off. As a result, the effect found in Studies 1 to 3 persisted in the control condition but disappeared in the cutting-off condition where associations among multiple dimensions were cut off. The result indicated that generalization among dimensions accounted for the effect we found. The result also ruled out the explanations of egocentrism and focalism. Study 5 manipulated the reference point in social comparison and found a null effect for reference point on the generalization effect, which ruled out the explanation of reference point. We reveal that assessments of relative performance are biased even when people have sufficient information about their own and others’ absolute performances because people generalize their absolute performance to relative performance. The generalization effect reflects the overgeneralization bias in social comparison. People fail to realize that absolute performances are not necessarily related to relative performances. Moreover, the current research offers a feasible approach to reduce such a bias. " "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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