Judgments of One's Environment

Examples of well-intentioned acts inspiring unintended, unwanted consequences abound. Proponents of Prohibition sought to decrease drinking in the U.S. but instead greatly exacerbated the problem. Proponents of anti-drug legislation have sought to eliminate the drug trade but have, instead, inspired changes in potency and trafficking that make drug trade harder to prevent. Manufacturers include safety features designed to protect consumers but these same features often inspire a false sense of security resulting in increased risk of injury. My work explores judgmental biases that contribute to the difficulty of foreseeing unintended consequences. In addition, I explore ways of overcoming these biases to encourage better judgment.

Projects
How Focus on the Intended Consequence Contributes to Error in Judgments

My research suggests that the failure to anticipate unintended consequences stems, in part, from a tendency to focus on the intended consequence in isolation, rather than as part of a system of interconnected variables (Ehrlinger, 2005). This focus leads to insufficient attention to the possibility of alternative and unintended consequences. In one study, for example, participants asked to complete a task individually and then as a team focused on the benefits afforded by the addition of teammates when predicting how well the team would perform. Because of this focus, participants neglected the possibility of coordination problems and made overconfident predictions of the group’s performance. More generally, on a variety of tasks, individuals focused on what was intended in a way that led to erroneous predictions. Those participants who resisted this focus offered predictions that were more accurate.

How Reducing Focus on the Intended Consequence Inspires More Accurate Judgments

If the failure to foresee unintended consequences stems, in part, from too great a focus on the intended consequence, a reduction in this focus should lead to better predictions. In current and future research, I draw upon this logic to develop manipulations that reduce focus on individual components of a system. In one study, I drew from an important real world phenomenon — people tend to form opinions on political proposals in isolation. People rarely weigh, for example, the importance of multiple government services when deciding whether they are in favor of cutting taxes. In order to reduce focus on the intended consequence of isolated political proposals, I asked participants to outline their ideal national budget expressed either by focusing on each category individually (and indicating whether current spending should be increased or decreased) or by attending to the budget as a set of interdependent categories (and allocating a percentage of the total budget to each spending category). After completing this latter defocusing manipulation, participants were more likely than control participants to identify potential unintended consequences when asked to consider two hypothetical policies (a tax cut and an increase in social welfare spending).

My current and future work draws upon research on counterfactual thinking to identify a second means of minimizing focus on intended consequence and inspiring better judgment. Past research shows that consideration of a salient event almost happening inspires a counterfactual mindset wherein other events that might have happened come to mind more easily. I am presently exploring whether counterfactual mindsets can also inspire consideration of unintended consequences. For example, I asked one set of participants to consider a salient event almost happened and then to play a computer game in which they adopt the role of an ecologist in a simulated ecosystem. Preliminary evidence suggests that participants in this counterfactual condition make more accurate predictions about future states of the ecosystem than controls and better game decisions as measured by their performance at the assigned task — successfully saving a species from extinction. Together, these studies suggest that reducing individuals’ focus on the intended consequence of an action and promoting consideration of alternative outcomes can inspire better judgments.