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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.
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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. |
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