The importance of critical thinking in CC psychology

When we think about cross-cultural differences in a course such as this and when we interact with people who are of different cultural, racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, it is essential that we not make common cognitive errors.

Shiraev and Levy describe a number of cognitive errors that all of us can fall prey to when making judgments about other people and the nature of reality.

Their suggestion is that when evaluating information in cross-cultural psychology, we engage in metathinking, literally thinking about our thinking processes.

Evaluative bias of language

Language can serve several functions. It can be used to describe things and people and it can also be used to evaluate things as good or bad.

Descriptions are typically seen as objective, while evaluations are subjective.

Which off the following adjectives might be considered the most objective description?
sweet
warm
white
nice

To Shiraev and Levy, in the vast majority of cases, this distinction is not a clear one. The reason is that words typically have personal values associated with them.

The problem is not so much when we describe objects (this marker is black) as when we describe people.

So, would the adjective “white” above be emotionally neutral when applied to people?
yes
no

Shiraev and Levy suggest that the same person might be described differently by two people with different value systems.

For example, one person might see a 70-yr-old man as “old” while another might describe him as “wise” or “mature”.

Or, in our hyper-partisan political atmosphere, a tea-party member might be described, depending upon one’s political attitudes, as either
old or young.
eastern or western.
liberal or conservative.
patriotic or right-wing.

It is not only that the values we have influence our language, but language influences our beliefs, attitudes, and values.

You see this a lot in politics, i.e., your views on abortion rights would get you labeled as either prochoice vs. prolife. Also, if you favor taxing the estates of the well-to-do after they die, you call this an inheritance tax or if you are against that, you would call it a death tax.

So, would Shiraev and Levy suggest that there are no neutral terms to describe personality traits, individuals, or groups?
yes
no

Black and white, or shades of gray

Some phenomena in the world are represented by dichotomous variables, that is, they belong to mutually exclusive categories, such as head/tails, on/off, alive/dead. There are no in-betweens.
Other phenomena can be described by continuous variables. Black and white are extremes, but there are continuous shades of gray in between.

So what is the problem when we talk about individualistic and collectivistic culture?

The problem is that we may treat these as dichotomies (either individualistic or collectivistic) and miss the fact that these represent continuous variables (varying degrees of individualism or collectivism).

Text examples:

Which of the following examples are continuous variables and which are dichotomous variables?

Married-single
continuous
dichotomous

Racist-nonracist
continuous
dichotomous

All phenomena are both similar and different

Shiraev and Levy give the following example:

A. Canadian B. Italian C. Cuban D. Hindu

Which of these words doesn’t belong with the other three?

If one is a religion and the others not, then the unique or odd one is
Hindu
Cuban
Italian
Canadian

Hindu—only religion, others are nationalities
Cuban—only Communist government
Italian—only European people
Canadian—only word that has an even number of letters.

So, whether or not you classify cultures are similar or different depends upon what dimensions you compare them.

Which countries are most similar?
U.S.
Australia
China
It depends upon which variables you use to compare these countries.

The Barnum Effect: “one-size fits all” descriptions

What’s wrong with the following statement?

Women don’t want to be rejected.

Ask yourself :

Men don’t want to be rejected.
true
false

If it true that both women and men don’t like to be rejected, what’s wrong with making the statement, “Women don’t want to be rejected”?
For accuracy, one should also point out that men don’t like to be rejected.
The statement is essentially meaningless since it doesn’t say anything about women that couldn’t be said about any other group.
Both of the above.

Is the following a Barnum statement? “White Americans like to be in control of events in their lives.”
yes
no
Not enough information is available to make this determination.

A Barnum statement is a personality description about a particular person or group that could easily be true of any person or group.

Shiraev & Levy mention a couple more that we’ve heard:

Minorities just want their rights.
Republicans care about family values.

“De-Barnumizing” Barnum statements.

Consider the following Barnum statement.

"Roberto is sensitive to criticism."

Which of the following might be a more accurate description of Roberto?
Everyone, including Roberto, is sensitive to criticism
Only Roberto is sensitive to criticism.
Roberto is particularly sensitive to criticism

Assimilation bias

Because our environment is so complex, we can most efficiently be perceived and dealt with it by selectively attending to only some stimuli and by categorizing similar objects or people into broad classes or groups. This process is probably an innate characteristic of humans.

Why might categorizing people into male/female, old/young, student/non-student, employer/employee, or faculty/staff make our social environment less complex and easier to deal with?
By placing people into these categories, we know more about them, even if we have never met them before.
There are social rules that govern our interactions with each of these classes of people so that we know how to behave toward an individual even if we know little more about him or her than the social category they belong to.
Both of the above simplify our social interactions.

These categorizations are conceptualized as schemas, or mental representations. Schemas provide a framework for understanding our world.

Jean Piaget pioneered our understanding of how schemas are affected by new information. He described two processes, assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation refers to the incorporation of new information into our existing beliefs. In other words, we modify the data to fit the schema.

Many conservatives believe that government is ineffective in fixing society’s problems. When the George Bush’s administration bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina, this information provided further support for this schema. Of course other interpretations could be made.

On the other hand, if we can’t fit the data into the theory, even by fudging a bit, the process of accommodation occurs.

Accommodation refers to the process by which we modify the schema to fit the data. In other words, if old schema don’t fit reality, we develop new ways of understanding.

Many economists believe that an unregulated, free market is self-regulating in the sense extreme gyrations resulting in stock market crashes will not occur. The unregulated, free market crashed in 2008, resulting in government bailouts of financial institutions and a severe recession. In the face of this, what cognitive process should free-market economists engage in?
assimilation
accommodation

Schemas are relatively resistant to change because our cognitive processing generally occurs automatically and sometimes unconsciously.

The assimilation bias refers to the processes by which we bias our perception of reality to make these perceptions consistent with what we already perceive.

If the assimilation bias is occurring, how might a person reconcile facts that are inconsistent with his schema?
Conducting biased searches for confirming information.
Misinterpreting information.
Invalidating information that doesn’t conform to existing schemas.
All of the above could occur.

Would assimilation bias play a role in perpetuating sociocultural stereotypes?
yes
no

Representativeness bias

What would be the heuristic we typically apply to this task?
Call every appliance store in the phone book.
Check the circulars in the newspaper; check prices at Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Costco, and other discounters.

On the positive side, heuristics save time and generally lead to correct solutions.

On the negative side, they can cause errors or can one to overlook a better solution.

A common heuristic is the representativeness heuristic. This heuristic involves judging the likelihood that something belongs to (represents) a particular category.

This is a heuristic, or shortcut, because we often make judgments based upon superficial characteristics.

For example, suppose you are trying to figure out whether a person is Italian with directly asking. How would you do it?
---Does the person look Italian? Does he or she have an Italian name?

What we do is compare our mental representation of Italians, our Italian schema, with what we know about the person. If there is a match, we guess that the person is Italian.

Likewise, a person by the name of Richard Kelly (a real person I know) is likely to be
Irish
German
Lebanese
Norwegian

In most cases, the representative heuristic yields an accurate result, i.e., the late Mayor Menino looked Italian, had an Italian name, and was Italian.

But errors can also occur.

Despite his name, the aforementioned Richard Kelly is 100% Lebanese.

When we use faulty prototypes (stereotypes), fail to take into account relevant data, and allow our motivational needs to affect our cognitions, this produces systematic errors, referred to as representativeness bias.

Which of the following would be an example of representativeness bias?
Because President Obama is a Democrat, his policies tend to be liberal.
Because the president’s name is Barack Hussein Obama, some people believe he is a secret Muslim.
Because President Obama is African-American, many people expect him to be concerned with civil rights.
All of the above are examples of representativeness bias.

What are antidotes to representativeness bias? How would one avoid this?

Shiraev & Levy suggest several things:

1. Keep in mind that the prototype in question might be inaccurate, biased or incomplete.

2. Take into account relevant statistical data (base rates, sample sizes, etc.)

In other words, they are suggesting that we engage in what activity previously mentioned?
Realize that phenomena are not black and white, but rather shades of gray.
Recognize the evaluative basis of language.
Engage in meta-thinking.
“De-Barnumize” Barnum Statements.

Availability bias

Imagine you are a Bridgewater State student whose home is in New York City and you are trying to decide whether to drive 7 hours home on Thanksgiving break or take advantage of a cheap commuter flight. Which is safer, in terms of being in a fatal accident?

The correct answer in terms of deaths per passenger mile is travel by commercial airline. You are 100 times more at risk travelling by car.

Why, especially after an airline accident, do we feel that car travel is safer?

The availability heuristic refers to making judgments about the frequency or likelihood of events on the basis of instances that are easily accessible or available from one’s memory.

While requiring little cognitive effort, these judgments often lead to correct conclusions.

One reason why the availability heuristic often leads to correct conclusions is that if you can easily recall examples, that is usually because there are probably many real examples.
true
false

On the other hand, the availability bias results when the use of the availability heuristic results in systematic errors in judgment.

Given this, why are so many people afraid to fly?
One can easily recall air crashes because there are many air crashes.
If there has recently been a horrible air crash in the news, our memories of this will be especially vivid and hard to ignore.
Both of the above are true.

How does all of this relate to cross-cultural psychology?

The stereotypes of groups other than our own are often based upon our memories of observations of specific members of that group. Unfortunately, the observations that most readily come to mind are of those whose behavior is vivid, conspicuous, prominent, or salient. We then generalize these impressions to all members of that group (stereotypes).

After 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and current unrest in the Middle East, many people in the U.S. have an image of Muslims as more violent and prone to terrorism than members of other major religions. Would this view be a better example of the availability heuristic or the availability bias?
the availability heuristic
the availability bias

The fundamental attribution error

When we observe other people’s behavior, we try to determine why they are behaving in this manner.

Attribution is the process in which we attempt to determine the cause of other’s and our own behavior. We tend to attribute behavior to either situational factors or to something about the other’s traits, a dispositional attribution.

One such error is the fundamental attribution error. This refers to the tendency of people to underestimate the influence of situational factors in explaining other people's behavior while overestimating the influence on dispositional factors.

For example, if you learned that a classmate of yours hadn't prepared for a very important test, how would you explain this behavior? Which of the following would represent the fundamental attribution error?
The student lacked discipline or didn’t take academics seriously.
The student was called into work unexpectedly or had some other crisis that prevented him/her from engaging in the necessary study time.

If you did not know this student personally, would choices a) and b) above be equally likely explanations in reality?
yes
no

Why are we, especially in Western cultures, susceptible to this bias? Cognitive biases and motivational biases each contribute to this cognitive error.

A cognitive bias results from our inability to take in everything in the environment. Specifically, our attention is drawn to the most salient aspects of the environment, the person rather than his or her surroundings.

By ignoring the environment surrounding the person, we tend to devaluate situational explanations.

A motivational bias is the tendency in Western cultures to be taught from an early age that we can control our destinies.

How might this cultural factor explain the fundamental attribution error?
As individualists, we tend to focus on all the situational factors that we must overcome in order to be successful.
As individualists, we freely choose to behave in a certain way. Therefore, choices reflect our personalities.

The self-fulfilling prophecy

The self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when the attitudes and beliefs we hold toward other people actually produce the behaviors we expect to find.

So, if we expect a person to be unfriendly, our behavior toward that person causes him to be unfriendly.

Racial or gender stereotypes can also lead to positive or negative behaviors by members of stereotyped groups.

Recently, an unarmed black teenager was shot in a confrontation with police in Ferguson, MO. Negative stereotypes by _________ probably contributed to this tragedy.
white police
black teenagers
both of the above

Correlation does not prove causality

A correlation is a statistical statement about the relationship between two variables.

For example, knowledge of a correlation, such as between water temperatures in the tropic and the formation of hurricanes, allow one to make predictions from one variable to another.

On the other hand, one cannot make causal statements, such as A causes B.

A could cause B. Or B could have caused A. Or a third variable, C, could have caused both A and B.

For example, homelessness and mental illness are correlated. Does mental illness sometimes cause homelessness? Or does homelessness lead to mental illness? Or, do each affect the other?

One particular example of faulty reasoning related to the confusion of correlation with causality is the post hoc error. If B follows A, then A must have caused B.

Television viewing became widespread in the 50s. Social upheavals occurred in the 60s. What would be an example of the post-hoc error?
Increased television viewing led to later social upheavals.
No conclusion can be made linking increased television viewing and later social upheavals.

Other cognitive errors than those previously discussed can affect how we interpret differences between cultures. As mentioned earlier, we need to engage in critical thinking when evaluating cultures. In particular, we must engage in metathinking, thinking about our own thinking processes in order to recognize our own cognitive errors.

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