Demonstrate-A-Concept Blog

The video would not upload here...so, the link for the video on youtube is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGriWFyye_o

When making social judgments, we often use heuristics, or cognitive shortcuts, to speed up processing and making decisions (Gilovich et al., 2002; Kahneman et al., 1982; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). One of the mental shortcuts demonstrated by Tversky and Kahneman (1973) is the availability heuristic, or the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event based on how quickly or easily an example comes to mind. They asked participants if words that start with the letter r or words that have r as their third letter are more common. They found that participants used the availability heuristic and incorrectly assumed that because words that start with the letter r came to mind more quickly, they were more common. One of the consequences of the availability heuristic is the vividness effect, or the tendency for us to rely on vivid personal testimonies, which come to mind easily, rather than on more reliable information like statistics (Stanovich, 2001).

To demonstrate the concept of the vividness effect, I asked eight people around campus about whether or not they would buy AT&T’s Samsung Sync SGH-A707 if they needed a new phone. Specifically, I informed them that the phone was rated as one of the top three best cell phones by Consumer Reports. Furthermore, I explained that this rating was based on user reports and results from its in-house testing laboratory. Next, I explained that I dislike the phone and have had a lot of issues with it. Consistent with the vividness effect, I expected most people to be more influenced by my personal testimony rather than the reliable information from Consumer Reports, and say that they would not purchase the phone.

The first person I asked is a good friend, and she said that she would not buy the phone at all. After I explained what the blog was about, she told me that her decision was based on my experiences. Although she has never actually used the phone, she has heard me voice my negative opinions about it before. This does illustrate the vividness effect, but I thought that it would be interesting to ask people who had never heard me voice opinions about the phone to see if I could receive the same results.

The next three people that I interviewed had very interesting responses. The second person said that she would consider purchasing the phone. Moreover, she explained that she knows people who have the phone and like it. I thought that it was interesting that although she said she would consider purchasing it, she was still basing her judgments in part on personal testimonies. The next person said that she would consider purchasing the phone. After talking to her further, she said that she is currently a research methods student and is therefore more aware of the importance of reliable information. The fourth person said that she would not purchase the phone. Unfortunately, my camera died before I could get further feedback on film about why she would not purchase it, but she did say that she always tends to trust people more than statistics. I thought that this is particularly interesting and clearly illustrates the vividness effect.

When interviewing the last four people, I decided that it would be more valuable to ask for feedback on why they decided to purchase or not purchase the phone. The fifth and sixth people interviewed said that they would not purchase the phone because they would use person testimonies, specifically my negative experiences, when making decisions about purchasing the phone. In addition, the seventh person said that she always tends to rely on information from others when making decisions rather than reliable, statistical information. Interestingly, the final person interviewed said that she would probably buy the phone because she values the information from Consumer Reports.

Taken together, the interviews conducted seemed to show that some people fall prey to the vividness effect by relying on personal testimonies rather than on more reliable information. After each interview I explained the vividness effect to the interviewees, and although some thought it was interesting, some insisted that they would still rely on personal experiences. It is interesting to note that two of the three people who said that they would consider purchasing the phone are science majors, and four of the five people who said that they would not purchase the phone are humanity majors. I thing that it would be interesting to read research on the vividness effect and what factors influence who falls prey to it more often. After all the interviews I thought it would be funny to ask my dad what he thought about the phone because he has seen firsthand the difficulties that my mom and I have had with it. Surprisingly, he decided to rely on consumer reports!

Gilovich, T., Grifin, D., & Kahneman, D. (Eds.). (2002). Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207-232.

Stanovich, K. E. (2001). How to think straight about psychology. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.