Intuition: It’s Powers and Perils

Book Notes
  • One experiment subliminally flashed emotionally positive scenes or negative scenes in an instant before participants viewed slides of people… although the participants consciously perceived only a flash of light, they gave more positive ratings to people whose photos had been associated with the positive scenes (1)… Chinese characters appear nicer if preceded by a flashed but unperceived smiling face rather than a frowning face (2)… Graduate students evaluate their ideas more negatively shortly after viewing the unperceived scowling face of their advisers (3)… Students given a tape with subliminal messages thought their memory was improving… but so did the control group… even though subjects perceived themselves to be receiving the benefits they expected, tests administered revealed that neither tape had any effect (4)  – pages 27-28
  • After hearing people recite the alphabet, observers have been able to intuit their social assertiveness… after watching ninety seconds of walking and taking, observers could estimate how others evaluated them… after a glance at someone’s photo, people gain some sense of the person’s personality traits (5)…  Chinese can estimate an Americans extraversion and agreeableness from their photos, as can Americans when judging Chinese photos (6) – pages 32-33
  • Five year olds who could most accurately discern emotions became nine year olds who easily made friends, cooperated with the teacher, and effectively managed their emotions (7) – page 36
  • When hearing somebody say something good or bad about another, people have a tendency to associate the trait with the speaker (8) – page 40?
  • Women are far more likely to describe themselves as empathetic… to a lesser extent, the gender gap in empathy extends to observed behavior (9) – page 46
  • Students watched as the numeral 6 jumped around a computer screen… although it seemed random – those who had seen the earlier presentations were quicker to find the next 6 when it was hidden… without knowing how it happened, their ability improved…  Students were shown computer altered faces… after some “unfair” professors  were shown with lengthened faces, students continued to associate fairness with facial proportions (10)… When students interacted with a warm friendly women, they later thought that a women who looked relatively similar was more friendly… the same effect occurred when a woman was particularly unfriendly towards them (11) – pages 52-54
  • Executives who score high on a test of practical managerial intelligence that assesses one’s tacit knowledge about how to write memos, how to motivate people, when to delegate, how to read people, and how to promote one’s career tend to earn higher salaries and receive better performance ratings (12) – page 57
  • The most eminent scientists and inventors were seldom lone geniuses… they were mentored challenged and bolstered by others (13) – page 60
  • The men’s recollections of their attitudes years earlier were astonishingly inaccurate (14)…  Even though their attitudes changed over the course of a decade, they now recalled earlier attitudes akin to their current sentiments (15)… Those now more in love than ever recalled love at first sight when they first met their partner…  those who had broken up misrecalled having recognized their partner’s selfishness (16)… Although many women recalled feeling out of sorts just before their last period, their own day to day self reports typically revealed little fluctuation across the menstrual cycle (17)… Subjects recalled past experiences more fondly by minimizing the boring or unpleasant experiences and remembering the high points (18)… People readily construct memories that support their current views.  If their present view is that they’ve improved, they will likely misrecall their past as more unlike the present than it actually was… The further we move from our past, the more we misrepresent our old self-ratings (19)… If put in a buoyant mood, people suddenly view their past and present through rose-colored glasses (20)… When subjects were told a man was a Nazi, they will detect cruelty in his neutral face…  Told he fought the Nazis, they will see kindness in his eyes (21)…  Depressed people recall their parents as rejecting and punitive… when not depressed they describe their parents more positively (22)… when teens are upset, they think their parents are jerks.  As their mood brightens, their parents become angels (23)  – pages 69-73
  • When people get HIV tested, they expect to be miserable about positive tests and elated about negative tests… yet the bad news recipients are less distraught and the good news recipients less elated than anticipated (24) – page 81
  • 48 percent of people said they’d comment on man if he made prejudiced remarks… only 16 percent actually did (25) – page 83
  • Most smokers perceive themselves as less vulnerable to the effects of tobacco than other smokers (26)…  Women who don’t use contraceptives perceive themselves to be less vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy (27)… Students who are overconfident tend to unN/Arepare… Anxious students study furiously and get higher grades (28) – page 85
  • Subjects were told the answers to anagrams… They guess that people would need about ten seconds for each… in reality they took three minutes (29) – page 92
  • Students were asked to predict months later whether they would drop a course, declare a major, live off campus… Although they were 84 percent sure of their predictions, they were wrong twice as often as they predicted (30)…  People are similarly overconfident in their predictions of losing weight, studying harder, exercising more, or quitting smoking (31) – pages 99-100
  • Half of the students were told that the woman was instructed to act friendly… The other half were told she was being herself… The effect of being informed had no effect on perceptions of the woman’s friendliness (32) – pages 110-111
  • If you believe it works, you would be more likely to recall times that it worked…  people have become convinced that they saw exactly what they expected (33) – page 113
  • Subjects were told a “fact” and asked for an explanation… They were then told that the explanation was actually false… participants still retained their explanations for why it might be true and walked away from the experiment continuing to believe it (34) – page 118
  • Patients and doctors are more apprehensive of a surgery in which 10 percent of people die than when 90 percent of people live (35)…54 percent of Americans said we should “forbid” anti-democracy speeches while 75 percent said we should “not allow” them (36)… Consumers are more accepting of beef labeled “75 percent lean” rather than “25 percent fat” (37)… People express more surprise of a 1 in 20 event occurring than a 10 in 200 event (38)… A $200 CD player marked down from $300 seems a better deal than the same item regularly priced at $200 (39)… People may be happy about a 5 percent pay raise during a time of 12 percent inflation, yet protest if given a 7 percent pay cut during a time of zero inflation (40) – pages 125-126
  • Most people prefer to sell a winning stock to lock in a profit and hang on to a loser in order to avoid a loss (41) – page 154
  • When researchers pit statistical prediction versus clinical intuition, the formula usually wins (42)… A clinician’s judgment was the least accurate in predicting clinical recidivism… a statistical formula heavily outperformed (43)…  In 63 studies, statistical prediction outperformed clinical intuition (44) – page 173
  • Judging from just a few seconds of behavior, subjects were accurately able to predict an individual’s talkativeness (45)… For all but less skilled jobs, general mental ability was the best available predictor of job success… informal interviews are less informative than aptitude tests, work samples, job knowledge tests, and peer ratings of past job performance (46) – pages 187-189
  • Interviewers’ preconceptions and moods color their perceptions and interpretations of interviewer responses (47) – page 192
  • Structuring the interview enhances its reliability and validity (48) – page 197

 

 

  1. Subliminal conditioning of attitudes
  2. Affect cognition and awareness affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposure
  3. Priming relationship schemas my advisor and the people are watching me from the back of my mind
  4. Subliminal semantic activation and subliminal snake oil, Double blind tests of subliminal self-help audiotapes
  5. Accurate social perception at zero acquaintance the affordances of a gibsonian approach
  6. Cross cultural consensus in personality judgments
  7. Emotion knowledge as a predictor of social behavior and academic competence in children at risk
  8. Spontaneous trait transference to familiar communicators is a little knoweldge a dangerous thing
  9. Sex differences in empathy and related capacities
  10. Nonconscious acquisition of information
  11. Nonconscious biasing effects of single instances on subsequent judgments
  12. Practical intelligence in real world pursuits the role of tacit knowledge, The g-ocentric view of intelligence and job performance is wrong, Testing common sense
  13. The social context of career success and course for 2026 scientists and inventors
  14. The altering of reported experiences
  15. Stability and change in political attitudes observe recall and explain
  16. The relation between current impressions and memories of self and dating partners
  17. Prevalence and predictors of cyclic and noncyclic affective change, Women’s theories of menstruation and biases in recall of menstrual symptoms
  18. Temporal adjustments in the evaluation of events the rosy view
  19. Awareness and attitude change in the forced compliance paradigm the importance of when, From chump to champ people’s appraisals of their earlier and present selves
  20. The influence of mood on perceptions of social interactions, Soccer rooms and the quality of your life mood effects on judgments of satisfaction with life in general and with specific domains
  21. Attitude and perception of faces, In an out of context influences of facial expression and context information on emotion attributions
  22. Recall of parental behavior by acute depressives remitted depressives and non depressives, Commentary  lewis
  23. The temporal stability of ratings of parents test retest reliability and influence of parental contact
  24. Anticipated versus actual responses to hiv test results
  25. Excuse me what did you just say women’s public and private reactions to sexist remarks
  26. Accuracy of smokers’ risk perceptions
  27. The illusion of unique invulnerability and the use of effective contraception
  28. The effects of positive and negative thinking on performance in an achievement situation, Defensive pessimism: harnessing anxiety as motivation, Distinguishing pessimism from depression negative expectations and positive coping mechanisms
  29. Adult egocentrism subjective experience versus analytic bases for judgment
  30. Overconfident prediction of future actions and outcomes by self and others
  31. The false hope syndrome unfulfilled expectations of self change
  32. The attribution of friendliness
  33. The display of information and the judgment of contingency
  34. Perseverance of social theories: the role of explanation in the persistence of discredited information
  35. Framing of information: its influences upon decisions of doctors and patients, Shaping perceptions to motivate healthy behavior the role of message framing
  36. Attitude intensity importance and certainty and susceptibility to response effects
  37. How consumers are affected by the framing of attribute information before and after consuming the product
  38. The generality of the ratio bias phenomenon
  39. The effect of plausible and exaggerated reference prices on consumer perceptions and price search
  40. Fairness as a constraint on profit seeking entitlements in the market
  41. Are investors reluctant to realize their losses?
  42. Causes and effects of my disturbing little book
  43. The prediction of criminal and violent recidivism among mentally disordered offenders
  44. Clinical versus mechanical prediction a meta analysis
  45. Accuracy of behavioral predictions at zero acquaintance a social relations analysis
  46. The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings
  47. The effects of application on processing of information from the employment interview, Looked over or overlooked prescreening decisions and post interview evaluations
  48. Structuring employment interviews to improve reliability validity and users reactions, A met analytic investigation of the impact of interview format and degree of structure on the validity of the employment interview