Derecho de Defensa

Our tour continues with an overview of some studies showing automatic belief acquisition in traditional ‗fundamental attribution error‘ (Ross, 1977, or equivalently, ‗correspondence bias,‘ Jones, 1987) cases. Both of the cases below involve reflexive beliefs being formed from perceptual processes and eventuating in misattributions.

2.5.6.1 Explaining Others Behaviors

In a study testing people‘s folk attributions of dispositional versus situational inferences, Gilbert (2002) showed participants silent videos of a woman being interviewed. Although the subjects could not hear the interview, they were told what topics were

discussed. The videos were classified into two groups, a ―sadness condition‖ and a ―happiness condition.‖ The sad videos contained interviews where the actress was asked (wait for it…) sadness-inducing questions about her life (e.g. ―Describe a time when your parents made you feel unloved‖) and in the happiness-inducing condition the actress was asked happiness-inducing questions (e.g. ―What is the nicest thing your parents have ever done for you?‖). The participants viewed the videos in a booth that had a camera on top of the monitor, pointed at the subjects. They were told that the camera was an eye tracking device (a ―parafoveal optiscope‖, which sounds very fancy, but is just made-up). Half the subjects from each group were put into an unburdened condition and half into a burdened condition. The unburdened condition subjects were told that a series of words would appear and disappear on the screen and that these words could be ignored because they were

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could not look at the words, for if they broke eye contact from the actress and looked at the words the camera would stop working and the experiment would not produce any reliable

data. Thus, the unburdened subjects were told they could (but needn‘t) ignore the words,

whereas the burdened subjects were told they must ignore the words.40

This mere act of self-regulation was cognitively demanding enough to make a noteworthy difference in the participant‘s responses. At the end of the study, when subjects were asked how (dispositionally) happy or unhappy the actress was, those in the unburdened condition were apt to account for the situational constraints whereas those in the burdened condition did not. The burdened subjects believed that the actress was disposed to always be happy (or sad, depending on what video they saw), whereas the unburdened subjects realized that they knew little about the subjects dispositional state. The most natural way of

describing this case is that participants in both conditions reflexively believed what they saw and that the participants who were not faced with an increased cognitive load had the ability to correct for (i.e., reject) their initial impressions, thereby rejecting their initial beliefs. Participants faced with an increased cognitive load, however, could not correct for their initial perceptions because they were cognitively burdened. Once again, the impact of load on people‘s perceptions serves to uncover an asymmetry in how people accept and reject information and this asymmetry is anathema to the Cartesian theory, while at home in the Spinozan.

40 _{Note that the mere self-regulation of behavior (e.g. being told not to look at something) is enough of a burden}

to induce cognitive load. Think about any social situation—can you imagine one where the majority of people aren‘t self-regulating (particularly impeding) some form of response? Note also how light this cognitive load is throughout these subjects. These subjects aren‘t being asked to also do calculus or count backwards by fours from 1,000, they are just asked to push a button when a tone arises, or when the number 5 shows up on a slow moving crawl. This type of load is exactly the type of load that we should expect that people are constantly being put under in real life, ecologically valid situations. When I‘m walking down the street I‘m monitoring the street for taxi-cabs that might come careening at me, so I‘ve the requisite cognitive load at play, as I pass by and read the billboard advertisement. It‘s thus no wonder that when you‘re a guest sitting at the high table, the Don sounds exceptionally persuasive.

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2.5.6.2 Explaining Your Own Behavior

As opposed to the study discussed directly above, which was a study of assessing other‘s psychological states, a similar anti-Cartesian effect can be seen in studies of assessing one‘s own mental states. In Gill et al. (1999) participants listened to music that was designed to either depress or elevate one‘s mood. The participants were then given forty-four

adjectives and asked to rate which ones accurately described their personalities (and not their transient mood). Keeping to the script, participants were split up into either a hurried

condition or an unhurried condition. Those in the hurried condition were asked to respond as quickly as they could (thus inducing the appropriate cognitive load), whereas those in the unhurried condition were asked to take their time and reflect on their answers.

Unsurprisingly, those in the hurried condition drew dispositional inferences based on their current moods, whereas those in the unhurried condition corrected for the situational

constraints (and didn‘t let the music they were listening to prime their answers).41

Note that the dispositional inference is the inference that is based on merely taking what you perceive as true. The Spinozan would explain the effect by nothing that since the participants clearly perceive (and thus token a mental representation of) their own behavior, but don‘t token a corresponding mental representation about the situational inference, they end up believing what they token and not adjusting their beliefs in light of the relevant evidence. Contrarily, the Cartesian cannot account for why the fundamental attribution error

41 _{This is an interesting datum in favor of the Rylean, or more generally behaviorist, view of self-knowledge}

(Ryle 1949). Ryle suggested that people draw inferences about themselves in the same way they draw inferences about others: through observing their own behavior. The data reported suggests that people use the same mental processes in order to make folk-psychological judgments regardless of whether they are judging their own folk-psychological states or others, for cognitive duress affects judgments and perceptions of others exactly as it affects judgments and perceptions of one‘s self.

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(which is of course an error of attribution based on mistaken belief) is exacerbated by cognitive load.