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Considering the opposite: a corrective strategy for social judgment.

C G Lord, M R Lepper, E Preston

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

|December 1, 1984

Summary

Considering opposing viewpoints reduces social judgment biases. Inducing individuals to "consider the opposite" mitigates biased assimilation of evidence and hypothesis testing, improving fairness in social perceptions.

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Area of Science:

Social Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Decision Making

Background:

Social judgment is susceptible to biases stemming from a failure to consider alternative possibilities.
Francis Bacon noted the tendency to ignore information contradicting current beliefs.
Cognitive biases can impact the assimilation of new evidence and hypothesis testing.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether inducing individuals to "consider the opposite" can reduce social judgment biases.
To test the effectiveness of this strategy in domains of biased evidence assimilation and personality impression formation.
To compare the "consider the opposite" strategy with instructions to be fair and unbiased.

Main Methods:

Two experiments were conducted applying the "consider the opposite" strategy.

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Participants were explicitly instructed to consider alternative viewpoints.

Stimulus materials were designed to increase the salience of opposite possibilities.

Main Results:

Inducing a "consider the opposite" strategy significantly reduced social judgment biases in both experiments.
This strategy was more effective than instructions to be as fair and unbiased as possible.
The findings align with research on perseverance, hindsight, and logical problem-solving.

Conclusions:

Encouraging individuals to consider the opposite is an effective method for reducing cognitive biases in social judgment.
This approach offers a practical strategy for retraining social judgment and promoting fairer perceptions.
The findings have implications for improving decision-making processes in various social contexts.