Ohhhhhh, Shiny. Central vs. peripheral routes of processing.

As an avid car enthusiast, I sometimes have people come to me and ask my opinions of cars they are thinking of buying. I assume this is because these people know that not only do i enjoy looking up specs and consumer reports for cars, but I am also motivated by my general craving for information to learn as much about the car as I possibly can. When doing this, I utilize a process called the central route of processing (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The central route of processing is one that people use when they are highly motivated to make a correct decision, or the decision they are making is high in personal relevance (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The flip side to the central route is the peripheral route, which is the way people make decisions when not highly motivated, or when the decision is low in personal relevance (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Peripheral route decisions are influenced by heuristics, as well as other factors such as how attractive the source presenting the information is, or simply how the person making the decision is feeling. On the other hand, central route decisions are not influenced by these factors, instead the decision is made by carefully examining the facts, and using logic to make the best choice (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

Consider this as an example. Someone recently asked me about my opinion on Ford Mustangs, specifically the GT models from 2005-2008. I told them that, in my opinion they should wait a year and buy a 2011 v6 mustang used instead of the one they were looking at buying, since they were in no real need of a new car. My rationale for saying that was thus: the new v6's have just as much horsepower as the old v8's, they get much better gas mileage, cost less to insure, and use a new, more reliable transmission. All of this, and they would end up paying about the same for a one-year-old v6 as a five-year-old v8. Very logical, yes? Central route processing. They informed me recently that, in spite of my opinion, they had purchased a 2005 GT because, and I quote "It was prettier, and the engine sounded good". Their decision was obviously influenced by factors outside of logic, hence they used the peripheral route.

Petty, R., E. & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Switching off the self monitor: a day with no filter.

According to Snyder (1987), self-monitoring is the tendency for a person to regulate their behavior to meet the demands of social situations. As someone who is moderately high on the Self-Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1987), I had wondered what it would be like to live a day where I didn't change my behavior to fit the situation I was in. In order to implement this change, I went through the whole day as if I didn't give a hoot what others thought of me. As a mild self monitor, this was rather difficult and I often had to just turn my social brain off and just roll with whatever was happening.

One situation where it was really obvious that I was not self monitoring was at work. First off, I showed up without my work shirt. Instead I wore my work shorts and shoes with a Grey v-neck t shirt. When my manager asked where my shirt was, I told him it was in my car, but I didn't feel like wearing it because it was way too big for me (which it is) and the shirt I was wearing was more comfortable (which it was). I had always wondered what would happen if I did something like that, because my manager is kind of a push-over, but I had never taken the notion seriously because wearing my work shirt was the proper thing to do in that situation. Not surprisingly, he just shrugged off my comment and didn't make a huge deal about me being out of uniform. After that, I continued my low self-monitoring streak by not adapting my language to fit where I was. I'm pretty abrasive to myself and around people I know well, because they know I mean no harm by what I say. However, when I'm at work I tone the madness down and just shrug off whatever weird stuff my co-workers say, and just go with the flow. However, with my self-monitoring turned way down it was on like donkey kong. One of my co-workers called me a hipster (note: I don't especially like hipsters, actually they make me pretty angry) because of my wardrobe choice, and seemingly out of nowhere I tore into him about what his choice of vehicle, a lifted ford f-150, said about the size of his gentleman’s parts. This caught him a little off guard, but he soon recovered and we went back and forth like that all night. It was fun having a little bit of a pissing contest with him, and good times were had by all. At one point a co-worker asked if I was on drugs because I seemed “a lot more energetic than normal”. I told him no, I was just letting loose a little bit. He said he thought I should keep doing drugs, because it was fun to watch me mess with people like I was doing.

Before I undertook this adventure, I was pretty nervous that people would misunderstand my cutting remarks and think that I was being serious, but as my day progressed I noticed that nobody really took anything I said too seriously, which was nice. I have often chided myself for being a little slow on the uptake in social situations, but seeing my behavior I realize that rather than taking forever to say anything, I'm taking forever to say something that I think people will like to hear. I think in the future I could use this to my advantage, altering my level of self monitoring in certain situations so as not to just fade into the background like I usually do. After being a low self-monitor for a day, I learned that my self-concept is built largely on my being a mid-to-high self-monitor, because I felt like a completely different person than I usually was. Apparently my self-concept is rather malleable, because after changing one part of that self-concept I changed a lot of how I viewed myself as a social being. I would actually consider making this a permanent change if I didn't know that there are people out there who don't really appreciate my brand of cutting humor (ironically, I seem to be related to a good number of these types). Also, I'm pretty sure I'd get myself into some pretty deep trouble in more structured social settings if I just let myself go like that all the time.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring. New York: Freeman

Self-Handicapping is not something which sounds like a good idea. For me, it brings to mind images of the movie "The Ringer" where the main character pretends to be mentally retarded in order to compete in the Special Olympics. In actuality, the term refers to a way in which people put obstacles in their way before a task (Berglas, S., & Jones, E.E., 1978). This is done so that if the outcome is not favorable, the individual can make an external attribution to his or her failure. On the other hand, if the outcome is favorable the individual can say that they succeeded in spite of the obstacle. This seems convenient, but can go horribly wrong in a number of ways. First, and hopefully most obviously, the self imposed handicap can make you fail at a task which you otherwise wouldn't have failed at. Sure you have a handy excuse, but what good is that really? In addition to this, people see through self handicapping easily, and they don't appreciate it.

The best example of self handicapping which i can think of from my life is my experience with the SAT/ACT. I'll just say this; i studied for neither (i thought i was really hot shit intellectually in high school, no lie). I ended up making really good scores despite this, and this only furthered my boasting. However, if i hadn't done well, i could have just chalked that up to the fact that i didn't bother studying for the test. Win/win, right?

Berglas, S., & Jones, E.E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 405-417

Tripped up by availability

We all take shortcuts, its just a fact of life. Life is too fast paced to do everything carefully, so sometimes we all sacrifice accuracy for a little speed. When we take shortcuts cognitively, it is called using a heuristic. Heuristics allow us to make decisions quickly, and generally lead us to correct thoughts. However, every once in a while we do get tripped up by our heuristics. When we make lists of things, we tend to use things which are common around us, which is called the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973).

I fell prey to a flaw in this heuristic this past week when someone asked me which car i would buy if i could have anything under 30 thousand dollars. My mind immediately went to cars which we see every day, Hondas, Fords, etc. I gave the person a quick answer (i told them a 2009 Subaru STI, in case you were curious). I later realized that even though the suby was a great car, that wouldn't be the car i would pick. What i would actually pick would be a 1988 Pontiac Fiero GT, which i would take the v6 out of, and instead put in a Chevy ls7 v8, basically making the car into a smaller, lighter, more nimble Corvette for about half the price. Why didn't i tell my friend this? Because nobody drives Fieros. I see STIs all of the time, there are at least two cars that share its body on campus, so when asked for a car of choice, my mind went straight to cars i saw frequently because those are the ones most easily thought through.

400+ horsepower in this? Why yes, I think i would.

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

Blog Number One: A Self Fulfilling Prophecy

As i read this week, the concept which resonated most with me was that of the self fulfilling prophecy. As Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) demonstrated, expectations of those around us do in fact have an effect on the way we are treated. In their experiment, Rosenthal and Jacobson administered tests to a group of students, and then randomly selected a group of students which they labeled "late bloomers". This label had no bearing on actual intelligence (hence it being random), but in a follow up analysis they found that the late bloomer group actually experienced a significant gain in intelligence as opposed to the control group. They theorized that the expectations placed on them by being labeled as smarter drove their instructors to pay more attention to them, which in turn actually made them smarter.

I see this effect at work a lot when i watch mixed martial arts fights. In a recent event, a professional boxer fought a more well-rounded wrestling specialist. For the entire run-up to the fight, the boxer worked on different ways to avoid the wrestler's take downs, altering his stance to avoid lead leg kicks, and so on and so forth. However, mere minutes before the fight, he decided to alter his plan of attack and disregard his corner's advice in favor of a pure boxing style because he felt he had to prove that boxing was the superior fighting style. He was taken down almost immediately with a technique which only works on an opponent in a boxing stance, and the wrestler controlled him for a few minutes before seeming to get bored, and choking the boxer using his own fearsome right arm. I believe the more rounded fighter would have won even if the boxer would have stuck to the plan, but his idea that boxing was the superior style certainly fulfilled the 'prophecy' of what one would expect from a fighter and a boxer.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development. New York, NY US: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Welcome

This summer I spent most of my time either at work or at lake Travis. Despite the total lack of academic merit, I still love delivering pizzas for a living. Driving around is one of the few true pleasures I take in life, and being paid to do so makes it even better. When I'm not at work during school, I can usually be found in my room reading or shooting 12 year olds in the head in Battlefield Bad Company 2. Other than that, I like working on cars, and perusing the internet to further my already astounding library of trivial knowledge.