Selective exposure partly relies on faulty affective forecasts

Dorison, Charles; Rogers, Todd

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.02.010

Cited by 54 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Recognizing these challenges temper our objective to the goal of adding useful information to this important question, rather than to offer the final word. That said, we believe that the bulk of evidence thus far suggests that although people expect conversations with unlike-minded others to be painful [ 5 ], they over-estimate the severity of the negative affect of these actual conversations [ 23 ]. It appears that the Culture War division that exists is not as strong and toxic as generally thought [ 24 ], that many norms surrounding civility and politeness remain intact [ 25 , 26 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are politically diverse Thanksgiving dinners shorter than politically uniform ones?

Frimer

Skitka

2020

PLoS ONE

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Americans on the political left and right are engaged in a Culture War with one another, one that is often characterized by mutual fear, antipathy, and avoidance. Are there safe havens from the socially straining effects of this Culture War, times and places where Americans of different political stripes gather and put aside their political differences? Previous research (Chen & Rohla, 2018) implied that there might not be insofar as even intimate family gatherings seem to be subject to Culture War tensions. They found that politically diverse Thanksgiving Dinners were 35–70 minutes shorter than politically uniform ones, representing a 14–27% reduction in overall dinner duration. Noting analytical and methodological limitations in the prior analysis, we conducted two pre-registered studies to test whether diverse dinners are shorter than uniform ones and to attempt to conceptually replicate and extend this prior analysis. Individual analyses yielded mixed results, with null models generally supported but effect estimates generally overlapping with those of Chen and Rohla (2018). A mega-analysis found that, when controlling for various covariates, politically diverse dinners were 24 minutes shorter than politically uniform ones, 95% confidence interval = [9, 39], representing a 6% decrease in the total dinner time [2%-10%]. This final result successfully replicates Chen and Rohla (2018) both in terms of effect overlap and direct-and-significance criteria while nonetheless favoring the conclusion that politics is not straining family ties as much as previously thought.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are politically diverse Thanksgiving dinners shorter than politically uniform ones?

Frimer

Skitka

2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Similarly, partisans vastly overestimate the levels of party-stereotypic membership (e.g., the percentage of Democrats who are LGBT); these inaccurate perceptions correlate with out-party dislike and participants' feelings of social distance from out-party members (Ahler & Sood, 2018). Partisans also underestimate how much they agree with out-party member views, which drives overestimation of the negative affect associated with exposure to opposing views and reduced consumption of opposing views (Dorison et al, 2019) .…”

Section: How Inaccuracy In First Vs Second-order Beliefs Lead To Actmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perhaps understandably, existing work on inaccurate political beliefs tends to focus on inaccurate factual beliefs (e.g., is climate change real, was Barack Obama born in the United States), yet interventions attempting to update such inaccurate beliefs tend to have small effects on judgment accuracy and struggle to overcome entrenched beliefs (see meta-analysis in Walter et al, 2020). While there is still much research to be done, recent work suggests corrective interventions targeting inaccurate meta-cognitive beliefs are quite effective at reducing negative intergroup outcomes (Dorison et al, 2019;Kteily et al, 2016;Lees & Cikara, 2020). Such interventions present a fruitful avenue for attenuating the mutually-reinforcing relationship between misperceived and actual polarization.…”

Section: Focus On Correcting Inaccurate Meta-perceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding and Combating Misperceived Polarization

Lees¹,

Cikara²

2020

Preprint

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By many accounts politics is becoming more polarized, yielding dire consequences for democracy and trust in government. Yet a growing body of research on “false polarization” finds that perceptions of “what the other side believes” are inaccurate–specifically, overly pessimistic–and that these inaccuracies exacerbate intergroup conflict. Through a review of existing work and a reanalysis of published data, we (i) develop a typology of the disparate phenomena that are labeled “polarization,” (ii) use that typology to understand when polarization is “false,” and (iii) identify when false polarization gives rise to true polarization (e.g., extreme issue attitudes and prejudice). We further suggest that a specific psychological domain is ideal for developing corrective interventions: meta-perception, one’s judgment of how they are perceived by others. We review evidence indicating that correcting meta-perception inaccuracies is effective at reducing intergroup conflict, and discuss methods for precisely measuring meta-perception accuracy. We argue that the reputational nature of meta-perception provides a motivational mechanism by which individuals are sensitive to the truth, even when those truths pertain to the “other side.” We conclude by discussing how these insights can be integrated into existing research across multiple disciplines seeking to understand polarization and its negative consequences.

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“…Hedonic forecasts are defined as implicit or explicit forecasts of utility that will be experienced at a later time ( Kahneman and Snell, 1992 ; Kahneman and Thaler, 2006 ). Previous research has investigated hedonic (or affective) forecasting ( Kahneman and Snell, 1990 , 1992 ; Linville and Fischer, 1991 ; Baron, 1992 ; Kahneman, 1994 ; Snell et al, 1995 ; Loewenstein and Frederick, 1997 ; Loewenstein et al, 1997 ; Loewenstein and Schkade, 1999 ; Gilbert and Wilson, 2000 ; Zeelenberg et al, 2000 ; Gilbert et al, 2002 ; Buechel et al, 2017 ; Kurtz, 2018 ; Dorison et al, 2019 ) and revealed a number of biases that distort prediction outcomes through their valence, intensity, or duration (overview in Wilson and Gilbert, 2003 ). In the Kahneman and Snell (1992) experiments, participants made predictions of their future liking for different stimuli (ice cream, yogurt, and short musical pieces).…”

Section: Hedonic Forecastingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incidental Emotions and Hedonic Forecasting: The Role of (Un)certainty

et al. 2020

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The impact of incidental emotions on decision making is well established. Incidental emotions can be differentiated on several appraisal dimensions, including certainty–uncertainty. The present research investigates the effect of certainty–uncertainty of incidental emotions on hedonic forecasting. The results of four experimental studies indicate that uncertainty-associated incidental emotions, such as fear and hope, compared with certainty emotions, such as anger and happiness, amplify predicted utility. This amplification effect is confirmed for opposite utility types; uncertainty-associated emotions, when compared with their certainty counterparts, lead to an overprediction of positive utilities and to an underprediction of negative utilities. This effect is mediated by the prediction task uncertainty, providing evidence for a carryover process of the incidental emotion. The effect of task uncertainty on predicted utility is, in turn, partly mediated by attention to the task, suggesting that an affective adaptation process lies behind the amplification of forecasts. Taken together, these findings extend the impact of certainty–uncertainty to the context of hedonic forecasting and further corroborate the impact of incidental emotions in judgment and decision making.

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Selective exposure partly relies on faulty affective forecasts

Cited by 54 publications

References 46 publications

Are politically diverse Thanksgiving dinners shorter than politically uniform ones?

Are politically diverse Thanksgiving dinners shorter than politically uniform ones?

Understanding and Combating Misperceived Polarization

Incidental Emotions and Hedonic Forecasting: The Role of (Un)certainty

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