The automatic influence of advocacy on lawyers and novices

Melnikoff, David; Strohminger, Nina

doi:10.1038/s41562-020-00943-3

Cited by 28 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…In the ambiguous condition of Study 2, subjects in the public condition not only punished more, they also reported greater moral support for punishment. In other words, consistent with other evidence that self-interest can color our perceptions of the world 42,[74][75][76] , reputation caused subjects to report seeing ambiguously-deserved punishment as more clearly merited. Is this perception a mechanism through which reputation encourages punishment?…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Punitive but discerning: Reputation can fuel ambiguously-deserved punishment, but does not erode sensitivity to nuance

Jordan¹,

Kteily²

2020

Preprint

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Reputation concerns can motivate moralistic punishment, but existing evidence comes exclusively from contexts in which punishment is unambiguously deserved. Recent debates surrounding “virtue signaling” and “outrage culture” raise the question of whether reputation may also fuel punishment in more ambiguous cases—and even encourage indiscriminate punishment that ignores moral nuance. But when the moral case for punishment is ambiguous, do people actually expect punishing to make them look good? And if so, are people willing to use ambiguously-deserved punishment to gain reputational benefits, or do personal reservations about whether punishment is merited restrain them from doing so? We address these questions across 11 experiments (n = 9448) employing both hypothetical vignette and costly behavioral paradigms. We find that reputation does fuel ambiguously-deserved punishment. Subjects expect even ambiguously-deserved punishment to look good, especially when the audience is highly ideological. Furthermore, despite personally harboring reservations about its morality, subjects readily use ambiguously-deserved punishment to gain reputational benefits. Yet we also find that reputation can do more to fuel unambiguously-deserved punishment. Subjects robustly expect unambiguously-deserved punishment to look better than ambiguously-deserved punishment, even when the audience is highly ideological. And we find evidence that as a result, introducing reputational incentives can preferentially increase unambiguously-deserved punishment—causing punishers to differentiate more between ambiguous and unambiguous cases and thereby heightening sensitivity to moral nuance. We thus conclude that the drive to signal virtue can make people more punitive but also more discriminating, painting a nuanced picture of the role that reputation plays in outrage culture.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Punitive but discerning: Reputation can fuel ambiguously-deserved punishment, but does not erode sensitivity to nuance

Jordan¹,

Kteily²

2020

Preprint

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“…Putting aside the moral and scientific problems with the superficial ‘common sense’ approach to consumer behavior for the moment, there is just so much potential here for new ways of studying and, admittedly, influencing consumer behavior. We know that a person's current goals and motives change even their strong attitudes and preferences, if doing so helps attain that current goal (see Ferguson & Bargh, 2004; Huang & Bargh, 2014; Melnikoff & Strohminger, 2020). And we also know that these goals and motives can be triggered, activated from outside by subtle cues (e.g., Bargh et al, 2001; Chartrand & Bargh, 1996; Chartrand et al, 2008; Chen et al, 2020; Weingarten et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Putting aside the moral and scientific problems with the superficial 'common sense' approach to consumer behavior for the moment, there is just so much potential here for new ways of studying and, admittedly, influencing consumer behavior. We know that a person's current goals and motives change even their strong attitudes and preferences, if doing so helps attain that current goal (see Ferguson & Bargh, 2004;Huang & Bargh, 2014;Melnikoff & Strohminger, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In both conscious as well as unconscious modes, the currently active goal directs selective attention to goal relevant features of the environment (Anderson & Pichert, 1978)—increasing attentional sensitivity to information relevant to the current need state, even to the point of causing normally subliminal strength stimuli to now become visible (Bruner, 1957; Ferguson, 2008; Xu et al, 2015, Study 1). The active goal changes evaluations and preferences (Huang & Bargh, 2014), and even implicit attitudes (see Melnikoff & Bailey, 2018; Melnikoff & Strohminger, 2020) if doing so would facilitate the current goal pursuit. The currently active goal also changes choices and decisions, including the assessment of risk, when pursued unconsciously (Ferguson, 2008; Ferguson & Bargh, 2004; Hill & Durante, 2011; Huang & Bargh, 2014) just as it does in conscious goal pursuit (Bargh et al, 2010; Gollwitzer, 1999; Kruglanski et al, 2002; Locke & Latham, 1990).…”

Section: The Hidden Operation Of Unconscious Motivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The hidden life of the consumer mind

Bargh

2021

Consumer Psychology Review

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Unconscious influences permeate the everyday life of consumers. The scope of unconscious influences is greatly enhanced when the operational definition of “unconscious” shifts from the anachronistic “subliminal” one—whether the person is aware of the triggering information itself—to the far more common situation of being unaware of the influence of that stimulus. People are often unaware of how external events influence their choices and behavior, which is a good reason not to rely on self‐report measures of mediating internal mental processes. What are the main forms of mundane unconscious influence? (1) The person's primary evolved needs and motives and active goal pursuits, which operate unconsciously to exert a transformative effect on selective attention, preferences, and purchases, and consumption. These can be triggered through common external means such as grocery store handouts and emails from the boss. (2) Immediate preconscious perceptual inputs from the external environment influence seemingly “free” conscious choices. Finally, (3) postconscious processes have the same effects but come from the carry‐over of conscious experiences from one situation into the next. This is the domain of “nudges” or “priming effects” with many field studies as well as meta‐analyses demonstrating their validity and replicability.

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“…However, another study found that incentives for accuracy can back re, slightly increasing belief in fake news 9 . Incentives also do not eliminate people's tendency to view familiar statements 33 or positions for which they advocate 34 as more accurate, raising questions as to whether incentives can override the heuristics people use to judge truth 35 . These con icting results motivate the need for a systematic investigation of when and for whom accuracy motivations in uence belief.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Accuracy and Social Incentives Shape Belief in (Mis)Information

Rathje

Bavel

Linden

2022

Preprint

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Liberals and conservatives are divided in their judgements about the accuracy of true and false news. Yet it is unclear whether this partisan divide reflects genuine differences in knowledge, or whether it can be overcome if people are motivated to be accurate. Across three experiments (n = 2,381), we motivated participants to be accurate by giving them a small financial incentive to provide correct responses about the veracity of news headlines. This incentive improved accuracy and reduced partisan bias in belief in news headlines – especially for conservative participants. Increasing social motivations, however, decreased accuracy. Replicating prior work, conservatives were substantially less accurate than liberals at discerning true from false headlines. Yet, this gap between liberals and conservatives closed by 60% when conservatives were motivated to be accurate. Altogether, these findings suggest that many instances of belief in (mis)information may reflect a lack of motivation to be accurate instead of a simple lack of knowledge.

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The automatic influence of advocacy on lawyers and novices

Cited by 28 publications

References 28 publications

Punitive but discerning: Reputation can fuel ambiguously-deserved punishment, but does not erode sensitivity to nuance

Punitive but discerning: Reputation can fuel ambiguously-deserved punishment, but does not erode sensitivity to nuance

The hidden life of the consumer mind

Accuracy and Social Incentives Shape Belief in (Mis)Information

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