Thomas Gilovich
Thomas Gilovich | |
---|---|
cognitive biases | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Psychology |
Institutions | Cornell University |
Thesis | Biased evaluation and persistence in gambling (1981) |
Doctoral advisors | Lee Ross Mark Lepper |
Doctoral students | Justin Kruger |
Thomas Dashiff Gilovich (born January 16, 1954) an American psychologist who is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of
Early history and education
Gilovich earned his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his PhD from Stanford University. After hearing Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman give a lecture about judgment and decision making in his very first classroom experience there, Gilovich changed his program of research to focus on the intersection of social psychology and judgment and decision making .[3] He went on to earn his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford in 1981.
Research in social and cognitive psychology
Gilovich is best known for his research in
Gilovich condensed his academic research in judgement and decision making into a popular book, How We Know What Isn't So. Writing in Skeptical Inquirer, Carl Sagan called it "a most illuminating book" that "shows how people systematically err in understanding numbers, in rejecting unpleasant evidence, in being influenced by the opinions of others. We're good in some things, but not in everything. Wisdom lies in understanding our limitations."[10] Reviewing the book for The New York Times, George Johnson wrote, "Over time, the ability to infer rules about the way the world works from skimpy evidence confers a survival advantage, even if much of the time the lessons are wrong. From evolution's standpoint, it is better to be safe than sorry."[11] In an interview, Gilovich summarized the thesis of How We Know What Isn't So as people "thinking we really have the evidence for things, [that] the world is telling us something, but in fact the world is telling us something a little more complicated, and how is it that we can misread the evidence of our everyday experience, and be convinced that something is true when it really isn't." He further elaborated on some of the erroneous beliefs his book discusses, including the sophomore jinx, the idea that things such as natural disasters come in threes, and the belief that the lines we are in slow down but the lines we leave speed up.[12] In the same interview he called confirmation bias the "mother of all biases."
Notable contributions in biases and heuristics research
Through his published work in biases and heuristics, Gilovich has made notable contributions to the field through the following concepts:
Hot hands
Gilovich's research in the alleged
Spotlight effect
The spotlight effect, the phenomenon where people tend to believe that they're noticed more than they really are, is a term Gilovich coined. In a paper he wrote with two graduate students in 1999, he explained that "because we are so focused on our own behavior, it can be difficult to arrive at an accurate assessment of how much–or how little–our behavior is noticed by others. Indeed, close inspection reveals frequent disparities between the way we view our performance (and think others will view it) and the way it is actually seen by others."[15] For the paper, Gilovich and his coauthors conducted an experiment asking college students to put on a Barry Manilow shirt and walk into a room of strangers facing the door. The researchers predicted that the students would assume that more people would notice their T-shirt than was actually true. The results were as predicted, with participants thinking that roughly half the strangers would have recognized the Barry Manilow shirt, when in fact the number was closer to 20 percent.[15][16]
Bias blind spot
Gilovich has contributed to an understanding of
Clustering illusion
Gilovich was an early author in the clustering illusion, which is closely related to the "hot hand" fallacy, and is the tendency to see "clusters" of data in a random sequence of data as nonrandom. In How We Know What Isn't So, Gilovich explains how people want to see a sequence such as xoooxoooxooxxxoxxoo as planned, even though it was arbitrary. In addition, he stated that people tend to misjudge randomness, thinking that rolling the same number on dice 4 times in a row is not truly random, when in fact it is.[20]
Illusion of transparency
Building on his research on the spotlight effect, Gilovich helped to discover the illusion of transparency, or the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people telegraph their inner thoughts and emotions. In a study he conducted with two coauthors in 1998, individuals read questions from index cards and answered them out loud. They either lied or told the truth based on what the card said to do on a label only they could see. Half of the liars thought they had been caught, but in fact only a quarter were, hence the illusion of transparency. In addition, they found in the same study that in an emergency situation, people assumed the emergency and concern would show in their expression and behavior, but it didn't, which the authors believe partially explains the bystander effect: "When confronted with a potential emergency, people typically play it cool, adopt a look of nonchalance, and monitor the reactions of others to determine if a crisis is really at hand. No one wants to overreact, after all, if it might not be a true emergency. However, because each individual holds back, looks nonchalant, and monitors the reactions of others, sometimes everyone concludes (perhaps erroneously) that the situation is not an emergency and hence does not require intervention."[21]
Regret
"We evolved to be goal-striving creatures. You'll regret more the things that you didn't do than the things you did."
—Thomas Gilovich[22]
Gilovich has researched the causes of regret. A study he conducted in 1994 found that specific actions people wish they hadn't taken are regretted more in the short run, but ultimately, inactions are regretted more in the long run. He has continued to emphasize that people tend to regret the things they don't do more than the things they did.[22][23]
Anchoring
Following Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Gilovich and his colleagues have conducted research in
Self-handicapping
In his social psychology research, Gilovich discovered the phenomenon of self-handicapping, which he described as "attempts to manage how others perceive us by controlling the attributions they make for our performance." An example of self-handicapping, according to Gilovich, would be drawing attention to elements that inhibit performance, and so discount failure in others' eyes, or make success the result of overcoming insurmountable odds. The self-handicapping can either be real (failing to study or drinking excessively), or faked (merely claiming that there were difficult obstacles present). Gilovich has stated that the strategy is most common in sports and undergraduate academics, but that it often backfires.[20]
Research in behavioral economics
Besides his contributions to the field of social psychology, Gilovich's research in cognitive psychology has influenced the field of
Experiential purchases
A major recurring theme in Gilovich's work in behavioral economics is the importance of experience over ownership of material things. For instance, a paper he co-authored with Leaf Van Boven found that people overwhelmingly preferred "experiential purchases" to "material purchases."[28] Writing for The Atlantic, James Hamblin noted the growing body of research, pioneered by Gilovich, showing that experiences tend to bring people more happiness than possessions: "It's the fleetingness of experiential purchases that endears us to them. Either they're not around long enough to become imperfect, or they are imperfect, but our memories and stories of them get sweet with time. Even a bad experience becomes a good story."[29] In a talk about barriers to gratitude, Gilovich further noted that a survey of his students at Cornell found that they enjoyed their conversations about their experiences than their material purchases, and that happiness from experiential purchases is more enduring than that from material purchases. The reason being that experiences make for better stories, cultivate personal identity more, and connect people to each other. Gilovich explained that the implication is that experiential purchases lead to more gratitude and thus to more pro-social behavior.[30] In addition, Gilovich has emphasized the importance of being active and seeking goals: "We evolved to be goal-striving creatures. You’ll regret more the things that you didn’t do rather than the things you did." Along similar lines, in one talk he urged his audience, "mind your peaks and ends. You won’t remember the length of your vacation experience, but you’ll remember the intensity. And do something special at the end."[22]
Publications
Books
- Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2015). The wisest one in the room: How you can benefit from social psychology's most powerful insights. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4516-7754-6
- Gilovich, T., Keltner, D., & Nisbett, R.E. Social Psychology. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-97875-3
- Gilovich, T., Griffin, D. W. & Kahneman, D. (Eds.). (2002). Heuristics and Biases : The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79679-2
- Belsky, G., & Gilovich, T. (1999). Why smart people make big money mistakes-and how to correct them: Lessons from the new science of behavioral economics. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-85938-6
- Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn't so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-02-911706-2. Summary.
Journal articles
- Epley, N.; Gilovich, T. (September 2001). "Putting adjustment back in the anchoring and adjustment heuristic: differential processing of self-generated and experimenter-provided anchors". Psychological Science. 12 (5): 391–6. S2CID 1133824.
- Epley, N.; Savitsky, K.; Gilovich, T. (August 2002). "Empathy neglect: reconciling the spotlight effect and the correspondence bias". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 83 (2): 300–12. PMID 12150229.
- Frank, M.G.; Gilovich, T. (January 1988). "The dark side of self- and social perception: black uniforms and aggression in professional sports". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 54 (1): 74–85. PMID 3346809.
- Gilovich, Thomas (1981). "Seeing the past in the present: The effect of associations to familiar events on judgments and decisions". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 40 (5): 797–808. .
- Gilovich, T.; Medvec, V.H. (April 1995). "The experience of regret: what, when, and why". Psychological Review. 102 (2): 379–95. S2CID 26371171.
- Gilovich, T.; Medvec, V.H.; Savitsky, K. (February 2000). "The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 78 (2): 211–22. S2CID 12809711.
- Gilovich, T.; Savitsky, K.; Medvec, V.H. (August 1998). "The illusion of transparency: biased assessments of others' ability to read one's emotional states". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 75 (2): 332–46. S2CID 14413726.
- Gilovich, Thomas; Vallone, Robert; Tversky, Amos (July 1985). "The hot hand in basketball: On the misperception of random sequences". Cognitive Psychology. 17 (3): 295–314. S2CID 317235.
- Libby, L.K.; Eibach, R.P.; Gilovich, T. (January 2005). "Here's looking at me: the effect of memory perspective on assessments of personal change". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 88 (1): 50–62. PMID 15631574.
- Pronin, E.; Gilovich, T.; Ross, L. (July 2004). "Objectivity in the eye of the beholder: divergent perceptions of bias in self versus others". Psychological Review. 111 (3): 781–99. S2CID 16919312.
- Van Boven, L.; Gilovich, T. (December 2003). "To do or to have? That is the question". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 85 (6): 1193–202. PMID 14674824.
Awards and recognition
- Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[31]
- Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Fellow of the American Psychological Association
- Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science
- Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology
- Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
- 1998-99 Russell Distinguished Teaching Award at Cornell University[32][33]
Personal life
Thomas Gilovich is married to Karen Dashiff Gilovich, with whom he has two daughters, Ilana and Rebecca.[20] Gilovich stated in an interview that the best part about being a scientist is going to work every day asking "what do I want to do today?" and not so often "what do I have to do today?" and that the best quality of a scientist is knowing how to respond to failure.
References
- ^ Almendrala, Anna (3 September 2014). "More Evidence Happiness Doesn't Come From Buying New Things". Huffington Post Australia. Retrieved September 3, 2014.
- ^ Lombrozo, Tania (June 30, 2014). "3 Things Everyone Should Know Before Growing Up". 13.7: Cosmos & Culture (blog). Retrieved June 30, 2014.
- ^ "Psychology professor Tom Gilovich – ScienceLives". Archived from the original on 2021-12-22. Retrieved January 13, 2016 – via YouTube.
- ^ "Tom Gilovich". gilovich.socialpsychology.org. Social Psychology Network. Retrieved January 18, 2016.
- ^ "Thomas Gilovich". Google Scholar. Citation indices. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
- ^ Oswald, Nick (2 April 2009). "Does Your h-index Measure Up?". /bitesizebio.com. Science Squared. Retrieved January 14, 2016.
- ISBN 9780521796798.
- ISBN 978-0-393-93896-8.
- ^ "ScienceLives: Tom Gilovich: Do What You Find Interesting". Archived from the original on 2021-12-22. Retrieved September 27, 2015 – via YouTube.
- ^ Sagan, Carl (March 1996). "Does Truth Matter? Science, Pseudoscience, and Civilization". Skeptical Inquirer. 20.2 March/April 1996. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
- New York Times. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
- ^ "Episode 8 − Extraordinary Claims: Uncut conversation with Tom Gilovich". Archived from the original on 2021-12-22. Retrieved October 6, 2015 – via YouTube.
- S2CID 317235.
- S2CID 17952286.
- ^ S2CID 12809711.
- ^ Morfitt, Russ (May 19, 2014). "The Spotlight Effect: or why Barry Manilow is still relevant". learntolive.com. Retrieved January 13, 2016.
- S2CID 1210432.
- ISBN 978-1-84169-418-4.
- ^ "Cultivating Gratitude in a Consumerist Society". YouTube. Retrieved 2016-01-20.
- ^ ISBN 9780029117064.
- PMID 9731312. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
- ^ a b c Glaser, Linda B. (April 28, 2015). "Behavioral economists discuss their emerging field". Cornell Chronicle. Cornell University. Retrieved April 28, 2015.
- PMID 7740094.
- S2CID 14747114.
- S2CID 10279390.
- ^ A Wise Guy's Guide to Happiness. The Brian Lehrer Show. December 10, 2015. Retrieved January 18, 2016.
- ^ "The Wisest One in the Room". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved January 18, 2016.
- ^ Postrel, Virginia (September 9, 2004). "In New Age economics, it's more about the experience than about just owning stuff". New York Times. Economic Scene. cited in "In New Age economics, it's more about the experience than about just owning stuff". vpostrel.com. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
- ^ Hamblin, James (October 7, 2014). "Buy Experiences, Not Things". Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved December 31, 2015.
- ^ "Cultivating Gratitude in a Consumerist Society". Retrieved January 18, 2016 – via YouTube.
- ^ "CSI Fellows and Staff". Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Retrieved August 7, 2011.
- ^ "Russell Distinguished Teaching Award". College of Arts & Sciences, Cornell University. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
- ^ "Tom Gilovich". W. W. Norton & Company, publishers. Retrieved January 18, 2016.