6.2

  • Focus of lecture: Understanding the unreliability of people's explanations for their behavior.

A True Reason

  • Main Idea: People often provide inaccurate reasons for their actions.

    • Example query: "Why did you check Facebook?"

    • Acknowledgment: Reasons often provided are not lies but rather post hoc inventions by the brain.

  • Coherent Narrative: The brain desires to create a seamless narrative, retroactively justifying behaviors.

    • Example behavior: Sitting and idly kicking legs.

    • Inquiry for reasoning: Why do this?

    • Possible invented explanation: "My leg was getting stiff."

  • Eating Example:

    • Reasoning for eating an apple: "I was hungry."

    • Critical Reflection: The feeling of hunger may precede the action but is not specifically tied to the moment of eating.

    • Key Discussion: Our brains fabricate reasons that often do not reflect our true motivations.

Caused People

  • Discussion of a significant experiment illustrating the disconnect between actual causes and perceived reasons for behavior.

    • Conducted by: Bateson and colleagues at the psychology department of Newcastle University (UK).

  • Experiment Setup: Coffee and tea were provided on an honor system.

    • Observation: Faculty were underpaying for these beverages.

    • Explanation: Some faculty members justified their behaviors with excuses like not having change, but others might have been dishonest.

  • Experiment Objective: To examine if changing visual cues would influence the payment behavior.

Picture Of Face

  • Experimental Design:

    • Alteration made to a posted piece of paper displaying the coffee and tea prices.

    • Visuals altered between a face (that appeared to be looking at the person) and flowers.

  • Results:

    • Significant increase in payment when a face was present: payments were 2.76 times higher for weeks featuring a face compared to those with flowers.

    • Critical observation: Do people realize the influence of the face on their payment behavior?

    • Hypothetical responses from participants:

    • "I didn’t have change last week."

    • "I was in a rush last week."

    • Reality: The influence of visual stimuli was not recognized by the faculty despite its clear impact on behavior.

Ask The People

  • Key Insight: People are frequently unaware of the true motivations behind their behaviors.

  • When asked directly, individuals may fabricate explanations for their actions due to discomfort with ambiguity.

  • Methodological Note: Although this study has faced media scrutiny, it continues to hold significant value and is mentioned despite minor methodological flaws.

  • Recommendation for Further Reading: There exists more rigorous research on the effect, but it is not mandatory for this course.

Conclusion

  • Cautionary Advice:

    • Skepticism about relying solely on individuals' recollections or justifications for their actions is advised.

    • Importance of understanding potential inaccuracies in self-reported motivations.

    • Individuals may not be intentionally deceptive but could still be mistaken.