Thinking and Deciding

40 THE STUDY OF THINKING
Tetlock found that moderate leftists got the highest scores, and he interpreted this
in terms of the fact that this group was constantly facing issues that put their values
in conflict, such as the goals of equality and economic efficiency, which conflict in
such questions as whether the rich should be taxed to help the poor (thus reducing
economic incentive but increasing equality).
Hypothetical scenarios
Another way to learn how people think or make decisions is to observe the conclusions
that people draw or the decisions they make. The investigator then makes
inferences from the effects of relevant variables on these responses. (A “variable”
is anything that we can measure, label, or manipulate.) Investigators strive both to
capture the phenomenon of interest and to control the effective variables, so that they
can determine which variables do what.
Sometimes we observe people making real decisions, or what they think are real
decisions. Real decisions may involve money that is actually paid at the end of an
experiment. Social psychologists often stage realistic deceptions, which the subjects
think are real. Most of the studies of decision making described in this book ask subjects
what they would do in hypothetical situations. The disadvantage of hypothetical
questions is that the results may not tell us much about what people would actually
do in the real world. For example, in answering the hypothetical question, people
may tell us that they would do what they think we (the researchers) would want them
to do — not what they would really do. This is called a “social desirability” effect.
(This is not a serious problem if the experimenter is interested in the subjects’ views
about what is the best decision.)
An advantage of using hypothetical situations for a study is that the researchers
can extensively manipulate the situation to find out what variables are affecting the
subject’s responses. Another advantage is that the experimenter can easily ask subjects
for justifications or explanations. Justifications and explanations can suggest
new hypotheses for study, provide evidence bearing on other hypotheses, and provide
evidence that subjects understand (or fail to understand) the situation as the experimenter
intended. Hypothetical situations are also useful in telling us how subjects
would respond to situations that are novel to them, and situations that are difficult to
stage in the laboratory. Finally, hypothetical decisions may be just as useful as real
ones for finding out how people think about certain types of problems.
Most of the research described in this book uses hypothetical decisions. The
conclusions of such research are strengthened if we can point to cases in the real
world — often cases involving public policy choices — that seem to correspond to
the hypothetical cases used in the laboratory. We cannot be sure that the apparent
biases in real cases are real biases. Other factors may influence people’s judgments
and decisions aside from those that are present in the lab. But the combination of real
cases and experimental evidence makes a case that may be sufficiently compelling
to arouse us to try to do something, especially when the apparent bias makes things
worse.