Social Cognitive Bias: PSYCOLOQUYy Call for Commentary

Krueger: Social Cognitive Bias The target article whose abstract appears below has just appeared in PSYCOLOQUY, a refereed journal of Open Peer Commentary sponsored by the American Psychological Association. Qualified professional biobehavioral, neural or cognitive scientists are hereby invited to submit Open Peer Commentary on it. Please email for Instructions if you are not familiar with format or acceptance criteria for PSYCOLOQUY commentaries (all submissions are refereed). To submit articles and commentaries or to seek information: EMAIL: psyc(a)pucc.princeton.edu URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc To retrieve the article: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?9.46 or ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1998.volume.9/psyc.98.9.46.so… AUTHOR'S RATIONALE FOR SOLICITING COMMENTARY: My contention is that social psychological research has depicted social perception in an excessively negative light by relying too much on demonstrations of various irrational biases. Normative models of good judgment have been too restrictive, and the prevalent testing strategy has equated good judgment with the truth of a null hypothesis. Rejections of such null hypotheses have then been interpreted as evidence for bias. I am particularly interested in learning how psychologists and methodologists respond to the idea that the use of multiple theories and methods will improve our understanding of social perception. I realize that my proposal is incomplete because breaking the predominance of the single ruling inference strategy (Null Hypothesis Significance Testing) may make it harder to draw comparisons between studies. How can the field preserve its coherence, while abandoning its traditional ways? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- psycoloquy.98.9.46.social-bias.1.krueger Fri Oct 2 1998 ISSN 1055-0143 (21 paragraphs, 41 references, 4 notes, 647 lines) PSYCOLOQUY is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA) Copyright 1998 Joachim Krueger THE BET ON BIAS: A FOREGONE CONCLUSION? Joachim Krueger Department of Psychology Brown University, Box 1853 Providence, RI 02912 USA Joachim_Krueger(a)Brown.edu http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Psychology/faculty/krueger.html ABSTRACT: Social psychology has painted a picture of human misbehavior and irrational thinking. For example, prominent social cognitive biases are said to distort consensus estimation, self perception, and causal attribution. The thesis of this target article is that the roots of this negativistic paradigm lie in the joint application of narrow normative theories and statistical testing methods designed to reject those theories. Suggestions for balancing the prevalent paradigm include (a) modifications to the ruling rituals of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing, (b) revisions of what is considered a normative response, and (c) increased emphasis on individual differences in judgment. KEYWORDS: Bayes' rule, bias, hypothesis testing, individual differences probability, rationality, significance testing, social cognition, statistical inference To retrieve the article: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?9.46 or ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1998.volume.9/psyc.98.9.46.so…