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PREFACE
EDITORIAL POLICY
Advances in Group Processes publishes theoretical analyses, reviews and
theory based empirical chapters on group phenomena . The series adopts a
broad conception of "group processes ." This includes work on groups ranging
from the very small to the very large, and on classic and contemporary topics
such as status, power, exchange, justice, influence, decision making, intergroup
relations and social networks . Contributors have included scholars from diverse
fields including sociology, psychology, political science, philosophy, mathe-
matics and organizational behavior .
The series provides an outlet for papers that may be longer, more theoretical
and/or more integrative than those published by standard journals . All papers
undergo a peer review process to ensure a consistent standard of quality . We
place a premium on the development of testable theories and theory-driven
research . Chapters in the following categories are especially apropos :
• Conventional and unconventional theoretical work, from broad metatheor-
etical and conceptual analyses to refinements of existing theories and
hypotheses. One goal of the series is to advance the field of group processes
by promoting theoretical work .
• Papers that review and integrate programs of research . The current structure
of the field often leads to the piecemeal publication of different parts of a
program of research . This series offers those engaged in programmatic
research on a given topic an opportunity to integrate their published and
unpublished work into a single paper . Review articles that transcend the
author's own work are also of considerable interest.
• Papers that develop and apply social psychological theories and research to
macrosociological processes. One premise underlying this series is that links
between macro and microsociological processes warrant more systematic
and testable theorizing . The series encourages development of the macro-
sociological implications embedded in social psychological work on
groups.
In addition the editors are open to submissions that depart from these
guidelines .
ix
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 18
The next two chapters address provocative questions that are seldom
examined in sociological social psychology. First, David Sally asks how the
study of autistic individuals can advance formal understandings of the social
mind . Because autism disrupts the ability to take the role or perspective of
another person, this condition provides a natural experiment for comparing
those who can role-play to those who cannot . In his chapter "Into the Looking
Glass : Discerning the Social Mind Through the Mindblind" Sally asserts that
an adequate theory of the mind is essential to a variety of intrapersonal and
group processes . Next, Satoshi Kanazawa asks "Where do Social Structures
Come From?" in his chapter of the same title . Kanazawa argues that the
emerging field of evolutionary psychology can help explain the origins of
social structures and networks . He then provides two empirical tests by
examining differences between male and female kinship networks . Data from
the 1985 General Social Survey are shown to be consistent with the
evolutionary psychology approach .
The final two chapters address fundamental questions of status organizing
processes . In "Processing Performance Evaluations in Homogeneous Task
Groups : Feedback and Gender Effects," Martha Foschi, Sandra Enns, and
Vanessa Lapointe investigate emergent status structures in homogeneous task
groups . They report data from a six condition experiment that manipulated the
sex of dyad and level feedback for a gender-neutral task . As predicted by
expectation states theory, the findings indicate task feedback is significantly
related the rejection of influence . Although gender differences were not found
to significantly impact behavior, they were related to a number of self-report
measures . Finally, James W. Balkwell reanalyzes data from a classic study in
his chapter entitled "The Camilleri-Berger Model Revisited ." In this chapter
Balkwell applies modem statistical and computation technology to data
collected by Santo Camilleri and Joseph Berger more than 30 years ago and
finds surprisingly supportive results for expectation states theory . Balkwell
shows how theoretical concepts important to social exchange theorizing (such
as sentiment and control) can be incorporated into formal models of status
processing . The broader significance of this work is to show how the social
exchange framework and expectation states theory complimentary one another
for a range of contemporary issues .
Shane R . Thye
Edward J . Lawler
Michael W. Macy
Henry A . Walker
Volume Co-Editors
FROM PROTOTYPICALITY TO POWER :
A SOCIAL IDENTITY ANALYSIS OF
LEADERSHIP
Michael A . Hogg
INTRODUCTION
2 MICHAEL A. HOGG
1997) . I set the scene by saying a few words about leadership research in social
psychology, and then a few words about the social identity approach . The bulk
of the chapter describes how social identity processes may be implicated in
leadership. I then overview relevant empirical work from my own lab and from
other groups, and go on to speculate about some conceptual and applied
implications of this analysis, in particular focusing on the relationship between
leadership and power .
The key point I will be making is that under certain circumstances,
specifically when group membership is an important basis of self-conception,
people tend to base their perceptions and evaluations of leadership effective-
ness on the extent to which a person possesses prototypical properties of group
membership, rather than, say, effective leadership qualities . This implies that to
be an effective leader in such groups, leaders need to pay attention to how
prototypical they are considered to be by members of the group . The analysis
is intended to apply to groups of all sizes and functions, and to emergent as
well as established leaders . Whatever the conditions of group life, proto-
typicality becomes a strong influence on the dynamics of leadership when
group membership is highly salient and self-conceptually important . The
analysis itself, however, is primarily described in the context of emergent
leadership in relatively transient groups - and the experiments described below
which are specifically designed to investigate the core premises of the theory
are similarly oriented .
RESEARCH ON LEADERSHIP
4 MICHAEL A . HOGG
1992 ; Fiedler & House, 1994 ; Pawar & Eastman, 1997 ; Wilpert, 1995 ; Yukl &
van Fleet, 1992) . The basis of this tradition is the view that leadership is a
dynamic product of transactions between leaders and followers (Bass, 1990b ;
Hollander, 1985 ; Lord & Maher, 1991 ; Nye & Simonetta, 1996) . Because
leaders play a significant role in helping followers achieve their goals,
followers bestow power and status on leaders to restore equity. Relatedly,
followers may try to redress the power imbalance in groups by gaining personal
information about the leader - an attribution process that imbues the leader
with charisma and additional power (Fiske, 1993 ; Fiske & Depret, 1996) .
Leaders may also accumulate "idiosyncrasy credit" with the group by
conforming to group norms - subsequently allowing them to be innovative and
effective leaders (Hollander, 1958 ; Hollander & Julian, 1970) .
Recent transactional leadership perspectives focus on transformational
leadership . Charismatic leaders are able to motivate followers to work for
collective goals that transcend self-interest and transform organizations (Bass,
1990b ; Bass & Avolio, 1993 ; see Mowday & Sutton, 1993, for critical
comment) . This focus on `charisma' is particularly evident in `new leadership'
research (e .g. Bass, 1985, 1990b, 1998 ; Bryman, 1992 ; Bums, 1978 ; Conger &
Kanungo, 1987, 1988) which proposes that effective leaders should be
proactive, change-oriented, innovative, motivating and inspiring, and have a
vision or mission with which they infuse the group . They should also be
interested in others, and be able to create commitment to the group, and extract
extra effort from and generally empower members of the group .
The recent study of leadership has largely been conducted outside mainstream
social psychology, and so it has not fully benefitted from some of the
conceptual advances made within social psychology over the last 20 years -
particularly the development and emerging synthesis of social cognition, group
processes, and intergroup relations research . Although most perspectives on
leadership now acknowledge that leadership is a relational property within
groups (i .e . leaders exist because of followers, and followers exist because of
leaders), the idea that leadership may emerge through the operation of ordinary
social-cognitive processes associated with psychologically belonging to a
group, has not really been elaborated .
Instead, the most recent analytic emphasis is upon : (a) individual cognitive
processes that categorize individuals as leaders - the social orientation between
individuals is not considered, and thus group processes are not incorporated, or
(b) whether individuals have the charismatic properties necessary to meet the
The social identity perspective has recently been reviewed in detail elsewhere
(e .g. Hogg, 2001 ; Hogg & Terry, 2000; Turner, 1999 ; see also Hogg & Abrams,
1988) . The perspective contains a number of compatible and inter-related
components and emphases ; in particular an original emphasis by Tajfel and
Turner and their associates on social identity, social comparison, intergroup
relations, and self-enhancement motivation (often simply called social identity
theory ; e .g . Tajfel, 1972 ; Tajfel & Turner, 1979 ; Turner, 1982), and a later
cognitive emphasis by Turner and his associates on the categorization process
(called self-categorization theory ; e .g . Turner, 1985 ; Turner, Hogg, Oakes,
Reicher & Wetherell, 1987) .
Research and conceptual developments have focused on self-esteem
motivation (e .g . Abrams & Hogg, 1988), uncertainty reduction motivation
(Hogg, 2000a; Hogg & Mullin, 1999), optimal distinctiveness motivation
(Brewer, 1991), social comparison processes (e .g . Turner, 1975 ; Hogg 2000b),
identity salience processes (Oakes, Haslam & Turner, 1994), stereotyping
(Oakes, Haslam & Turner, 1994), social influence (e .g . Turner, 1991), cohesion
6 MICHAEL A . HOGG
(Hogg, 1992, 1993), collective action (Reicher, 1982, 2001), language and
ethnicity (e.g . Giles & Johnson, 1987), social belief structures (e .g . Ellemers,
1993), attitudes, norms and behavior (e .g . Terry & Hogg, 1996), deviance (e .g .
Marques, Abrams, Paez & Hogg, 2001), performance motivation (Fielding &
Hogg, in press ; Worchel, Rothgerber, Day, Hart & Butemeyer, 1998), and role
identities (e .g . Hogg, Terry & White, 1995) . There is also a number of recent
edited books (e.g . Abrams & Hogg, 1999 ; Capozza & Brown, 2000 ; Ellemers,
Spears & Doosje, 1999 ; Hogg & Terry, 2001 ; Spears, Oakes, Ellemers &
Haslam, 1997 ; Terry & Hogg, 2000 ; Worchel, Morales, Paez & Deschamps,
1998) . Not surprisingly, the social identity perspective continues to play an
important role in the revival of interest among social psychologists in the study
of groups (Abrams & Hogg, 1998 ; Hogg & Abrams, 1999 ; Moreland, Hogg &
Hains, 1994) .
According to the social identity perspective, people define and evaluate
themselves and others in terms of the groups they belong to : group
memberships define the collective self-concept and thus people's social
identity . Because social identity is evaluative, intergroup relations is a
competitive struggle for evaluatively positive intergroup distinctiveness and
hence positive social identity. The specific strategies that groups and their
members adopt depend on perceptions of intergroup status differences and the
stability and legitimacy of such differences, as well as the permeability of
intergroup boundaries and thus the feasibility of redefining oneself as a
member of a higher status group . The struggle for positive social identity is a
group level manifestation of an underlying human motivation to maintain a
positive sense of self-esteem .
The process underlying social identification is social categorization . Social
categorization segments the social world into ingroups and outgroups that are
cognitively represented as prototypes : context-specific fuzzy sets that define
and prescribe attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that characterize one group and
distinguish it from other groups . Prototypes are stored in memory to be
engaged by social categorization in a particular context to guide perception,
self-conception and action . However they are contextually responsive, and can
even be entirely constructed in situ . The principle governing context sensitivity
is meta-contrast . New prototypes form, or existing ones are modified, in such
a way as to maximize the ratio of perceived intergroup differences to intragroup
differences ; prototypes form to accentuate differences between categories and
similarities within categories .
Social categorization of other people perceptually assimilates them to the
relevant ingroup or outgroup prototype, and thus perceptually accentuates
prototypical similarities among people in the same group and prototypical
8 MICHAEL A. HOGG
Within a salient group some members are more prototypical than others - there
is a prototypicality gradient that, in extreme cases, defines some people as
prototypically marginal and others as prototypically central (e .g . Marques &
Paez, 1994) . Because depersonalization is based on prototypicality, group
members are highly sensitive to prototypicality. Prototypicality is the basis of
perception and evaluation of self and other group members ; thus people notice
and respond to subtle differences in how prototypical fellow members are -
they are very aware of the prototype, and also of who is most prototypical and
of how prototypical others are (e.g . Haslam, Oakes, McGarty, Turner &
Onorato, 1995 ; Hogg, 1993) .
Within a salient group, then, people who are perceived to occupy the most
prototypical position are perceived to best embody the behaviors to which
other, less prototypical, members are conforming . There is a perception of
differential influence within the group, with the most prototypical member
appearing to exercise influence over less prototypical members . This
"appearance" probably arises due to the human tendency to personify and give
human agency to abstract forces - perhaps a manifestation of the fundamental
attribution error (Ross, 1977) or correspondence bias (e .g . Gilbert & Malone,
1995) . In new groups, this is only an "appearance" because the most
prototypical person does not actively exercise influence; it is the prototype,
which he or she happens to embody, that influences others' behavior . In
established groups the appearance is reinforced by actual influence (see
below) .
Where the social context is in flux, the prototype will likewise be in flux . As
the prototype changes so will the person who appears to be most prototypical
Social Attraction
Social categorization affects not only perceptions, but also feelings, about other
people . Social identification transforms the basis of one's liking for others from
idiosyncratic preference and personal relationship history (personal attraction)
to prototypicality (social attraction) - ingroup members are liked more than
outgroup members and more prototypical ingroupers are liked more than less
prototypical ingroupers . Where there is a relatively consensual ingroup
prototype, social categorization renders more prototypical members socially
popular - there is consensual and unilateral liking for more prototypical
members . This depersonalized social attraction hypothesis (Hogg, 1992, 1993)
is supported by a series of laboratory and field studies (e .g . Hogg, Cooper-
Shaw & Holzworth, 1993 ; Hogg & Hains, 1996, 1998 ; Hogg & Hardie, 1991 ;
Hogg, Hardie & Reynolds, 1995) .
From the point of view of leadership, the person occupying the most
prototypical position may thus acquire, in new groups, or possess, in
established groups, the ability to actively influence because he or she is socially
attractive and thus able to secure compliance with suggestions and recom-
mendations he or she makes . A well researched consequence of liking is that
it increases compliance with requests . If you like someone you are more likely
to agree with them, and comply with requests and suggestions (e .g . Berscheid
10 MICHAEL A. HOGG
& Reis, 1998) . In this way, the most prototypical person is able to actively
exercise leadership by having his or her ideas accepted more readily and more
widely than ideas suggested by others . This empowers the leader, and publicly
confirms his or her ability to exercise influence . Consensual depersonalized
liking, particularly over time, confirms differential popularity and public
endorsement of the leader. It imbues the leader with prestige and status, and
begins to reify the nascent intragroup status differential between leader(s) and
followers . It allows someone who is "merely" prototypical, a passive focus for
influence, to take the initiative and become an active and innovative agent of
influence . In the case of established leaders, it allows them to be more
effectively innovative and influential .
Social attraction may also be enhanced by the behavior of highly
prototypical members . More prototypical members tend to identify more
strongly, and thus display more pronounced group behaviors ; they are more
normative, show greater ingroup loyalty and ethnocentrism, and generally
behave in a more group serving manner . These behaviors confirm proto-
typicality and thus enhance social attraction . A leader who acts as "one of us",
by showing strong ingroup favoritism and intragroup fairness, is not only more
socially attractive, but is also furnished with legitimacy. Research on justice
considerations in group contexts confirms that although distributive justice is
complicated (intragroup fairness conflicting with intergroup bias), intragroup
procedural justice is critical . According to the group value model of procedural
justice, members feel more satisfied and more committed to the group if the
leader is procedurally fair (Tyler, 1997 ; Tyler & Lind, 1992 ; see Platow, Reid
& Andrew, 1998) .
We have seen that when group membership is salient, people are sensitive to
prototypicality and attend to subtle differences in prototypicality of fellow
members . Highly prototypical members are most informative about what is
prototypical of group membership (see Turner, 1991), and so in a group context
they attract most attention . They are subjectively important and are distinctive
or figural against the background of other less informative members . Research
in social cognition shows that people who are subjectively important and
distinctive are seen to be disproportionately influential and have their behavior
dispositionally attributed (e .g . Erber & Fiske, 1984 ; Taylor & Fiske, 1975) . We
have also seen how highly prototypical members may appear to have influence
due to their relative prototypicality, and may actively exercise influence and
gain compliance as a consequence of consensual social attraction .
Together, the leadership nature of this behavior and the relative prominence
of prototypical members may encourage an internal attribution to intrinsic
leadership ability, or charisma. In this analysis charisma is certainly not a
personality attribute that causes leadership . It is an emergent perception on the
part of followers, based on the operation of social-cognitive processes
associated with group membership .
In groups, then, the behavior of highly prototypical members is likely to be
attributed, particularly in stable groups over time, to the person's personality
rather than the prototypicality of the position occupied. The consequence is a
tendency to construct a charismatic leadership personality for that person
which, to some extent, separates that person from the rest of the group and
reinforces the perception of status-based structural differentiation within the
group into leader(s) and followers . This may make the leader stand out more
starkly against the background of less prototypical followers, as well as draw
attention to a potential power imbalance ; thus further fueling the attributional
effect.
There is some empirical support for the idea that followers tend to focus
upon the leader and make dispositional attributions for that person's behavior .
Fiske (1993 ; Fiske & Depret, 1996) shows how followers pay close attention to
leaders, and seek dispositional information about leaders because detailed
individualized knowledge helps redress the perceived power imbalance
between leader and followers . Conger and Kanungo (1987, 1988) describe how
followers attributionally construct a charismatic leadership personality for
organizational leaders who have a "vision" that involves substantial change to
the group . Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich (1985) showed that simplified
dispositional attributions for leadership were more evident for distinctive
leadership behaviors, and under crisis conditions .
12 MICHAEL A . HOGG
Maintaining Leadership
The core idea of the social identity model of leadership is that under conditions
of group salience prototypicality becomes the basis of leadership . Automatic
14 MICHAEL A . HOGG
Platow and van Knippenberg (1999) have recently replicated the finding
from Hains, Hogg and Duck (1997) that prototypicality becomes an
increasingly influential basis for leadership endorsement as group membership
becomes more salient . Duck & Fielding (1999), drawing directly on the social
identity theory of leadership, conducted two laboratory experiments which, in
a relatively minimal way, simulated equal status subgroups nested within a
larger organization . They measured group identification and evaluations of
organization leaders who were randomly appointed from participants' own or
the other subgroup . Ingroup, thus prototypical, leaders were more strongly
supported than outgroup, thus non-prototypical, leaders, and this effect was
more pronounced to the extent that participants identified strongly with their
own subgroup . Again, the basis of leadership perception and endorsement is
more firmly grounded in prototypicality as people identify more strongly with
the group .
Platow, Reid and Andrew (1998) provide some indirect support for the
leadership theory from a laboratory experiment in which they manipulated
group salience (interpersonal vs . intergroup context), and whether a randomly
appointed leader was procedurally fair/unfair and distributively fair/unfair . If it
is assumed that fairness is a general property of leadership schemas, but that
ingroup favoritism is a generally prototypical and socially attractive property of
group membership, then we would predict that distributively and procedurally
ingroup favoring leaders would be more strongly endorsed under high than low
salience conditions . This is precisely what Platow and his colleagues found .
Haslam, McGarty, Brown, Eggins, Morrison and Reynolds (1998) report
three experiments that support the idea that systematically selected leaders may
be less favorably perceived than randomly appointed leaders . They argue, from
social identity theory, that this may be because a systematic selection process
draws attention away from the group and towards individuality . It personalizes
the leader and separates him or her from the group, and thus renders the leader
perceptually less prototypical . It may even also weaken group identification . In
contrast a random process keeps attention on the group as a whole . It does not
personalize the leader, and thus allows him or her to be viewed as a prototypical
group member . It may also strengthen group identification . Again, proto-
typicality becomes an increasingly important basis of leadership as group
membership becomes more salient .
Finally, there are studies conducted within a social dilemmas tradition .
Drawing on social identity theory and on Tyler and Lind's (1992) group-value
model, van Vugt and de Cremer (1999) conducted two experiments in which
they found that when people strongly identify with a group faced by a social
dilemma they prefer a leader who shares the group's values (i .e . is prototypical)
16 MICHAEL A . HOGG
and that such a leader will actually be more effective . Van Vugt and de Cremer
explicitly view this as supporting the social identity theory of leadership . In
another social dilemma study, de Cremer and van Vugt (in press) manipulated
a number of variables including how much participants identified with the
group and how much a randomly appointed leader ostensibly identified with
the group. Dependent measures focused mainly on cooperation with the leader
as a reflection of leader approval, support and effectiveness . The results showed
that members cooperated more with a high than low identifying leader, and that
this was particularly the case for members who identified strongly with the
group . In addition the effect was clearly mediated by social attraction . De
Cremer and van Vugt explicitly state that these data support the social identity
theory of leadership . Finally, Foddy and Hogg (1999) report some data of their
own that suggest that where there are leaders managing a scarce resource, those
leaders who identify more strongly with the group (and thus consider
themselves to be more prototypical) tend to be more conserving of the scarce
resource, and are thus more effective leaders .
In this section I have reviewed social identity research that directly tests or
indirectly tests the leadership theory presented here . There is consistent and
reliable support for the core idea that as groups become more salient and people
identify more strongly with them, prototypicality of the leader becomes an
increasingly significant basis for leadership perceptions . There is some
evidence that as prototypicality becomes more important, leadership schema
congruence becomes less important . There is also support for the idea that
prototype-based depersonalized social attraction may facilitate leadership .
There is some direct evidence from the studies by Fielding and Hogg (1997)
and de Cremer and van Vugt (in press), whereas in other studies social
attraction is a component of the leadership evaluation measure (e .g. Hains,
Hogg & Duck, 1997 ; Hogg, Hains & Mason, 1998) . The attribution and
associated structural differentiation components of the theory have indirect
support (e .g . Fiske, 1993 ; Fiske & Depret, 1996), but remain to be directly
tested.
18 MICHAEL A . HOGG
prototype and thus reduce the leader's prototypicality. We described above how
leaders then strive to redefine the prototype to better fit themselves - they can
accentuate the existing ingroup prototype, pillory ingroup deviants, or
demonize an appropriate outgroup . These tactics generally do not involve
coercion . However, where an intergroup differentiation is clearly evident,
perceived threats to leadership are automatically perceived in intergroup terms
as collective challenge/revolt on the part of the followers . This makes salient
the latent intergroup orientation between leader(s) and followers, and
engenders competitive intergroup relations between leader(s) and followers -
competitive relations in which one group has consensually legitimate and
overwhelming power over the other. Under these circumstances leadership
becomes coercion, based on the relatively limitless exercise of coercive power
over others . The dynamic is similar to the way in which a power elite "reacts'
to a perceived challenge to it's privileged position (e.g . Wright, 1997), but
because it occurs within the power-legitimizing framework of a common group
membership the "reaction" is potentially all the more extreme .
The analysis in the previous section suggests a series of steps that transforms
prototype-based leadership into power-based leadership . Highly prototypical
leaders of salient groups, particularly newly-emerged leaders, provide leader-
ship through influence - they do not need to exercise power over followers, and
indeed may not actually be able to behave in this way. Enduring tenure renders
leaders more influential and facilitates normative innovation - leaders still do
not need to exercise power over followers because they now have the capacity
to ensure that they remain prototypical and thus influential . Further tenure
differentiates the leader(s) from the followers . It creates an intergroup
differentiation based on widening, reified and consensually legitimized role and
power differences - the potential to use power is now very real . The conditions
that translate the potential into reality are ones that render salient the latent
power-based intergroup relationship between leaders and followers - for
example a sense of threat to one's leadership position, a feeling of remoteness
and alienation from the group, or a sense of becoming less influential in the life
of the group .
The exercise of leadership through coercion rests on the psychological
reality (based on self-categorization and social identity processes) of a sharp
role, status, and power discontinuity between leaders(s) and followers that
reconfigures cooperative intragroup role relations as competitive intergroup
relations . Such intergroup relations within a group provide ideal conditions for
20 MICHAEL A. HOGG
group members who through being prototypical contribute more to the group's
goals than do less prototypical followers .
Earlier I suggested that prototype based leadership might be better for groups .
This is not, however, always the case . For instance, in decision making groups,
prototype-based leadership can degrade decision making processes . As people
identify more strongly with a group (the group becomes more cohesive),
leadership becomes increasingly based on prototypicality rather than leader
schemas . Rather than basing leadership on leader schemas that generally
contain optimal situation and task specific leadership prescriptions, a situation
can exist where there is a powerful leader who embodies a group prototype that
does not prescribe optimal decision making procedures . This may produce
groupthink (Janis, 1972) ; powerful leaders and the absence of norms for
optimal decision making conspire in highly cohesive groups to produce
suboptimal decision making procedures that lead to poor decisions (Hogg &
Hains, 1998 ; Turner, Pratkanis, Probasco & Leve, 1992) .
Another pitfall of prototype based leadership is that social minorities (e .g .
based on race, ethnicity, gender, disability) may find it difficult to assume
leadership roles in some contexts . For example, if the normative environment
for business, or the organizational culture within specific organizations, renders
social minorities intrinsically less prototypical of the organization than
majorities, then minorities will find it more difficult to achieve and maintain an
effective leadership role (see Hogg & Terry, 2000) .
Finally, prototype-based leadership where the prototype is sharply focused
and consensual may be associated with high entitativity groups that are very
cohesive . These sorts of groups are well suited to subjective uncertainty
reduction through self-categorization (Hogg, 2000a ; Hogg & Mullin, 1999 ;
Reid & Hogg, 2000) - conditions of high societal or personal uncertainty may
motivate identification with these groups or the reconfiguration of existing
groups to be like this . These groups are likely to be "extremist" and prone to
hierarchical leadership structures, with remote and powerful leaders who are
invested with enormous charisma and who can exercise and abuse their position
of power. Under high self-conceptual uncertainty members strive for a simple
and distinct prototype, support witch-hunts to purify the group of deviants,
express consensual social attraction, are highly attuned to prototypicality, and
invest the leader with a highly charismatic leadership personality .
A good example of this is "totalist" groups such as cults (e.g . Curtis &
Curtis, 1993 ; Galanter, 1989) . In these groups, leaders are often distinct and
22 MICHAEL A . HOGG
remote from followers. There is a steep and rigid prestige differential between
leaders and followers that provides a clearly delineated intragroup status
structure . This arrangement contributes further to uncertainty reduction under
conditions of extreme uncertainty, because it imbues the intragroup structural
arrangement, and thus the leader, with perceived legitimacy that protects the
system from change (see Jost & Banaji's, 1994, system justification theory) .
Leaders may also maintain or strengthen their leadership position through
strategic management of uncertainty (see Marris's, 1996, notion that certainty
is power) . Specifically, they can deliberately raise uncertainty (e .g . the specters
of war, economic collapse, cultural disintegration), and at the same time define
a clear social identity predicated on a prototype that closely matches the leader .
Uncertainty reduction automatically endorses the leader .
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This chapter was made possible by a research enabling grant from the
University of Queensland, and by research grant support from the Australian
Research Council . I would also like to thank Kelly Fielding, Margaret Foddy,
Sarah Hains, Leigh Morris, and Sherry Schneider for their intellectual
contributions to the development of some of the ideas presented in this
chapter.
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RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL BASES
OF COMMITMENT TO GROUP
HIERARCHIES
Ann Branaman
ABSTRACT
31
32 ANN BRANAMAN
I. INTRODUCTION
34 ANN BRANAMAN
because actual social groups vary in the extent to which their organization is
governed more or less by the respective logics at the root of each of these two
perspectives.
Generally, expectation states theories have limited their analyses to groups
that are task-oriented and are working toward the achievement of collective
goals . While individuals may compete for personal status within such groups,
they do so by striving to demonstrate task competence . Because of the group's
orientation towards collective success, it is in the interests of group members
to favor the contributions of the member(s) they believe to be most competent .
Expectation states theorists acknowledge that there are some social groups in
which members' desires for personal recognition outweigh their commitment
to collective goals . Such groups, however, do not meet their scope conditions
and hence are typically excluded from analysis .
In actual social life, however, many groups are task-oriented and aimed
towards collective goals in principle, while nonetheless group members'
behaviors may be motivated by many other things in addition to or instead of
group success . Unlike Goffman and more like the expectation states tradition,
my concern in this paper is with groups that are task-oriented and aimed
towards collective goals in principle . I am particularly interested, however, in
understanding the differences between groups that act according to those
principles and those that are illicitly driven more by norms, identities, and
emotions .
Undoubtedly, status processes in most actual social groups are affected by
cognitive beliefs about competence and by norms, identities, and affective
processes . Often, these will be difficult to disentangle for a couple of reasons .
First, social psychological research has demonstrated that cognitive beliefs are
often shaped by emotions (Isen, 1987 ; Bower, 1991) . And, second, in task-
oriented and collectively-oriented groups where task competence is, in
principle, the most legitimate basis of status, statements of beliefs about
competence may be used as a "smokescreen" to mask more unacceptable
motivations . Despite difficulties in disentangling cognition and emotion,
however, I believe that task-oriented groups do significantly vary in the degree
to which status structures are organized according to beliefs about competence
or norms, identities, and emotions . The degree to which a status hierarchy is
organized according to one or the other set of principles will likely be most
apparent in situations where an established hierarchy is upset by the
demonstration of competence of a low-status actor . For this reason, I focus my
comparison of expectation states theory and Goffman on just such a situation .
I distinguish between "rational" and "irrational" bases of commitment to
established hierarchies . I consider commitment to an established hierarchy to
36 ANN BRANAMAN
be "rational" if the high-status members of the group are also believed to be the
most competent . One of the most significant contributions of the expectation
states theoretical research program is to demonstrate the variety of ways in
which determinations of the relative competence of group members are biased
and hence far less than fully rational . Yet, as long as most group members
believe that performance opportunities, high evaluations, and influence are
allocated according to competence, I consider such a hierarchy to be "rational"
(though the degree of bias in such beliefs may be widely varied .)
Conversely, I say that commitment to an established hierarchy is "irrational"
if beliefs about the relative competence of group members have little bearing
on members' standing within the group, but instead the maintenance of the
hierarchy is driven by norms, identities, and emotions . I argue that rational
justifications may often be used to camouflage more irrational motivations for
resisting an upset of the status quo, particularly in task-oriented groups where
hierarchy is most legitimately defensible when it corresponds to inequalities of
competence and merit. For this reason, the line between rational and irrational
motivations underlying efforts to maintain an established hierarchy will
sometimes be ambiguous and may itself be a point of bitter contention when
established hierarchies are challenged .
In a recent article on the legitimation and delegitimation of power and
prestige orders, Berger et al . (1998) point out that the emergence of
inconsistent performance expectations will put a strain on the legitimacy of an
established power and prestige order and will favor the possibility of its
delegitimation . Yet, they also point out that performance expectations are not
the crucial determinants of whether or not a power and prestige order achieves
legitimacy in the first place . Instead, the diffuse status characteristics of task
leaders are more important determinants . And while inconsistent performance
expectations may strain the legitimacy of a power and prestige order, they may
or may not succeed in actually delegitimating it. Berger et al . (1998) conclude
their article by pointing out that further analyses needs to be done to understand
"how the delegitimation process is affected by the mechanisms groups
sometimes use to cope with situations in which performance expectations
become incongruent with the legitimated structure and threaten to undermine
it" (Berger et al., 1998 : 398) .
According to the basic logic of the expectation states perspective,
legitimated power and prestige orders should become delegitimated when
performance expectations become incongruent with them . When and if they do
not, however, this suggests that norms, identities, and/or affective processes
may have come to override beliefs about competence in determining the
allocation of status in group interaction . In conjunction with recent work on
affect and status processes, I believe that Goffman provides a useful analysis of
affectively-driven interaction processes that impede the delegitimation of
legitimated status hierarchies .
The differences I highlight between Goffman and expectation states theory
are by no means absolute . Expectation states and other more systematic
sociological research programs have studied the effects of norms, identities,
and affect on status processes . Beliefs about reality, furthermore, certainly play
an important part in Goffman's analysis . I think it is important, however, to
maintain an analytical distinction between cognitive and normative/affective
determinants of status allocation and hierarchy maintenance . Drawing an
analytic distinction between the basic logics of SCES theories and Goffman is,
I believe, a useful way to conceptualize this distinction - even if neither falls
exclusively on one or the other side of the analytic divide .
I do not hold one logic to be inherently superior to the other in its ability to
account for the emergence and maintenance of status hierarchies . I believe that
both logics operate in most actual task-oriented groups . Furthermore, it seems
to me that the dynamics of some groups are best characterized by the "rational"
logic of the expectation states perspective, while others are best characterized
by a Goffmanian "irrational" logic .
Both perspectives account for common experiences of "subtle discrimina-
tion" experienced by persons with devalued diffuse status characteristics in
heterogenous social groups . Both provide analyses of the difficult barriers that
low-status persons face if they attempt to challenge established status
hierarchies . Yet, the types of discrimination implied by the basic logics of each
these two perspectives are qualitatively different . Expectation states theories
imply a cognitively-rooted form of discrimination based on generalized beliefs
that persons with certain status characteristics are generally more competent
than others . Goffman's perspective, on the other hand, implies a more "old-
fashioned" form of discrimination rooted in normative and affective attachment
to established hierarchies and identities . Expectations states theories hold that
hierarchies in task- group interaction express or reflect expected inequalities of
competence among group members, while Goffman's analyses suggests that
interaction processes in hierarchical group situations may be more about
affirming or defending established hierarchies that might otherwise rest on
quite tenuous ground .
To address the first type of discrimination requires interventions aimed at
changing the beliefs that people hold about the competence of particular
individuals and categories of individuals . Due to the self-fulfilling interaction
processes set in motion by the initially biased belief, addressing biased beliefs
is difficult enough . It should be pointed out, however, that research within the
38 ANN BRANAMAN
expectation states tradition has suggested strategies for addressing biases that
have been shown to be successful in some situations (Webster & Driskell,
1985 ; Pugh & Wahrman, 1985 ; Cohen & Roper, 1985 ; Meeker & Weitzel
O'Neill, 1985) .
Addressing the more "old-fashioned" form of discrimination, however, is
likely an even thornier problem . In the face of normative and emotional
attachment to established hierarchies, attempts to alter the cognitive beliefs that
members hold about the relative competence of group members may only
increase resistance and intensify efforts to maintain the status quo. Presentation
of contradictory information that should challenge the legitimacy of an
established hierarchy, where there is intense normative and emotional
attachment to it, may only intensify this attachment and generate defensive
efforts to maintain the established hierarchy . This is why it is important to
understand if a hierarchy is fueled primarily by cognitive or by normative and
affective processes .
40 ANN BRANAMAN
influence others not only denies the opportunity to demonstrate the potential
efficacy of their suggestions, but the lack of influence itself serves as a marker
of incompetence . Often, the potential value of a contribution may be
ambiguous, and the basis upon which other group members judge the value of
the contribution is by noting the reception it receives from other group
members and the influence it has on them . So even those whose expectations
might otherwise have been unaffected by the diffuse status characteristics of
the low-status group member may form low expectations on the basis of this
person's lack of influence in the group . The effect of influence on perceived
competence has been established by research in the expectation states tradition
(Berger & Conner, 1974 : Berger, Conner & McKeown, 1974) .
By themselves, the self-fulfilling tendencies of power and prestige orders
create a formidable set of barriers for even the most competent low-status
group member to overcome . The well-worn saying - "A woman has to be twice
as good as a man" - expresses the nature of the problem. Yet, an addendum to
this saying that I recently heard adds : "Fortunately, this is not hard ." Obviously,
there are cases in which persons who bring culturally devalued diffuse status
characteristics to group interaction are "twice as good" at the task as other
persons who bring more culturally valued diffuse status characteristics to group
interaction . What then?
One of the basic postulates of expectation states theory is that all salient
status characteristics are combined to form expectations of the competence of
each group member (Berger et al ., 1977 ; Fisek, Berger & Norman, 1991) .
Research demonstrates that it is not the case that diffuse status characteristics
such as race or gender outweigh other relevant status characteristics to an
extent that there is nothing a woman or a minority can do to be perceived to be
competent . Quite to the contrary, evidence clearly demonstrates that actors are
not perceived solely on the basis of their diffuse status characteristics . Both
diffuse status characteristics and specific status characteristics (characteristics
more directly relevant to the particular task at hand) are combined to assign
competence expectations to actors (Webster & Driskell, 1985 : 132-133) . When
group members know their relative task abilities and do not need to rely on
diffuse status characteristics to generate performance expectations, research
suggests that specific, instrumental status characteristics have a stronger effect
on performance expectations than do diffuse status characteristics (Zelditch,
1985 : 104) . Some research on paths of status expectancies suggests that the
more task-connected status characteristics exert a greater influence on a
person's group standing than do less directly relevant diffuse status character-
istics (Berger, Wagner & Zelditch, 1985 : 17 ; Zelditch, Lauderdale & Stublarec,
1980) . Other research, however, only partially supports the notion that specific
42 ANN BRANAMAN
44 ANN BRANAMAN
46 ANN BRANAMAN
48 ANN BRANAMAN
50 ANN BRANAMAN
eyes of the rest of the group, however, this move is not only ineffective but is
experienced as offensive . The high-status actor and some or all of the other
group members react with hostility to this eye-rolling sigher and seek to put her
back in her place (only this time a little lower) .
This is what Goffman means when he refers to the looping effect : "an agency
that creates a defensive response . . . takes this very response at the target of its
next attack" (1961 : 35-36) . The higher-status party is able to impose this
looping effect, thus denying the lesser person's expression of a separate self . A
defensive response on the part of a higher-status person, on the other hand,
establishes not only the superiority of the self relative to the contaminating
treatment but also de-faces the offender . The looping effect is a particular
hazard the low-status actor faces if she challenge an established power and
prestige hierarchy. Goffman's analysis of the looping effect is consistent with
Ridgeway and Johnson's (1990) finding that negative emotional reactions on
the part of low-status actors tend to be suppressed, while high-status actors are
freer to express negative emotion in response to disagreement .
A related point is that low-status persons may easily be caught in what
Goffman calls a "frame trap ." People with low social status and little social
power have little power to frame events or to combat interpretive frameworks
applied to them. A person judged to be incompetent, for example, carries no
weight in combating the judgment. The protests can be discounted, taken as
further evidence of incompetence (1974 : 445) . The tendency to deny the power
to contribute to the framing of reality makes it possible for the individual to be
contained in what Goffman calls a "frame trap" - an arrangement of the world
in such a way that every bit of evidence and every attempt by the framed
individual to correct the misinterpretation is taken to confirm the original
interpretation (1974 : 480) . In general, people with higher social status are
accorded more authority to frame events, themselves, and others ; people with
lower social status are vulnerable to being contained in a frame trap .
52 ANN BRANAMAN
actors frequently get caught in status traps . Upon observation, the dynamics
described by each appear very similar . This is especially the case if analysis is
restricted to behavior and does not consider the meanings actors attach to their
behavior. Arguably, the status characteristics and expectation states program
systematizes the insights in Goffman's work that pertain to hierarchy in group
interaction .
Yet, their explanations of the conservative tendencies of social interaction
are different. According to the core logic of expectation states theory, the
conservative tendencies of social interaction are based primarily in cognition .
For Goffman, hierarchies are rooted more in norms and emotion . For
expectation states theory, the tendency for a low-status actor to become
"trapped" in a low-status position is a byproduct of the necessity for human
beings to use social categories to process information . That diffuse status
characteristics such as race and gender are unjustly employed as predictors of
competence and that group hierarchies that mirror societal inequalities are
more likely to receive legitimacy speaks to the continuing significance of race
and gender bias in our culture . Nonetheless, according to the core logic of the
theory, the status trap is based in beliefs about competence and commitments
to meritocracy (insofar as performance expectations mediate the relationship
between diffuse status characteristics and power and prestige within the
group).
In Goffman's analysis, however, social behavior appears to have less to do
with cognition and merit than it does with "looking good", or, at the very least,
not looking bad . Actors are much less concerned with assessing the relative
competence of actors than they are with sizing up the norms (especially the
normative hierarchy) of the social situation . Driven by their own desire for
positive regard in social situations, even if this is the more limited regard
accorded to the "well-adjusted" low-status actor, they are less motivated to
respond to participants on the basis of merit than they are to pay homage to
existing hierarchies . In Goffman's analysis, people make ceremonial affirma-
tion of the existing order and engage in a variety of defensive practices to
maintain it that cannot be accounted for by performance expectations alone .
Whereas the basic logic of expectation states theory suggests that even
legitimated hierarchies should become delegitimated when contradictory
evidence about the relative competence of actors emerges, Goffman's analysis
provides a better account of situations in which this does not occur .
Expectation states theory suggests that the hierarchies of social life, at least
the task-oriented ones, are best characterized as flawed meritocracies . They
may even be deeply flawed and hence not very meritocratic at all . The bias
introduced by non-relevant diffuse status characteristics to predict competence
54 ANN BRANAMAN
56 ANN BRANAMAN
Lovaglia and Hauser propose that high status persons are more likely to feel
integrating emotions and thus act in ways to promote the group involvement of
low-status actors . Conversely, as a result of the lesser respect and influence they
receive, they argue that low-status persons are more likely to feel differentiating
emotions and will resist the influence of high-status actors . Thus, they argue
that integrating emotions are compatible with high status, while differentiating
emotions are compatible with low status . They propose that compatible
emotions experienced by both high and low-status actors tends to decrease
status differences in task groups, while incompatible emotions tends to increase
them (Lovaglia & Hauser, 1996 : 869) . However, when the integrating emotions
of the high-status actor leads her to give low-status group members more
influence, she may consequently feel that her status has declined relative to
them and may in turn experience negative emotion . On the basis of her negative
emotion, she may then act in ways to reduce the influence of low-status
members and hence solidify the status difference between them . This in turn
create negative emotions on the part of low-status actors, generating a self-
perpetuating cycle . Lovaglia and Hauser argue that this reciprocal process
recurs in such a way as to produce a self-stabilizing status structure (Lovaglia
& Hauser, 1996 : 870) .
Though they view emotional reactions as largely derivative of social status,
Lovaglia and Hauser's analysis illustrates an important point that I have
attempted to highlight in my analysis of Goffman - i .e. that status insecurity,
not demonstrable superiority in competence, on the part of high-status actors
tends to generate defensive efforts to affirm an established hierarchy . Though
Goffman is similar to researchers in the expectation states program in viewing
status differences between actors as determining the patterns of their
interaction, the crucial difference between the two perspectives is the
insignificance that performance expectations play in Goffman's analysis .
Goffman's world is one in which there are few stable realities and few
opportunities to demonstrate who one "really" is . Hence, the construction of a
particular reality depends on self-presentation and a great deal of interactional
work. In at least some task-oriented groups, on the other hand, presumably
there are some more-or-less concrete ways to demonstrate one's competence
and to justify one's status within the group . In such situations, I would argue,
heavy use of mechanisms such as those described in Goffman's analysis
suggests an insecurity of status and a need to defend and affirm a reality that
is not self-evident .
Thus, I believe a crucial distinction suggested by the comparison of
expectation states theory and Goffman is the distinction between group
hierarchies that express and reflect actual or expected inequalities, and those
that seek to affirm and defend otherwise tenuous ones .
IV. CONCLUSION
Though commitment to group hierarchies will typically be maintained by some
combination of cognition, norms, and emotion, the question of the relative
strength of these motives may have important implications on a practical level .
Do hierarchical patterns in social interaction primarily express actual or
expected inequalities of competence, or are they motivated more by the desire
(conscious or not) to protect the established social order and identities of
actors? Are individuals essentially reasonable beings who are rationally, albeit
imperfectly so, oriented to achievement of instrumental goals (at least in the
context of task-oriented and collective group settings)? Or are they more
suitably characterized as affective beings driven by pride, fear, envy, or any
number of other emotions and who often care more about maintaining their
desired identity and status than they do about accomplishing any instrumental
goal? To the extent that the latter is true, does the play of such emotions thwart
the emergence of competence, impede the achievement of instrumental goals,
and/or produce any other form of dysfunction in the group? These are the basic
questions by which my comparison of expectation states theory and Goffman
has been motivated .
This comparison of expectation states theory and Goffman suggests some
propositions to be explored in further research .
1 . When a person lacks competence at a task or is not clearly superior to
other group members in task competence, status insecurity is more likely to be
experienced by group members with culturally valued diffuse status character-
istics than it is to be experienced by group members with devalued diffuse
status characteristics . This derives from the greater pressure experienced by the
high-status actor to "maintain face" consistent with what may be attributed to
him on the basis of his diffuse status characteristics . This applies particularly
to group situations in which the high-status member significantly identifies
with his or her position within the group .
2 . As a result of status insecurity, a group member who possesses culturally
valued diffuse status characteristics is likely, independently of the person's
relative competence, to express negative emotion to group members with
devalued diffuse status characteristics when the latter demonstrate task
competence or otherwise assume influential positions in group interaction .
Again, this applies to situations in which the individual's position within the
group is a significant part of his or her identity.
58 ANN BRANAMAN
3 . Even when other group members believe that a group member with
culturally devalued diffuse status characteristics is more competent than group
members with more highly valued diffuse status characteristics, they may
nonetheless feel normative pressure to accord more deference towards the
group member with more highly valued diffuse status characteristics . They will
be particularly likely to feel such pressure when the person with valued diffuse
status characteristics adopts a "line" in social interaction consistent with his
diffuse status characteristics .
4 . Despite the official norms in task groups that prescribe that power and
prestige positions should be allocated according to the respective task
competencies of group members, face claims made by group members with
culturally valued diffuse status characteristics (if they are made) will outweigh
competence-based claims by members with devalued diffuse status character-
istics in generating behavioral support from other group members .
5 . Contradictions between evident hierarchies of competence within a group
and hierarchies of diffuse status characteristics provoke emotionally-driven
defenses of hierarchy on the part of group members with highly valued diffuse
status characteristics, particularly when the diffuse status characteristic and
competence at the task are central to the person's identity .
6. Such emotionally-driven defenses of hierarchy will undermine group
solidarity, will divert attention from the task, and will thereby undermine the
group's ability to successfully accomplish group tasks . Goffman (1959, 1967)
argues that social interaction breaks down when individuals in social
interaction are unable to affirm the images of self and the interactional lines
taken by others . When faces have been damaged and reparations are not made,
he points out, the cost is the social relationship itself . In task groups,
accordingly, the cost includes the task as well . The task and the solidarity of the
group may be "saved" by the person with devalued diffuse status characteristics
hiding competence and not requiring the group to confront the contradiction
between hierarchies of competence and hierarchies of diffuse status character-
istics . And, indeed, in groups where less competent but higher status others can
perform the task at a minimal level of adequacy, this may seem to be the
optimal solution to all involved . But in situations where the low-status person
is more than "twice as good" or where the high-status person is egregiously
incompetent but will not willingly cede his power and prestige position, the
contradiction may pose an insoluble problem for the group .
7 . Because of norms against "irrational" bases of commitment to established
orders, irrational bases of commitment will rarely be self-evident . Though
subjective judgement will inevitably be required in determining the degree of
60 ANN BRANAMAN
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EGOCENTRIC EMPATHY GAPS IN
SOCIAL INTERACTION AND
EXCHANGE
ABSTRACT
65
66 DAVID DUNNING, LEAF VAN BOVEN AND GEORGE F . LOEWENSTEIN
INTRODUCTION
Unfortunately, people rarely, if ever, possess all the information they need to
take another person's perspective, and the information they do have may be in
error. Furthermore, even when they do have the information required to take
another person's perspective accurately, they are unlikely to possess the time,
energy, or resources to use that information to arrive at an optimal judgment .
Such limitations of time, energy, or processing power constitute sources of
"bounded rationality" (March & Simon, 1958) which inevitably lead to errors
in perspective taking . Some of these errors are undoubtedly non-systematic .
For example, constraints on information or information processing, while
substantial, are likely to cause random errors in the inferences people make
about those they exchange with .
The focus of this chapter is on how difficulties in perspective-taking can
cause systematic biases in anticipating the preferences of others . In particular,
people suffer from egocentric empathy gaps : they perceive that the preferences
and reactions of other people are more similar to their own than those
preferences and reactions actually are . We trace this difficulty to the problems
people have in anticipating how they themselves would react if placed in the
other person's shoes . We also show that this difficulty leads people to make
suboptimal decisions in their dealings with others .
We argue that these difficulties in perspective taking, and the egocentric
empathy gaps they engender arise in two differing circumstances . The first
circumstance is when people possess private information - information not
shared by other persons . In these situations, people often act as though others
possess that same information (or can anticipate it) even though they
understand explicitly that the information is theirs alone . We will touch on how
this informational empathy gap can influence and disrupt social exchange . The
second circumstance arises when people are in a different emotional or drive
state, or have different preferences, than those around them . People often act as
if others feel more like they do at the moment, or share their preferences more,
than is actually the case .
We explore the specific implications of these difficulties, in particular, for the
dynamics of buying and selling . The roles of owner and buyer evoke different
psychologies, in that the informational sets, tastes, and emotional attachments
to objects differ in significant ways between owners and buyers . Successful
transactions between buyers and owners would be facilitated by understanding
these differences, but owners and buyers often fail to anticipate how much the
tastes and preferences of people in the other role differ from their own .' In this
chapter, we describe experiments that reveal egocentric empathy gaps between
owners and buyers, and discuss the consequences of these gaps for people
engaged in social exchange. We also discuss how difficult it is for people to
68 DAVID DUNNING, LEAF VAN BOVEN AND GEORGE F. LOEWENSTEIN
learn the psychology producing these gaps, and outline some implications of
that lack of learning for emotions that influence exchange relationships, as well
as for perceptions of fairness in those relationships . We address how general
these empathy gaps are, and note that people suffer these egocentric gaps
because they often cannot anticipate how they themselves would respond if
placed in the situation or role of the other person . We end by touching on the
implications of this inability for social understanding, social policy, and
pluralistic ignorance .
Both sociologists and psychologists have asserted that the ability to see the
other person's point of view is a crucial one to succeed in social interaction . For
example, George Herbert Mead (1934) asserted that :
It is generally recognized that the specifically social expressions of intelligence, or the
exercise of what is often called "social intelligence," depend upon the given individual's
ability to take the roles of, or "put himself in the place of," the other individuals implicated
with him in given social situations ; and upon his consequent sensitivity to their attitudes
toward himself and toward one another. . . . [T]his putting of one's self in the places of
others, this taking by one's self of their roles or attitudes, is not merely one of the various
aspects or expressions of intelligence or of intelligent behavior, but is the very essence of
its character (p . 141) .
Work in psychology echoes this point . The ability to empathize with others has
been linked to many benefits, such as self-reports of social competence (Davis,
1983), reduced use of stereotypes (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), reduced
aggression (Richardson, Hammock, Smith, Gardener & Signo, 1994),
increased satisfaction with (and longevity of) romantic relationships (Arriaga
& Rusbult, 1998 ; Franzoi, Davis & Young, 1985 ; Long & Andrews, 1991 ;
Simpson, Ickes & Blackstone, 1995), cooperativeness in children (Johnson,
1975), and increased prosocial or altruistic behavior (Batson, 1991), to name a
few. Other benefits have been observed in settings involving exchange
relationships . Salespeople who can accurately discern the thoughts and feelings
of customers tend to make more sales (Comer & Drollinger, 1999) . Negotiators
who characteristically try to see things from the other person's point of view
are more likely to succeed, resolving more issues and reaching more optimal
agreements (Neale & Bazerman, 1983) . All this research suggests that Dale
Carnegie, the pioneering "self-help" guru, was right in his dictum that a
"formula that will work wonders for you is [to try] honestly to see things from
the other person's point of view" (Carnegie, 1936, p . 175) .
attachments they assign to the object between them . And, as described below,
it is surprisingly difficult for them to understand and anticipate the thoughts and
feelings of the person in the other role .
Once "in the know," it is difficult to recreate the world in which one did not
know. That is, once people are in the possession of a piece of information, such
as the outcome of an event or the correct answer to a question, they suffer
intrapersonal empathy gaps . They fail to anticipate how they would have
reacted if they did not have the information .
The clearest example of the bias comes from work on hindsight bias, also
known as the knew-it-all-along effect. The hindsight bias refers to people's
tendency to overestimate how much they could have anticipated that something
was true after being informed of its truthfulness (Fischhoff, 1975, 1977) . The
hindsight bias has been observed for answers to trivia questions : After being
told the correct answer, people overestimate the likelihood that they would have
gotten the question correct if asked . The bias has also been documented for
predictions of future events : Once those events take place, people overestimate
how likely they would have predicted that those events would occur (for
reviews, see Christian-Szalanski & Fobin Millham, 1991 ; Hawkins & Hastie,
1990) . Importantly, this bias arises even when people are informed of its
existence and admonished not to fail prey to it (Fischhoff, 1977 ; Kamin &
Rachlinski, 1995) . It even produces errors in memory. In experiments in which
people make predictions of future events, and then are recontacted after some
of those events occur, people consistently misremember how well they had
anticipated the events that had since transpired (e .g. Wood, 1978) .
Why does this hindsight bias occur? It arises because receiving information
about an event causes people to revise their representation of the information
they have about that event in three crucial ways . First, once people know the
outcome of an event, they more closely associate that outcome with the event
(e .g . Hertwig, Gigerenzer & Hoffrage, 1997) . Thus, when they think of the
event, the outcome just comes to mind more automatically . For example, if told
that Hawaii was admitted to statehood soon after Alaska, people will likely
remember that fact reflexively if asked which was the 50th state admitted to the
Union . Second, knowing the outcome prompts people to re-evaluate the
importance of various pieces of information surrounding the event . For
example, if told that the British easily won their 19th century war against the
Gurkas of Nepal, participants revise the importance they place on the fact that
the British had superior arms (Fischhoff, 1975) . Third, knowing the outcome
causes people to spin causal scenarios that would produce it (e .g . the
tremendous discipline of the British army meant they could persevere in a
difficult war), and these causal scenarios are inevitably brought to mind when
people reconsider the event . Thus, these changes in the cognitive representation
of an event, once formed, are automatically brought to mind and bias how
much the person thinks he or she could have anticipated the supposed outcome
(Fischhoff, 1975) .
Hindsight bias has implications for judgments and evaluations of others, for
it can lead good decisions to seem obvious and bad decisions to seem
foreseeable . Baron and Hershey (1988), for example, demonstrated such an
effect in a study in which participants evaluated decisions made by doctors .
Participants were given the information that the doctors had at their disposal,
and some participants were told whether the doctor's actions had led to success
or failure . The outcome information had a significant impact on appraisals of
the doctor. Doctors whose decisions led to failure were judged more harshly
than those whose decisions led to success, even though participants in both
conditions read about the same decision and were briefed on what exact
information the doctor had at his or her disposal .
The same cognitive processes that produce hindsight bias also contaminate
people's impressions of the information currently possessed by others . That is,
people suffer from a curse of knowledge (Camerer, Loewenstein & Weber,
1989; Nickerson, Baddeley & Freeman, 1987), behaving as if others possess
privileged information that only they themselves possess, even though they are
made explicitly aware that other people are uninformed . Camerer, Loewenstein
72 DAVID DUNNING, LEAF VAN BOVEN AND GEORGE F . LOEWENSTEIN
anger and frustration is obvious, the spiral toward more anger - and possible
breakdown of the negotiation - might be made inevitable .
responded on average that they would pay $3 .78 . Another group of people had
the same insecticide described, but asked how much lower the price would have
to be to accept two health risks that inflicted injuries in 2 out of every 10,000
users . People were not very enthusiastic about losing their protection against
these risks . Indeed, 77% refused to buy any product with the increased risk, no
matter how much the price was reduced .
The act of giving people an object causes them to not only be reluctant to
part with the object, but also to assign more positive characteristics to it than
they would if they did not possess it . Beggan (1992) conducted a study in
which he gave half of his participants a "cold cup insulator" to take home with
them . These participants rated the object more favorably than did groups not
given the insulators, . Indeed, they rated the insulators more favorably than a
group allowed to handle the insulators and to think about them, but just did not
get to keep them. Similarly, Samuelson and Schauser (1988) asked participants
to rate a number of potential social policies for their value and worthiness .
They discovered that respondents rated a policy more favorably when told that
it was the one already in place, an effect they termed the status quo bias .
Why would ownership cause people to value an object more - indeed, often
causing them to double the price they would assign to the object, if not more?
According to accepted theory, the endowment effect arises from how the
human "pleasure machine" is set up to deal with prospects of losses versus
prospects of benefits . According to prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky,
1979), losses loom larger in human decision making than gains . For example,
if one walked up to other people and asked them whether they would agree to
a friendly wager to flip a single coin, with a 50% chance of winning $20 and
a 50% chance of losing the same amount, one would not find many people
willing to agree to the wager . Indeed, only a third of individuals given an
opportunity to wager on a 50% chance of winning $200 versus a 50% chance
of losing $100 choose to take up the bet, even though taking the bet has an
expected value of $50 (Tversky & Shafir, 1992) . This reluctance to gamble
arises because the disutility or displeasure caused by a loss of size X is of
greater magnitude than the utility and pleasure associated with an equivalent
gain of size X. One can readily see how the relative impact of gains and losses
would produce the endowment effect . When a potential buyer examines the
prospect of obtaining a mug, the utility associated with that gain is not as great
as the potential disutility experienced by an owner contemplating giving up the
same mug .
Other studies have ruled out alternative explanations for the endowment
effect . The phenomenon does not appear to arise out of a general reluctance to
trade, in that participants are quite willing to buy and sell tokens that can be
redeemed for a specified amount of money, and show no difference in the value
they place on those tokens . Also, the phenomenon does not appear to arise from
strategic pricing . Even when told that they can have multiple chances to buy or
sell mugs, buyers and owners fail to change their prices in strategic ways, first
asking for advantageous prices and then moderating their demands once those
prices are unsuccessful (Kahneman et al ., 1990) . The endowment phenomenon
also arises in situations in which strategic considerations are precluded . In one
such study, students were given a choice between two different rewards for
participating in an experiment . One group was given a choice between
receiving a coffee mug and a bar of Swiss chocolate, and 56% chose the mug .
In another group, students were initially given a coffee mug and then asked if
they would like to exchange their mug for the exact same chocolate bar . A full
89% opted to keep the mug . In a third group, students were initially given a
chocolate bar, and then asked if they would like to trade for a mug . In this
condition, only 10% exchanged the candy for the mug (Knetsch, 1989) .
In sum, several studies have revealed that people value an item more once
they are endowed with it. The implications of this phenomenon for exchange
relations are clear : To obtain a good, buyers must often offer a price that they
initially think is too high . To sell an item, owners must realize that potential
buyers may not imbue the item with the same value that they assign to it, and
so must lower their demands beyond what they might think is reasonable . To
the extent that neither side understands that they must make the adjustment,
exchanges will not occur . Indeed, it has been noted by behavioral economists
that the endowment effect explains why rates of trading between buyers and
sellers are often surprisingly low (Kahneman et al ., 1990) . Buyers and owners
diverge in the value they place on objects, and often those differences preclude
satisfactory trades.
the pain of the higher price . However, do people understand this principle about
the psychology of ownership? Do they understand how ownership (or the lack
thereof) changes the value assigned to goods and commodities? In a series of
laboratory experiments, we examined whether people possess an adequate
understanding of the impact of this endowment effect on the tastes and actions
of their peers .
At first blush, it would appear obvious that people should have some intuition
that owners value objects more than non-owners . After all, people often
experience the task of buying and selling objects, and occasionally have a
chance to negotiate with people in the other role . People should therefore be
intimately familiar with the psychology of ownership . However, there is
growing evidence that people may not be perfectly "in tune" with the impact
that ownership has on their own valuation of goods and commodities .
Consistent with our thinking about the genesis of egocentric empathy gaps,
people fail to realize how much their own tastes and preferences will change
once they are placed in the role of ownership . This failure was demonstrated
by two experiments performed by Loewenstein and Adler (1995). They showed
students from Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh
some mugs with the appropriate college logo . Students were told that they
would be given one of the mugs and would be given the opportunity to sell it
back to the experimenter . Their task was to estimate the price at which they
would sell the mug . Students were presented with a list of prices that began
with $ .25 and continued in 25-cent increments to $10 . At each price, students
were asked whether they thought that they would sell or keep the mug . On
average, students predicted that they would sell the mug from around $3 .27 to
$3 .73, depending on the specific class they were in . However, when actually
given a mug and given a real chance to sell it back to the experimenters,
students cited significantly higher prices for their mugs, from around $4 .56 to
$5 .40.
In a second experiment, Loewenstein and Adler (1995) discovered similar
mispredictions by non-owners in a situation in which they had incentives to be
accurate. Namely, students were told that they might receive a mug, and that
they should report the lowest price at which they would sell that mug for in case
they did get one . The authors presumed that people with an uncertain prospect
of receiving a mug would not yet feel endowed with it, and thus would
underestimate how much they would value the mug once they owned it . This
The studies conducted by Loewenstein and Adler (1995) showed that people
experience intrapersonal empathy gaps when they predict how they would
respond in a different role, with people mispredicting how much owning a mug
would influence their preferences . But would these intrapersonal gaps produce
interpersonal ones? When predicting the tastes and preferences of another
person, would people again underestimate the impact of the endowment
effect?
In a series of studies, we examined the extent to which people could
accurately predict the behavior of owners and non-owners when they were in
the other role . In one such study (Van Boven, Dunning & Loewenstein, 2000,
Study 1), in a classroom setting, we gave roughly half the students a Cornell
University travel mug, worth about six dollars at the local bookstore . We then
offered everyone in the room a deal . Owners were asked whether they would
sell the mug at a number of prices that began at $0 .50 and rose in 50-cent
increments to $10 . They were told that the experimenter would name a
randomly selected price at the end of the session, and that if the student had
said that he or she would sell the mug at that price, then he or she must do so .
Students not owning mugs were given a questionnaire listing the same series of
prices, and were asked at each price whether they would buy a mug at that
price . As with the owners, the experimenter told non-owners that he would
name a randomly selected price at the end of the experimental session, and that
if the student had mentioned that he or she would buy a mug at that price, than
he or she would have to do so . The experimenter explained that he took checks
and IOUs . Not surprisingly, the choices of students revealed a strong
endowment effect - the lowest selling price cited by mug owners on average
($5 .40) was over three times higher than the highest buying price reported by
non-owners ($1 .56) .
Of key importance, however, was an additional set of questions in which
students were asked to estimate the preferences and wishes of people
occupying the other role . Non-owners were asked to forecast the lowest price
at which the average owner would sell the mug . Owners were asked to predict
the highest price the average non-owner was willing to pay to buy a mug .
Owners and non-owners answered these questions by filling out the exact
questionnaire that had been completed by students in the other role .
78 DAVID DUNNING, LEAF VAN BOVEN AND GEORGE F . LOEWENSTEIN
Buyers' agents' made bids that were too low, thus revealing an inadequate
understanding of the power of the endowment effect. On average, the agents
bid $4 .92, but mug owners typically wanted at least $6 .83 for their mugs, so
only 25% of the agents succeeded making a bid high enough to be successful
and earn some money. A supplementary analysis revealed that buyer's agents
had made bids that were not "rational," in the sense that they had produced
outcomes that were suboptimal . An ancillary analysis of owners' selling prices
indicated that a bid of $6 .50 would have been optimal for buyers' agents . If all
agents bid $6 .50, then, given the distribution of owners' selling prices, 62% of
bids would have been accepted each with a profit of $3 .50, and thus the average
profit - that is, the expected value - would have been $2 .15 . Higher bids would
have been more frequently accepted, but at a lower profit ; lower bids would
have been more often rejected, even if an accepted bid would have produced
greater profit . Buyers' agents' low bids produced an average profit across all
transactions (successful and unsuccessful) of only $ .75, or only 35% of what
they could have earned if they had bid optimally .
In short, in a one-shot exchange situation, buyer's agents showed an
imperfect understanding of the endowment effect, thinking that owners would
value commodities in much the same way as they did themselves . This flaw in
perspective taking produced tangible costs, prompting them to bid too low for
the owner's possessions and thus miss out on chances to earn money . However,
although our studies (so far) only focused on the behavior of buyer's agents in
one-shot exchanges, we have reason to believe that the misunderstandings
about the psychology of ownership occur more generally . We will describe in
the next section how misunderstandings of the endowment effect can lead to
difficulties in situations involving multiple chances to exchange .
We can also speculate that people other than buyers and their agents - other
non-owners, that is - will similarly misperceive the psychology of the owner .
Although we have no formal data, we have no reason to believe, for example,
that agents acting on the behalf of owners will understand their client's
valuation any better than anyone else . Because seller's agents would not own
the object themselves, they, too, will underestimate the impact of endowment
of an owner's preferences . Indeed, in one best-selling book on buying a home,
co-written by a real estate agent who has represented many sellers over the
years, comes the following statement :
We think the average buyer is brighter than the average seller . How else can you explain
why buyers are generally so much more realistic about property prices? It's not as though
there are two different real estate markets : an expensive one for sellers and a cheap one for
buyers. Sellers have access to exactly the same comps [comparison prices] buyers do . Yet
buyers' initial offering prices tend to be far more realistic than sellers' initial asking
80 DAVID DUNNING, LEAF VAN BOVEN AND GEORGE F . LOEWENSTEIN
prices . . . . [Thus, the] better you understand the warped thought processes of these sellers,
the better you can handle their unreasonable objections to your eminently fair offer (Tyson
& Brown, 1996, pp . 210-211).
more money than the mug was really worth," "The owner didn't want me to
make any money," and "The owner must be from the city [New York City]
where things are crazy expensive!"
More formal analyses revealed that both owners and buyer's agents tended
to lay blame for failure at the feet of the other person as opposed to the
endowment effect . In close-ended questions, owners and agents were given a
number of plausible explanations for why the bid had failed and asked to rate
how reasonable they thought the explanations were . Both owners and agents
rated personal greed on the part of the person in the other role as a more
plausible explanation than they did the endowment effect, even when the
endowment effect was explicitly described to them .
In short, participants revealed a tendency known to all social psychologists
on the psychological side of the ledger . They had underestimated the power of
the situation - or, in this case, the power of the role of being an owner - and
instead attributed the failure of the bid to the personality of the other person .
That tendency is referred to, in different quarters, as either the fundamental
attribution error (Nisbett & Ross, 1980) or correspondence bias (Jones, 1990) .
In general, this tendency refers to the underweighing of situational forces and
overweighing of personal characteristics in the explanation, prediction, and
judgment of the behavior of other people .
The presence of the correspondence bias may explain why it would be
difficult for people to learn about the presence and magnitude of the
endowment effect in social transactions . As people buy, sell, haggle, and argue
with others over the exchange of commodities, the tendency of people to
attribute transaction failures to something about the other individual will
prevent them from learning about the general dynamic of the endowment
effect, no matter how much experience they gain . For example, if John
repeatedly bargains with Marsha, he may learn that he will often have to offer
more than he would initially expect. However, although he may get the
behavior right, this will not necessarily mean that he will gain insight into why
offering more is the correct behavior to bring about successful exchanges . As
suggested in our studies on attribution, John may learn what to offer, but he
may come to attribute the need to offer more to Marsha's greed rather than to
the general psychology of endowment that operates on everybody .
Attributing failed transactions to other people may hinder individuals from
reaching an understanding of endowment even if they haggle with several
individuals over a wide variety of objects . This is because such experiences
tend to be piecemeal . Each person must attempt to consummate a transaction
with Person A over Object X, then negotiate with Person B about Object Y, and
so on . As they do, they may miss the general pattern that people want more for
82 DAVID DUNNING, LEAF VAN BOVEN AND GEORGE F . LOEWENSTEIN
their possessions because they readily attribute their failure with Person A to
his or her personality (greed), their failure with Person B to his or her
intelligence (misinformed about the true value of the object), and so on . That
is, once failures and surprises are attributed to the other person, the individual
is unlikely to seek out a general situational dynamic, such as the endowment
effect, that could explain the common pattern in others' behavior.
But perhaps we are too pessimistic . Perhaps, to gain insight into the dynamics
of endowment, the best experience would be to negotiate with a number of
different individuals . In that way, people may learn the general principle that
people value their possessions to an unexpected degree . We have explored this
possibility in a series of follow-up buyer's agent experiments . In these
experiments, we examined whether the lack of understanding about the
endowment effect survived repeated experiences with the preferences and
tastes of owners . We brought participants into the laboratory and gave mugs to
half of them. The other half of the participants were asked to play the role of
buyer's agent, but had a chance to make bids on the mugs of five different
owners . After each bid, they received feedback about whether their bids had
succeeded . Buyers' agents raised their bid on each successive trial . On the first
trial, they made a bid that, on average, was only 75% of what owners typically
asked for. By the fifth try, their bid was 88% of what owners asked for,
indicating that they had learned that they must change their behavior to make
a successful bid (Van Boven, Loewenstein & Dunning, 2000) .
However, that learning was rather narrow . After the fifth bid, the
experimenter distributed pens to the mug owners, and asked buyer's agents to
make bids on those pens .' Buyer's agents made initial bids that were only 75%
of what the owners typically asked for, and the increase in their bids on
subsequent trials was no steeper than it had been during the trials with the
mugs . In short, giving non-owners experience with owners in which they
gathered information about how much owners valued their mugs did not afford
any generalized understanding of the psychology of ownership . Buyers' agents
started on "square one" when the commodity in question was switched from
mugs to pens, and they showed no "savings" in their learning curve . Buyers'
agents seem to have learned that sellers, for some reason, valued the mug more
than they expected them to, but they did not attribute the unexpectedly high
prices to the endowment effect . The experience with mugs did not teach them
a lesson to be generalized to another (even slightly different) situation (Van
Boven, Loewenstein & Dunning, 2000) .
However, one can look at our experiments, particularly the buyer's agent
studies described above (Van Boven, Dunning et al ., 2000), and disagree with
our assessment that participants are acting irrationally . To be sure, participants
in our buyer's agent studies made suboptimal choices, bidding too low for the
coffee mugs owned by other students, but perhaps this was simply because they
84 DAVID DUNNING, LEAF VAN BOVEN AND GEORGE F . LOEWENSTEIN
would ask for. Echoing previous studies, they also made bids that were too
low .
However, in a second group, we were able to induce agents to gain insight
into their own potential behavior and to make more optimal bids . We did this
by asking them, like we did for the first group, to guess how much they would
demand if they were an owner - but only after giving them their own mug . Now
placed in the exact same situation as the owners, with their own mug to think
about and consider selling, agents made significantly more accurate predictions
about what their demands would be if asked to sell the mug . In addition, when
bidding for another person's mug, they made significantly higher bids .
Supplemental analyses revealed that these higher bids occurred because of
the insight these agents had gained about their own potential behavior as an
owner. Because they could more successfully project themselves into the
psychology of ownership, and could realize that they would make high
demands themselves, they were significantly more likely to make high bids for
the mug of another individual. That is, awareness that one would ask for a high
price one's self statistically mediated the relationship between having a mug
and bidding higher for another person's mug .
Taken together, our findings on egocentric empathy gaps between buyers and
owners have diverse implications for social psychological theorizing about
social exchange . More specifically, the findings heighten and extend recent
thought about emotion in social exchange, as well as the issue of fairness .
Emotion
Lawler & Yoon, 1996, 1998 ; for a review of how emotions may come into play
at various stages of social exchange, see Lawler & Thye, 1999) .
Our studies reveal how emotion, particularly negative emotion, can be
produced during social exchange . After one of our studies, conducted in a
classroom, owners were asked to reveal how much they wanted for their coffee
mugs to the set of buyer's agents collected there . After the owners began to
report surprisingly high prices - at least to the buyer's agents - one agent was
heard to exclaim, "Those f-king owners are the most f-king greediest people
I've ever seen!" The angry tone in this young woman's voice was a surprise to
us, as was the number of buyer's agents who nodded their heads in
agreement.
Many buyer's agents in our studies shared this woman's belief that the
owners were greedy . When given a chance to attribute the failure of a
transaction to the endowment effect or to greed, both owners and buyer's agents
endorsed greed with more enthusiasm (Van Boven, Dunning et al ., 2000 ; Study
4) . We do not know if they shared the intensity of this belief expressed by this
one outspoken participant. However, one can see how misunderstanding the
endowment effect can lead to attributions that promote negative affect . To the
extent that buyers attribute the failure or difficulty of an exchange to something
"wrong" about the other person, they will naturally become angry (see Smith
& Ellsworth, 1985 ; Weiner, 1985, 1986) .
This anger can lead to intransigence in a negotiation . It can even lead to
breaking off the negotiation . Several studies have shown that people's
impressions of the intentions of other people color the decisions they make in
negotiations or exchange . For example, they may be willing to accept a
settlement if a computer randomly generates it, but they may reject the exact
same settlement if they think another person proposed it, one possibly
harboring self-interested or malevolent motives (e .g . Blount, 1995 ; Larrick &
Blount, 1997) . Beyond this, emotions can color the interpretation of the other
person's subsequent actions . The simple presence of certain emotions, such as
happiness, sadness, and anger, tend to bring to mind different cognitions and
beliefs more readily, which can alter the interpretations of actions and events
(Bower, 1991) . Thus, misunderstandings of the dynamics of endowment may
be the source of emotions that make easy exchanges more difficult to
consummate .
Fairness
When people enter into exchanges, they do so not so much to promote their
self-interest as they do to promote it fairly. That is, people are sensitive to how
For example, they will realize that owners ask for higher prices, but will fail to
realize just how much more owners will need to part with their mugs . As a
consequence, the behavior of people in the other role will be doubly surprising .
People will have thought that they have already corrected for the impact of the
other person's role . Thus, there will be no further attribution to make other than
the other person is being strategic, selfish, or misinformed . Partial success in
perspective taking, therefore, could potentially be worse than no success at
all .
At its most general, our analysis is that people fail to anticipate or understand
the impact of affective states on their own behavior and, as a result,
misunderstand the impact of these same states on the behavior of others .
Loewenstein (1999 ; Loewenstein & Schkade, 2000) refer to this problem as a
hot/cold empathy gap . One example is the endowment effect, in which
ownership causes greater attachment to an object than a potential buyer might
foresee, but most likely there are myriad similar examples in which people
cannot envision the impact of other emotional states .
We have begun to investigate some of those examples in our research . In one
such project, we are investigating whether people can anticipate the impact that
fear of social embarrassment has on the behavior of oneself and others (Van
Boven, Loewenstein, Welch & Dunning, 2000) . In one such study, a guest
instructor made a proposal to half the class, randomly chosen . They were asked
if they would volunteer to come up to the front of the class to dance to the song
"Superfreak" by R&B legend Rick James for 5 minutes . They would be paid
$5 for their performance . The other half of the class was not given this
proposal, but were rather asked if they would have volunteered if given the
chance . All students were asked whether a randomly selected student (other
than themselves) who was given the opportunity to dance would agree to do
so.
Students not facing the actual choice underestimated the impact of the
potential social embarrassment on their own behavior and that of their peers .
Whereas only 8% of the students actually given the choice volunteered to
dance, a full 33% of the students not given the offer stated that they would have
volunteered, and that 36% of their peers would have done likewise . Students
given the offer were wiser about the potential actions of their peers . They
predicted that only 16% of their peers would volunteer - a total that was much
closer to the proportion of volunteers actually observed .
On Social Policy
saddened they would be if their tenure was denied . A few months after tenure
decisions had been handed down, these same individuals were approached
again and asked about their emotional state . Those receiving tenure were not as
happy as they thought they would be ; and those denied tenure were not as
devastated as they had anticipated. A similar pattern of findings arose for
people obtaining HIV tests at a local health clinic . Participants overpredicted
how anxious and distressed they would be several weeks after receiving a
positive result suggesting they had the virus . They also overestimated how
relieved they would be to get back a negative result indicating perfect health
(Sieff, Dawes & Loewenstein, 1999) .
Misunderstanding the power of affective states might lead to two different
types of errors in the conduct of social policy . First, it may lead people to
propose interventions that miss the mark . If people cannot anticipate the power
of drug addiction, for example, they may propose treatment strategies that are
too weak to be successful . Second, misunderstanding the power of emotional
or physiological states might lead people to make unwarranted attributions for
why social policies fail . For instance, if a drug intervention fails, people might
attribute the failure to weaknesses in the drug addict's character as opposed to
the strength of the addiction. Thus, people may abandon social policies too
quickly. They might decide that the subjects of the intervention are
uncooperative, not trying hard enough, or are somehow unworthy . However,
the true source of the intervention's failure might be the weakness of the
intervention in the face of powerful viseral or emotional states, and thus more
powerful interventions might be called for at exactly the time that the general
public might be tempted to abandon hope .
On Pluralistic Ignorance
are themselves (Miller & McFarland, 1987 ; Van Boven, 2000) . If placed in a
classroom with other students, and an instructor walks to the front of the room
to deliver an incomprehensible and incoherent lecture, they fail to realize that
others are just as bewildered and anxious as they are (Miller & McFarland,
1987) .
Why might people overestimate the similarity between themselves and
others in some situations, experiencing egocentric empathy gaps, but
underestimate the similarity between themselves and others in other situations,
experiencing pluralistic ignorance? We believe that the discovery of an answer
- or answers as will likely be the case - will constitute significant advance of
social psychological theory. We do not pretend to have that answer (yet) . But
one possibility concerns people's beliefs about the observability of different
emotional states . The instances of pluralistic ignorance described above all
involve self-conscious emotions . If people believe that such emotions are
observable then they need not use themselves as a basis for predicting others
because they think (erroneously) they can simply look at others and infer their
internal states . Note that (at least) two things are necessary for people to
observe others' emotions and avoid using themselves as information : First, they
must believe that other people's internal states are observable ; second, they
must be able to observe other people . In our studies, at least one of these was
never true . In the studies of buyers and sellers, for example, people did not see
the particular person they were paired with . Even if they did, they may not have
believed that feelings associated with ownership are readily observable . In the
"Superfreak" study, which involved the self-conscious emotion of embarrass-
ment, people did not know exactly who was assigned to which condition, so
they may have looked to themselves instead of looking to others (Van Boven,
Loewenstein et al ., 2000) . Only time will tell if this speculation withstands
empirical examination .
CONCLUDING REMARKS
We began this chapter by noting that such diverse commentators as George
Herbert Meade and Dale Carnegie have extolled the importance of accurate
perspective taking . To deal with others successfully, one must have an adequate
understanding of their thoughts, beliefs, and desires . However, we also noted
that perspective taking is an intrinsically difficult task, so that often people do
not know how people in other roles will perceive situations and react . In
particular, we noted that the role of ownership produces a different attitude
toward an object, and non-owners do not necessarily anticipate that change in
attitude .
92 DAVID DUNNING, LEAF VAN BOVEN AND GEORGE F . LOEWENSTEIN
Along the way, we noted how this lack of understanding between owners and
non-owners might be a specific instance of a more general issue in exchange
relationships - as well as in many social interactions. People may have a
difficult time anticipating how they, and thus others, will react when confronted
with any situation that produces an emotional overtone. Without feeling that
emotion themselves, people may fail to anticipate what impact a situation
might have on the behavior and preferences of others, respond to them in a
suboptimal way, and draw incorrect lessons about the actions they subsequently
observe .
We have no idea how pervasive these empathy gaps are or how far-reaching
their consequences are for interpersonal interactions . We focused here on the
consequences of egocentric empathy gaps for buyers and sellers engaged in
economic exchanges. However, the situations we produced in the lab are
hardly the most emotional ones people might confront as they go about their
lives. Emotions in the real world can run high, and thus we can only speculate
that such empathy gaps are likely to be even more pervasive and consequential
in the types of emotionally charged interactions that people might encounter
outside of the laboratory .
NOTES
1 . In essence, buyers and sellers suffer a version of a problem that has plagued
theoretical economists and sociological exchange theorists for years : It is often difficult
to make an interpersonal comparison between how much two different people would
attach to an object or event (Heckathorn, 1983 ; Homans, 1961 ; Luce & Raiffa, 1957) .
Often, economists throw up their hands in trying to measure the extent to which two
people would gain equally or unequally . The layperson has the same difficulty, but with
a twist. He or she will often assume that the comparison between his or her utility and
that of another person can be determined, and egocentrically concludes that the person
will assign the same or similar utility to an object or event as he or she would . As will
become obvious below, for buyers estimating the utility for sellers and seller estimating
the utility of buyers, that egocentric assumption will often be erroneous and can lead to
suboptimal outcomes .
2 . We replicated this procedure eight times, for a total of nine markets . Across
markets, we varied the commodities that were traded, but all were similarly priced at the
campus store.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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INTO THE LOOKING GLASS :
DISCERNING THE SOCIAL MIND
THROUGH THE MINDBLIND
David Sally
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
It is a traditional story line that most of us, but not all, can appreciate : out of
the tragedy of one comes gain for the many . Most of us, but not all, can
sympathize with the plight and emotions of the victim, while yet also seeing the
broader context in which the greater good is served - knowledge gained, lives
protected, honor restored . If there was a silver lining to the iron tamping rod
99
I want to be sure that we see that the content put into the mind is only a development and
product of social interaction . It is a development which is of enormous importance . . . . but
originally it is nothing but the taking over of the attitude of the other. To the extent that the
animal can take the attitude of the other and utilize that attitude for the control of his own
conduct, we have what is termed mind; and that is the only apparatus involved in the
appearance of the mind (p . 191) .
The "taking the attitude of the other" may be demonstrated in the adherence to
conventions, the learning of norms, the identification of the other's strategy set,
the recognition of the other's identity or interests, the acknowledgement of the
other's power, the deciphering of the other's meaning, etc . That the social mind
is present is never in doubt, but where it comes from and what it consists of are
relatively unknown .
Virtually unacknowledged by social scientists is the existence of a natural,
Phineas-Gage-like experiment in the social mind . Autism is a condition that
disrupts much of the social mind, largely because autistic individuals seem to
lack a theory of mind and therefore, have difficulty taking the attitude of
another. Finding another's mind to be fundamentally uninterpretable has been
labeled by Baron-Cohen (1995) as mindblindness . The decision making and
behavioral deficits of the mindblind reveal, by contrast, what the capability of
mindseeing does for the majority of individuals who are not autistic .
The first section of this paper will attempt to see through the eyes of the
mindblind . We will review the significant advances developmental psycholo-
gists have made in the last few decades in characterizing the causes and effects
of autism, including the gross behavioral symptoms in the areas of social
interaction, communication and pretense, the core psychological deficits,
especially theory of mind, and the connections among the specific cognitions
and behaviors of the mindblind . The looking-glass reflection of the picture we
discern through the eyes of the autistic person will be shown, in the second
section, to be consistent with the social relations theory advanced by Sally
(2000a) for those who are mindseeing . This theory of sympathy is a balance
model that builds on the work of Hume, Smith, Cooley, Mead and Heider,
among others, and examines the relationship of affect, evaluation, physical and
psychological distance, mindreading,' and taking the role and interests of
another. The last section will examine the possibility of occasional mindblind-
ness and the specific implications for social psychologists, sociologists and
economists .
The chief claim of this study is that autism proves that a theory of mind and
the sympathetic process are, simultaneously and inextricably, essential to
language, play, interaction, cohesion, imagination and strategy . Hence, the
paper encourages synthesis across the social sciences, for it suggests that the
choice of an optimal strategy is linked to the sharing of a smile or a touch, and
to speaking through hints, metaphors and jokes . The long-term promise of this
line of inquiry is that, as the understanding of the neural basis of autism, theory
of mind and sympathy advances over the next decade, social scientific
researchers examining situations of occasional mindblindness or of exceptional
sympathy and identification should be able to connect a portfolio of social
cognitions and behaviors to specific brain capacities .
CONTINUALLY MINDBLIND
A Looking-Glass World?
Suppose you could not suppose. Suppose every interaction you had left the
other person with the sense of queerness and of something amiss . Suppose you
could not hint or joke or keep a conversation on track . Impairments in
imagination, social functioning, and communication are central to the diagnosis
of autism . Other common symptoms include sensory and perceptual sensitivity,
ritualistic and obsessional compulsions, mental retardation, and self-injury
(Frith, 1989) . Approximately 10% of autists have savant abilities and are
brilliant artists, musicians or number theorists (Sacks, 1995), a critical
1 02 DAVID SALLY
reminder that autistic individuals have talents and capabilities in certain areas
that may meet or exceed those of the mindseeing . In addition, there is a
spectrum of disability as some "high-functioning" autists are able to construct
their own cognitive bridges to span certain social gaps . However, as a leading
researcher says, "Autism . . . does not go away. . . . Nevertheless, autistic
people can, and often do, compensate for their handicap to a remarkable
degree . [But] there remains a persistent deficit . . . something that cannot be
corrected or substituted" (Uta Frith, quoted in Sacks, 1995, p . 252) .
The etiology of this condition was addressed in the only social scientific
(outside of developmental psychology) article on autism . In hindsight,
Bettelheim's (1959) argument is a Freudian nightmare : feral children were not
really raised by wolves, rather they were autistic, a condition brought about by
parental rejection and emotional deprivation. He elaborated on this viewpoint
in The Empty Fortress, evoking images of babies suffocating at the breast,
sadistic maternal teasing, withdrawal and rejection, and prisoners in German
concentration camps (Bettelheim, 1967) . 2
This harsh theory is now discredited : the evidence is overwhelming that
autism is an organic brain disorder with multiple causes - "genetic
predisposition, pre- or post-natal viral infection . . . , chromosomal damage,
biological agents still unknown" (Park, 1998, pp . 30-31) .
Although it may be difficult to read the minds of the mindblind, we can
certainly apply our sympathetic capabilities to understand the feelings and
thoughts of those who are close to autistic individuals . One neurologist
describes an autistic child's impairment in interaction :
Meeting him at intervals of several months, one is welcomed and bid goodbye with the
same impersonal kindness as if contact were only real as long as it lasted during concrete
presence . . . it is a presence without emotional content (Kurt Goldstein, quoted in Sacks,
1995, p . 216) .
As Frith said above, some autistic people can compensate, but not entirely,
often there is still a measure of oddness :
What is it like to have to learn the myriad rules of human interaction one by one, by rote?
By rote, because the criterion of `how would I feel if' is unavailable, since so much of what
pleases (or distresses) her does not please others, and so little of what pleases (or distresses)
others pleases her. . . . What's it like? It can be funny ; that's the best of it . Five years ago
Jessy gave me an unexpected Mother's Day gift - a can of cat litter deodorizer, beautifully
wrapped, topped with a tiny restaurant packet of strawberry jam . The attribution of feelings
and desires to others still hag a way to go (Park, 1998, p . 37) .
Jessy, who must try so hard to control her crying, often asks, `Is it a good reason to cry?'
(Park, 1998, p . 41) .
The speech of another very high-functioning autist, Temple Grandin, is overly
scripted and monological :
She spoke well and clearly, but with a certain unstoppable impetus and fixity . A sentence,
a paragraph, once started, had to be completed ; nothing was left implicit, hanging in the air
(Sacks, 1995, p. 257) .
The wisps were tiny creatures, almost transparent . They hung in the air directly above me,
and looked something like wisps of hair . . . . My bed was also surrounded and totally
encased by tiny spots that I called stars, so that it seemed to me I lay in some kind of
mystical glass coffin. . . . By looking through the stars and not at them, I could see them
. . . (Williams, 1992, p. 10) .
Autism is when your two-year-old looks straight through you to the wall behind - through
you, her father, her sister, her brother, or anybody else . You are a pane of glass . Or you are
her own personal extension, your hand a tool she uses to get the cookie she will not reach
for herself (Park, 1998, p . 30).
The metaphor here is an exact reversal of Cooley's (1902) looking glass self -
"Each to each a looking glass/Reflects the other that doth pass" (p . 184) . There
is limited reflection in autism .
One is also reminded of Alice's speculation about life in the Looking-glass
House : from the outside, you cannot discern directly if the fire is lit, the words
in the books go the wrong way, "you can just see a little peep of the passage
. . . . if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open : and it's very like
our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on
beyond" ; and, from the other side if you were to pass through as Alice does,
none of the animated objects seem to be able to see you or hear you, poetry is
Jabberwocky, and if you don't write your feelings down, as the White King
attempts to do, you will never remember them (Carroll, 1871) .
Like the White King, Temple Grandin possesses a mental archive of social
situations and emotions :
[Her experiences] were like a library of videotapes, which she could play in her mind and
inspect at any time -'videos' of how people behaved in different circumstances . She would
play these over and over again and learn, by degrees, to correlate what she saw, so that she
could then predict how people in similar circumstances might act (Sacks, 1995, p . 260) .
1 04 DAVID SALLY
evidence through which we deduce and anticipate the desires, beliefs, feelings
and thoughts of other people in order to predict their behavior. As Bem (1967)
shows, we may use the same theory to make sense of ourselves and guide our
own behavior. Central coherence represents the ability to integrate parts into a
whole, to unite content and context to find higher levels of meaning (Frith,
1989 ; Happe, 2000) . Finally, executive function stands beside other brain
functions and allows the individual to disengage from present stimuli, inhibit
responses, and plan sequences of actions (Hughes, 1996) .
There is a dispute within the literature about the relative importance of these
three deficits, but almost every researcher agrees that an autistic person has
some impairment of his ToM . 4 Two frequently replicated tests establish the lack
of a ToM in the mindblind ; both have to do with the deduction of beliefs (see
Yirmiya, et al . (1998) for a meta-analysis of these experiments) . In the Sally/
Anne task (Baron-Cohen, 1995), two individuals are dramatized through
puppetry as co-present in a certain setting, making the setting common
knowledge (to the characters, the tested child, and the experimenter), in
particular, that Sally has just placed her ball in a covered basket . Sally skips out
of the room, and Anne moves the ball to a nearby box and closes the top . Now,
the audience is asked, where will Sally look for her ball when she returns?
Normal four-year-old children, and those with Down's Syndrome and with a
mental age of four years, answer, "The basket!" Autistic children of the
matched mental age answer, "The box ." This task is obviously trivial for the
mindseeing who can easily keep track of where the ball really is versus where
Sally believes it to be .
One objection might be that answering "the box" just reveals a confused
mind, not a mindblind one . A second analogous experiment refutes this
interpretation (Leekam & Perrier, 1991 ; Leslie & Thaiss, 1992) . This time, a
child is shown a scene and given a Polaroid camera with which to photograph
the venue. He looks through the lens and snaps . A prominent item in the scene,
such as a ball, is moved to a new location, making the photograph "false," and
then the child is asked, "Where will the ball be in the photo?" Autistic children
have no difficulty reading the mind of the camera, for they indicate the original
position . Their accuracy here suggests that autists suffer from a blindness
specific to the minds of people.
That the weakness in ToM causes inaccuracies in self-insight is demon-
strated by another "false belief' test (Perner et al ., 1989) . A brightly labeled
candy canister is shown to a child, who, after being queried about its contents,
replies "candy." The top is taken off, only to reveal an inedible, non-sugary set
of pencils . The top is replaced and two questions are posed - "What did you
think was in here?" and "What will the next kid think is in here?" In reply to
both, normal children say, "candy" and those with autism, "pencils ."
Of course, as they get older, many autistic children can successfully pass
these simple ToM tests . The developmental lag continues throughout
childhood, however, and most autists remain blind to such second-order
thoughts as "what does he think she wants?" or "why doesn't he believe me?"
(Baron-Cohen, 2000) . High-functioning autistic people such as Temple
Grandin may continue to develop a logical ToM, but they can never close the
gap on their intuitive mindseeing peers .
Neuroscientists are in the early stages of locating the ToM within the brain .
For example, Sabbagh and Taylor (2000) document increased electrical brain
activity in the left frontal area for normal subjects doing a false belief task
versus those doing a false photograph task . Modem Phineas Gage counterparts,
suffering from lesions due to stroke in the right hemisphere, had much more
difficulty with advanced ToM tests than did non brain-damaged controls
(Brownell et al ., 2000) . Extrapolating from a variety of early studies, Frith and
Frith (1999, 2000) suggest that the ToM is found in a distributed neural system
incorporating the medial prefrontal cortex, which includes areas activated in
monitoring the self's inner states, and the superior temporal sulcus, which is
associated with the detection of the movement of animate objects, especially
eyes, hands, and mouth .
Hence, autistic individuals have an impaired ToM and are mindblind . As a
result, they are non-social, exceptional members of society :
[T]he line of our visual regard, the intensity of our involvement, and the shape of our initial
actions, allow others to glean our immediate intent and purpose . . . . At the very center of
interaction life is the cognitive relation we have with those present before us, without which
relationship our activity, behavioral and verbal, could not be meaningfully organized
(Goffman, 1983, pp . 3-4) .
Society is an interweaving and interworking of mental selves . I imagine your mind, and
especially what your mind thinks about my mind, and what your mind thinks about what
my mind thinks about your mind . I dress my mind before yours and expect that you will
dress yours before mine . Whoever cannot or will not perform these feats is not properly in
the game (Cooley, 1927, pp . 200-201).
Their absence from the game is manifest in violations of protocol in social
interaction - not saying hello, standing too close or askew, talking too loud, etc .
(Hobson & Lee, 1998) . It is also apparent in relationship difficulties, for the
mindblind do not generally have friends or spouses : even highly functional
autistic children are unable to describe what a friend is or to distinguish a friend
from an acquaintance (Lord & Magill, 1989) . What other problems are
attendant upon their absence from the social game? The next two sections will
examine the precursors and consequences of mindblindness .
1 06 DAVID SALLY
Precursors of Mindblindness
In normal children, the ToM does not emerge until four years of age : most
three-year-olds will fail the simple false belief tests . On what basis, then, is a
toddler interacting with her parents? Does she lack a social mind? The answer
is clear given that a normal toddler will exhaust you after a single hour with so
much interaction, communication, and imagination . Gopnik and Meltzoff
(1997) suggest most persuasively that ToM is a natural outgrowth of the
infant's innate talent for imitation :
Babies automatically seem to assume that their own internal feelings and the actions of
others can be represented in the same way . Imitation is nature's way of solving the other
minds problem and the mind/body problem in one fell swoop (Gopnik, Capps & Meltzoff,
2000, p. 54) .
The evidence is startling : newborns, having emerged less than one hour earlier,
"differentially imitated tongue protrusion, mouth opening, and lip protrusion"
(Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1997, p . 130) .
This same correspondent, mimetic approach continues throughout early
childhood:
In each case, desires [age 2], perceptions [3], beliefs [4], and interpretations [6 or 7], babies
seem to begin by assuming that they and other people have the same internal states and
gradually develop an understanding of differences. . . . They assume that they are like
others and that their internal states map on to the behaviour of others (Gopnik, Capps &
Meltzoff, 2000, p . 58) .
To carry out this process, the baby must be able to : 1 . Differentiate human
beings from other objects ; 2 . Be "involuntarily" drawn to attend to humans ; 3 .
Share joint attention with another person ; 4 . Mime an other's actions, either
automatically or intentionally ; 5 . Translate feeling to action and action to
feeling, either consciously or non-consciously . Somewhere between mirroring
a tongue-protruding razz and predicting the composition of another's thoughts,
an autistic child will have problems in at least one of these five areas .
A face may be not clearly differentiated from an inanimate object . Using
imaging techniques, Schultz et al . (2000) find that the brain activity caused by
the mindblind's perceptual processing of faces is equivalent to that created by
the mindseeing's perceptual processing of objects . In a similar result, when
autistic subjects process upside-down faces, they have less difficulty than non-
autistic subjects (Hobson, Ouston & Lee, 1988 ; Tantam et al ., 1989) . Experts
perceive their regularly scrutinized objects holistically (for example, birders
and a swallowtail), while other objects are seen through an analysis of distinct
segments (Schultz et al ., 2000) . That the autist appraises faces objectively may
bespeak a lack of accumulated expertise in visages . He may have more trouble
Down's syndrome to utilize the co-presence to gaze at the parent, smile at her,
or give her things (Dissanayake & Crossley, 1996) .
Temple Grandin, despite her high level of intelligence, does not read novels or
plays both because it takes a huge effort, due to her faulty ToM, to figure out
what Romeo and Juliet are up to, and because the activity is not rewarding or
interesting enough (Sacks, 1995) .
The trouble Ms . Grandin has in empathizing with fictional characters is
reflective of a more general problem with helping in autism. The link to ToM
is clear : if someone cries out sharply and suddenly, squeezes her eyes shut, and
shakes her hand vigorously back and forth, but none of these actions is gripping
or explicable, you would neither look nor reach out willingly to help . In the
psychology laboratory, this drama commences when the experimenter appears
to slam his thumb with a toy hammer and hops around in pain . Far fewer
autistic than normal or developmentally delayed children stare at the face of the
injured man or even look up from what they are doing (Sigman & Kasari, 1995 ;
Charman et al ., 1997) .
Lastly, mindblindness affects the language faculty deeply . The autist's
problems with joint attention and pointing suggest that Augustine's method of
learning language is not applicable :
When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I
saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant
to point it out . Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements . . . : the expression
of the face, the play of the eyes (cited in Wittgenstein, 1958, p . 2) .
Indeed, the language facility of autistic children followed over several years by
Sigman and Ruskin (1999, cited in Tager-Flusberg, 2000) was correlated with
their readiness to respond to offers for joint attention as toddlers .
However, as Wittgenstein (1958) demonstrates, learning and using language
is more than just heaping one name on top of another ; in his famous phrase,
"Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination" (p .
4) . Without a sense of how the strings hit by the key's hammer will resonate,
due to nescience of their tautness, thickness, length and composition, and to the
absence of an internally heard tone, the mindblind speaker is unable to play the
normal chords of language . Pragmatic uses of language create dissonance for
the autistic individual : metaphor, poetry, irony, sarcasm, joking, all ring false to
his ears and leave him unmoved (Happe, 1993 ; Tager-Flusberg, 2000) .
Moreover, since "it is natural that we speak by hints" (Vygotsky, 1986, p . 238),
the mindblind listener will overlook any subtlety or implication, and the
speaker's intended meaning will be ignored in favor of a literal interpretation
of his words (Mitchell, Saltmarsh & Russell, 1997) .
Poignantly and symbolically, many autistic speakers experience confusion
with their pronouns (Lee, Hobson & Chiat, 1994) . Even the simple pronoun
requires an ability to change perspective : when I say "I," you must translate the
word into "you," and when you say "you," you must know that I will think "L"
As this pronominal inversion and conversion reveal, without a theory of mind,
without the sympathetic ability to take the other's perspective, life in the
looking-glass house becomes impossibly complicated - the animate and
inanimate are confounded, words are backwards and jabberwocky, joint
attention is fleeting, and feelings need to be recorded and catalogued .
CONTINUALLY MINDSEEING
Sympathy and Theory of Mind
How queer the mindseeing are! Show them a film depicting simple geometric
shapes moving independently along various non-linear vectors, and when two
figures randomly happen to move in parallel (as any two particles in Brownian
motion will sometimes do), these people start seeing relationships, emotions,
and stories (Heider & Simmel, 1944 ; Heider, 1958)! By contrast, show the
mindblind the same film and they see exactly what's there - "The small circle
went inside the rectangle. The big triangle was in the box with the circle"
(Subject quoted in Klin, Schultz & Cohen, 2000, pp . 363-364) . 5 Mindreaders
have a hair-trigger on their ToM's : they can find intention, emotion, and belief
in the casual, chaotic heap of animal entrails (Zeitlyn, 1995), the stochastic
stress-induced sliding of the plates in the Earth's crust, a blinking shadow cast
diagonally through the trees by a passing cloud on a moonlit night, or an ant
dragging an oversized crumb up and over, up and over, up and over a series of
little twigs and stones .
The looking glass reflection (and Phineas-Gage-like inference) of our
conclusions about mindblindness is that in the mindseeing, all the following
elements are interwoven : synchronicity in interaction, joint attention, mutual
gaze, imitation, the sharing of thoughts, the sharing of emotions, empathy and
helping, figurative speech, and all non-literal uses of language . Throughout the
history of the social sciences, various authors have examined (under different
names) the individual's theory of mind and taking the attitude of an other : the
Scottish moral philosophers, Hume and Smith ; the (first) evolutionary
psychologist, Darwin (1936) ; the pragmatists, Cooley and Mead ; the folk
psychologist, Heider. Also, the last twenty years have witnessed the creation
and vibrant growth of the field of social cognition and the incorporation of
emotions into previously "cold" approaches (Lawler & Thye, 1999 ; Schwarz,
1998 ; Zajonc, 1998) . One might ask, is there a modem theory of the social
mind that combines all or many of these elements? It will not surprise the
mindperceiving reader to find that the present author has developed such a
framework .
To express continuity with earlier writers, especially those named just above,
I have called our innate theory of mind and mindreading ability, sympathy .
Cooley (1902) writes,
[S]ympathy [is] the sense of primary communication or an entering into and sharing the
mind of someone else . When I converse with a man, through words, looks, or other
symbols, I have more or less intelligence or communion with him, we get on common
ground and have similar ideas and sentiments . If one uses sympathy in this connection -
and it is perhaps the most available word - one has to bear in mind that it denotes the
sharing of any mental state that can be communicated, and has not the special implication
of pity. . . . (p . 102) .
1 12 DAVID SALLY
A complete transactive memory in a group occurs when each member keeps current on
who knows what, passes information on a topic to the group's expert on the topic, and
develops a relative sense of who is expert on what among all group members (p . 326,
quoted in Nickerson, 1999) .
Without the ability to understand, at a general level, what other people know,
such a distributed system would unravel .
Finally, identifying with another, as mentioned earlier, is critical to language
and conversation . Every utterance has an infinity of meanings, and so,
communication is of necessity a complex coordination game (Sally, 2000b).
Meaning is a puzzle . As the puzzle-maker, the speaker must create a sentence
that he knows the listener will find soluble, and to do so, he must bring to mind
key characteristics of the audience . The listener, in turn, must activate her
model of the speaker to help solve the puzzle of what he means . To speak, I
must take the role of the audience ; to listen, I must take the role of the utterer ;
to communicate, our projections must converge (Mead, 1934) . When the
mindseeing speak to another, we seize control of that person's mind for a set
of instants . Ironically, though, in preparing to speak, we have already let the
other into our own mind . The harder puzzles of meaning created by metaphors,
irony, jokes, allusions, hints, indirectness, and implication can only be solved
through a strong sense of sympathy (Sally, 2000c) .
We know from our review of the development literature that the child's ToM
varies according to the circumstances of the social situation . A baby will
imitate its mother more readily ; a toddler will stay closer to her than to a
stranger, and send her more gazes and smiles . Older children (and adults) can
resolve ambiguous verbal statements and social situations more readily, since
such events are more familiar . The factors affecting the extent of sympathy
from one person to another are captured in the balance model shown in Fig . 1 .8
Physical and psychological distance are represented in the boxes labelled
physical proximity and similarity and familiarity, respectively . Affection refers
to "liking vs . disliking," and so is a summary measure of the emotional attitude
toward the other . Evaluation is the valence, the overall goodness, of a stimulus .
I will have more to say about each of these factors below, but the reader should
refer to Sally (2000a) for a thorough discussion .
As with Heider's (1958) balance theory, two types of equilibria are assumed
to exist among the four underlying factors :
and
For example, we seek to avoid those things that are different or strange, or that
we dislike or believe are bad; we come to like those people with whom we
interact frequently, who have similar tastes and beliefs, and who we believe are
admirable . At the first equilibrium, the other's thoughts are read ; her actions,
believed; her decisions, foretold ; her metaphors, understood, her hints,
followed, and her jokes, laughed at ; and, finally, her interests, strongly
acknowledged . At the latter equilibrium, there is relative mindblindness .
1 14 DAVID SALLY
Closeness
There were two uses of glass imagery in the reports about autism - glass as an
invisible, yet real barrier, to contact and friendship, and other people as
transparent and non-reflecting . For the mindseeing, co-presence, similarity and
familiarity can lead to a strong sense of closeness, allowing us to array various
other individuals at different distances from our self (Smith, 1790 ; Lewin,
1948 ; Little, 1965 ; Aron, Aron & Smollan, 1992 ; Davis et al ., 1996) .
Nearness translates into sympathy, both an enlarged self and ToM efficiency .
Closeness can create a kind of cognitive confusion anecdotally present in the
intermingling of spouses' stories and experiences - "you went to that party? . . .
I thought it was me ." In a laboratory, it takes subjects a longer time to recognize
traits that are unique to themselves as opposed to traits shared with their
spouses (Aron et al ., 1991) . Stinson and Ickes (1992) explicitly tested the link
between closeness and mindreading . Pairs of friends were secretly videotaped
while they waited for a promised experiment to begin . Each friend then
watched the tape and recorded any thoughts or feelings he or she had at various
moments during the interaction . During a second and final viewing of the tape,
each friend was asked to record what the other was feeling or thinking . In the
control condition pairs of strangers followed the same procedure . The results
were clear: pairs of friends were much more accurate in their mindseeing than
strangers were .
Those researchers who have studied the non-verbal behaviors and position-
ings of humans have demonstrated that physical proximity is not just the
Euclidean distance from one body's center of gravity to another's, but is also
a function of angle, tilt, gesture, and especially, eye contact (Argyle & Dean,
1965) . As the unseeing gaze of the autist shows, a ToM is necessary for the
mutual glance to have the power that Simmel (1908) suggests : "The eye of a
person discloses his own soul when he seeks to uncover that of another"
(p . 308) .
The autistic person, to overstate the case a little, is filled with the cold
realization that every other person is fundamentally distinct from himself . Just
as a moving triangle is a moving triangle, a different person is a different
person . For the non-autist, however, the initial hypothesis is that an unknown
other is akin, alike to me . The automatic imitation of neonates, Gopnik and
Meltzoff (1997) propose, is based on the inborn idea that others are "just like
me ." The acquaintanceship process is usually smooth among the mindseeing,
because in the absence of any strong negative information, we are programmed
to look for similarities with others (Hoch, 1987) ; "our first movement is to
believe in an undivided being between us" (Merleau-Ponty, 1969, p . 52) . If I
assume that we are alike, I am more willing to expend the sympathetic effort
and more confident that I can figure you out .
Affection
The correlations between liking someone and being close, both physically and
psychologically, has been well documented . Common hallways (Newcomb,
1956 ; Priest & Sawyer, 1967 ; Nahemow & Lawton, 1975) and shared traits
(Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954 ; Tuma & Hallinan, 1979 ; Feld, 1982), experiences
(Latane, Eckman & Joy, 1966), and attitudes (Byrne & Nelson, 1965 ; Lydon et
al ., 1988) lead to friendship, and vice versa (Darley & Berscheid, 1967) .
As Hume (1740) realized long ago, familiarity leads to liking and
preference :
The mind finds a satisfaction and ease in the view of objects, to which it is accustom'd, and
naturally prefers them to others, which, tho', perhaps, in themselves more valuable, are less
known to it (p . 355) .
The connection of repeated proximity, familiarity, and affection can occur
automatically and involuntarily ; Zajonc (1968 ; 1980) has labeled this non-
conscious connection the "mere exposure" effect . That the mind prefers those
things which multiple exposures make it "accustom'd" to, has been
demonstrated for objects as varied as random polygons, Chinese ideographs,
numbers and letters, flavors and colors, etc . (Zajonc, 1998 ; for a thorough
review, see Bornstein, 1989) . The mindblind may not become accustomed to
those they interact with, but Brockner and Swap (1976) demonstrate that if we
have seen the other person repeatedly even without any mutual acknowledge-
ment, the laboratory equivalent of standing apart on the same train platform day
after day, we would prefer to interact with that person rather than some
"stranger."
The non-autist, even when his infancy is far behind, spontaneously imitates
facial expressions, postures, bodily mannerisms, and speech patterns and
elements (Bavelas et al ., 1986 ; Hatfield et al ., 1994) . Imitation leads to the
perception of similarity and a sense of affection . For therapists and patients
(Trout & Rosenfeld, 1980) and fellow classmates (La France, 1979), postural
mirroring was positively correlated with relationship strength ; Cappella (1997)
found that synchronous smiling was correlated with attraction between brand
new acquaintances .
The most direct evidence comes from Chartrand and Bargh (1999) . Through
a careful protocol and the use of twitchy accomplices, these researchers show,
initially, that subjects would imitate at a significant rate the confederates'
smiling or face rubbing or foot shaking during an interaction . The first
1 16 DAVID SALLY
Evaluation
Because of the pattern of brain activity they observed in the normal film
viewers who saw a human drama enacted by the moving geometric shapes,
Klin, Schultz and Cohen (2000) conjecture that, neurologically, social
perception
is by necessity affectively mediated, given that the appreciation of interaction between
people may involve an evaluative component (good/bad, helpful/hostile) that is intrinsically
associated with a predisposition to respond in certain ways (to approach or to distance
oneself (p . 378) .
One gets a sense from their memoirs that the mindblind must preconsciously
screen and classify another person, except the most familiar, as neutral on the
"good" scale and negative on the "bad" scale .' Because evaluation automat-
ically invokes behavioral tendencies - good - approach, bad withdraw
(Lewin, 1935 ; Berntson et al ., 1993) - the autist's negative evaluation of others
would partially account for his distancing and lack of eye contact .
The non-autist tends to bring evaluation, affection, familiarity, and proximity
to a positive equilibrium with respect to his acquaintances and friends . "An act
is good when it is performed by a friend" (Heider 1958, p . 54) . Having been
asked about our spouse, we readily admit that they are accommodating and
OCCASIONALLY MINDBLIND
While the previous sections showed that passing into the glass of autism is
valuable when thinking about the broad social relations theory of sympathy, it
is also true that other theories may benefit from occasional exposure to the
limited reflection of autism." Affect control theory, for example, suggests that
emotions arise from situational cognitions :
A person's definition of the situation provides a self identity and an identity for other, and
those identifications set sentiments that should be reflected in experiences . The person
builds events to push experiences in a direction that affirms the sentiments associated with
situational identities. If something happens to deflect experiences away from identity
confirmation, then a person builds corrective events to put social interaction back on track
(Heise, 1999, p . 7) .
1 18 DAVID SALLY
constantly engaged with his idealized self or the approving generalized other
(Mead, 1934) in a noisy reaffirmation of correctness . This solipsistic busyness
makes it easy to crowd out the smiles, deeds, looks, and words of the
contending side .
Passing emotion can cloud the mind even of a close other. When we are
temporarily aggrieved at a spouse or a close friend, we find him inarticulate, his
voice inaudible, and his utterances garbled . Conversely, if someone noticeably
shuts his mind to us through curt or irrelevant answers, the sympathetic balance
moves toward the negative pole (Garfinkel, 1967 ; Wyer, Swan & Gruenfeld,
1995) .
Those at the top of an organization may not be able to read the minds of
those below accurately, because the natural signals are controlled and distorted .
Those below may have independent, deceitful reasons or more submissive,
mindguarding (Janis, 1982) motivations . This distortion is easier to achieve if
the boss is isolated, an outsider, unfamiliar, and disliked . In any case, he is the
recipient of only winning smiles, sycophantic gestures, and positive, literal
statements, and accordingly, is made blind .
Just as the non-autist reads too much into the film of geometric shapes, he
may also assume too much about the transparency of his own mind . In one
experiment, participants felt that despite their intention to stay neutral and not
give off any signs, observers would be able to guess when they told a little lie,
drank a foul tasting liquid, or were concerned about someone's bad behavior
(Gilovich, Medvec & Savitsky, 1998) . As a result, desires and beliefs that
should be made explicit are left unsaid : a spouse expects the other to "surprise"
him with just what he wants on his birthday ; a friend stews while waiting for
the other to apologize .
The assumption of similarity that initiates imitation and attribution in
acquaintanceship can distort the reading of the other's mind : sometimes we
assume that we see the contents of our own mind in the looking glass . This self-
reflection is a weaker version of the inner conversation of righteousness :
We experience our own point of view more or less directly, whereas we must always attain
the other person's in a more indirect manner . Furthermore, we are usually unable to turn
our own viewpoint off completely when trying to infer the other's, and it usually continues
to ring in our ears while we try to decode the other's (Flavell, 1977, p . 124, quoted in
Nickerson, 1999) .
The vividness of the content in our mind seems to be related to the chance that
we will automatically project it into the mind of the other - a catchy tune, a
long-practiced skill, a money-making bit of inside information (Nickerson,
1999) .
NOTES
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DO YOU TRUST? WHOM DO YOU
TRUST? WHEN DO YOU TRUST?
ABSTRACT
We try to provide a broader view on the factors that influence the decision
to trust and honor trust . Using the "Trust Game" as our experimental
paradigm, we consider three classes offactors that may be related to trust
issues. The first one considers individual differences with regard to the
probability to trust others (and honor trust of others), or disposition
factors . Which kinds of people are more likely to trust? Second, we
examine who is more likely to be trusted (anticipation factors), focusing
on the appearance of the person who is to be trusted. And third, we
analyze the circumstances under which trust is more likely to evolve
(situation factors). Trusting is easy if there is not much at stake, but if the
stakes and the risk increase, then how does that affect the willingness to
trust? In short, we consider the decision to trust to be dependent on who
you are, on who it is that has to be trusted, and on the specific situation.
Moreover, we analyze which of these three classes is more important,
using a set of experiments designed to measure the impact of disposition,
anticipation, and situation factors . The data suggest that disposition
factors play a minor role; the differences between people with regard to
their likelihood to trust are relatively small . Anticipation factors,
operationalized by varying alter's appearance, had a larger but somewhat
paradoxical effect. Those with a trustworthy appearance are indeed
trusted more easily, but they do not actually behave more trustworthy . By
129
far the strongest influences were found among the situation factors . Both
the payoffs and the structure of the game have a large impact on trust and
honoring trust .
INTRODUCTION
Suppose you are searching for a '69 Ford Mustang and come across a newspaper
advertisement offering exactly the car you were searching for . Arriving at the address
mentioned in the ad, you are confronted with a gray-haired guy, about 75 years old, called
Sal, who tells you he is an ex-mechanic who patches up old cars . The polish on the shiny
Mustang in the garage has the same roguish twinkle as the guy's eyes . The price he asks
sounds reasonable assuming the car is in as good a shape as he claims ("It's just a hobby,
my friend, I don't want to make a profit .") . Actually, if you were sure the car was in a good
shape as he claimed, you would certainly buy it . You realize, however, that Sal could just
as easily be an ex-salesman as an ex-mechanic, and that the twinkle in his eye might not
reflect his honest nature but the prospect of a large sum of money coming his way for a car
that isn't worth half the price . Would you buy the car? Would you buy it if the price were
lower? Would you buy the car if the guy were not a twinkling-eyed, gray-haired, 75-year-
old, but a flashy 30-year-old yuppie? On what factors would you base your decision?
The basic issue of interpersonal trust is this : Ego has to decide whether or not
to hand over control over the situation to Alter. Alter can choose to honor or
betray the trust of Ego, has a certain incentive to betray, and Ego knows it .
Many daily life situations, including the one mentioned above, have a similar
structure that is well captured by the "Trust Game" (Dasgupta, 1988 ; Kreps,
1990) in Fig. 1 .
In the Trust Game, player 1 moves first and has to choose between two
possible acts : moving left (i .e . no trust) thus ending the game (resulting in each
player getting $20), or moving right (i .e . trust) thus letting player 2 decide .
Player 2, if getting his turn, must choose between moving left (i .e . abuse trust)
and keeping $100 for himself, or moving right (i .e . honor trust) entailing an
even split . If player 1 would be sure that player 2 would split the $100, he
would certainly let player 2 decide . Player 1, however, is uncertain about player
2's choice, and if sufficiently unsure may want to settle for the 20 dollars .
Figure 1 shows both this Trust Game, and the more general format in which P
represents the payments both players receive when player 1 decides not to trust,
R stands for payments to both players when player 1 trusts player 2 and player
2 reciprocates, and, finally, S represents what player 1 ends up with when
player 1 has trusted player 2 and player 2 subsequently decides to abuse trust
and receive T. The chosen symbols emphasize the resemblance with the
Prisoner's Dilemma . As in the Prisoner's Dilemma, the relation S < P < R < T
has to be satisfied .
i gets US 0 1 gets US 50
2 gets US 100 2 gets US 50
1 gets S 1 gets R
2 gets T 2 gets R
S<P<R<T
three classes of factors . As is apparent from the structure of the Trust Game, our
investigations are limited to static two-person settings .
Naturally, interactions between elements from different categories are
possible . For instance, some people may trust more under some conditions but
not under others . Or similarly, under some circumstances some people may be
trusted more than others . It is easy to come up with ways in which all three
kinds of factors interact. Some people may have different perceptions of the
same situation (disposition), which influences the way in which they look at the
other person (anticipation) in certain Trust Games (situation) . Though such
interactions are not only possible but also probable, they are beyond the realm
of this study ; only main effects are considered .
An important advantage of using the Trust Game is that it explicitly
disentangles two concepts that are sometimes treated as identical : trustfulness
(willingness to trust) and trustworthiness (willingness to honor given trust) .
Trust is sometimes considered to be a lubricant of social and economic life .
Underlying this assertion is the assumption that trustfulness and trustworthi-
ness come hand in hand, which need not be true . In fact, most scales measuring
trust, like Rotter's (1967) Interpersonal Trust Scale, or the Dyadic Trust Scale
by Larzelere and Houston (1980), actually measure only trustfulness . Finally,
using the Trust Game enables us to manipulate the variables that form the basis
for decisions on trust simultaneously .
The current literature suggests that all the three factors mentioned above play
a role in the decision to trust (or mistrust) . Regarding disposition, there is
evidence that some individuals seem to be more prone to trust than others
(Yamagishi, 1986) . For instance, research on social dilemmas suggests that
economists tend to be less cooperative (Frank, Gilovich & Regan, 1993) and
therefore perhaps less trustful and trustworthy . Trust also seems to depend on
beliefs regarding the others' intentions and inclinations (Parks, Henager &
Scamahom, 1996) . Indeed, predicting and anticipating others' behavior is
based on previous knowledge and experience with those others, or by physical
appearance such as facial outlook and other behavioral signals (van Lange &
Kuhlman, 1994) . Finally, situational variables may also influence considera-
tions of trust . For instance, there is substantial evidence showing that trustful
behavior in interdependent situations, like public good games, strongly
depends on the size of monetary incentives (Ledyard, 1995) .
In essence, we address the explanatory power of the "dispositionalist view"
as opposed to the "situationalist" view (Mischel, 1968), applied to the question
of trust . Mischel has convincingly shown that cross-situation consistencies are
low for several traits, like honesty and aggressiveness . Other research (e .g . Bern
& Allen, 1974) challenged these findings and argued, among other things, that
it may very well be that consistencies are stronger for specific domains . Trust
could be one of them .
In what follows, we describe a series of experiments on trust, conducted in
the past few years, and interpret the results in light of a broader literature . The
first three sections address the dispositional, the anticipation, and the situational
questions, respectively . The final section is an attempt to combine the different
results in order to obtain an overall assessment of the determinants of trust .
DO YOU TRUST?
The first approach to the question of trust is to examine whether some people
are more likely to trust than others . Several studies examined which
characteristics of people correlate with trustful behavior yet the empirical
evidence is quite mixed . Some studies investigated sex differences and trust,
but - possibly because trust is not consistently operationalized - findings are
not unequivocal (compare, for instance, Aranoff & Tedeschi, 1968 ; Rapoport et
al ., 1976 ; Dawes et al ., 1977 ; Terrell & Barrett, 1979 ; Wright & Sharp, 1979 ;
Heretick, 1984 ; Lagace & Gassenheimer, 1989 ; Steel, 1991) . Given the
inconsistent evidence, one may doubt whether any universal sex differences, as
far as trust in others is concerned, do exist. Such doubts have been echoed by
Orbell et al .'s (1994) review of sex (gender) differences in social dilemmas, and
by Kagel and Roth's (1995) review of public goods experiments .
Other characteristics that correlate with trust have been less extensively
studied . For instance, Larzelere (1984) found that religious (Christian) students
were less trustful than secular students . Yamagishi and Yamagishi (1994)
provide empirical evidence for the claim that Americans, in general, are more
likely to trust other people compared with Japanese . There is apparently a
positive relation between trust and marital status (Larzelere & Huston, 1980),
a negative relation between trust and suspicion (Misra & Kalro, 1979), and
some complicated relations between trust, race, and socio-economic status
(Switkin & Gynther, 1974 ; Terrell & Barrett, 1979 ; Steel, 1991) . Wheeless and
Grotz (1977) report a relation between trust and self-disclosure .
Liebrand et al . (1986) introduced the "Might versus Morality" effect : some
people evaluate behavior in terms of strong versus weak ("might"), while
others evaluate behavior in terms of good and bad ("morality") . Those who
emphasize might are more likely to behave non-cooperatively in trust issues
(i .e . they are less trustful and less trustworthy), because they tend to behave in
a way that maximizes their own profits without regard for the profit or loss of
others . Likewise, those that emphasize morality are more likely to behave
cooperatively in trust issues, because they tend to behave in a way that
maximizes profit from the point of view of the collectivity . Persons who have
been frequently exposed to the evaluation of behavioral alternatives in terms of
might, like those who have studied game theory or economics, may therefore
be less likely to trust others and less likely to honor the trust of others . The
latter factor in particular appears to have a strong effect . Economists tend to
trust significantly less often, as has been reported by Marwell and Ames (1981),
Carter and Irons (1991), and Frank et al . (1993) .
In the first set of experiments we report on (Snijders, 1996), participants
(university students) played several Trust Games and some of the individual
characteristics mentioned above were examined . Participants in the other study
were respondents of a survey among households who played a Trust Game,
controlling for various socio-economic background characteristics . The main
results of these experiments are briefly described below.
Participants (466, mostly students) in the first set of experiments played several
(3, 5 or 6) one-shot Trust Games . Sessions were run under laboratory
conditions with about 20 participants per session . In total, 36 different Trust
Games were employed (average values of S, P, R, T were 0, $10, $20, $40
respectively) . For each Trust Game, participants were asked to indicate what
they would choose in the role of player 1 and what they would do in the role
of player 2 . Participants were told in advance that at the end of each session,
two participants would be randomly determined as winners : a player 1 and a
player 2 . Subsequently, one Trust Game would be randomly chosen and the
winners would be paid in accordance with their choices in that particular Trust
Game . This procedure implies that participants knew that "the other player" in
a Trust Game would in fact be a randomly determined other in the same
session . In addition, participants filled out a questionnaire measuring several
characteristics that we considered likely to correlate with trustful or trustworthy
behavior. All participants received a flat fee (about 5 U .S .$) . Further details are
provided in Snijders (1996) and Snijders and Keren (1999) .
The demographic information obtained from participants consisted of sex,
age, field of study, whether they carried a donor codicil, were blood donors, had
any knowledge about game theory, and a factor score of their high school
graduation package . As a last measure of disposition, the "Ring" measure of
social orientations (Liebrand, 1984) was included . This standard test measures
the extent to which a person values payoffs to others (Liebrand & McClintock,
1988) . Usually, the test results are used to divide subjects in "pro-socials" (or
"cooperators"), "individualists", and "competitors" . Competitors are relatively
General
Male +0.07 -0.09
Age 0 0
Indicators of pro-social behavior
Donor Codicil + +0 .10 0
Blood donor + 0 0
Might versus morality
Being a student of economics - 0 0
Knowledge about game theory 0 0
Beta-graduation (math etc .) - 0 0
Ring measure of social orientation
Pro-social (reference: others) + +0 .20 +0 .19
scarce (about 15% of the subjects), so that individualists and competitors are
often clustered and labeled "pro-self' . In general, the prediction is that pro-
socials are more cooperative, more trusting, less cynical, more optimistic, and
more caring about other than pro-selfs . Table 1 summarizes the results of our
analyses (Snijders, 1996) . Results are based on a repeated measures Probit
analysis . The first column indicates the direction of the hypothesized effects .
The numeric entries in the following two columns represent the effect on the
probability to trust (honor trust) . For instance, there is a mean difference of
0 .10 in the probability to trust between subjects carrying a donor codicil and
those who do not .
Inspection of Table 1 suggests that males tend to be more trustful and less
trustworthy, and participants who carry a donor codicil seem to be more
trustful . Pro-socials are both more trustful and more trustworthy. Most of the
other indicators were not statistically significant . These weak results regarding
disposition emphasize the danger of assessing other persons' trustworthiness
through stereotyping or categorization (that is, by basing assessments on the
group to which the person belongs to) . Apparently, it is difficult to find a
category of people who trust (or honor trust) significantly more than others, at
least in a student population . Measuring a person's social orientation provides
the most useful information (hence, look for pro-socials, beware of pro-
selves) .
The above experiment should not be considered as conclusive evidence that
differences in disposition to trust are scarce and small . Nevertheless, a literature
The data for this experiment were obtained as part of a large survey of Dutch
households, with 1533 two-person households and 288 singles (Kalmijn,
Bernasco & Weesie, 1995) . Every interview ended with presenting respondents
with a booklet consisting of several socio- and psychometric scales, one or
another version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, and one Trust Game (Bruins &
Weesie, 1996) . About 70% (2283 out of 3354) booklets were returned, of which
half are of interest for our analysis here depending on which characteristics are
taken into account (for instance, not all respondents were willing to state their
incomes, or their political preference) . Behavior of the trustor in a Trust Game
was examined and correlated with several socio-economic characteristics of the
respondents . Admittedly, the choice of the socio-economic variables is
somewhat arbitrary, and the analyses should be considered explorative . Four
clusters were constructed labeled as `General characteristics', `View on life',
`Control over short term gratification', and `Previous breach of trust' .
Included under `General characteristics' were sex, education, household
income, and age . These characteristics are quite broad and permit different
sorts of reasoning regarding their relation with trust . For instance, one could
conjecture that as people grow older, they will trust more (because they care
less about trust being abused), less (because their trust has been betrayed more
often) or use better judgment (because they have learned when to trust and
when not) . Hence, these variables were simply added as controls .
The cluster `View on life' was assessed by kind of job, religion, political
affiliation, and whether one lives in a large city or small village . The third
group of indicators ('Control over short term gratification') was supposed to
examine susceptibility to short-term incentives . Underlying this cluster is the
supposition that the more likely one opts for immediate gratification (like
smoking or drinking), the less trustful she will be because the inability to resist
the (usually short-term) temptation to abuse trust . Finally, the category
Trustfulness
General characteristics
Male 0
Education 0
Income 0
Age 0
View on life
Job is related to economics 0
Education related to economics 0
Religion
Roman Catholics -0 .06
Political pref. (higher= more rightwing) -0 .02
Donates to charity +0.13
Living in city or in village 0
Control over short-term gratification
Smokes 0
Drinks 0
Previous breach of trust
Parents divorced 0
Mother worked when respondent 14 +0.11
Number of previous relationships 0
Number of previous marriages 0
people whose mother worked when they themselves were fourteen years old
are also more likely to trust. The latter is inconsistent with our original
intuitions : The variable `mother worked when respondent 14' was meant to
serve as an admittedly extremely crude proxy for, say, "growing up in a cold
nest" .
Overall, the two experiments display a similar pattern . There is little
evidence to suggest that some groups, or people with certain traits, tend to trust
more often than others . Certainly our sample size warrants the expectation that
even small differences between individuals would have tended to materialize .
A related concern is that perhaps the Trust Game is not a very reliable
measurement instrument, and that we therefore look at trust only through a
haze of measurement error (cf. Thye, 2000) . A conclusive reply to this
argument can only be given based on analyses taking the measurement error
explicitly into account. What we can say is that in the remainder of this chapter,
other effects do materialize, in spite of possible measurement error, which
provides some support for the assertion that the Trust Game has reasonable
reliability as long as one assumes that measurement error does not vary
systematically with the experimental conditions . The effects of disposition we
find here, though relatively weak, seem to relate to pro-social behavior. Those
who score high on a scale measuring pro-social behavior and those who donate
to charity, trust more often . These results are compatible with Uslaner's (in
press) claim that trust is related to a person's general world-view and not so
much to a person's experience with issues regarding trust .
appearance . Even without any information about a person, trust in daily life is
often based on guts feelings and the belief (justified or not) that we are able to
accurately "read" a person's face or appearance ("first impressions are often
truest") . There are (at least) two reasons why appearance of others could guide
our assessments regarding their trustworthiness .
First, it is known that people are particularly susceptible to what has been
coined the fundamental attribution error or correspondence bias . There is an
inclination to attribute observed behavior to an actor's disposition more than to
situational circumstances, even when obvious situational incentives exist that
are sufficient to explain that behavior (Ross, 1977) . In other words, we tend to
interpret behavior as a strong sign of character . Moreover, not only a person's
behavior but also his or her appearance is often taken as displaying that
person's character. The shape and expression of the face, body language, and
clothing can be conceived as providing information about a person's nature,
and people are more than willing to use such cues .
A second, and related, argument relies on what has been termed
(dispositional) category based expectancies (Jones, 1990, page 79) : the belief
that members of a particular group (e .g . rock stars, people over 65, men with
thick black eyebrows, etc) share similar dispositions. A glance at someone's
appearance is often enough to relate that person to a group . A category-based
expectancy is frequently formed, especially when no other information about
the other person is available . Whether these conclusions about others, based on
whatever clue, are warranted is of course an entirely different question .
Evidence in the literature suggesting that people's behavior towards other
persons is affected by physical appearance is, to the best of our knowledge,
mainly related to physical attractiveness . Examples abound in diverse areas of
interest . For instance, physically attractive students are judged more favorably
by their teachers on a number of dimensions including intelligence and various
social skills (Ritts, Patterson & Miles, 1992) ; physical attractiveness of children
is associated with their teacher's expectations about them (Clifford & Walster,
1973) ; physically attractive persons with HIV are considered more responsible
for their condition than others (Agnew, Thompson & Vaida, 1994) ; physically
attractive female-offenders are treated differently by male intake personnel
(Rosenbaum & Chesney, 1994) ; men are more likely to help physically
attractive females (Harrel, 1978), and personnel professionals are reported to
have a (slight) bias in favor of physically attractive job candidates (Morrow et
al ., 1990) . The effect of appearance is not limited to physical attractiveness .
Brownlow (1992) suggests that credibility is affected by facial appearance, and
Lennon (1986) demonstrated an effect of clothing on first impressions of
Anticipation
Player 2 appears trustworthy + +0 .12
Player 2 appears trustworthy ? 0
Aronson & Worchel, 1966; Byrne, 1971 ; Condon & Crano, 1988) . Similarity
could possibly account for the fact that subjects disagreed about who looked
trustworthy : they only assessed those subjects as trustworthy who, in some
way, resembled themselves . One could hypothesize on the basis of similarity
that males perceive other males to be more likely to honor their trust ("he is one
of us guys"), and females perceive other females as more likely to honor their
trust ("she is one of us girls") . Alternatively, if a male judges another male's
trustworthiness, he has the advantage of being similar to the one he judges . The
other person is a male just like him, and therefore may better be able to judge
how that other person is going to behave in a Trust Game . This suggests that
player 1 may be more likely to rely on what he or she would do if he or she
were in player 2's shoes, if player 2 happens to be of the same sex . Additional
analyses revealed that no such effects are supported by the data.
"effective Trust Game" are possible. For instance, one could argue that what is
lacking from the model is the feeling of guilt that player 2 will have when he
or she abuses the trust of player 1 . This can be modeled as an effective Trust
Game by assuming that if player 2 in a Trust Game abuses the trust given by
player 1, player 2 values the payoff he then gets (7) somewhat less . Figure 2
displays the effective Trust Game .
In the guilt model, player 2 honors trust if and only if that player's "guilt
parameter" y2 is larger than (T-R)/(T-S) . Following the model, player 2 will not
abuse player l's trust due to her feelings of guilt for pocketing more cash than
player 1 (T for player 2, as opposed to S for player 1) . Specifically, this guilt
feeling is amplified by the fact that it is exactly player l's behavior that enables
player 2 to receive more money, in the first place . Other researchers have
proposed the same ratio as being related to the percentage of cooperative
choices in a Prisoner's Dilemma (Harris, 1969 ; Rapoport & Chammah, 1965),
though these ratios were inspired by arguments based on repeated rather than
one-shot games . Here, the ratio is a natural consequence of the assumptions of
the guilt model . Now suppose that indeed all persons in the role of player 2 bear
their personal guilt parameter and behave accordingly . Then, as the index
1 gets P
2 gets P
1 gets S 1 gets R
2 gets T- )~ (T-S) 2 gets R
Fig. 2. An Implementation of the "Effective Form" of the Trust Game When Including
Guilt.
Table 4. Net Effects of Monetary Payoffs and of Payoff Indices (risk and
temptation) on (the probability to) Trust .
The separate effects of the payoffs S, P, R",, and T are harder to interpret
because, for instance, P is constrained between S and R so that the potential
increase in the probability to trust, depends on the particular Trust Game being
played. It should be noted that, contrary to our initial expectations, the
probability of trustworthy behavior does not depend on the payoff P (and also
not on risk) . The data show that not all people abuse trust, even if there is a
strong monetary temptation to do so . The question is what kind of motives may
induce player 2 not to give in to the temptation? One such motive could arise
from the fact that player 2 appreciates that player 1 has actually gone out on a
limb by trusting, and thus feels a sense of obligation to reciprocate . The larger
the potential sacrifice of player 1, the larger the motivation for reciprocity (i .e .
players 2 are more likely not to give in to temptation for larger values of P, or
for larger values of risk) . This, in turn, triggers the question what it is that
people are reciprocating when they decide to honor the trust given to them . To
answer this question we turn to another situational aspect besides the monetary
payoffs, namely the structure of the game .
Why is trust being honored? One reason, as suggested above, is reciprocity .
An alternative explanation is based on plain altruism. If a trustor is lucky
enough to be confronted with a trustee who has genuine feelings for the trustor
(or for trustors in general), trust will be honored . There is, however, an essential
difference between genuine altruism and reciprocity . Reciprocity implies a
certain obligation or debt, but this obligation is conditional on previous
behavior of the trustor. It is this conditional aspect that discerns it from
altruism . This is also why the judgment of the extent to which reciprocity has
taken place in an experimental setting is complicated by a methodological
problem . Just looking at what subjects do when confronted with one or several
Trust Games does not suffice . In fact, several researchers (e .g, McCabe,
Rassenti & Smith, 1996) have employed the concept of reciprocity to account
for cooperative behavior in different types of games, without taking into
account rival explanations based on altruism. Indeed, there is ample empirical
evidence that considerations of fairness and decency cause people to act
cooperatively even in games (like "dictator" or "ultimatum") in which there is
no place for reciprocity (e .g . Kagel & Roth, 1995, p . 270 ; Dufwenberg &
Gneezy, 1996) . Therefore, to infer reciprocity, it is essential to employ a control
group where the possibility of reciprocity is precluded .
We propose two ways in which characteristics of the situation may influence
the triggering of reciprocity, which we label Bookkeeping (of utility associated
with gains and losses) and Perceived Intentionality (Keren & Snijders, 1999) .
The first is based on calculations for achieving a balance in terms of costs and
1 gets US 0 1 gets US 50
2 gets US 100 2 gets US 50
1 gets US 0 1 gets US 50
2 gets US 100 2 gets US 50
1 gets US 0 1 gets US 50
2 gets US 100 2 gets US 50
1 gets US 0 1 gets US 50
2 gets US 100 2 gets US 50
1 gets US 0 1 gets US 50
2 gets US 100 2 gets US 50
Fig. 4 . Trust Game, Coin-Flip Game, and Control Condition. Testing the Intentionality
Hypothesis .
In total, 879 participants, mostly students, played a single Trust Game, a single
control condition, or a single "coin-flip Trust Game" (thus, all comparisons are
based on between-subjects designs) . As independent factors, we considered
whether participants were paid in accordance with their choices or received a
flat fee, and whether they participated in the experimental lab or were
interviewed on campus . Five different base Trust Games were used . All
participants were assigned the role of player 2 . See Keren and Snijders (1999)
for further details . A summary of the results is portrayed in Table 5 . We focus
on the results of testing the bookkeeping and intentionality hypothesis . The
numeric entries in this table represent the average effect on the probability to
honor trust. For instance, on average there is a difference of 0 .25 in the
probability of trustworthiness between players 2 in a Trust Game and players
2 in the control condition.
Hypothesis Trustworthiness
Bookkeeping hypothesis
P,-S payoff difference + 0
R2_P2 payoff difference + 0
P,-P2 payoff difference + 0
Intentionality hypothesis
Game versus control condition + +0 .25
Active player 1 versus coin-flip + +0 .18
shot games are not suited to deal with such issues, though it seems logical that
setups using repeated Trust Games could shed some light on the matter . There
is even a more compelling question at the heart of our approach, namely how
well the intricate topic of trust is captured by the abstract games we employ to
measure it . Some critical comments are in order .
Perhaps the most central issue is whether trust behavior can be conceived
(and studied) in an exclusively rational framework. Does the construct of trust
necessarily require consistency, given the structure of the situation and the
preferences of the actors? We know that predictions based on a narrow
economic interpretation of game theory (nobody trusts and nobody honors
trust) are plainly wrong . In response, one may claim the need for more
sophisticated models, for instance models that would more accurately capture
actors' preferences or would better represent the affective aspects associated
with trust. Alternatively, one may argue that an exclusive rational model cannot
(in principle) capture all the subtleties underlying trust considerations on the
simple grounds that people are not always rational, especially when trust is
concerned . The Trust Game undoubtedly captures some primary aspects of
trust yet it may not lend itself to some ("non-rational") particulars associated
with messy real life situations . In addition, the specific structure of the trust
game and the manner in which it is presented in controlled experiments may
implicitly guide participants to behave consistently. The situation presented to
participants is well structured, creating a "conversational logic" (Schwarz,
1996) that triggers neat and orderly behavior from subjects . Asking participants
to play several Trust Games could be interpreted as what is referred to as
`demand characteristics' . Specifically, participants might conclude (con-
sciously or unconsciously) that the experimenter's aim is to test whether their
behavior is consistent across the games . By responding to such demands,
participants may exhibit behavior that is consistent across payoffs, whereas in
real-life this consistency would have been absent .
A related worry is that we cannot exclude that real-life trust is to a large
extent based on "minor considerations" typically unsuited for treatment in
systematic research : the rise of a brow, the bad taste of your coffee, or the
weather being sunny. Statistical models can predict behavior in a single shot
Trust Game reasonably well, not perfectly (Snijders & Keren, 1999) . The
unexplained part is still large, but what is worse is that this unexplained part
might be, for the larger part, random noise. What does it mean when we find
out that we will never explain more than 5% of the variance?
We feel we have only scratched the surface of the intricate subject of trust .
Our story in the introduction about the mechanic selling the car paints a picture
("Can he be trusted? Should I do it? What is he saying between the lines?") that
can only be partially captured in the abstract world of Trust Games, and even
in that abstract world we only looked at part of the main effects . Still, were we
forced to take a stand on the issue raised in the title of our contribution, then,
based on the empirical evidence available to us at this moment, we would claim
that the question is not so much who will trust, and also not whom will be
trusted, but whether the situation induces trustful and trustworthy behavior.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by a grant from the Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) .
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WHERE DO SOCIAL STRUCTURES
COME FROM?
Satoshi Kanazawa
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
161
Apart from its inability to explain the origins of social structures, structuralism
has a few theoretical problems, despite its tremendous empirical success . First,
while structuralism and network theory purport to explain individual behavior
purely in terms of properties and configurations of the social structure, all
structural theories must nonetheless make some assumptions about the internal
states of individual actors .' Take, for instance, Blau's (1977a) macrostructural
theory, one of the most prolific and successful sociological theories from any
perspective . While the theory aims to explain the patterns of intergroup
relations from the properties of groups in society (mainly, the extent and
patterns of heterogeneity and inequality among individuals within and between
groups), the theory must nevertheless assume certain "sociopsychological
tendencies" (Blau, 1977b, p . 46) on the part of individual actors . For example,
individuals in Blau's theory must want to marry and they must want to
associate with others . In fact, Blau must assume a uniform level of desire to
marry and associate with others across all individuals ; otherwise, his theory
does not work . If individuals do not have a constant level of desire to marry or
associate with others, then heterogeneity, in the face of ingroup preferences,
will not lead to greater levels of intermarriage and intergroup relations because
individuals could simply choose not to marry or associate with anyone at all
when there are no ingroup members to marry or associate with . Then his
theorem (T- 11 : Increasing heterogeneity increases the probability of intergroup
relations (Blau, 1977a, pp . 78-83)) will be logically false .
Some of Blau's assumptions explicitly refer to internal states of individual
actors . For instance, the very first, and therefore the most fundamental,
assumption of the theory assumes that individuals are homophilous (A- 1 :
Social associations are more prevalent among persons in proximate than
between those in distant social positions (Blau, 1977a, pp . 36-41)) . Since no
prior assumptions are made about the structural constraints on associations, this
homophilous tendency must necessarily come from individual preferences and
desires to associate with others in similar social positions .' In other words, A-1
posits choice homophily, not induced homophily (McPherson & Smith-Lovin,
1987, pp . 371-372) . In fact, Blau (1977a, p . 36 ; emphases added) explicitly
states : "People in similar social positions share social experiences and roles,
and have similar attributes and attitudes, which promote social intercourse
among them . This is the reasoning underlying the first axiom, on which
numerous theorems rest."
While Blau's macrostructural theory, and other structural theories, must
assume certain sociopsychological tendencies, they cannot explain why
individuals have these tendencies . Why do individuals want to marry? Why do
individuals want to associate with others? Why are individuals homophilous?
Another theoretical problem of structuralism is that it treats all actors as
equivalent and interchangeable nodes in a social network (Blau, 1989, p . 53 ;
Smith-Lovin & McPherson, 1993, p . 223) . "Structuralists do not attribute
social or psychological characteristics to individual humans . . . . Social
phenomena are properties of social networks" (Mayhew, 1980, p . 346) . In
network theory, actors (egos) who have ties to identical or similar others
(alters) are called "structurally equivalent" (Lorrain & White, 1971) or
"regularly equivalent" (Sailer, 1978), and the theory predicts their behavior will
be similar (since they share all structural characteristics) . Alters in turn are
defined by to which other actors they have ties . For instance, network theory
does not posit that men and women are inherently different . It explains all sex
Apart from the two theoretical problems identified above, the most significant
problem with structuralism and network theory is its inability to account for the
origins of social structures and networks . While all theories must leave some
factors exogenous, and no theories can explain everything, I believe that social
structures, which are the primary causal factors in structuralism, are too
important for it to leave exogenous, just as values and preferences, which are
among the primary causal factors in the microfoundations of rational choice
theory, are too important for it to leave exogenous .
One of the very few factors that structuralists use to explain the origin of
networks is homophily (McPherson & Smith-Lovin, 1987) . The principle of
homophily (Mark, 1998b, pp . 454-455) states that people who are similar in
sociodemographic characteristics are more likely to interact with each other
than are people who are dissimilar . A large number of empirical studies
conclusively demonstrate that personal networks are highly homophilous
(Fischer, 1982, pp . 179-190 ; Marsden, 1987 ; McPherson & Smith-Lovin,
1987, footnote 1) . Homophily in principle can explain the emergence of social
networks from the state of nature . Given a collection of atomized individuals
with no ties, a man is more likely to develop a tie with another man than with
a woman . A white is more likely to develop a tie with another white than with
a black. Eventually, a social network of a given type will emerge from the
collection of individuals with homophilous tendencies .
However, homophily as an explanation of the origins of social structures and
networks runs into at least four specific problems, all of which ultimately
derive from the fact that the concept of homophily is atheoretical. First, this
explanation of the emergence of social structures, in fact, the very concept of
homophily itself, violates one of the fundamental assumptions of structuralism
that actors do not have inherent attributes or characteristics (Mayhew, 1980 ;
Smith-Lovin & McPherson, 1993) . It is strictly with inherent individual
characteristics such as sex, race, ethnicity, education, and income that actors
can be more or less homophilous on these attributes (although Smith-Lovin &
McPherson (1993, footnote 2) deny that any of these attributes is truly
individual in nature) .
Second, given that individuals have multiple sociodemographic character-
istics, and given that the multiple correlation among these dimensions R < 1 .0
(or, to use Blau's (1977a) language, given less than perfect consolidation of
multiple parameters), when individuals are homophilous on one dimension,
they are necessarily less homophilous on others . Individuals cannot be
maximally or equally homophilous on two or more dimensions simultaneously .
Conversely, once again, given R < 1 .0, one can always identify one dimension
on which individuals are necessarily more homophilous than other dimensions .
Given R < 1 .0, personal networks are by definition simultaneously homo-
philous on some dimensions and heterophilous on others (Blau, 1977b, pp .
44-46 ; Merton, 1972, pp . 21-29) . Chance (random pairing) is the only criterion
against which one can evaluate homophily .
Third, the very important distinction that McPherson and Smith-Lovin
(1987, pp . 371-372) make between choice homophily and induced homophily
turns out not to be a distinction . Choice homophily happens when individuals
have the opportunity to associate with either similar or dissimilar others and
they selectively choose to associate only or mostly with similar others to the
exclusion of dissimilar others . Induced homophily happens when individuals
have the opportunity to associate only or mostly with similar others because the
groups to which they belong are already homogeneous . In homogeneous
groups, most or all of individuals' associates are already similar to them even
when they choose their associates randomly from other group members and do
not make any conscious effort to associate only with similar others . McPherson
and Smith-Lovin's (1987) study of voluntary organizations in Nebraska shows
that most personal networks are homophilous because of induced homophily,
not choice homophily. Induced homophily, however, can take place only in the
context of homogeneous groups . How do groups get to be homogeneous in the
first place? Why do individuals join groups whose members are already similar
to them? It is obvious that what produces group homogeneity (a necessary
condition for induced homophily) is prior choice homophily (Feld 1982, p .
798) . Induced homophily at time t is the result of choice homophily at time t-i
(i=1, 2, . . oc) .
Finally, the most significant problem with the concept of homophily and its
atheoretical nature is that nobody knows where homophily comes from . Why
are individuals homophilous? Why are they more homophilous on some
dimensions than others? For instance, why are they more homophilous on age,
sex and race than on education and occupation (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954 ;
McPherson & Smith-Lovin, 1987, Table 1 ; Verbrugge, 1977)? If homophily is
so important and pervasive, then why isn't everybody gay? Marriage is one of
the most important social relations in anyone's life, and sex is one of the most
salient sociodemographic dimensions . Why then are most people decidedly not
homophilous in this very important social relation on this very salient
dimension? Obviously, the answer is that most people are biologically
heterosexual and therefore heterophilous on sex in marriage (just like a few are
homosexual and homophilous for the same reason) .' If biological and
evolutionary predispositions underlie whether or not one is homophilous in this
particular social relation on this particular dimension, is it unlikely that similar
predispositions also underlie other choices individuals make in their net-
works?
millions of years during the Pleistocene epoch in the African savanna where
humans lived during most of this time (Maryanski & Turner, 1992, pp . 69-90) .
This environment - African savanna where humans lived in small bands of fifty
or so related individuals as hunter-gatherers - is called the environment of
evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) (Bowlby, 1969) or ancestral environment, and
it is to the EEA or the ancestral environment that our body (including the brain)
is adapted .
Figure 1 presents the basic theoretical structure of evolutionary psychology .
It argues that an adaptive problem leads to an evolved psychological
mechanism, which then usually leads to adaptive (fitness-maximizing)
behavior in the EEA . Evolutionary psychology assumes that most behavior in
the EEA maximizes inclusive fitness of the actor . However, it recognizes that
our current environment may be radically different from the EEA, yet our
psychological mechanisms (just like our hands and our pancreas) are still the
same as they were in the EEA and produce the same behavior as they did in the
EEA. This leads to the distinct possibility that our behavior in our current
environment might be completely maladaptive . To the extent that our current
environment is different from the EEA (to which all psychological mechanisms
are adapted), evolutionary psychology would predict that our current behavior
is maladaptive .
Relying as it does on universal human nature and its sex differences (distinct
male and female human natures) for its explanations of human behavior,
evolutionary psychology is particularly suited for explaining social phenomena
that are culturally universal, such as why it is that young men commit an
overwhelming majority of violent and property crimes in every human society
(Kanazawa & Still, 2000). However, it can also explain culturally variable
phenomena. By specifying how universal human nature interacts with varied
local environments, evolutionary psychology can also explain, for instance,
why women in some societies choose to many polygynously while those in
others choose to marry monogamously in the absence of the institution of
marriage (Kanazawa & Still, 1999) . However, due to its reliance on universal
human nature, evolutionary psychology cannot explain idiosyncratic differ-
ences in individual behavior. Behavior genetic and developmental
psychological theories can better explain such unique individual behavior.
Evolutionary psychology tends to explain the behavior of individuals in rough
categories, such as men and women (sex differences), rich and poor (class
differences), or young and old (age differences) .
While evolutionary psychology proper is a microlevel theory of individual
behavior, it can also explain some emergent phenomena . A key assumption in
the macrolevel application of evolutionary psychology is the methodologically
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individualist one that the emergent properties at the macro level reflect the
aggregation of individual behavior at the micro level . Evolutionary psychology
can thus explain the emergence of some norms (Kanazawa & Still, 2001) . It is
my contention here that evolutionary psychology can also explain the
emergence of another aggregate phenomenon : Social structures and networks .
I believe that it can address and begin to solve some of the problems of
structuralism and network theory discussed above .
How can evolutionary psychology solve some of the theoretical problems of
structuralism and network theory? First, it can explain why most personal
networks are homophilous on such dimensions as sex, age, and race . One very
important implication of evolutionary psychology is that the human brain is
biased to perceive the environment as if it were still the EEA . Since the basic
architecture of the human brain has not changed since the end of the
Pleistocene epoch about 10,000 years ago, it has difficulty comprehending
elements that emerged in the meantime . This is why most people have innate
phobias of spiders and snakes, many species of which are poisonous and
therefore represented genuine threats to survival in the EEA, but they do not
have phobias of such evolutionarily novel dangers like cars and guns, even
though far more people in contemporary societies die of automobile accidents
and gunshot wounds than of spider or snake bites . The human brain, adapted
to the EEA, functions as if spiders and snakes represent some of the greatest
threats to human survival (Buss, 1999, pp . 62-63) .
Human society in the EEA was more or less egalitarian and there were few
clear differentiations among individuals . Major exceptions to this, however,
were sex and age (Maryanski & Turner, 1992, pp. 78-89) . Human society, just
like primate societies, has always had clear divisions of labor based on age and
sex, and has always been gerontocratic. These features of human society in the
ancestral environment put people into age and sex categories, and our ancestors
mostly associated with others of the same sex and similar ages . And, of course,
all human societies in the ancestral environment were racially and ethnically
homogeneous . Humans also possess a psychological mechanism that makes
them ethnocentric and preferentially associate with others in their deme (a local
population within which people marry endogamously) (Whitmeyer, 1997) . I
contend that individuals have homophilous tendencies today because we have
evolved psychological mechanisms that compel us to associate with others of
the same sex and race and similar age, and these evolved psychological
mechanisms reflect the social organization of human society in the EEA .
Evolutionary psychology, and its assumption of the human brain being
biased to perceive the environment as if it were the EEA, can also explain why
individuals are more homophilous on sex, age, and race than on education and
Jane, they explain how the compositions of their personal networks remain
more or less the same through adult years because "Jim is serious about his
career as an engineer [and] Jane is equally serious about her nursing".
However, the change begins when they become parents . "When their first child
is born, however, Jane's mother comes to visit for two weeks ; Jane begins to
use her sister as a babysitter for daytime care while she is working . . . . Because
more of her time is taken up with the baby, Jane's networks become more
centered on neighborhood and kin, to some extent at the expense of her work
and voluntary association friends . Jim's work and group ties are less altered"
(pp . 234-235) .
Their explanation, however, simply begs the questions : Why is it Jane's
mother who comes to visit after the baby is born, not Jim's (when Jim's mother
is presumably equally related to the baby as Jane's mother)? Or is she? Why
is it Jane's sister who becomes their babysitter, not Jim's sister (when both
sisters are presumably equally related to the baby)? Or are they? Smith-Lovin
and McPherson assume that it is Jane, not Jim, who is the primary caretaker of
the baby. Why is this so?
Evolutionary psychology can answer all of these questions . The fact that the
female gamete (egg) is greater in size and fewer in number than the male
gamete (sperm) (which is the biological definition of male and female), and the
fact that gestation takes place within the female body, together lead, directly or
indirectly, to almost all of the sex differences in preferences and behavior . One
of these differences is parental investment . Across all species for which these
two conditions hold, the female makes greater parental investment than the
male . In fact, for most species, the male parental investment is limited to the
sperm. The sex differences in parental investment occurs because males under
these conditions have far greater fitness ceiling than the females do ; males can
produce a far larger number of offspring in their lifetime than females can .
This is true of humans as well . Thus, while successful reproduction is
equally important to men and women, each child is far more valuable to a
woman than to a man because it represents a greater share of a woman's
lifetime reproductive potential than a man's . Men are exceptional in nature in
that they make a large amount of parental investment into their offspring
(compared to males of other species) . Nonetheless, women (just like females of
most other species) still make far greater parental investment into their children
than men do, because women's evolved psychological mechanisms compel
them to do so .
For these evolutionary reasons, women are more motivated to make parental
investment than men are . However, women cannot always do it alone;
sometimes, they need help from others, especially in the EEA where resources
were scarce and life was precarious . When mothers need help in their effort to
raise their children, nobody is more likely or willing to deliver it than their kin .
Women's kin are sometimes even more motivated to invest in the children than
the putative fathers are, because, due to paternity uncertainty (created by the
possibility of cuckoldry), the fathers may or may not be genetically related to
the children, whereas the maternal kin are always genetically related to the
children . For the same reason, paternal kin are not as motivated to invest in the
children as maternal kin are . I contend that this is why women, even today, have
a larger number of kin in their personal networks than men do . Women's
evolved psychological mechanism compels them to make greater parental
investment into the children, and women need to rely on their kin in case they
need help, materially or otherwise .
EMPIRICAL TESTS
common one of an interaction effect between sex and the independent variables
of interest . A significant sex interaction effect would only demonstrate that the
coefficients for men and women are significantly different from each other. It
does not tell us if the coefficient is significant for women and not significant for
men, as I predict . (The sex interaction effect could be significant, and the
coefficients for men and women could both be significant or both be non-
significant .) I therefore estimate the equations separately for men and women,
rather than include sex interaction terms .
Dependent variable . I use the measure of kin density as the dependent
variable . This is the proportion of kin among their (up to) five closest
associates, and thus varies from 0 to 1 .0 . Unlike a similar measure used by
Marsden (1987) and others, however, I exclude the spouse from the category of
kin, for two reasons . First, the respondent's current marital status is one of the
predictors in the following tests, so I need a measure of kin density that is
independent of whether or not they have a spouse . Second, and more
importantly, from the evolutionary psychological perspective, and particularly
for my explanation, the spouses do not count as kin because they are not
genetically related to the respondents .
Marsden (1987, p . 129) reports, that, when spouses are included among kin,
women's kin density is 0 .066 higher than men's (0 .580 vs . 514, p < 0 .01) .
When I exclude spouses from kin, the difference increases to 0.1064 (0 .3881
vs . 0 .2817, p < 0 .0001) . Thus the sex differences in kin density of personal
networks is even greater than previously thought .
Independent variables . I use the measures of total family income and
current marital status (1 if currently married) as main predictors of kin density.
I predict significant negative effects of both variables on women's kin density,
but not men's .
Control variables . Since the number of kin that the GSS respondents can
have in their personal networks is in reverse proportion to the number of
coworkers (given that the GSS limited the total number of associates to five),
I need to control for the respondent's work status . I include variables that
measure respondent's status which make it more likely that they have
coworkers in their personal networks : Full-time employment (1 if the
respondent has a full-time job), and occupational prestige (the Hodge-Siegel-
Rossi Prestige Scores) . Since blacks, especially black males, have fewer ties to
their families than others (Marsden, 1987, Table 3), I also control for race (1 if
black) . Finally, in order specifically to test the explanation offered by Smith-
Lovin and McPherson (1993 ; Munch et al ., 1997), I include a measure of
parenthood in the equations (1 if the respondent has had one or more children,
0 if the respondent is childless) . If Smith-Lovin and McPherson are correct,
Women Men
Predictor : (1) (2) (3) (4)
Controls :
Full-time job -0 .0701** -0.0674*
(0 .0270) (0.0301)
Occupational -0.0013 -0.0024
prestige (0.0010) (8 .7194-4)
Race 0 .0155 -0 .1776***
(0 .0451) (0 .0461)
Parenthood 0 .0330 -0.1069***
(0.0306) (0.0276)
Constant 0 .5760 0.5612 0 .4653 0.5995
(0.0396) (0 .0586) (0.0522) (0 .0599)
Number of cases 770 706 648 634
R2 0.0304 0 .0411 0.0195 0 .0771
Women Men
Predictor : (1) (2) (3) (4)
Currently married -0 .0758** -0 .0784** -0 .1026*** -0.0495
(0 .0242) (0 .0258) (0 .0262) (0.0300)
Controls :
Full-time job -0 .0789** -0.0810**
(0 .0259) (0.0269)
Occupational -0 .0016 -0.0027**
prestige (9 .2555) (8.3522)
Race -0 .0352 -0.1649***
(0 .0421) (0.0439)
Parenthood 0 .0538 -0.0864**
(0 .0299) (0.0304)
Constant 0 .4273 0 .4806 0 .3464 0 .5512
(0 .0174) (0 .0474) (0 .0208) (0.0427)
Number of cases 844 774 687 672
R2 0 .0115 0 .0361 0 .0220 0.0761
because they need their kin's help in their effort to make parental investment
into their children .
Critics might argue, however, that the non-significant effect of parenthood on
women's kin density disconfirms my evolutionary psychological explanation
(as well as Smith-Lovin and McPherson's) . If, as I argue, women need their kin
to help raise their children, why doesn't being a parent have an effect on their
kin density?
This is because the human brain has difficulty making facultative choices in
response to situations that did not exist in the EEA . Take the example of our
preference for sweets and fats (Barash, 1982, pp . 144-147) . We have an
evolved psychological mechanism that compels us to consume sweet and fatty
foods because, in the nutritionally deficient EEA, those who had a taste for and
consumed more such foods (which contain higher calories) survived better and
had greater reproductive success than those who didn't have such a taste . This
psychological mechanism, however, does not respond facultatively to different
nutritional conditions . It does not say "If you are malnourished and can use
extra calories, then consume as many sweet and fatty foods as you can get your
hands on. If, however, you are not malnourished, then do not consume such
foods" . It does not say so because the second contingency ("if you are not
malnourished") never existed in the EEA ; our ancestors were always on the
verge of malnutrition . This psychological mechanism does not allow us to
make facultative choices in response to different conditions, and that is why we
have a constant craving for sweet and fatty foods regardless of our current
nutritional condition . We have a taste for such foods even though few of us are
malnourished today, and we get obese as a result.
Similarly, parenthood was a constant in the EEA . Given that humans in the
EEA were mildly polygynous (Alexander et al ., 1979 ; Leutenegger & Kelly,
1977), there were many men who did not have any mates and therefore did not
reproduce at all, but we are not descended from these men . And almost all
women had mates and reproduced in the EEA . Given the absence of reliable
means of birth control, parenthood was inevitable for anyone with mates
(which included most adult women) . Thus our evolved psychological
mechanisms do not allow us to make facultative choices on the basis of our
parental status ("If you have children, do X ; if you don't have children, do Y"),
because, once again, the second contingency ("if you don't have children")
never held true for our ancestors from whom we are descended and inherited
our psychological mechanisms . This is why all women, regardless of their
current parental status, are compelled to maintain ties with their kin in
preparation for making parental investment into their offspring . In contrast,
even in the EEA, some women and families were materially better off than
others, and some women were "married" while the husbands of others have
either died or left them. Thus the human brain, adapted to the EEA, can make
the facultative decisions such as "if you're poor, rely on your kin ; if you are
rich, do not rely on your kin" or "if you do not have a mate present, rely on
your kin ; if you have a mate present, do not rely on your kin ."
DISCUSSION
NOTES
5 . A gene that predisposes men toward homosexuality has been located at Xq28 (X
chromosome, arm q, location 28), even though the gene itself has not been identified
(Hamer et al ., 1993) . The same location, however, does not seem to influence women's
sexual orientation (Hu et al ., 1995) . Given that women's sexual orientation tends to be
more flexible than men's, it is entirely possible that no such genes exist for women
(Blum, 1997, pp . 127-157) .
6. I agree with Blau (1977b, p . 28, emphases added) wholeheartedly : "Of course,
there can be no doubt that technological and economic conditions, cultural values, and
psychological motives influence human behavior and hence social relations . This is not
at issue . Granted the existence of these influences, the question raised is what
independent influences the structure of social positions in a society or community exerts
on social relations" .
7 . For instance, Mark's (1998a) theory of information and social structure can
explain the emergence of social structures from undifferentiated systems . One of the
integral assumptions of his model, however, is the similarity assumption : "Individuals
with similar information are more likely to interact than are individuals with dissimilar
information" (Mark, 1998a, p . 312) . In other words, individuals in his model must : a)
be different in the information they possess ; b) be able to differentiate others on the
basis of the information they possess ; and c) act on this differentiation .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Paula England, Michael Hechter, Peter J . Katzenstein, Noah Mark,
Alexandra R . Maryanski, Alan S . Miller, David Strang, colloquium participants
at the Department of Sociology, Cornell University, and the Population Studies
Center, University of Pennsylvania, and Editors for their comments on earlier
drafts . I dedicate this paper to Phyllis Sinclair, Mary C . Still, Cara mia Kelly,
Michele E . Pinkow, and all the other women who over the years bugged me
about my own kin network (or lack thereof) . Their remarkably consistent and
persistent nagging provided me with the insight behind the hypothesis
regarding women and kin networks proposed herein . Direct all correspondence
to : Satoshi Kanazawa, Department of Sociology, Indiana University of
Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705-1087 . Email : Kanazawa@grove .iup .edu .
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PROCESSING PERFORMANCE
EVALUATIONS IN HOMOGENEOUS
TASK GROUPS : FEEDBACK AND
GENDER EFFECTS
ABSTRACT
This experiment investigates the development of performance expectations
in status-homogeneous task groups. The issue of central interest is
whether or not gender is a factor in expectation formation when group
members are of the same sex and work on a gender-neutral task. Male and
female undergraduates, participating in same-sex dyads, worked first
individually and then as a team on a novel, visual perception task . Apart
from the feedback they received from the experimenter at the end of the
individual performance phase, participants were given no information
with which to form differentiated expectations about self and partner for
this task We investigate effects from both sex of dyad and level of feedback
on: (a) influence behavior during the team phase, and (b) selected
variables obtained through self-reports. Rejection of influence data show
statistically significant effects from feedback only . Self-reports, on the
other hand, reveal significant results from both feedback and sex of subject
across several assessments of self's and partner's competence, and from
sex of subject in some of the items concerning perceptions of the
experimenter's status . Different conditions for the emergence of such
185
and "sex of dyad" interchangeably.) The experimental task, in turn, was either
left undefined in relation to gender, or explicitly dissociated from it . Seven of
these experiments included only male dyads, six had only female dyads, and
six included both types - this latter group is the one of special interest here . Of
those six, Camilleri and Berger (1967) (Study 2), Camilleri et al . (1972), and
Conner (1977) show no significant sex-of-dyad differences in rejection of
influence, Foschi et al . (1985) and Ilardi and McMahon (1988) report some
marked (although not statistically significant) such differences, and Foschi and
Freeman (1991) report significant sex-of-dyad differences . We note, however,
that only Foschi and Freeman (1991) and Ilardi and McMahon (1988) were
specifically designed to investigate sex-of-dyad effects . Thus, these are the only
studies that both analyze the data by this factor and include a sufficiently large
number of subjects per cell in this respect (i .e . at least fifteen, as it is generally
the case in this type of research) . Note also that neither study has a complete
design regarding level of feedback .
provides either direct or indirect information about self's and other's task
competence in that setting .' For example, the women's standards for ability
could be more lenient than the men's .
Foschi and Freeman (1991) deal more extensively with such bases than any
of the other five studies identified in this group . Thus, that experiment includes
subjects' reports on task importance, seriousness about doing it well,
motivation, and control over performances, and these data were used to
investigate a possible association between each of these factors and the
obtained sex differences in influence behavior. No such association was found,
although, in each condition, results on reported ability in self and other
matched rejection of influence rates . More specifically : the women differ-
entiated, as instructed, between feedback indicating either clearly or
ambiguously that the partner had more ability than themselves ; the men, on the
other hand, treated the information in both conditions as equally ambiguous
indications of the partner's superiority . The authors propose that these results
may be explained by sex differences in the status assigned to the source and/or
in the number of performances required for a convincing inference of ability .
The study, however, was not designed to provide data on either factor .
In this article we focus on three sets of key task-related variables . These
concern self's : (a) own task and performance requirements for the inference of
ability, (b) assessment of the partner's task choices and overall competence
relative to self, and (c) assessment of the experimenter's competence . Sex
differences in these factors, as well as in meeting scope conditions, could be
due to characteristics of the particular men and women in the sample studied
(see Related Issues below), or could be the result of additional conditions for
the activation of gender . In either case, whether men and women are similar or
different in these respects needs to be examined for a fuller understanding of
how they form expectations .
Research Questions
mentioned earlier have not been studied in detail, and the same is true of
additional factors that could be associated with gender in that setting . Thus,
further investigation of this topic is necessary .
We carry out a study systematically varying only the two independent
variables of main interest in this area, namely, sex of dyad and level of
feedback . The setting under consideration is designed to meet the following
scope conditions : self (i) values the ability required for the task ; (ii) is task-
oriented ; (iii) is collectively oriented ; (iv) accepts the evaluations received from
the source; (v) receives no other information with which to form either higher
or lower expectations relative to the partner ; and (vi) believes that no
association has been established between any external status characteristic and
the task.
We also identify three sets of factors that we consider of central importance
in expectation formation in such a setting . We do not vary them experimentally
but rather, leave room for subjects to report their own values . We then assess
whether or not these factors vary by sex of subject (as well as level of feedback)
and, if so, whether the variation is sufficient to affect expectations .
(a) Task and performance requirements. These involve self's own standards
for ability and lack of ability (both for self and the partner) . Research has
shown that competence standards affect how performance evaluations are
processed (Foschi, 1996 ; Foschi & Freeman, 1991 ; Foschi et al ., 1985) . For
example, a person setting a demanding standard for ability (e .g . 85% or more
correct responses) will not infer as much competence from a performance of
75% correct responses as a person setting a more lenient standard (e .g . 65% or
more correct) . We propose that, for a more thorough understanding of the role
of standards in ability assignment, they should be considered in relation to a
specified number of performances - rather than in absolute terms. For example,
we expect that a standard of 85% applied to 100 performances will result in a
more definite inference regarding a person's ability than the same standard
applied to only 20. The perceived validity of the test used to assess competence,
as well as self's perceptions of task difficulty, are also of related interest here .
(b) Partner's task choices and overall competence relative to self. We
investigate several variables concerning self's views of the partner's choices,
namely, confidence in them, their perceived correctness and importance to self,
and impressions of the partner's seriousness in making them . In addition, we
ask directly about impressions of the two persons' overall competence, as
several expectation states studies show this variable to be correlated with
rejection of influence (Foddy & Smithson, 1999 ; Foschi, 1996, Foschi &
Freeman, 1991 ; Foschi et al ., 1985 ; but see also Lockheed et al ., 1983 ; Riches
& Foddy, 1989 for studies reporting no such correlation) . Note that self-reports
Related Issues
The present research also relates directly to several important theoretical and
methodological issues in the experimental study of status processes, as
follows .
A . Behavioral and self-report measures . In all studies using the standard
setting, the dependent variable of central interest has been rejection of
influence . This is assessed through the proportion of times a person rejects the
partner's choices over the series of trials that makes up their collective task . The
advantages of this measure are clear : the fact that it consists of relatively
spontaneous behavioral responses makes it less likely to be reactive than are
paper-and-pencil measures ; because it involves several responses, it is more
reliable than measures of a single act . Numerous studies (see, for example,
Wagner & Berger, 1993 for a review) testify to its usefulness . Additional
measures, collected through written questionnaires either before, during, or
after the experimental session have also been used in this setting, particularly
in the more recent studies (e .g . Foschi, 1996 ; Lovaglia, 1995 ; Riches & Foddy,
1989 ; Troyer & Younts, 1997) . These self-reports provide auxiliary data on
other factors of interest ; that is, they are manipulation checks on independent
variables and scope conditions, and measures of intervening and additional
dependent variables . Self-reports are also of value in verifying the comparabil-
ity of studies using this research setting . Here we collect and report in detail on
a variety of such measures and on their relationship to rejection of influence .
It should be clear, however, that behaviors and written responses to
questionnaires provide data of a different nature : the former assess what people
do ; the latter, what they say - and the two are not always consistent with each
other. Thus, although both are useful, they often provide information on
reactions to different situations . This is also the case within studies using the
standard setting . Note in particular that the core of expectation states theory is
about the relationships between status characteristics, competence beliefs,
expectations, and behaviors, and that none of these links is assumed to be
conscious . Self-reports, on the other hand, are likely to make a person aware of
his or her responses . Furthermore, scope conditions such as task- and collective
orientation may not always be present when the objective is to complete a
theory, the matter of interest is not the study of same-sex groups per se but,
rather, that of groups representing equal status . Thus, one could propose to
form such groups through a "new" (i .e . created by the experimenter) attribute
rather than by using an existing, organismic one . It would then be possible to
assign participants at random to, for example, groups of either equally high or
equally low status . Note, however, that the sex-of-subject issue does not go
away, as the participants who would be thus assigned would, in turn, be either
men or women . This is, then, an additional reason for including both male and
female subjects even when studying same-sex groups .
METHOD
the figures of 9 and 15 to signal one person's superiority over the other without
definitely establishing that one had ability and the other did not ; this allows for
the possibility of subjects activating and using various standards to interpret
these evaluations .' Subjects in the control conditions ((2) and (5)) received no
scores . An overview of the design appears in Table 1 . Next, all participants
completed a written questionnaire consisting of a variety of items : some were
checks on independent variables and scope conditions, others provided data on
the additional variables described earlier, and the remaining were fillers
included to maintain the realism of the cover story and help conceal possibly
reactive items .
During the second series of trials, the two participants were instructed to
work as a team and try to arrive at a correct choice in each trial . Subjects were
told that a team would be awarded two points whenever both persons were
correct, and that the three teams with the most points would each win a $30
prize (in addition to the lottery prizes for which all subjects were eligible) . For
consistency with other experiments with a similar design, the task varied
slightly during this phase . It now involved two patterns per trial, and subjects
had ten seconds to decide which of the two contained more white . The same
ability as in the first phase was said to be involved . After a subject made a
decision, the partner's "choice" was relayed. This message was manipulated to
result in 20 disagreements and 5 agreements on the initial choices . Each person
then had five seconds to make his or her own final selection . The decision to
remain with one's initial choice after a disagreement is referred to as a "self-
response ;" the proportion of such responses operationalizes influence
rejection .
At the conclusion of this series, subjects completed a second questionnaire
that included further manipulation checks and measures of additional variables,
as well as fillers as described earlier. The instrument also served to assess any
misunderstandings and/or suspicions regarding the procedures . Next, subjects
were interviewed individually to check further on these issues, and then were
fully debriefed about the true nature of the study.
RESULTS
On the basis of the information obtained through the written questionnaires and
the post-experimental interviews, 17 subjects (10 men and 7 women) were
excluded from the analysis . This figure represents 10.90% of the total number
of participants . Rejection rules were conservative (i .e . they required extreme
values over several items) and formulated beforehand, and this percentage
compares favorably with the exclusion rates of similar experiments . The
excluded subjects can be classified as follows : one volunteered well articulated
suspicions about the true nature of the study, five misunderstood crucial
sections of the instructions and/or the written questions, and fifteen showed a
clear lack of task orientation and/or collective orientation . (Four subjects
belong in more than one of these categories .) There is no evident pattern in the
distribution of exclusions across conditions . Our analyses include only the 139
retained subjects .
We analyze all results through ANOVAs (either two-way or three-way) .
Except for the analysis of the number of correct responses estimated by
control-group subjects, all two-way ANOVAs involve sex of subject and level
of feedback . We use three-way ANOVAs in the following cases : since several
items appeared in both questionnaires, for those items we also check for
possible effects from phase of the study (namely, either individual or team) .' A
significant effect from this variable occurred only for task importance, and this
is discussed later in this section ; otherwise, the data have been collapsed across
questionnaires . More generally, we discuss and present details of all analyses
yielding significant results (and three borderline-significant results closest to
p = 0.05) . If effects from a variable do not meet these criteria, they are not
mentioned and the data from all its values are collapsed . Exceptions to this rule
are some of the results in Tables 2 and 4 : although there are no statistically
significant sex-of-subject effects in rejection of influence and confidence in
partner's choices, we nevertheless present these data by condition because of
their centrality to our discussion . No significant interaction effects were found
regarding any of the variables studied .
We do not analyze data by experimenter because we consider the number of
observations available for that analysis to be insufficient (10-12 per cell) ; in
any case, no substantial differences by experimenter are apparent regarding any
variable, as intended . In discussing our results, we group conditions (as per
Table 1) by their shared level of one of the independent variables . Thus, for
Manipulation Checks
All subjects reported believing, as informed, that they and the partner were of
the same sex and highly similar in age and level of education . Furthermore, all
subjects in the experimental conditions recalled exactly the scores received by
self and partner in the first phase, while those in the control conditions
estimated that, on average, they themselves had made 11 .26 [2 .91] correct
responses in that phase while the partner had made 12 .36 [2 .45] . Results from
a two-way ANOVA with sex of subject and recipient of estimated score (either
self or partner) as the factors indicate the difference between those two figures
to be significant (F (1, 90)=3 .87, p = 0 .052) . As another manipulation check,
subjects rated self's and other's performances from Poor (1) to Excellent (6) .
These ratings were affected by feedback as follows . The overall self-rating by
the better performers was 4 .73 [0.54] ; by those receiving no scores, 3 .45 [0 .83] ;
and by the worse performers, 2 .34 [0 .99] (F (2, 133)=100 .73, p=0 .000) . The
corresponding figures for the ratings of the partner's performance were : 3 .10
[0 .63], 3 .91 [0 .62], and 5 .16 [0 .48] ; F (2, 133) =142.97, p = 0 .000 .
We used five bipolar scales to assess perceptions of contrast sensitivity in
terms of its value and lack of association with other attributes . Overall means
from three of these items were : Creative (1) - Routine (6) : 3 .42 [1 .42] ; Intuitive
(1) - Learned (6) : 2 .27 [1 .06] ; and Specific (1) - Related to a Wide Variety of
Abilities (6) : 3 .91 [1 .37] . Responses to Masculine (1) - Feminine (6) showed
a borderline sex-of-subject effect (M (women) : 3 .80 [0 .77] ; M (men) : 3 .64
[0 .69] ; F (1, 266)=3 .52, p=0 .062), while responses to Important (1) -
Unimportant (6) were affected by both feedback and phase of the study : the
better performers rated the ability as being about as important (M : 3 .14 [1 .00])
as did those receiving no scores (M : 3 .07 [1 .06]), but significantly more
important than did the worse performers (M : 3 .52 [1 .10] ; F (2, 266)=4 .77,
p = 0 .009) ; on the other hand, the ability's importance was rated more highly
after the individual phase (M : 3 .37 [1 .17]) than after the team phase (M : 3 .10
[0 .94] ; F (1, 266)=4 .76, p=0 .030) .
The questionnaires also included three similar scales to assess the
participants' task orientation . Overall mean for Motivated (1) - Unmotivated
(6) was 3 .04 [1 .13] ; for Involved (1) - Uninvolved (6), 2 .71 [1 .15] . Results for
Additional Factors
(a) Task and performance requirements . The better performers were asked to
indicate their standards for ability in self and lack of ability in other ; the worse
performers were asked for their standards for ability in the partner and lack of
ability in self; and those in the control groups were asked all four questions .
(Pre-tests had shown this to be the most logical set of questions to ask, given
the feedback received in each case ; for details on these questions see Foschi,
1996 : 242) . Standards were to be expressed in terms of the percentage of
correct responses required to definitely infer either ability or lack of ability . The
overall mean for the ability standard was 70 .94 [9 .91] ; corresponding results
for lack of ability show a borderline sex-of-subject effect as follows : M (men) :
38 .58 [11 .92] ; M (women) : 41 .98 [12 .19] ; F (1, 178)=3 .59,p=0 .060 . Subjects
were, in addition, asked to state the number of trials between 1 and 100 that
they would require for a convincing assessment of ability level (regardless of
whether high or low) . Results show a borderline effect from feedback : the
better performers required about the same number of trials (M : 54 .06 [28.26])
as did those receiving no scores (M : 54 .17 [28 .33]) but substantially more than
did the worse performers (M : 42 .50 [27 .14] ; F (1, 133)=2 .71, p=0.071).
We also used one scale to obtain subjects' perceptions of the validity of the
contrast sensitivity test (Valid (1) - Not Valid (6)), and another to assess
perceived task difficulty (Easy (1) - Difficult (6)) . The overall mean response to
the former was 2 .75 [1 .00], while responses to the latter varied with feedback :
the better performers considered the task to be easier (3 .53 [1 .26]) than did
those receiving no scores (4 .06 [1 .23]) who, in turn, rated it as easier than did
the worse performers (4 .44 [1 .31] ; F (2, 266) = 11 .91, p = 0 .000) .
(b) Partner's task choices and overall competence relative to self's . In this
section we analyze results from five scales concerning perceptions of self's and
partner's competence . Findings on two of these factors are shown in Table 2 .
Subjects indicated their confidence in the partner's choices on a scale ranging
from Very Confident (1) to Very Unconfident (6) . ANOVA shows a main effect
from feedback (M (better performers) : 3 .94 [0 .56] ; M (no scores) : 3 .49 [0 .72] ;
M (worse performers) : 2.59 [0 .73] ; F (2, 133)=48 .13, p=0 .000) . As to
importance to self of partner's choices (ranging from Important (1) to
Unimportant (6)), we found main effects from both feedback (M (better
performers) : 2 .71 [0 .99] ; M (no scores) : 2 .53 [1 .08] ; M (worse performers) :
1 .95 [0 .77] ; F (2, 133)=7 .71, p=0 .001) and sex of subject (M (men) : 2 .62
[1 .16] ; M (women) : 2 .21 [0 .79] ; F (1, 133)=5 .92, p=0 .016) . (Note that these
two factors are different from collective orientation . The latter concerns
attitudes towards the team and requires only that self take the partner's choices
into account, while the former refer to the perceived worth of those choices .)
Results on two other factors in this group appear in Table 3 . On perceived
correctness of partner's choices (Mostly Correct (1) - Mostly Incorrect (6)),
ANOVA yielded main effects from both feedback (M (better performers) : 3 .88
[0 .67] ; M (no scores) : 3 .34 [0 .60] ; M (worse performers) : 2 .44 [0 .86] ; F (2,
133)=47 .01,p=0 .000) and sex of subject (M (men) : 3 .39 [0 .99] ; M (women) :
3 .10 [0 .83] ; F (1, 133)=5 .13, p=0 .025) . Main effects from both independent
variables were also obtained for "My partner was very serious about doing the
task well" (with Strongly Agree (1) and Strongly Disagree (6) as the anchors) .
Results by feedback were : M (better performers) : 2 .99 [0 .87] ; M (no scores) :
2 .83 [1 .05] ; M (worse performers) : 2 .30 [0.70] ; F (2, 133)=8 .03, p=0 .001)
while by sex of subject, the following were found : M (men) : 2 .90 [1 .04] ; M
(women) : 2 .54 [0 .77] ; F (1, 133)=5 .67,p=0 .019 .
For the fifth factor in this set, relative ability, the anchors were Self Much
Worse than Partner (1) and Self Much Better than Partner (7) . Results appear
in Table 4 . ANOVA shows main effects from feedback (M (better performers) :
4 .98 [0 .70] ; M (no scores) : 3 .40 [1 .08] ; M (worse performers) : 1 .91 [0 .77] ; F
(2, 133) = 153 .14, p = 0 .000), and from sex of subject (M (men) : 3 .75 [1 .58], M
(women) : 3 .21 [1 .42] ; F (1, 133) = 11 .96, p=0 .001 .5
(c) Experimenter's competence . We assessed the subjects' perceptions of the
experimenter in this respect by means of four scales . ANOVA results on views
of her qualifications (Qualified (1) - Unqualified (6)) show women giving a
significantly better rating (M : 1 .27 [0 .51]) than men (M : 1 .53 [0 .74] ; F (1,
. Similarly, on Knowledgeable (1) -Not Knowledgeable
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(6) women reveal a better evaluation (M : 1 .21 [0 .48] than men (M : 1 .56 [0 .76] ;
F (1, 133) = 10 .30, p = 0 .002) . On the other hand, no such effects were observed
in the other two measures : the overall mean for the research assistant's
perceived level of education (Bachelor's Degree in Progress (1) - Doctorate
Completed (6)) was 2 .88 [0 .85] ; the corresponding value for her standing
relative to self's (Inferior (1) - Superior (6)) was 4 .65 [0 .72] .
Rejection of Influence
DISCUSSION
Overall Review of Results
seven task- and collective-orientation questions : while men have higher values
than women in level of interest in the task, women agree more than men with
the statement that the partner's choices should be considered carefully .
More important to this analysis, the statistically significant differences found
in these checks are still within acceptable ranges and, as a result, do not affect
rejection of influence . Note that a scope condition specifies either one value or
a range of values of a given factor that is (are) predicted not to have an effect
on the outcome variable (see, for example, Berger et al ., 1977 : Ch . 3 ; Foschi,
1997 ; Walker & Cohen, 1985) . The wider that range, the more general the
theory is with respect to that factor . The results obtained here do not involve,
in any of the cases, values outside that acceptable range - that is, the scope
conditions have not become independent variables . For example, while men
and women report different values in level of interest in the task (i .e . 2 .68 and
2 .98, respectively), both figures are within the range of "at least average
interest" - which we would define as any value between 1 and 3 . In other
words, the statistically significant differences are not large enough to have
theoretical implications for rejection of influence .
Next we discuss the results from the additional factors, beginning with (a)
task and performance requirements. Responses on the validity of the test and
standards for ability show subjects to be highly similar in these respects . On the
other hand, standards for lack of ability indicate a borderline sex-of-subject
difference, and the number of trials required to be convinced of a person's
ability level is marginally affected by feedback . Overall, the values for the two
standards and the number of trials required reveal that subjects perceived the
task to be fairly (although not extremely) difficult, as follows . Standards for
both ability and lack of ability are relatively lenient (i .e . neither is very high),
even when the sex difference is noted . In addition, the number of trials required
for a decision on ability level is, overall, substantially higher than the twenty
trials that the subjects had completed in the "test" but, not unexpectedly, is
lowest for the worse performers . (These results also confirm our view that, for
a fuller understanding of their role in expectation formation, standards should
be considered in relation to a required number of performances .) The large
standard deviations associated with this number in all three feedback
conditions highlight the absence of guidelines to the subjects on what
constituted levels of this ability and also, to some extent, the difficulty and
novelty of the task . Finally, responses to a direct question on task difficulty
show the effects of feedback : again not surprisingly, the better one's
performance, the less difficult the task was perceived to be . The level of task
difficulty shown by these various measures is consistent with the one found in
comparable studies where such data are reported (see, e.g . Foddy & Smithson,
1996, 1999 ; Foschi, 1996 on both measures of standards and ratings of task
difficulty) . 6
Results from the other two sets of factors are as follows . Five items provide
(b) perceptions of partner's choices and overall competence, revealing main
effects from feedback in all five and sex-of-subject effects in four. All feedback
effects clearly correspond with the manipulations of that variable . In addition,
sex-of-subject differences indicate that, relative to men and at every level of
feedback, women portrayed the partner as having more ability, and as both
more likely to be correct and more serious about doing the task well . Women
also assigned more importance to the partner's choices than did men . It is worth
noting that such sex effects appeared in four of the five more general questions
concerning the worth of the partner's choices and the two participants' relative
competence (i.e . in those questions that leave room for interpretation), but not
in the more specific ratings of self's and other's performances that we used as
a manipulation check (see Results section) . Finally, the questions about (c) the
experimenter's competence show across-conditions subject similarity regarding
her higher level of education and standing relative to the respondent, but sex
effects regarding her superior qualifications and knowledge, with women
giving better ratings than men in both respects . (The sex effects in these two
factors are consistent with the women's more generous view of the partner's
competence observed in (b) ; see also footnote 5) .
Let us now consider all of the results taken together, and examine them in
terms of the two situations we posed under Research Questions . While the data
do not meet the conditions of either situation exactly, they are nevertheless
closer to the first . Thus, feedback levels and scope conditions were
implemented as intended, and notably to highly similar extents by men and
women . Subjects also show overall gender similarity in their task and
performance requirements, and the sex-of-subject effects on perceptions of the
experimenter's competence, although worth keeping in mind, are not a clearly
differentiating factor, as they appear in two of four variables . On the other
hand, there were highly consistent sex differences regarding views of the
partner's choices and overall competence relative to self's : while one item in
this group shows feedback effects only, the other four are affected by both
feedback and sex of subject . Effects from the latter, however, are in all four
cases smaller than those from feedback . Furthermore, men's as well as
women's values are always within the range for the corresponding feedback
level - as confirmed by the lack of interaction effects . Lastly, our outcome
variable, rejection of influence behavior, shows effects from feedback only.
This, we conclude, results from the combination of the following : men and
women were similar with respect to most factors, while the sex differences that
occurred in the rest of these factors were not sufficiently pronounced.
Our results also correspond with those obtained in five of the six expectation
states studies reviewed earlier on same-sex task dyads and evaluations from a
source . Foschi and Freeman (1991) thus remains the only study in this group
where significant sex-of-subject effects on influence were found . We propose
that it is likely that the men and women in that experiment varied substantially
in ways the study did not detect, and therefore that they instantiate the
conditions of the second of the two situations we pose. Although subjects in
Foschi and Freeman (1991) and in the present study were from highly similar
populations, it is probable that gender was a stronger diffuse status
characteristic for the participants of the earlier study, which was carried out
approximately a decade ago . Ensuing gender-based differences in : (i) the status
assigned to the experimenter and (ii) the degree of acceptance of the
combination of evaluations and standards that she was providing (neither of
which was measured in that study), could have affected formation of
expectations .
Although the significant sex differences observed here do not affect influence
rates, they are nevertheless of interest in themselves and thus deserve a special
note on why they occurred . As discussed above, behavior and self-reports are
responses of a different nature . In addition, they often occur in different
contexts . In this study there were two such contexts : one involved working on
a collective task ; the other, completing questionnaires individually. We propose
that, because of their different norms, these two contexts constituted different
conditions for the activation of gender.
In this discussion we focus on reports concerning self's and other's
competence, both because of their close relationship to expectations and
because it is in these reports that sex effects appear most noticeably and
consistently. The act of either accepting or rejecting influence from the other
person reveals how a subject addresses the question "How much ability do I
have relative to my partner?" On the other hand, when a subject is completing
questionnaire items about competence, he or she is responding to "What do I
say about how much ability I have relative to my partner?" The two questions
are related but still different ; also, as noted earlier, subjects are more likely to
be aware of the question they are answering in the latter than in the former case .
We assume that in both cases they would be primarily concerned with
presenting themselves in line with the scores received, given the focus on task
competence that the two contexts have . That is, we assume that subjects would
be in compliance with the generally accepted norm in task settings of
respecting the available evidence about participants' relevant qualifications -
particularly when, as in the present case, that evidence is convincing . Results
from both behaviors and self-reports show clear feedback effects, in
accordance with this interpretation .
We propose that, in addition, each of these contexts included different
norms . When subjects were working with the partner, they were partially
responsible for a joint outcome . Thus, collective orientation was an important
norm in this situation . This norm implies costs, to the team, associated with
making a wrong choice (see Camilleri & Berger, 1967) . Manipulation checks
show that the norm was accepted by the participants, as intended . In that
context, only their earlier, individual-performance scores provided clearly
differentiating information that could be of use in deciding whether or not to
agree with the partner . Gender, as well as age and education, did not have such
a use, as all three equated the subjects and had been defined as not significantly
related to the task. Accordingly, none of these factors were activated .
On the other hand, when completing the questionnaires, the focus shifted
away from self and other . Whereas participants knew that the partner would
learn immediately about their task choices, the recipient of their written
answers was not that clearly specified - subjects were told that these would be
seen by "the research team ." Unlike the collective setting, there were no
apparent costs associated with giving inaccurate reports . Relative to the
unknown research-team members, subjects had only four items of information :
they themselves were either men or women, young, undergraduates, and had
received one of three types of feedback . We propose that the four items were
activated in trying to define how to relate to these unspecified others -
otherwise it would have been rather disconcerting to be in a situation where
information about neither self nor these others was highlighted . Of the four
factors, sex of subject and feedback differed across participants, while age and
education equated them . Taking all of this information into account, the result
was the activation, at each feedback level, of different norms concerning
gender and self-presentation of ability relative to the research team . (One could
also argue that the subjects viewed the research team as including, most
prominently, the female experimenter - as we have noted earlier. In that case,
the same argument about the activation of gender and self-presentation norms
would apply. However, we propose that it was not the experimenter alone who
activated these norms, as results regarding the competence status assigned to
her do not show a distinct sex-of-subject difference .)
In both Canada and the United States, particularly over the last two decades,
the status value of gender has diminished or even disappeared for many .
However, it is still highly common for men and women to accept different
norms regarding self-presentation of abilities . Thus, while men are expected to
show high confidence, the rule for women is to be modest . These norms reflect,
of course, gender as a status factor . (For reviews of research in this area, see
Bartol, 1999 and Wiley, 1995 . Work on different causal attributions made for
the same performance, either successful or unsuccessful by either a man or a
woman, is particularly relevant to this point . See also Carli, 1991 ; Ridgeway &
Berger, 1986 ; Meeker & Weitzel-O'Neill, 1977, on gender and the legitimation
of status-enhancement .) Our results on self-reports on perceptions of
competence are in line with this interpretation : findings from four measures
show, overall, men portraying a higher status for themselves relative to the
partner, than do women . This is also the case, to some extent, regarding the
experimenter . The interpretation is also consistent with the fact that most of the
sex differences occurred where such norms were most likely to be activated -
that is, in reports of one's status relative to others . For example, although
reporting the task as being either more or less difficult could be a way of
manipulating self-presentation, it is a rather indirect method of doing so, and
the results do not suggest that subjects were engaged in such a practice . More
generally, views on self's and other's competence reflect a close correspon-
dence with the feedback received, and the rest of the self-reports also indicate
a high level of truthfulness (see, for example, those on subjects' own interest
and motivation) .
In sum, both rejection of influence data and self-reports provide valuable
information on how expectations are formed . Self-reports serve as manipula-
tion checks, auxiliary measures, and evidence on additional variables . In the
case of the perceptions of competence examined here, we propose that
behaviors and self-reports were obtained in two contexts that included different
norms, and that this allowed for differences in external status to emerge . We
also interpret our results as indicative that gender was still a diffuse status
characteristic for our subjects, but that one setting blocked its effects while the
other did not . Furthermore, results show that even when sex effects emerge, in
no case was gender as strong a determinant of responses as was feedback - in
line with expectation states research on the effects of degree of relevance
between a given attribute and the task (see, for example, Berger et al ., 1977 :
58-61 ; Wood & Karten, 1986) .
It would be worthwhile to investigate further, and in different situations, our
explanation regarding gender effects . Of the six experiments reviewed earlier
on male and female dyads and evaluations from a source, only Foschi et al .
(1985) and Foschi and Freeman (1991) present data on both influence behavior
and self-reports . The latter, however, are analyzed in a way that makes them not
directly comparable to the present findings . One interesting way of testing the
explanation we propose would be, in a future study, to assign subjects at
random to either same-sex or opposite-sex dyads, and to obtain data from the
two types of measures . Since opposite-sex dyads should show effects from both
sex of partner and self-presentation rules, differences in self-reports between
the two types of such dyads should be larger than differences between male and
female dyads . In addition, for a more comprehensive understanding of status
effects in these two contexts it would be useful to carry out studies similar to
the present one but operationalizing status through other attributes .
Results from the study show a high level of both factual reporting and
internal consistency over a wide array of measures . Manipulation checks reveal
that levels of feedback, perceptions of sex of partner, and task- and collective
orientation had been created as intended - and in particular, that men and
women were highly similar in these respects . Male and female participants
were equally similar in their views of the task. Rejection of influence results
show, as predicted, strong effects from feedback but no effects from sex of
subject. On the other hand, self-reports reflect sex differences as well as
feedback effects in perceptions of self's and other's competence . Although
level of feedback is the primary organizer of responses for both men and
women, men's reports portray higher status for themselves relative to the
partner (and also, to some extent, the experimenter) than do women's . We
propose and discuss the following interpretation of these findings . The
completion of a joint task by male and female dyads who are alike in key task-
related variables blocks gender effects on expectations and thus results in
similar rejection of influence behaviors by men and women . On the other hand,
sex differences still emerge in the participants' accounts of those expectations
because of the different conditions for the activation of gender that apply to the
two contexts .
NOTES
1 . There are also other expectation states studies examining how members of same-
sex groups respond to different levels of task evaluations from a source . These studies
(Camilleri & Conner, 1976 ; Foddy & Smithson, 1996; Foschi, 1971, 1986 ; Shelly &
Munroe, 1999) are not reviewed here because they do not use the two-person standard
setting and/or the rejection of influence measure . In any case, of these five, only Shelly
and Munroe (1999) provide data comparing male and female groups and, with the
exception of the granting of action opportunities, no significant differences in task-
related interactions between these two groups were found . We also exclude from our
review those studies that, although investigating dyads in the standard setting, are not
of direct relevance here because their focus is to compare the effects of external status
with those of evaluations received by either (but not both) men or women working with
a same-sex partner . Two examples of this research are Freese and Cohen (1973) and
Knottnerus and Greenstein (1981) .
2 . Differences in the expectations formed by male and female dyads could still occur
due to other, non task-related factors . For example, it could be that male and female
participants vary in their personality characteristics (such as shy, outgoing, rigid) or in
the norms they hold regarding socio-emotional behaviors (e .g . in norms allowing less
expressiveness in men than in women) (Wagner & Berger, 1997), and that these
differences affect expectations even though they do not contain information on task
competence . Nevertheless, we propose that if men and women accept to similar extents
the specified focus on collective performance, the effects of these other factors on
expectations will be negligible relative to those of the task-related factors .
3 . Note that, because of our interest in the subjects' own standards, the present study
differs from those "source" experiments where participants receive both evaluations and
standards through which to interpret them (see, for example, Webster & Sobieszek,
1974 : 175) . The source of evaluations also differs : in our case it is the research team ;
in those other studies, a specific individual .
4 . More specifically, the various items (which are discussed in detail next in this
section) were distributed as follows . Manipulation checks of self's and other's
performance level, measures of standards, and number of trials required for an ability
inference were included only in the first questionnaire. Manipulation checks of partner's
sex, age and level of education, Likert scales on task- and collective orientation, and
indicators of perceptions of self's and other's competence, the validity of the test, and
the experimenter's qualifications were included only in the second questionnaire . The
rest of the questions appeared in both instruments .
5 . The second questionnaire also included an item on partner's likeability (Partner
Likeable (1) - Partner Not Likeable (6)), and ANOVA results show women giving
significantly more positive ratings of the partner than do men : M (men) : 3 .23 [0 .92] ; M
(women) : 2 .82 [0 .76] ; F (1, 133)=8 .40, p=0 .004 . Although the question was intended
only as a filler, its results are nevertheless worth reporting because of their consistency
with those from all but one of the other variables in this group, and because of the
interesting connections they reveal between gender status and affect processes (on this
topic, see Fisek & Berger, 1998 ; Lovaglia & Houser, 1996) .
6 . In this study we are concerned primarily with whether or not there are main effects
from either independent variable . It is thus beyond the scope of this discussion to
include internal analyses of the results . Nevertheless, we should note that, relative to the
control-group subjects, the worse performers reacted, overall, more markedly to the
received scores than did the better performers . This trend can be observed with respect
to the manipulation checks of self's and other's performance level and most of the
results shown in Tables 2 to 4 . Similar findings have also been reported in comparable
studies (see, for example, Berger & Conner, 1969; Foschi et al ., 1985) . In our view, this
asymmetry is directly related to the fairly high level of task difficulty. For a more
thorough understanding of how expectations are formed, it would be worthwhile to vary
this factor in future studies .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The study reported here was carried out under Research Grant No .
410-97-0101 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada to the senior author. We gratefully acknowledge this support . We also
thank Kelly Giesbrecht, Joanna Kim and Susan Lindquist for their efficiency
and good judgment in conducting the experimental sessions, and Joseph
Berger, Thelma S . Cook, Gwendolyn L . Gerber, Fiona Kay, Carol Stoppel and
Henry A . Walker for their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this
article . Direct correspondence to Martha Foschi, Department of Anthropology
and Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B . C ., Canada V6T
1Z1 ( e-mail : mfoschi@interchange .ubc .ca) .
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THE CAMILLERI-BER ER MODEL
REVISITED
James W. Balkwell
ABSTRACT
More than three decades ago, Santo Camilleri and Joseph Berger
carried out a set of experiments on decision making and social influence.
In their experimental setting, two subjects worked together on a task . The
dependent variable was whether a subject would accept or resist the
other's influence, given a disagreement between them. One independent
variable involved a subject's ability compared with that of her or his
partner, a second involved the subject's responsibility for the team's final
decisions. Then, researchers did not have access to the statistical and
computational technology available today, so Camilleri and Berger
(1967) did not analyze their experimental data rigorously in terms of their
model. Doing so reveals surprisingly supportive results, especially after
some fine tuning based on more recent work. Perhaps most importantly,
this suggests what may be a promising approach to contemporary
questions about sentiment and task-group processes .
INTRODUCTION
Recently there has been much discussion about how to integrate such important
phenomena as sentiment and formal control into expectation states theory and
research (Shelley, 1993 ; Lovaglia & Houser, 1996 ; Wagner, 1998) . In other
22 0 JAMES W. BALKWELL
(2)
The quantities (3,, (3 2, and R3 are fixed parameters whose values are unknown ;
we must estimate these from the experimental data . Substituting Eqs . 2 into Eq .
1 and rearranging the resulting expression yields the following (for details of
the derivation, please see the Appendix) :
22 2 JAMES W. BALKWELL
1
+(R2x+ 1)R3(es - e0)
1 2R'
P(S) = I + (3)
2 (3, + 02X+ 1
When researchers refer to "the Camilleri-Berger model," they typically mean
Eq . 1 . Nevertheless, using assumptions that are quite explicit in Camilleri and
Berger (1967), we can derive Eq . 3 . rom the latter we can see that the
Camilleri-Berger model is straightforwardly interpretable as an expectation
states model . Indeed, if decision-making responsibility were experimentally
held constant, Eq . 3 would be merely a linear function of the focal actor's
expectation advantage, empirically indistinguishable from the function set
forth by Berger et al . (1977 : 131) . More generally, the Camilleri-Berger model
includes the Berger et al . (1977) model as a special case . Not only is a a
theoretical precursor of es - e0 , but u, is a precursor of the Berger et al . (1977)
formulation's m. 2 Also of interest, Eq . 3 asserts a contingency involving
expectations and decision-making responsibility : the effect of expectations on
P(S) depends on the focal actor's responsibility for the team's final decisions .
Now let's consider the empirical adequacy of the Camilleri-Berger model,
using the most statistically tractable form of this model, that is, Eq . 3 .
AN EMPIRICAL REEVALUATION
Results
N-- 00 ~O
r'0 N 7M SV SM N hN N
O 7 O\ 00 ~O '0 r
C coo coo 0 0 . 0 0
w qqq°°oq°ooq g
0
w
.b
0 C- -~MN ~O a, N \O 0 0 00 N
U U y 00
5 5C 00~OV10 ~O
N ~O
N 0h rM 00
M O
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
w
a
ou
.d
A rn a, -moo rn a S S o 0 C 0
pa N r 000 In S W) z N N en en
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
O
w
a>
on
s~
a>
P
N
oa 0 ONO
0 ~
00
0 0 ~0 N
o o 0 \CCg
°
w N
o n o o n o o n o o n o 00
c 00 -oo-~oo oo-moo C
a U I
b a
y
b O
0
C
r 5
0 0 O O N r N
N N N 0
0 0 o O
O C o N N h V
a 0 ---~oooooo I I I
Q
-O
N v I
a
W b
C
N
V
II
Cl
OQ a
O = 7
0 w w z 2 z
z0 w z w u~ z
00 iii+++Ii7+++ U
U f
.a
Rs = exp(as + b x)
(6)
R o = exp(a o + box)
m =1og(p Jµ0) = 'YO + -Y ix
In the last line, yo =- as - a,, and y, _= bs - b0 .
In Camilleri and Berger's (1967 : 372) terms, as reflects the utility to the focal
actor of self-approval stemming initial-final choice consistency, a o reflecting
the value of self-disapproval stemming from inconsistency . Assuming the two
choices are equally attractive aside from this consistency consideration, as
should be greater than a o and thus yo should be positive . Also based on
Camilleri and Berger's (1967 : 372) theoretical discussion, we would expect b s
to be negative and b o to be positive, making y, negative . Substantively, y,
indexes the value of approval from the subject's partner, which in part would
reflect the subject's sentiment toward her or his partner . Approval from
someone who is liked or respected is more valuable than that from someone
who is not. While liking or other sentiment for the partner would not have
varied systematically across Camilleri and Berger's experimental conditions,
we can envision future experiments in which sentiment will be a manipulated
experimental variable . Building sentiment-effects into this model would be
straightforward.'
We can combine Eq . 5 and the last line in Eqs . 6 to obtain a model for P(S)
in the Camilleri-Berger experiment that reflects both certain aspects of
Camilleri and Berger's logic and more recent developments in expectation
states theory (i .e . Berger et al ., 1977 ; Balkwell, 1991a) .
P(S) = exp[-Yo+'Y,x+y2(es - eo)7 (7)
1 +exp[yo+'Ylx+'Y2(es - eo)]
or the sake of a simpler notation, I have renamed Eq . (5)'s q as y 2. Based on
expectation states theory (Berger et al ., 1977 : 130), y2 should be positive in
sign . Like Eq . 3, this specification entails three fixed parameters whose values
are unknown and therefore must be estimated from the experimental data .
Empirical Evaluation
22 6 JAMES W. BALKWELL
N
O C ('1
00 pp~ N N N C N N
k. O O O O O O O O N
W qqq°°Oq°OgOq
w
O b
~t V N h M N V1 M 01 M --~
U 7 00 00 ~O N N 0 N N N .Nr N
r 0°D Dip N N M Np M M 7
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
w
b
x
n
b
N
N r
N N
00 O C O N V1 O ~ M M
lD ID N n lD r N ~
A Q" O O O O O O O O O O O O
r
I
N
N
O O g 0 0 0 g 0 0 0 0
H ~v~'~b~ CN C N
4K
U
N
L
4 .1
4-I O
QO O v1 0 0 kn O O W) O O vn O M
0 0 O O --~ C O -~ O O T
U O
b
N
L fS'
b
O
b 000000-I i V
L"
d
U
a n
W
o
I
M
N a
i
C 7
7 0 7 0 a 0 7 0 C!'
0 w zz u° . ~ z w Zz w zz
I I I+++ I I I+++ U
O ++++++ I I I I I I
U .a
attributed to chance alone (X'= 59 .435, d .f. = 9, p < 0 .001) . Nevertheless, the
model accounts for the great preponderance of the systematic variation in P(S)
from one experimental condition to another (R2 = 0 .931) ; moreover, the signs of
the parameter estimates all are in the predicted directions . inally, the
explained variation is notably higher for this model than for the original one
(93 .1% vs . 86 .7%) .
CONCLUSIONS
What can we conclude from these results that differ from what Camilleri and
Berger concluded? One thing is that the fit revealed in Tables 1 and 2,
especially the latter, is much better than that revealed by Camilleri and Berger's
analogous table . Much of their discussion about how to improve their model
may be irrelevant in the light of these results . Second, their analysis seemed to
suggest that expectation states theory may apply more adequately to high status
actors than to low status actors, a finding that I have seen referred to in several
other published papers . When we compare the observed and predicted P(S)
values for (+ #) and (- #) actors, we see little evidence that the model
predicts more adequately for the former than for the latter . It seems to me that
the model gives satisfactory predictions for both, there being no obvious
systematic difference . The earlier sense that EST does not apply as well to low
status actors as to high status actors appears to have rested on a defect in
Camilleri and Berger's statistical methodology .
lawed methodology or not, the strengths of Camilleri and Berger's paper
still merit attention 30 years after its publication . It provides a smooth and
pleasing theoretical integration of social exchange principles and status
processing principles . The authors derived not only their variables but also the
functional form of their model from prior theoretical ideas, something that we
too rarely find in contemporary work . In current expectation states theorizing,
there may be an inclination to throw out the social exchange ideas, replacing
these with special-purpose ideas that are not part of cumulative knowledge .
Related to this, there is an inclination to simply posit statistical interactions and
other effects, rather than deriving these from more basic theoretical
considerations . Even when such "posited" effects fit empirical data tolerably
well, the results have minimal implications for cumulative knowledge, because
we do not know why they occur . Camilleri and Berger's work from the 1960s
goes well beyond this and simultaneously does a much better job than once
seemed to be the case of accounting for empirical data .
Epitomizing the basic approach these remarks imply, there recently have
appeared several kindred bridge-building efforts that seek to combine
22 8 JAMES W. BALKWELL
APPENDIX
Derivation of Equations
eatures of the Situation . On each critical trial in Camilleri and Berger's (1967)
experiment, the subject made an initial choice between two alternatives,
received feedback that her or his partner had made the other choice, then made
a final choice that counted towards the "team score ." In this setting, task-
orientation implies that the focal actor is concentrating on getting correct final
choices ; Camilleri and Berger's experimental instructions were designed to
insure this .
Let B, denote the benefit to the focal actor of consistency between her or his
initial and final choices, B 2 the benefit of approval from her or his partner, and
B3 the benefit of approval from the experimenter . Let C,, C 2 , and C3 denote the
costs of self-inconsistency, partner disapproval, and experimenter disapproval,
respectively. Because a cost is negative in its behavioral significance, this
formulation expresses the C's as negative numbers . inally, let a denote the
focal actor's subjective probability that he or she is correct, given a
disagreement on initial choices . Below is a matrix describing the focal actor's
potential benefits and costs from staying or changing on an experimental trial,
given that her or his initial choice is correct (which it is with probability (X) or
incorrect (which it is with probability 1 - a) .
Initial Choice Is :
Correct Incorrect
(prob = a) (prob =1 - a)
Because each B is greater than or equal to zero, and each C is less than or equal
to zero, the substitutions, u; =- R; - C; (i = 1, 2, 3), denote quantities that are
greater than or equal to zero in each case . rom Camilleri and Berger's
experiment, the relative significance of benefits and costs cannot be
distinguished ; u 1 , u2, and u 3 denote the combined utility of the benefits and
costs from their respective sources .
Using Camilleri and Berger's theoretical assumption that P(S) = S/( S+ ),
Eq . 1 follows immediately :
23 0 JAMES W. BALKWELL
1
=X +2 (1 - X) + 133(e, - eo)(l - X) (3)
1 1
= 2 + 2X + 133(e, - eo)(1 - A)
1
2131 + (132x + 003(e, - eo )
1
_-+
2 13 1 +132x+1
The last line is Eq . 3 as presented in the text of this chapter .
Berger et al. unction. One unrecognized feature of the Camilleri-Berger
model is that it includes Berger, isek, Norman and Zelditch's (1977 : 131)
function for P(S) as a special case . To see this, we rearrange Eq . 3 and then
make some substitutions based on Eq. 2 .
1
131 + (132x + 1)133(e, - eo)
1 2
P(S)-
2+ 131+132x+ 1
1
1 + 2131 + 133(132x+ 1)
es - e
(2 131+132x+1) 0 131+[32x+1)( ~)
1
-u
2
(2 + u1 u 2 1 + u3) + (13 u2+u3)
3+u
(es - eo)
= m + q(es - e 0)
The quantities m and q of the Berger et al . (1977 : 131) specification typically
have been taken as fixed parameters to be estimated from the research data .
NOTES
ACKNOWLED MENTS
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 93rd Annual Meeting of
the American Sociological Association, San rancisco, August 1998 . I want to
thank a Coeditor and one reviewer of Advances in roup Processes for
suggestions that strengthened my presentation .
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