Notes

INTRODUCTION

  1. Gould, The Panda’s Thumb.

  2. Nisbett, “Hunger, Obesity and the Ventromedial Hypothalamus.”

  3. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge.

  4. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought.

  5. Lehman et al., “The Effects of Graduate Training on Reasoning”; Lehman, Darrin, and Nisbett, “A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Undergraduate Education on Reasoning”; Morris and Nisbett, “Tools of the Trade.”

  6. Larrick, Morgan, and Nisbett, “Teaching the Use of Cost-Benefit Reasoning in Everyday Life”; Larrick, Nisbett, and Morgan, “Who Uses the Cost-Benefit Rules of Choice? Implications for the Normative Status of Microeconomic Theory”; Nisbett et al., “Teaching Reasoning”; Nisbett et al., “Improving Inductive Inference” in Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky, Judgment Under Uncertainty; Nisbett et al., “The Use of Statistical Heuristics in Everyday Reasoning.”

1. EVERYTHING’S AN INFERENCE

  1. Shepard, Mind Sights: Original Visual Illusions, Ambiguities, and Other Anomalies.

  2. Higgins, Rholes, and Jones, “Category Accessibility and Impression Formation.”

  3. Bargh, “Automaticity in Social Psychology.”

  4. Cesario, Plaks, and Higgins, “Automatic Social Behavior as Motivated Preparation to Interact.”

  5. Darley and Gross, “A Hypothesis-Confirming Bias in Labeling Effects.”

  6. Meyer and Schvaneveldt, “Facilitation in Recognizing Pairs of Words: Evidence of a Dependence Between Retrieval Operations.”

  7. Ross and Ward, “Naive Realism in Everyday Life: Implications for Social Conflict and Misunderstanding.”

  8. Jung et al., “Female Hurricanes Are Deadlier Than Male Hurricanes.”

  9. Alter, Drunk Tank Pink.

10. Berman, Jonides, and Kaplan, “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature”; Lichtenfield et al., “Fertile Green: Green Facilitates Creative Performance”; Mehta and Zhu, “Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances.”

11. Alter, Drunk Tank Pink.

12. Berger, Meredith, and Wheeler, “Contextual Priming: Where People Vote Affects How They Vote.”

13. Rigdon et al., “Minimal Social Cues in the Dictator Game.”

14. Song and Schwarz, “If It’s Hard to Read, It’s Hard to Do.”

15. Lee and Schwarz, “Bidirectionality, Mediation, and Moderation of Metaphorical Effects: The Embodiment of Social Suspicion and Fishy Smells.”

16. Alter and Oppenheimer, “Predicting Stock Price Fluctuations Using Processing Fluency.”

17. Danziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso, “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions.”

18. Williams and Bargh, “Experiencing Physical Warmth Influences Personal Warmth.”

19. Dutton and Aron, “Some Evidence for Heightened Sexual Attraction Under Conditions of High Anxiety.”

20. Levin and Gaeth, “Framing of Attribute Information Before and After Consuming the Product.”

21. McNeil et al., “On the Elicitation of Preferences for Alternative Therapies.”

22. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

23. Tversky and Kahneman, “Extensional Versus Intuitive Reasoning: The Conjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgment.”

24. Tversky and Kahneman, “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.”

25. Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky, “The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences.”

2. THE POWER OF THE SITUATION

  1. Jones and Harris, “The Attribution of Attitudes.”

  2. Darley and Latané, “Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility.”

  3. Darley and Batson, “From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior.”

  4. Pietromonaco and Nisbett, “Swimming Upstream Against the Fundamental Attribution Error: Subjects’ Weak Generalizations from the Darley and Batson Study.”

  5. Humphrey, “How Work Roles Influence Perception: Structural-Cognitive Processes and Organizational Behavior.”

  6. Triplett, “The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition.”

  7. Brown, Eicher, and Petrie, “The Importance of Peer Group (‘Crowd’) Affiliation in Adolescence.”

  8. Kremer and Levy, “Peer Effects and Alcohol Use Among College Students.”

  9. Prentice and Miller, “Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus.”

10. Liu et al., “Findings from the 2008 Administration of the College Senior Survey (CSS): National Aggregates.”

11. Sanchez-Burks, “Performance in Intercultural Interactions at Work: Cross-Cultural Differences in Responses to Behavioral Mirroring.”

12. Goethals and Reckman, “The Perception of Consistency in Attitudes.”

13. Goethals, Cooper, and Naficy, “Role of Foreseen, Foreseeable, and Unforeseeable Behavioral Consequences in the Arousal of Cognitive Dissonance.”

14. Nisbett et al., “Behavior as Seen by the Actor and as Seen by the Observer.”

15. Ibid.

16. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought; Nisbett et al., “Culture and Systems of Thought: Holistic Vs. Analytic Cognition.”

17. Masuda et al., “Placing the Face in Context: Cultural Differences in the Perception of Facial Emotion.”

18. Masuda and Nisbett, “Attending Holistically vs. Analytically: Comparing the Context Sensitivity of Japanese and Americans.”

19. Cha and Nam, “A Test of Kelley’s Cube Theory of Attribution: A Cross-Cultural Replication of McArthur’s Study.”

20. Choi and Nisbett, “Situational Salience and Cultural Differences in the Correspondence Bias and in the Actor-Observer Bias.”

21. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought.

3. THE RATIONAL UNCONSCIOUS

  1. Nisbett and Wilson, “Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes.”

  2. Zajonc, “The Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure.”

  3. Bargh and Pietromonaco, “Automatic Information Processing and Social Perception: The Influence of Trait Information Presented Outside of Conscious Awareness on Impression Formation.”

  4. Karremans, Stroebe, and Claus, “Beyond Vicary’s Fantasies: The Impact of Subliminal Priming and Brand Choice.”

  5. Chartrand et al., “Nonconscious Goals and Consumer Choice.”

  6. Berger and Fitzsimons, “Dogs on the Street, Pumas on Your Feet.”

  7. Buss, The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill.

  8. Wilson and Schooler, “Thinking Too Much: Introspection Can Reduce the Quality of Preferences and Decisions.”

  9. Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, “A Theory of Unconscious Thought.”

10. The interpretation that I (and the authors) prefer for the art poster, jam, and apartment studies has been questioned. I side with the authors, but the following references will get you in touch with the available evidence pro and con concerning the possibility that unconscious pondering of alternatives can result in superior choices: Aczel et al., “Unconscious Intuition or Conscious Analysis: Critical Questions for the Deliberation-Without-Attention Paradigm”; Calvillo and Penaloza, “Are Complex Decisions Better Left to the Unconscious?”; Dijksterhuis, “Think Different: The Merits of Unconscious Thought in Preference Development and Decision Making”; Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, “A Theory of Unconscious Thought”; A. Dijksterhuis et al., “On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect”; Gonzalo et al., “‘Save Angels Perhaps’: A Critical Examination of Unconscious Thought Theory and the Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect”; Strick et al., “A Meta-Analysis on Unconscious Thought Effects.”

11. Lewicki et al., “Nonconscious Acquisition of Information.”

12. Klarreich, “Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap.”

13. Ghiselin, ed. The Creative Process.

14. Maier, “Reasoning in Humans II: The Solution of a Problem and Its Appearance in Consciousness.”

15. Kim, “Naked Self-Interest? Why the Legal Profession Resists Gatekeeping”; O’Brien, Sommers, and Ellsworth, “Ask and What Shall Ye Receive? A Guide for Using and Interpreting What Jurors Tell Us”; Thompson, Fong, and Rosenhan, “Inadmissible Evidence and Juror Verdicts.”

4. SHOULD YOU THINK LIKE AN ECONOMIST?

  1. Dunn, Aknin, and Norton, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness.”

  2. Borgonovi, “Doing Well by Doing Good: The Relationship Between Formal Volunteering and Self-Reported Health and Happiness.”

  3. Heckman, “Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children”; Knudsen et al., “Economic, Neurobiological, and Behavioral Perspectives on Building America’s Future Workforce.”

  4. Sunstein, “The Stunning Triumph of Cost-Benefit Analysis.”

  5. Appelbaum, “As U.S. Agencies Put More Value on a Life, Businesses Fret.”

  6. NBC News, “How to Value Life? EPA Devalues Its Estimate.”

  7. Appelbaum, “As U.S. Agencies Put More Value on a Life, Businesses Fret.”

  8. Kingsbury, “The Value of a Human Life: $129,000.”

  9. Desvousges et al., “Measuring Non-Use Damages Using Contingent Valuation: An Experimental Evaluation of Accuracy.”

10. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons.”

5. SPILT MILK AND FREE LUNCH

  1. Larrick, Morgan, and Nisbett, “Teaching the Use of Cost-Benefit Reasoning in Everyday Life”; Larrick, Nisbett, and Morgan, “Who Uses the Cost-Benefit Rules of Choice? Implications for the Normative Status of Microeconomic Theory.” These papers report this and all the remaining findings in this section.

  2. Larrick, Nisbett, and Morgan, “Who Uses the Cost-Benefit Rules of Choice? Implications for the Normative Status of Microeconomic Theory.”

  3. Larrick, Morgan, and Nisbett, “Teaching the Use of Cost-Benefit Reasoning in Everyday Life.”

6. FOILING FOIBLES

  1. Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

  2. Kahneman, Knetch, and Thaler, “Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem.”

  3. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

  4. Fryer et al., “Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives Through Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment.”

  5. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

  6. Samuelson and Zeckhauser, “Status Quo Bias in Decision Making.”

  7. Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Investment Company Institute, “401(K) Plans: A 25-Year Retrospective.”

10. Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

11. Madrian and Shea, “The Power of Suggestion: Inertia in 401(K) Participation and Savings Behavior.”

12. Benartzi and Thaler, “Heuristics and Biases in Retirement Savings Behavior.”

13. Iyengar and Lepper, “When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?”

14. Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

15. Ibid.

16. Schultz et al., “The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms.”

17. Perkins, Haines, and Rice, “Misperceiving the College Drinking Norm and Related Problems: A Nationwide Study of Exposure to Prevention Information, Perceived Norms and Student Alcohol Misuse”; Prentice and Miller, “Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus.”

18. Goldstein, Cialdini, and Griskevicius, “A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels.”

19. Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett, “Undermining Children’s Intrinsic Interest with Extrinsic Reward: A Test of the Overjustification Hypothesis.”