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Protagoras comments on Cross-Cultural maps and Asch's Conformity Experiment - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Sable 09 March 2016 12:40AM

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Comment author: Protagoras 09 March 2016 04:29:29AM 0 points [-]

The research indicates that most people's responses to any social science result is "that's what I would have expected," although that doesn't actually seem to be true; you can get them to say they expected conflicting results. Have there really been no studies of when people say they think studies are surprising, comparing the results to what people actually predicted beforehand (I know Milgram informally surveyed what people expected before his study, but I don't think he did any rigorous analysis of expectations)? Perhaps people are as inaccurate in reporting what they find surprising as they are in reporting what they expected. It would certainly be interesting to know!

Comment author: Sable 10 March 2016 02:02:22PM *  1 point [-]

There are studies on hindsight bias, which is what I think you're talking about.

In 1983, researcher Daphna Baratz asked undergraduates to read 16 pairs of statements describing psychological findings and their opposites; they were told to evaluate how likely they would have been to predict each finding. So, for example, they read: “People who go to church regularly tend to have more children than people who go to church infrequently.” They also read, “People who go to church infrequently tend to have more children than people who go to church regularly.” Whether rating the truth or its opposite, most students said the supposed finding was what they would have predicted.

From her dissertation.

(I couldn't find a pdf of the dissertation, but that's its page on worldcat).

As for your specific question:

Have there really been no studies of when people say they think studies are surprising, comparing the results to what people actually predicted beforehand

I have no idea, but I want them.

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