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9th April 2008, 12:24 PM | #1 |
Muse
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Cognitive dissonance studies' mistake
FCP: Free Choice Paradigm
CD: Cognitive Dissonance
Originally Posted by M. Keith Chen
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9th April 2008, 12:37 PM | #2 |
Ardent Formulist
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Location: Austin, TX
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I predict that this will cause cognitive dissonance in the minds of many experimental psychologists, who will resolve the dissonance by questioning the paper's validity.
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9th April 2008, 05:03 PM | #3 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I don't think that would be a suprise, there are a number of artifacts to scaling. But if the variation is not measured in a subscale, then how can you know if the dissonant effect if from a .1 or a .9.
there are other influences I would be much more worried about, the tendency of subjects to not represent what they really think in the first place and the stuff where people always seem to chose the middle value if there is an odd number to the scale. There are many different strategies to cope, expanding scales (say twenty point) , have people mark thier position on a line, rather than assign a number. You could even try a spider web style of decision making where people tried at actually map the variables that effect the choice. Self answering surveys are a wonder and a mess at the same time. Such as the Beck depression Invenetory, even given a binary (yes,no) choice people will then put down an answer that does not reflect what they say in a later interview. It is wonderful, wierd and fraught with peril. So it would not suprise me in the least if scaling has a huge source of hiden error. |
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9th April 2008, 05:16 PM | #4 |
Philosopher
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I didn't read the paper, but from the abstract you quoted this is nothing but a form of the Monty Hall problem.
Suppose your true preference goes 1,2,3. You're either presented with 1,2, 1,3, or 2,3 with equal probability. In the first case you will choose B, but in the other two you will choose C (just like switching in the MH problem). The correct odds are 2/3, not 66% - but presumably that's what he means. If people really wrote papers overlooking such an obvious fact, I'm shocked. |
9th April 2008, 05:22 PM | #5 |
Penultimate Amazing
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9th April 2008, 08:36 PM | #6 |
Muse
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 569
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I'd be shocked too. So I read some of the referenced papers. Here's the most blatant failure.
The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance Evidence From Children and Monkeys Louisa C. Egan, Laurie R. Santos, and Paul Bloom This paper shocks me. Here's the childrens' procedure:
Quote:
That one is clearly knock-down a bad test. But most FCP experiments use a different procedure. The paper argues against this more subtle procedure as well, and to my eyes, convincingly. |
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9th April 2008, 08:45 PM | #7 |
Cereal Killer
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It does seem like an odd way to measure CD-- note, the problem lies with the researcher then and not necessarily the construct.
Also, unless I'm missing something, the paper hasn't been published. It's just a draft? |
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9th April 2008, 08:49 PM | #8 |
Muse
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I realize now that linking to and discussing a draft paper might be socially unacceptable. I don't have any actual knowledge about it, so someone please take me to task if I shouldn't.
Yes, true, you should be able to take the same data and analyze it correctly. But it may mean we need to reexamine quite a lot of CD research. |
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9th April 2008, 08:59 PM | #9 |
Cereal Killer
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I dunno that it's unacceptable to discuss it, but until and unless it gets published in a good journal, it would be premature to slam experimental psychology as a whole (theoretically, if it's that bad-- I didn't read it-- it won't get in a good journal, and the field will then be saved!).
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9th April 2008, 09:04 PM | #10 |
Cereal Killer
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I do think it's odd (if I skimmed it right) to base the key manipulation on banking on a test's imprecision (that a 4 might be a 4.3 or a 4.1).
I'd be perhaps more impressed if they used something rated a 3 earlier, but subjects now picked it over a 4, because a prior pick on two 4 items had created dissonance. Then we don't need to get into all this probability crap. That would be fairly striking and less complicated-- jmo. ETA, I see the guy's a management professor. We do state of the art experimental psych research in management, but it's circa 1972 (that said, I bet his salary's 150,000$ + !). |
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9th April 2008, 09:08 PM | #11 |
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