9/25/07 WEEK 5: EXPLANATION AND PERSEVERANCE
Discussion Leader: Mary
An Early Demonstration
Ross, L., Lepper, M. R., & Hubbard, M. (1975). Perseverance in self-perception and social perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 880-892.
The Role of Explanation
Anderson, C. A., Lepper, M. R., & Ross, L. (1980). Perseverance of social theories: The role of explanation in the persistence of discredited information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1037-1049.
Explaining Emotions and the Effect on Memory
Halberstadt, J. B., & Niedenthal, P. M. (2001). Effects of emotion concepts on perceptual memory for emotional expressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 587-598.
Multiple Explanation as a De-biasing Procedure
Hirt, E. R., and Markham, K. D. (1995). Multiple explanation: A consider-an-alternative strategy for debiasing judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 1069-1086.
In reading these papers, consider the following questions and be ready to discuss them in class:
1. How does Hirt and Markham’s “multiple explanation” account of how perseverance effects can be removed allow us to understand the effectiveness of Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard’s process debriefing procedure?
2. Which situational variables might influence the likelihood that the perseverance of inaccurate beliefs (based on the receipt of faulty information) would occur in the first place?
3. Which dispositional variables might influence this same likelihood?
4. Can you think of influence practitioners who induce target-generated explanations to achieve their influence goals?
5. How might a car salesperson profitably induce such explanations?
6. Reread the first question I asked after last week’s readings. Do you see its usefulness differently after this week’s readings? Why are such questions vital for scientists to ask?