One of the most persistent findings in psychology is confirmation bias. When we have a belief about something in the
world, we tend to seek out information that will confirm that belief. For example, if you meet a new person, and
you believe that they are an extravert, you might focus on finding out
information consistent with that belief (like whether they enjoy attending big
parties and meeting new people) rather than information inconsistent with that
belief (like whether they enjoy time alone or like to stick with the same close
circle of friends).
An interesting paper by Tali Kleiman and Ran Hassin in the
September, 2013 issue of the Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology suggests that people might be more prone
to consider two sides of an issue when they are experiencing a goal
conflict.
Goals drive our behavior. One thing that makes it difficult
to achieve our goals, though, is that sometimes they conflict. For example, a student might want to study in
order to get a good grade on an upcoming exam, but might also want to go out
with friends to have a good time. When
it is not possible to do both, the goals are in conflict.
Kleiman and Hassin suggest that when goals conflict, it puts
people in a mindset that forces them to consider two sides of issues, because
resolving the goal conflict requires that people consider the strengths and
weaknesses of the opportunities before them.
Interestingly, goals can conflict even when people are not consciously
aware of the conflict.
To test this possibility, participants were brought to the
lab to do what they were told were two unrelated studies. First, they did a lexical decision task. In this task, they see strings of letter and
have to respond whether they form a word.
If they saw the letters BROGI, they would respond that it was not a
word. If they saw the letters PARTY,
they would respond that it was a word.
One group saw words that referred to both an academic goal (like CLASS
and STUDY) and a social goal (like PARTY and MOVIE). This condition created an unconscious goal
conflict. A second group saw words that
were not consistently related to any goals.
After doing this lexical decision task, participants were
told that they could ask a series of questions to someone to find out whether
he was an extravert. They were given a
list of 25 possible questions and were asked to pick 12. Ten of the questions
would ask for information that would confirm that the person was an
extravert. Ten of the questions would
ask for information that would suggest the person was an introvert. The remaining questions were unrelated to
extraversion.
People in the control condition chose far more questions
relating to extraversion than introversion.
The people who were given the goal conflict asked about the same number
of extraversion and introversion questions.
This result suggests that people primed with a goal conflict were not
influenced by confirmation bias as strongly as those given no goal conflict.
A second study primed people with words that were opposites
rather than just goal conflict, and found that opposites still lead to a
confirmation bias. A third study found
that when people were primed with two unrelated goals that do not conflict
directly, they still exhibit confirmation bias.
Each of these studies also replicated the finding that goal conflict
reduces confirmation bias.
Putting these results together, the motivational system
influences both actions and thinking. Clearly,
having an active goal pushes you to act in ways that are consistent with the
goal. An active goal also pushes people to think about information that is
related to that goal. But, when goals
compete, it pushes people to think in ways that will help them to resolve
conflicts. Reducing confirmation bias is
one way to help resolve those conflicts.
