Mental contamination and mental correction: Unwanted influences on judgments and evaluations.

“The extent to which known unwanted biases can be avoided, controlled or corrected is unclear (Wilson and Brekke, 1994).”

“Similarly, research on deliberate versus automatic processing and mental contamination (Wilson and Brekke, 1994) has distinguished between unwanted judgments, actions, and moods that deviate from the preferred state.”

“…exist, (b) they must desire to correct such bias, (c) they must understand how this bias influences their decisions (size and direction), and (d) they must be able to properly correct such bias (i.e., not under- or overcorrect; see also Wilson & Brekke, 1994; Wilson, Centerbar, & Brekke, 2002).”

“…utilization is no doubt hampered by the inherent limitations on humans as processors of complex information, as rational problem solvers, and as optimal decision makers (cf. Bieri et al., 1966; Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996; Janis & Mann, 1977; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“According to recent theorists (e.g., Wegener & Petty, 1997; Wilson & Brekke, 1994), people are more likely to correct for such factors when they are (a) aware of the potentially biasing influence of a contextual factor (i.e., possess a theory regarding its likely effect), (b) motivated to adjust…”

“The primary reason we argue that all consumer psychologists should factor processes outside of awareness into their theorizing is that for a consumer to control a process, he or she must, almost by definition, be aware of it (Bargh, 1999; Wegener & Petty, 1997; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“Various aspects of our framework are compatible with and partly overlap with work by Arkes (1991), Fischhoff (1975), Morewedge and Kahneman (2010), Wilson and Brekke (1994), and probably others.”

“As such, a second strategy is to teach decision-makers strategies to prevent the unwanted biases from being activated or influence judgment (Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“The dominant view among psychologists and philosophers is that people do not have direct control over what they believe (Alston, 1988; Epley & Gilovich, 2016; Gilbert, 1991, 1993; James, 1937; Wegner, 1994; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“See Gosling et al. (2006), Hope et al. (2004), Silvia and Gendolla (2001), Wilson and Brekke (1994).”

“Engaging in persistent decision making, complex experiences, and constant restraints is likely to drain the battery of self-control (Baumeister et al., 2007), leading to mental contamination (Wilson and Brekke, 1994).”

“(1982) and others (Kahneman, 2011; Wilson & Brekke, 1994) generally signalled gloom and doom, a mood that has prevailed for a number of years.”

“Wilson and Brekke’s model of “mental contamination,” or the unwanted influence of cognitive bias, details four decision points which determine whether our reasoning is contaminated by bias (Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“First, private-context information appears to influence perceptions at the time of encoding, influencing self-evaluations in a way that makes it difficult for people to recognize the extent to which their selfassessments have been contaminated (Ross & Ward, 1996; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“This is an issue that cannot be ignored, especially as the prevalence of cognitive bias and naïve realism has been demonstrated in a compelling fashion in the psychology of science literature (e.g. Lord et al., 1984; MacCoun, 1998, 2005; Miller et al., 1993; Wilson and Brekke, 1994).”

“Metcalfe, 1998). Consistent with this notion, people try to debias their judgements if they become aware of the fact that their judgements are unduly influenced by contextual information or if the informational value of this information has been discredited (Jacoby & Kelley, 1987; Sanna & Schwarz, 2003; Schwarz, 1990,…”

“As a result, people are not aware of the source of their optimistic bias and have difficulty recognizing and correcting optimistic bias (Lench, Bench, & Davis, forthcoming; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“... and contrast effects is dependent on the type of information that is primed (trait versus exemplar), the categorical similarity between prime and target stimuli, and the match in stereotypicality of the primed information and the target’s social category—seems too complex to be explained in terms of people’s naive…”

“One might wonder whether some contrast mechanism, perhaps theory-based (Petty & Wegener, 1993; Wilson & Brekke, 1994), might provide an alternative explanation for our results.”

“In light of our pessimistic characterization of the point-of-view bias as an instance of mental contamination that in all likelihood cannot be readily undone, is there any recommendation that we can suggest for preventing this bias from finding its way into real courtrooms? Wilson and Brekke (1994, p. 134) argued that…”

“Research on biases leaves no doubt that cognitive biases operate automatically, outside of awareness, and they cannot be avoided simply through introspection and conscious effort (Pronin & Kugler, 2007; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“Similarly, correction models (Strack, 1992; Wegener & Petty, 1995; Wilson & Brekke, 1994) may be relevant to the current discussion.”

“…for example, studies reporting that intuition-based assessments may be even more overcon.dent when a greater amount of information is available [Oskamp 1965; Whitecotton et al. 1998], and that overcon.dence is dif.cult to avoid when processes are intuition-based [Wilson and Brekke 1994].”

“The central assumption underlying this research is that confabulations of intentionality depend on participants’ naive assumptions about evaluative properties of the primes (Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“These findings are consistent with Fazio s (1990) MODE model, in that automatic processes are likely to dominate people s reactions toward their social environment unless they have both the motivation and opportunity to engage in controlled processing (see also Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“…heuristic The social-circle heuristic aims tomodel howpeople judge the relative frequency of others' beliefs, preferences, behaviors, and characteristics in 3 In light of evidence formental contamination (e.g.,Wilson & Brekke, 1994), onemay ask how this targeted sampling process is implemented.”

“However, as we have seen, having motivation to correct for bias (the second criterion for avoiding mental contamination; Wilson & Brekke, 1994) does not ensure that correction will occur: a limiting instruction might draw attention to the possibility that jurors’ cognitions have been biased in a…”

“Given that awareness of the influence is a first precondition for judgmental correction ( Wilson & Brekke, 1994 ), this reasoning suggests that basic anchoring effects may be easier to correct for than standard anchoring effects.”

“We agree with a key point of convergence arising from both sides of this debate: that although people often cannot directly observe the mental processes that underlie the formation of their perceptions, they generally have conscious access to the products of those processes, i.e., the perceptions themselves (see also…”

“Yet Wilson and Brekke (1994) highlight some troubling facts facing this type of control.”

“…biases is found even when one is fully aware of the possibility of being infl uenced by undesirable “mental contamination” and is motivated to avoid it (e.g., Shapiro & Spence, 2005; Stapel, Koomen, & Zeelenberg, 1998; Wilson & Brekke, 1994; see Wilson, Centerbar, & Brekke, 2002 for a review).”

“What is more, even when a hiring agent is aware of rules banning race- and sex-based hiring decisions and intends on making a race- or sex-neutral decision, automatic tendencies to rely on social cues in decision making may render him or her unable to consider an applicants demographic attributes (DiTomaso and Smith,…”

“…of the ACS also yielded no evidence of a moderating influence of attributional complexity on the camera perspective bias. and sophistication with which they subsequently reflected on the information extracted, the damage was already done and could not be easily remedied (cf. Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“In the absence of such awareness, people must rely on their evaluations of the output of mental processes (e.g., Jacoby, Kelley, Brown, & Jasechko, 1989), interpreted in light of their intuitive theories regarding sources and causes of unwanted influences ( Wilson & Brekke, 1994 ), in an attempt to correct their conta…”

“However, much of the work on forensic reasoning in the last 20 years has been concerned with the effects of “mental contamination” [50] -- being exposed to “task-irrele-”

“However, this explanation becomes less plausible if one considers a recent observation by Wilson and Brekke (1994) that people are more concerned with not falling prey to the correspondence bias than they are with the possibility of a nuclear war.”

“Further research into the jurors’ interpretations of the instructions and their beliefs about the direction and magnitude of the impact of the defendant’s responsibility on their awards would be helpful in order to better understand the effect on awards of different types of jury instructions designed to counter the i…”

“…is limited via the explicit selfreport method (Asendorpf, Banse, & Mücke, 2002), because individuals struggle with accurately identifying the influences on their motivations (Wilson & Brekke, 1994) and intuitions about oneself are difficult to consciously access (Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000).”

“Although the role of meta-cognition for the process of judgmental correction has been extensively studied in social cognition ( Wilson & Brekke, 1994; Wegener & Petty, 1999), relatively little attention has been paid to these processes as applied to memory (but see Bless & Strack, 1998; Strack & Fo ¨rster, 1998).”

“That is, the mental contamination that results from implicit bias is difficult to control as a result of the fundamental feature of human cognition that makes us unaware of many of our mental processes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“Other social‐cognitive theories (Wegener, Petty, & Dunn, 1998; Wilson & Brekke, 1994 ) assert that correction for biased judgments can take place under these conditions if the biasing information is seen as an unwarranted influence.”

“Even if people are aware of their biases, avoiding bias takes effort and practice, which is why simply reminding people about their biases has little effect on mitigating them (Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“…this suggests that effective interventions must invoke a specific and narrow set of social categories to meet the necessary conditions for bias correction (Wilson & Brekke, 1994) or to initiate motivational processes for correcting bias to those specific social categories (Moskowitz & Li, 2011).”

“It is also important to emphasize that many of these top-down influences occur automatically and without awareness (Kunda, 1990; Nickerson, 1998; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”

“Similarly, Wilson and Brekke (1994) asserted that individuals with high cognitive load, but strong cognitive adjustments or self-regulation exhibit elevated motivation levels.”

“Recent research has examined some moderators to interpret the mixed conclusions, such as correlational and correspondent inferences (Pechmann, 1992 ), perceived bias (Wilson & Brekke, 1994 ), the time allowed for message recipients to process the ad content (Bohner et al, 2003 ), mood states (Becker-Olsen, 2006 ), and…”

“Thus, privileged knowledge biases people’s judgement of naive knowledge (Hawkins & Hastie, 1990; Wilson & Brekke, 1994 ).”

“…& Hastie, 1988, 1993; Semin & Fiedler, 1988; Semin & Smith, 1999; Smith, 1998; Trafimow & Wyer, 1993; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987; Wegner & Vallacher, 1986; Wilson & Brekke, 1994), any goal-relevant information captured in a simulation has the potential to enhance its efficacy (Gollwitzer, 1999).”