Relying on Our Intuition

Relying on Our Intuition

          Many people believe that they can fi nd answers to questions about human behavior by using their own intuition. They think that because they spend their  whole lives with others, they should certainly have learned what makes people do what they do and why. As a result, many may believe that behavioral research is basically “common sense” and that, therefore, formal study of it is not necessary. Although there is no question that we do learn about other people by observing them, because our observations are conducted informally, they may lead us to draw unwarranted or incorrect conclusions. In fact, we are often incorrect in our intuition about why others do what they do and even (as Sigmund Freud so insightfully noted) why we ourselves do what we do! 

            The problem with the way people collect and interpret data in their everyday lives is that they are not always particularly thorough. Often, when one explanation for an event seems to make sense, we adopt that explanation as the truth even when other explanations are possible and potentially more accurate. To take a couple of examples, eyewitnesses to violent crimes are often extremely confi dent in their identifi cations of the perpetrators of these crimes. But evidence shows that eyewitnesses are no less confi dent of their identifi cations when they are incorrect than when they are correct (Wells, Leippe, & Ostrom, 1979). People also become convinced of the existence of extrasensory perception, or the predictive value of astrology, when there is no evidence for either. Accepting explanations without testing them thoroughly may lead people to think that they know things that they do not really know. 

           Behavioral scientists have also found that there are a variety of cognitive and motivational biases that frequently bias our perceptions and lead us to draw erroneous conclusions (Fiske & Taylor, 2007; Hsee & Hastie, 2006). As one example, the research by Brendl and his colleagues reported at the end of this chapter shows that people have a preference for the letters in their own name, even though it is unlikely that many people realize that they do. Because these biases occur out of our awareness, it is very diffi cult for us to correct for them.