Journal ArticleDOI
Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives
Daniel Kahneman,Dale T. Miller +1 more
TLDR
In this article, a theory of norms and normality is presented and applied to some phenomena of emotional responses, social judgment, and conversations about causes, such as emotional response to events that have abnormal causes, the generation of predictions and inferences from observations of behavior and the role of norms in causal questions and answers.Abstract:
A theory of norms and normality is presented and applied to some phenomena of emotional responses, social judgment, and conversations about causes. Norms are assumed to be constructed ad hoc by recruiting specific representations. Category norms are derived by recruiting exemplars. Specific objects or events generate their own norms by retrieval of similar experiences stored in memory or by construction of counterfactual alternatives. The normality of a stimulus is evaluated by comparing it to the norms that it evokes after the fact, rather than to precomputed expectations. Norm theory is applied in analyses of the enhanced emotional response to events that have abnormal causes, of the generation of predictions and inferences from observations of behavior, and of the role of norms in causal questions and answers. This article is concerned with category norms that represent knowledge of concepts and with stimulus norms that govern comparative judgments and designate experiences as surprising. In the tradition of adaptation level theory (Appley, 1971; Helson, 1964), the concept of norm is applied to events that range in complexity from single visual displays to social interactions. We first propose a model of an activation process that produces norms, then explore the role of norms in social cognition. The central idea of the present treatment is that norms are computed after the event rather than in advance. We sketch a supplement to the generally accepted idea that events in the stream of experience are interpreted and evaluated by consulting precomputed schemas and frames of reference. The view developed here is that each stimulus selectively recruits its own alternatives (Garner, 1962, 1970) and is interpreted in a rich context of remembered and constructed representations of what it could have been, might have been, or should have been. Thus, each event brings its own frame of reference into being. We also explore the idea that knowledge of categories (e.g., "encounters with Jim") can be derived on-line by selectively evoking stored representations of discrete episodes and exemplars. The present model assumes that a number of representations can be recruited in parallel, by either a stimulus event or anread more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The psychological pleasure and pain of choosing: when people prefer choosing at the cost of subsequent outcome satisfaction.
Simona Botti,Sheena S. lyengar +1 more
TL;DR: This empirical investigation tested the hypothesis that the benefits of personal choosing are restricted to choices made from among attractive alternatives and found that contrary to people's self-predictions prior to actually choosing, choosers only proved more satisfied than nonchoosers when selecting from among more preferred alternatives.
Journal ArticleDOI
Comparing the Accuracy of Personality Judgments by the Self and Knowledgeable Others
TL;DR: Findings imply that the most valid source for personality judgements that are relevant to patterns of overt behavior may not be self-reports but the consensus of the judgement of the community of one's peers.
Journal ArticleDOI
Some Effects of Schematic Processing on Consumer Expectations and Disconfirmation Judgments
TL;DR: This paper explored how processing based on such schemas interacts with consumer expectations prior to the trial of a new product and influences disconfirmation judgments and product evaluations following the trial. But they focused on the product-category schema level, rather than the product attribute level.
Journal ArticleDOI
What do connectionism and social psychology offer each other
TL;DR: Open questions regarding connectionist models are reviewed and it is concluded that social psychological contributions to such topics as cognition-motivation interactions may be important for the development of integrative Connectionist models.
Journal ArticleDOI
Unconscious Influences of Memory for a Prior Event
TL;DR: This work presents experiments in which memory used as a tool enhances perception, lowers the subjective experience of background noise, increases the fame of nonfamous names, and lowers estimates of the difficulty of anagrams.
References
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Martin Fishbein,Icek Ajzen +1 more
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An inventory for measuring depression
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Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk
Daniel Kahneman,Amos Tversky +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk, and develop an alternative model, called prospect theory, in which value is assigned to gains and losses rather than to final assets and in which probabilities are replaced by decision weights.