Nicholas Epley - US grants

People's judgments are often inordinately influenced by the first information that comes to mind. Judgments of others' perceptions are unduly tied to one's own (Gilovich & Savitsky, 1999; Savitsky, Epley, & Gilovich, 2001; Keysar & Barr, 2002), impressions of others' personalities overly influenced by initial dispositional inferences (Gilbert, 2002) and answers to general knowledge questions anchored on irrelevant information considered early in the processing stream (Chapman & Johnson, 2002; Wilson, Brekke, & Centerbar, 2002). These effects, and many like them, have traditionally been explained as insufficient adjustment from an initial anchor or starting point, using what Tversky and Kahneman (1974) called the "anchoring and adjustment" heuristic. In short, people make judgments under uncertainty of all kinds by starting with (or anchoring on) information that is presented to their attention or that comes quickly and automatically to mind, and then serially adjusting their initial impression until an acceptable judgment is reached. Although originally used to explain numerical estimates, anchoring and adjustment has figured prominently in numerous theories of social judgment.

Recent evidence has cast doubt on the "anchoring and adjustment" heuristic. In particular, it has come to light that the experimental paradigm long used to investigate anchoring and adjustment does not, in fact, involve adjustment at all. These results, accompanied by failures to find conclusive evidence for a process of adjustment outside this paradigm, have led some researchers to reject the anchoring and adjustment heuristic altogether (Chapman & Johnson, 2002).

Research conducted with funding from a current NSF grant indicates that this conclusion is premature: The anchoring and adjustment heuristic is alive and well when one looks in the right places (Epley & Gilovich, 2001). This research indicates that people adjust in a serial fashion from anchors they automatically generate themselves as a value known to be close to the right answer but in need of tinkering. It appears, furthermore, that the processing of such "self-generated" anchors is common and pervasive in everyday life, making an accurate understanding of them critical to a broader understanding of social judgment.

The studies proposed here are designed to expand the work begun on the existing grant by: a) developing new methodologies for tracking the operation of true anchoring and adjustment; b) more clearly identifying the exact nature of anchors that stimulate adjustment and those that do not; c) expanding the scope of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic beyond questions of general knowledge and into social judgment more generally; and d) developing techniques for overcoming insufficient adjustment.

This research project concerns the escalation of conflict. Small insults can lead to larger insults, escalating back and forth from minor events into major tragedies. In the nineties, for instance, rivalry between the East-Coast and West-Coast hip hop scenes started with a "diss track," a song that disparaged rappers from the other "scene," and escalated by the end of the decade to several unsolved murders. Child-custody disagreements between divorcing parents often escalate to major legal battles that traumatize the children, deplete the financial resources of the parties, and damage their mental and physical health. Escalation in social exchange is common and central to many interpersonal, intergroup, and international conflicts. It also presents a significant physical and mental health risk to members of society, not only by the direct acts of aggression and violence between individuals and groups, but also by the physiological distress it creates. This research project has two broad goals: First, the project is dedicated to understanding the psychological causes behind negative escalation, the factors that exacerbate it and the situations that nurture such escalation. Second, the project will use the deeper understanding of the causes of escalation to identify novel ways to prevent and defuse conflict escalation. The project develops a theory of social action that explains why negative exchange escalates. It assumes that actors and reactors perceive the same action systematically differently, and that this difference leads directly to escalation. The theory also suggests novel ways that the vicious cycle of negative escalation could be broken. The researchers will test the theory in eight experiments, each of which should provide different insights about way to defuse escalation.

This research project promises substantial benefits to society. The quality of social relationships is central to physical and mental health, with escalating conflict serving as a major social stressor. Escalation occurs at all levels of social organization, from individuals to international acts of aggression in reaction to a perceived offense. The research project is therefore likely to have substantial scientific impact, as well as significant implications for the welfare of individuals and society.