“As you think, so you become… Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren't there.”
- Epictetus
A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology proposed that individuals who jump to conclusions (JTC) tend to be overconfident, make more mistakes and endorse oddball beliefs such as conspiracy theories. This behavior, however, can be diminished through interventions.
This study was carried out by Carmen Sanchez, an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and David Dunning, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan.
Whether you’re a doctor diagnosing a patient or a college student picking a major, the ability to make informative well-rounded decisions is essential. However, as society increasingly moves at a faster pace, it can be natural to make snap judgements when given new information.
In fact, people often place an excessive amount of emphasis on the first piece of information they’re given, while neglecting everything that follows. Unsurprisingly, making judgements without having all the information can cloud how you perceive and understand the world around you, leading to poor decision making.
Dr. Sanchez and Dunning performed the following experiments to learn more about how JTC affects performance as well as how to reduce this behavior.
In the first experiment, the researchers wanted to examine whether individuals high in JTC would make more errors on a task and exhibit more bias.
Participants were given a scenario about a character fishing from one of two lakes. Majority of the fish in the first lake were red, while the rest were gray. In the second lake, the opposite was true. After each fish was pulled out, the participants had the option to guess which lake the character was fishing in or wait to see the next fish.
Next, the researchers examined the extent to which participants agreed with oddball beliefs (e.g. conspiracy theories) such as “Health officials know that cell phones cause cancer but are doing nothing to stop it because large corporations won’t let them.”
Following this, participants were given multiple choice questions about American history. After answering each question, they were asked to rate the chance that their answer was right from 25% (I’m only guessing) to 100% (I’m certain that I’m right).
The researchers also measured each participant's ability to resist errors by asking them to evaluate syllogisms (e.g. All fish swim. Tuna are fish. Therefore, tuna can swim) and by asking questions such as “If John can drink one barrel of water in 6 days and Mary can drink one barrel of water in 12 days, how long would it take them to drink one barrel of water together.” The quick but wrong intuitive answer that comes to mind is 9, but the true answer is 4.
The researchers found that people who displayed high JTC behavior made significantly more errors, were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories and demonstrated more knowledge corruption (they were overconfident despite achieving lower accuracy on their answers).
With these results in mind, the researchers were curious if there was a method to diminish the overconfidence that often leads to JTC behavior. They decided to adapt an intervention commonly used on schizophrenic patients, since schizophrenia is often associated with JTC behavior. The intervention was as follows:
Task 1: Education program. Participants were educated on what JTC behavior is, why people make snap judgements and how the brain processes these judgements through different mechanisms. The researchers also explained that everyone is vulnerable to this behavior and while it’s often unproductive, it can occasionally be beneficial.
Task 2: What’s the picture? One by one, participants were shown an image that revealed an aspect of a larger picture. Participants had to guess what the final image would be. The purpose of this was to demonstrate that reaching a conclusion can be difficult if you don’t have all the information.
Task 3: Optical illusions. Participants were shown various optical illusions (i.e. images with multiple interpretations) and were asked to write down what they saw. The researchers immediately pointed out the details that they missed. This was meant to encourage them to slow down their judgements.
Task 4: JTC ramifications. Participants watched a video of a male jogger complimenting a female artist who ignores him. Eventually, she notices him when he’s screaming at her, but he runs off before she can communicate with him. She leaves him a picture with a note explaining that she’s deaf and the video ends with the male jogger feeling foolish. Participants were then asked to write down times when they made incorrect snap judgements and what they wish they’d considered.
Participants in the intervention group completed various tasks assessing their ability to accurately answer questions and make judgements. Those in the control group performed the same tasks but didn’t undergo the intervention.
The results of this experiment revealed that the intervention program reduced levels of confidence and overconfidence throughout the various tasks. However, this affected all the participants, not just those higher in JTC behavior.
In sum, the researchers found that those higher in JTC behavior are more likely to make greater errors in cognitive and reasoning tasks, endorse conspiracy theories and be overconfident despite poor performance. Fortunately, they also found that an invention designed to educate individuals on JTC behavior can reduce overconfidence, allowing for more well-thought out decisions-making.