Engineer a situation where subjects will perform an action because you tricked them into doing it, and then ask them for reasons why they performed that action. Specifics here that actually work are beyond my pay-grade. But I’m reminded of an experiment where a subject was hypnotized and given an umbrella. After the hypnosis, the researcher asked “Why do you have an umbrella?” and the subject, initially looking a bit shocked at the umbrella, answered “I thought it was going to rain”.
It would help to have a list of reliable triggers to make people perform actions without conscious decision, which most people wouldn’t be aware of.
This is conceptually motivated by the finding that giving a child specific warnings is less effective than giving nonspecific warnings. Supposedly, if given a vague warning the child will make up their own reasons for avoidance of bad behavior, like “I didn’t really want to do that anyway.”
And the point of this, of course, is to have a definitive case of rationalization to point to, in order to train the ability to spot rationalization in oneself.
Exercise: Trick people into rationalizing
Engineer a situation where subjects will perform an action because you tricked them into doing it, and then ask them for reasons why they performed that action. Specifics here that actually work are beyond my pay-grade. But I’m reminded of an experiment where a subject was hypnotized and given an umbrella. After the hypnosis, the researcher asked “Why do you have an umbrella?” and the subject, initially looking a bit shocked at the umbrella, answered “I thought it was going to rain”.
It would help to have a list of reliable triggers to make people perform actions without conscious decision, which most people wouldn’t be aware of.
This is conceptually motivated by the finding that giving a child specific warnings is less effective than giving nonspecific warnings. Supposedly, if given a vague warning the child will make up their own reasons for avoidance of bad behavior, like “I didn’t really want to do that anyway.”
And the point of this, of course, is to have a definitive case of rationalization to point to, in order to train the ability to spot rationalization in oneself.