Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports On Mental Processes

Introduction

Why do you like him? How did you solve this problem? Why did you take that job?

Several cognitive psychologists have proposed that we may have no direct access to higher order mental processes such as those involved in evaluation, judgement, problem solving, and initiation of behavior.

Mandler (1975a) “There are many systems that cannot be brought into consciousness, and probably most systems that analyze the environment in the first place have that characteristic. In most of these cases, only the products of cognitive and mental processes are available.”

Critique of anti-introspectivist view

As of 1977, the research available was concerned with the basic processes of perception and memory. In which it has been confirmed that there is almost no conscious awareness of perceptual and memorial processes. It is, however, a substantial leap to blanket assertions about higher order processes from this research.

This view fails to account that people commonly report on cognitive processes underlying complex behaviors such as judgement, choice, inference, and problem solving. Why and how?

This view does not allow that people may sometimes be correct in their reports about higher order mental processes.

Major conclusions

The accuracy of subjective reports on the effects of stimuli on higher order inference based responses is so poor as to suggest that any introspective access that may exist is not sufficient to produce generally correct or reliable reports.

When reporting on the effects of stimuli, people may not interrogate a memory of cognitive responses that operated on the stimuli; instead they may base their reports on implicit, a priori theories about the causal connection between stimulus and response.

Subjective reports about higher order mental processes are sometimes correct, but even the instances of correct reports are not due to direct introspective awareness. Instead, they are due to the incidentally correct employment of a priori causal theories.

Verbal Reports on Cognitive Processes in Dissonance and Attribution Studies

Subjects frequently cannot report on the chief response that was produced by the manipulations.

Even when they are able to report the existence of the responses, subjects do not report that an evaluational or attitudinal response underwent any alterations.

Subjects cannot correctly identify the stimuli that produced the response.

Evidence

		Awareness of the existence of the response.
		Awareness of the existence of a change process.
		Reports about cognitive processes.
		Subliminal  Perception
		Reports on problem solving processes.
		Reports on the effects of the presence of others on helping behavior

Demonstrations of subject inability to report accurately on the effects of stimuli on responses.

Failure to report the influence of effective stimulus factors.

	Erroneous reports about stimuli influencing associative behavior.
	Erroneous reports about position effects on appraisal and choice.
	Erroneous reports about anchoring effects and predictions.
	Erroneous reports about the influence of an individual’s personality on reactions to his physical characteristics.

Reporting the influence of ineffective stimulus factors.

	Erroneous reports about the emotional impact of literary passages.
	Erroneous reports about the effects of distractions on reactions to a film.
	Erroneous reports about the effects of reassurance on willingness to take electric shocks.

The origins of verbal reports  about cognitive processes

Sometimes, as in many dissonance and attribution studies, people are unable to report correctly even about the existence of the evaluative and motivational responses produced by the manipulations.

Sometimes, as in dissonance and attribution studies, and in the reports of creative artists and scientists, people appear to be unable to report that a cognitive process has occurred.

Sometimes, as in the subliminal perception literature and the reports of creative workers, people may not be able to identify the existence of critical stimulus.

Even when people are completely cognizant of the existence of both stimulus and response, they appear to be unable to report correctly about the effect of the stimulus on the response. This is true in dissonance and attribution studies, in the subliminal perception literature, in the reports of creative workers, and in the work by Maier(1931), Latane and Darley (1970), and in our own studies described above.(Nisbett 1977)

A Priori Causal Theories

		the culture or subculture may supply implicit theories about causal relations
		the culture may have explicit rules stating the relationship between a particular stimulus and a particular response
		an individual may hold a particular causal theory on the basis of empirical observation of covariation between stimuli of the general type and responses of the general type.

"in"

		in  the absence of a culturally supplied rule, implicit causal theory, or assumption about covariation, people may be able to generate causal hypotheses linking even novel stimuli and novel responses

When will we be wrong in our verbal reports?

		Removal in time: Perhaps chief among the circumstances that should decrease accuracy in a self- report is a separation in time between the report and the actual occurrence of the process.
		Mechanics of judgement
		Context
		Nonevents
		Nonverbal behavior
		Discrepancy between the magnitudes of cause and effect

When will we be correct in our verbal reports?

		These conditions may be summarized briefly by saying that reports will be accurate when influential stimuli are (a) available and (b) plausible causes of the response, and when (c) few or no plausible but non influential factors are available.

"Some evidence in the literature..."

		Some evidence in the literature that people can sometimes accurately report on the stimuli that influence particular cognitive processes (a) learning without awareness and (b) awareness of factors influencing complex judgements.

Why are we unaware of our unawareness?

		confusion between content and process: access to much content, but little process.
		knowledge of prior idiosyncratic reactions to a stimulus category
		differences in causal theories between sub-cultures
		attention and intentional knowledge
		inadequate feedback: Disconfirmation of hypotheses about the workings of our minds is hard to come by

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