This week's readings focused particularly on metacognitive failures in people otherwise considered healthy and normal.
What we know about how people's minds work tells us that lying politicians and news accounts and the like are particularly damaging and dangerous. It is very difficult to reverse the impact of widespread lies. Even after people know the truth, studies show their perspective is still impacted. In addition, I have also seen people respond to fabrications with extreme hindsight bias, saying, that they know something's not true, but it's something that person would say, so it doesn't matter (like that Twitter fabrication described here)
One observation I had about the material was the notion that living mindfully, with your mind present in the moment, seems like a technique that would improve both memory accuracy and your ability to protect your recollections against influence.
The discussions of hindsight bias in the case of jurors has significant implications for the criminal justice system, and particularly the importance of proper forensic evidence processing and interrogation techniques. The backlog of DNA evidence is a disgrace. I hope that the legal system is able to absorb what psychology is teaching us about the dangers of simply asking a jury to disregard information.
I myself have found that when I have a 'knew it all along' response to a situation. I am not sure the model that was presented is a direct corollary to this. To me, that 'knew it all along' feeling seems like a result of a feeling of "fit" -- the result is consistent with my thinking up to that point, and it all plugs together in a familiar/recognized way.
For example, with the Trayvon Martin case, I found myself thinking both ways -- that the evidence as it was reported to me surely pointed toward conviction, and that the prosecutorial conduct of the case pointed toward acquittal. But once the verdict came out, I distinctly felt that I knew they were not going to convict Zimmermann, or at least that I should have known, which feels like much the same thing.
Once the verdict came out, the story came together. In theory, I knew that I was not in the jury room, and I was sure that there are many cases which look clear in the media but which are conducted in a way that the jury decides that the case has not been made effectively. But I was aware of a visceral reaction that the whole situation had been unfair, that I'd known or should've known it was going to turn out this way, that I should have known better than to hope that a seemingly-guilty person (as reported by the media) would also be guilty in court.
The distinction is a subtlety of the system that can be overlooked, but a careful juror is trying to make a decision based not on "what really happened" but rather "what the evidence proves". You hope that the evidence tells you what happened, but people lie, evidence gets overlooked or is simply lacking. So a vote to convict and a belief about reality are really different things. It does seem that people's ability to draw these types of distinction is susceptible to bias -- evidence may be weighed differently depending on what people suspect to be true based on race, gender, age, etc. A tighter and more vigorous case may be needed in situations where people are biased toward empathy for the accused.
The Communications MindTools talk about the virtue of planning a first impression or a communication activity, and what we know about hindsight bias emphasizes the value of this -- if you mess it up, it's very hard to fix later. Even if everyone agrees that something was awry and wants to put it aside in a fair way, psychology tells us that the first impression is persistent. There were some parallels between the active listening and active questioning section and the cognitive interview style that is described in the text -- in both cases, you are working to support the speaker's ability to deliver the message they want to deliver, without influencing it or cutting it short.
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