Telling More Than We Can Know¶
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231-259.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Implicit Knowledge
- Formal education scales but loses implicit content
This sourceNisbett-Wilson articulation gap introspection limitation.
- Formal education scales but loses implicit content
Domain-specific¶
- Bias Blind Spot
- The critical fact is that cognitive biases are largely automatic and operate below the threshold of conscious awareness
This sourceThe classic review showing that people have little or no introspective access to the processes that shape their judgments, so they can be unaware that a factor has influenced them.
Supported in partVerified against the source
- The critical fact is that cognitive biases are largely automatic and operate below the threshold of conscious awareness
Mechanisms¶
- Apprenticeship Reflection
- Its failure mode is post-hoc invention: reflection readily fabricates a tidy principle the expert never actually followed, or over-generalizes a setting-specific trick into a universal law.
This sourceShows that retrospective explanations of mental processes may be inferred from plausible causal theories rather than recovered through direct introspection.
- Its failure mode is post-hoc invention: reflection readily fabricates a tidy principle the expert never actually followed, or over-generalizes a setting-specific trick into a universal law.
- Initiator Interview Protocol
- Asked why they acted, people generate a coherent story that was not necessarily the real reason
This sourceShows that people may report plausible causal explanations without introspective access to the processes that produced their behavior.
- Asked why they acted, people generate a coherent story that was not necessarily the real reason
- Reconciliation Report
- Its failure mode is post-hoc rationalization
This sourceShows that explanations of one's own mental processes can be reconstructed from plausible prior causal theories rather than recovered through direct introspective access.
- Its failure mode is post-hoc rationalization
Verification¶
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