Critical Thinking
Across the
Curriculum Project

COMMON SENSE TEST RESULTS

All are FALSE!

This is false because people often behave in ways that run contrary to their attitudes. Any time we explain our behavior as "giving in to peer pressure" we have said that we hold an attitude against that behavior, but engaged in it regardless.

While we may be more willing to engage in a boring activity if there is a great reward promised for doing so, we will actually enjoy it less. We explain our behavior in terms of the payoffs we receive for engaging in that behavior. If we are getting paid, for example, then the money is the justification for performing the behavior, "at least I'm being paid well." However, if there is minimal external reward, we will attribute our behavior to something like, "Well, it wasn't really that bad. In fact, it was sort of fun trying to get a rhythm to the task."

Beyond that, we will come to enjoy intrinsically rewarding activities less when there is an external reward associated with it. Reading programs for children that provide money or pizza for the number of books read actually end up decreasing the number of books read by those children once the external rewards are removed. The children explain their behavior by showing that they engaged in the activity not for the pleasure of reading, but for the money or pizza.

(See: work by Mark Lepper, cf: Lepper, M.R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R.E. (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the over justification hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 129-137.)

Most people rate themselves above average, but less than ideal. This is often called the Self-centered bias. Several studies have found that we tend to say we are "not genius, but above average intelligence, not gorgeous, but above average looking, etc."

Markus, H., & Wurf, E. (1987) The dynamic self-concept: A social psychological perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 299-337.

Myers, D.G. (1980) Inflated self: Human illusions and the biblical call to hope. New York: Seabury Press.

Taylor, S.E., & Brown J.D. (1988). Illusion and well-being : A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.

Taylor, S.E., & Brown J.D. (1994) Illusion and well-being revisited Separating fact from fiction. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 21-27.

Unfortunately, this is false. The most classical experiments on this were performed by Stanley Milgram. In his studies, he had an experimenter in a white lab coat instruct a research subject to deliver ever-increasingly strong shocks to another person, believed to be another subject. The shocks were followed by groans, screams, protests, and finally by silence. Although subjects did not want to persist, all delivered at least some shocks, and about 2/3 completed the entire range of shocks. Many subjects believed the subject being shocked had possibly died as a result of their activity, but none heroically rescued the victim in defiance of the official authority!

See his book: Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to authority. New York: Harper & Row.

The first person to speak gets the advantage of setting the stage. The person who follows must break down the arguments and scenario as presented by the first speaker, while also presenting their own perspective. While the last word is certainly beneficial, being first provides a decided advantage.

Despite all the talk about making team efforts and "we're in this together" people tend to slack off when there are others to take over for them or cover their lack of effort. This is apparent to anyone who ever had a group project in school or at work in which peoples' individual effort could not be determined by the teacher or boss. Someone ends up with the lion's share of the work, and an equal share in the payoff.

The process is call "diffusion of responsibility" and occurs regularly in groups and teams.

Groups actually will make more extreme decisions than will individuals. This is related to diffusion of responsibility - if things go wrong I can say, "I didn't want it, but the group over-rode me." There is also a tendency toward "groupthink." This is a polarization of groups into more extreme opinions and plans. There is a mentality that, "you're either with us or you're against us, what's it gonna be?" There is also the dynamic that "we can do it if we all get together!" (Refer back to #6 above!)

cf: Janis, I.L. (1971) Groupthink. Psychology Today, 5(6), 43-46ff.

cf: Janis, I.L. (1972) Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Here we tend to notice the aspects of our loved ones that are different from us, labeling them as "opposite". But stop for a moment and think about yourself, what would your true opposite be? A tall, thin, dark-skinned, motivated, religious, intelligent, social, liberal, college student striving for a degree in engineering would be attracted to a short, heavy, light-skinned, apathetic, atheist, unintelligent, withdrawn, conservative high-school drop out! This is the opposite of these characteristics! While a bit of variation makes for interest, opposites are generally rejected and we search for people much like ourselves. This is called the "matching hypothesis." People tend to marry within their own social group (called endogamy) and tend to marry those with similar personality characteristics (called Homogamy).

As with this cliche, there are often counter-cliches that say the reverse, but are also believed to be true. Although opposites attract, birds of a feather flock together. How can these both be true? The basic problem with cliches is that we treat them as if they were obvious, we tend to select only that data which supports the underlying assumptions, and reject or simply not notice other data.

While short separations in a committed relationship might make the couple celebrate the reunion, absences tend to make the heart start to wander! Long distance relationships rarely work for long. There are people close by who start to look interesting.

Cliches in general do not offer good advice for living.

This is due to a phenomenon called the "bystander effect" and is related to diffusion of responsibility (discussed under #6 above). Essentially, we take cues about whether to act from the others gathered around us. Since the others are also taking cues from each other, we tend to all stand around doing nothing because it is "nothing" that seems to be the thing to do. No one wants to look like a fool for being the only one to act and end up with it being a mistake. This is exaggerated in situations that are ambiguous. We may not be sure what the right thing to do is; or whether the person really needs help. We see this being addressed in crisis intervention and first aid classes when they tell people that if you are choking at mealtime to stand, throw over the table, and point to your throat. If you are being polite and trying not to create a scene, people might mistake the true state of emergency and you might die for your politeness! Reduce the ambiguity.

When there is only one other person, that person is more likely to intervene. Have your emergencies around a select few trained people and you are more likely to have assistance.

cf:. Latane, B., & Darley, J. (1970) The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn't he help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Contrary to popular belief, babies who are quickly attended to do not learn to cry more to be picked up more, they learn that their needs will be readily attended to and cry less. It is like the child in the grocery store who knows she has to fuss for a long time to get the candy at the check-out counter - she starts in early and is fussing for the long haul. A baby whose needs are attended to learn a sense of security in the responsiveness of care-givers.

While we expect modeling to be effective here, the fact is there is no difference between families of gay or lesbian parents and families of heterosexual parents in the sexual orientation of the children. If this were true, then homosexual parents would model this to their children and there would be no gay or lesbian people because all children (aside for artificial methods of conception) are from a male-female union.

(Question items 1 - 10 are from Whitford, F.W. (1992) Instructors' Resource Manual for Worchel & Shebilske's Psychology, 4th Edition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. All explanations are original to Matthew Westra).

• A cow has 4 functional teats.
• Lobsters cannot "scream" because they have no vocal chords. The noise is actually a "hissing" sound as the heated air rushes out between the carapace (large back-plate) and the head. This sets up a vibration, much like the whistling of a tea kettle. When put in head first, the air rushes out through the larger opening between the carapace and the tail, making no sound.
• The law office ad creates an assumption that insurance companies are making billions of dollars and that they don't willingly pay their claims. This would be libel against these companies. Actually, the ad says that the companies DIDN'T make billions, and didn't make them as a result of withholding claims. While they actually DO pay their claims, the insurance companies don't make money that way, they spend it that way. They make money by charging premiums and investing their assets. Similarly we aren't making money when we engage in paying our mortgage and water bill. We make money by going to work. Most likely, neither of us made billions by either paying our bills nor going to work!

Often what happens is that people fall prey to some common Fallacies Leading to Assumptions of Common Sense.

Follow the link above to go to Part 4 of the Common Sense pages.

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Inquiries to: michael.connelly@mcckc.edu
Last modified: 03/02/04