Memos to the President from a 'Council of Psychological Science Advisers'

Bethany A. Teachman; Michael I. Norton; Barbara A. Spellman

Article | Perspectives on Psychological Science

Memos to the President from a 'Council of Psychological Science Advisers'

by Bethany A. Teachman, Michael I. Norton and Barbara A. Spellman

Abstract

On September 15, 2015, President Obama issued an Executive Order recommending that executive departments and agencies use "behavioral science insights to better serve the American people." The articles in this special section were already in press when the order was issued, and this serendipity further underscores the timeliness of this special section. These articles propose many examples of the very actions that could be taken by federal (as well as state and local) agencies to promote psychological science in the spirit of President Obama's order.

Keywords: Social Psychology; Government Administration; Public Administration Industry; United States;

Format: Print

Read Now

Citation:

Teachman, Bethany A., Michael I. Norton, and Barbara A. Spellman. "Memos to the President from a 'Council of Psychological Science Advisers'." Perspectives on Psychological Science 10, no. 6 (November 2015): 697–700.

Article | Journal of Consumer Psychology

The Feeling of Not Knowing It All

Haiyang Yang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton

How do consumers assess their mastery of knowledge they have learned? We explore this question by investigating a common knowledge consumption situation: encountering opportunities for further learning. We argue and show that such opportunities can trigger a feeling-of-not-knowing-it-all (FONKIA), which lowers consumers’ confidence in their mastery of the knowledge they already possess. Specifically, listing optional follow-up readings at the conclusion of a course lowered students’ confidence in their mastery of the course material they had already learned (Study 1). Encountering an optional learning opportunity increased the FONKIA, which mediated the decreased confidence (Studies 2 and 3). We also document two moderators consistent with our conceptualization. First, participants primed with mastery (vs. instrumental) motivation were more negatively impacted when they encountered optional learning opportunities. Second, the more related the optional opportunities were to the target topic, the lower participants’ confidence in their mastery of what they had already learned. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings, such as encouraging further learning or harming teaching evaluations.

Keywords: Knowledge consumption; Consumption of learning; Judgment of knowledge; Feeling ofknowing; Confidence in knowledge; WYSIATI; FONKIA; Knowledge Acquisition; Learning; Perception;

Citation:

Yang, Haiyang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely, and Michael I. Norton. "The Feeling of Not Knowing It All." Journal of Consumer Psychology 29, no. 3 (July 2019): 455–462. View Details

Cite View Details Find at Harvard Read Now

Faculty & Research

Memos to the President from a 'Council of Psychological Science Advisers'

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author