More from the Author

• Article | Psychological Science | 2010

  I May Not Agree With You, but I Trust You: Caring About Social Issues Signals Integrity

  Julian Zlatev

  What characteristics of an individual signal trustworthiness to other people? I propose that individuals who care about contentious social issues signal to observers that they have integrity and thus can be trusted. Critically, this signal conveys trustworthiness whether or not the target and the observer hold the same view on the issue. Five studies (N = 3,817) demonstrated the predicted effect of caring on integrity-based trust (Studies 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 4)—even in cases of strong disagreement—across a variety of issues (Study 1) and when behavioral outcomes with real stakes were used (Studies 3a and 3b). This effect largely results from a perception of low-caring targets as particularly untrustworthy (Study 2). Additionally, participants trusted targets with staunchly opposing views about an issue even though they simultaneously disliked them (Study 4). These findings have important implications for how people form impressions of others and speak to potential interventions to help mitigate the growing ideological divide.

  Keywords: Personal Characteristics; Moral Sensibility; Perception; Trust;

  Citation:

  Zlatev, Julian. "I May Not Agree With You, but I Trust You: Caring About Social Issues Signals Integrity." Psychological Science 30, no. 6 (June 2019): 880–892.  View Details

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• Article | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

  Choice Architects Reveal a Bias Toward Positivity and Certainty

  David P. Daniels and Julian Zlatev

  Biases influence important decisions, but little is known about whether and how individuals try to exploit others’ biases in strategic interactions. Choice architects—that is, people who present choices to others—must often decide between presenting choice sets with positive or certain options (influencing others toward safer options) versus presenting choice sets with negative or risky options (influencing others toward riskier options). We show that choice architects’ influence strategies are distorted toward presenting choice sets with positive or certain options across thirteen studies involving diverse samples (executives, law/business/medical students, adults) and contexts (public policy, business, medicine). These distortions appear to primarily reflect decision biases rather than social preferences, and they can cause choice architects to use influence strategies that backfire.

  Keywords: nudges; Biases; strategic decision making; social influence; Choice architects; choice architecture; Reflection effect; Certainty effect; Loss aversion; Decision Making; Risk and Uncertainty; Power and Influence;

  Citation:

  Daniels, David P., and Julian Zlatev. "Choice Architects Reveal a Bias Toward Positivity and Certainty." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 151 (March 2019): 132–149.  View Details

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• Article | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

  Default Neglect in Attempts at Social Influence

  Julian Zlatev, David P. Daniels, Hajin Kim and Margaret A. Neale

  Current theories suggest that people understand how to exploit common biases to influence others. However, these predictions have received little empirical attention. We consider a widely studied bias with special policy relevance: the default effect, which is the tendency to choose whichever option is the status quo. We asked participants (including managers, law/business/medical students, and US adults) to nudge others toward selecting a target option by choosing whether to present that target option as the default. In contrast to theoretical predictions, we find that people often fail to understand and/or use defaults to influence others, i.e., they show “default neglect.” First, in one-shot default-setting games, we find that only 50.8% of participants set the target option as the default across 11 samples (n = 2,844), consistent with people not systematically using defaults at all. Second, when participants have multiple opportunities for experience and feedback, they still do not systematically use defaults. Third, we investigate beliefs related to the default effect. People seem to anticipate some mechanisms that drive default effects, yet most people do not believe in the default effect on average, even in cases where they do use defaults. We discuss implications of default neglect for decision making, social influence, and evidence-based policy.

  Keywords: social influence; default effect; nudges; choice architecture; Decision Making; Behavior;

  Citation:

  Zlatev, Julian, David P. Daniels, Hajin Kim, and Margaret A. Neale. "Default Neglect in Attempts at Social Influence." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, no. 52 (December 26, 2017).  View Details

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