The False Consensus Effect

Lee Ross, David Greene, and Pamela

House

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (1977)

 The intuitive psychologist
We each have information built up from countless previous experiences
involving both ourselves and others, so surely we should have solid insights?

• The professional psychologist relies upon well-defined sampling techniques

and statistical procedures for estimating the commonness of particular
responses. Where such estimates are relevant to subsequent interpretations
and inferences, he can proceed with confidence in his data

• Intuitive psychologists, by contrast, are rarely blessed either with adequate

“baseline” data or with the means of acquiring such data. To the extent that
their systems for interpreting social responses depend upon estimates of
commonness or oddity they must, accordingly, rely largely upon subjective
impressions and intuitions
In a sense, every social observer is an intuitive psychologist who is forced by
everyday experience to judge the causes and implications of behavior

• In reality people show a number of predictable biases when estimating

other people’s behaviour and its causes. And these biases help to show
exactly why we need psychology experiments and why we can’t rely on
our intuitions about the behaviour of others

One of these is called the false consensus bias

 Background

• In the 1970s Stanford University Social Psychologist Professor Lee Ross set
out to show just how the false consensus effect operates in two neat
studies

The phenomenon of false consensus effect centralizes on people’s tendency

to project their way of thinking onto other people, thinking other people
think the same way as they do

This logical fallacy may involve a group or just a sole individual that assumes
their own set of opinions; beliefs and impressions are more prevalent
amongst public than they actually are
 The research domain
Professor Lee Ross (Stanford University, 1977) conducted a research on:

"biases in human inference, judgment, and decision making, especially on the

cognitive, perceptual and motivational biases that lead people to misinterpret
each other’s behavior and that create particular barriers to dispute resolution
and the implementation of peace agreements.“

Professor Ross conducted 2 studies meant to show how the false consensus
effect works
 Study 1

Methodology

• The subjects presented with questionnaires containing one of four brief

stories composed specifically for our purposes. A total of 320 Stanford
undergraduates (80 for each of the four stories) participated

• Each story asked the readers to place themselves in a particular setting in

which a series of events culminated in a clear behavioral choice

• The subjects were not immediately required to state their own choice but
were asked to estimate the percentage of their peers who would choose
each of the two possible courses of action suggested

Ross et al, 1977

The four stories:
SUPERMARKET STORY

• As you are leaving your neighborhood supermarket a man in a business

suit asks you whether you like shopping in that store. You reply quite
honestly that you do like shopping there and indicate that in addition to
being close to your home the supermarket seems to have very good meats
and produce at reasonably low prices. The man then reveals that a
videotape crew has filmed your comments and asks you to sign a release
allowing them to use the unedited film for a TV commercial that the
supermarket chain is preparing

• What % of your peers do you estimate would sign the release?-%

• What % would refuse to sign it?-% (Total % should be 100%)

Ross et al, 1977

 The Term Paper Story
• You arrive for the first day of class in a course in your major area of study.
The professor says that the grade in your course will depend on a paper
due the final day of the course. He gives the class the option of two
alternatives upon which they must vote. They can either do papers
individually in the normal way or they can work in teams of three persons
who will submit a single paper between them. You are informed that he
will still give out the same number of A’s, B’s, and C’s, etc., but that in the
first case every student will be graded individually while the second case
all three students who work together get the same grade

• What % of your peers do you estimate would vote for group papers?-%
• What % would vote for individual papers?-% (Total % should be 100%)

Ross et al, 1977

 TRAFFIC TICKET STORY
• While driving through a rural area near your home you are stopped by a
county police officer who informs you that you have been clocked (with
radar) at 38 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone. You believe this information
to be accurate. After the policeman leaves, you inspect your citation and
find that the details on the summons regarding weather, visibility, time,
and location of violation are highly inaccurate. The citation informs you
that you may either pay a $20 fine by mail without appearing in court or
you must appear in municipal court within the next two weeks to contest
the charge

• What % of your peers do you estimate would pay the $20 fine by mail?-%
• What % would go to court to contest the charge?-% (Total should be
100%)

Ross et al, 1977

 SPACE PROGRAM REFERENDUM STORY
• It is proposed in Congress that the space program be revived and that large
sums be allocated for the manned and unmanned exploration of the moon
and planets nearest Earth. Supporters of the proposal argue that it will
provide jobs, spur technology, and promote national pride and unity.
Opponents argue that a space program will either necessitate higher taxes,
or else dram money from important domestic priorities. Furthermore, they
deny that it will accomplish the desirable effects claimed by the program’s
supporters. Both sides, of course, refute each other’s claims and ultimately a
public referendum is held.

• What % of your peers do you estimate would vote for the proposed
allocation of funds for space exploration?-%
• What % would vote against it?-% (Total should be 100%)

Ross et al, 1977

 Completing a questionnaire
• After completing the relevant percentage estimates, subjects were
required to fill out a three-page questionnaire. On one page, they were
first asked to indicate which of the two behavioral options they personally
would choose and then asked to rate themselves on a series of Likert-type
personality scales

• This self description page of the questionnaire was either followed or

preceded by two pages on which the participant was required to rate the
personal traits of the “typical person” of the reader’s own age and sex
who would choose each of the two specific options presented in the story

For example:
Subjects who read the Supermarket Story were required on one page to rate
the traits of “the typical person who would sign the commercial release” and,
on another page. to rate “the typical person who would not sign the
commercial release.”
Ross et al, 1977
 Results

Option 1: pro; Option 2: Against

Ross et al, 1977

 Results
The Perception of Consensus:

• Most of the subjects had thought that other people would do the same as
them, regardless of which of the two responses they actually chose
themselves. This validates the phenomenon of false consensus effect,
where an individual thinks that other people think the same way they do
when actually they often don’t

• Another observation that emerged from the study is that when

participants were asked to describe the attributes of the people who will
likely make the choice opposite their own, subjects made extreme
predictions about the personalities of those who didn’t share their choice
 STUDY 2
Rationale and Method
• Study 2 attempted to extend the domain of the false consensus effect.
Whereas Study 1 had demonstrated that subjects tend to overestimate
the degree of consensus enjoyed by their own behavioral choices in a
hypothetical conflict situation
• Study 2 was designed to explore a more general tendency for subjects to
overestimate the extent to which others share their habits, preferences,
fears, daily activities, expectations, and other personal characteristics
 Study 2 - methodology
• A total of 80 Stanford undergraduates completed a questionnaire dealing
with 35 person description items

• Each item presented a pair of mutually exclusive and exhaustive

categories. Half of the subjects first categorized themselves with respect
to the 35 variables and then proceeded to estimate the percentage of
“college students in general” who fit into each category: the remainder
answered these questions in reverse order.

• The hypothesis in Study 2: subjects who placed themselves in a given

personal description category would estimate the percentage of “college
students in general” in that category to be greater than would subjects
who placed themselves in the alternative category
 Results and Summary

• subjects who placed themselves in a given descriptive category

consistently estimated the percentage of “college students in general” in
that category to be greater than did subjects who placed themselves in
the alternative category

The false consensus effect applies to many types of personal behaviors,

feelings, opinions, and characteristics, although there is some ambiguity
about the specific domain and the limits of the phenomenon
 Study 3: Eat at Joe’s!
• While the finding from the first study is all very well in theory, how can we
be sure people really behave the way they say they will?

• 104 Stanford Undergraduates were asked if they would be willing to walk

around their campus for 30 minutes wearing a sandwich board saying:
“Eat at Joe’s”. (No information is available about the food quality at ‘Joe’s’,
and consequently how foolish students would look)
• For motivation participants were simply told they would learn ‘something
useful’ from the study, but that they were absolutely free to refuse if they
wished

• What % of your peers do you estimate would agree to carry the

sandwich board around campus?-%
• What % would refuse to carry it?-% (Total should be 100%)
 Results
• The results of this study confirmed the previous study.

• Of those who agreed to wear the sandwich board, 62% thought others
would also agree. Of those who refused, only 33% thought others would
agree to wear the sandwich board.
• Again, as before, people also made more extreme predictions about the
type of person who made the opposite decision to their own.

The people who agreed to carry the sandwich board might have said:
“What’s wrong with someone who refuses? I think they must be really scared
of looking like a fool.”
While the people who refused:
“Who are these show-offs who agreed to carry the sandwich board? I know
people like them – they’re weird.”
 Procedure for Study 4
• 80 Stanford undergraduates, participating in groups of two to five subjects
• These subjects had volunteered to take part in an experiment concerned with
“communication techniques.” Upon arriving at the site of the
• study, the subjects were first asked to complete a single-page “Likes and
Dislikes” questionnaire which asked them to describe briefly some of the
things they liked to do, and some of the things they disliked doing

• They were then asked to carry sandwich boards and walk around the campus
for about 30 minutes and assess how individuals responded to personal
messages
• Conflict was created by asking students to indicate their personal willingness
to do the task / or not based on their responses in the Like / dislike
questionnaire

• Once the subject had made his own decision, he was asked to make consensus
estimates concerning his choice, and to rate the traits of one person who
agreed and one who refused to wear the sign
 Results

Perceptions of consensus
• Overall, the false consensus effect was strikingly apparent both for those
subjects who faced the hypothetical decision in Study 3 and for those who
faced the authentic conflict situation created in Study 4

• Subjects whose hypothetical or real decision was to acquiesce to the

experimenter’s request to wear the sign thought such acquiescence was
relatively common; subjects who refused to wear the sign, by contrast,
thought that acquiescence was relatively uncommon
 Application

• The phenomenon of false consensus effect validates the fact

that people have the tendency to judge how people make
decisions based on how they would make their own. And if
other people do decide to do otherwise, they view them as
someone defective or unacceptable
 We’re poor intuitive psychologists
• This study is fascinating not only because it shows a
bias in how we think about others’ behaviours but also
because it demonstrates the importance of psychology
studies themselves

“I could have told you that – it’s obvious!”

“No, in my experience that’s not true – people
don’t really behave like that”

As this social psychology study shows, people are

actually pretty poor intuitive psychologists
 Conclusion
• People are also more likely to assume someone who doesn’t hold the
same views as them has a more extreme personality than their own. This
is because people think to themselves, whether consciously or
unconsciously, surely all right-thinking (read ‘normal’) people think the
same way as me?

• Well, apparently not. Although knowing that we don’t know other people
is a great start

And that is one good reason why we need psychology

studies
A Class Divided

Jane Elliott
“They shot a King last night Mrs Elliott.
Why did they shoot that King?”

• On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott – A
teacher for third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, decided to
teach her young pupils the meaning of discrimination

• The class had recently made M L King their “Hero of the Month,” and they couldn’t
understand why someone would kill him.

• So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination.
She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to
people
Jane Elliott…

“ The Blue Eyed /Brown Eyed workshop is not an experiment; it is an

exercise or experience. I don't experiment with people without their
permission. What I do with the exercise is attempt to create a microcosm of
society in a small setting for a short time. If what happens during the
exercise looks like an experiment, perhaps it's time to realize that we've
been running an experiment on the people in the US for many years and it's
way past time to put a stop you it. When society stops running the skin color
experiment, I'll stop using the eye color exercise”
The test….
• Elliott divided her class by eye color — those with blue eyes and those
with brown
• On the first day, the blue-eyed children were treated favourably and
brown eyed children discriminately
• On the second day, the roles were reversed and the blue-eyed children
were made to feel inferior while the brown eyes were designated the
dominant group

http://www.thesociologicalcinema.com/uploads/4/8/3/9/
4839762/9110109.jpg?1411315765
 Day 1
• She suggests that over two days, the class will be split into blue-eyed and
brown-eyed students and that on the first day, blue-eyed people are better
than brown-eyed people
• This means that they get extra recess
• can drink right from the fountain
• may have seconds at lunch and
• can play on the playground equipment

Brown-eyed students must use a paper cup to drink from the fountain, may not
play with blue-eyed children, must stay off the playground equipment and wear
collars around their necks to be easily identifiable
 Day 1
During the rest of the day, both in and out of class, Elliott points out
 how much time brown-eyed students take to complete tasks
 how ill-prepared they are
 how they don’t take things seriously and
 are generally disruptive and badly behaved

She initiates the blue-eyed children to back her up and give examples of these
supposed behavioral deficiencies

• The blue-eyed children easily and quickly slip into the roles of bully,
informer and bigot
• One child suggests that Elliott should keep the yardstick close by so that
she can deal with unruly brown-eyed kids. Some children call others
“brown eyes” in a way that one explicitly compares the African
Americans
 Day 2
It is the turn of the brown-eyed children to be better than the blue-eyed
children

• All the privileges of the blue-eyed kids the day before are now the given
to the brown-eyed ones today

• Despite having been on the receiving end of discriminatory and nasty

behavior because of their eye color only the day before, or maybe because
of it, the brown-eyed children take to their roles as bigots and tormentors
easily and cheerfully

A blue-eyed child describes his experience on Wednesday as like being a dog

on a leash
• At the end of Wednesday, Elliott explicitly leads them to the lesson of the
experiment by asking whether eye or skin color should be how you decide
whether someone is good or bad or if those things make a good or bad
person. All of the children say no
 Effect on Performance
On the second year of the exercise:-
 Spelling test
 Maths Test
 Reading test

2 weeks before the exercise – during the exercise – 2 weeks after the exercise

 Students scores went down the day they were discriminated against
 Students scores went up the day they were privileged
 And maintained a higher level for the rest of the year

Results were sent to Dept of Psychology, Stanford University for review

Observed that students responded to stimuli better knowing that they are
good
What happened?

• Over the two-day exercise the behaviour of students astonished both

students and teacher
• On both days, children who were designated as inferior took on the look
and behavior of genuinely inferior students, performing poorly on tests
and other work. In contrast, the “superior” students — students who had
been sweet and tolerant before the exercise — became mean-spirited and
seemed to like discriminating against the “inferior” group.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-
kxTvzHbNXSk/UdFzN3uV7ZI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/1Fq36zz38EQ/s257/images.jpg
 “I watched what had been marvelous,
cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children
turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little
third-graders in a space of fifteen minutes,”
says Elliott. She says she realized then that she
had “created a microcosm of society in a third-
grade classroom.”
 “After you do this exercise, when the debriefing starts, when the pain is
over and they’re all back together, you find out how society could be if we
really believed all this stuff that we preach, if we really acted that way, you
could feel as good about one another as those kids feel about one another
after this exercise is over. You create instant cousins,” says Elliott. “The kids
said over and over, ‘We’re kind of like a family now.’ They found out how to
hurt one another and they found out how it feels to be hurt in that way and
they refuse to hurt one another in that way again.”
 A re-run…
• Elliott repeated the exercise with her new classes in the following year

• The third time, in 1970, cameras were present

• Fourteen years later, FRONTLINE’s A Class Divided chronicled a mini-

reunion of that 1970 third-grade class

• As young adults, Elliott’s former students watch themselves on film and

talk about the impact Elliott’s lesson in bigotry has had on their lives and
attitudes

• It is Jane Elliott’s first chance to find out how much of her lesson her
students had retained
“Nobody likes to be looked down upon. Nobody likes to be hated, teased or
discriminated against,” Verla, one of the former students
• Sandra: “You hear these people talking about different people and how
they’d like to have them out of the country. And sometimes I just wish I
had that collar in my pocket. I could whip it out and put it on and say
‘Wear this, and put yourself in their place.’ I wish they would go through
what I went through, you know.”

• Jane Elliott practiced this exercise with employees of the Iowa prison
system. During a daylong workshop in human relations she teaches the
same lesson to the adults. Their reactions to the blue-eye, brown-eye
exercise are similar to those of the children
 The Iowa Department of Corrections
• Uses it for training its guards and parole officers

• Corrections staff attend a training seminar and are separated by eye color
with the blue-eyed individuals discriminated against. They wear green
collars, can’t use the same bathrooms as everyone else and are treated
badly. They are taken in a half hour late to the training, during which time
the brown-eyed employees have been told what is going on. Blue-eyed
employees are antagonistic towards Elliott, a few rebel, but the brown-
eyed employees assist Elliott
 The Iowa Department of Corrections
• After a break, Elliott debriefs the entire group and asks for their input.
Many of the blue-eyed employees describe feeling powerless, hopeless,
angry and wanting to speak up but being afraid to do so. One even
explained that when they tried to argue with her, their argumentative
behavior was then just twisted and used to further support their supposed
inferiority

• The brown-eyed employees felt embarrassed but also relieved to be on

the good side of the experiment. One white, brown-eyed woman
eloquently stated that all the blue-eyed people are white and while this
might have been uncomfortable for that day, they can’t truly know how it
feels to be Black in America, where every morning you wake up knowing
the day is likely to be a struggle to have your ideas and voice heard and to
not be discriminated against.
 Conclusions
• In one day, Jane Elliot proved that racism is a learned trait

• According to Carl Horowitz (2007), the experiment not only

had an impact on the children’s individual behaviors,
thoughts, feelings, and moods but also the townsfolk of
Riceville displayed displeasure
 Conclusions
• These experiments point to the predictability of evil; that
process by which ordinary individuals can do wicked things so
long as they have the proper framework in which to
rationalize them. The most important message that the
experiment reveals is that the children believed and trusted
what their teacher told them in much the same manner in
which they believe and trust what their parents teach them.
Changing the racist attitudes and behaviors in the world must
start with parental guidance. The belief of how other people
perceived them led the participants to believe it about
themselves
 The Measurement of
Psychological Androgyny

Bem S L (1974)

Journal of Consulting and Clinical

Psychology, 42(2): 155–62
 BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
• Prior to the 1970s, the prevalent view (both within psychology and in
society) was that an individual could be either masculine or feminine

• People who achieved a good fit with their sex type/sex role (i.e. a
masculine male and a feminine female) were better adjusted
physiologically/ psychologically healthier than those who did not
(Moghaddam, 1998)

• Widely used psychological tests (developed between the 1930s and the
1960s, such as the Terman and Miles scale) made it impossible for an
individual to register as both highly masculine and highly feminine: they
were seen as mutually exclusive ie. the nearer the masculine end of the
scale you scored, the further away from the feminine end you were
• So, it was impossible to find any androgynous people, that is, individuals
who display both masculine and feminine characteristics
‘andro’ = male, ‘gyne’ = female
 BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
• When scores on these tests were factor-analysed (tested for inter-correlations
between different parts of the test)
the same temperamental factors kept emerging:
● Masculine - independent, assertive, dominant and instrumental
● feminine - interpersonal sensitivity, compassion and warmth

These correspond closely with

 sociological (Parsons and Bales, 1955) and
 anthropological (Barry et al., 1957) ideas
- of universal concepts in masculinity and femininity
 BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
• By the early 1970s, several researchers had challenged this traditional view
and stated that:
– the same individual could be high on both
– low on both
– or medium on both
since masculinity and femininity were independent dimensions

This shift in perspective owed a great deal to the feminist movement, including
feminist psychologists such as Sandra Bem

To ‘discover’ androgyny - a different sort of test was required - which would

produce two logically independent scores

The Bem sex role inventory (BSRI) was the first and most influential of these
tests (Moghaddam, 1998)
 AIM AND NATURE
• Bem’s article
The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny - Bem S L (1974)
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42(2): 155–62
describes the development of the Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)

• The implicit prediction  it should be possible to design a questionnaire

which reliably and validly measures a person’s:
degree of masculinity
femininity
androgyny
 Bem’s Sex Role Inventory
• This questionnaire has 2 subscales (each with 20 items) and 20
neutral items:
– Masculinity (how masculine is your psychological profile)
– Femininity (how feminine is your psychological profile)

• The scores are given on the 1-7 scales, thus if you have a score of 4,
you are exactly in the middle

• If people score above median on both scales, they are considered

to be "androgynous"
 METHOD/DESIGN
Item selection
• Preliminary to item selection for the masculinity and femininity scales 
Bem compiled a list of about 200 personality traits that seemed to be both
positive in value and either masculine or feminine in tone

• This list served as the pool from which the masculine and feminine items
were ultimately chosen

• An additional list of 200 traits was compiled which seemed to be neither

masculine nor feminine in tone, half positive and half negative in value;
from this, a Social Desirability Scale was chosen

• The ‘judges’ (participants) were 40 Stanford University undergraduates

who completed the questionnaire in 1972, and an additional 60 in 1973

• In both samples, half were male and half were female

 METHOD/DESIGN
• Because the BSRI was designed to measure how much a person distances
him/herself from those characteristics that might be considered more
‘appropriate’ for the opposite sex, the final items were selected if they were
judged to be more desirable in US society for one sex than the other

Specifically, judges used a seven point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all desirable) to 7
(extremely desirable)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

to rate the (approximately) 400 personality characteristics. Each judge rated the
desirability of all 400 traits either ‘for a man’ or ‘for a woman’;

no judge rated both

• A personality trait qualified as masculine if it was independently judged by both
males and females in both samples to be significantly more desirable for a man
than for a woman; similarly for feminine traits
 METHOD/DESIGN
Of those traits that met the criteria:
- 20 were chosen for the masculinity scale (including aggressive, competitive,
and self-reliant)
- 20 for the femininity scale (including compassionate, sensitive to the needs
of others, and yielding)

A neutral trait was one which:

● was independently judged by both males and females to be no
more desirable for one sex than the other;
● did not produce significantly different desirability ratings by male
and female judges

Ten positive and ten negative traits met these criteria, and were chosen for
the Social Desirability Scale
 METHOD/DESIGN

• Once all the individual items had been selected, mean desirability scores
were computed for the masculine, feminine and neutral items for each of
the 100 judges

• For both males and females, the mean desirability of the 40 masculine and
feminine items was significantly higher for the ‘appropriate’ sex, while for
the neutral items it was no higher for one sex than the other

• These results, of course, were a direct consequence of the criteria used for
selecting the items
 Scoring
• The BSRI asks people to indicate on a seven-point scale how well each of
the masculine, feminine and neutral traits describes themselves

• The scale ranges from 1 (never or almost never true) to 7 (always or

almost always true)

What score does an individual get after test administration?

• Each person receives a masculinity score, a femininity score and, most
importantly, an androgyny score; in addition, a social desirability score can
also be calculated
• The masculinity and femininity scores indicate how much a person
endorses masculine and feminine traits as self-descriptive:
– 1 Masculinity = mean self-rating for all endorsed masculine items
– 2 Femininity = mean self-rating for all endorsed feminine items
Both can range from 1 to 7 and the two scores are independent
 Scoring
• Androgyny = relative amounts of masculinity and femininity the person includes in his/her self-
description; it best characterizes the nature of his/her total sex role

• One simple way of calculating androgyny is:

femininity score – masculinity score = the androgyny difference score

• The greater the value of the androgyny score, the more the person is sex-
typed or sex-reversed
high positive scores indicate femininity and high negative scores indicate masculinity

Masculinity Femininity

A ‘masculine’ sex role thus represents not only the endorsement of masculine traits, but the
simultaneous rejection of feminine traits

A ‘feminine’ sex role represents not only the endorsement of feminine traits, but the simultaneous
rejection of masculine traits

By contrast, the closer the androgyny score is to zero, the more the person is androgynous
equal endorsement of both masculine and feminine traits
 Social Desirability Score
The social desirability score indicates how much a person
describes -
- him/herself in a socially desirable way on neutral items
- it can range from 1 to 7
 1 indicating a strong tendency to describe oneself in a socially
undesirable direction
 Psychometric analyses
The BSRI was given to 444 male and 279 female introductory psychology
students at Stanford University, and to 117 male and 77 female paid
volunteers

Correlation Tests were conducted between 

1. the social desirability score and the masculinity, femininity and
androgyny scores for the two samples separately
2. the social desirability score and the absolute value of the androgyny
score

Both masculinity and femininity scores were correlated with social

desirability

Near-zero correlations between androgyny and social desirability  the

androgyny score was not measuring a general tendency to respond in a
socially desirable direction
 Test–retest reliability

• The BSRI was given for a second time to 28 males and 28 females from the
Stanford normative sample, about four weeks after the first test

• Participants were told that the researchers were interested in how their
responses on the test might vary over time, and more explicitly instructed
not to try to remember how they had responded originally

• Correlations between first and second tests for all four scores
(masculinity, Femininity, Androgyny and Social Desirability)
showed them to be extremely reliable
 Validity and Norms
• Correlations with other measures of masculinity–femininity:
during the second BSRI test participants were also asked to complete
(a) the masculinity–femininity scales of the California psychological inventory
(b) the Guilford- Zimmerman temperament survey,
both tests had been used quite often in previous research on sex roles

California Psychological Inventory  moderately correlated with the masculinity, femininity

and androgyny scales of the BSRI

Guilford Zimmerman temperament Inventory  not correlated with BSRI scales

Norms: in both samples (primary and re-test)

a. males scored significantly higher than females on the masculinity scale
b. females scored significantly higher than males on the femininity scale

On the two measures of androgyny, males scored on the masculine side of zero, and females
on the feminine side of zero; this difference was significant for both measures in both samples
 CONCLUSIONS
• Bem hoped that the development of the BSRI would encourage
researchers in the areas of sex differences and sex roles to question the
traditional assumption of sex typing and mental health

• To begin focusing on the behavioural and societal consequences of more

flexible sex-role self-concepts

• Bem (1975) found that androgynous individuals show sex-role adaptability

across situations: they will behave as the situation requires, even though
this means behaving in a sex-inappropriate way

• Lubinski et al. (1981) found that androgynous people report feeling

greater emotional well-being

• Spence et al. (1975) found that they have higher self-esteem

 CONCLUSIONS
• There are two main hypotheses derived from
the BSRI:

 first, that scores on the BSRI predict certain kinds of

behaviour preference

 second, that androgyny is a good indicator of psychological

well-being/mental health
We have motives to do or to obtain this or that,
over the short term or the long. But very often,
we must suppress or inhibit the direct
expression of our motives or wishes

How do we do it?
Can we learn to do it better?
Self Control and The
Marshmallow Test
Walter Mischel (1972)
Walter Mischel, for more than 40 years explored
self-control in children with a simple but
effective test

His experiments using the “marshmallow test,”

as it came to be known, laid the groundwork for
the modern study of self-control
 Subjects and Experimenters
• The subjects were 16 boys and 16
girls attending the Bing Nursery Bing
School of Stanford University Nursery
school
• The children ranged in age from 3
years 6 months, to 5 years 8 months
(with a median age of 4 years, 6 Boys Girls
months) (n=16) (n=16)

• The procedures were conducted by

two male experimenters
Cond 1 Cond 2 Cond 3 Cond 4
• Eight subjects (4 males and 4
females) were assigned randomly to
each of the four experimental
conditions

Mischel and Ebbesen, 1970

 Procedure
• The procedures were designed to develop a new method for
studying delay behavior experimentally with young subjects

• In the week prior to the start of the experiment, the two male
experimenters spent a few days playing with as many children
in the nursery school as they could
• These nurturant sessions were designed so that the children
would more readily agree to accompany the experimenters to
the "surprise room“ and, once there, would be at ease
• After obtaining the child's consent to go to the surprise room,
the experimenter escorted the child to the experimental room

Mischel and Ebbesen, 1970

 Procedure
• The experimental room was a small private chamber containing a table, on
which lay 5, 1 inch long pieces of pretzel and an opaque cake tin

• A chair was in front of the table, and on a second chair there was an
empty cardboard box. Under the cake tin on the table were five 2-inch-
long pretzels and two animal cookies. On the floor near the chair with the
cardboard box were four battery-operated toys. On one wall, at right
angles with the table, was a one-way mirror

• Apart from those objects, the room was empty

• The experimenter pointed out the four toys, and before the child could
begin to play with the toys, asked the child to sit in the chair which was in
front of the table

Mischel and Ebbesen, 1970

• He then demonstrated each toy briefly in a friendly manner, saying
with enthusiasm after each demonstration that they would play
with the toys later on, placing each toy in the cardboard box out of
sight of the child

• These references to the toys were designed to help relax the

children and also to set up an expectancy that both the child and
experimenter would play with the toys sometime later on in the
session (thus, terminating the delay period would not mean having
to terminate play in the surprise room)

Mischel and Ebbesen, 1970

The next phase required teaching the child the
technique for terminating the waiting period
and summoning the experimenter at will

For this purpose the experimenter said:

“Sometimes I have to go out of the room and when I do, you can
bring me back. Do you sec these tiny pretzels? Well, if I go out of
the room and you eat one of these pretzels you can make me
come back into the room. You can make me come back! Let's try
it. I'll go out of the room now and shut the door. As soon as I do,
you eat one of the pretzels and make me come back”

Mischel and Ebbesen, 1970

• The experimenter left the room and re-entered once the child had put the
pretzel in his mouth
• To insure that the child learned reliably how to bring the experimenter
back, this sequence was repeated four limes with four of the five small
pieces of pretzel, still leaving the last small piece lying next to the
unopened cake tin

• Next the experimenter lifted the cake tin, revealing the two sets of reward
objects lying there (two cookies and five 2-inch pretzels) – and asks the
children which they prefer more (cookie or pretzel)

• The children are told that they can wait until the experimenter returns and
have both the desired treats (Cookies and pretzels) or can eat the small 1
inch pretzel and then they will get only the less preferred treat
Mischel and Ebbesen, 1970
• Thus the instructions faced the child with a choice: he could either
continue waiting for the more preferred reward until the experimenter
returned, or he could stop waiting by bringing the experimenter back. If he
slopped waiting, then he would receive the less favored (but more
immediately available) reward and forego the more preferred one

Depending on the condition and the child's choice of preferred reward, the
experimenter picked up the cake tin and along with it:
• Condition 1 – picked up nothing else
• Condition 2 - the more preferred reward
• Condition 3 - the less preferred reward
• Condition 4 - both the rewards

The physical arrangement was such that the rewards, if left, were directly in
front of the child at about shoulder level
http://score.addicaid.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/marshmallow-test-self-control-Score-
Addicaid-3.jpg
 Results
• Waiting time was scored from the moment the experimenter shut the
door. The experimenter returned either as soon as the child signaled or
after I5 minutes—the criterion time—if the child did not signal

Mischel and Ebbesen, 1970

 Results
• 6 out of 8 children waited the maximum 15-minute time when they could
attend to neither the immediate nor the delayed rewards, whereas the
mean waiting time was about 1 minute when they could attend to both
rewards
• Some children covered their eyes with their hands, rested their heads on
their arms, and found other similar techniques for averting their eyes from
the reward objects. Many seemed to try to reduce the frustration of delay
of reward by generating their own diversions: singing, inventing new
games, fall asleep etc - self-distractions occurred mainly in the rewards-
absent condition and almost never in the both-rewards-present condition
• Children under other conditions (where they could see the immediate
rewards, the delayed or both) only waited for very short times before
calling the experimenter by eating the pretzel – and accepting the
immediate available reward
 The HOT and COOL systems

• The marshmallow experiments led to the development a framework to

explain the human ability to delay gratification. He proposed what he calls
a “hot-and-cool” system to explain why willpower succeeds or fails

• The cool system is cognitive in nature - It’s essentially a thinking system,

incorporating knowledge about sensations, feelings, actions and goals —
reminding yourself, for instance, why you shouldn’t eat the marshmallow

• The cool system is reflective, the hot system is impulsive and emotional

• The hot system is responsible for quick, reflexive responses to certain

triggers — such as popping the marshmallow into your mouth without
considering the long-term implications
the cool system would be the angel on your shoulder and the hot system,
the devil
 Hot and cool systems

When willpower fails, exposure to a “hot” stimulus essentially overrides the

cool system, leading to impulsive actions. Some people, it seems, may be
more or less susceptible to hot triggers

Susceptibility to emotional responses may influence their behavior

throughout life, as Mischel discovered when he revisited his marshmallow-
test subjects as adolescents
 Subsequent research
• B.J. Casey, Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, and other colleagues tracked down 59 subjects,
now in their 40s, who had participated in the marshmallow experiments as
children
• The subjects were tested on – willpower strength and self-control
• In general, children who were less successful at resisting the marshmallow 40
years earlier performed more poorly on the self-control task as adults

• Casey and colleagues examined brain activity in some subjects using fMRI

• When presented with tempting stimuli, individuals with low self-control showed
brain patterns that differed from those with high self-control

• The researchers found that the prefrontal cortex (a region that controls executive
functions, such as making choices) was more active in subjects with higher self-
control. And the ventral striatum (a region thought to process desires and rewards)
showed boosted activity in those with lower self-control

https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower-gratification.pdf
 Subsequent research
• Mischel found that those who deferred gratification were significantly
more competent and received higher SAT scores than their peers, meaning
that this characteristic likely remains with a person for life

• While this study seems simplistic, the findings outline some of the
foundational differences in individual traits that can predict success