Thomas Gilovich
Biographic Data
| ID | 110323 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Gilovich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Gilovich |
| SIGNATURE | GILOVICH T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4452-3626 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 929 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 71 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
The Aptly Buried “I” in Experience
Experiential purchases (focused on doing rather than having ) provide more satisfaction than material goods. Here, we examine a different downstream consequence of spending money on experiences: fostering social connection. Consumers reported feeling more kinship with someone who had made a similar experiential purchase than someone who had made a similar material purchase—a result tied to the greater centrality of experiences to one's identity. …
The minority-groups homogeneity effect
The widely documented "outgroup homogeneity effect" refers to people's tendency to view members of groups to which they do not belong (outgroups) as more similar to one another than members of their own groups (ingroups). Here, we present evidence for a novel but related phenomenon: People tend to view members of different minority groups as collectively more similar to one another than members of the majority group are to one another. Across nin…
Psychological Science in the Wake of Covid-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—an event that hinges on human-to-human contact—we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology…
The streaking star effect
2,625) for the Streaking Star Effect-people's greater desire to see runs of successful performance by individuals continue more than identical runs of success by groups. We find this bias in an obscure Italian sport (Study 1), a British trivia competition (Study 2), and a tennis competition in which the number of individual versus team competitors is held constant (Study 3). This effect appears to result from individual streaks of success inspiri…
There must be more to life than this
We examine how self-assessments are influenced by readily-accessible extreme exemplars that embody specific traits, skills, or behavioral tendencies. Because individuals who live especially active and adventurous lives are so noticeable, they tend to spring to mind and serve as benchmarks for self-evaluation, and thereby encourage people to feel that they aren’t getting as much out of life as they should. This is part of a more general psychologi…
Spending on doing promotes more moment-to-moment happiness than spending on having
Sudden-death aversion
We present evidence of sudden-death aversion (SDA)-the tendency to avoid "fast" strategies that provide a greater chance of success, but include the possibility of immediate defeat, in favor of "slow" strategies that reduce the possibility of losing quickly, but have lower odds of ultimate success. Using a combination of archival analyses and controlled experiments, we explore the psychology behind SDA. First, we provide evidence for SDA and its …
The ideal road not taken
Research on the structural features of people's most enduring regrets has focused on whether they result from having acted or having failed to act. Here we focus on a different structural feature, their connection to a person's self-concept. In 6 studies, we predict and find that people's most enduring regrets stem more often from discrepancies between their actual and ideal selves than their actual and ought selves. We also provide evidence that…
Home alone
activities (e.g., the number of parties one attends or proximity to the "inner circle" of one's social sphere). We argue that this pessimistic bias stems from the fact that trendsetters and socialites come most easily to mind as a standard of comparison and show that reducing the availability of extremely social people eliminates this bias. We conclude by discussing implications for research on social comparison and self-enhancement. (PsycINFO Da…
Cultivating gratitude and giving through experiential consumption
Gratitude promotes well-being and prompts prosocial behavior. Here, we examine a novel way to cultivate this beneficial emotion. We demonstrate that 2 different types of consumption-material consumption (buying for the sake of having) and experiential consumption (buying for the sake of doing)-differentially foster gratitude and giving. In 6 studies we show that reflecting on experiential purchases (e.g., travel, meals out, tickets to events) ins…
The Heart and the Head
An enduring question in the field of judgment and decision making is when people are likely to choose on the basis of intuition and when they are likely to pursue a more deliberative decision strategy. Here, we attempt to shed light on that question by examining whether people tend to weight intuition more heavily when making experiential purchases, and to weight deliberation more heavily when making material purchases. Results from seven studies…
The headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry
Seven studies provide evidence of an availability bias in people's assessments of the benefits they've enjoyed and the barriers they've faced. Barriers and hindrances command attention because they have to be overcome; benefits and resources can often be simply enjoyed and largely ignored. As a result of this "headwind/tailwind" asymmetry, Democrats and Republicans both claim that the electoral map works against them (Study 1), football fans take…
The Mechanics of Motivated Reasoning
Whenever we see voters explain away their preferred candidate's weaknesses, dieters assert that a couple scoops of ice cream won't really hurt their weight loss goals, or parents maintain that their children are unusually gifted, we are reminded that people's preferences can affect their beliefs. This idea is captured in the common saying, "People believe what they want to believe." But people don't simply believe what they want to believe. Psych…
Building a More Mobile America—One Income Quintile at a Time
A core tenet of the American ethos is that there is considerable economic mobility. Americans seem willing to accept vast financial inequalities as long as they believe that everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We examined whether people’s beliefs about the amount of economic mobility in the contemporary United States conform to reality. We found that (a) people believe there is more upward mobility than downward mobility; (b) people overesti…
A wonderful life
What Goes Up Apparently Needn't Come Down
In eight studies, we document an upward mobility bias , or a tendency to predict that a rise in rankings is more likely than a decline. This asymmetry was observed in predictions of classroom performance, NBA and NFL standings, business school rankings, and employee performance rankings. The bias was found for entities people care about and want to see improve their standing, as well as entities in which people are not invested. It appears to res…
Generality and cultural variation in the experience of regret
Regret is the prototypical decision-related emotion. Most theory and research on regret comes from the United States and Europe, but recent research has suggested potential cross-cultural differences in regret. We examined generality and cultural variation in the experience of regret. A cross-cultural study compared experiences of regret with those of disappointment and guilt as reported by participants from the United States (n = 143), the Nethe…
Heuristics and Biases
Moral masochism
Do people sometimes seek to atone for their transgressions by harming themselves physically? The current results suggest that they do. People who wrote about a past guilt-inducing event inflicted more intense electric shocks on themselves than did those who wrote about feeling sad or about a neutral event. Moreover, the stronger the shocks that guilty participants administered to themselves, the more their feelings of guilt were alleviated. We di…
The dark side of intuition
When making decisions, people typically draw on two general modes of thought: intuition and reason. Age-related changes in cognition and emotion may impact these decision processes: Although older individuals experience declines in deliberative processes, they experience stability or improvement in their emotional processes. Recent research has shown that when older adults rely more on their intact emotional abilities versus their declining delib…
I am what I do, not what I have
What kinds of purchases do the most to make us happy? Previous research (Carter & Gilovich, 2010; Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003) indicates that experiences, such as vacations and concerts, are more likely to do so than material possessions, such as clothes and electronic gadgets. The present research was designed to explore 1 potential explanation for this result, namely, that experiences tend to be more closely associated with the self than possess…
Angry (or Disgusted), but Adjusting? The Effect of Specific Emotions on Adjustment From Self-Generated Anchors
Many numerical judgments are made by adjusting from a salient anchor value. This research examines the effect of high-certainty emotions—emotions associated with feelings of confidence about what is happening, what will happen, and how to respond—on the adjustment process. The authors examined whether such emotions would induce people to engage in adjustment more confidently and thoroughly, leading to greater adjustment. In two studies, the autho…
Buyer's remorse or missed opportunity? Differential regrets for material and experiential purchases
Previous research has established that experiential purchases tend to yield greater enduring satisfaction than material purchases. The present work suggests that this difference in satisfaction is paralleled by a tendency for material and experiential purchases to differ in the types of regrets they elicit. In 5 studies, we find that people's material purchase decisions are more likely to generate regrets of action (buyer's remorse) and their exp…
The better-than-my-average effect
The ball don't lie”
Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation
In this paper we investigate whether exposure to the self-interest model commonly used in economics alters the extent to which people behave in self-interested ways. First, we report the results of several empirical studies-some our own, some by others-that suggest economists behave in more self-interested ways. By itself, this evidence does not demonstrate that exposure to the self-interest model causes more self-interested behavior, since it ma…
Perspective Taking as Egocentric Anchoring and Adjustment
The authors propose that people adopt others' perspectives by serially adjusting from their own. As predicted, estimates of others' perceptions were consistent with one's own but differed in a manner consistent with serial adjustment (Study 1). Participants were slower to indicate that another's perception would be different from--rather than similar to--their own (Study 2). Egocentric biases increased under time pressure (Study 2) and decreased …
To Do or to Have? That Is the Question
Do experiences make people happier than material possessions? In two surveys, respondents from various demographic groups indicated that experiential purchases-those made with the primary intention of acquiring a life experience--made them happier than material purchases. In a follow-up laboratory experiment, participants experienced more positive feelings after pondering an experiential purchase than after pondering a material purchase. In anoth…
The spotlight effect in social judgment
This research provides evidence that people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others, a phenomenon dubbed the spotlight effect. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who were asked to don a T-shirt depicting either a flattering or potentially embarrassing image overestimated the number of observers who would be able to recall what was pictured on the shirt. In Study 3, participants in a group discussion overest…
When less is more
Research on counterfactual thinking has shown that people's emotional responses to events are influenced by their thoughts about "what might have been." The authors extend these findings by documenting a familiar occasion in which those who are objectively better off nonetheless feel worse. In particular, an analysis of the emotional reactions of bronze and silver medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics--both at the conclusion of their events and o…
The temporal pattern to the experience of regret
Through telephone surveys, written questionnaires, and face-to-face interviews, it was found that people's biggest regrets tend to involve things they have failed to do in their lives. This conflicts with research on counterfactual thinking that indicates that people regret unfortunate outcomes that stem from actions taken more than identical outcomes that result from actions foregone. These divergent findings were reconciled by demonstrating tha…
The illusion of transparency
Effect of temporal perspective on subjective confidence
Four studies examined whether people tend to lose confidence in their prospects for success the closer they are to the "moment of truth." Study 1 found that students think they will do better on their midterm exams when asked on the 1st day of class than when asked on the day of the exam. Studies 2 and 4 replicated this finding under controlled conditions. Study 3 demonstrated that the same effect holds retrospectively: People are more confident …
The Mechanics of Motivated Reasoning
Whenever we see voters explain away their preferred candidate's weaknesses, dieters assert that a couple scoops of ice cream won't really hurt their weight loss goals, or parents maintain that their children are unusually gifted, we are reminded that people's preferences can affect their beliefs. This idea is captured in the common saying, "People believe what they want to believe." But people don't simply believe what they want to believe. Psych…
I am what I do, not what I have
What kinds of purchases do the most to make us happy? Previous research (Carter & Gilovich, 2010; Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003) indicates that experiences, such as vacations and concerts, are more likely to do so than material possessions, such as clothes and electronic gadgets. The present research was designed to explore 1 potential explanation for this result, namely, that experiences tend to be more closely associated with the self than possess…
The relative relativity of material and experiential purchases
When it comes to spending disposable income, experiential purchases tend to make people happier than material purchases (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003). But why are experiences more satisfying? We propose that the evaluation of experiences tends to be less comparative than that of material possessions, such that potentially invidious comparisons have less impact on satisfaction with experiences than with material possessions. Support for this conten…
Biased evaluation and persistence in gambling
Incidental environmental anchors
Three studies examined whether potential anchor values that are incidentally present in the environment can affect a person's numerical estimates. In Study 1, estimates of an athlete's performance were influenced by the number on his jersey. In Study 2, estimates of the proportion of sales in the domestic market were influenced by a product's model number. In Study 3, participants' estimates of how much they would spend at a restaurant were influ…
Seeing the past in the present
Just Going Along
Do others judge us as harshly as we think? Overestimating the impact of our failures, shortcomings, and mishaps
Effect of memory perspective on retrospective causal attributions
Two studies examined whether people's retrospective causal attributions might be mediated by the visual perspective from which events are recalled. In Study 1, pairs of Ss participated in "get-acquainted" conversations and made a series of attribution ratings for their performance. They returned 3 weeks later to rerate their performance on the same attribution scales and to indicate the perspective from which they remembered their earlier convers…
Buyer's remorse or missed opportunity? Differential regrets for material and experiential purchases
Previous research has established that experiential purchases tend to yield greater enduring satisfaction than material purchases. The present work suggests that this difference in satisfaction is paralleled by a tendency for material and experiential purchases to differ in the types of regrets they elicit. In 5 studies, we find that people's material purchase decisions are more likely to generate regrets of action (buyer's remorse) and their exp…
Target and observer differences in the acceptance of questionable apologies
Do people distinguish between sincere and insincere apologies? Because targets and observers face different constraints, we hypothesized that observers would differentiate between spontaneous and coerced apologies but that targets would not. In Studies 1 and 2 participants either received or observed a spontaneous apology, a coerced apology, or no apology, following a staged offense, and the predicted target-observer difference emerged. Studies 3…
The dark side of self- and social perception
Black is viewed as the color of evil and death in virtually all cultures. With this association in mind, we were interested in whether a cue as subtle as the color of a person's clothing might have a significant impact on his or her behavior. To test this possibility, we examined whether professional football and ice hockey teams that wear black uniforms are more aggressive than those that wear nonblack uniforms. An analysis of the penalty record…
Why people are reluctant to tempt fate
The present research explored the belief that it is bad luck to "tempt fate." Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that people do indeed have the intuition that actions that tempt fate increase the likelihood of negative outcomes. Studies 3-6 examined our claim that the intuition is due, in large part, to the combination of the automatic tendencies to attend to negative prospects and to use accessibility as a cue when judging likelihood. Study 3 demonstr…
Here's Looking at Me
Five studies manipulated the memory perspective (1st-person vs. 3rd-person) individuals used to visually recall autobiographical events and examined its effects on assessments of personal change. Psychotherapy clients recalled their first treatment (Study 1), and undergraduates recalled past social awkwardness (Study 2). Participants who were induced to recall from the 3rd-person perspective believed, and acted as though (Study 2), they had chang…
When effortful thinking influences judgmental anchoring
Two experiments examined the impact of financial incentives and forewarnings on judgmental anchoring effects, or the tendency for judgments of uncertain qualities to be biased in the direction of salient anchor values. Previous research has found no effect of either manipulation on the magnitude of anchoring effects. We argue, however, that anchoring effects are produced by multiple mechanisms—one involving an effortful process of adjustment from…
Differential construal and the false consensus effect
People's own beliefs, values, and habits tend to bias their perceptions of how widely they are shared. The present research examined whether this "false consensus effect" is partly due to people's failure to recognize that their choices are not solely a function of the "objective" response alternatives, but of their subjective construal of those alternatives. Study 1 provided initial support for the importance of differential construal in people'…
"Naive cynicism" in everyday theories of responsibility assessment
Evidence from several lab and field studies is presented that indicates that people have cynical intuitions about how others assess responsibility. Married couples (Study 1), video game enthusiasts (Study 2), debaters (Study 3), and darts players (Study 4) divided responsibility for a series of desirable and undesirable joint outcomes and estimated how others would apportion responsibility. In all studies, participants expected the responsibility…
Seeing the past in the present
Accentuating the positive
Causal focus and estimates of consensus
Biased evaluation and persistence in gambling
The hot hand in basketball
Biased evaluations of randomly determined gambling outcomes
Mere presence and social facilitation
Secondhand information and social judgment
The dark side of self- and social perception
Black is viewed as the color of evil and death in virtually all cultures. With this association in mind, we were interested in whether a cue as subtle as the color of a person's clothing might have a significant impact on his or her behavior. To test this possibility, we examined whether professional football and ice hockey teams that wear black uniforms are more aggressive than those that wear nonblack uniforms. An analysis of the penalty record…
Effect of memory perspective on retrospective causal attributions
Two studies examined whether people's retrospective causal attributions might be mediated by the visual perspective from which events are recalled. In Study 1, pairs of Ss participated in "get-acquainted" conversations and made a series of attribution ratings for their performance. They returned 3 weeks later to rerate their performance on the same attribution scales and to indicate the perspective from which they remembered their earlier convers…
Differential construal and the false consensus effect
People's own beliefs, values, and habits tend to bias their perceptions of how widely they are shared. The present research examined whether this "false consensus effect" is partly due to people's failure to recognize that their choices are not solely a function of the "objective" response alternatives, but of their subjective construal of those alternatives. Study 1 provided initial support for the importance of differential construal in people'…
The evolution of one-shot cooperation
Effect of temporal focus on the recall of expectancy-consistent and expectancy-inconsistent information
This research examined the impact of temporal focus on the recall of information that is consistent or inconsistent with an expectation. A consistent pattern of results across 4 experiments indicates that when Ss' expectations are temporally unfocused, better memory for consistent information is observed. In contrast, when expectations are focused in time--that is, Ss know when the relevant events are likely to occur--recall for consistent and in…
How we know what isn't so
Discusses the processes through which we become convinced of the validity of questionable or false beliefs such as special psychological powers and New Age health practices
Effect of temporal perspective on subjective confidence
Four studies examined whether people tend to lose confidence in their prospects for success the closer they are to the "moment of truth." Study 1 found that students think they will do better on their midterm exams when asked on the 1st day of class than when asked on the day of the exam. Studies 2 and 4 replicated this finding under controlled conditions. Study 3 demonstrated that the same effect holds retrospectively: People are more confident …
Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation
In this paper we investigate whether exposure to the self-interest model commonly used in economics alters the extent to which people behave in self-interested ways. First, we report the results of several empirical studies-some our own, some by others-that suggest economists behave in more self-interested ways. By itself, this evidence does not demonstrate that exposure to the self-interest model causes more self-interested behavior, since it ma…
The temporal pattern to the experience of regret
Through telephone surveys, written questionnaires, and face-to-face interviews, it was found that people's biggest regrets tend to involve things they have failed to do in their lives. This conflicts with research on counterfactual thinking that indicates that people regret unfortunate outcomes that stem from actions taken more than identical outcomes that result from actions foregone. These divergent findings were reconciled by demonstrating tha…
The experience of regret
This article reviews evidence indicating that there is a temporal pattern to the experience of regret. Actions, or errors of commission, generate more regret in the short term; but inactions, or errors of omission, produce more regret in the long run. The authors contend that this temporal pattern is multiply determined, and present a framework to organize the divergent causal mechanisms that are responsible for it. In particular, this article do…
When less is more
Research on counterfactual thinking has shown that people's emotional responses to events are influenced by their thoughts about "what might have been." The authors extend these findings by documenting a familiar occasion in which those who are objectively better off nonetheless feel worse. In particular, an analysis of the emotional reactions of bronze and silver medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics--both at the conclusion of their events and o…
The illusion of transparency
The perceiver as perceived
This research examined people's intuitions about the correspondence bias, or the tendency to favor dispositional rather than situational explanations of behavior. In 3 studies, constrained actors overestimated the magnitude of observers' correspondent inferences. Additional studies indicated that this overestimation is due to people's oversimplified theories about the attributional processes of others. In one, Japanese participants, whose culture…
Just Going Along
"Naive cynicism" in everyday theories of responsibility assessment
Evidence from several lab and field studies is presented that indicates that people have cynical intuitions about how others assess responsibility. Married couples (Study 1), video game enthusiasts (Study 2), debaters (Study 3), and darts players (Study 4) divided responsibility for a series of desirable and undesirable joint outcomes and estimated how others would apportion responsibility. In all studies, participants expected the responsibility…
The spotlight effect in social judgment
This research provides evidence that people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others, a phenomenon dubbed the spotlight effect. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who were asked to don a T-shirt depicting either a flattering or potentially embarrassing image overestimated the number of observers who would be able to recall what was pictured on the shirt. In Study 3, participants in a group discussion overest…
Putting Adjustment Back in the Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
People's estimates of uncertain quantities are commonly influenced by irrelevant values. These anchoring effects were originally explained as insufficient adjustment away from an initial anchor value. The existing literature provides little support for the postulated process of adjustment, however, and a consensus that none takes place seems to be emerging. We argue that this conclusion is premature, and we present evidence that insufficient adju…
Psychology (69 works) · Social Psychology (68 works) · Social Psychology (42 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (31 works) · Cognitive psychology (30 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (29 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (21 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (21 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Law (13 works)