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How Pictures Skew Our Judgment
An article at Ars summarizes a study into how simply seeing pictures can alter what we believe, even if the pictures don't provide any information about the topic at hand (abstract). Researchers asked true-or-false questions to a group of test subjects about whether a minor celebrity was still alive. When they provided a picture of the celebrity, more people evaluated the statement as 'true' than when no picture was provided. The researchers then switched the question, asking whether it was true or false that the celebrity was dead. Again, the subjects shown a picture were more likely to respond with 'true.' Experiments also showed this phenomenon wasn't limited to questions about people, but general knowledge as well.
"The authors spend a bit of time discussing why this sort of truth bias might arise. In cases where we have rich information—a photo or detailed description of something—it's easier to pull additional information out of our memory. So, even if a photo doesn't tell us much about whether the person is alive, it does make it easier to retrieve relevant information on them—if they're wearing a suit in the photo, we might reason they're a political or financial figure, etc. When the information flows that readily, we're more likely to conclude that we're familiar with the question that's being posed, and will then tend to conclude it's true."
cause insanity, right? Because they're strongly correlated with people with psychiatric illnell.
seriously -
we perceive stuff though our eyes and the brain makes up a lot of stuff...
put people in a darkened room and ask the same questions
who where what when now?
*starts up PhotoShop to create a "couple" photograph of me and Olivia Wilde*
Anyone know her address?
Pics or GTFO.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I guess brings new meaning to the term "pics or it didn't happen".
Class in college .. here's a photo. Everyone looks at it.
There's a young man in a cap and gown with what appears to be a diploma. A smiling man is standing to one side, a smiling woman to the other and in the forground is a girl about 12 looking bored.
Assertions, true or false: The father is proud of his son. The graduate's younger sister wants an ice cream. The mother is very happy.
The first assertion is not necessarily true (therefore false), how do we know the smiling man is father, uncle, family friend, whatever?
The second assertion is not necessarily true, how do you know she is related to the graduate? Where does it say anything about ice-cream? She could potentially be a young boy with long hair in girls clothing.
The third assertion, mother? How do we know the woman has children? How do we know any of those present is related. It's also false.
Quite fasciniating watching the light go on (perhaps for the first time in their lives) of my classmates. I challenged the assertions immediately because, being a rather literal programmer, I didn't see any statements of fact with the photo, so everything had to be assumptions (and who codes on assumptions? Ok.. lots of people do, that's why we have so many security problems, lack of useful feedback when things don't work and poor interfaces.)
Now consider there are tens of millions of people who haven't even had an introduction to Critical Thinking and they are influenced by advertising, politcal speeches,much of the garbage on talk radio and those evil stinkers who talk young men and women into committing atrocities.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Most people are idiots. They immediately jump to a conclusion based upon flimsy evidence like photos (never thinking maybe the photo has been doctored), or something they read at FOX or MSNBC.com, or were told on facebook. (See my sig for examples of these idiots.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Yes, we did. If we can determine how memory works we can use that information to use it to it's maximum. This is just a granular piece of information that can then be applied in different ways to make life better.
This combined with the power of the Baskerville font will empower you to crush the free will of others, MUAHAHAHA!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Filmmakers noticed early on that juxtaposing images had significant effects on perception, with the Kuleshov Effect being one famous demonstration.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A photo or description would help in knowledge recall, this is a known fact. Saying that it "skews" the answers is impossible to say without knowing what the correct outcome was. If 'true' is the correct response, then having an external information source to help with determining your answer would indeed increase the number of people who get it correct (assuming they had the knowledge in the first place). Furthermore, if a photo of the person in question doesn't "provide any information about the topic at hand", what the heck does? A question about someone and a photo of them seem pretty related to me. *That aside, the general public doesn't usually have pictures of people after they're dead, so this is a terrible example to begin with.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
have professional photogs take hundreds of photos of the president
choose the worst one due to facial shape or mouth while he was talking or doing something
have the blogs call him an idiot and back it up by bad looking pictures
Researchers asked true-or-false questions to a group of test subjects about whether a minor celebrity was still alive. When they provided a picture of the celebrity, more people evaluated the statement as 'true' than when no picture was provided. The researchers then switched the question, asking whether it was true or false that the celebrity was dead.
And the picture of this guy: http://i.imgur.com/C4j2T.jpg made everyone say "yeah, he's dead."
--
BMO
I frequently hear from people who talk about how the world has gotten so much worse since they were children. They always cite reports they hear on the news.
Question:
Are things really worse today, or are crimes just being caught and reported more often than they used to, creating the perception things are worse?
After all we didn't have video cameras and the internet everywhere 30 years ago. Perhaps people simply got away more often back then.
Suppose the possibility then, that we are actually safer today because crime is caught and reported more frequently.
I've noticed that non-geeks seem to have a very difficult time separating facts from opinions or feelings. On the other hand those on the autism spectrum tend to have an internal citations list. I may still have many incorrect beliefs but I at least know where the ideas came from and can check the sources later on. Slowly weeding out the false ideas until all my knowledge is perfected. (OMG! I've turned into an Objectivist!) </sarcasm>
But if you're going to ask me T/F if say... Richard Simmons is dead; I simply can't answer true or false on that one. Show me a picture and... well that's not relevant to the question.
*Gets up, leaves testing room*
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
They must be alive... I just saw a picture of them.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
So, basically, they showed people photos of five-minute-celebrities whose five minutes were last year, those people had to guess true/false and ended up picking true more often than false, cause people in general tend to pick true/yes/agree/... over the negatives.
Where is the control group where the pictures contain Celebrities unconscious, in a pool of blood, beheaded, or otherwise similar to images found in Faces of Death?
In Soviet Russia, total bollocks talks timecube!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The title should be, "How not having an, "I don't know" option on true/false research tests will cause people to guess, frequently invalidating the results of the research that would be quite different with the third option."
But then, that doesn't fit into a short title block.
Perhaps we as a species haven't been exposed to realistic portraits (including photos) for long enough to have developed the ability not to consider someone we recognise to be alive at some unconcious level. Without the existence of realistic portraits it makes no sense to consider someone we see to be not there, so I don't see why the ability would have started evolving before we were able to make those portraits. We probably recognise people on portraits because we're still partially fooled by them.
Stephen Colberts explains it here. Description of the video: Scientists from Canada and New Zealand research a little world-changing concept Stephen tossed off on his first show in 2005.
not necessarily true (therefore false)
I'm not clear on this bit...
That's because it's wrong. This statement is not valid. It may be true or false.
From the GP:
Now consider there are tens of millions of people who haven't even had an introduction to Critical Thinking and they are influenced by advertising, politcal speeches,much of the garbage on talk radio and those evil stinkers who talk young men and women into committing atrocities.
"Critical Thinking" is the security theater equivalent of thinking. Call it "Thinking Theater" if you will: it makes a show of thought while being utterly uninformed and mindless. The grandparent is a perfect example. I suggest a rigorous study of logic (both formal and informal) so you can actually analyze statements, and rhetoric, so you can be aware of the communication techniques you will encounter.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Completely pointless. Providing a picture provides more data. If the celebrity they show is someone that looks young and healthy you're obviously more likely to think they would still be alive; likewise if they look like Mel Gibson after yet another bender, or a pic of Lindsey Lohan during one of her heavily coked-out phases you'd probably figure they were dead by now.
If we can determine how memory works advertisers and government agencies can use that information to exploit a person's emotions to the maximum. This is just an important piece of information that can then be applied in different ways to make life easier to manipulate and control.
FTFY
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
The study fails to mention which celebrity they were asking about. Look at the picture and it will be obvious why the study got the results it did.
I really hate to bring this up, but I hope we can focus on the topic, and not skew off to debate the court/political side of things....
Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman news coverage.
When the news story first reported most of the newspapers and news agencies showed the picture of Trayvon in the red shirt and George in an orange jumper. There were other pictures available, so somebody chose these pictures.
Trayvon's picture was of when he was 12 years old. The picture has a very happy looking kid, with a big smile. Eyes are bright, and the picture is very friendly, very innocent.
George's picture is of a old mug shot, he was heavy, unshaven, the picture could be lightened or darkened (I've seen lighter and darker pictures, unsure what the original looked like). George is not smiling, unhappy, depressing.
Now there is a headline "Man kills teen" and phrase "Man kills in self-defense"
With the images provided we make assumptions.
The Trayvon is 12 years old. False, Trayvon is 17.
George is a convicted felon/criminal. False, George was arrested, but charges were dropped (yes I know there is some claims on this, but the charges were dropped.).
George is white, Trayvon is black, this is racism. False, George is Hispanic. George is known for tutoring black children for free on the weekends, and was the only person to come to the defense of a homeless black man. The FBI investigated George and found no evidence that he is racist in any way.
So, the images and headline imply the idea: "White racist convicted felon kills innocent happy black child."
Other shading comes from the text - small example: Using "Trayvon" and "Zimmerman" for names. "Trayvon" is a very "black-sounding" name. Zimmerman is a common German name (Germans aren't known for any racists right?).
And the damage is done. People have picked sides and have dug themselves in. Even now when we have up-to-date pictures (few are using the old red-shirt/orange jumper pics), the original images have set themselves in the minds of the people. What would have the story been like if the media outlets used the up-to-date pictures, rather than the kid/convict pictures?
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
that a picture is just a snapshot of time taken out of context. As such, you can often read what you want into the pictures. i.e. build your own context. The context you build can be so strong, that when presented with facts pointing you are wrong, some people still own't believe the truth over there made up context.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This doesn't have anything to do with "pictures" in particular. You can ask someone a question that requires them to prioritize ethics or results about their job and they will choose a different path depending on if you've recently asked them an ethical question vs a results prioritizing question. You ask someone to pick a different colored card from a table in a sentance that contains a word that rhymes with one of those colors... same result. This is just how the mind works. You bring something to the forefront of someone's mind and they will prioritize it. Haven't seen someone for a while, more likely to lean towards maybe that old dude is dead. I think we've known this forever. At least.. street magicians and con artists have.
If I posted a picture of a cop beating a person and tazing them for instance.
I added a caption to it that said "Cop beating a innocent person because they took a picture of them" then suddenly everyone would be outraged and everyone would jump the bandwagon mentality of hating the police, start chanting about our loss of freedoms and so on.
If I instead added the caption "Cop using physical means as a last restort to capturing a man who fled a crime scene after killing his wife and child in cold blood and attacked the officer when confronted" everyone would start bashing the man for what he did to his wife and child and start chanting in unison what a scumbag he is.
Now right or wrong isnt the case here but simply the fact I can completely skew the publics opinion by adding a context to it whether it be true or not people will go along with the group mentality and no one would ever dare thinking of challenging the photos context as long as they get to bitch about something because people are dumb, ignorant and narrow minded beings that will just follow popular opinion like sheep. just like I saw this video on youtube of everyone bitching about this racist cop who was verbally assualting these oh so innocent girls just because they were black. Well he was a cop in a black neighborhood and these girls were crossing the road in the middle of it through the middle of traffic as they were giving the drivers the finger and such and the officer didnt even arrest them, he was just chewing them out for being stupid enough to talk into traffic like they owned the road. But because the guy who filmed it (a black guy) posted it and said the cop was racist everyone suddenly jumped in with him.
Wow...all that technical stuff...when I think the reason people are more likely to answer "Is this person alive?" with "Yes." when shown a picture is something else entirely.
The English language is a complicated beast. Often things are implied, but not outright stated in English. If you ask "Is this person alive?" with no picture, people assume you are talking about the actual person, so it is clear and they will tend to answer as you'd expect.
However, if you say "Is this person alive?" and show them a picture it gets murky. People likely aren't being influenced by the picture in the way the blurb states though. The blurb interprets the people's wrong answers as an effect of pictures influencing what people think is true. However, the much more obvious way to go is to understand that the inclusion of a picture creates an implied language ambiguity. That is, by asking "Is Bob alive?" you could be asking "Is Bob alive [in reality]?" or "Is Bob alive [in this picture]?" It isn't clear which one you mean, like the other situation was.
The problem is not "truth bias" the problem is language ambiguity.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Simply reading headlines or subject headers can alter what we read in TFA, a poll, etc.
"Believe nothing you hear, and only about half of what you see."
I just did a Google search to find who said this originally, and it looks like it might have been Benjamin Franklin.
A politician kissing babies is just one of those things. Political advertising campaigns are using pictures from sites like istockphoto.com while pretending that the people in the pictures have anything to do with reality.
Not that you know much about reality - or anything about critical thinking. Hearing you talk about critical thinking is like hearing Rick Perry talk about the biological sciences - the speaker has no credibility on the subject whatsoever.
And by the way, here is your lord kissing a baby. Here he is riding a tractor with a baby on his lap. Here he is holding another baby at a religious rally. And here is yet another picture of him with a baby.
Or were those photos just doctored?
There was an interesting study conducted built around the recent research on Eastern and Western cognition. People were initially "primed" with a series of photos relating to one culture or the other. For example, people from East Asia who had previous exposure to Western society were shown pictures of cowboys and the Statue of Liberty while Westerners who had experience working with East Asians were shown images representing Eastern culture like pagodas and pandas. They were then immediately provided with a series of exercises that had been previously developed to examine the cognitive approach. By "priming" individuals, the researchers found that temporarily, they would think like the culture they were primed with instead of the default approach they normally rely upon. It shows that while we may be trained in one way or another by our culture, we are by no means limited to thinking that way.
What is interesting about this example was pointed out to me in a presentation about Paradigms. While it is 100% true that the photo here does not prove the truth of any of the associated statements, none the less if you came across this scene in real life and began interacting with the people in question, you would probably be money ahead assuming the statements are true rather than guessing you have no idea what is going on.
Basically Paradigms allow us to take mental shortcuts that often, but not always, result in us getting correct results sooner. It is kind of related to why we don’t really go around assuming all of reality is a lie all the time (or the non-crazy of us do). So it is good to recognize when you are using a Paradigm, but also good to recognize when they are not useful and when they are.
I'm writing all my essays in Baskerville with included pictures from now on. I'm sure that will go down really well for my next funding application -- do graphs count as pictures?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
when i saw pictures of anna (a "sponsored" anti-corruption crusader who is being pitched up in teh air by the media daily since God-knows-when) hazare in the newspaper. What was interesting was that no matter what kind of headline (pro or anti anna) it was in the paper daily, his picture was always put in such a way and such a pose was selected so as to make him get pity and be looked upon as a hero, which is not the case i think, he is just a fast-to-death-for-hire-guy (seriously, he has now done so many fasts-to-deaths that now only when he actually dies from hunger on another fast, will people believe him, but that's not gonna happen) But the media or the people who sponsor his articles ensure that good pictures of him feature at prominent parts of the newspaper. On the other hand some genuinely good but maybe slightly controversial people who are not doing The-Man's bidding or being defiant, get featured with bad pictures, even if the article/headline vindicated them or proves them right. The picture does its job of making even a hero look bad and a villian look like some kinda hero. Just as journalists are required to just report and not give personal opinions there should be some restriction on teh kind of pictes you can post on priominent headlines - you cannot use pictures as a way of falsely showing people in good or bad light, i think only passport pictures (i.e. :| pose) with no expressions should be used for celebrities other than filmstars.
It's not about critical thinking but about formation of hunch. The same hunch that working late and thinking "I should not be here alone" is confirmed by the fact that you hear 2 persons speaking. To you it is a fact because you don't have the resources to verify there are 0/200 persons in other floors of the building.