The Psychologists at The University
of Manchester have shown how difficult it is for people to guess the true intention
of each other’s behavior, reports ITRealms.
The study, published today in
Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, has important implications
on public policies designed to impact on areas such as smoking, obesity,
eating disorders, self-harm, alcohol use and gambling.
Clinical psychologist Dr Warren
Mansell, who led the study, says policy makers need to accurately
understand what a person is trying to control using their behaviour, rather
than trying to change the behaviour itself.
He said: “We think we know what
someone is doing just by observing them. For example if we see someone move a
steering wheel of their car, we assume they are aiming to keep their car in the
centre of the lane.
“But our study shows that it is
incredibly easy to be mistaken – and that has important implications on anyone
whose task is to change human behaviour.
“In psychological research, for
example, this study suggests that some behaviour studied may be no more than a
side effect of participants’true intentions.
“We should therefore avoid focusing
on people's behaviour itself . That would lead to multiple and inevitably
futile interventions for each and every problem.”
He added: “In terms of public
policy, we frequently we see money spent on another new initiative for
'behaviour change'.
“Yet if these behaviours are just
side effects of people trying to exert control, then this multi-pronged
approach to health is highly inefficient and fails to address the common root
cause of people's difficulties.
“You need to ask people what they
want in their life and how they solve their problems. Smoking, for example, is
just one of many different ways in which a person might try to control
something important to them – such as their social confidence, or emotional state.”
Dr Mansell’s team were able to fool
over 350 people into thinking that a person they saw in a video controlling the
location of a knot in a rubber band was doing something completely different.
The study participants wrongly
thought it showed someone drawing a picture, exposing the phenomenon of
'control blindness'.
Most participants failed to
correctly infer the person’s intention, instead inferring complex but
non-existent goals, such as ‘tracing out two kangaroos boxing’, based on the
actions taken to keep the knot under control.
The effect persisted with many
participants even when their awareness was successfully directed at the knot
whose position was under control.
Much of the work was carried out by
Andrew Willett, an honorary research assistant who spent three months at
Manchester on secondment from Vassar College, Poughkeepsie.
The results were modelled on a
computer by Dr Rick Marken, based at Antioch University.
Dr Mansell said: “It might surprise
some, but this study backs up what we have found in studies of people’s health
and well-being. What’s more, if control blindness is apparent with the simple
behaviour in our study, then it is even more likely in everyday life where
people’s actions can be sophisticated or subtle.
“Observers with control blindness
appear to be unable to guess what the true intention of someone's behaviour is,
even if their attention is drawn towards it.
“Seeing the unintentionally
produced pattern of pen movement as intentional is an example of what has been
called’the illusion of control’
“Our study shows that the side
effects of intentional behaviour that create the illusion of control can be so
compelling that they blind people to the true intention, leading to control
blindness.”
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