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Predicting Unpredictability in People
Running head: PREDICTING UNPREDICTABILITY IN PEOPLE
This version submitted 12-31-05 to Sydney Symposium organizers
The Social Prediction Dynamic: A Legacy of Cognition and Mixed Motives
Oscar Ybarra
University of Michigan
Matthew C. Keller
Virginia Commonwealth University
Emily Chan
Colorado College
Jeffrey Hutsler, Stephen Garcia, , and Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks
University of Michigan
(Words excluding abstract, references, and footnote, 5616)
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Abstract
Social navigation involves not only predicting others but also how the object of
prediction responds to the prospect of being figured out. Given the often-expressed
frustration by social scientists that human behavior is less predictable than the topics
studied by the "harder" sciences, it is surprising that the latter, to our knowledge, has
not been considered in social psychology. We argue that when dealing with people, we
many times are dealing with moving targets. Thus, we suggest that one way to
understand and predict humans is by actually appreciating that many times they have a
basic interest in not being sized up (e.g., by curious social scientists). However,
people’s predictability should vary as a function of the social circumstances, with
uncertain, contentious, and threatening social situations heightening, but more favorable
and safe social situations reducing, people’s need to be opaque and unpredictable.
(words, 142)
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The Social Prediction Dynamic: A Legacy of Cognition and Mixed Motives
Social scientists often lament that human behavior is less predictable than the
topics studied by the “harder” sciences, ostensibly because many factors go into
determining why people do the things they do. Normally, this unpredictability is treated
as the “noise” or measurement error of social science studies. However, as some
investigators have pointed out, such noise may reflect meaningful behavior in complex
systems (Gilden, 2001) and has actually been modeled and used to inform theory in the
physical and biological sciences (Miller, 1997). In this chapter we make this noise the
centerpiece of our analysis. We put forth a theoretical rationale that holds that the
trouble with predicting human behavior is partly due to a suite of behaviors that bias
people away from wanting to be sized-up and predicted by others, especially in
uncertain or contentious social circumstances. Thus, while research on theory of mind
and related areas of person perception explore one side of the social prediction
dynamic, we think that its complement, people’s reactions to being perceived and
predicted, deserves equal attention.
Social Pressures on Cognitive Evolution
A fundamental social motive is the need to understand and predict other people’s
behavior; this is what we all do, not just social scientists. By knowing others’ mental
states, such as their intentions and desires, we can anticipate others’ actions. Thus,
“good enough” guesses of others’ mental states should facilitate social interaction
(Asch, 1952; Baron-Cohen, 1995; Heider, 1958; Roth & Leslie, 1991; Tagiuri, 1958;
Whiten, 1997)1. However, smooth and coordinated social interaction is an outcome
people should want from their interactions with kin, friends, and other trusted
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individuals. However, the mental transparency that facilitates coordinated interaction is
not something people want from their interactions with unknown or contentious parties
who could potentially predict a person’s behaviors to the detriment of the predicted
(social scientists may fall in this latter category).
The concern people should have with predicting others, and as we will argue,
with having others predict them, may be an outcome of primate brain evolution. In
contrast to the idea that primate intelligence and primate brains evolved in response to
ecological pressures (e.g., Clutton-Brock & Harvey, 1980; Gibson, 1986; Milton, 1988),
other research indicates that many brain characteristics can be better explained in
terms of features of the social environment (e.g., Dunbar, 1992). This should be
expected given the potential for benefits but also costs associated with group living
(Humphrey, 1976).
Consistent with this perspective, studies have shown that across various primate
species the typical group size for a species correlates with neocortex size, such that
larger brains are associated with living in larger groups (Barton & Dunbar, 1997;
Dunbar, 1992; Sawaguchi & Kudo, 1990). This suggests that social complexity (e.g.,
tracking others, triadic awareness, etc.) was an important force in brain evolution
(Barton & Dunbar, 1997; de Waal, 1998). Moreover, recent research has shown that the
degree of deception displayed by various primate species is highly related to neocortex
size (Byrne & Corp, 2004).
The above findings suggest that although theory of mind and our social
perception apparatus allows for some ability to predict others, which should prove
advantageous in social domains, the findings on deception in primates suggest that with
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social prediction also comes the ability to manipulate and to keep from being predicted
(cf. Humphrey, 1976), which in itself should be advantageous under specific
circumstances. It does not make sense that everyone under all circumstances would
have the ability to predict and thus manipulate everyone else’s behaviors. Under some
circumstances, individual advantage would accrue not only to those good at social
prediction (e.g., able to read minds), but also those better able to keep their own minds
from being known and their behavior from being predicted (Miller, 1997; also see Krebs
& Dawkins, 1984). We propose that such easily activated reactions in people, especially
when confronted with unfamiliar, uncertain, or threatening circumstances, contribute to
the difficulty social psychologists and social scientists more generally have in predicting
and chasing this social animal.
Before delineating our theoretical framework further and describing some initial
studies from our lab, we will review approaches taken by social scientists over the last
few decades to predict their reticent and less than cooperative human participants. In
addition, we will review various findings in a subsequent section that detail some
reactions people experience at the prospect of being predicted and figured out.
On Social Scientists trying to Predict People
What People Say and Do
Social psychologists have long regarded people’s attitudes and beliefs and their
reports on them as central to predicting social behavior. However, it was not long before
they discovered that the road from such reports to corresponding behavior was not
straightforward. The extent to which attitudes predict behavior is regarded as one of the
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most important controversies in attitude research (c.f., Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Kraus,
1995; Wicker, 1969).
Early findings by LaPiere (1934) showing a lack of correspondence between
prejudiced attitudes and prejudiced behavior served as the impetus for much research
aimed at determining the conditions that augment the attitude/behavior correlation. For
example, defining the attitude and behavior at a similar level of abstraction tends to
improve prediction, as does having multiple measures of the attitude and behavior
(Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977). Other factors have been shown to impact the ability to use
people’s reported attitudes to predict behavior. These include the stability of the attitude
over time (Kraus, 1995), the strength and importance of the attitude (e.g., Krosnick,
Boninger, Chuang, Berent, & Carnot, 1993), attitude accessibility in memory (e.g.,
Fazio, Chen, McDonel, & Sherman, 1982), whether or not the attitude is formed through
direct experience (e.g., Regan & Fazio, 1977), and the consonance of the attitudinal
components (e.g., affect & cognition) (Millar & Tesser, 1986; Posavac, Sanbonmatsu, &
Fazio, 1997) (for a meta analysis see Kraus, 1995). In addition, factors other than the
attitude itself, such as the norms surrounding the performance of certain behaviors, also
impact the relationship (Ajzen, 1991).
As the catalog of factors above suggests, researchers have made great strides in
uncovering the many conditions that affect an attitude’s influence on behavior. However,
given the diversity of approaches to this issue, with no one approach applying broadly
and robustly, we are left with the feeling that predicting people’s behavior from their
attitudes requires considerable knowledge of the nature of people’s attitudes as well as
considerable knowledge of various situational factors, the person’s state of mind, and so
Predicting Unpredictability in People
on. To be cognizant of all these factors should amount to an overwhelming task for the
most expert researchers, let alone the lay person.
Predicting people’s behavior is difficult not only because behavior is determined
by many factors and situational cues, but also because, as we argue, at a fundamental
level people do not want to be sized up and do not want their behavior predicted. Thus,
people either do not provide accurate information on their attitudes and intentions or
they intentionally behave in ways that are inconsistent with their attitudes. Given the
trouble with predicting people’s behavior from their expressed beliefs and attitudes, it
makes much sense that researchers have attempted to assess the content of people’s
minds in ways that preclude people’s tendency not to be predicted.
The Bogus Pipeline
This was the motivation behind a study conducted by Jones and Sigall (1971).
These researchers created the bogus pipeline, an impressive contraption made up of a
pile of electronic hardware with dials the experimenter could secretly manipulate. The
machine was presented to participants as a type of lie detector, whereas participants in
the control condition were simply asked to indicate their attitudes on a paper and pencil
measure. In one study, for example, Sigall and Page (1971) found that students readily
expressed more racial prejudice in the presence of the bogus pipeline.
Other studies have shown that people who were illegitimately given information
were more likely to confess having that information under bogus pipeline conditions
than a control condition (Quigley-Fernandez & Tedeschi, 1978), and women tended to
report higher levels of sexual activity under bogus pipeline than a control condition
(Alexander & Fisher, 2003; for a review see Roese and Jamieson, 1993).
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In terms of the present analysis, what is important to note is that in the control
conditions people frequently mislead, which is consistent with research indicating that
people have a proclivity to lie in day to day life (Kashy and DePaulo, 1996; DePaulo,
Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996) and actually expect others to lie to them on a
regular basis (Schul, Burnstein, & Bardi, 1996). The study by Alexander and Fisher
(2003) is especially informative. This study, in addition to the bogus pipeline condition,
included two comparison conditions, one public (research assistant had access to
participants’ responses) and one anonymous. The bogus pipeline condition produced
negligible gender differences, so it increased the veracity of the reports (i.e., women
reported more sexual activity). The public condition produced the biggest sex difference
in reports of sexual activity, but the anonymous condition, in which participants were
guaranteed their responses could not be linked to them, also produced a sex difference.
This last result suggests that people lied even when they would not be found out.
Research efforts have moved beyond the bogus pipeline to trying to assess
people’s mental contents in a manner that minimizes participant control, such as using
measures of implicit cognition and techniques that allow researchers to assess brain
activity. We review these trends next.
Implicit Measures of Cognition and Brain Activity
There has been an explosion of research on implicit attitudes and cognition and
their measurement (e.g., Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997;
Fazio & Olson, 2003; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000).
Implicit attitude assessment usually rests on people’s response latencies to a stimulus
of interest. For example, after activating a stereotype of a social group in memory
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outside conscious awareness (e.g., by subliminally presenting race-relevant words such
as white or black), a question of interest might be whether people are subsequently
faster at identifying words that are positive or negative in valence, the assumption being
that faster recognition for the former represents an implicit positive White bias (e.g.,
Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997).
According to research on implicit attitudes, attitudes may be implicit for various
reasons (Brauer, Wasel, & Niedenthal, 2000; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995;
Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; for a review see Wilson & Dunn,
2004), and there are important theoretical reasons for undertaking such approaches to
their measurement. For example, as both philosophers and psychologists have mused,
human behavior is many times prompted and directed by cues in the environment of
which the person has little knowledge or awareness (Bargh, 1996; Dennett, 1991). But,
regardless of the assessment technique used or the theoretical approach taken, we
believe there are potentially other reasons for these research efforts: researchers may
believe that by doing so they are better able to excavate and make their way to the true
nature of people’s minds. An interest in implicit cognition may be deemed necessary
because the people being studied many times do not want to be known and predicted.
Research in social neuroscience and neuroscience more generally, which many
times relies on brain imaging techniques (e.g., PET, fMRI), may similarly serve the
unacknowledged purpose of measuring people’s minds more directly by bypassing
people’s social and communicative processes. These different techniques have become
of great interest to psychologists because they provide a sense that it is possible to
assess participants’ responses in a manner that precludes the various problems
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associated with gaining valid information from people. By examining people’s implicit
responses or peering straight into the brain structures themselves (assuming there is
good consensus as to what those structures do), researchers may gain confidence that
they are assessing “true” responses.
We offer our proposals as informed speculation. Researchers may go to great
lengths to study cognition in the ways described above because it cannot be studied by
asking the participants themselves. And one reason they cannot rely on participants’
responses is that people many times do not want to be known and predicted (whether
consciously or not).
The Averseness of Being the Target of Prediction
In general, people should find the prospect of being the object of prediction
aversive. Thus, at times, they may want to avoid these unpleasant states or
circumstances by being unpredictable, a hypothesis we test in studies to be reviewed
subsequently. At this point, our aim is to review several findings from the literature to
show across various paradigms that people are prone to feel scrutinized and that they
are being watched by others. These various reactions make sense in the context of our
framework, in that such aversive responses may signal to people that they should exit
such situations or enact responses that will foil others’ social prediction attempts.
Day-to-Day Paranoia
One such phenomenon is referred to as paranoid cognition (e.g., Kramer, 1994),
which relates to a person’s beliefs, for example, that they are being persecuted (cf.
Colby, 1981). More recently researchers have explored the social and situational
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aspects of paranoid cognition instead of focusing on individual pathology (e.g.,
Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992; Zimbardo, Andersen, & Kabat, 1981).
Such research suggests that people in many social situations, especially novel
ones, may be prone to feelings of uncertainty about what others think of them (cf.
Festinger, 1954). Hence, people are apt to be sensitive to various social cues and to
ruminate about them (Colby, 1981). Although this can be regarded as a normal process,
certain situational factors and reactions can transform these cognitions into more
dysfunctional forms, such as greater self-consciousness and the feeling that one is
being scrutinized (Lord & Saenz, 1985). Social uncertainly can also increase people’s
misinterpretation of events (and elaboration of such misinterpretations), which can result
in feelings of discomfort in the presence of others. Social uncertainty can also lead to
judgments that others are not open to them and can give rise to distrust (as reported in
Kramer & Wei, 1999).
Uncertain social situations can prompt people to feel as if they are being
scrutinized. But it is also interesting to consider the idea that people, regardless of the
circumstances, are generally inclined to such thinking. For example, in one sample of
324 college students, researchers found that 47% of those participants had had some
experience of paranoia (Ellet, Lopes & Chadwick, 2003). In a different study, Fenigstein
and Vanable (1992, Study 1) constructed and validated a measure of paranoia that
consisted of 32 items. The investigators found that out of a range of 20-100 for the total
score on the paranoia scale (the higher the score, the higher the paranoia), the mean
was 42.7. Given that paranoid responses were highly and negatively correlated with
social desirability (Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992), meaning people seemed aware of the
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potential for social disapproval from endorsing such items, many respondents
nevertheless felt that some of the paranoid experiences described in the items applied
to them.
The above findings suggest that even people from non-clinical samples may be
apt to feel on occasion that they are being watched, that there is a need to be
suspicious, and to potentially assume ill will on the part of others. Other phenomena to
be reviewed presently further corroborate the idea that people often do feel scrutinized,
and as we suggest, feel that they are being subjected to other's prediction efforts. Below
we discuss these reactions, namely the "spotlight" effect and the “illusion of
transparency."
Spotlight Effect
The “spotlight” refers to an effect in which people overestimate the degree to
which their actions and appearance are noticed and evaluated by others (Gilovich &
Savitsky, 1999; Gilovich, Kruger, & Medvec, 2002; Gilovich, Medvec, & Savitsky, 2000).
Interestingly, the feelings that others are taking special notice and that one is being
watched are thought of as classical indicators of paranoid ideology (e.g., Magaro, 1980;
Millon, 1981). Fenigstein and Vanable (1992, Study 2) showed, for example, that the
more people were predisposed toward having paranoid thoughts, the more they felt they
were being observed.
In two studies on the “spotlight” effect, participants were asked to wear a t-shirt
with a potentially embarrassing or flattering image (Gilovich et al., 2000, Studies 1 & 2).
In these studies participants overestimated the number of people who would be able to
remember the images on the shirts. Thus, participants felt that they stood out and that
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others were scrutinizing them much more so than was actually the case. Feeling as if
one is in the spotlight thus represents one way in which most people can feel as if
others are taking notice and scrutinizing the self.
Feeling Transparent
The feelings of transparency studied by Gilovich and colleagues (e.g., Gilovich &
Savitsky, 1999; Vorauer, & Cameron, 2002; Vorauer & Ross, 1999) may be slightly
different manifestations of the same reactions underlying the spotlight effect and
paranoid cognition more generally. As described by Gilovich, Savitsky, and Medvec
(1998), feelings of transparency are nicely illustrated by the responses of the
protagonist in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, in which he is trying to suppress
his reaction to the crime he has committed while conversing with three police officers.
The protagonist is so taken by his anxiety that he actually feels he can hear, as can the
police, the beating heart of his victim buried underneath the floorboards. To feel
transparent is for a person to feel as if one’s thoughts, feelings, and reactions are
leaking out for all to see (Gilovich & Savitsky, 1999).
Evidence for the transparency effect comes from various sources. For example,
Barr and Kleck (1995) had participants watch a video and then judge how expressive
they had been during the viewing. The results showed that the participants rated
themselves as more expressive than a group of observers judged them to be. The
researchers then had the participants watch the covertly recorded videos. The
participants actually expressed surprise as to how inexpressive they seemed in the
video recordings. This study nicely illustrates that people are prone to think that they are
being explicitly analyzed, and that their internal states are readily available to others.
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Due to different factors, the above review suggests that people are predisposed
to assume some form of paranoid thinking, which usually coincides with
overgeneralization of scrutiny and the unpleasant feelings of self-consciousness
(Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992). We suggest that such states should be unpleasant to
people because they serve as a signal that the situation they are in is one in which
others are potentially keen on figuring them out and predicting their behavior.
The Social Prediction Dynamic: Delineating the Theoretical Framework
In describing the efforts of social scientists to find better ways to ascertain valid
information from their participants we have aimed to highlight the person perception or
prediction side of the social prediction dynamic. Our discussion on people’s readiness to
feel scrutinized speaks to the responses of the person as the object of prediction. Up to
this point, we have thus focused on the form the social prediction dynamic takes when
people find themselves in uncertain, contentious, or unfamiliar social circumstances. But
social prediction and people’s responses to prediction are dynamic in that people should
be sensitive not only to the negative and threatening aspects of social situations but
also their positive and propitious characteristics as well. Thus, it is important to consider
the social interaction factors that may highlight people’s need to be predicted in some
situations but not others.
Cooperation, Competition and the Benefits and Costs of Group Living
Group living creates benefits but also potential costs for individuals (Barash,
1977; Humphrey, 1976). For example, group living brings together potential mates but
also increases competition for them. Social living is beneficial in the acquisition of food,
but competition surfaces when resources are scarce. Living with others aids in the
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defense against predators or other groups, but costs include the problem of free-riders.
Thus, group living is and was likely to be a complex and ever shifting mix of both
competitive and cooperative scenarios. At the same time, while being able to predict
another’s behavior was probably adaptive regardless of the situation, the adaptive
benefit of being predicted was probably contextual, depending on whether the situation
was cooperative or competitive. We propose that reactions to others’ attempts to predict
the self have been shaped by natural selection to be sensitive to the cooperative (safe,
favorable) or competitive (threatening, unfavorable) nature of the immediate situation.
Cooperative and safe contexts should shift one towards lessened discomfort at
the prospect of being known and predicted. In such situations, benefits should result
from mutual prediction by known and trusted others. Many activities throughout human
and primate evolution have required coordinated responses and rest on the individual’s
ability to build and maintain coalitions for mutual protection against enemies or
individuals who abuse power within the group (Boehm, 1997; de Waal, 1998). Hunting
and food-gathering activities can also require high levels of coordination. The benefits of
mutual ‘mind reading’ between members of such cooperative groups should not require
elaboration.
In addition, members of a group must be transparent enough to members of the
opposite sex for courting and reproduction to take place. Although there is much
uncertainty in the courting of a mate, there will be no offspring and protection of those
offspring if some transparency of intentions, desires, and needs fails to be established
between the courting parties and, eventually, their offspring. In essence, we predict
transparency and predictability to increase to the degree that fates are shared between
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predictors and the targets of prediction. Importantly, such a shift should have at least as
much to do with the situation as it does the people involved; a desire to be transparent
to someone in one context (e.g., hunting) does not necessarily transfer to a desire to be
transparent to the same person in a different context (e.g., coalition building).
Competitive contexts should do the opposite: people should strive to be opaque
and unpredictable to unfamiliar or potentially contentious parties (cf. Miller, 1997). The
adaptive response to many situations throughout human and primate evolution,
involving both ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’ members, should have depended on the
individual’s ability to keep oneself from being known, sized-up, and predicted by others
when this information could be used to one’s detriment. Considerations of signal
detection theory as applied to human cognitive evolution (Nesse, 2001; Haselton &
Buss, 2003) would predict a cognitive system that commits fewer of the costliest errors
at the expense of committing more of the less costly errors. Thus, we might expect that
the occasional event of being predicted by a competitor would be more costly than the
occasional event of being unpredictable to a friend, which should incline humans, as a
default, to be unpredictable, opaque, and difficult to ‘figure out’.
Some of the benefits (or reduction in costs) of being unknown and unpredictable
in competitive situations would include not being harmed, betrayed, or taken advantage
of. Avoiding such negative outcomes should have proven useful in winning
competitions, conflict resolution, securing resources and perhaps mates, and
maintaining a given role or rank within a group. Some of the costs of being unknown
and unpredictable when the situation was truly cooperative might be that one would be
distrusted, disliked, or ostracized by potential cooperative partners. Thus, for uncertain
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or contentious social circumstances, we predict that people should want to be opaque
and unpredictable.
In the next section we test some implications of our model, which suggest that
people’s reactions to being sized up and predicted should be responsive to the
contentious or cooperative (threatening or safe) nature of the social interaction.
Although people may generally be biased toward being unpredictable, our perspective
holds that people should relax these tendencies when circumstances prove to be
cooperative or more generally safe and favorable.
Situational Factors Moderate the Need to be Unpredictable
Evidence for Changes in Behavioral Tendencies
In two preliminary survey studies (n=366) (Ybarra, Keller, Baron, Chan, Garcia, &
Sanchez-Burks, 2005), we conceptualized and created measures of three behavioral
tendencies that should be sensitive to people’s positive or negative interpersonal
expectations. For these studies participants’ ratings of the world as exploitative and
competitive (as assessed by a measure of social distrust) were correlated with these
three self-reported tendencies of not wanting to be known and predicted. These social
interaction tendencies (SIT) included: Unwillingness to self-disclose, which measured
reticence and an unwillingness to open up to others; Deceptiveness, which reflected a
willingness to use deception in dealing with people; and Unpredictability, which
assessed the degree to which participants felt they were complex, difficult to
understand, and inconsistent from situation to situation. We predicted that people who
view their social world as more competitive would report a greater frequency of these
behavioral tendencies.
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We treated social distrust as the predictor variable and ran multivariate
regressions on the three subscales above. Consistent with expectations, in both studies
people who tended to be distrustful of others’ intentions also conceived of themselves
as less willing to self-disclose, more deceptive, and less predictable. Thus, by holding a
view of the world as competitive, people appear more likely to display behavioral
tendencies that would be counter-measures to being exploited and predicted.
We conducted a follow-up experiment (Ybarra et al., 2005, Study 3, n=202) to
eliminate counter explanations associated with correlational findings and also to show
that people when placed in competitive and cooperative situations adopt a greater or
lesser need not to be known and to be predictable. In this experiment we led
participants to believe they would interact with another participant in a competitive or
cooperative situation. We also included a control group of participants who did not
expect to be involved in any interaction. In the competition and cooperation conditions
participants blindly selected a colored badge from a bag at the beginning of the session
and pinned the badge to their shirts. Participants were then asked to find their
“opponent” (competition condition) or “partner” (cooperation condition) with the same
badge color and sit across from them.
In the competition and cooperation conditions, the participants were told they and
the person sitting across from them would go to another room to play a game called
“Matching Wits.” We manipulated the participants’ expectations of competition or
cooperation by describing this game differently depending on condition. Prior to going
forward with the game, we asked participants to fill out some personality questionnaires
for a second, unrelated study. Embedded in the battery were our assessments of the
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three subscales used to operationalize people’s tendency not to be known and
predictable. We expected that compared to the control condition, participants expecting
to compete in the upcoming game would feel less willing to disclose information about
themselves, would be more inclined to be deceptive, and would be more inclined to be
unpredictable. In contrast, we expected participants in the cooperative situation to show
a reduction relative to the control condition in these behavioral tendencies (SIT). More
importantly, we expected the two experimental conditions to differ significantly from
each other.
Figure 1: The three measures of SIT (+/- 1 standard error) as a function of experimental
condition
Competition
0.40
z-score
0.20
Control
0.00
Cooperation
-0.20
-0.40
Deceptiveness
Unwillingness to
self-disclose
Unpredictability
The overall analysis indicated there were differences among the conditions,
(MANOVA omnibus Wilk’s F, p < .05). As can be seen in Figure 1, for each subscale,
the responses of the control group were midway between the means of the two
experimental conditions. In testing our specific prediction, the contrast comparing the
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competition vs. cooperation condition was significant (p < .01). The univariate contrasts
conducted on each dependent measure separately were significant for Unwillingness to
self-disclose (p < .01) and Unpredictability (p < .01), and marginally so for
Deceptiveness (p = .06). In subsequent analyses we controlled for mood valence and
arousal, which did not alter the significance levels of the contrasts. Thus, participants’
behavioral tendencies were modified depending upon whether they thought they were
going to compete or cooperate in a manner consistent with our model’s predictions.
Interestingly, in this experiment participants indicated how they felt that they
typically behave, so their reporting on the social interaction tendencies does not seem
to have been consciously mediated in response to the upcoming game.
Evidence for Changes in Self-Definitions and the use of Survey Responses
In the above studies participants reported on specific behavioral tendencies that
had to do with being unpredictable, not wanting to be known, and being deceptive. In
the next study, we wanted to examine whether people’s self definitions, in terms of the
trait dispositions they endorse, would shift toward not wanting to be known and toward
being unpredictable as a function of the anticipated interpersonal context.
How can we infer such a shift in self-definitions? Well, surveys can be created to
allow for this. On a standard semantic differential scale, participants choose between
two bipolar or opposing trait adjectives, such as “interesting” on one end and “boring” at
the other end, and the intervening intervals are delineated so that the mid-point
represents no endorsement of “interesting” or “boring.”
However, we could give participants a modified semantic differential scale in
which a) they have to choose one of the trait labels at either pole of the scale or b) they
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have the option of choosing “both” or “neither” if they feel both traits capture what they
are like or if they do not feel either of the traits is self-descriptive, respectively. In
particular, a “both” response may serve to instill the expectation of unpredictability in
behavior, as the person is basically saying I can assume either of these opposing
dispositional qualities. The critical question we examined in this last study was whether
a subtle experimental intervention aimed at shifting people’s interpersonal expectations
could create changes in self-definitions. We expected that people with negative
interpersonal expectations would choose “both” when endorsing traits about the self to a
greater extent than people with positive interpersonal expectations, who in turn would
choose to a greater extent one of the two listed traits.
In this study (Ybarra & Chan, 2005) we induced interpersonal expectations by
having people in the first part of two, ostensibly unrelated studies bring to mind and
write about a person they knew. In the negative interpersonal expectancies condition
the participants were asked to bring to mind the image of a person they disliked. In the
positive interpersonal expectations condition participants were asked to bring to mind
the image of a person they liked. After completing this part of the experiment, the
participants were presented with the second, unrelated study in which they were asked
to endorse from a list those traits that described them. The traits were presented as
pairs (n pairs = 21) on a horizontal line. Participants had to choose one of the traits or if
they wanted they could choose “both” or neither.”
Predicting Unpredictability in People
22
Table 1: The mean number of times specific traits and the “both” option were selected
as a function of experimental condition.
Condition
# of Traits
Recall Liked Other (n=18)
11.28 (3.49)
# of “Both”
9.28 (3.61)
Recall Disliked Other (n=17)
8.47 (4.23)
11.65 (3.99)
The main results for the study are presented in Table 1. “Neither” responses
were infrequent and thus were not analyzed. A mixed design analysis produced an
interaction of the two factors (p < .05). As suggested by the means in Table 1,
participants who brought to mind an image of a person who they did not like chose
fewer, specific traits to describe the self than participants who recalled a liked other (p <
.04). In terms of choosing the “both” option, the participants who recalled the disliked
other chose “both” more frequently than participants who recalled the liked other in a
marginally significant contrast (p < .07). It is important to keep in mind that participants
could have chosen “neither” as well, but they hardly did this (M’s less than 1 in both
conditions).
The findings from this study showed that by simply having participants bring to
mind the image of a liked or disliked other who they knew, we impacted participants’
self-definitions and their use of survey responses. We propose that the use of the “both”
option in the survey provides people with the ability to hide the self and to express that
they are unpredictable. As predicted by our model and consistent with the results from
the previous experiment, this tendency toward not wanting to be known and to be
unpredictable was more likely when the interpersonal context was negative or
threatening than positive or safe.
Predicting Unpredictability in People
23
Conclusion
Our general purpose in this chapter has been to put forth a theoretical framework
that emphasizes not only the prediction side of social perception but also how the object
of prediction, many times a moving target, responds to the prospect of being predicted.
We argue that our behavioral tendencies carry the imprint of our ancestral social past,
with a sensitivity to the threatening or safe nature of interpersonal situations. We believe
the analysis has broad implications for other variables that affect the tenor of social
interactions or relationships, for example, the relative power between parties, whether
the interaction is one-shot or long term, or other factors that influence trust or
approachability more generally. But, given the frequency with which people are likely to
find themselves in uncertain social situations in modern times, it may be that we have
inherited mechanisms that predispose us too easily and too often toward not wanting to
be known and to be predictable. It is such reactions that may many times lay the
foundation for the trouble with predicting human behavior and the lament of the social
scientist. Hence, the present analysis reveals the value in predicting human behavior in
unpredictable ways.
Predicting Unpredictability in People
24
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Predicting Unpredictability in People
Authors’ Note
Please direct correspondence concerning this manuscript to Oscar Ybarra,
University of Michigan, Department of Psychology and Research Center for Group
Dynamics, 525 East University, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109. (email: [email protected];
phone: 734-763-3156)
32
Predicting Unpredictability in People
Footnote
1
This assertion in some circles might raise some hackles given the “Other Minds”
problem. As the Solipsism doctrine holds, and as famous philosophers such as
Descartes have argued, it may be that people only really know their own minds, and
from their mental states infer what another might think and feel. This is what we mean
by good enough guesses.
33