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Information overload, overstimulation, time pressure, multi-tasking—words that are often associated with the ills (and less so thrills) of living in the twenty first century. Today’s teenagers appear to be particularly good at doing multiple things at once, including texting, internet browsing, gaming and watching TV. That’s why the Internet Generation has been referred to as ‘Generation M’: the Multi-tasking Generation. (However, a recent study by UCL academics in conjunction with the BBC suggests that M-ers may actually be inferior multi-taskers compared to individuals from the previous, Y, generation. Doing more multi-tasking doesn’t necessarily imply being better at it!)
In any event, multi-tasking is demanding because our ability to process information is of course limited. Psychologists have long taken advantage of this basic fact by using experimental manipulations that put participants under time pressure, distract them or make them cognitively busy. Under conditions of cognitive load (as a result of having to memorize a 7-digit number, for example), where processing resources are limited, people are more likely to give responses that come to mind quickly and easily. Psychologists often talk about this in “System 1” versus “System 2” terms: automatic and intuitive in contrast to more deliberative and reflective thinking. Since our capacity for System 2 processes is relatively limited, it doesn’t take much to impair System 2 functioning and allow System 1 to be more influential on what we say and do.
Here are a couple of examples. A familiar concept in social psychology is that of the correspondence bias, the tendency to attribute a person’s actions to personal dispositions rather than the influence of the situation. For instance, someone may attribute Bob’s poor performance on his last math test to his lack of intelligence rather than the fact that he suffered from the flu. Although this bias varies across cultures (Americans succumb to it more often than East Asians), it also has an intuitive component. It’s quite natural to think that there’s something inside people that drives behavior. Not surprisingly, increasing people’s cognitive load has been shown to amplify the correspondence bias.
In consumer psychology, a well-known study by Shiv and Fedorikhin showed that when presented with a choice of either fruit salad or equally priced chocolate cake, 63 percent of experimental participants with limited processing resources opted for the chocolate cake. By contrast, only 41 percent of participants who operated without processing constraints chose the cake. There was no such difference when only pictures of chocolate cake and fruit salad were shown to people. Chocolate cake is not only full of calories but laden with affect when we have the real deal in front of us.
Although cognitive load can make our behavior more impulsive, it can also be put to good use. Consider computer games, a Generation M favorite. In applied consumer research, there has been increasing interest in “gamification”: making research more engaging to respondents by making it more playful. From a multi-tasking point of view, it could also be argued that playing a game and answering questions at the same time can reduce the “System 2 filter” that researchers often attribute to overly reflective or even biased responses.
So here’s my suggestion if you’re having difficulties expressing how you feel to your partner about a particular issue. Play a cognitively demanding 2-player video/computer game together while discussing the issue at hand. Perhaps a classic arcade game. You may not only have quality time together, but the game may divert attention and preoccupy you sufficiently to become a straight-talker. Granted, distraction can hamper your ability to listen, but it may also help you speak from the gut or heart!
Available from July 2014: The Behavioral Economics Guide 2014 on BehavioralEconomics.com (free download)
References & Further Reading
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking fast and slow. London: Allen Lane.
Miyamoto, Y., & Kitayama, S. (2002). Cultural variation in correspondence bias: The critical role of attitude diagnosticity of socially constrained behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1239-48.
Nicholas, D., Rowlands, I., Clark, D., & Williams, P. (2011). Google Generation II: Web behaviour experiments with the BBC. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 63, 28-45.
Shiv, B., & Fedorikhin, A. (1999). Heart and mind in conflict: The interplay of affect and cognition in consumer decision making. Journal of Consumer Research, 26, 278-292.
