TY - JOUR
T1 - Think of What Really Matters
T2 - Structured Analysis of Personal Criteria can Save Lives
AU - Gordon-Hecker, Tom
AU - Kogut, Tehila
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), grant no. 1757315, and by the NSF-BSF, grant no. 2021727.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2023/11/1
Y1 - 2023/11/1
N2 - Helping decisions are susceptible to many biases—partly due to the helpers’ spontaneous emotional reactions to the appeal diverting their attention from the need to maximize the impact of their help. Attempts to overcome these biases by prompting deliberative thinking—namely, by asking participants to think deeply—have often been unsuccessful. Here, we propose a way of directing people’s attention to the most important aspects of their decisions, by asking them to rate the extent to which such attributes should be considered. In two experiments involving real-world crises, participants who underwent such structured analysis of their personal criteria were more likely to make decisions that maximized the number of lives saved. Moreover, their decisions were more in line with their personal values. We conclude that this method is a simple, efficient way of improving the quality of helping decisions in life-and-death situations.
AB - Helping decisions are susceptible to many biases—partly due to the helpers’ spontaneous emotional reactions to the appeal diverting their attention from the need to maximize the impact of their help. Attempts to overcome these biases by prompting deliberative thinking—namely, by asking participants to think deeply—have often been unsuccessful. Here, we propose a way of directing people’s attention to the most important aspects of their decisions, by asking them to rate the extent to which such attributes should be considered. In two experiments involving real-world crises, participants who underwent such structured analysis of their personal criteria were more likely to make decisions that maximized the number of lives saved. Moreover, their decisions were more in line with their personal values. We conclude that this method is a simple, efficient way of improving the quality of helping decisions in life-and-death situations.
KW - helping/prosocial behavior
KW - individual differences
KW - thinking styles
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85144200090&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/19485506221141987
DO - 10.1177/19485506221141987
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85144200090
SN - 1948-5506
VL - 14
SP - 891
EP - 899
JO - Social Psychological and Personality Science
JF - Social Psychological and Personality Science
IS - 8
ER -