"Head versus heart"

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 2, No. 4, August 2007, pp. 217–224 “Head versus heart”: Effect of monetary frames on expression of sympathetic magical concerns Paul Rozin∗ University of Pennsylvania Heidi Grant Lehigh University Stephanie Weinberg University of Pennsylvania Scott Parker American University Abstract Most American respondents give “irrational,” magical responses in a variety of situations that exemplify the sympathetic magical laws of similarity and contagion. In most of these cases, respondents are aware that their responses (usually rejections, as of fudge crafted to look like dog feces, or a food touched by a sterilized, dead cockroach) are not “scientifically” justified, but they are willing to avow them. We interpret this, in some sense, as “heart over head.” We report in this study that American adults and undergraduates are substantially less likely to acknowledge magical effects when the judgments involve money (amount willing to pay to avoid an “unpleasant” magical contact) than they are when using preference or rating measures. We conclude that in “head-heart” conflicts of this type, money tips the balance towards the former, or, in other words, that money makes the mind less magical. Keywords: sympathetic magic, willingness to pay, preference, rationality. 1 Introduction Sympathetic magical thinking is recognizably irrational to most educated adults who show the effects. Participants often laugh at themselves or almost apologize in face-to-face studies in which they acknowledge reluctance to engage in activities such as eating a piece of chocolate that is shaped to look like dog feces, drinking apple juice from a brand new bed pan, wearing a sweater that had been previously worn by someone with AIDS after it was sterilized by heat, or drinking a glass of juice that had previously been touched to a dead, sterilized cockroach. These, and other situations are exemplifications of the two laws of sympathetic magic, first described by anthropologists around the turn of the 20th century (Edwin Tylor, 1879; James Frazer, 1895, and Marcel Mauss, 1902; see Rozin and Nemeroff, 1990, for a review). The two relevant laws are contagion (“once in contact, always in contact”) and similarity (“like causes like,” and “appearance equals reality”). A different or weaker form of the law of similarity involves simple association. If two entities are associated, and one has negative properties, then the second may take on some of these properties (Nemeroff & Rozin, 1994). For exam∗ Preparation of this paper was assisted by grant R21–DA10858–0 to Paul Rozin, from the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Send correspondence to: Paul Rozin Department of Psychology University of Pennsylvania 3720 Walnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19104–6241 Phone: 215–898–7632. Email: . ple, an object owned by but never touched by a disliked person, may take on negative properties. In some cases, the applicability of similarity and association principles overlaps. Consider a person who feels bad about wearing a new sweater that has the words “convicted murderer” written on the label inside the neck rim. This could be explained simply as an association between the sweater and the negative connotations of “murderer,” and/or by similarity (appearance = reality), such that the words “convicted murderer” stand for the real thing; such a person actually might have owned and worn the sweater. A majority of undergraduate and other participants (see, e.g., Rozin, Millman, & Nemeroff, 1986; Rozin, Millman, Wane, & Sherrod, 1989) are surprisingly willing to acknowledge their feelings (discomfort) in a wide range of magical scenarios. Although embarrassment would be thought to work against such admissions, participants seem to sense that in this peculiar domain they have license to display their feelings. Among the studies we have done, this combination of expressed magical thinking overcoming embarrassment is most clear in the “cyanide” studies (Rozin, Millman, & Nemeroff, 1986; Rozin, Markwith, & Ross, 1990). Participants observed as sugar from a commercial package was poured into two clean bottles. They were then given two labels, one saying “sugar” and the other saying “sodium cyanide, poison,” and asked to place one label on each bottle, as they chose. Most participants subsequently showed more reluctance to drink sugar water made from the bottle that 217 Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 2, No. 4, August 2007 they had labeled with the cyanide (or even a “not sodium cyanide”) label. We suspect that this willingness to show a rather silly, if genuine response, would be curbed if the stakes were higher, that is, for example, if money were at stake. One might be willing to acknowledge a silly magical feeling, but not to put money behind it. The studies described in this paper test this idea, in questionnaire format. Identical magical scenarios are described, and respondents indicate, in a between-subject design, their feelings or willingness to pay to avoid interaction with a magically degraded object. We also include a data set in which the same respondents make both types of judgments, at different periods of time, two months apart. 2 Method Table 1 summarizes the respondents and the items used. There were two groups of respondents. One was University of Pennsylvania students in an introductory psychology course, in 1994 and 1996. Demographic data were not collected, but students in this course are moderately representative of arts and science students in the University; students come from all over the United States and the world, with the largest group from the middleAtlantic and northeastern United States. Average SAT scores are in the mid 600 range. Most come from middle to upper middle class homes. Principal religious affiliations are Jewish, Catholic and Protestant. The racial background is predominantly Caucasian. The second group of respondents was volunteers from the Philadelphia Jury Pool. Philadelphia summons adult citizens on a random basis to a jury room for one day, where they are potential jurors. We distributed questionnaires to volunteers from this pool. Between 30 and 60% of jurors, on any morning, agreed to participate. Participants were rewarded with their choice of a candy bar. For the students, both relevant surveys were distributed and completed in class, as part of an in-class “laboratory.” Results from most of the items were eventually presented to the class and used in lectures. Each student had a randomly assigned subject number, known only to the student. The students wrote this number on all questionnaires, allowing for matching across time. One set of items, for 1994, were distributed as part of class questionnaires in January and March in the same course. Students received, at random, forms that had either rating or money judgments in January, and, again at random, forms with money, rating, or preference judgments in March. The second questionnaire was (...truncated)