Talk:Wishful thinking/Archives/2013

Addition of Psychology Section--Wishful Seeing
Hello! For our Cognitive Psych class we have been assigned to help edit a wikipedia article. My team consists of four members: Zach Blount, Megan Garzon, and Jenni Isaac and we decided that the wishful thinking article would benefit from a section related to psychology to create a more well-rounded article. In particular, we would like to discuss a subset of wishful thinking, wishful seeing. Wishful seeing is the idea that people perceive things based on what they wish to see rather than what they truly see. In particular, we would each like to specialize in a topic related to wishful seeing in relation to wishful thinking as well as add a history and current directions in research section. Each of us had to conduct research on a seed article and now we would like to bring our research together to edit this page.

For example, I focused my research on top-down processing (and points of cognitive penetrability) and environmental perception. I would like to add sections on how processing can be influenced by motivation and desire along with cognitive penetration. These sections would dissect a crucial step on how wishful seeing is facilitated. Specific studies would be cited such as Balcetis and Dunning (2013), Lupyan, Thompson Schill and Swingley (2009), Aue, Nusbaum, & Cacioppo (2012) and Bhalla and Proffitt (1999). Furthermore, research on the neural correlates involved in wishful seeing and thinking would also be analyzed.

Another topic to look at would be how motivations effect the perception of one's environment such as: size, shape, length, speed or slope of a target. For instance, size has been demonstrated to be misinterpreted, in as study conducted by Witt in 2001, softball players who hit the ball better perceived the ball to be bigger. Balcetis and Dunning (2010) also looked at how the desirability of objects affected distance perception, hypothesizing and concluding that that more desirable objects appear closer. Cognitive dissonance also has been researched in its roles in environmental perception. In a study conducted by Balcetis and Dunning in 2007, it was concluded that to reduce cognitive dissonance in the high choice group the subjects changed their attitude to match the situation. Thus, they perceived their environment in a less extreme way (shorter distance) than the low choice group. Altogether, these studies suggest that intraphysic motives play a role in perception of environments in order to encourage the perceiver to engage in behaviors that lead them either to acquire a desired object or be able to complete a desired task.

Other things to be looked into would be areas such as optimism, attention, future research (neural correlates), methods of researching wishful thinking (ambiguous stimuli). Together we hope to extend and link other related articles to the Wishful Thinking article.

ChristinaYlee (talk) 02:28, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

To add on to Christina's comments (I am in her group for our Cognitive Psychology class project), I would think it may be good to note a bit about the history of the psychological study of wishful thinking, beginning in the early part of the 20th century. This history section could focus on experiments such as the Bruner & Goodman (1947) study concerning children from less wealthy families and their tendency to misjudge the size of coins. Along with this history section, it should be noted that the early studies of wishful thinking were not at all conclusive due to many variables being left without control conditions. Of course, having a historical section riddled with studies that were not conclusive makes necessary the inclusion of a "current research" and/or a "future directions" section that would include where the psychological study of wishful thinking is headed today.

Personally, I plan to write a bit about optimism and its affect on wishful thinking, using studies like Aue, Nusbaum, and Cacioppo (2012). The use of ambiguous figures, like in studies such as Changizi and Hall (2001) and Balcetis and Dale (2007), being a very standard way to study wishful thinking and seeing in psychological studies, should also be investigated and included throughout the article. Zach Blount (talk) 03:52, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

As Christina mentioned, I would talk about the mechanisms of wishful seeing, more specifically attention and how deficits in attention (ie. attentional blink, change blindness, etc.) contribute to the changes in perception that influence wishful seeing. Also, I plan on investigating the various factors that influence attention and whether these correlate with wishful seeing. This relates to cognitive penetrability, as discussed above, and at what stage in the cognitive processes of perception wishful seeing occurs.

In addition to what Zach said, I would like to take a look at the methodological challenges that riddled the “New Look” psychological approach to a point of disrepute and how these challenges are being addressed by current studies including those by Balcetis and Dunning (2010), which took into consideration such confounding factors as positive mood and reporter bias.

Overall, I think that we can provide a comprehensive review of the material regarding the psychology of wishful thinking that would greatly enhance its current portrayal on this page. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. --Jenniisaac (talk) 01:10, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Wishful Seeing
As we have discussed, some background and history of how our perception is influenced by the context that surrounds us became a topic of interest of topic can be expanded on and included. The examples provided for Wishful Thinking are vague and could use clearer examples, such as how the size of a coin differed for a child in a poor economic situation relative to a boy in a good economic situation. It could also use more primary sources and a more focused theme, specifically wishful thinking in psychology.

This article could benefit from including how desires and preferences not only influence thinking, but also visual processing. In Dunning & Balcetis (2013), they specifically address the term coined wishful thinking or the influence of preferences on perception of an objects categorization and representation .As well as the way personal contexts, such as cultural background or physical fitness, can influence the way emotion and the environment is perceived.

However, I also believe it is important to address both the biological and cognitive mechanisms underlying wishful thinking and seeing. A study has found neural correlates to wishful thinking in the reward system of the central nervous system. Furthermore, these activated regions of the brain have provided clues to the possible lower-cognitive level processing that takes place during wishful thinking. This could lead into a segway to look at the studies that address cognitive mechanisms, such as selective attention, that have been used to explain biases in perceptions and expectations.