The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget

However, what’s troubling about these findings is that, in daily life, true and false information wasn’t coded in green and red. Since they had enough time to process the information, they gave fairer punishments. They gave sentences appropriate to the actual crime committed. On the other hand, the participants who weren’t distracted while reading excluded the false statements. Those whose false claims favored the criminal gave less than half the penalty. Those whose texts included false descriptions alleging the robber’s cruel behavior gave sentences doubly severe as the others.

In short, the distracted group forgot that the text contained both true and false statements. The testers expected those who were disrupted to act more naturally, precisely because they lacked control over the situation, which would cause them to behave in their usual manner.Īt the end of the experiment, there was a significant difference between the punishments given by the group that was distracted versus the group that wasn’t distracted. The other half completed the exercise without any distractions. They mentioned his friendly demeanor and no instances of violence.įurthermore, as the experiment progressed, the testers interrupted half of the participants with distractions. For example, they said the robber had to provide for his family. On the other hand, other texts attempted to “soften” the crime. For example, they said that the robber was armed or had aggressive behavior. Some of these claims made the robbery seem more violent. The false statements, in red, contained information on the details of the crime. They needed to take this into account as they understood the details of the robbery and decided on a fair sentence.

The green lines represented true statements, while the red statements were false. Based on the text, they had to choose a fair punishment for the robber.įurthermore, the text was composed of both green and red lines. Each person read a text detailing a robbery. They began with a group of 71 volunteers. The central question of the experiment was whether understanding and belief were two separate processes or processes that occurred simultaneously. Thus, in 1993, Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues conducted the Gilbert experiment to test the validity of each theory. Descartes and Spinoza never came to an agreement on the debate.

The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget