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The streetlight effect, or the drunkard's search principle, is a type of observational bias that occurs when people only search for something where it is easiest to look. [1] Both names refer to a well-known joke: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost.
Author Massimo Polidoro writing in Skeptical Inquirer has considered claims of SLI to be examples of correlation not implying causation, or of confirmation bias: people are much more likely to notice when a nearby street light turns on or off than they are to notice a light turning on or off at a distance, or a street light in a steady state at any distance.
Other ways to promote natural surveillance include low landscaping, street lights, street designs that encourage pedestrian use, removing hiding and lurking places, and placing high risk targets, such as expensive or display items, in plain view of legitimate users, such as near a receptionist or sales clerk.
J. O. Ogunlade (1979, p. 205) describes behavioral contagion as a "spontaneous, unsolicited and uncritical imitation of another's behavior" that occurs when certain variables are met: a) the observer and the model share a similar situation or mood (this is one way behavioral contagion can be readily applied to mob psychology); b) the model's ...
It can take the form of over-reporting "good behavior" or under-reporting "bad" or undesirable behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports. This bias interferes with the interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences.
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The spotlight effect is an extension of several psychological phenomena. Among these is the phenomenon known as anchoring and adjustment, which suggests that individuals will use their own internal feelings of anxiety and the accompanying self-representation as an anchor, then insufficiently correct for the fact that others are less privy to those feelings than they are themselves.
There are three processes of attitude change as defined by Harvard psychologist Herbert Kelman in a 1958 paper published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. [1] The purpose of defining these processes was to help determine the effects of social influence: for example, to separate public conformity (behavior) from private acceptance (personal belief).