The Mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action: The Role of "Placebic" Information in Interpersonal Interaction
By Ellen J. Langer, A. Blank, B. Chanowitz. 1978
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
- Madeleine Grunde-McLaughlin
- Jon M. Kleinberg
- Ranjay Krishna
- David M. Markowitz
- Sendhil Mullainathan
- A. P. Mcgraw
- Michael S. Bernstein
- Jens Ludwig
Citations in the corpus
- Challenges for Transparency (2017, background): “Langer et al. (1978) arranged for researchers to try to jump in line to make a few photocopies at a busy library copy machine.”
- The perception–behavior expressway: Automatic effects of social perception on social behavior. (2001, result): “(This finding is reminiscent of an earlier one by Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz, 1978, in which participants were likely to allow a person to cut in front of them in line for clearly bogus reasons except when the cost of doing so was high – as when the requestor was going to make a lot of copies.)”
- Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field (2013, background): “For example, individuals who were asked to write automatically while engaging in another task that required their attention were unable to recall the words they wrote, despite being certain they had written “something” (Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz 1978; Solomons and Stein 1896).”
- Discrimination in the Age of Algorithms (2018, background): “For example, Langer et al. (1978) asked subjects in their study to make some copies.”
- Peer to Peer Lending: The Relationship Between Language Features, Trustworthiness, and Persuasion Success (2011, background): “This strategy might work in some contexts, for example, Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz (1978) found a greater rate of compliance when a request was coupled with a justification.”
- Mind the Gap in Mindfulness Research: A Comparative Account of the Leading Schools of Thought (2013, background): “…interventions themselves—several of them are not clearly described and have no protocols that could be followed by researchers who may want to replicate the study (see Anglin et al., 2008; Delizonna et al., 2009; Crum & Langer, 2007; Djikic et al., 2008; Langer et al., 1985; Langer et al., 2010).”
- Reflection and Mindfulness in Organizations: Rationales and Possibilities for Integration (2009, background): “as an individual learning process characterized by a heightened awareness of the specifi c circumstances in a given situation (for example Brown and Ryan, 2003; Chanowitz and Langer, 1981; Langer, 1989, 1997; Langer et al., 1978; cf. Langer and Moldoveanu, 2000).”
- A Multidisciplinary Survey and Framework for Design and Evaluation of Explainable AI Systems (2018, background): “’s experiment [114] on the role of “placebic” explanations (i.”
- Transparency: Motivations and Challenges (2017, methodology): “tivation may be suspect. This can lead to worrying types of manipulation and requires careful consideration. Considering type 7 transparency, we draw attention to the remarkable ‘Copy Machine’ study. [37] arranged for researchers to try to jump in line to make a few photocopies at a busy library cop”
- Taboo Trade-Offs, Relational Framing, and the Acceptability of Exchanges (2005, background): “Building on work on the powerful tendency for people to seek out reasons that justify the judgments they make ( Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978; Shafir, Simonson, & Tversky, 1993) as well as on work on motivated reasoning and ideological biases in reasoning (Kunda, 1999; Sniderman & Tetlock,”
- Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics (2003, background): “Ellen J. Langer et al. (1978) provided a well-known example of what she called “mindless behavior.””