Educational attainment vary with childrens social class

Educational attainment vary with childrens social class   Increased diversity in our educational institutions as a result of modern globalisation has led to many different racial and linguistic backgrounds integrating together in schools. The impact on the British education system has thus seen a rise in the influx of children from different ethnic backgrounds. Despite the implementation of various policies to ensure that every child, regardless of ethnicity, social class and gender, has the access to the best education, the debate around inequality in education has still focused on the evidence of the underachievement of particular racial groups in our education system. The debate is a very complex one, and it requires looking at how each three variables interlink, since any one alone cannot account for the variation. This paper will attempt to discuss them, whilst critically analysing why and how they play such a critical role on an individual childs educational attainment, and whether or not it should concern us as practitioners.   The underperformance of certain ethnic minority children, in particular black African-Caribbean pupils, is well documented in the Swann Report (1985), which highlighted how this group of children perform consistently worse compared to their counterparts. The report also recognised that teacher racism, low expectations and stereotyping contribute to poorer performance. Indeed, pupils themselves in the report cited that there tended to be an emphasis on physical ability rather than academic, and thus felt stereotyped that they were only any good for their sports abilities. Institutional racism can play a vital role in the breakdown of rapport between teacher and pupil, which would almost certainly affect their educational attainment. Wright (1992) found in his observational research that children of African-Caribbean heritage saw their typical schooling experience as one of high teacher expectation for poor behaviour, high incidences of teacher disproval, criticism and control. Sim ilarly, Gillborn (1990) supports these findings, by highlighting how children in his study felt they were singled out for criticism, even though several pupils of different ethnic origins were engaged in the same behaviour. White students at the school confirmed these observations on unfair and frequent criticism. Thus, discrimination may influence how a child is treated within the educational institution and therefore may impede their learning opportunities within the classroom. Indeed, Sewell (1997) sought to focus on the interactions between teachers and African-Caribbean pupils with particular regard to the constructs of black masculinity and the tensions around their heritage. He found that the teachers in the survey displayed more control and criticism of these compared to other ethnic groups. Moreover, general staff views were negative. There was a high teacher expectation for challenges to teacher authority and inappropriate behaviour. Sewell (1997) concluded that there was a failure to deliver an inclusive curriculum, and to tackle institutional racism. This evidence clearly shows how a childs ethnic background can contribute to a negative learning environment which can affect their chances of performing well at school. Furthermore, Rutter et al (1999) extends this view by arguing that the notion of resistance is responsible for their underachievement; he argues that since the education system is dominated by white, middle-class male teachers, some black boys resist their efforts, and do not want to be taught by them, this negative perception creates the divide between the teacher and the pupil. Equally, as the report stated, some institutional racism on behalf of the teacher may also occur that can limit the crucial teacher-pupil rapport being built and consequent opportunities for learning. Additionally Moore et al (2001) continues to discuss how African-Caribbean males respond with aggression, and reject the education system primarily due to the do mination of white pupils. This adverse view, results in children trying to make an attempt to gain status and recognition through other means, for example through anti-social behaviour. Similar to the African-Caribbean males, those of Indian origin also revert to exhibit their anger, however rather than rejecting the educational system they use it to its advantage and proceed on to succeed. (Moore et al 2001).   Franklin (1998) argues that some institutional factors cause attainment to vary by ethnicity. He argues how school assessments are based on culturally biased tests, which are written primarily in English, leading to poor results and unsuitable intervention and overrepresentation in special educational needs. Although the Framework for the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs in England and Wales (DfEE, 1994) warns against blurring special needs with special educational needs, and the need for assessment tools to be culturally neutral for a range of ethnic groups, Franklin argues that it is bland and general and not in enough detail. Moreover, Franklin and Franklin (1998) argue that the IQ definition is biased against bilingual children. In their study they found that bilingual children scored lower standardised reading scores on prose tests as opposed to single writing. They concluded that these children were less able to take advantage of the context in the prose test than the predominantly monolingual group on whom it had been standardized. It instead focused on higher order processing skills for example comprehension rather than spelling which is not confounded by higher order processing skills. Indeed, this would affect the educational attainment chances of some of the ethnic minority children such as Bangladeshi. Indeed, children with Bangladeshi origin are the worst performing group of children across all four Key Stages. Strand (2008) highlights how these children tend to fall behind at Key Stage 2 assessments, and then continue to fall behind as the children enter Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. It is interesting to note that even when accounting for other socio-economic factors, for example the free schools meals proxy for disadvantage that these children still tend to perform worse. Moreover, Strand (2008) also highlights how by the end of Key Stage 4, Chinese and Indian children actually overtake middle-class White children in the attainment league tables. It is therefore clear that there are other factors influencing why these children perform at a disadvantage to their peers, not ethnicity alone. Family factors such as family ethics may attempt to shed light on the reasons why some children are more involved at school than others. For example, the level of parental engagement with the school certainly varies between ethnic and social class group. Crozier (1996) conducted a case study of the experiences of a group of black parents in relation to their childrens schools. Although he found that many had educational knowledge and awareness of the school system, there remained a dissonance between these parents and the school. Indeed, parents are the first educators, and the most effective way of communicating with them as practitioners is to initiate a firm base of trust and openness, especially true for children with English as an additional language, since much more information is required from their pare nts in order to create fluidity across both the school and home settings. However, since Bangladeshi families face additional barriers presented to their community, since they are not as long established and therefore less fluent, this has a great influence on their childrens education. Furthermore, data from the National Child Development Study (Sacker et al 2002) highlighted how if the social class is high, then educational attainment tends to be high, however the strongest factor was parental engagement. Given that some parents are harder to reach than others; for reasons other than simply language barriers, may attempt to explain why their input into their childrens education is limited. Indeed, Harris and Chrispeels (2006) argue that certain ethnic and social groups are less likely to engage in their childs education and the school in which they attend.   The Berkow Report (2008) highlighted that children from a low socioeconomic background will have difficulties at school. Given the reality that the UKs minority ethnic groups as a whole are more likely to be in poverty than the population at large (Craig, 2002); coupled with the fact that they tend to get placed in housing in low socio-economic areas, provides a prediction towards their educational achievement. The impact of attending a disadvantaged school contributes to it also, due to uneven funding and allocation of resources. The Excellence in Cities scheme has helped to reduce low achievement through focusing on poor schools in areas of serious disadvantage. Moreover, the Narrowing the Gap (NFER, 2008) focuses on improving the home learning environment, which is essential for improving   childrens behaviour, wellbeing and later educational achievement (Sylva et al, 2004). Although the difference within social class has been a dominant feature in education, the government has tried to narrow the gap by introducing a number of initiatives from an early age, such as The Every Child Matters (2003) agenda, Sure Start schemes, and The Early Years Foundation Stage. Yet, the gap remains. Moore et al (2001) indicates that high performance in educational attainment is inclined by ones social status in society. He states that those with a lower social status are materially deprived, with less money to use, therefore are unable to use education to their full advantage. Moreover, the fact that black children attend lower quality schools on average is identified by Fryer and Levitt (2004). They argue that higher levels of free school meals, litter and gang culture makes for a more disadvantaged learning environment, as opposed to middle-class predominantly white schools. They also argue that these children lose ground to white children over the summer period as a c onsequence of a worse neighbourhood environment. Furthermore Douglas (1971) indicates that the most important factor in a child excelling through education is the parental interest given in a childs daily life at school. However, ethnicity has strong associations with the incidence of social class and poverty through different household structure, and child-rearing practices. For example, birth rates for Bangladeshi and Pakistani families are higher than the UK white population; therefore larger families need more money. Moreover, there is less individual attention on the child in these families. Barn (2006) explored the views and experiences of parents in key areas for example family support and education. The findings showed that minority ethnic family life is complex. Most parents wished to be involved in their childrens education, regardless of ethnic background and social class. Black and Asian parents in particular placed an enormous importance on the value of education which was less prominent among white. This places a tension on the reality of the educational achievements of such minority groups.   The reasons for this are complex. Strand (2008) focuses on socio economic classification on linguistic attainment to try and account for the gap. Through analysing data from the Youth Cohort Longitudinal Study, he highlights how children from high classified groups have a vocabulary 50% more than working class children, and 100% more of those on welfare. Since 50% of all African Caribbean births are to single women (Somerville, 2000) they are more susceptible to material deprivation, thus fewer learning opportunities. Indeed, a high quality home learning environment is essential for raising attainment highlighted through the EPPE project (Sylva, 2004). Clearly, any attempt to understand ethnic differences in the involvement/achievement link must first take into account the influence of socio-economic status. Ethnicity alone does not account. Ross and Ryan (1990) have documented that children can pick up and absorb racist values from early as three years old. They argue that positive self esteem is directly related to attainment, so it is vital that we are concerned as practitioners to raise their self esteem from an early age and promote inclusion of all racial backgrounds, regardless of their social class and gender. If a child feels they are worthless their self esteem decreased which affects their academic attainment (Purkey, 1970). It is clear to see that the Government recognises the disadvantages of children from particular ethnic backgrounds, through looking at the specific projects launched to help certain ethnic minority children, for example the Excellence in Cities scheme, and the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG). Moreover, the launch of the Aiming High: DfES National pilot project to Raise Levels of Attainment for African-Caribbean pupils was launched in 2003 with the aim of maximising levels of achievement. Such focus leads one to respond that indeed, educational attainment is affected by ethnicity, and therefore, as discussed, social class. The issue of gender also throws a complex light onto academic performance. On the whole, females tend to perform better than males academically, yet for Black African-Caribbeans, both male and female fall behind, compared to any other ethnic group (Strand, 2008).This therefore, seems to suggest that this particular ethnic group is underperforming for another reason, such as the reasons given above. The issues surrounding gender performance and achievement are complex, affecting different sub-groups of boys and girls in different ways, often reflecting the influence of class and ethnicity. The traditional criterion for monitoring the school system has been the proportion of students securing five or more A* to C grades in public examinations at 16-plus. Since the late 1980s this figure has been rising steadily, however the gap in the performance of boys and girls appears to have been widening parallel to this. The National Pupil Database (2002) highlighted how girls performed better a cross all groups, however there are many complex reasons as to why this is. Firstly, there are scientific explanations for example whilst children are young, numerous changes take place, each child begins to develop   physically, emotionally, socially and intellectually at their own pace, they begin to acquire   the understanding of the environments they are exposed to whilst their ability to communicate   with their peers strengthens. Scientific evidence states the physical structure of the brain may be the reason as to why both sexes have a variance in attainment. The development of language within boys comes at a slower pace than that of girls, as girls acquire language rapidly, and at an earlier stage. Girls also focus for lengthier periods of time when in conversation and are able to concentrate more in the classroom. Therefore the structure of the brain shows advantage to the girls (Watkins, 1991). Furthermore, Haralambos et al 1997 states that research over the past 30 years shows a consistency of trends whereby girls at the age of 16 left school after acquiring better grades than boys. Government s tatistics indicate that the variance in attainment achievement between boys and girls start from an early age. Data from the 2007 examinations in England, from Key Stage One and Key Stage Three examinations show that girls achieved higher marks then boys. However in the mathematics papers taken at key stage 2, showed that boys outperformed girls by 2%.In comparison to the papers taken by Key Stage 3 the differences amongst the sexes was higher. It has also been argued that the curriculum has become feminised whereby it works in favour to the females, whilst disadvantaging the boys (Mac and Ghaill, 1994). They argue that there has been a crisis of masculinity, because of the decline in traditional manual jobs. This has led, to an identity crisis, and made it easier for some males to question the need for qualifications when the jobs they would have traditionally gone into no longer exist. Unmistakably the issue around boys underachieving within education in comparison to girls is a major cause for concern. Perhaps the specific focus on some of the ethnic minority groups have shifted the concern away from the white population, with the result being that white working-class boys are now underperforming consistently through the education system. The statistics presented are undeniable, particularly whilst it is becoming an increasing trend for boys to take the opportunity of turning away from formal education at a young age. Thus being the reason why parents and practitioners need to be able to recognise the changes in a child from earlier on so that there is support available for the child to be able to make the right decisions. The variance amongst children can be immense, as mentioned above; each child is individual and develops at their own pace. Although these differences can be vast, it is up to teaching professionals and parents to be aware of this and to be able to recognise it, particularly when each child approaches the learning process in different ways. In conclusion, it is clear to see that not any one variable of social class, ethnicity and gender stand alone as a cause behind a childs educational attainment; rather they interlink in quite a complex way. It should concern us, since we, the practitioners who are helping to shape their futures, need to understand that all three interlink to produce each unique child, which is at the very heart of the Every Child Matters agenda.

The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations

Research Reports The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations Leaf Van Boven, Thomas Gilovich, and Victoria Husted Medvec The authors examined whether negotiators are prone to an â€Å"illusion of transparency,† or the belief that their private thoughts and feelings are more discernible to their negotiation partners than they actually are. In Study One, negotiators who were trying to conceal their preferences thought that their preferences had â€Å"leaked out† more than they actually did. In Study Two, experienced negotiators who were trying to convey information about some of their preferences overestimated their partners’ ability to discern them. The results of Study Three rule out the possibility that the findings are simply the result of the curse of knowledge, or the projection of one’s own knowledge onto others. Discussion explores how the illusion of transparency might impede negotiators’ success. I most cartoon depictions of negotiators in action (a tiny fraction of the cartoon universe, we admit), negotiators are shown with dialog bubbles depicting their overt comments and thought bubbles revealing their private thoughts. These conventions convey the different levels at which negotiators operate: Some of their wants, wishes, and worries are conveyed to the other side, but some are held back for strategic advantage. Because one task in negotiation is deciding how much information to hold back (Raiffa 1982), Leaf Van Boven is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Campus Box 345, Boulder, Colo. 80309. Email: [email  protected] edu. Thomas Gilovich is a Professor of Psychology at Cornell University, Department of Psychology, Ithaca, N. Y. 15850. Email: [email  protected] edu. Victoria Husted Medvec is the Adeline Barry Davee Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Ill. 60201. Email:[email  protected] orthwestern. edu. 0748-4526/03/0400-0117/0  © 2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation Negotiation Journal April 2003 117 it follows that part of the phenomenology of negotiation is monitoring how well one has conveyed what one wants to convey and concealed what one wants to conceal. Do negotiators know how well they have conveyed or concealed their preferences? Typically, negotiators know what they have and have not said, of course, so they may g enerally have a good idea what their partners know about their preferences. But how well calibrated are negotiators’ assessments of what they have conveyed and concealed? We explored one source of potential miscalibration, namely, whether negotiators experience an illusion of transparency, overestimating the extent to which their internal states â€Å"leak out† and are known by others (Gilovich, Savitsky, and Medvec 1998). Most research on the illusion of transparency shows that people overestimate their ability to conceal private information. But there is also evidence that people experience the illusion when trying to convey private information. Individuals who were asked to convey emotions with facial expressions alone overestimated observers’ ability to discern the expressed emotion (Savitsky 1997). Likewise, participants who were videotaped while exposed to humorous material thought they had been more expressive than observers subsequently rated them as being (Barr and Kleck 1995). These findings suggest that, when trying either to conceal or convey information, negotiators may experience an illusion of transparency, overestimating what their partners know about their preferences. Whether they do so is important, because previous research has shown that the likelihood of (optimal) settlement is often contingent on accurate perceptions of what others know about one’s own preferences (Bazerman and Neale 1992; Raiffa 1982; Thompson 1991). We conducted three different studies to examine whether negotiators experience an illusion of transparency in negotiations. Studies One and Three examined whether novice negotiators trying to conceal their preferences tend to overestimate the likelihood that their negotiation partners would be able to identify those preferences. Study Two investigated whether experienced negotiators attempting to communicate some of their preferences also succumb to an illusion of transparency. Study Three was also designed to distinguish the illusion of transparency from the â€Å"curse of knowledge,† or the tendency to project one’s knowledge onto others (Camerer, Loewenstein, and Weber 1989; Keysar and Bly 1995; Keysar, Ginzel, and Bazerman 1995). Specifically, we examined whether observers who are â€Å"cursed† with the same knowledge as the negotiators exhibit the same biases as the negotiators themselves. Study One Method Twenty-four previously unacquainted Cornell University undergraduates participated in pairs in exchange for course credit. Participants learned that 118 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations they would complete a negotiation exercise in which they would each represent the provost at one of two campuses of a multi-campus university system. Because of budget constraints, all of the system’s eight social psychologists needed to be consolidated at the two provosts’ universities. The provosts were to negotiate the distribution of the social psychologists between the two campuses. Participants were informed that some social psychologists were more valuable than others, and that some were more valuable to one campus than the other. These differences were summarized in a report describing the strengths and weaknesses of each psychologist and assigning each a specific number of points. The eight psychologists were among the fifteen most frequently cited in social psychology textbooks (Gordon and Vicarii 1992). To familiarize participants with the psychologist and his or her expertise, each psychologist was depicted on a 2- by 4-inch laminated â€Å"trading card† that displayed a picture of the social psychologist, his or her name, and two of his or her better-known publications. Each negotiator’s most and least valuable psychologists were assigned +5 and –5 points, respectively, and the other psychologists were assigned intermediate values. The experimenter said that all psychologists must be employed at one of the two universities because all were tenured. The most and least valuable psychologists were not the same for the two negotiators; the correlation between how much each of the eight psychologists was worth to the two participants was . 79. Participants were told that they should conceal their report, which was somewhat different from the other participant’s report. Because pilot testing indicated that many participants were unsure how to negotiate, we showed them a five-minute videotape of a staged negotiation in which two confederates bartered over who would get (or be forced to acquire) each psychologist. Confederates were shown trading cards actively back and forth. Participants were given as much time as they needed to negotiate, usually about 30 minutes. They were told that several prizes would be awarded at the end of the academic term (e. g. , a $50 gift certificate to the Cornell book store, dinner for two at a local restaurant) and their chance of winning a prize corresponded to the number of points they earned in the negotiation. We asked participants both early in the negotiation (after approximately five minutes) and at the end to name their partner’s most valuable and least valuable psychologists. At both times, we also asked them to estimate the likelihood (expressed as a percentage) that their partner would correctly identify their most and least valuable psychologists. We pointed out that the probability of correct identification by chance alone was 12. 5 percent. Question order was counterbalanced, with no effect of order in any of our analyses. Negotiation Journal April 2003 119 Results and Discussion Our key analysis was a comparison of participants’ mean estimates to a null value derived from the overall accuracy rate. Participants can be said to exhibit an illusion of transparency if their estimates, on average, are higher than the actual accuracy rate. As predicted, negotiators overestimated their partners’ ability to detect their preferences, but only after the negotiation was complete (see Table One). Early in the negotiation, individuals slightly underestimated (by 2 percent) the likelihood that their partners would correctly identify their most valuable psychologist and slightly overestimated (by 8 percent) the likelihood that their partners would identify their least valuable psychologist. Neither of these differences was statistically reliable. 1 Following the negotiation, participants overestimated the probability that their partners would identify correctly their most and least valuable psychologists by 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively. Both of these differences were statistically reliable. That is, the probability that negotiators overestimated by pure chance how much their partners knew about their preferences is less than . 05 (the t statistics for these two comparisons are 3. 16 and 3. 30, respectively). Negotiators thus experienced an illusion of transparency at the end of the negotiation, overestimating their partners’ ability to discern their preferences. Table One Negotiators’ estimates of the likelihood that their partners would be able to identify their most and least valuable social psychologists, and the corresponding percentages actually able to do so. Estimated % Early negotiation Most valuable Least valuable Post negotiation Most valuable Least valuable 72%* 76%* 58% 63% 69% 58% 71% 50% Actual % Note: * indicates that the estimated percentage is reliably greater than the corresponding actual percentage, p < . 5 120 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations These findings extend earlier research on the illusion of transparency, showing that negotiators believe their inner thoughts and preferences â€Å"leak out† and are more discernible than they really are. This result was obtained only during the second assessment, but we do not wish to make too much of this finding. First, it is hardly surprising because, at the time of the initial assessment, most groups had yet to engage in much discussion of specific candidates, and thus there was little opportunity for participants’ references to have leaked out. Furthermore, it was only participants’ estimates of the detectibility of their least valuable psychologists that rose predictably (from 58 to 76 percent) from early in the negotiation to the end — an increase that was highly statistically reliable (t = 3. 78). Their estimates of the detectibility of their most valuable psychologists stayed largely the same across the course of the negotiation (from 69 to 72 percent) and it was only a decrease in identification accuracy (from 71 to 58 percent) over time that led to the difference in the magnitude of the illusion of transparency. These subsidiary findings may result from the usual dynamics of the negotiation process: Negotiators typically focus initially on the most important issues, postponing a discussion of less important issues or of what they are willing to give up to obtain what they want until later in the negotiation. This would explain why negotiators felt that they had already leaked information about their most important psychologists early in the negotiation, but that a similar feeling of leakage regarding their least important psychologists took longer to develop. This tendency might also explain why it may have been relatively easy for the negotiators to discern one another’s â€Å"top choices† early in the discussion. It may have been harder to do so later on, after the negotiators discussed all of the psychologists and the various tradeoffs between them. Study Two In Study One, participants experienced an illusion of transparency when they were instructed to conceal their preferences from their partners. In many negotiations outside the laboratory, however, negotiators often attempt to communicate rather than conceal their preferences. In fact, negotiation instructors often advise MBAs and other would-be negotiators to communicate information about their preferences. Do negotiators experience an illusion of transparency when they attempt to communicate rather than conceal their preferences? Past research has shown that people experience an illusion of transparency when trying (nonverbally) to convey thoughts and feelings in settings outside negotiations (Barr and Kleck 1995; Savitsky 1997). We therefore examined whether negotiators attempting to communicate some of their preferences, whose efforts at communication are not limited to nonverbal channels, would likewise experience an illusion of transparency. Negotiation Journal April 2003 121 As part of a classroom exercise, MBA students in negotiation courses completed a complex six-party negotiation simulation (Harborco, a teaching tool available from the Clearinghouse of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, www. pon. org). The course emphasized the importance of negotiators communicating some of their preferences to one another in negotiations. Prior to the Harborco negotiation, students had engaged in numerous other exercises in which their failure to convey information resulted in nonoptimal settlements. To verify that the Harborco negotiators were attempting to communicate information about their preferences, we asked 22 Cornell and Northwestern University MBA students (not included in following study) who had just completed the Harborco negotiation to indicate which strategy they engaged in more: an information-sharing strategy (attempting to communicate their preferences to others), or an information-hiding strategy (attempting to conceal their preferences from others). Everyone indicated that they used the information-sharing strategy more. We hypothesized that the same psychological processes that lead novice negotiators trying to conceal their preferences to experience an illusion of transparency would also lead experienced negotiators trying to communicate at least some of their preferences to experience a similar illusion. We thus predicted that participants would overestimate the number of other negotiators who could correctly identify their preferences. Method Two hundred and forty MBA students at Cornell and Northwestern completed the Harborco simulation, negotiating whether, and under what circumstances, a major new seaport would be built off the coast of a fictional city. There were six parties to the negotiation. The negotiator who represented Harborco (a consortium of investors) was most central. A second negotiator, representing the federal agency that oversees the development of such seaports, had to decide whether to subsidize a $3 billion loan Harborco had requested. The other negotiators represented the state governor, the labor unions from surrounding seaports, the owners of other ports that might be affected by a new seaport, and environmentalists concerned about the impact of a new seaport on the local ecology. The negotiation involved five issues, each with several options of varying importance to the six parties. For each negotiator, points were assigned to each option of each issue. Student performance was evaluated according to the number of points accumulated. For example, the most important issue to the Harborco representative was the approval of the subsidized loan (worth 35 points for approval of the full $3 billion, 29 points for approval of a $2 billion loan, etc. ); the second most important issue was the compensation to other ports for their expected losses due to the new seaport (worth 23 points for no compensation, 15 points for compensation of $150 million, 122 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations etc. ). The Harborco negotiator’s preference order for the five issues was somewhat different from the preference order of the other five negotiators. Participants were given approximately one and a half hours to reach an agreement. They were required to vote on a settlement proposed by the Harborco negotiator at three points during the negotiation: after 20 minutes, after one hour, and at the end. A successful agreement required the approval of at least five negotiators. Any agreement that included the subsidized loan required the approval of the federal agency representative. The Harborco negotiator could veto any proposal. The dependent measures, collected after the first and final rounds of voting, concerned the Harborco negotiator’s estimates of the other negotiators’ identification of his or her preference order. The Harborco negotiators estimated how many of the other five negotiators would identify the rank ordering (to the Harborco negotiator) of each issue — for example, how many would identify the approval of the loan as their most important issue? We made clear that one negotiator would guess the exact importance of each issue by chance alone. Meanwhile, each of the other negotiators estimated the issue that was most important to Harborco, second most important, and so on. Figure One Number able to identify each issue 5 4 3 2 1 0 Predicted Number Actual Number ird co nd rth co nd Th ird th Fo ur h Fi rs Fi rs Fi ft Fi rs Th Se Fo u First Round ISSUE IMPORTANCE Predicted and actual number of negotiators able to identify correctly the importance of each issue to the Harborco negotiator after the first and final rounds of voting. Results and Discussion The dashed lines in Figure One indicate that, as predicted, the Harborco negotiators’ estimate of the number of other negotiators who could identify the rank of each issue was greater than the actual number of negotiators able Negotiation Journal April 2003 123 Se Second Round Fi ft h t t t to do so (as indicated by the solid lines). Following the first round of voting, the Harborco negotiators overestimated the number of their fellow negotiators able to identify the importance — to them — of all mid-range issues. All these differences were statistically reliable (all ts > 2. 0). Negotiators did not overestimate the number of negotiators able to identify their most and least important issues. Following the final round of voting, Harborco representatives overestimated the number of negotiators able to identify their four most important issues. This overestimation was statistically reliable for the four most important issues (all t > 2. 25), and was marginally reliable with a probability level of . 14 for the least important issue (t = 1. 5). These findings replicate and extend those of Study One and of previous research on the illusion of transparency. Experienced negotiators who were attempting to convey (rather than conceal) their preferences to other negotiators tended to overestimate the transparency of those preferences. Study Three We contend that negotiators’ overestimation of their partner’s ability to discern their preferences reflects an egocentric illusion whereby negotiators overestimate the transparency of their internal states. An alternative account is that negotiators experience a â€Å"curse of knowledge,† overestimating the knowability of whatever they themselves know (Camerer et al. 989; Keysar and Bly, 1995; Keysar et al. 1995). Negotiators may thus overestimate the discernibility of their preferences because they cannot undo the knowledge of their own preferences, not because they feel like their preferences â€Å"leaked out. † Studies One and Two provide some evidence against this alternative interpretation because participants did not significantly overestimate their partnersâ€⠄¢ ability to discern their preferences early in the negotiation — when they were â€Å"cursed† with the same knowledge, but had little opportunity for their preferences to leak out. To provide a more rigorous test of this alternative interpretation, Study Three employed a paradigm in which observers were yoked to each individual negotiator. The observers were informed of their counterpart’s preferences and thus were â€Å"cursed† with the same abstract knowledge, but not with the phenomenology of having — and possibly leaking — the negotiators’ preferences. After watching a videotaped negotiation between their yoked counterpart and another negotiator, observers estimated the likelihood that their counterpart’s negotiation partner would identify their counterpart’s preferences. We expected that observers’ estimates would be lower than actual negotiators’ estimates because observers would not have the experience of their preferences â€Å"leaking out. † 124 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations Method Twenty-four previously unacquainted Northwestern University undergraduates participated in pairs in exchange for the opportunity to earn between $4 and $13, based on their performance in the negotiation. Negotiators were taken to separate rooms and given instructions for the negotiation. The negotiation was similar to that used in Study One, except that it involved a buyer-seller framework, with which we felt our participants would be familiar. Participants learned that they would act as a provost of one of two campuses of a large university system. Because of budget cuts, the larger of the two campuses (the â€Å"seller†) needed to eliminate fifteen of its 35 psychology department faculty. Because the fifteen faculty were tenured, they could not be fired, but they could be transferred to the smaller of the two campuses (the â€Å"buyer†), which was trying to acquire faculty. Participants were to negotiate over the fifteen psychologists â€Å"in play†; any faculty not acquired by the buyer would remain at the seller’s campus. Participants were given a report that described each psychologist and his or her associated point value. Some of the psychologists had a positive value to buyers and a negative value to sellers, others had a positive value to both, and still others had a negative value to both. Participants were told that they should not show their confidential reports to the other negotiator. Participants earned 25 cents for every positive point and had to pay 25 cents for every negative point they accumulated. To give buyers and sellers an equal chance to make the same amount of money, we endowed sellers with an initial stake of $10 and buyers with an initial stake of $4. If buyers obtained all nine of the beneficial faculty and none of the four costly faculty (two were worth 0 points) they earned an additional $8, for $12 total. Similarly, if the sellers eliminated all eight costly faculty and retained all five beneficial faculty (two were worth 0 points) they earned $2, for $12 total. If no agreement was reached, sellers retained all faculty, losing $6, and buyers acquired no psychologists, leaving both with $4. As in Study One, we gave participants laminated trading cards with a picture of each psychologist and two of that psychologist’s better-known works on the back. The fifteen faculty members, although in reality all social psychologists, were arbitrarily divided into the three subdisciplines of social, clinical, and human-experimental psychology. We designed the payoffs so that the sychologist within each discipline who the buyer most wanted to obtain was not the psychologist the seller most wanted to eliminate. To encourage participants to obtain or retain psychologists across the three disciplines, sellers were offered an additional two points if they eliminated at least one faculty member from each discipline, and an additional four points if they eliminated at least two from each discipline. Similarly, buyers were offered an additional two points if they acquired at least one faculty Negotiation Journal April 2003 125 member from each discipline, and an additional four points if they acquired at least two from each discipline. Thus, maximum earnings for buyers and sellers were $13 (the $12 earned by accumulating all possible positive points, no negative points, plus the $1 bonus). After negotiators understood their task, they were brought together and given as long as they needed to negotiate a division of the fifteen psychologists, usually about 20 minutes. Afterward, buyers estimated the likelihood (expressed as a percentage) that the seller would correctly identify the psychologists from each subdiscipline who were the most and least important for the buyer to obtain; sellers estimated the likelihood that the buyer would correctly identify the psychologists from each subdiscipline who were the most and least important for the seller to eliminate. Participants were told that the chance accuracy rate was 20% percent. Buyers were also asked to identify the psychologists from each subdiscipline who were the most and least important for the seller to eliminate, and sellers were asked to make analogous judgments about the buyers’ incentive structure. Control Condition. Twelve pairs of previously unacquainted Northwestern undergraduates were paid $6 and â€Å"yoked† to one of the 12 pairs from the negotiation condition — one student matched to the buyer and one to the seller. Participants read the instructions given to t heir yoked counterpart (either the buyer or seller) in the actual negotiation before viewing their counterpart’s videotaped negotiation. Participants then made the same estimates as their counterparts in the negotiation condition, identifying the psychologists from each subdiscipline who were most and least important for their counterpart’s negotiation partner to acquire (or eliminate), and estimating the likelihood that their counterpart’s negotiation partner would be able to guess the psychologists in each subdiscipline who were most and least important for their counterpart to obtain (or eliminate). Results Negotiators. As anticipated, negotiators exhibited an illusion of transparency. As can be see in the left and right columns of Table Two, buyers and sellers overestimated their partners’ ability to identify their most important psychologists by 20 percent — both statistically reliable differences (ts= 3. 58 and 3. 45, respectively). Buyers and sellers also overestimated the likelihood that their partner would be able to identify their least important psychologists by 4 percent and 25 percent, respectively, with only the latter result statistically reliable (t = 4. 34). Control participants. Control participants displayed a â€Å"curse of knowledge,† overestimating the likelihood that their counterpart’s negotiation partner would correctly identify their counterpart’s preferences (compare the center and right columns of Table Two). This was particularly true for 126 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations those yoked to sellers: They reliably overestimated the likelihood that their yoked counterparts’ negotiation partners would identify their counterparts’ most and least important psychologists by 12 percent and 19 percent, respectively (ts = 2. 58 and 4. 9). Control participants who were yoked to buyers, in contrast, did not overestimate the likelihood that their yoked counterparts’ negotiation partners would overestimate their counterparts’ preferences. Table Two Participants’ estimates of the likelihood that their negotiators’ partners were able to identify the negotiat ors’ most and least important psychologists, and the corresponding percentages actually able to do so. Negotiators’ Estimates Control Estimates Actual Accuracy Most Important Buyers Sellers Least Important Buyers Sellers 62% 68%* 56% 63%* 58% 42% 70%* 59%* 53% 51%* 50% 39% Note: * indicates that the estimated percentage is reliably greater than the corresponding actual percentage, p < . 05 More important, in every case the control participants’ estimates (overall M = 56 percent) were lower than the actual negotiators’ estimates (overall M = 64 percent) — a statistically reliable difference (t = 2. 53). Thus, negotiators overestimated the transparency of their preferences more than yoked observers who were â€Å"cursed† with the same knowledge, but did not have the same subjective experience as negotiators themselves. Discussion The results of Study Three indicate that negotiators’ overestimation of their partners’ ability to discern their preferences stems from both a curse of knowledge and an illusion of transparency. Observers who were provided with the same abstract knowledge as the negotiators — those provided with Negotiation Journal April 2003 127 abstract information about sellers’ preferences at any rate — overestimated the likelihood that those preferences would be detected. However, this effect was not as strong as that found for actual negotiators’ estimates. Those participants, possessing more detailed knowledge about how it felt to want to obtain some psychologists and avoid others, apparently thought that some of those feelings had leaked out to their partners because they made significantly higher estimates of the likelihood of detection than the observers did. Negotiators experience an illusion of transparency over and above any curse of knowledge to which they are subject. What Does it All Mean? These three studies provide consistent support for an illusion of transparency in negotiations. Undergraduate students who were instructed to conceal their preferences thought that they had â€Å"tipped their hand† more than they actually had (Studies One and Three). Likewise, business students experienced in negotiation who were attempting to communicate information about some of their preferences overestimated how successfully they had done so (Study Three). These results are not due to an abstract â€Å"curse of knowledge† because observers who were cursed with the same knowledge as the negotiators did not overestimate the detectibility of the negotiators’ preferences to the same extent as the negotiators did (Study Three). The illusion of transparency is thus due to the sense that one’s specific actions and reactions that arise in the give-and-take of negotiation — a blush here, an averted gaze there — are more telling than they actually are. These results complement and extend findings by Vorauer and Claude (1998) who examined participants’ ability to estimate how well others could discern their general approach to a joint problem-solving exercise — i. e. , whether they were most interested in being assertive, being fair, being accommodating, and so on. They found that participants thought their goals would be more readily discerned than they actually were. Their findings, however, appear to reflect a curse of knowledge rather than an illusion of transparency because their participants’ estimates of the detectibility of their own goals were just the same as those made by observers who were simply informed of the participants’ goals. The Vorauer and Claude findings should not be surprising since their participants did not actually engage in face-to-face interaction. Instead, each participant exchanged notes with a â€Å"phantom† other, whose responses were crafted by the experimenters. Without interaction, it is difficult see how an illusory sense of transparency could emerge. Vorauer and Claude’s studies, along with the results of Study Three, suggest that the curse of knowledge can likewise lead to exaggerated estimates of how readily one’s negotiation partner can discern one’s own perspective on the negotiation (Keysar et al. 1995). 128 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations It is important to note that both the illusion of transparency and the curse of knowledge reflect people’s difficulty in getting beyond their privileged information. In the curse of knowledge, this information is abstract knowledge of one’s beliefs, preferences, or goals; in the illusion of transparency, this information is more detailed, phenomenological knowledge of how one feels or how difficult it was to suppress a particular reaction. At one level, then, it may be fair to characterize the illusion of transparency as a special case of knowledge — more detailed and affect-laden — with which one is cursed. At another level, however, the differences between the two phenomena may be sufficiently pronounced that there is more to be gained by viewing them as distinct. Ultimately, a more complete understanding of the relationship between the curse of knowledge and illusion of transparency must await the outcome of further research. Future research might also further examine the underlying mechanism proposed for the illusion of transparency. Gilovich et al. (1998) attribute the phenomenon to a process much like Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) anchoring and adjustment heuristic. When attempting to ascertain how apparent their internal states are to others, people are likely to begin the process of judgment from their own subjective experience. Because people know that others are not as privy to their internal states as they are themselves, they adjust from their own perspective to capture others’ perspective. Because such adjustments tend to be insufficient (Tversky and Kahneman 1974; Epley and Gilovich 2001), the net result is a residual effect of one’s own phenomenology, and the feeling that one is more transparent than is actually the case. This account suggests that the illusion of transparency should be particularly pronounced when the internal state being assessed is one that is strongly and clearly felt, such as when negotiating especially important issues. In addition, future research might examine the impact of the illusion of transparency on negotiation processes and outcomes. Thompson (1991) has shown that when negotiators have different priorities, negotiators who provide information about their priorities to their partners fare better than those who do not. The illusion of transparency may lead negotiators to hold back information about their priorities in the mistaken belief that one has conveyed too much information already. By leading negotiators to believe that their own preferences are more apparent than they really are, the illusion of transparency may give rise to the belief that the other side is being less open and cooperative than they are themselves — which may lead each negotiator to hold back even more. The process can thus spiral in the wrong direction toward greater secrecy. Negotiation Journal April 2003 129 It may be advantageous, then, for negotiators to be aware of the illusion of transparency. If negotiators know they tend to conceal less than they think they do, they may open up a bit more and increase their chances of reaching optimal agreements. In other words, knowing that one’s own â€Å"thought bubbles† are invisible to others can lead to more successful negotiations. NOTES This research was supported by Research Grant SBR9319558 from the National Science Foundation. We thank Tina Rackitt her help in collecting data and Dennis Regan for his comments on an earlier draft. 1. Because the data for each pair of negotiators are interdependent, all analyses in this and subsequent studies used the dyad (or group) as the unit of analysis. 2. A t statistic is a measure of how extreme a statistical estimate is. Specifically, a t is the ratio of the difference between a hypothesized value and an observed value, divided by the standard error of the sampled distribution. Consider negotiators’ estimates, following the negotiation, that their negotiation partner had a 72 percent chance of correctly identifying their most valuable psychologist. Because, in actuality, egotiators identified their partners’ most valuable psychologist only 58 percent of the time, the difference between the hypothesized value (58 percent) and the observed value (72 percent) is 14 percent. The standard error, in this case, is the standard deviation of the difference between a negotiators’ predicted likelihood and the actual likelihood (the average squared difference betw een these two scores), divided by the square root of the sample size. In general, t statistics more extreme than 1. 96 are statistically reliable — that is, the probability that the observed difference is due to chance alone is less than . 5. 3. We also asked negotiators to estimate which subdiscipline was most important to their partner, and to estimate the likelihood that their partner would discern correctly their own preference order vis-a-vis the three subdisciplines. During debriefing, however, participants said they found these questions confusing because they did not parse the 15 faculty according to their subdiscipline, but instead focused on the value of each individual faculty. These responses are therefore not discussed further. REFERENCES Barr, C. L. and R. E. Kleck. 1995. Self-other perception of the intensity of facial expressions of emotion: Do we know what we show? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68: 608-618. Bazerman, M. H. and M. Neale. 1992. Negotiating rationality. New York: Free Press. Camerer, C. , G. Loewenstein, and M. Weber. 1989. The curse of knowledge in economic settings: An experimental analysis. Journal of Political Economy 97: 1232-1253. Epley, N. and T. Gilovich. 2001. Putting adjustment back in the anchoring and adjustment heuristic: An examination of self-generated and experimenter-provided anchors. Psychological Science 12: 391-396. Gilovich, T. D. , K. K. Savitsky, and V. H. Medvec. 1998. The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others’ ability to read our emotional states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75: 332-346. Gordon, R. A. and P. J. Vicarii. 1992. Eminence in social psychology: A comparison of textbook citation, social science citation index, and research productivity rankings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 18: 26-38. Keysar, B. and B. Bly. 1995. Intuitions about the transparency of intention: Linguistic perspective taking in text. Cognitive Psychology 26: 165-208. Keysar, B. , L. E. Ginzel, and M. H. Bazerman. 1995. States of affairs and states of mind: The effect of knowledge on beliefs. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 64: 283293. Raiffa, H. 1982. The art and science of negotiation. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. 130 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations Savitsky, K. 1997. Perceived transparency of and the leakage of emotional states: Do we know how little we show? Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University. Thompson, L. 1990. An examination of naive and experienced negotiators. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 26: 528-544. ———. 1991. Information exchange in negotiation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 27: 161-179. Tversky, A. and D. Kahneman. 1974. Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science 185: 1124-1131. Vorauer, J. D. and S. Claude. 1998. Perceived versus actual transparency of goals in negotiation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24: 371-385. Negotiation Journal April 2003 131

Unnatural Killers Summary

The story is about a young couple that attempts murder twice, committing it once. The story is told by a lawyer that works in a small town in Mississippi. He meets a devout Christian and solid citizen, Mr. Savage. On March 7th, 1995, Sarah and Ben, a young couple on a road trip, entered Mr. Savage’s office and shot and killed Mr. Savage. They took his credit cards and cash. There were no witnesses. The couple made their way down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Running low on cash, Sarah entered a convenience store and shot the 35 year old mother that was working that night. She then took the money from the register. The clerk survived but was completely paralyzed. An anonymous informant identified Sarah from the video from the convenience store. Sarah and Ben were sent to trial. Sarah blamed Ben. She said that the movie Natural Born Killers brainwashed them and lead them to work out their â€Å"demons†. She said she didn’t see a 35 year old mother. She said she saw a demon so she shot her. Sarah is likely seeing a life sentence and Ben may see a death sentence. The lawyer from the Mississippi town believes that the maker of the movie is to blame for these crimes. There have been other murders that were linked to people watching the movie. The voice of Grisham is shown towards the end of the story where he calls for the writer of the movie to be tried in court.

Francis Bacon and the Essay Of Revenge

The first major English essayist, Francis Bacon  (1561-1626) published three versions of his Essayes or Counsels (1597, 1612 and 1625), and the third edition has endured as the most popular of his many writings. The Essayes, observes Robert K. Faulkner, appeals not so much to self-expression as to self-interest, and does so by supplying enlightened ways to satisfy ones interest. (Encyclopedia of the Essay, 1997) A notable jurist who served as both attorney general and Lord Chancellor of England, Bacon argues in his essay Of Revenge (1625) that the wild justice of personal revenge is a fundamental challenge to the rule of law. Of Revenge by Francis Bacon Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more mans nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a princes part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man to pass by an offence. That which is past is gone, and irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labor in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong for the wrongs sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tole rable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a mans enemy is still before hand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should know whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt as in making the party repent. But base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable; You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends. But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at Gods hands, and not be content to take evil also? And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds gree n, which otherwise would heal and do well. Public revenges are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Caesar; for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry the Third of France; and many more. But in private revenges it is not so. Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.