prevalence induced concept change

The Problem with Solving Problems by Neuroscience News

Researchers say prevalence induced concept changes cause people to redefine problems as they are reduced.

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Perhaps the most socially relevant of the studies described in the paper, Gilbert said, involved participants acting as members of an institutional review board, the committee that reviews research methodology to ensure that scientific studies are ethical. NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.

Neuroscience News | June 29, 2018 at 6:08 pm | Tags: prevalence induced concept change | URL: https://wp.me/p4sXNK-d39

“Our studies show that people ju

dge each new instance of a concept in the context of the previous instances,” Gilbert said. “So as we reduce the prevalence of a problem, such as discrimination for example, we judge each new behavior in the improved context that we have created.”

“Another way to say this is that solving problems causes us to expand our definitions of them,” he said. “When problems become rare, we count more things as problems. Our studies suggest that when the world gets better, we become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn’t actually gotten better at all. Progress, it seems, tends to mask itself.”