Open AccessTwo Different Views on the World Around Us: The World of Uniformity versus Diversity
Author(s) -
Jae-Hwan Kwon,
Dhananjay Nayakankuppam
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0168589
Subject(s) - statistic , population , homogeneity (statistics) , outlier , personality , sample (material) , confidence interval , statistics , sample size determination , contrast (vision) , homogeneous , psychology , econometrics , social psychology , demography , mathematics , computer science , sociology , artificial intelligence , chemistry , chromatography , combinatorics
We propose that when individuals believe in fixed traits of personality (entity theorists), they are likely to expect a world of “uniformity.” As such, they easily infer a population statistic from a small sample of data with confidence . In contrast, individuals who believe in malleable traits of personality (incremental theorists) are likely to presume a world of “diversity,” such that they “hesitate” to infer a population statistic from a similarly sized sample. In four laboratory experiments, we found that compared to incremental theorists, entity theorists estimated a population mean from a sample with a greater level of confidence (Studies 1a and 1b), expected more homogeneity among the entities within a population (Study 2), and perceived an extreme value to be more indicative of an outlier (Study 3). These results suggest that individuals are likely to use their implicit self-theory orientations (entity theory versus incremental theory) to see a population in general as a constitution either of homogeneous or heterogeneous entities.