Overinterpretation

 

 

Overinterpretation

Deriving – or misplaced attempts to derive – more meaning than a given packet of information warrants.

 

For example, a customer may misconstrue a bank teller’s careless and thoughtless manner, and take it as rudeness, divining an intention which wasn’t present (i.e., mistaking inconsiderateness for discourtesy). Or, after carrying out a pilot study✱ into homeopathic remedies, a sympathizer determines that his research results reveal clear ‘proof’ that homeopathy ‘works’. Similarly, a supporter of “subliminal persuasion” may attach unjustified ‘validation’ to the very good evidence which does indeed support subliminal perception, wrongly reading it as substantiating the former, for which actual scientific support is lacking (as summed up by Pratkanis, 1992).

 

Amongst these types of errors are: carelessly generalizing a study’s results – involving a particular category of subjects – to an whole population, though the use of the relative participant type tends to restrict how widely such comparisons are justified. Similarly, extrapolating to a larger population when the results were obtained through the application of a sampling method which will have biased the outcome, because of an unacceptably small sample size, or in the case that the circumstances utilized in the experiment do not readily translate to most others, or to everyone else.

 

Some other contexts in which overinterpretation may cloud or derail good judgement include:

■

the meaningfulness of very modest differences concerning student test scores, with the presumptive preferred response to refrain from making decisions which attach rather greater weight than might be considered reasonable in the circumstances;

■

eschewing too much emphasis on a suppositional explanatory scheme – e.g., when seeking to account for certain behaviour – especially when the situation in which the actions were embedded does not easily lend itself to a clear-cut separation of the multiplicity of factors exerting influence (many of which may not figure at all in this theoretical framework);

■

avoiding an unwarranted extension of an inference about a target on the basis of meagre evidence – such as in the case of having only had a brief conversation with the person during a single short interview – where the available information might be expected to be rather too limited to draw an expansive conclusion;

■

in ordinary human relations, such as with platonic friendships, that the members involved steer clear of stretching the expression of positive gestures and confidences of the other party to constitute a definite indication of romantic feelings;

 

and

■

even more so concerning the sphere of male-female communication just generally, for men to restrain any tendency when observing the demeanour of women not to read into polite or merely tacitly-pleasant – or even neutral – behaviour signs of sexual interest.

 

✱

such as may have only a tiny handful of subjects, and which omits the formation of a control group, takes no steps to apply “blinding” techniques (either for study participants or those making observations or evaluations, etc.), nor includes measures negating “selection bias”, and so on: that is, without the minimum expected scientific rigour. The actual purpose of conducting “pilot studies” (or pilot tests or research) is as a sort of ‘practice run’ using just a few subjects and simplified methods, with the goal of informing the design and implementation of the planned experiment, i.e., to try to find out about the situation(s) which may crop-up in the full-scale study, and to identify and iron out any problems, such as with a questionnaire to be used or with the proposed means of sampling, data collection procedures, or other methodologies. The results of a pilot study are merely exploratory and preliminary, and do not constitute nor stand as scientific evidence which can itself support one’s hypothesis or view.

 

✝

“Subliminal Perception”: the detection and processing of sensory input without actors’ conscious awareness of exposure to the relative information.

 

(see also: Interpretation, Judgement, Explanation, Evaluation, Understanding, Prediction, Decision, Inference, Reasoning)

 

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Glossary of selected Judgement and Decision-making, Belief-related, and other Psychology terms