E. Meyers, J. Gretton, Joshua R. C. Budge, Jonathan A. Fugelsang, Derek J. Koehler
People often overestimate their understanding of how things work. For instance, people believe that they can explain even ordinary phenomena such as the operation of zippers and speedometers in greater depth than they really can. This is called the illusion of explanatory depth. Fortunately, a person can expose the illusion by attempting to generate a causal explanation for how the phenomenon operates (e.g., how a zipper works). This might be because explanation makes salient the gaps in a person’s knowledge of that phenomenon. However, recent evidence suggests that people might be able to expose the illusion by instead explaining a different phenomenon. Across three preregistered experiments, we tested whether the process of explaining one phenomenon (e.g., how a zipper works) would lead someone to report knowing less about a completely different phenomenon (e.g., how snow forms). In each experiment, we found that attempting to explain one phenomenon led participants to report knowing less about various phenomena. For example, participants reported knowing less about how snow forms after attempting to explain how a zipper works. We discuss alternative accounts of the illusion of explanatory depth that might better fit our results. We also consider the utility of explanation as an indirect, non-confrontational debiasing method in which a person generalizes a feeling of ignorance about one phenomenon to their knowledge base more generally.
{"title":"Broad effects of shallow understanding: Explaining an unrelated phenomenon exposes the illusion of explanatory depth","authors":"E. Meyers, J. Gretton, Joshua R. C. Budge, Jonathan A. Fugelsang, Derek J. Koehler","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2023.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2023.24","url":null,"abstract":"People often overestimate their understanding of how things work. For instance, people believe that they can explain even ordinary phenomena such as the operation of zippers and speedometers in greater depth than they really can. This is called the illusion of explanatory depth. Fortunately, a person can expose the illusion by attempting to generate a causal explanation for how the phenomenon operates (e.g., how a zipper works). This might be because explanation makes salient the gaps in a person’s knowledge of that phenomenon. However, recent evidence suggests that people might be able to expose the illusion by instead explaining a different phenomenon. Across three preregistered experiments, we tested whether the process of explaining one phenomenon (e.g., how a zipper works) would lead someone to report knowing less about a completely different phenomenon (e.g., how snow forms). In each experiment, we found that attempting to explain one phenomenon led participants to report knowing less about various phenomena. For example, participants reported knowing less about how snow forms after attempting to explain how a zipper works. We discuss alternative accounts of the illusion of explanatory depth that might better fit our results. We also consider the utility of explanation as an indirect, non-confrontational debiasing method in which a person generalizes a feeling of ignorance about one phenomenon to their knowledge base more generally.","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56717470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
People often test changes to see if the change is producing the desired result (e.g., does taking an antidepressant improve my mood, or does keeping to a consistent schedule reduce a child’s tantrums?). Despite the prevalence of such decisions in everyday life, it is unknown how well people can assess whether the change has influenced the result. According to interrupted time series analysis (ITSA), doing so involves assessing whether there has been a change to the mean (‘level’) or slope of the outcome, after versus before the change. Making this assessment could be hard for multiple reasons. First, people may have difficulty understanding the need to control the slope prior to the change. Additionally, one may need to remember events that occurred prior to the change, which may be a long time ago. In Experiments 1 and 2, we tested how well people can judge causality in 9 ITSA situations across 4 presentation formats in which participants were presented with the data simultaneously or in quick succession. We also explored individual differences. In Experiment 3, we tested how well people can judge causality when the events were spaced out once per day, mimicking a more realistic timeframe of how people make changes in their lives. We found that participants were able to learn accurate causal relations when there is a zero pre-intervention slope in the time series but had difficulty controlling for nonzero pre-intervention slopes. We discuss these results in terms of 2 heuristics that people might use.
{"title":"Causal learning with interrupted time series data","authors":"Yiwen Zhang, Benjamin M. Rottman","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2023.29","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2023.29","url":null,"abstract":"People often test changes to see if the change is producing the desired result (e.g., does taking an antidepressant improve my mood, or does keeping to a consistent schedule reduce a child’s tantrums?). Despite the prevalence of such decisions in everyday life, it is unknown how well people can assess whether the change has influenced the result. According to interrupted time series analysis (ITSA), doing so involves assessing whether there has been a change to the mean (‘level’) or slope of the outcome, after versus before the change. Making this assessment could be hard for multiple reasons. First, people may have difficulty understanding the need to control the slope prior to the change. Additionally, one may need to remember events that occurred prior to the change, which may be a long time ago. In Experiments 1 and 2, we tested how well people can judge causality in 9 ITSA situations across 4 presentation formats in which participants were presented with the data simultaneously or in quick succession. We also explored individual differences. In Experiment 3, we tested how well people can judge causality when the events were spaced out once per day, mimicking a more realistic timeframe of how people make changes in their lives. We found that participants were able to learn accurate causal relations when there is a zero pre-intervention slope in the time series but had difficulty controlling for nonzero pre-intervention slopes. We discuss these results in terms of 2 heuristics that people might use.","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56717971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract How was Chinese people’s confidence in the political system linked to their perception of Covid infection risk, perception of health threat of Covid infection, lockdown experience, and attitudes toward the dynamic Zero-Covid policy? Using 2 waves of online surveys conducted in 2020 and 2022, we investigated how these factors were related. Individuals who were more supportive of the Zero-Covid policy were more confident. Those who were less supportive of the Zero-Covid policy were from areas with more severe Covid infections and experienced a longer lockdown as well; these individuals also perceived higher Covid infection risk and health threat. As such, their confidence in the political system was also more likely to drop from 2020 to 2022. In sum, these findings suggest that Chinese people’s confidence in the political system was linked to their Covid infection risk perception, perceived Covid threat to health, lockdown experience, and attitudes toward the Zero-Covid policy. These findings were corroborated with the severity of Covid infections in the province and individual’s political beliefs and orientation.
{"title":"Confidence in China’s political system was linked to perception of Covid infection risk, Covid health threat, and attitudes toward dynamic Zero-Covid policy","authors":"King King Li, Ying-yi Hong","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2023.34","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2023.34","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract How was Chinese people’s confidence in the political system linked to their perception of Covid infection risk, perception of health threat of Covid infection, lockdown experience, and attitudes toward the dynamic Zero-Covid policy? Using 2 waves of online surveys conducted in 2020 and 2022, we investigated how these factors were related. Individuals who were more supportive of the Zero-Covid policy were more confident. Those who were less supportive of the Zero-Covid policy were from areas with more severe Covid infections and experienced a longer lockdown as well; these individuals also perceived higher Covid infection risk and health threat. As such, their confidence in the political system was also more likely to drop from 2020 to 2022. In sum, these findings suggest that Chinese people’s confidence in the political system was linked to their Covid infection risk perception, perceived Covid threat to health, lockdown experience, and attitudes toward the Zero-Covid policy. These findings were corroborated with the severity of Covid infections in the province and individual’s political beliefs and orientation.","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135445772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
To investigate the impact of framing on rule-breaking in social dilemmas, we incorporated a rule in a 1-shot resource game with 2 framing treatments: in one frame, we offered a give-some dilemma (i.e., a variant of a public goods game), and in the other frame, a take-some dilemma (i.e., a variant of a commons dilemma game). In each frame, all participants were part of 1 single collective sharing a common good. Each participant was initially equipped with 1 of 5 different endowments of points from which they must give/were allowed to take amounts to/from the common good. The rule established outcome equality between participants by prescribing the exact amounts of what to give/take to/from the common good, which was finally divided equally among participants. Participants decided whether to cooperate and comply with the rule or to break the rule to their own advantage and to the detriment of the collective (i.e., giving lower/taking higher amounts). The results of an online experiment with 202 participants showed a significantly higher proportion of individuals breaking the rule in the take-some dilemma than in the give-some dilemma. In addition, endowment size influenced the proportion of rule-breaking behavior in the take-some dilemma. However, the average amounts of points not given/taken too much were not different between the 2 dilemma types.
{"title":"Give what is required and take only what you need! The effect of framing on rule-breaking in social dilemmas","authors":"Marc Wyszynski, A. Bauer","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2023.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2023.18","url":null,"abstract":"To investigate the impact of framing on rule-breaking in social dilemmas, we incorporated a rule in a 1-shot resource game with 2 framing treatments: in one frame, we offered a give-some dilemma (i.e., a variant of a public goods game), and in the other frame, a take-some dilemma (i.e., a variant of a commons dilemma game). In each frame, all participants were part of 1 single collective sharing a common good. Each participant was initially equipped with 1 of 5 different endowments of points from which they must give/were allowed to take amounts to/from the common good. The rule established outcome equality between participants by prescribing the exact amounts of what to give/take to/from the common good, which was finally divided equally among participants. Participants decided whether to cooperate and comply with the rule or to break the rule to their own advantage and to the detriment of the collective (i.e., giving lower/taking higher amounts). The results of an online experiment with 202 participants showed a significantly higher proportion of individuals breaking the rule in the take-some dilemma than in the give-some dilemma. In addition, endowment size influenced the proportion of rule-breaking behavior in the take-some dilemma. However, the average amounts of points not given/taken too much were not different between the 2 dilemma types.","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56717579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael C. Silverstein, Pär Bjälkebring, Brittany Shoots-Reinhard, Ellen Peters
Numeracy—the ability to understand and use numeric information—is linked to good decision-making. Several problems exist with current numeracy measures, however. Depending on the participant sample, some existing measures are too easy or too hard; also, established measures often contain items well-known to participants. The current article aimed to develop new numeric understanding measures (NUMs) including a 1-item (1-NUM), 4-item (4-NUM), and 4-item adaptive measure (A-NUM). In a calibration study, 2 participant samples (n = 226 and 264 from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk [MTurk]) each responded to half of 84 novel numeracy items. We calibrated items using 2-parameter logistic item response theory (IRT) models. Based on item parameters, we developed the 3 new numeracy measures. In a subsequent validation study, 600 MTurk participants completed the new numeracy measures, the adaptive Berlin Numeracy Test, and the Weller Rasch-Based Numeracy Test, in randomized order. To establish predictive and convergent validities, participants also completed judgment and decision tasks, Raven’s progressive matrices, a vocabulary test, and demographics. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the 1-NUM, 4-NUM, and A-NUM load onto the same factor as existing measures. The NUM scales also showed similar association patterns to subjective numeracy and cognitive ability measures as established measures. Finally, they effectively predicted classic numeracy effects. In fact, based on power analyses, the A-NUM and 4-NUM appeared to confer more power to detect effects than existing measures. Thus, using IRT, we developed 3 brief numeracy measures, using novel items and without sacrificing construct scope. The measures can be downloaded as Qualtrics files (https://osf.io/pcegz/).
{"title":"The numeric understanding measures: Developing and validating adaptive and nonadaptive numeracy scales","authors":"Michael C. Silverstein, Pär Bjälkebring, Brittany Shoots-Reinhard, Ellen Peters","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2023.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2023.17","url":null,"abstract":"Numeracy—the ability to understand and use numeric information—is linked to good decision-making. Several problems exist with current numeracy measures, however. Depending on the participant sample, some existing measures are too easy or too hard; also, established measures often contain items well-known to participants. The current article aimed to develop new numeric understanding measures (NUMs) including a 1-item (1-NUM), 4-item (4-NUM), and 4-item adaptive measure (A-NUM). In a calibration study, 2 participant samples (n = 226 and 264 from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk [MTurk]) each responded to half of 84 novel numeracy items. We calibrated items using 2-parameter logistic item response theory (IRT) models. Based on item parameters, we developed the 3 new numeracy measures. In a subsequent validation study, 600 MTurk participants completed the new numeracy measures, the adaptive Berlin Numeracy Test, and the Weller Rasch-Based Numeracy Test, in randomized order. To establish predictive and convergent validities, participants also completed judgment and decision tasks, Raven’s progressive matrices, a vocabulary test, and demographics. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the 1-NUM, 4-NUM, and A-NUM load onto the same factor as existing measures. The NUM scales also showed similar association patterns to subjective numeracy and cognitive ability measures as established measures. Finally, they effectively predicted classic numeracy effects. In fact, based on power analyses, the A-NUM and 4-NUM appeared to confer more power to detect effects than existing measures. Thus, using IRT, we developed 3 brief numeracy measures, using novel items and without sacrificing construct scope. The measures can be downloaded as Qualtrics files (https://osf.io/pcegz/).","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56717502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
F. Bolger, G. Rowe, Ian Hamlin, Ian K. Belton, Megan M. Crawford, Aileen Sissons, Courtney Taylor Browne Lūka, Alexandrina Vasilichi, George Wright
Although the individual has been the focus of most research into judgment and decision-making (JDM), important decisions in the real world are often made collectively rather than individually, a tendency that has increased in recent times with the opportunities for easy information exchange through the Internet. From this perspective, JDM research that factors in this social context has increased generalizability and mundane realism relative to that which ignores it. We delineate a problem-space for research within which we locate protocols that are used to study or support collective JDM, identify a common research question posed by all of these protocols—‘What are the factors leading to opinion change for the better (‘virtuous opinion change’) in individual JDM agents?’—and propose a modeling approach and research paradigm using structured groups (i.e., groups with some constraints on their interaction), for answering this question. This paradigm, based on that used in studies of judge-adviser systems, avoids the need for real interacting groups and their attendant logistical problems, lack of power, and poor experimental control. We report an experiment using our paradigm on the effects of group size and opinion diversity on judgmental forecasting performance to illustrate our approach. The study found a U-shaped effect of group size on the probability of opinion change, but no effect on the amount of virtuous opinion change. Implications of our approach for development of more externally valid empirical studies and theories of JDM, and for the design of structured-group techniques to support collective JDM, are discussed.
{"title":"Virtuous opinion change in structured groups","authors":"F. Bolger, G. Rowe, Ian Hamlin, Ian K. Belton, Megan M. Crawford, Aileen Sissons, Courtney Taylor Browne Lūka, Alexandrina Vasilichi, George Wright","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2023.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2023.22","url":null,"abstract":"Although the individual has been the focus of most research into judgment and decision-making (JDM), important decisions in the real world are often made collectively rather than individually, a tendency that has increased in recent times with the opportunities for easy information exchange through the Internet. From this perspective, JDM research that factors in this social context has increased generalizability and mundane realism relative to that which ignores it. We delineate a problem-space for research within which we locate protocols that are used to study or support collective JDM, identify a common research question posed by all of these protocols—‘What are the factors leading to opinion change for the better (‘virtuous opinion change’) in individual JDM agents?’—and propose a modeling approach and research paradigm using structured groups (i.e., groups with some constraints on their interaction), for answering this question. This paradigm, based on that used in studies of judge-adviser systems, avoids the need for real interacting groups and their attendant logistical problems, lack of power, and poor experimental control. We report an experiment using our paradigm on the effects of group size and opinion diversity on judgmental forecasting performance to illustrate our approach. The study found a U-shaped effect of group size on the probability of opinion change, but no effect on the amount of virtuous opinion change. Implications of our approach for development of more externally valid empirical studies and theories of JDM, and for the design of structured-group techniques to support collective JDM, are discussed.","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56717817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
José Mauro C. Hernandez, M. C. Costa Filho, Donald R. Gaffney, Frank Kardes
Consumers often spend time searching before making a purchasing decision to acquire knowledge about products. If the purchasing decision is delayed, recall of acquired knowledge is likely to be impaired. Because products in the marketplace are rarely described completely, consumers who take too long to decide may fail to notice the absence of information relevant to a purchasing decision and fall prey to a phenomenon called ‘omission neglect’, an inability to detect missing information and form extreme and confidently held judgments. Omission neglect may be corrected by acquiring knowledge about the target product before making the choice. In the present research, we examine consumer decisions in the context of choice sets described incompletely and presented either immediately or a week after the acquisition of relevant information about a target product. Specifically, we investigate how the timing between product knowledge acquisition and decision-making affects the detection of missing information, decision confidence, and choice deferral. Across three experiments, we find that, after acquiring knowledge, when consumers have their decision delayed, they are less able to detect missing information, feel more confident, and defer choices less.
{"title":"The benefits of deciding now and not later: The influence of the timing between acquiring knowledge and deciding on decision confidence, omission neglect bias, and choice deferral","authors":"José Mauro C. Hernandez, M. C. Costa Filho, Donald R. Gaffney, Frank Kardes","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2022.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2022.2","url":null,"abstract":"Consumers often spend time searching before making a purchasing decision to acquire knowledge about products. If the purchasing decision is delayed, recall of acquired knowledge is likely to be impaired. Because products in the marketplace are rarely described completely, consumers who take too long to decide may fail to notice the absence of information relevant to a purchasing decision and fall prey to a phenomenon called ‘omission neglect’, an inability to detect missing information and form extreme and confidently held judgments. Omission neglect may be corrected by acquiring knowledge about the target product before making the choice. In the present research, we examine consumer decisions in the context of choice sets described incompletely and presented either immediately or a week after the acquisition of relevant information about a target product. Specifically, we investigate how the timing between product knowledge acquisition and decision-making affects the detection of missing information, decision confidence, and choice deferral. Across three experiments, we find that, after acquiring knowledge, when consumers have their decision delayed, they are less able to detect missing information, feel more confident, and defer choices less.","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56717085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Previous research suggests that people may develop stronger causal illusions when the existence of a causal relationship is consistent with their prior beliefs. In the present study, we hypothesized that prior pseudoscientific beliefs will influence judgments about the effectiveness of both alternative medicine and scientific medicine. Participants (N = 98) were exposed to an adaptation of the standard causal illusion task in which they had to judge whether two fictitious treatments, one described as conventional medicine and the other as alternative medicine, could heal the crises caused by two different syndromes. Since both treatments were completely ineffective, those believing that any of the two medicines worked were exhibiting a causal illusion. Participants also responded to the Pseudoscience Endorsement Scale (PES) and some questions about trust in alternative therapies that were taken from the Survey on the Social Perception of Science and Technology conducted by FECYT. The results replicated the causal illusion effect and extended them by revealing an interaction between the prior pseudoscientific beliefs and the scientific/pseudoscientific status of the fictitious treatment. Individuals reporting stronger pseudoscientific beliefs were more vulnerable to the illusion in both scenarios, whereas participants with low adherence to pseudoscientific beliefs seemed to be more resistant to the illusion in the alternative medicine scenario.
{"title":"I want to believe: Prior beliefs influence judgments about the effectiveness of both alternative and scientific medicine","authors":"Lucía Vicente, Fernando Blanco, H. Matute","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2022.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2022.3","url":null,"abstract":"Previous research suggests that people may develop stronger causal illusions when the existence of a causal relationship is consistent with their prior beliefs. In the present study, we hypothesized that prior pseudoscientific beliefs will influence judgments about the effectiveness of both alternative medicine and scientific medicine. Participants (N = 98) were exposed to an adaptation of the standard causal illusion task in which they had to judge whether two fictitious treatments, one described as conventional medicine and the other as alternative medicine, could heal the crises caused by two different syndromes. Since both treatments were completely ineffective, those believing that any of the two medicines worked were exhibiting a causal illusion. Participants also responded to the Pseudoscience Endorsement Scale (PES) and some questions about trust in alternative therapies that were taken from the Survey on the Social Perception of Science and Technology conducted by FECYT. The results replicated the causal illusion effect and extended them by revealing an interaction between the prior pseudoscientific beliefs and the scientific/pseudoscientific status of the fictitious treatment. Individuals reporting stronger pseudoscientific beliefs were more vulnerable to the illusion in both scenarios, whereas participants with low adherence to pseudoscientific beliefs seemed to be more resistant to the illusion in the alternative medicine scenario.","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56717106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hajdi Moche, Arvid Erlandsson, Stephan Dickert, D. Västfjäll
This article revisits and further investigates the extent to which scope insensitivity in helping contexts can be reduced by the unit asking (UA) method. UA is an intervention that first asks people to help one unit and then asks for willingness to help multiple units. In 3 studies (N = 3,442), participants took on the role of policymakers to allocate help (motivation to help and willingness to pay) to local aid projects. They underwent either UA or a control condition (in which they stated their willingness to help only to the multiple units). Against expectations, the first 2 studies found a reversed UA effect for helping motivation, such that help decreased when participants were in the UA condition. However, the third study found a UA effect for helping motivation when participants made the sequential assessments within one project (when the individual unit belonged to the multiple units-group), rather than between projects (when the individual unit belonged to another group). Thus, our results suggest that the 2 assessments critical for the UA method should be done within the same project rather than between 2 projects to successfully reduce scope insensitivity. Further, the age of the unit (child or adult), the number of the unit(s), the composition of the group (homogeneous or heterogeneous), and the size of the group did not substantially reduce scope insensitivity with UA.
{"title":"The potential and pitfalls of unit asking in reducing scope insensitivity","authors":"Hajdi Moche, Arvid Erlandsson, Stephan Dickert, D. Västfjäll","doi":"10.1017/jdm.2023.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2023.27","url":null,"abstract":"This article revisits and further investigates the extent to which scope insensitivity in helping contexts can be reduced by the unit asking (UA) method. UA is an intervention that first asks people to help one unit and then asks for willingness to help multiple units. In 3 studies (N = 3,442), participants took on the role of policymakers to allocate help (motivation to help and willingness to pay) to local aid projects. They underwent either UA or a control condition (in which they stated their willingness to help only to the multiple units). Against expectations, the first 2 studies found a reversed UA effect for helping motivation, such that help decreased when participants were in the UA condition. However, the third study found a UA effect for helping motivation when participants made the sequential assessments within one project (when the individual unit belonged to the multiple units-group), rather than between projects (when the individual unit belonged to another group). Thus, our results suggest that the 2 assessments critical for the UA method should be done within the same project rather than between 2 projects to successfully reduce scope insensitivity. Further, the age of the unit (child or adult), the number of the unit(s), the composition of the group (homogeneous or heterogeneous), and the size of the group did not substantially reduce scope insensitivity with UA.","PeriodicalId":48045,"journal":{"name":"Judgment and Decision Making","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56717963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}