Psychology 458/558<br>
Judgment and Decision Making<br>
Prof. Bertram Malle<br>
Fall 1995<P>
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<center><font size = 6> Lecture 12:  Nov 9<br>
<font size = 8> Whose biases? </font></center><p> 
<p>
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Note: The representativeness heuristic is described in the handout to Lecture 
11.
<p>

<h2>General issues</h2>
<ul>
<li>Experiments in the lab vs. the real world:  Representativeness problem.  Process
versus phenomena.
<li>The power of quick and clean studies.  Avoidance of complexities?
</ul>

<h2>More specific</h2>
<ul>
<li>Errors  vs. mistakes
<li>Issues of style: "We are so smart"; pointing out flaws vs. ways to mend
them
<li>Power of experimenter over subject: experiment is a social situation</ul>

<h2>Communicative critique</h2> 

This critique is not necessarily explaining away all the findings
of heuristics-and-biases research but points to processes that might
have exaggerated the effects. 
<p>
<ul>
<li>People (subjects) follow conversational rules that are often violated by
experimenters (see Schwarz's article for details).  Subjects therefore
interpret the experiment as a very different task than the experimenter would
want them to.  
<li>Examples<br>
<ol>
<li>engineer/lawyer problem: relevance and recency rules (if computerized or
order of information switched  close to "normative")
<li>fundamental attribution error: relevance principle (double message: she was
asked to give this speech in favor of X, but now try to find out her real
attitude)
<li>real-estate study and other anchoring experiments: diagnostic
information?
<li>Linda the bank teller: implicit negation of `feminist'? ("first the
descriptions clearly suggests..., then they give me these options...")</ol>
</ul>

The heuristics and biases research has made us aware of many possible or actual
flaws of our reasoning and judgment.  But the precise extent to which we really
make mistakes in everyday thinking is unknown. Moreover, the <i>conditions</i>
under which our heuristics bring success or error have been studied more in the
lab than in the real world.  Some of these conditions have been unwittingly
created by experimenters themselves.  In a situation of high demand and minimal
information to work with, people will try to come up with a reasonable answer,
and their answer depends crucially on their interpretation of what the task
truly demands ("Am I in a psychodiagnostic experiment or a statistical one?"
"Shall I form an impression or calculate frequencies?").  Real life provides
those conditions of high demand and minimal information often enough.  We can
therefore use the awareness (and suspicion) acquired from heuristics and biases
research to prevent mistakes--both the ones that stem from task characteristics
(probabilities, limited information, etc.) and the ones that stem from social
processes (misleading clues, violated conversational principles, etc.)<p>
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