Empirical tests of a fast-and-frugal heuristic: Not everyone “takes-the-best”

The fast-and-frugal heuristics approach to decision making under uncertainty advocated by Gigerenzer and colleagues (e.g., Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996) has achieved great popularity despite a relative lack of empirical validation. We report two experiments that examine the use of one particular heuristic—“take-the-best” (TTB). In both experiments the majority of participants adopted frugal strategies, but only one-third (33%) behaved in a manner completely consistent with TTB’s search, stopping and decision rules. Furthermore, a significant proportion of participants in both experiments adopted a non-frugal strategy in which they accumulated more information than was predicted by TTB’s stopping rule. The results provide an insight into the conditions under which different heuristics are used, and question the predictive power of the fast-and-frugal approach.     

Interpersonal comparison versus persuasive argumentation: A more direct test of alternative explanations for group-induced shifts in individual choice

One class of theories explains group induced shifts in individual choice in terms of interpersonal comparison process. By comparing himself with others a member finds out that his position is uncomfortably discrepant, e.g., he is overly “cautious” or overly “risky”. Knowledge of this discrepancy presumably is necessary and sufficient to induce him to change his initial choice. Another class of theories holds that merely knowing one is different from others is unimportant. Shifts in choice occur because during discussion a member is exposed to persuasive arguments which prior to discussion were not available to him. Thus, if in a factorial design one independently varied (a) the number of others' choices available for comparison and (b) the number of arguments others presented in support of these choices, interpersonal comparison theories would predict the magnitude of the shift to be a function of (a) and not of (b), while theories of persuasive argumentation would predict the opposite. When such an experiment was performed the only reliable main effects were based on the number of arguments, (b), as predicted by persuasive arguments. In no instance did effects involving (a) approach significance.     

Persuasion: From Single to Multiple to Metacognitive Processes

ABSTRACT— This article provides a brief overview of major developments in the history of contemporary persuasion theory. The first intuitive and empirical approaches to persuasion were guided by main-effect questions (e.g., are experts more persuasive than nonexperts?). Furthermore, researchers focused on only one process by which variables (e.g., emotion, source credibility) would have an impact (e.g., emotion affected attitudes by classical conditioning). As data began to accumulate, so many new theories and effects were uncovered that the discipline faced collapse from the numerous inconsistencies evident. In response to the reigning confusion of the previous era, contemporary multiprocess theories were proposed (e.g., the elaboration likelihood model). According to these more integrative approaches, any one variable could affect attitudes by different processes in different situations and thereby sometimes produce opposite effects. Finally, we describe the role of a recently discovered new contributor to persuasion: self-validation. Unlike previous mechanisms that focus on primary cognition, this new process emphasizes secondary or meta-cognition.     

Familiarity-Matching: An Ecologically Rational Heuristic for the Relationships-Comparison Task

Previous studies have shown that people often use heuristics in making inferences and that subjective memory experiences, such as recognition or familiarity of objects, can be valid cues for inferences. So far, many researchers have used the binary choice task in which two objects are presented as alternatives (e.g., “Which city has the larger population, city A or city B?”). However, objects can be presented not only as alternatives but also in a question (e.g., “Which country is city X in, country A or country B?”). In such a situation, people can make inferences based on the relationship between the object in the question and each object given as an alternative. In the present study, we call this type of task a “relationships-comparison task.” We modeled the three inference strategies that people could apply to solve it (familiarity-matching [FM; a new heuristic we propose in this study], familiarity heuristic [FH], and knowledge-based inference [KI]) to examine people's inference processes. Through Studies 1, 2, and 3, we found that (a) people tended to rely on heuristics, and that FM (inferences based on similarity in familiarity between objects) well explained participants' inference patterns; (b) FM could work as an ecologically rational strategy for the relationships–comparison task since it could effectively reflect environmental structures, and that the use of FM could be highly replicable and robust; and (c) people could sometimes use a decision strategy like FM, even in their daily lives (consumer behaviors). The nature of the relationships–comparison task and human cognitive processes is discussed.     

Ignorance or integration: the cognitive processes underlying choice behavior

The fast‐and‐frugal heuristic framework assumes noncompensatory tools for human preferences (i.e., priority heuristic) and inferences (i.e., take the best heuristic). According to this framework, these heuristics predict choice behavior as well as model the cognitive processes underlying such behavior. The current paper presents two studies that juxtapose predictions derived from these two simple heuristics with alternative predictions derived from compensatory principles. Dependent measures that included reaction time, choice pattern, confidence level, and accuracy were better predicted by compensatory indices than by noncompensatory indices. These findings suggest that people do not rely on limited arguments only, but tend to integrate all acquired information into their choice processes. This tendency was replicated even when the experimental task facilitated the use of noncompensatory principles. We argue that the fast and frugal heuristics can predict the final outcome only under certain conditions, but even in these particular situations they are not applicable to the processes underlying choice behavior. An integrative model for choice behavior is proposed that better represents the data. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explaining the errors away: Young children forgive understandable semantic mistakes

Errors differ in degree of seriousness. We asked whether preschoolers would use the magnitude of an informant's errors to decide if that informant would be a good source of information later. Four- and 5-year-olds observed two informants incorrectly label familiar objects, but one informant's errors were closer to the correct answer than the other's (e.g., one referred to a comb as a brush and the other referred to the same comb as a thunderstorm). When informants had an unambiguous view of the objects, children could identify which informant was closer to being correct, but they did not favor novel labels the “closer” informant later provided. When the informants had an ambiguous view of the objects (e.g., only the handle of the comb was visible), children preferred the novel labels provided later by the “closer” informant. Preschoolers are willing to overlook semantic errors that are close to being correct, but only when there is an understandable reason for the speaker's errors.     

Share and Share Alike or Winner Take All?: The Influence of Social Value Orientation upon Choice and Recall of Negotiation Heuristics

Two experiments test the hypothesis that social value orientation influences choice and recall of heuristics in individuals preparing for negotiation. Consistent with predictions, Study 1 shows that in the preparation phase, negotiators with a prosocial value orientation choose more cooperative heuristics (e.g., “equal split is fair”) than competitive heuristics (e.g., “your gain is my loss”) while negotiators with a competitive social value orientation do the reverse. Negotiators with an individualistic social value orientation do not discriminate in their choice between cooperative and competitive heuristics. Study 2 shows that following preparation, prosocial negotiators recall more cooperative than competitive heuristics while individualists and competitors do the reverse. Additional measures suggest that prosocial negotiators prefer cooperative heuristics because these are seen as morally appropriate, whereas individualists and competitors prefer competitive heuristics because these are seen as effective.     

Aptness predicts preference for metaphors or similes, as well as recall bias

Why might we sometimes prefer a metaphor such as “genes are blueprints” to a simile such as “genes are like blueprints”? One possibility is that metaphors are preferred when the comparison between a tenor (e.g., genes) and a vehicle (e.g., blueprints) seems especially apt. That is, metaphors might be used when the comparison captures many salient features of the tenor in question. The present experiments examined the relation between the aptness of comparisons and people’s preferences for expressing those comparisons as metaphors or as similes. In Experiment 1, it was found that there is consensus on how to express particular comparisons. In Experiment 2, it was found that this preference can be predicted from the aptness of a comparison. It was also found that aptness can predict errors in the recall of comparisons. These findings have implications for theories of metaphor.     

Power and choice: their dynamic interplay in quenching the thirst for personal control

Power and choice represent two fundamental forces that govern human behavior. Scholars have largely treated power as an interpersonal construct involving control over other individuals, whereas choice has largely been treated as an intrapersonal construct that concerns the ability to select a preferred course of action. Although these constructs have historically been studied separately, we propose that they share a common foundation--that both are rooted in an individual's sense of personal control. Because of this common underlying basis, we hypothesized that power and choice are substitutable; that is, we predicted that the absence of one would increase the desire for the other, which, when acquired, would serve to satisfy the broader need for control. We also predicted that choice and power would exhibit a threshold effect, such that once one source of control had been provided (e.g., power), the addition of the other (e.g., choice) would yield diminishing returns. Six experiments provide evidence supporting these predictions.     

Simple mechanisms for gathering social information

Social contexts are notoriously complex, yet decisions are nevertheless made by using simple strategies. We argue that the concept of fast and frugal heuristics provides a promising framework for understanding how we gather social information to make decisions in social environments. That is, we assume that under limitations of time, energy, and computational resources people use cognitively based shortcuts that rely on information from social environments to solve different types of real problems. We review three successful applications of heuristics to the social arena. We first introduce some commonly faced social inference problems (e.g., selecting a mate or deciding whether to cooperate with someone) and then discuss how individuals can use simple strategies to solve such problems. For each problem, we consider how social environments are structured, and how we take advantage of this structure when using heuristics to make inferences and decisions.     

A multi-analyses approach of inductive/deductive asymmetry in the affective priming paradigm

Rapidly evaluating our environment's beneficial and detrimental features is critical for our successful functioning. A classic paradigm used to investigate such fast and automatic evaluations is the affective priming (AP) paradigm, where participants classify valenced target stimuli (e.g., words) as good or bad while ignoring the valenced primes (e.g., words). We investigate the differential impact that verbs and adjectives used as primes and targets have on the AP paradigm. Based on earlier work on the Linguistic Category Model, we expect AP effect to be modulated by non-evaluative properties of the word stimuli, such as the linguistic category (e.g., if the prime is an adjective and the target is a verb versus the reverse). A reduction in the magnitude of the priming effect was predicted for adjective–verb prime-target pairs compared to verb–adjective prime-target pairs. Moreover, we implemented a modified crowdsourcing of statistical analyses implementing independently three different statistical approaches. Deriving our conclusions on the converging/diverging evidence provided by the different approaches, we show a clear deductive/inductive asymmetry in AP paradigm (exp. 1), that this asymmetry does not require a focus on the evaluative dimension to emerge (exp. 2) and that the semantic-based asymmetry weakly extends to valence (exp. 3).     

Decade breaks in the mental number line? Putting the tens and units back in different bins.

Most models of number recognition agree that among other number representations there is a central semantic magnitude representation which may be conceptualized as a logarithmically compressed mental number line. Whether or not this number line is decomposed into different representations for tens and units is, however, controversial. We investigated this issue in German participants in a magnitude comparison (selection) task in which the larger of two visually presented Arabic two-digit numbers had to be selected. Most importantly, we varied unit-decade-compatibility: a number pair was defined as compatible if the decade magnitude comparison and the unit magnitude comparison of the two numbers would lead to the same response (e.g. 52 and 67) and as incompatible if this was not the case (e.g. 47 and 62). While controlling for overall numerical distance, size and other variables, we consistently found compatibility effects. A control experiment showed that this compatibility effect was not due to perceptual presentation characteristics. We conclude that the idea of one single number line representation that does not additionally assume different magnitude representations for tens and units is not sufficient to account for the data. Finally, we discuss why decade effects were not found in other experimental settings.     

Mechanism Discovery and Design Explanation: Where Role Function Meets Biological Advantage Function

In the recent literature on explanation in biology, increasing attention is being paid to the connection between design explanation and mechanistic explanation, viz. the role of design principles and heuristics for mechanism discovery and mechanistic explanation. In this paper we extend the connection between design explanation and mechanism discovery by prizing apart two different types of design explanation and by elaborating novel heuristics that one specific type offers for mechanism discovery across species. We illustrate our claims in terms of two lines of biological research on the biological advantages of organismal traits, one on the eye-size of giant squid, the other on foraging habits of specific bat species. We argue that this research illustrates useful heuristics for mechanism discovery across species, viz. reasoning strategies to infer likely mechanisms for a certain biological role based on assessments of the environmental conditions in which the role is performed efficiently (i.e., offers a biological advantage) and less or in-efficiently. We bring out the novel features of our analysis in terms of a comparison with mechanistic approaches to mechanism discovery, amongst which graph-theoretical ones, and by comparing the different types of design explanation and the discovery heuristics they support.     

Two-digit comparison: decomposed, holistic, or hybrid?

We investigate whether two-digit numbers are decomposed for purposes of numerical comparison (e.g., choosing the larger one). Earlier theorists concluded that numbers are processed holistically (Brysbaert, 1995; Dehaene, Dupoux, & Mehler, 1990), or that holistic and decomposed processes operate in parallel (Nuerk, Weger, & Willmes, 2001). In the present experiment, we presented pairs of two-digit numbers with a decade distance of either zero (e.g., 54-57) or one (54-61). If a holistic process contributes to two-digit comparison, there should be an overall distance effect for number pairs with a decade distance of one. On the other hand, if numbers are decomposed and a holistic comparison does not contribute, this overall distance effect should be absent for these number pairs. Evidence is found that, at least in the present task settings, numbers are not compared holistically. The results are interpreted in terms of a recently proposed theory of numerical cognition (Verguts & Fias, 2004; Verguts, Fias, & Stevens, in press).     

The role of working memory in the metaphor interference effect

Participants took longer to judge that metaphors (e.g., an insult is a razor, memory is a warehouse) were literally false than to judge that scrambled sentences (e.g., an insult is a warehouse) were false. This result is the metaphor interference effect (MIE). It demonstrates that metaphor processing is automatic. In this experiment, we found that the magnitude of the MIE is predicted by working memory (WM) capacity, with higher WM yielding a smaller MIE. This suggests that although metaphor comprehension is automatic, the early processing of metaphors is controllable by executive mechanisms. We relate our results to Kintsch’s (2000, 2001) predication model. Specifically, we suggest that mechanisms of WM influence metaphor processing by affecting the effectiveness of the construction-integration process that identifies common properties between topics and vehicles. WM also influences the speed with which meanings are identified as literal or figurative.     

When Cognitive Diagnosis Meets Computerized Adaptive Testing: CD-CAT

Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a mode of testing which enables more efficient and accurate recovery of one or more latent traits. Traditionally, CAT is built upon Item Response Theory (IRT) models that assume unidimensionality. However, the problem of how to build CAT upon latent class models (LCM) has not been investigated until recently, when Tatsuoka (J. R. Stat. Soc., Ser. C, Appl. Stat. 51:337–350, 2002) and Tatsuoka and Ferguson (J. R. Stat., Ser. B 65:143–157, 2003) established a general theorem on the asymptotically optimal sequential selection of experiments to classify finite, partially ordered sets. Xu, Chang, and Douglas (Paper presented at the annual meeting of National Council on Measurement in Education, Montreal, Canada, 2003) then tested two heuristics in a simulation study based on Tatsuoka’s theoretical work in the context of computerized adaptive testing. One of the heuristics was developed based on Kullback–Leibler information, and the other based on Shannon entropy. In this paper, we showcase the application of the optimal sequential selection methodology in item selection of CAT that is built upon cognitive diagnostic models. Two new heuristics are proposed, and are compared against the randomized item selection method and the two heuristics investigated in Xu et al. (Paper presented at the annual meeting of National Council on Measurement in Education, Montreal, Canada, 2003). Finally, we show the connection between the Kullback–Leibler-information-based approaches and the Shannon-entropy-based approach, as well as the connection between algorithms built upon LCM and those built upon IRT models.     

Information search in heuristic decision making

Simple heuristics of the type introduced by Gigerenzer, Todd, and The ABC Research Group ( 1999 ) embody principles for information search, stop and decision making. These heuristics suggest that such processes are simple. In an analysis of general practitioners' (GPs) information search and decision‐making behaviour when prescribing a lipid lowering drug, we examined whether information search was simple, and whether a heuristic that predicts a simple decision‐making process was also accurate at describing information search. We found that GPs' information search behaviour was simple in that it demonstrated characteristics of the matching heuristic (e.g. stopping rule). In addition, although the matching heuristic which correctly predicted on average 75% of GPs' decisions used significantly fewer cues on average than the GPs did in the information search task, it was reasonably accurate in describing order of information search. These findings have implications for the validity of simple heuristics describing both information search and decision making. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is 26 + 26 smaller than 24 + 28? Estimating the approximate magnitude of repeated versus different numbers

It has recently been suggested that regardless of the dimension at hand (i.e., numerosity, length, time), similar operational mechanisms are involved in the comparison process based on approximate magnitude representation. One piece of evidence for this hypothesis lies in the presence of similar behavioral effects for any comparison (i.e., the distance effect). In the case of length comparison, the comparison process can be biased by summation toward either an underestimation or an overestimation: The sum of equal-size stimuli is underestimated, whereas the sum of different-size stimuli is overestimated. Relying on the hypothesis that similar operational mechanisms underlie the comparison process of any magnitude, we aim at extending these findings to another magnitude dimension. A number comparison task with digit numbers was used in the two experiments reported presently. The objective was to investigate whether summation also biases magnitude representation of numerical and symbolic information. The results provided evidence that the summation bias can also apply to numerical magnitude comparison, since the sum of repeated numbers (26 + 26) was underestimated whereas the sum of different numbers (24 + 28) was overestimated. We propose that these effects could be accounted for by a heuristic linking cognitive effort and magnitude estimation.