Fast and frugal heuristics are plausible models of cognition: reply to Dougherty, Franco-Watkins, and Thomas (2008)

M. R. Dougherty, A. M. Franco-Watkins, and R. Thomas (2008) conjectured that fast and frugal heuristics need an automatic frequency counter for ordering cues. In fact, only a few heuristics order cues, and these orderings can arise from evolutionary, social, or individual learning, none of which requires automatic frequency counting. The idea that cue validities cannot be computed because memory does not encode missing information is misinformed; it implies that measures of co-occurrence are incomputable and would invalidate most theories of cue learning. They also questioned the recognition heuristic's psychological plausibility on the basis of their belief that it has not been implemented in a memory model, although it actually has been implemented in ACT-R (L. J. Schooler & R. Hertwig, 2005). On the positive side, M. R. Dougherty et al. discovered a new mechanism for a less-is-more effect. The authors of the present article specify minimal criteria for psychological plausibility, describe some genuine challenges in the study of heuristics, and conclude that fast and frugal heuristics are psychologically plausible: They use limited search and are tractable and robust.     

Group communication and decision-making strategies

In daily life, people frequently make inferences about current and future states of the world. Most of these inferences are not made individually, but by exchanging information about which strategies could be used with other people. In an experiment, we analyzed whether exchanging information socially increased the probability of selecting the most adaptive strategy. In our experiment, take-the-best (TTB; Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996), a simple heuristic that employs one-reason decision making, achieved the highest payoff. Results showed that the fit of TTB increased substantially across trial blocks when participants were allowed to exchange information with other group members. In contrast, when participants made inferences individually, they did not select the most adaptive strategy even after seven trial blocks. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that group communication increases the likelihood that participants select the most adaptive strategy for making inferences.     

The acceptance of modern myths about sexual aggression scale: development and validation in German and English

Scales of rape myth acceptance (RMA) often yield low means and skewed distributions. This is proposed to be because of a change in rape-related beliefs toward more subtle content. Incorporating insights from racism and sexism research, a 30-item self-report scale measuring the acceptance of modern myths about sexual aggression (AMMSA) is presented. Across four studies (total N=1,279), the reliability and validity of parallel German and English versions of the AMMSA scale were examined. The results show that both language versions are highly reliable; compared with a traditional RMA scale, means of AMMSA scores are higher and their distributions more closely approximate normality. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses provide evidence for the AMMSA scale's concurrent and predictive construct validity.     

The Rating of Sexist Humor Under Time Pressure as an Indicator of Spontaneous Sexist Attitudes

Spontaneous vs. more controlled indicators of sexist attitudes were assessed in a laboratory experiment with 131 male German undergraduates. Participants rated the funniness of sexist and nonsexist jokes either with or without time pressure, and completed self-report measures of sexism and related constructs. With time pressure, participants showed greater liking for sexist jokes than without. No such effect was found for nonsexist jokes. Both with and without time pressure, sexist joke ratings showed meaningful correlations with standard self-report measures, which attests to the joke measure’s high reliability and construct validity. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Children can solve Bayesian problems: the role of representation in mental computation

Can children reason the Bayesian way? We argue that the answer to this question depends on how numbers are represented, because a representation can do part of the computation. We test, for the first time, whether Bayesian reasoning can be elicited in children by means of natural frequencies. We show that when information was presented to fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in terms of probabilities, their ability to estimate the Bayesian posterior probability was zero. Yet when the same information was presented in natural frequencies, Bayesian reasoning showed a steady increase from fourth to sixth grade, reaching an average level of 19, 39, and 53%, respectively, in two studies. Sixth graders' performance with natural frequencies matched the performance of adults with probabilities. But this general increase was accompanied by striking individual differences. More than half of the sixth graders solved most or all problems, whereas one third could not solve a single one. An analysis of the children's responses provides evidence for the use of three non-Bayesian strategies. These follow an overlapping wave model of development and continue to be observed in the minds of adults. More so than adults' probabilistic reasoning, children's reasoning depends on a proper representation of information.     

Representation facilitates reasoning: what natural frequencies are and what they are not

A good representation can be crucial for finding the solution to a problem. Gigerenzer and Hoffrage (Psychol. Rev. 102 (1995) 684; Psychol. Rev. 106 (1999) 425) have shown that representations in terms of natural frequencies, rather than conditional probabilities, facilitate the computation of a cause's probability (or frequency) given an effect--a problem that is usually referred to as Bayesian reasoning. They also have shown that normalized frequencies--which are not natural frequencies--do not lead to computational facilitation, and consequently, do not enhance people's performance. Here, we correct two misconceptions propagated in recent work (Cognition 77 (2000) 197; Cognition 78 (2001) 247; Psychol. Rev. 106 (1999) 62; Organ. Behav. Hum. Decision Process. 82 (2000) 217): normalized frequencies have been mistaken for natural frequencies and, as a consequence, "nested sets" and the "subset principle" have been proposed as new explanations. These new terms, however, are nothing more than vague labels for the basic properties of natural frequencies.     

The Decline of Academic Theology at Göttingen

Until recently, the transfer of an academic theologian to another faculty as a result of objections by ecclesiastical officials was limited to Catholic professors. Now for the first time in the annals of the German university a Protestant professor faces such an action by a church body. Professor Gerd Lüdemann, who since 1983 has taught New Testament Studies in the University of Göttingen, has become the target of criticism by the Confederation of Lutheran Churches in Lower Saxony. As a result of a decision by the President of his University, theology students can no longer receive credit for attending his courses, nor can he serve as director or advisor of graduate studies. Professor Lüdemann tells the story of his censure and describes the present situation which is now before a court of law.     

Affective and cognitive attitudes,uncertainty avoidance and intention to obtain genetic testing: An extension of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

To ensure successful implementation of genetic screening and counselling according to patients best interests, the attitudes and motives of the public are important to consider. The aim of this study was to apply a theoretical framework in order to investigate which individual and disease characteristics might facilitate the uptake of genetic testing. A questionnaire using an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour was developed to assess the predictive value of affective and cognitive expected outcomes, subjective norms, perceived control and uncertainty avoidance on the intention to undergo genetic testing. In addition to these individual characteristics, the predictive power of two disease characteristics was investigated by systematically varying the diseases fatality and penetrance (i.e. the probability of getting ill in case one is a mutation carrier). This resulted in four versions of the questionnaire which was mailed to a random sample of 2400 Norwegians. Results showed genetic test interest to be quite high, and to vary depending on the characteristics of the disease, with participants preferring tests for highly penetrant diseases. The most important individual predictor was uncertainty avoidance.