A cognitive footprint in archival data: Generalizing the dilution effect from laboratory to field settings

This paper delineates a bridging strategy for generalizing a theoretical proposition about human judgment from laboratory to field settings. This strategy encompasses experimental and archival methods, emphasizing each method’s complementary rather than competitive advantage. Basic experiments that use generic tasks and settings, and novice subjects, contribute empirical tests that maximize internal validity. Given a target area in the “real world” for generalizing the proposition, applied experiments that use tasks and settings with greater mundane realism, and professional subjects from the target area, contribute replicating tests that balance internal and external validity. As a complement to experimentation, archival research adds value by testing observable implications of the proposition in field settings. We relate the bridging strategy to judgment research on the dilution effect (i.e., the presence of nondiagnostic cues, when processed with diagnostic cues, causes judges to under-weigh the diagnostic cues) in psychology and applied areas. Finally, we contribute an archival data analysis that uncovers indirect evidence, or a cognitive footprint, of the dilution effect in a professional judgment setting where social and economic mechanisms potentially discipline systematic error.     

Why Maximize Expected Choice-Worthiness?1

This paper argues in favor of a particular account of decision-making under normative uncertainty: that, when it is possible to do so, one should maximize expected choice-worthiness. Though this position has been often suggested in the literature and is often taken to be the ‘default’ view, it has so far received little in the way of positive argument in its favor. After dealing with some preliminaries and giving the basic motivation for taking normative uncertainty into account in our decision-making, we consider and provide new arguments against two rival accounts that have been offered—the accounts that we call ‘My Favorite Theory’ and ‘My Favorite Option’. We then give a novel argument for comparativism—the view that, under normative uncertainty, one should take into account both probabilities of different theories and magnitudes of choice-worthiness. Finally, we further argue in favor of maximizing expected choice-worthiness and consider and respond to five objections.     

Is IQ in Childhood Associated with Suicidal Thoughts and Attempts? Findings from The Mater University Study of Pregnancy and Its Outcomes

This study explores associations of IQ at age 14 with adult symptoms of suicidal thoughts and attempts at age 21. Analysis was based on the Mater University Study of Pregnancy and its outcomes, an Australian prospective birth cohort study started in Brisbane Australia in 1981. We assessed associations with suicide thoughts, plans, and attempts. We used two measures of IQ: the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices and the Wide Range Achievement Test. In multivariable analyses, there was an inverse association between Raven's IQ and suicide thoughts, plans, and attempts, but no strong evidence of an association between the WRAT3 and the three suicidal items. Specific aspects of intelligence may be associated with suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts.