Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.

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Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies.

This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.

/pdf/judgment-under-uncertainty-heuristics-and-biases-43eigsa9ws.pdf

Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

Self-Reports in Organizational Research: Problems and Prospects

Evidence is reviewed which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Subjects are sometimes (a) unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, (b) unaware of the existence of the response, and (c) unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes.

/pdf/telling-more-than-we-can-know-verbal-reports-on-mental-57xv5dwuck.pdf

Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes.

Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability

Scales for Physical and Social Anhedonia.

The predictive validities of several indicators of psychosis proneness were evaluated in a 10-year longitudinal study (N = 508). As hypothesized, high scorers on the Perceptual Aberration Scale, Magical Ideation Scale, or both (n = 182), especially those who initially reported psychoticlike experiences of at least moderate deviance, exceeded control subjects (n = 153) on psychoses (revised 3rd edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), psychotic relatives, schizotypal symptoms, and psychoticlike experiences at follow up. Ss who initially scored high on the Magical Ideation Scale and above the mean on the Social Anhedonia Scale were especially deviant. The Physical Anhedonia Scale and the Impulsive Nonconformity Scale were not effective predictors of psychosis proneness.

Loren J. Chapman

Papers

Scales for Physical and Social Anhedonia.

Putatively psychosis-prone subjects 10 years later.

Magical ideation as an indicator of schizotypy.

Illusory correlation as an obstacle to the use of valid psychodiagnostic signs.

Body-image aberration in Schizophrenia.