Early studies of intuitive judgment and decision making conducted with the late Amos Tversky are reviewed in the context of two related concepts: an analysis of accessibility, the ease with which thoughts come to mind; a distinction between effortless intuition and deliberate reasoning. Intuitive thoughts, like percepts, are highly accessible. Determinants and consequences of accessibility help explain the central results of prospect theory, framing effects, the heuristic process of attribute substitution, and the characteristic biases that result from the substitution of nonextensional for extensional attributes. Variations in the accessibility of rules explain the occasional corrections of intuitive judgments. The study of biases is compatible with a view of intuitive thinking and decision making as generally skilled and successful.

https://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/JudgementAndChoice.MappingBoundedRationality.DKahneman2003.pdf

A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality.

A review is presented of the book “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment,” edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman.

Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

▪ Abstract We review empirical and conceptual developments over the past four years (1992–1995) on attitudes and persuasion. A voluminous amount of material was produced concerning attitude structure, attitude change, and the consequences of holding attitudes. In the structure area, particular attention is paid to work on attitude accessiblity, ambivalence, and the affective versus cognitive bases of attitudes. In persuasion, our review examines research that has focused on high effort cognitive processes (central route), low effort processes (peripheral route), and the multiple roles by which variables can have an impact on attitudes. Special emphasis is given to work on cognitive dissonance and other biases in message processing, and on the multiple processes by which mood influences evaluations. Work on the consequences of attitudes focuses on the impact of attitudes on behavior and social judgments.

Attitudes and attitude change

Much research in the last two decades has demon- strated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision mak- ing and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be inter- preted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experi- menter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implica- tions of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance er- rors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations un- derlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Un- expected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X00003435

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?

Publisher Summary This chapter presents an integrated understanding of various impression formation processes. The chapter introduces a model of impression formation that integrates social cognition research on stereotyping with traditional research on person perception. According to this model, people form impressions of others through a variety of processes that lie on a continuum reflecting the extent to that the perceiver utilizes a target's particular attributes. The continuum implies that the distinctions among these processes are matters of degree, rather than discrete shifts. The chapter examines the evidence for the five main premises of the model, it is helpful to discuss some related models that raise issues for additional consideration. The chapter discusses the research that supports each of the five basic premises, competing models, and hypotheses for further research. The chapter concludes that one of the model's fundamental purposes is to integrate diverse perspectives on impression formation, as indicated by the opening quotation. It is also designed to generate predictions about basic impression formation processes and to help generate interventions that can reduce the impact of stereotypes on impression formation.

A Continuum of Impression Formation, from Category-Based to Individuating Processes: Influences of Information and Motivation on Attention and Interpretation

We define mental contamination as the process whereby a person has an unwanted response because of mental processing that is unconscious or uncontrollable This type of bias is distinguishable from the failure to know or apply normative rules of inference and can be further divided into the unwanted consequences of automatic processing and source confusion, which is the confusion of 2 or more causes of a response Mental contamination is difficult to avoid because it results from both fundamental properties of human cognition (eg, a lack of awareness of mental processes) and faulty lay beliefs about the mind (eg, incorrect theories about mental biases) People's lay beliefs determine the steps they take (or fail to take) to correct their judgments and thus are an important but neglected source of biased responses Strategies for avoiding contamination, such as controlling one's exposure to biasing information, are discussed

Mental contamination and mental correction: unwanted influences on judgments and evaluations.

In previous anchoring studies people were asked to consider an anchor as a possible answer to the target question or were given informative anchors. The authors predicted that basic anchoring effects can occur, whereby uninformative numerical anchors influence a judgment even when people are not asked to compare this number to the target value. Five studies supported these hypotheses: Basic anchoring occurs if people pay sufficient attention to the anchor value; knowledgeable people are less susceptible to basic anchoring effects; anchoring appears to operate unintentionally and nonconsciously in that it is difficult to avoid even when people are forewarned. The possible mechanisms of basic anchoring and the relation between these mechanisms and other processes of judgment and correction are discussed.

/pdf/a-new-look-at-anchoring-effects-basic-anchoring-and-its-3vnc6tq20w.pdf

A New Look at Anchoring Effects: Basic Anchoring and Its Antecedents

Sex stereotypes and social judgment.

Expert Psychological Testimony in Rape Trials: A Social-Cognitive Analysis

People do not have access to or control over the recipe of their impressions, feelings, and attitudes. There exists a vast, adaptive unconscious that does much of the work of sizing up and evaluating the world (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977b; Wilson, 2001); people often know the final product with no awareness of exactly how it was formed. Consider Ms. Green, a partner in a prestigious law firm, who is interviewing candidates for the position of associate in her firm. When she interviews Mr. Jones, a young African-American attorney, she has an immediate negative impression, finding him to be arrogant and lacking the kind of brilliance she looks for in new associates. Ms. Green decides that her impression of Mr. Jones was accurate and at a meeting of the partners, argues against hiring him. She wonders, however, whether her negative evaluation was influenced by Mr. Jones' race. Ms. Green may have suffered from mental contamination, which Wilson and Brekke (1994) defined as unconscious or uncontrollable mental processing that results in unwanted judgments, emotions, or behavior. Her dilemma illustrates the difficulty of knowing whether one's responses are contaminated, and if so, how to correct them. In this chapter, we review and update the arguments made by Wilson and Brekke (1994) concerning mental contamination, and also address several questions about the ways in which people try to protect their minds from unwanted influences.

Nancy Brekke

Papers

Mental contamination and mental correction: unwanted influences on judgments and evaluations.

A New Look at Anchoring Effects: Basic Anchoring and Its Antecedents

Sex stereotypes and social judgment.

Expert Psychological Testimony in Rape Trials: A Social-Cognitive Analysis

Mental contamination and the debiasing problem.