Social behavior is ordinarily treated as being under conscious (if not always thoughtful) control. However, considerable evidence now supports the view that social behavior often operates in an implicit or unconscious fashion. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that past experience influences judgment in a fashion not introspectively known by the actor. The present conclusion--that attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation--extends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology. Methodologically, this review calls for increased use of indirect measures--which are imperative in studies of implicit cognition. The theorized ordinariness of implicit stereotyping is consistent with recent findings of discrimination by people who explicitly disavow prejudice. The finding that implicit cognitive effects are often reduced by focusing judges' attention on their judgment task provides a basis for evaluating applications (such as affirmative action) aimed at reducing such unintended discrimination.

/pdf/implicit-social-cognition-attitudes-self-esteem-and-2j32pp6h9o.pdf

Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes.

Fast and frugal heuristics - simple rules for making decisions with realistic mental resources - are presented here. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices, classifications, and predictions by employing bounded rationality. But when and how can such fast and frugal heuristics work? What heuristics are in the mind's adaptive toolbox, and what building blocks compose them? Can judgments based simply on a single reason be as accurate as those based on many reasons? Could less knowledge even lead to systematically better predictions than more knowledge? This book explores these questions by developing computational models of heuristics and testing them through experiments and analysis. It shows how fast and frugal heuristics can yield adaptive decisions in situations as varied as choosing a mate, dividing resources among offspring, predicting high school drop-out rates, and playing the stock market.

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart

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

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?

The program of research now known as the heuristics and biases approach began with a survey of 84 participants at the 1969 meetings of the Mathematical Psychology Society and the American Psychological Association (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971). The respondents, including several authors of statistics texts, were asked realistic questions about the robustness of statistical estimates and the replicability of research results. The article commented tongue-in-heek on the prevalence of a belief that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well: Respondents placed too much confidence in the results of small samples, and their statistical judgments showed little sensitivity to sample size. The mathematical psychologists who participated in the survey not only should have known better – they did know better. Although their intuitive guesses were off the mark, most of them could have computed the correct answers on the back of an envelope. These sophisticated individuals apparently had access to two distinct approaches for answering statistical questions: one that is spontaneous, intuitive, effortless, and fast; and another that is deliberate, rule-governed, effortful, and slow. The persistence of large biases in the guesses of experts raised doubts about the educability of statistical intuitions. Moreover, it was known that the same biases affect choices in the real world, where researchers commonly select sample sizes that are too small to provide a fair test of their hypotheses (Cohen, 1969, 1992).

Representativeness revisited: Attribute substitution in intuitive judgment.

Hindsight: Biased judgments of past events after the outcomes are known.

In three learning experiments we examined how subjects' level of involvement during initial exposure to consumer trivia influences what they learn and what they subsequently come to believe. Subjects rated consumer trivia statements as more true when they had been exposed to those statements earlier in the experiment. Simple repetition increased subsequent truth ratings. Moreover, when subjects processed the information during initial exposure in a less involving fashion, the effect of repetition on truth became more pronounced. Familiarity emerged as a key mediator of the truth effect. When subjects experienced an “it rings a bell” reaction, they judged the information to be more true. Finally, under low-involvement processing, the truth effect increased when subjects engaged in a processing task (rote rehearsal) that increased familiarity without increasing evaluative processing of the information.

Low-Involvement Learning: Memory without Evaluation

Ss expressed preferences between pairs of decision alternatives characterized by 2 attributes, for example, price and quality. They were more likely to prefer the alternative that was superior with respect to the most important attribute when making choices and strength-of-preference judgments than when making matching and monetary-equivalent value judgments. Rating scale judgments fell between these two extremes. These findings extend the previously established choice versus matching prominence effect (Tversky, Sattath, & Slovic, 1988) to a more general qualitative versus quantitative task prominence effect. The data support the strategy-compatibility interpretation of the prominence effect. They also show that in riskless decision making, the generalized prominence effect is much stronger than simple scale-compatibility effects

Strategy compatibility, scale compatibility, and the prominence effect.

This research examines the impact of age-related deficits in recognition and source memory on repetition-induced increases in belief in fictitious statements (the “truth effect”). Young and elderly subjects made recognition-memory judgments and rated the credibility of new and previously presented statements. Experiment 1 assessed the level of memory impairment in the elderly, as compared to the young, and its influence on the truth effect. The elderly, who had a greater tendency to make false-alarm errors in recognition and had poorer source memory for the claims, were more susceptible to the truth-inflating effect of repetition than were the young. Deeper (semantic vs. perceptual) processing was ineffective in reducing age-related deficits in memory or sensitivity to repetition-induced beliefs. Experiment 2 demonstrated that an imagery encoding task did provide more environmental support (a greater improvement in recognition and source memory for the elderly than the young) than did a perceptual encoding task. When both young and elderly subjects engaged in an imagery task during encoding, their memory performance was equivalent and age-related differences in the truth effect were abolished. Thus, it appears that the elderly are more susceptible to the truth-inflating effect of repetition, and this effect seems to be mediated via their poor memory. However, if memory is enhanced using environmental support, the elderly are no longer especially vulnerable to the truth effect.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/209529

Repetition-Induced Belief in the Elderly: Rehabilitating Age-Related Memory Deficits

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/2055.pdf

Scott A. Hawkins

Papers

Hindsight: Biased judgments of past events after the outcomes are known.

Low-Involvement Learning: Memory without Evaluation

Strategy compatibility, scale compatibility, and the prominence effect.

Repetition-Induced Belief in the Elderly: Rehabilitating Age-Related Memory Deficits

Advertising repetition and quality perception