The Psychology of Judgment
and Decision Making
Scott Plous Wesleyan University, 1993
Overview
 Compendium that aggregates decades of research on judgment and decision
making
 Primarily from Psychology, but pulls in a few other fields
 Our approach today:
 Complete the Reader survey as a class
 Walk through each chapter
 Describe the concepts
 Discuss examples from reader survey
 Discuss application to MIS research
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Section I
Perception, Memory, and Context
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Ch1: Selective Perception
 There is no such thing as immaculate
perception. What you see depends
upon what you thought before you
looked.
-Myron Tribus
 There is no such thing as context-free
decision making. All judgments and
decisions rest on the way we see and
interpret the world.
-Scott Plous
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Ch2: Cognitive Dissonance
 We are motivated to reduce or avoid psychological inconsistencies
 Self-perception theory
 Dissonance has more to do with how people infer their beliefs from watching
themselves behave
 The brain wants the world to make sense and will create explanations such that it does
 i.e. if I perform a task for a small amount of money, I must derive enjoyment from
the task, but if I was highly compensated, I was motivated by the money.
 Can be pre-decisional or post-decisional
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Ch2: Cognitive Dissonance
Relevance to MIS
 System design
 User behavior
 Deception detection
 Induces physiological changes
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Ch3: Memory and Hindsight Biases
 What is memory?
 Not copies of experiences on deposit in a data bank
 Reconstructive, dependent upon contextual factors
 Hindsight bias
 Tendency to view what has already happened as inevitable and obvious without
recognizing that retrospective knowledge is influencing one’s judgment
 Strategies to avoid
 Stop to consider reasons why the results may have turned out differently
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Ch3: Memory and Hindsight Biases – survey examples
 Memory is reconstructive and
highly dependent upon contextual
factors:
 (34b) "The ants in the kitchen ate
the sweet jelly which was on the
table."
 (34a) "The ants ate the jelly which
was on the table."
 Did this sentence appeared before
or not? Confidence rating: ___
 Did this sentence appeared before
or not? Confidence rating: ___
 (34c) "The ants ate the sweet
jelly."
 Did this sentence appeared before
or not? Confidence rating: ___
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Ch3: Memory and Hindsight Biases
Relevance to MIS
 System design
 System adoption
 Acceptance of technology
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Ch4: Context Dependence
 Contrast effects
 Our perceptions can be different based upon the context in which they occur
 Hot, cold, warm water
 Primacy effect
 Characteristics appearing early influence impressions more than ones appearing later
 Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent
vs.
 Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious
 Recency effect
 Able to remember more recent information more readily than older information
 Halo effect
 Tendency to treat a set of characteristics in a similar manner – all high, all low – even
when they should not necessarily be related
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Ch4: Context Dependence
Relevance to MIS
 System design
 How interfaces are perceived (contrast/halo)
 Efficiency – what do you look at first and how does that impact context/decisions
 Recency – what does the system expect the user to remember (use/training)
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Section II
How questions affect answers
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Ch5: Plasticity
 Plasticity: Malleability of responses based on situation
 Order effects
 The order in which questions are asked can influence the perceived context and as a result
influence responses
 Pseudo-opinions




When people are familiar with an issue, context and order produce marginal changes of opinion
When people have little familiarity, they are more easily influenced
If they know nothing, sometimes they will still offer a “pseudo-opinion”
Can drastically influence political affairs
 Inconsistency
 Discrepancy between two related attitudes or between an attitude and a corresponding behavior
 Can illustrate cognitive dissonance and also that situational factors can introduce complications –
abstract attitudes can bear little relation to specific actions
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Ch5: Plasticity
Relevance to MIS
 System design
 Order effects in UI
 Adoption
 Pseudo-opinions and inconsistency can impact project success
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Ch6: The Effects of Question Wording and Framing
It’s not what you ask
It’s how you ask
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Ch6: The Effects of Question Wording and Framing (cont.)
 Word choice, safe vs. safer
 Forced choice (e.g., faster vs. slower) vs. middle category (e.g., faster vs. same as
now vs. slower)
 Open (fill in the blank) vs. closed (a, b, c, and or d, etc.)
 Norbert Schwarz et al. noted “Response scales are not simply ‘measurement
devices’ that respondents use to report their behaviors. Rather . . . respondents
may use the range of behaviors [emphasis added] described in the response
alternatives as a frame of reference in estimating and evaluating their own
behavior [emphasis added]” (as cited in Plous 1993, p. 67).
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Ch6: The Effects of Question Wording and Framing (cont.)
 Social desirability – some answers may be more socially desirable than others
 Allowing vs. forbidding
 Types of speech
 Peep shows, X-rated movies
 “Framing”
 Tversky and Kahneman stated a decision frame [emphasis added] is “the decision
maker's conception of the acts, outcomes, and contingencies associated with a
particular choice” (as cited in Plous 1993, p. 69).
 Very, very important in information security, gain security or lose freedom
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Ch6: The Effects of Question Wording and Framing (cont.)
 Deductive logic
 “Extra” taxes for childless families, not tax deductions for families with children
 Psychological accounting
 Psychological accounting requires some notion of reference points/accounts.
 We just saw an MIS Speaker Series on Mental Accounting (without reference).
 Before relying on results from survey research [emphasis added] and other studies
of judgment and decision making [emphasis added], it is important to consider
how people's answers would have changed as a function of factors such as:
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Ch6: The Effects of Question Wording and Framing (cont.)
 The order in which the questions
were presented
 The range of suggested response
alternatives
 The context in which the questions
appeared
 The order in which response
alternatives were presented
 Whether the question format was
open or closed
 Whether middle categories were
provided
 Whether the questions were
filtered
 Whether problems were framed in
terms of gains or losses
 Whether the questions contained
catch phrases
* More to come
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Ch6: The Effects of Question Wording and Framing
Relevance to MIS
 Measures
 Survey or not, you have to ask questions
 System design
 UI Question wording and framing
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Section IV
Heuristics and Biases
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Ch10: The Representativeness Heuristic
 The Law of Small Numbers
 The Hot Hand
 Neglecting Base Rates
 Nonregressive Prediction
 Clinical Versus Actuarial Prediction
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Ch10: The Representativeness Heuristic
Relevance to MIS
 System design
 What information do we present?
 How to mitigate heuristic based bias with UI design
 Decision making
 Understanding decision-making heuristics key to interpreting user behavior
 Summarization and dashboarding
 Are we providing the correct context (base rates, etc.)
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Ch11: The Availability Heuristic
 Availability Goes A Wry
 The Limits of Imagination
 Denial
 Nuclear war
 Vividness
 The Legal Significance of Guacamole
 A Disclaimer
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Ch11: The Availability Heuristic
Relevance to MIS
 System design
 What comparisons are people making when they interact with the system?
 Experiments and Measures
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Ch12: Probability and Risk
 Confusion of The Inverse
 It'll Never Happen To Me
 Compound Events
 Conservatism
 The Perception of Risk
 Do Accidents Make Us Safer?
 Recommendations
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Ch12: Probability and Risk
Relevance to MIS
 IT deployment and valuation
 User actions
 Experiments and Measures
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Ch13: Anchoring and Adjustment
 Thinking About The Unthinkable
 How Real is Real Estate?
 Further Examples of Anchoring
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Ch13: Anchoring and Adjustment
Relevance to MIS
 System design
 User interface
 What information is presented as anchor?
 IT Deployment and economics
 Experiments and Measures
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Ch14: The Perception of Randomness
 An Unlikely Development
 Luck And Superstition
 Recognizing Randomness
 Seeing Patterns In Randomness
 Can People Behave Randomly?
 Learning To Act Randomly
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Ch14: The Perception of Randomness
Relevance to MIS
 ADMIT & CAT
 People can be trained to behave randomly
 UI for data analysis and pattern recognition
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Ch15: Correlation, Causation, and Control
 Does God Answer Prayers?
 Illusory Correlation
 Invisible Correlations
 Getting By
 Causalation
 Heads I Win, Tails It's Chance
 The Kind Of Help That Doesn't Help
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Ch15: Correlation, Causation, and Control
Relevance to MIS
 Experiments and Measures
 Data analysis
 Researcher
 User
 Prescriptive systems and behavior change
 Perception of control
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Ch16: Attribution Theory
 Analysis of Variance Framework
 The Person - Consensus
 The Entity – Stimulus
 The Time – Circumstance
 A Lack Of Consensus
 Salience
 The Fundamental Attribution Error
 My Situation Is Your Disposition
 there is a pervasive tendency for actors to attribute their actions to situational requirements,
whereas observers tend to attribute the same actions to stable personal dispositions.
 Trading Places
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Ch16: Attribution Theory – cont.
 Clinical Implications
 For observers, the actor is most salient; for the actor, situational demands are salient
 Other Attributional Biases
 "self-serving" bias
 "egocentric" biases
 "positivity effect" is a tendency to attribute positive behaviors to dispositional factors and negative
behaviors to situational factors
 "negativity effect" disliked others the "ultimate attribution error“
 the tendency to ascribe less variability to others than to oneself
 Debiasing
 Pay Close Attention to Consensus: If most people behave similarly when confronted by the same
situation, a dispositional explanation is probably unwarranted. Instead, observers should look to
situational factors for an explanation of behavior.
 Ask How You Would Have Behaved In The Same Circumstance
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Ch16: Attribution Theory
Relevance to MIS
 Experiments and Measures
 Data analysis
 User behavior and prescriptive systems
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Section V
The Social Side of Judgment and Decision Making
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Ch17: Social Influences
 Social Facilitation
 Social Loafing
 Scene 1: "Let That Girl Alone!“
 Scene 2: Tunnel Vision
 Scene 3: Picking Up The Pieces
 Bystander Intervention
 Social Comparison Theory
 Taking Cues From Those Who Are Similar
 Social Analgesia
 Conformity
 Minority Influence
 Groupthink
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Ch17: Social Influences
Relevance to MIS
 Individual behavior when a group is present
 Motivation
 Experiments and Measures
 Social desirability
 Society and culture
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Ch18: Group Judgments and Decisions
 Group Errors and Biases
 Group Polarization
 Horse Sense
 Are Several Heads Better Than One?
 The Benefits Of Dictatorship
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Ch18: Group Judgments and Decisions
Relevance to MIS
 Group behavior and interactions
 System design
 Group Support Systems
 Online interaction
 Social networking
 Experimental design
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Section VI
Common Traps
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Ch19: Overconfidence
 The Case Of Joseph Kidd
 Extreme Confidence
 When Overconfidence Becomes A Capital Offense
 Calibration
 The Correlation Between Confidence And Accuracy
 How Can Overconfidence Be Reduced?
 Stop to consider reasons why your judgment might be wrong.
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Ch20: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
 Guess Again
 Self-Perpetuating Social Beliefs
 The Pygmalion Effect
 In The Minds Of Men
 Self-Fulfilling Racial Stereotypes
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Ch21: Behavioral Traps
 A Taxonomy Of Traps
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Time delay traps
Ignorance traps
Investment traps
Deterioration traps
Collective traps
 Prisoner's Dilemma
 How Much Would You Pay For A Dollar?
 Knee Deep In The Big Muddy
 The Great Escape
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Conclusions
 Psychological biases are an intrinsic part of the way humans make judgments and
decisions
 It is important to take these biases into consideration when conducting MIS
research
 System Design
 Experiment Design
 Biases impact not just subjects, but researchers themselves
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