Do Smarter People Employ Better Decision Strategies? The Influence of Intelligence on Adaptive Use of the Recognition Heuristic

Martha Michalkiewicz; Katja Arden; Edgar Erdfelder

doi:10.1002/bdm.2040

Do Smarter People Employ Better Decision Strategies? The Influence of Intelligence on Adaptive Use of the Recognition Heuristic

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making ◽

10.1002/bdm.2040 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 3-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Martha Michalkiewicz ◽

Katja Arden ◽

Edgar Erdfelder

Keyword(s):

Recognition Heuristic ◽

Decision Strategies ◽

Adaptive Use

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When prior knowledge overrules new evidence: Adaptive use of decision strategies and the role of behavioral routines 1The paper is based on a presentation held at the 16th SPUDM conference in Leeds, 1997. The research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to Klaus Fiedler and Tilmann Betsch, within the Sonderforschungsbereich 504 at the Universities of Mannheim and Heidelberg. We are grateful to Frank Siebler for programming the Mouselab. Thanks are due to Susanne Haberstroh, Arndt Bröder, Bronwyn Jones and Esther Goldbloom for many helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper.

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024//1421-0185.58.3.151 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 58 (3) ◽

pp. 151-160 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Tilmann Betsch ◽

Babette Julia Brinkmann ◽

Klaus Fiedler ◽

Katja Breining

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Time Pressure ◽

Time Lapse ◽

Second Phase ◽

Decision Strategies ◽

Adaptive Use ◽

Human Ability ◽

Two Phases ◽

Adaptive Decision Making ◽

New Evidence

This paper focuses on behavioral routines in adaptive decision making. In an experiment consisting of two phases, participants worked on recurrent, multiattribute choice problems. In the first phase, routines were induced by relying upon the human ability to adapt to situational changes by changing decision strategies. To induce strategy change, time pressure was varied as a within factor. Payoffs were manipulated so that an adaptive change in strategy led participants to maximize choice frequency for one out of three options (routine acquisition). After a one week time lapse, participants worked on similar problems, containing the previously preferred routine option. In this second phase, payoffs favored deviation from the routine option. Results showed that choices were almost perfectly calibrated to payoffs under low time pressure. However, if time pressure increased, participants were more likely to prefer the routine option, even though search strategies were still used adaptively and evidence discouraged routine selection. Results are discussed with reference to the model of adaptive decision making ( Payne, Bettman & Johnson, 1993 ), and the MODE model of attitude-behavior relation ( Fazio, 1990 ).

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Recognizing Users of the Recognition Heuristic

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169.55.6.394 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 55 (6) ◽

pp. 394-401 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Benjamin E. Hilbig ◽

Rüdiger F. Pohl

Keyword(s):

Decision Makers ◽

Recognition Heuristic ◽

Inference Strategy

The recognition heuristic is hypothesized to be a frugal inference strategy assuming that inferences are based on the recognition cue alone. This assumption, however, has been questioned by existing research. At the same time most studies rely on the proportion of choices consistent with the heuristic as a measure of its use which may not be fully appropriate. In this study, we propose an index to identify true users of the heuristic contrasting them to decision makers who incorporate further knowledge beyond recognition. The properties and the applicability of the proposed index are investigated in the reanalyses of four published experiments and corroborated by a new study drawn up to rectify the shortcomings of the reanalyzed experiments. Applying the proposed index to explore the influence of knowledge we found that participants who were more knowledgeable made use of the information available to them and achieved the highest proportion of correct inferences.

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