The role of age and prior beliefs in contingency judgment

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 875-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon A. Mutter ◽  
Laura M. Strain ◽  
Leslie F. Plumlee
Keyword(s):  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Contingency Judgment

Reducing misperceptions through news stories with data visualization: The role of readers’ prior knowledge and prior beliefs

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110287
Author(s):  
Paul Mena
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Data Visualization ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Graphical Representations ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Issue Involvement

Amid the global discussion on ways to fight misinformation, journalists have been writing stories with graphical representations of data to expose misperceptions and provide readers with more accurate information. Employing an experimental design, this study explored to what extent news stories correcting misperceptions are effective in reducing them when the stories include data visualization and how influential readers’ prior beliefs, issue involvement and prior knowledge may be in that context. The study found that the presence of data visualization in news articles correcting misperceptions significantly enhanced the reduction of misperceptions among news readers with less than average prior knowledge about an issue. In addition, it was found that prior beliefs had a significant effect on news readers’ misperceptions regardless of the presence or absence of data visualization. In this way, this research offers some support for the notion that data visualization may be useful to decrease misperceptions under certain circumstances.

scholarly journals Optimistic amnesia: how online and offline processing shape belief updating and memory biases in immediate and long-term optimism biases

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziqing Yao ◽  
Xuanyi Lin ◽  
Xiaoqing Hu
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Belief Updating ◽  
Estimation Task ◽  
Memory Biases ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Adverse Life Event ◽  
Offline Processing

Abstract When people are confronted with feedback that counters their prior beliefs, they preferentially rely on desirable rather than undesirable feedback in belief updating, i.e. an optimism bias. In two pre-registered EEG studies employing an adverse life event probability estimation task, we investigated the neurocognitive processes that support the formation and the change of optimism biases in immediate and 24 h delayed tests. We found that optimistic belief updating biases not only emerged immediately but also became significantly larger after 24 h, suggesting an active role of valence-dependent offline consolidation processes in the change of optimism biases. Participants also showed optimistic memory biases: they were less accurate in remembering undesirable than desirable feedback probabilities, with inferior memories of undesirable feedback associated with lower belief updating in the delayed test. Examining event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed that desirability of feedback biased initial encoding: desirable feedback elicited larger P300s than undesirable feedback, with larger P300 amplitudes predicting both higher belief updating and memory accuracies. These results suggest that desirability of feedback could bias both online and offline memory-related processes such as encoding and consolidation, with both processes contributing to the formation and change of optimism biases.

Changing minds about climate change: a pervasive role for domain-general metacognition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manos Tsakiris ◽  
Neza Vehar ◽  
Stephen M Fleming ◽  
Sophie De Beukelaer ◽  
Max Rollwage
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Negative Evidence ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
The Face ◽  
Metacognitive Abilities ◽  
Insight Into

Updating one’s beliefs about the causes and effects of climate change is crucial for altering attitudes and behaviours. Importantly, metacognitive abilities - insight into the (in)correctness of one’s beliefs- play a key role in the formation of polarized beliefs. We investigated the role of domain-general and domain-specific metacognition in updating prior beliefs about climate change across the spectrum of climate change scepticism. We also considered the role of how climate science is communicated in the form of textual or visuo-textual presentations. We show that climate change scepticism is associated with differences in domain-general as well as domain-specific metacognitive abilities. Moreover, domain-general metacognitive sensitivity influenced belief updating in an asymmetric way : lower domain-general metacognition decreased the updating of prior beliefs, especially in the face of negative evidence. Our findings highlight the role of metacognitive failures in revising erroneous beliefs about climate change and point to their adverse social effects.

Prior Beliefs and Ambiguity Attitudes in Decision from Experience

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilke Aydogan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Decision Model ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Subjective Probabilities ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Decisions From Experience ◽  
Ambiguity Attitudes ◽  
Existing Data

Prior beliefs and their updating play a crucial role in decisions under uncertainty, and theories about them have been well established in classical Bayesianism. Yet, they are almost absent for ambiguous decisions from experience. This paper proposes a new decision model that incorporates the role of prior beliefs, beyond the role of ambiguity attitudes, into the analysis of such decisions. Hence, it connects ambiguity theories, popular in economics, with decision from experience, popular (mostly) in psychology, to the benefit of both. A reanalysis of some existing data sets from the literature on decisions from experience shows that the model that incorporates prior beliefs into the estimation of subjective probabilities outperforms the commonly used model that approximates subjective probabilities with observed relative frequencies. Controlling for subjective priors, we obtain more accurate measurements of ambiguity attitudes, and thus a new explanation of the gap between decision from description and decision from experience. This paper was accepted by Manel Baucells, decision analysis.

scholarly journals The Role of Experimenter Belief in Social Priming

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thandiwe S. E. Gilder ◽  
Erin A. Heerey
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Interaction Partner ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Prime Condition ◽  
Participant Behavior

Research suggests that stimuli that prime social concepts can fundamentally alter people’s behavior. However, most researchers who conduct priming studies fail to explicitly report double-blind procedures. Because experimenter expectations may influence participant behavior, we asked whether a short pre-experiment interaction between participants and experimenters would contribute to priming effects when experimenters were not blind to participant condition. An initial double-blind experiment failed to demonstrate the expected effects of a social prime on executive cognition. To determine whether double-blind procedures caused this result, we independently manipulated participants’ exposure to a prime and experimenters’ belief about which prime participants received. Across four experiments, we found that experimenter belief, rather than prime condition, altered participant behavior. Experimenter belief also altered participants’ perceptions of their experimenter, suggesting that differences in experimenter behavior across conditions caused the effect. Findings reinforce double-blind designs as experimental best practice and suggest that people’s prior beliefs have important consequences for shaping behavior with an interaction partner.

scholarly journals Attention Discrimination: Theory and Field Experiments with Monitoring Information Acquisition

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (6) ◽  
pp. 1437-1475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vojtěch Bartoš ◽  
Michal Bauer ◽  
Julie Chytilová ◽  
Filip Matějka
Keyword(s):  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Rental Housing ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Effort Level ◽  
Standard Models ◽  
The One ◽  
Rental Housing Market

We integrate tools to monitor information acquisition in field experiments on discrimination and examine whether gaps arise already when decision makers choose the effort level for reading an application. In both countries we study, negatively stereotyped minority names reduce employers' effort to inspect resumes. In contrast, minority names increase information acquisition in the rental housing market. Both results are consistent with a model of endogenous allocation of costly attention, which magnifies the role of prior beliefs and preferences beyond the one considered in standard models of discrimination. The findings have implications for magnitude of discrimination, returns to human capital and policy. (JEL C93, D83, J15, J16, J24, J71, R31)

scholarly journals Stability and Bayesian Consistency in Two-Sided Markets

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (8) ◽  
pp. 2625-2666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingmin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Information Asymmetry ◽  
Rational Expectations ◽  
Competitive Equilibrium ◽  
Pairwise Stability ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
The Core ◽  
Role Of Information ◽  
Two Sided Markets

We propose a criterion of stability for two-sided markets with asymmetric information. A central idea is to formulate off-path beliefs conditional on counterfactual pairwise deviations and on-path beliefs in the absence of such deviations. A matching-belief configuration is stable if the matching is individually rational with respect to the system of on-path beliefs and is not blocked with respect to the system of off-path beliefs. The formulation provides a language for assessing matching outcomes with respect to their supporting beliefs and opens the door to further belief-based refinements. The main refinement analyzed in the paper requires the Bayesian consistency of on-path and off-path beliefs with prior beliefs. We define concepts of Bayesian efficiency, the rational expectations competitive equilibrium, and the core. Their contrast with pairwise stability manifests the role of information asymmetry in matching formation. (JEL C78, D40, D82, D83)

Exploring Prospective EFL Teachers' Beliefs About Teachers and Teaching Through Metaphor Analysis

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-147
Author(s):  
Anıl Rakıcıoğlu-Söylemez ◽  
Ayşe Selmin Söylemez ◽  
Amanda Yeşilbursa
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Prospective Teachers ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Mentoring Practices ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
Efl Teachers

This study aimed to explore prospective EFL teachers' metaphors of “teachers, teaching and being a prospective EFL teacher” at the beginning and the end of a ten-week practicum course. A total of 110 Turkish prospective EFL teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and metaphor-elicitation forms. Results lead to three major conclusions. First, the participants' prior beliefs about the role of an EFL teacher and teaching were affected by their previous experiences as language learners. Second, although the content analysis of the metaphors revealed a limited change throughout the practicum experience, the analysis of the interviews showed the dynamic nature of beliefs held by the prospective teachers. Finally, data analysis of the interviews revealed that the variation in beliefs and practices mainly derived from individual experiences with mentoring practices of the cooperating teachers and the socio-professional context of the practicum school.

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