scholarly journals The anchoring bias reflects rational use of cognitive resources

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Falk Lieder ◽  
Tom Griffiths ◽  
Quentin J.M. Huys ◽  
Noah D. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Process Model ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Reasoning Under Uncertainty ◽  
Rational Analysis ◽  
Rational Use ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Anchoring Bias

Cognitive biases, such as the anchoring bias, pose a serious challenge to rational accounts of human cognition. We investigate whether rational theories can meet this challenge by taking into account the mind’s bounded cognitive resources. We asked what reasoning under uncertainty would look like if people made rational use of their finite time and limited cognitive resources. To answer this question, we applied a mathematical theory of bounded rationality to the problem of numerical estimation. Our analysis led to a rational process model that can be interpreted in terms of anchoring-and-adjustment. This model provided a unifying explanation for ten anchoring phenomena including the differential effect of accuracy motivation on the bias towards provided versus self-generated anchors. Our results illustrate the potential of resource-rational analysis to provide formal theories that can unify a wide range of empirical results and reconcile the impressive capacities of the human mind with its apparently irrational cognitive biases.

Resource-rational analysis: Understanding human cognition as the optimal use of limited computational resources

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Falk Lieder ◽  
Thomas L. Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Cognitive Modeling ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Architectures ◽  
Rational Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Constraints ◽  
Rational Models ◽  
And Linguistics

Abstract Modeling human cognition is challenging because there are infinitely many mechanisms that can generate any given observation. Some researchers address this by constraining the hypothesis space through assumptions about what the human mind can and cannot do, while others constrain it through principles of rationality and adaptation. Recent work in economics, psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics has begun to integrate both approaches by augmenting rational models with cognitive constraints, incorporating rational principles into cognitive architectures, and applying optimality principles to understanding neural representations. We identify the rational use of limited resources as a unifying principle underlying these diverse approaches, expressing it in a new cognitive modeling paradigm called resource-rational analysis. The integration of rational principles with realistic cognitive constraints makes resource-rational analysis a promising framework for reverse-engineering cognitive mechanisms and representations. It has already shed new light on the debate about human rationality and can be leveraged to revisit classic questions of cognitive psychology within a principled computational framework. We demonstrate that resource-rational models can reconcile the mind's most impressive cognitive skills with people's ostensive irrationality. Resource-rational analysis also provides a new way to connect psychological theory more deeply with artificial intelligence, economics, neuroscience, and linguistics.

scholarly journals Empirical evidence for resource-rational anchoring and adjustment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Falk Lieder ◽  
Tom Griffiths ◽  
Quentin J.M. Huys ◽  
Noah D. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Finite Time ◽  
Initial Guess ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Rational Use ◽  
Anchoring Bias ◽  
Error Cost ◽  
Cost Of Time ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Speed Accuracy ◽  
Accuracy Tradeoff

People’s estimates of numerical quantities are systematically biased towards their initial guess. This anchoring bias is usually interpreted as sign of human irrationality, but it has recently been suggested that the anchoring bias instead results from people’s rational use of their finite time and limited cognitive resources. If this were true, then adjustment should decrease with the relative cost of time. To test this hypothesis, we designed a new numerical estimation paradigm that controls people’s knowledge and varies the cost of time and error independently while allowing people to invest as much or as little time and effort into refining their estimate as they wish. Two experimentsconfirmed the prediction that adjustment decreases with time cost but increases with error cost regardless of whether the anchor was self-generated or provided. These results support the hypothesis that people rationally adapt their number of adjustments to achieve a near-optimal speed-accuracy tradeoff. This suggests that the anchoring bias might be a signature of the rational use of finite time and limited cognitive resources rather than a sign of human irrationality.

Uncovering cognitive constraints is the bottleneck in resource-rational analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cvetomir Dimov
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Cognitive Architectures ◽  
Rational Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Constraints ◽  
Major Constraint ◽  
The Mind

Abstract A major constraint in resource-rational analysis is cognitive resources. Yet, uncovering the nature of individual components of the human mind has progressed slowly, because even the simplest behavior is a function of most (if not all) of the mind. Accelerating our understanding of the mind's structure requires more efforts in developing cognitive architectures.

scholarly journals The anchoring bias reflects rational use of cognitive resources

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 322-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Falk Lieder ◽  
Thomas L. Griffiths ◽  
Quentin J. M. Huys ◽  
Noah D. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Rational Use ◽  
Anchoring Bias

scholarly journals Over-representation of extreme events in decision-making reflects rational use of cognitive resources

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Falk Lieder ◽  
Tom Griffiths ◽  
Ming Hsu
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Expected Utility ◽  
Extreme Events ◽  
Finite Time ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Memory Recall ◽  
Wide Range

People’s decisions and judgments are disproportionately swayed by improbable but extreme eventualities, such as terrorism, that come to mind easily. This article explores whether such availability biases can be reconciled with rational information processing by taking into account the fact that decision-makers value their time and have limited cognitive resources. Our analysis suggests that to make optimal use of their finite time decision-makers should over-represent the most important potential consequences relative to less important, put potentially more probable, outcomes. To evaluate this account we derive and test a model we call utility-weighted sampling. Utility-weighted sampling estimates the expected utility of potential actions by simulating their outcomes. Critically, outcomes with more extreme utilities have a higher probability of being simulated. We demonstrate that this model can explain not only people’s availability bias in judging the frequency of extreme events but also a wide range of cognitive biases in decisions from experience, decisions from description, and memory recall.

scholarly journals Bad World: The Negativity Bias in International Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 96-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic D.P. Johnson ◽  
Dominic Tierney
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Negative Information ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Negativity Bias ◽  
Positive Information ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Research

A major puzzle in international relations is why states privilege negative over positive information. States tend to inflate threats, exhibit loss aversion, and learn more from failures than from successes. Rationalist accounts fail to explain this phenomenon, because systematically overweighting bad over good may in fact undermine state interests. New research in psychology, however, offers an explanation. The “negativity bias” has emerged as a fundamental principle of the human mind, in which people's response to positive and negative information is asymmetric. Negative factors have greater effects than positive factors across a wide range of psychological phenomena, including cognition, motivation, emotion, information processing, decision-making, learning, and memory. Put simply, bad is stronger than good. Scholars have long pointed to the role of positive biases, such as overconfidence, in causing war, but negative biases are actually more pervasive and may represent a core explanation for patterns of conflict. Positive and negative dispositions apply in different contexts. People privilege negative information about the external environment and other actors, but positive information about themselves. The coexistence of biases can increase the potential for conflict. Decisionmakers simultaneously exaggerate the severity of threats and exhibit overconfidence about their capacity to deal with them. Overall, the negativity bias is a potent force in human judgment and decisionmaking, with important implications for international relations theory and practice.

scholarly journals Cognitive Biases in Criminal Case Evaluation: A Review of the Research

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Meterko ◽  
Glinda Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Criminal Case ◽  
Supporting Evidence ◽  
Case Evaluation ◽  
Complex Stimuli ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Specific Factors

AbstractPsychological heuristics are an adaptive part of human cognition, helping us operate efficiently in a world full of complex stimuli. However, these mental shortcuts also have the potential to undermine the search for truth in a criminal investigation. We reviewed 30 social science research papers on cognitive biases in criminal case evaluations (i.e., integrating and drawing conclusions based on the totality of the evidence in a criminal case), 18 of which were based on police participants or an examination of police documents. Only two of these police participant studies were done in the USA, with the remainder conducted in various European countries. The studies provide supporting evidence that lay people and law enforcement professionals alike are vulnerable to confirmation bias, and there are other environmental, individual, and case-specific factors that may exacerbate this risk. Six studies described or evaluated the efficacy of intervention strategies, with varying evidence of success. Further research, particularly in the USA, is needed to evaluate different approaches to protect criminal investigations from cognitive biases.

Nothing in Popular Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gad Saad
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychology Today ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Song Lyrics

An evolutionary lens can inform the study of cultural forms in a myriad of ways. These can be construed as adaptations, as exaptations (evolutionary byproducts), as gene–culture interactions, as memes, or as fossils of the human mind. Products of popular culture (e.g., song lyrics, movie themes, romance novels) are to evolutionary cultural theorists what fossils and skeletal remains represent to paleontologists. Although human minds do not fossilize or skeletonize (the cranium does), the cultural products created by human minds do. By identifying universally recurring themes for a given cultural form (song lyrics and collective wisdoms in the current article), spanning a wide range of cultures and time periods, one is able to test key tenets of evolutionary psychology. In addition to using evolutionary psychology to understand the contents of popular culture, the discipline can itself be studied as a contributor to popular culture. Beginning with the sociobiology debates in the 1970s, evolutionary informed analyses of human behavior have engendered great fascination and animus among the public at large. Following a brief summary of studies that have explored the diffusion of the evolutionary behavioral sciences within specific communities (e.g., the British media), I offer a case analysis of the penetration of evolutionary psychology within the blogosphere, specifically the blog community hosted by Psychology Today.

Précis ofUnified theories of cognition

1992 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Newell
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
Syllogistic Reasoning ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Unified Theories

AbstractThe book presents the case that cognitive science should turn its attention to developing theories of human cognition that cover the full range of human perceptual, cognitive, and action phenomena. Cognitive science has now produced a massive number of high-quality regularities with many microtheories that reveal important mechanisms. The need for integration is pressing and will continue to increase. Equally important, cognitive science now has the theoretical concepts and tools to support serious attempts at unified theories. The argument is made entirely by presenting an exemplar unified theory of cognition both to show what a real unified theory would be like and to provide convincing evidence that such theories are feasible. The exemplar is SOAR, a cognitive architecture, which is realized as a software system. After a detailed discussion of the architecture and its properties, with its relation to the constraints on cognition in the real world and to existing ideas in cognitive science, SOAR is used as theory for a wide range of cognitive phenomena: immediate responses (stimulus-response compatibility and the Sternberg phenomena); discrete motor skills (transcription typing); memory and learning (episodic memory and the acquisition of skill through practice); problem solving (cryptarithmetic puzzles and syllogistic reasoning); language (sentence verification and taking instructions); and development (transitions in the balance beam task). The treatments vary in depth and adequacy, but they clearly reveal a single, highly specific, operational theory that works over the entire range of human cognition, SOAR is presented as an exemplar unified theory, not as the sole candidate. Cognitive science is not ready yet for a single theory – there must be multiple attempts. But cognitive science must begin to work toward such unified theories.

Level of Automation Forms a Key Aspect of Autonomy Design

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mica R. Endsley
Keyword(s):  
Situation Awareness ◽  
Interface Design ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Level Of Automation ◽  
Out Of The Loop ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Levels Of Automation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact

The concept of different levels of automation (LOAs) has been pervasive in the automation literature since its introduction by Sheridan and Verplanck. LOA taxonomies have been very useful in guiding understanding of how automation affects human cognition and performance, with several practical and theoretical benefits. Over the past several decades a wide body of research has been conducted on the impact of various LOAs on human performance, workload, and situation awareness (SA). LOA has a significant effect on operator SA and level of engagement that helps to ameliorate out-of-the-loop performance problems. Together with other aspects of system design, including adaptive automation, granularity of control, and automation interface design, LOA is a fundamental design characteristic that determines the ability of operators to provide effective oversight and interaction with system autonomy. LOA research provides a solid foundation for guiding the creation of effective human–automation interaction, which is critical for the wide range of autonomous and semiautonomous systems currently being developed across many industries.

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