Processing Style and Responsiveness to Corrective Information

The limited influence of corrective messages is one of the most striking observations in the misperceptions literature. We elaborate on this well-known outcome, showing that correction effectiveness varies according to recipients’ judgment strategy. Using data from two online experiments, we demonstrate that individuals’ responses to corrective messages are less biased by prior attitudes when they engage in on-line rather than memory-based processing. We also show that individuals are more responsive to one-sided messages under conditions of on-line rather than memory-based processing. Unexpectedly, two-sided messages, which repeat the inaccuracy before correcting it, performed better than one-sided messages among individuals using memory-based processes. These findings contribute to our understanding of fact-checking, and suggest strategies that could help promote greater responsiveness to corrective messages.

The Influence of Product Anthropomorphism on Comparative Judgment

The present research proposes a new perspective to investigate the effect of product anthropomorphism on consumers’ comparative judgment strategy in comparing two anthropomorphized (vs. two nonanthropomorphized) product options in a consideration set. Six experiments show that anthropomorphism increases consumers’ use of an absolute judgment strategy (vs. a dimension-by-dimension strategy) in comparative judgment, leading to increased preference for the option with a more favorable overall evaluation over the option with a greater number of superior dimensions. The effect is mediated by consumers’ perception of each anthropomorphized product alternative as an integrated entity rather than a bundle of separate attributes. The authors find the effect to be robust by directly tracing the process of participants’ information processing using MouseLab software and eye-tracking techniques, and by self-reported preferences and real consumption choices. Moreover, the effect is moderated by the motivation to seek maximized accuracy or ease. These studies have important implications for theories about anthropomorphism and comparative judgment as well as marketing practice.

The Judge

The judge is the singular source of authority, the figure in whose action judgment is embodied. Using Georges Rouault’s painting, The Judges, this chapter discusses the relationship between law, spectating, and feeling. Taking up a refrain from Walt Whitman, a poetic form of judging is argued for. Poetic judgment brings about a world framed by the creation of forms by which we can educate ourselves in the collective business of living. Strategy, understood as the presentation of an organization to itself and others, becomes a judgmental condition of bringing together general sensibility and particular experience to re-frame the places in which we live and work. This chapter introduces a reversal of visionary forms of strategy. With poetic judgment, strategy becomes an aesthetic process of creating organizational forms and we become increasingly and collectively aware of the vulnerable ordinary and its panoply of elusive and sometimes strange occurrences.

Learning from observation, feedback, and intervention in linear and non-linear task environments

This multiple-cue judgment study investigates whether we can manipulate the judgment strategy and increase accuracy in linear and non-linear cue–criterion environments just by changing the training mode. Three experiments show that accuracy in simple linear additive task environments are improved with feedback training and intervention training, while accuracy in complex multiplicative tasks are improved with observational training. The observed interaction effect suggests that the training mode invites different strategies that are adjusted as a function of experience to the demands from the underlying cue–criterion structure. Thus, feedback and the intervention training modes invite cue abstraction, an effortful but successful strategy in combination with simple linear task structures, and observational training invites exemplar memory processes, a simple but successful strategy in combination with complex non-linear task structures. The study discusses adaptive cognition and the implication of the different training modes across a life span and for clinical populations.

How Long Did I Wait? The Effect of Construal Levels on Consumers’ Wait Duration Judgments

We examine how construal levels affect wait duration judgments through two different routes: one based on consumers’ subjective feelings (an affective route) and the other based on mental markers (a cognitive route). We further identify the conditions under which the affective versus the cognitive route operates. We theorize that low-level construal people generate more wait-unrelated thoughts during the wait than high-level construal people. This difference in turn affects duration judgments in opposite directions depending on the judgment strategy that people use. People spontaneously rely on their subjective feelings—how long they feel they have waited. In this case, low- (vs. high-) level construal consumers, who are more distracted by their wait-unrelated thoughts, find the wait to be less boring and hence judge it to be shorter. However, when subjective feelings become less accessible (after a delay) or diagnostic (perceived as less trustworthy), or when mental markers become more accessible, people resort to the number of thoughts they had during the wait to infer the duration—the more thoughts they had, the longer it must have been. In this case, low- (vs. high-) level construal people perceive the wait to be longer. Results from five studies support the proposed framework.

A Method for the ORU Division of Manned Spacecraft

In order to make on-orbit maintenance easy, a division method for the orbital replaceable unit (ORU) of manned spacecraft is proposed. Selection range of ORU was determined based on analyzing on-orbit repair requirements of system. Then a logic judgment strategy for ORU division was established to obtain a preliminary partition scheme, and the verification method is used to adjust the scheme of ORU division. Finally, the proposed method is applied on a subsystem of a manned spacecraft and the partition scheme can ensure the balance of system performances, which indicate that the proposed method can provide a feasible approach to engineering implementation.

Haunted by a Doppelgänger

Judging other people is a common and important task. Every day professionals make decisions that affect the lives of other people when they diagnose medical conditions, grant parole, or hire new employees. To prevent discrimination, professional standards require that decision makers render accurate and unbiased judgments solely based on relevant information. Facial similarity to previously encountered persons can be a potential source of bias. Psychological research suggests that people only rely on similarity-based judgment strategies if the provided information does not allow them to make accurate rule-based judgments. Our study shows, however, that facial similarity to previously encountered persons influences judgment even in situations in which relevant information is available for making accurate rule-based judgments and where similarity is irrelevant for the task and relying on similarity is detrimental. In two experiments in an employment context we show that applicants who looked similar to high-performing former employees were judged as more suitable than applicants who looked similar to low-performing former employees. This similarity effect was found despite the fact that the participants used the relevant résumé information about the applicants by following a rule-based judgment strategy. These findings suggest that similarity-based and rule-based processes simultaneously underlie human judgment.