Memory and Judgment Bias in Retrospective Evaluations

Previous research has shown that people are biased when providing summary assessments about past experiences. Retrospective evaluations seem based on specific moments within the to-be-assessed episode (e.g., Fredrickson & Kahneman, 1993; Hogarth & Einhorn, 1992). Here, drawing on some of the parallelisms between memory phenomena and judgment and decision making biases (e.g., distinctiveness; Hunt, 2006), a memory-based approach is outlined and explored. By doing so, the research also addressed the broader debate surrounding the relationships between memory and judgment, fuelled by conflicting results about memory–judgment correlations (e.g., Hastie & Park, 1986). In the first set of studies, participants recalled lists of words, after having assessed each list for pleasantness. The results showed clear associations between memory and judgment, which appeared moderated by the cognitive demands associated with the memory task. Retrospective evaluations were predicted by both the content of recall and the ease with which distinctive information was brought to mind (Schwarz, 1998). The nature of these associations was further investigated in the second set of studies. By hindering the memorability of negative information, it was possible to reduce its impact on retrospective assessments; this finding can easily be interpreted if one assumes a causal relationship between memory and judgment. The last study corroborated the memory-based approach with more cohesive stimuli – namely short stories told through slideshows. These results also suggested that memory-judgment relationships are vulnerable to experiment-related factors; they are easily hindered if the way memory is probed is not aligned with the information that underlies the judgment task. Overall, the findings suggest that, in order to assess an event in retrospect, people rely on their memory but in a way that is biased by the relative availability of certain features of the event. These results are at odds with the predictions of on-line judgment theories (e.g., Anderson, 1989), which postulate functional independence between memory and judgment. The theoretical and practical implications of this work are discussed and future directions for research on the role of memory in retrospective evaluations are suggested

Preference Stability and Memory: Two Unlikely Companions

Do people have stable risk preferences? This important question has engaged normativ

Memory and judgment bias in retrospective evaluations

Previous research has shown that people are biased when providing summary assessments about past experiences. Retrospective evaluations seem based on specific moments within the to-be-assessed episode (e.g., Fredrickson & Kahneman, 1993; Hogarth & Einhorn, 1992). Here, drawing on some of the parallelisms between memory phenomena and judgment and decision making biases (e.g., distinctiveness; Hunt, 2006), a memory-based approach is outlined and explored. By doing so, the research also addressed the broader debate surrounding the relationships between memory and judgment, fuelled by conflicting results about memory–judgment correlations (e.g., Hastie & Park, 1986). In the first set of studies, participants recalled lists of words, after having assessed each list for pleasantness. The results showed clear associations between memory and judgment, which appeared moderated by the cognitive demands associated with the memory task. Retrospective evaluations were predicted by both the content of recall and the ease with which distinctive information was brought to mind (Schwarz, 1998). The nature of these associations was further investigated in the second set of studies. By hindering the memorability of negative information, it was possible to reduce its impact on retrospective assessments; this finding can easily be interpreted if one assumes a causal relationship between memory and judgment. The last study corroborated the memory-based approach with more cohesive stimuli – namely short stories told through slideshows. These results also suggested that memory-judgment relationships are vulnerable to experiment-related factors; they are easily hindered if the way memory is probed is not aligned with the information that underlies the judgment task. Overall, the findings suggest that, in order to assess an event in retrospect, people rely on their memory but in a way that is biased by the relative availability of certain features of the event. These results are at odds with the predictions of on-line judgment theories (e.g., Anderson, 1989), which postulate functional independence between memory and judgment. The theoretical and practical implications of this work are discussed and future directions for research on the role of memory in retrospective evaluations are suggested.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Explanations of comparative facts

A comparative fact can be presented in two ways. ‘Among white evangelical Christians, Obama had 40% fewer votes than McCain.’ or ‘Among white evangelical Christians, McCain had 40% more votes than Obama.’ Focusing on why Obama had fewer votes than McCain may result in a different explanation from focusing on why McCain had more votes than Obama, although it is the same fact. Thus what determines whether we focus in our explanation on Obama or McCain? In two studies, we show that people generally focused more on the first part of the comparative fact. However, when the comparative fact is presented in a negative frame (‘less … than’) there was a shift in focus from the first to the second part of the fact. For neutral items this moderating effect did not occur. The Principle of Lexical Marking (Clark, 1969) and Loss Aversion (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) are discussed as possible accounts for this shift in focus

Context moderates priming effects on financial risk taking

Previous research has shown that risk preferences are sensitive to the financial domain in which they are framed. In the present paper, we explore whether the effect of negative priming on risk taking is moderated by financial context. A total of 120 participants completed questionnaires, where risky choices were framed in six different financial scenarios. Half of the participants were allocated to a negative priming condition. Negative priming reduced risk-seeking behaviour compared to a neutral condition. However, this effect was confined to non-experiential scenarios (i.e., gamble to win, possibility to lose), and not to ‘real world’ financial products (e.g., pension provision). The results call into question the generalisability of priming effects on different financial contexts

Explanations of comparative facts: A shift in focus.

A comparative fact can be presented in two ways. ‘Among white evangelical Christians, Obama had 40% fewer votes than McCain.’ or ‘Among white evangelical Christians, McCain had 40% more votes than Obama.’ Focusing on why Obama had fewer votes than McCain may result in a different explanation from focusing on why McCain had more votes than Obama, although it is the same fact. Thus what determines whether we focus in our explanation on Obama or McCain? In two studies, we show that people generally focused more on the first part of the comparative fact. However, when the comparative fact is presented in a negative frame (‘less … than’) there was a shift in focus from the first to the second part of the fact. For neutral items this moderating effect did not occur. The Principle of Lexical Marking (Clark, 1969) and Loss Aversion (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) are discussed as possible accounts for this shift in focus

Now I like it, now I don’t: Delay effects and retrospective judgment.

The present paper tests the widely accepted hypothesis that on-line judgment implies functional independence between memory for, and judgment of, verbal stimuli (e.g., Anderson, 1989; Hastie & Park, 1986). In the present study, participants recalled lists of words, after having assessed each for its pleasantness. Presentation position of a negative item within the lists was manipulated. Also, items memorability was manipulated after their presentation – by inserting a filled delay between presentation and the judgment task; in this way, on-line judgment formation was spared. The memory manipulation reduced recall rates for negative items presented in the last position – and their negative influence on pleasantness ratings accordingly. These results contradict the predictions of pure on-line approaches to judgment formation (e.g., Betsch, Plessner, Schwieren, & Gütig, 2001) and suggest that even in on-line judgment tasks, memory plays a role

Social norms and rank-based nudging: Changing willingness to pay for healthy food.

People’s evaluations in the domain of healthy eating are at least partly determined by the choice context. We systematically test reference level and rank-based models of relative comparisons against each other and explore their application to social norms nudging, an intervention that aims at influencing consumers’ behavior by addressing their inaccurate beliefs about their consumption relative to the consumption of others. Study 1 finds that the rank of a product or behavior amongst others in the immediate comparison context, rather than its objective attributes, influences its evaluation. Study 2 finds that when a comparator is presented in isolation the same rank-based process occurs based on information retrieved from memory. Study 3 finds that telling people how their consumption ranks within a normative comparison sample increases willingness to pay for a healthy food by over 30% relative to the normal social norms intervention that tells them how they compare to the average. We conclude that social norms interventions should present rank information (e.g., “you are in the most unhealthy 10% of eaters”) rather than information relative to the average (e.g., “you consume 500 calories more than the average person”

Retrospective Evaluations of Sequences: Testing the Predictions of a Memory-based Analysis

Retrospective evaluation (RE) of event sequences are known to be biased in various ways. The present paper presents a series of studies that examined the suggestion that the moments that are the most accessible in memory at the point of RE contribute to these biases. As predicted by this memory-based analysis, Experiment 1 showed that pleasantness ratings of word lists were biased by the presentation position of a negative item and by how easy the negative information was to retrieve. Experiment 2 ruled out the hypothesis that these findings were due to the dual nature of the task called upon. Experiment 3 further manipulated the memorability of the negative items—and corresponding changes in RE were as predicted. Finally, Experiment 4 extended the findings to more complex stimuli involving event narratives. Overall, the results suggest that assessments were adjusted based on the retrieval of the most readily available information

Students' concern about indebtedness: a rank based social norms account

This paper describes a new model of students’ concern about indebtedness within a rank-based social norms framework. Study 1 found that students hold highly variable beliefs about how much other students will owe at the end of their degree. Students’ concern about their own anticipated debt—and their intention of taking on a part-time job during term time—was best predicted not by the size of the anticipated debt, but by how they, often incorrectly, believed their debt ranked amongst that of others. Study 2 manipulated hypothetical debt amounts experimentally and found that the same anticipated debt was rated as 2.5 times more concerning when it ranked as the second highest being considered than when it was the fifth highest. Study 3 demonstrated that the model applies to evaluation of different types of debt (income contingent loans vs. general debt)