Information Sampling And Adaptive Cognition

by Edited by Klaus Fiedler , Peter Juslin

• ISBN13: 9780521831598
• ISBN10: 0521831598
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A 'sample’ is not only a concept from statistics that has penetrated common sense but also a metaphor that has inspired much research and theorizing in current psychology. The sampling approach emphasizes the selectivity and the biases that are inherent in the samples of information input with which judges and decision makers are fed. As environmental samples are rarely random, or representative of the world as a whole, decision making calls for censorship and critical evaluation of the data given. However, even the most intelligent decision makers tend to behave like 'näive intuitive statisticians’: quite sensitive to the data given but uncritical concerning the source of the data. Thus, the vicissitudes of sampling information in the environment together with the failure to monitor and control sampling effects adequately provide a key to re-interpreting findings obtained in the last two decades of research on judgment and decision making.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	vii
PART I INTRODUCTION
1. Taking the Interface between Mind and Environment Seriously	3	(30)
Klaus Fiedler and Peter Juslin
PART II THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS
2. Good Sampling, Distorted Views: The Perception of Variability	33	(20)
Yaakov Kareev
3. Intuitive Judgments about Sample Size	53	(19)
Peter Sedlmeier
4. The Role of Information Sampling in Risky Choice	72	(20)
Ralph Hertwig, Greg Barron, Elke U. Weber, and Ido Erev
5. Less Is More in Covariation Detection — Or Is It?	92	(35)
Peter Juslin, Klaus Fiedler, and Nick Chater
PART III BIASED AND UNBIASED JUDGMENTS FROM BIASED SAMPLES
6. Subjective Validity Judgments as an Index of Sensitivity to Sampling Bias	127	(20)
Peter Freytag and Klaus Fiedler
7. An Analysis of Structural Availability Biases, and a Brief Study	147	(6)
Robyn M. Dawes
8. Subjective Confidence and the Sampling of Knowledge	153	(30)
Joshua Klayman, Jack B. Soll, Peter Juslin, and Anders Winman
9. Contingency Learning and Biased Group Impressions	183	(27)
Thorsten Meiser
10. Mental Mechanisms: Speculations on Human Causal Learning and Reasoning	210	(29)
Nick Chater and Mike Oaksford
PART IV WHAT INFORMATION CONTENTS ARE SAMPLED?
11. What's in a Sample? A Manual for Building Cognitive Theories	239	(22)
Gerd Gigerenzer
12. Assessing Evidential Support in Uncertain Environments	261	(38)
Chris M. White and Derek J. Koehler
13. Information Sampling in Group Decision Making: Sampling Biases and Their Consequences	299	(28)
Andreas Mojzisch and Stefan Schulz-Hardt
14. Confidence in Aggregation of Opinions from Multiple Sources	327	(26)
David V. Budescu
15. Self as Sample	353	(28)
Joachim J. Krueger, Melissa Acevedo, and Jordan M. Robbins
PART V VICISSITUDES OF SAMPLING IN THE RESEARCHER'S MIND AND METHOD
16. Which World Should Be Represented in Representative Design?	381	(28)
Ulrich Hoffrage and Ralph Hertwig
17. "I'm m/n Confident That I'm Correct": Confidence in Foresight and Hindsight as a Sampling Probability	409	(31)
Anders Winman and Peter Juslin
18. Natural Sampling of Stimuli in (Artificial) Grammar Learning	440	(16)
Fenna H. Poletiek
19. Is Confidence in Decisions Related to Feedback? Evidence from Random Samples of Real-World Behavior	456	(29)
Robin M. Hogarth
Index	485