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I know 2 explanations to such seemingly irrational behaviour in cognitive science. Both of them don't really justify the usage of the simple reward-maximizing model in economics.
Rule Rationality versus Act Rationality
Act Rationality is the notion that every decision an agent makes is made in order to maximize his utility. Rule Rationality is the notion ...
15
There is currently a lot of debate surrounding what questions Bayesian modeling is appropriate for answering within cognitive science, as well what makes a "poor model." Unfortunately these become extremely thorny issues very quickly, partly because what is called "bayesian modeling" actually refers to a rather heterogeneous set of approaches and ...
14
It is "paradox of choice". See these resources:
The paradox of choice: why more is less By Barry Schwartz (Google Books)
Excerpts from the above book by Barry Schwartz (.doc format)
Positive Psychology in Practice chapter 6 Doing Better but Feeling Worse:
The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz and Andrew Ward (.pdf format)
I actually haven't been able to ...
13
Obedience
The most famous paper dealing with this issue is Milgram's paper, called Behavioral study of obedience[1]. From the abstract:
This article describes a procedure for the study of destructive obedience in the laboratory. It consists of ordering a naive subject to administer increasingly more severe punishment to a victim in the context of a ...
13
It's an interesting phenomenon, and I think it can be seen in many other domains beyond lifts. At least where I live, pedestrian crossings have buttons, which I've seen people repeatedly press. You can see it often on computers and other digital devices when the system does not immediately respond to user input.
Basic Bayesian Rational Actor
My starting ...
12
Does the locking refer to the initiation of the measurement with
starting cue being being the presentation of stimulus or the response
of the subject?
More or less, yes.
When measuring brain activity, you usually make a long, continuous recording during which you expose your study participants to a task over and over again. There's a lot of noise in ...
12
Short answer: Dual-process, mindfulness and flow theory are related by way of attention theory. Two previous posts that may be of interest are "What is the relation between concepts, constructs and measures?" and "How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer?".
Commensurability
This is an apt example of what Thomas Kuhn would ...
answered Apr 28 '15 at 11:02
Christian Hummeluhr
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Concurring with the comments on the Skeptics question, I am also not aware of a standardized operationalization of "number of decisions" that could be used to produce a meaningful measure for this, and to my knowledge no (serious) research has attempted to calculate a daily tally.
This clearly poses little challenge for the numerous references to this and ...
11
@OfriRaviv provided a great answer, but I thought I'd add a third alternative I am aware of for completeness.
The Tversky & Shafir result is only a violation of classical probability. This approach to probability usually goes unquestioned (since people often assume classical logic is the only reasonable logic), but could be put under scientific scrutiny....
11
It's a big topic. The relationship between group size and performance on a cognitive task is going to vary by several factors.
Here are a few thoughts:
The form of interdependence adopted by the group on the task will matter. When everyone can just work independently (e.g., taking calls in a call centre), then it makes sense that output would increase ...
10
Could you be talking about conformity:
e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity
and/or
groupthink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink ?
In addition to the famous Milgram studies which you may have already heard about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
There's quite a lengthy literature on these issues but those links should get ...
10
I recently read a paper, which showed a mathematical model for performance scaling of research groups in different scientific branches. I'm aware you were originally asking for smaller "cognitive tasks" and project-like group-processes in the comments, but output and quality of publications/patents is probably anyway a better and more objective measure on a ...
10
@CHCH has provided a good broad overview, but I thought I would also append some specific experiments that are considered to be a weakness of Bayesian models. The whole theme of this answer is an extension of Tversky and Kahneman's program of rationality-violation. All of these experiments can be fitted by some Bayesian-ish just-so model of the sort Bowers &...
10
A nice summary about heuristics can be found in:
Gigerenzer, G., & Gaissmaier, W. (2011). Heuristic Decision Making. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 451–482.
In this review "satisficing" (accepting a good enough option) is referred to an earlier reference than the 1958 you cite:
Simon, H.A. (1955). A behavioral model of rational choice. Q. J. Econ. ...
9
The classic reference for exactly what you are describing is Gilovich & Medvec, 1995 (LINK), the primary thesis of which is that "Actions, or errors of commission, generate more regret in the short term; but inactions, or errors of omission, produce more regret in the long run" (from the abstract). The authors explain that there are many factors that ...
8
More generally, you are asking about a common tendency to substitute a sub-set of alternative actions for the entire set without realizing it.
Beyond the contribution of pure habit, it seems to be related to several common decision making biases, including attentional bias and focusing effect, though it doesn't exactly match any. I don't recall seeing ...
8
This may not answer your question directly, but is related:
Kruger and Dunning (1999) conducted a study in which people performed a variety of 'tests' in different domains, such as logical reasoning, grammar, and humor. After taking a test, participants were asked to judge their performance relative to other test-takers, and to estimate their objective ...
8
Perhaps the best well-known example of asking patients to do something at random was performed by Benjamin Libet in 1983[1]. Libet asked patients to wait until a spontaneous moment and push a button as they watched an animated clockhand circle. Surprisingly, what he found was that there were about 200 ms between cerebral activity indicating the patient was ...
8
If that same effect is happening with the "99% fat free" labeling, consumers would over-perceive the amount of fat
I think you are misunderstanding the desired effect here. I don't see how "99% fat free" would lead to the impression that a product contains a lot of fat. My read is, "This is 99% fat free! That's really good!" as opposed to "1% fat" which ...
7
This is a very broad topic. I'll attempt to quickly summarize the most relevant findings from a wide variety of research areas.
Post-rationalization:
There is a fair bit of evidence that explanation follows decision-making, rather than the other way around. Here is a nice quote from Wikipedia attributed to Robert Zajonc: "decisions are made with little ...
7
Check out this question on biology.stackexchange: Do omnivore mammals vary food preferences based on dietary needs?
The answers in that question mention that experiments on Rats and Birds determined that there's an internal chemosensor, the anterior piriform cortex (APC) within bird and rat brains that senses lack of Indispensible Amino Acids (IAA). Animals ...
7
This is just an elaboration on my comment that Sanford et al (2002) might be relevant to the question. If you don't have access Tony Sanford indicates that "To obtain a copy of any of these papers, please email."
The study reports three experiments.
In experiment 2 they found experimentally that there was a preference for the "% fat free" format.
Twenty-...
6
Diederich & Busemeyer (2003) presented a diffusion model for three choice alternatives (p. 314). The paper is a tutorial for calculating diffusion models with (discrete) matrix methods. The extension to three choice alternatives is reached by defining a two-dimensional diffusion process on a triangular plane (state space).
Recently, Wollschläger & ...
6
Instead of having a single integrator with two bounds for two choices (symmetric random walk model), you can have many competing integrators each with a bound (race model). For example, see Fig 2. of Gold and Shadlen 2007 and references therein.
As for the continuous choices case, it is important to understand a limit of discrete choices can be very ...
6
There is an unclear relationship between classical conceptions of a unitary view of mental workload to the modern constructs of cognitive psychology and neuroscience that are relevant to your question. This is partly because mental workload is tough to define, and also because it is far too coarse a construct given the extremely large variety of dynamic ...
6
In naïve realism, the subject acknowledges others' points of view while affirming the superiority of his/her own. Ross and Ward (1996) review the literature. I tried to write a summary of their fine paper, but I couldn't do it justice. I provide a link to it below.
In selfishness or unenlightened self-interest, the subject may consider multiple points of ...
6
I've found Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being by E.F.P. Luttmer (2005), although I'm not sure it's the right one. I've heard about your study as well, but I thought it was older than 2005. You can read the study I linked and look up the references. There are quite a lot that touch the same subject.
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His very first use of heuristic beyond computer science (he won the Turing award in Comp. Science) is from 1946.
The Proverbs of Administration
Herbert A. Simon, Public Administration Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter, 1946), pp. 53-67
If so, the evidence that it is an
error has never been marshalled or published-apart
from loose heuristic arguments
...
6
Presumably the decision of drivers to slow down in response to work zone signage is influenced by many factors.
Signage and road factors: Presumably there are a wide range of factors related to the nature of the signs and the structure of the road setting that influence whether people slow down. For example, I've seen road work signage on freeways that were ...
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