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How did the research of Amos Tworsky and Daniel Kahneman change the psychology community?
Amos Tworsky and Daniel Kahneman's outstanding contributions cannot be ignored in the evolution of psychology. Their research focuses on how humans make judgments under uncertainty, challenging the previous concept of human beings being a rational actor. Through discussions on heuristics and prejudice, they reveal psychological shortcuts that humans often rely on when making decisions. These discoveries not only changed the research direction of the psychology community, but also had a profound impact on many fields such as law, medicine and business.
Accessibility heuristics are a psychological shortcut that relies on examples that can be recalled in the mind immediately to evaluate a specific topic.
The core idea of the availability heuristic is that if certain information is easily recalled, people often think that it is more important. This means that people's perception of certain events is often affected by recent memories, not necessarily based on the frequency of facts. This can be verified through simple experiments, for example, when judging when an English single word starts with the letter "K" or the letter "K" appears in the third position of the single word, most people mistakenly believe that the first situation is more common.
When the content of the memory is not questioned, people often rely on the impression of these contents to make judgments.
The history of this study can be traced back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, and preliminary research by Tworsky and Kahnemann conducted extensive discussions on "heuristics and biases." Their series of experimental results show that the use of different heuristics in logical reasoning can lead to systematic bias. Such findings not only question the descriptive ability of idealized judgment models, but also provide insights into explaining human erroneous cognitive processes without the need to rely on motivational irrationality.
For example, Tworsky and Kahneman conducted a classic experiment where participants evaluate whether randomly selected English single words start with “K” or “K” is more common in the third position of the single word. In this study, subjects generally mistakenly believed that "there are more words starting with K", showing that people rely on data that are easier to recall as a basis when making judgments.
In the psychology community, the research of Tworsky and Kahnemann promotes the transformation of decision theory.
In addition, their research has also introduced the concept of illusory correlation. This means that when certain events often occur simultaneously, people overestimate the correlation between these events. For example, when participants are presented with information from multiple patients, they mistakenly evaluate the common frequency of certain conditions, because there are too many examples and recollections in their memories to influence their judgment.
Tworsky and Kahneman's research reveals the commonality of accessibility heuristics in daily life. These studies have not only caused extensive discussion in the academic community, but have also promoted in-depth research in other fields such as law, medicine and business. For example, in medicine, a doctor may make medical judgments based on easily recalled cases, which can lead to a false diagnosis. In terms of the economy, investors may also make irrational investment decisions because they rely too much on recent market performance.
In the field of education, teachers and students can use the aid of heuristics to improve learning results. Some studies show that when students evaluate courses, if the task is more difficult, their ratings may be more positive because they are not able to recall too many dissatisfactions. This shows the effect of accessibility heuristics on people’s self-cognition.
Accessibility heuristics are not only a research tool in psychology, but also an important factor affecting human behavior and decision-making.
As these theories expand, we begin to rethink the decision-making process of people and the cognitive biases in it. The research related to accessibility heuristics proposed by Tworsky and Kahneman has become an important tool for understanding human behavior. Today, the application of these insights in various fields shows their increasing importance to human understanding and social behavior. As we rely more and more on these psychological shortcuts, can we find a balance to correct these systematic judgment biases in the future?
