Harriet Shaklee

Behavior, communication, and assumptions about other people's behavior in a commons dilemma situation.

Abstract : Two experiments investigated effects of communication on behavior in an 8-person commons dilemma of group versus individual gain. Subjects made a single choice involving a substantial amount of money (possible outcomes ranging from nothing to

Strategies of information search in causal analysis

10.50). In Experiment 1, 4 communication conditions were crossed with the possibility of losing money (loss, no loss). Subjects chose defecting or cooperating responses and predicted responses of other group members. Results showed defection significantly higher in no communication and irrelevant communication conditions than in relevant communication and relevant communication plus roll call conditions. Loss had no effect on decisions. Defectors expected much more defection than did cooperators. Experiment 2 replicated irrelevant communication and communication effects, and compared predictions of participants with those of observers.

A rule analysis of judgments of covariation between events

Five experiments investigated the relative prevalence of three search patterns that individuals may use in explaining events with multiple possible causes: (1) parallel search—pursue information about all possible causes before making any causal judgments, (2) serial search—clarify the role of one cause before considering any others, (3) truncated search—clarify the role of one cause without proceeding to consider other causes. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, subjects were told about an event, two or three nonexclusive possible causes of the event, and a fact implicating one of the suggested causes as influencing the event. Subjects were asked for the question whose answer would help them most in explaining the event. In each experiment, subjects preferred to clarify the role of the implicated cause, a pattern congruent with both the serial and truncated search strategies. Results of a fourth experiment indicated that these preferences reflect a truncated rather than a serial search. A final experiment demonstrated that the preference for information about the implicated cause persists even with the opportunity for a more extended search.

Cause and covariate: Development of two related concepts

Several strategies are proposed as bases for judgments of covariation between events. Covariation problems were structured in such a way that patterns of correct and incorrect judgments would index the judgment rule being used by a given subject. In two experiments, 10th-grade or college subjects viewed a set of covariation problems, each of which consisted of a set of observations in which each of two events was defined as present or absent. Subjects were asked to identify the relationship between the events. Subjects’ response patterns suggested that the modal strategy was to compare frequency of confirming and disconfirming events in defining the relationship. Response accuracy was influenced by pretraining on the concept of covariation and by response format. Instructions to sort the observations did not influence judgment accuracy.

Judging response-outcome relations: The role of response-outcome contingency, outcome probability, and method of information presentation

Abstract This study used a rule-analytic technique to investigate the role of event covariation in causal judgment. Junior high school and college subjects were shown information about the co-occurrences of two potentially related events and were asked to make either causal or covariation judgments about the two events. Subjects often failed to identify covariates as causes or identified as causes events which were either unrelated or related in the opposite direction to the event to be explained. Rule analyses indicated that use of mathematically flawed strategies resulted in erroneous covariation and causal judgments. Comparisons between the junior high and college samples showed parallel improvement with increasing age for the two judgments. Strategy analyses of the covariation and causal judgments showed that males defined causes and covariates by similar rules, but that females used different rules to make the two judgments.

Judging interevent contingencies: being right for the wrong reasons

A series of four experiments investigated college students’ judgments of interevent contingency. Subjects were asked to judge the effect of a discrete response Itapping a wire) on the occurrence of a brief outcome (a radio’s buzzing). Pairings of the possible event-state combinations (response-outcome, response-no outcome, no response-outcome, no response-no outcome) were presented in a summary-table (Experiments 2 and 4), in an unbroken-time-line (Experimente 1, 2, and 4), or in a broken-time-line format (Experiment 3). Subjects judged the extent to which the response caused the outcome or prevented it from occurring. Across all methods of information presentation, judgments were a positive function of response-outcome contingency and outcome probability. In the unbroken-time-line condition, judgments of negative response-outcome contingencies were less extreme than judgments of equivalent positive contingencies. This asymmetry was smaller in the broken-time-line condition and in those conditions in which subjects were encouraged to segment an unbroken time line into discrete response outcome units. Finally, judgments of positive and negative relationships were generally symmetrical in the summary-table condition. Relative to the two time-line portrayals, summary table judgments were also less influenced by the overall probability of outcome occurrence. These judgment differences among format conditions suggest that, depending on the method of information presentation, subjects differently partition event sequences into discrete event pairings.

Causal Schemata: Description or Explanation of Judgment Process? A Reply to Fiedler

Mathematically inaccurate judgment rules often produce correct covariation judgments; thus, accuracy of covariation judgment alone may be a poor index of the sophistication of a subject’s understanding. We offer a past paradigm of our own (Wasserman & Shaklee, 1984) as an instance in which impressive judgment accuracy may have been the product of simple and inaccurate judgment rules. The present investigation replicates the judgment paradigm of our prior experiment, using a set of 12 covariation problems designed to produce unique judgment patterns by each of four judgment rules. Subjects’ judgment patterns indicated that use of a mathematically accurate rule was quite rare (comparison of conditional probabilities: 3.1% of subjects). The modal judgment pattern conformed to that predicted by a rule in which subjects compare only two cells of a 2×2 contingency table (Strategy a-versus-b: 38.1% of subjects). Distributions of strategy classifications differed among several judgment conditions which varied in the presentation format of event-frequency information.

Sources of error in judging event covariations: Effects of memory demands.

Fiedler (1982) argued that Kelleys causal schemata were poor characterizations o/performance because they functioned merely as descriptive labels for attribution patterns and failed to explain those patterns. It is argued that the schemata are useful as descriptions rather than as explanations and are testable as such. Research on the multiple sufficient schema is reviewed as a case in which one causal schema was tested as a descriptive model and proved to be inadequate. It is also argued that research outside of the attribution tradition must be considered in drawing conclusions about naive causal reasoning. Every young scholar dreams of finding his or her name prominently featured in the writings of another investigator. A reference in the text is attention getting, a major subheading too much to hope for. Thus, I approached Fiedlers (1982) recent article on causal schemata with enthusiasm. However, enthusiasm faded as I followed his analysis of the problem of causal schemata. His conceptualization of my own research had problems as well. Because that research is unpublished and not readily available to scholars in the area, I take this opportunity to reply to Fiedlers arguments. This reply focuses first on Fiedlers general position, second on my own work, and finally on other work relevant to his analysis.