Jay J.J. Christensen-Szalanski

Experience and the base-rate fallacy

Abstract This study shows that decision makers can use the base rate to assess posterior probabilities when they have experienced the relationship between the base rate and the diagnostic information. When they experience only the base rate, they do not use it.

Problem solving strategies: A selection mechanism, some implications, and some data

Abstract Beach and Mitchell (in press) have proposed a contingency model for the selection of decision strategies. The strategy that the decision maker sees as offering the greatest expected net gain is the one selected (i.e., selection is based on a cost-benefit analysis). The present paper expands the range of applicability of this model, develops the selection mechanism in greater detail, examines the implications of variations in the costs and benefits, and presents the results of two studies that test some of these implications.

A further examination of the selection of problem-solving strategies: The effects of deadlines and analytic aptitudes☆

Abstract Christensen-Szalanski 1978 formalized and tested a cost-benefit model of problem-solving strategy selection. This paper reports the results of two additional studies which test the models predictions of the effects of varying the immediacy of solution deadlines and the analytic aptitude upon strategy selection. The results were consistent with the models predictions and support the belief that the temporal and energetic costs of thinking are important to the selection process.

Deprivation, delay of reinforcement, and the selection of behavioural strategies

Abstract Thirty-two rats with different histories of water deprivation were tested at different levels of present water deprivation in a choice condition: they had to choose between a small water reinforcement delayed a short period of time and a large water reinforcement delayed a longer period of time. The animals expressed a greater preference for the larger, more delayed reinforcement when they were either presently deprived of water or had a past history of water deprivation. The results are discussed in the context of present ecological models and the conditions during which animals would be expected to behave according to those models.

On the Significance of Judgment Studies

diagnostic accuracy would improve once the bias was eliminated and whether this improvement would merit the expenditure of resources needed to accomplish it. As previously shown, 2,1 the effect of statistically significant judgmental biases may be so small as to be washed out by random sources of error inherent to clinical settings. In this issue, Dawson et al.6 like previous researchers,l’ document that physicians’ probabilistic judgments are sensitive to the hindsight bias. When informed of a patient’s diagnosis, physicians retrospectively perceived that this diagnosis was more likely to have been the true diagnosis all along. The fact that this effect

Book Review : Recent Developments in the Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making

paired physicians, quality assurance, peer review, and patient care guidelines. The inclusion of a broader spectrum of research perspectives and state-by-state approaches to medical tort law and tort reform-successes and failureswill be an important extension to this introductory text.DENNIS J. MAZUR, MD, PhD, Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR

Some Practical Implications of the Hindsight Bias: A Meta-Analysis.

The hindsight bias is frequently cited as a bias in probability assessments. A meta-analysis revealed that the bias does not always occur, and that even when its effect is the greatest it fails to achieve conventional measures of practical significance. These results suggest that the bias frequently may not be as worrisome as commonly assumed in the literature.