Choosing one, ignoring the other: Binary choice-making and easily accessible information under uncertainty

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)When we make a decision, we need information (Einhorn & Hogarth, 1981). Psychological research has shown that people often overestimate the correctness (or validity) of information which they have accessed quickly, or when it is the only information available to them (e.g., availability heuristic, confirmation bias, cue familiarity, halo error, etc.). This tendency becomes even more salient in an uncertain situation in which the necessary information is less available (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), such as hard/easy effect (Fischhoff, Slovic, & Lichteinstein, 1977; Lichtenstein, Fischhoff, & Philips, 1982; Suantak, Bolger, & Ferrell, 1996).According to the information accessibility hypothesis (or model; Koriat, 1993; Koriat, 1995), people get a subjective feeling of correctness from information when that information easily comes to mind. Also, people overestimate the validity of information when it is the sole information available to them (Koriat, Lichtenstein, & Fischhoff, 1980). Overall, people's subjective beliefs about information are not only influenced by how they evaluate the information, but also whether their mind has accessed the information easily or deliberately, and whether the information available to them is with or without other information.The idea of the current research is based on the well-known phenomenon in which information can subjectively facilitate judgment but does not significantly improve objective performance, if the information is easily accessible, or available without contradictory information (Benjamin, Bjork, & Schwartz, 1998; Kelly & Lindsay, 1993; Koriat et al. 1980). Specifically, the current research has investigated whether this phenomenon can also be found in binary-choice situations-where a person chooses one correct answer from two alternatives-and what psychological processes lie behind this phenomenon.Choosing between two alternatives is an extremely important and also frequent cognitive and behavioral activity, whether it's predicting sports outcomes, voting in the US presidential election, or encountering a sudden split in the highway. Indeed, any yes or no decision is essentially a choice between two and any decision that involves many alternatives is often reduced to a choice between the two best alternatives. Thus, if choice-making is overly influenced by psychological factors which do not always help us to choose the best alternative, they are worth investigating.The current research attempted methodological and theoretical improvements as well. While much of the previous research used complex experimental methods - often involving bulky tasks, such as general knowledge questions (Koriat, 1995; Fischhoff et al., 1977), writing supportive and opposing ideas (Koriat et al., 1980), measuring different types of performanceprediction (Costermans, Lories, & Ansay, 1992), etc. - the current research tested the same hypothesis, and demonstrated a comparable phenomenon, while employing a simple true experimental method. It directly manipulated the accessibility (or availability) of the information between a control and experimental condition, and derived quantitatively measurable and statistically significant behavioral differences between them. Furthermore, by modulating the manipulation in several ways through multiple experiments, it became more parsimonious to identify the psychological processes behind the phenomenon: While easily accessible or solely available information can facilitate judgment, it does not improve objective performance to the same degree. This theoretical improvement was attained by adopting the paradigm, choosing one correct answer from two alternatives, in the current research.The current research is based on four psychological concepts, from which four specific questions have been derived. These concepts and questions are as follows:1. …