Information-gathering Strategies Research Articles

Information-gathering strategies in hypothesis-testing

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the informational factors affecting the kinds of questions people ask for testing a hypothesis about another's personality. In Experiment 1, subjects formulated by themselves questions to test either the hypothesis that the interviewee is polite or the hypothesis that he is impolite. The boundary of the hypothesis was set either at an extreme or at an intermediate point on the trait dimension. Experiment 2 also varied the location of the boundary, but the hypotheses concerned extroversion-introversion and subjects chose questions from a predetermined list of questions that asked either about extroverted features or introverted features and that were either low or high in diagnostic value. Both studies found that subjects preferred to ask about features that are consistent with the hypothesis only when the boundary was extreme. In contrast, diagnostic features were preferred in all conditions. Experiment 3 showed that subjects' judgment of the diagnosticity of the various kinds of questions for discriminating at different boundaries paralleled subjects' preferences among these questions. These results were interpreted as providing support for the diagnostic strategy in social information gathering.

Price Discrimination Based On Imperfect Information: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Usually, the information a buyer requires in order to obtain the lowest price must be produced at a cost depending on the efficiency with which the buyers gather information. Thus, a suitable price dispersion enables a monopolist to split up the market to permit a more profitable price discrimination. In this paper, necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a non-trivial profit maximizing price dispersion are considered. Furthermore, the relationship between statistical properties of the set of consumers' characteristics and this existence problem are studied. This paper takes up again the problem of imperfect information and price originally discussed by Salop (1977) and later by Berninghaus and Ramser (1980). This problem is based on the observation that markets for apparently identical commodities are characterized by dispersion in price and differences in durability and other quality measures. An endogeneous explanation for this kind of price is provided by Salop: The information a buyer requires in order to obtain the lowest price or 'best buy' must be produced at a cost... Consumers' search techniques and the efficiency with which they gather information varies. This heterogeneity leads to differences in optimal information-gathering strategies. Those consumers who are more efficient information-gatherers and searchers obtain better buys on average Hence, price dispersion serves as a device for splitting up the market to permit price discrimination (Salop (1977) p. 393). Salop develops this idea for an economy with a monopolistic producer, selling a homogeneous commodity at different prices to consumers characterized by their information-gathering cost, and a limit price they are willing to pay for this commodity. Under the assumption of a special search behaviour of the consumers, Salop gives necessary conditions for the existence and for the structure of a profit maximizing price dispersion, yielding higher returns for the monopolist than any single price strategy. However, Salop's results are incomplete in that he does not consider sufficient conditions. In their paper, Berninghaus and Ramser take up this point and show for some special cases that Salop's conditions are fulfilled only under restrictive assumptions about the distribution of consumer search costs. Their opinion that . a price dispersion for discriminating uninformed consumers will be rather improbable to be observed (Berninghaus and Ramser (1980), p. 420), is, however, based on these special results. Hence, there is still a need for a general solution of the problem of price

Verbal information gathering strategies: the child's use of language to acquire language.

Recent investigations suggest that normally developing infants are active participants in a language-transmission partnership with the mature speakers in their environments. In a recent paper, (Snyder, McLean, 1977) we noted that available data suggest several specific language acquisition strategies exhibited by children in these interactions. While the earlier paper focused on a set of posited nonverbal strategies, this sequel focuses on two broad types of early verbal behavior that function as effective strategies for the language-learning child. These posited verbal acquisition strategies are referred to as selective imitation and metalinguistic utterance production. The conflicting theory and data on the role of early verbal imitation are reviewed, and it is concluded that selective imitation is most functional at specific stages of the language acquisition process. A hierarchy of metalinguistic utterance types is suggested, ranging from those reflecting the highest apparent intentionality (that is, interrogative utterances) to those reflecting the least (referred to as evocative utterances). Suggestions for future research are offered and implications for language intervention are discussed.

The Noisy Monopolist: Imperfect Information, Price Dispersion and Price Discrimination

Although economists often assume that commodities form homogeneous categories with a single price, there are in fact heterogeneities within commodity groupings. Many markets for apparently identical commodities are characterized by dispersion in price and differences in durability and other quality measures. The information a buyer requires in order to obtain the lowest price or best buy must be produced at a cost. For example, various activities for producing this information are reading magazines such as Consumer Reports, consultations with friends and sales personnel, scanning newspaper advertisements and directly sampling store prices. Consumers' search techniques and the efficiency with which they gather information varies. This heterogeneity leads to differences in optimal information-gathering strategies. Those consumers who are more efficient information-gatherers and searchers obtain better buys on average. Although there are clearly private returns to information-gathering, dispersion appears socially wasteful. If there were no dispersion, consumers would not need to engage in this costly learning activity. It is only the failure of the market to price correctly that allows the private returns to search. This waste leads to the suspicion that a monopolistically controlled market will be characterized by a smaller degree of dispersion than a more competitive one. Stigler [19, p. 223] argues that From the manufacturer's viewpoint, uncertainty concerning his price is clearly disadvantageous, the cost of search is a cost of purchase, and consumption will be smaller the greater the dispersion of prices and the greater the optimum amount of search . On the other hand, when consumers differ in their information-generating efficiencies and costs, dispersion serves as a device for splitting up the market to permit price discrimination. The basic idea is as follows. Suppose that demand conditions are such that the monopolist would like to price discriminate against the less efficient informationgatherers; that is, suppose the submarket consisting of inefficient consumers is more price inelastic. Given these potential gains from discrimination, the monopolist must also discover some method of identifying the inefficient, price inelastic consumers. Simply permitting dispersion is such a method since less-efficient information gatherers will search less and thus on average pay a higher price than will efficient searchers. The very presence of dispersion both splits the market and charges a higher purchase price to the submarket of inefficient searchers. Thus, dispersion acts as a costly device for sorting consumers into submarkets to permit price discrimination. If it is not too costly and demand elasticities vary in the correct direction so that the feasible price discrimination is profitable, then dispersion is more profitable than a single price.

Deviations from optimum information-purchase strategies in human decision-making

Twenty Ss served in a simple pay-to-observe task. On each of 330 trials they were given one free sample and then had the option of purchasing one more before reaching a terminal decision. The hypotheses to be resolved differed as to the parameter p (0.60 vs 0.40) of the binomial distribution generating the samples. Decision-making behavior was evaluated with respect to an optimum purchasing policy which maximizes expected value. The findings were these: (1) there were large individual differences in purchasing behavior; (2) the number of purchases made declined with increases in the informational impact of the free sample and the purchase price of the second sample; (3) there were substantial departures from the optimum policy, all but one of these involving the purchase of too much information; (4) there were no significant differences in information-gathering strategies as a function of the supplying/withholding of a posteriori probability statements bearing on the informational impact of the free sample.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOGICAL PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGIES

Independent groups of both normal and bright children between the ages of 9 and 16 were given a series of 8 relatively content-free diagnostic problems. Their information-gathering behavior was assessed by means of a strategy score. A plot of strategy score as a function of mental age yields a smooth negatively accelerated growth curve which starts at a random level for 9-year-olds of normal IQ and approaches theoretically optimal performance as an asymptote. Comparison of group learning curves indicates that the improvement cannot be explained in terms of differential learning rate. Rather, the increase in logical information-gathering strategy with increasing mental age is best described in terms of an increase in the number of Ss who develop and use a logical strategy. This explanation was supported by analysis of a number of additional response measures. It was suggested that, for individual Ss, development of a logical strategy may proceed in an all-or-none fashion, possibly at more than one level of abstraction.

Effect of differential reinforcement upon information-gathering strategies in diagnostic problem solving.

Effect of differential reinforcement upon information-gathering strategies in diagnostic problem solving.