How experimental methods shaped views on human competence and rationality

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4423950
AutoresTomás Lejarraga (0000-0001-6135-2243), Ralph Hertwig (0000-0002-9908-9556, Rational (Germany))
Ano2021
Volume147
Fascículo6
Páginas535-564
Data de publicação2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPsychological Bulletin (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0033-2909 • E-ISSN: 1939-1455
EditoraAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037/bul0000324
PMID34843298
OpenAlexW3156270834
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas20

article, Tversky and Kahneman rejected this conclusion, arguing that "people rely on a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simple judgmental operations" (p. 1124). With that, they introduced the heuristics-and-biases research program, which has profoundly altered how psychology, and the behavioral sciences more generally, view the mind's competences and rationality. How was this radical transformation possible? We examine a previously neglected driver: The heuristics-and-biases program established an experimental protocol in behavioral decision research that relied on described scenarios rather than learning and experience. We demonstrate this shift with an analysis of 604 experiments, which shows that the descriptive protocol has dominated post-1974 research. Specifically, we examine two lines of research addressed in the intuitive-statistician program (Bayesian reasoning and judgments of compound events) and two lines of research spurred by the heuristics-and-biases program (framing and anchoring and adjustment). We conclude that the focus on description at the expense of learning has profoundly shaped the influential view of the error-proneness of human cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Competence (human resources) · Epistemology · Experimental psychology · Framing effect · Heuristic · Heuristics · Persuasion · Protocol analysis · Psychological research · Rationality · Representativeness heuristic · Statistician · Statistics · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Psychology · Social Psychology