 Self-selection bias in hypothesis comparisonJennifer C. Whitman and Todd S. Woodward Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2012, vol. 118, issue 2, 216-225 Abstract: Here we investigated whether, given equivalent supporting evidence, we judge self-selected hypotheses differently from those selected by an external source. On each trial of a probabilistic reasoning task requiring no retrieval from memory, participants rated the probability of a focal hypothesis, relative to two alternatives. The focal hypothesis was either selected by the participant or by a computer. In four experiments, self-selected focal hypotheses were judged to be more probable than externally selected ones, despite equivalent supporting evidence. This self-selection bias was independent of level of difficulty in selecting the focal hypothesis (cognitive effort) and of whether evidence was gradually accumulated or all presented instantaneously. These results suggest that the cognitive operations involved in selecting a hypothesis lead to assignment of higher probability to that hypothesis, and that this effect is independent of hypothesis selection difficulty and of the rate of evidence accumulation. Keywords: Judgment; Probabilistic reasoning; Decision-making; Overconfidence; Choice; Option fixation; Hypothesis generation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:118:y:2012:i:2:p:216-225 DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.02.002 Access Statistics for this article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes is currently edited by John M. Schaubroeck More articles in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from Elsevier |
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