The Representativeness Heuristic in Political Decision Making
In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
"The Representativeness Heuristic in Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.
36 Ergebnisse
Sortierung:
In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
"The Representativeness Heuristic in Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.
Do politicians use the representativeness heuristic when making judgements, that is, when they appraise the likelihood or frequency of an outcome that is unknown or unknowable? Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that facilitate judgements and decision making. Oftentimes, heuristics are useful, but they may also lead to systematic biases that can be detrimental for decision making in a representative democracy. Thus far, we lack experimental evidence on whether politicians use the representativeness heuristic. To contribute to and extend the existing literature, we develop and conduct a survey experiment with as main participants Dutch elected local politicians from the larger municipalities (n = 211). This survey experiment examines whether politician participants display two decision-making biases related to the representativeness heuristic: the conjunction error and scope neglect. We also run the experiment with a student sample (n = 260), mainly to validate the experimental design. Our findings show that politician participants neglect scope in one scenario and that they display the conjunction error in two of three scenarios. These results suggest that politician participants use the representativeness heuristic. Conversely, our third conjunction error scenario does not find evidence for politician participants displaying this bias. As we discuss in the article, the latter may be an artifact of our experimental design. Overall, our findings contribute fundamentally to our understanding of how politicians process information and how this influences their judgements and decision making.
BASE
In: Political behavior, Band 43, Heft 4, S. 1411-1432
ISSN: 1573-6687
AbstractDo politicians use the representativeness heuristic when making judgements, that is, when they appraise the likelihood or frequency of an outcome that is unknown or unknowable? Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that facilitate judgements and decision making. Oftentimes, heuristics are useful, but they may also lead to systematic biases that can be detrimental for decision making in a representative democracy. Thus far, we lack experimental evidence on whether politicians use the representativeness heuristic. To contribute to and extend the existing literature, we develop and conduct a survey experiment with as main participants Dutch elected local politicians from the larger municipalities (n = 211). This survey experiment examines whether politician participants display two decision-making biases related to the representativeness heuristic: the conjunction error and scope neglect. We also run the experiment with a student sample (n = 260), mainly to validate the experimental design. Our findings show that politician participants neglect scope in one scenario and that they display the conjunction error in two of three scenarios. These results suggest that politician participants use the representativeness heuristic. Conversely, our third conjunction error scenario does not find evidence for politician participants displaying this bias. As we discuss in the article, the latter may be an artifact of our experimental design. Overall, our findings contribute fundamentally to our understanding of how politicians process information and how this influences their judgements and decision making.
SSRN
Working paper
In: Emerging markets, finance and trade: EMFT, S. 1-12
ISSN: 1558-0938
In: The journal of trading: JOT, Band 7, Heft 3, S. 40-51
ISSN: 1559-3967
In: Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series No. 142 https://doi.org/10.36687/inetwp142
SSRN
In: SpringerBriefs in Finance
In: SpringerLink
In: Bücher
Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 Conservatism bias and asset price overreaction or underreaction to new information in a competitive securities market -- Chapter 3 Conservatism bias and asset price overreaction or underreaction to new information in the presence of strategic interaction -- Chapter 4 Representativeness heuristic and asset price overreaction or underreaction to new information in a competitive securities market -- Chapter 5 Representativeness heuristic and asset price overreaction or underreaction to new information in the presence of strategic interaction -- Chapter 6 The presence of representativeness heuristic and conservatism bias in an asset market -- Chapter 7 Conclusion -- Appendix -- References.
In: Journal of Banking and Finance, Forthcoming
SSRN
In: European journal of health psychology, Band 29, Heft 4, S. 187-195
ISSN: 2512-8450
Abstract. Background: Diabetes continues to be a major health problem around the globe, and low treatment adherence continues to hinder clinical outcomes. Risk perception has been considered to guide the decision-making processes, and in recent years, the bounded rationality theory and cognitive heuristics have proved to be a useful lens to gain insight into informal and irrational reasoning. In particular, heuristics for the estimation of event frequencies and probabilities are considered to be relevant to the field of health behaviors. It is possible that the risk perceptions that determine patients' adherence could be generated by these heuristics. Aims: The purpose of this study is to analyze the role of the representativeness heuristic in risk perceptions related to heart attacks and coronary heart disease (CHD) in a sample of patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Method: Cross-sectional study with 342 patients attending a public hospital in an urban setting to treat their diabetes. Results: The heuristic was correlated through both its mechanisms with CHD and heart attack. Evidence suggests that the representativeness heuristic might play a role in probability judgments related to heart complications in patients with T2D. Limitations: Only CHD and heart attack were included in the study, and the heuristic could correlate with the risk perception of other complications as well as the perceived risks and benefits of the diabetes treatment. Conclusion: We call for researchers to further study these heuristics in the context of treatment adherence of T2D patients.
Altres ajuts: FEDER/PSI2017-84539-P, FEDER/PSI2014-52181-P ; European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. no. 613465-AThEME ; Language context (native vs. foreign) affects people's choices and preferences in a wide variety of situations. However, emotional reactions are a key component driving people's choices in those situations. In six studies, we test whether foreign language context modifies biases and the use of heuristics not directly caused by emotional reactions. We fail to find evidence that foreign language context modifies the extent to which people suffer from outcome bias (Experiment 1a & 1b) and the use of the representativeness heuristic (Experiment 2a & 2b). Furthermore, foreign language context does not modulate decision-making in those scenarios even when emotion is brought into the context (Experiment 1c & 2c). Foreign language context shapes decision-making, but the scope of its effects might be limited to decision-making tendencies in which emotion plays a causal role.
BASE
In: Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series No. 175
SSRN
In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
"The Role of Analogies in Crisis Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.
SSRN
It is broadly assumed that political elites (e.g. party leaders) regularly rely on heuristics in their judgments or decision-making. In this article, I aim to bring together and discuss the scattered literature on this topic. To address the current conceptual unclarity, I discuss two traditions on heuristics: (1) the heuristics and biases (H&B) tradition pioneered by Kahneman and Tversky and (2) the fast and frugal heuristics (F&F) tradition pioneered by Gigerenzer et al. I propose to concentrate on two well-defined heuristics from the H&B tradition—availability and representativeness—to empirically assess when political elites rely on heuristics and thereby understand better their judgments and decisions. My review of existing studies supports the notion that political elites use the availability heuristic and possibly the representativeness one for making complex decisions under uncertainty. It also reveals that besides this, we still know relatively little about when political elites use which heuristic and with what effect(s). Therefore, I end by proposing an agenda for future research.
BASE