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Is Simpler Better? Testing the Recognition Heuristic

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2015, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Psychology/Experimental.
There is debate over whether or not the recognition heuristic is a good model for participants’ behavior on a binary forced-choice task. Some literature shows that the recognition heuristic models 90% of participants’ decisions on average; other studies demonstrate that people incorporate cues other than recognition before making a decision. There is also evidence that people adjust their reliance on the recognition heuristic, based on its performance in a given environment. To ascertain if the recognition heuristic is truly used as a decision strategy, Experiments 1 and 2 provided a pure test of the recognition heuristic. In these experiments, participants chose which of two fictitious cities they thought was more populous—one of the city names was presented earlier in the experiment, and the other was completely novel. Participants in Experiment 1 made an average of 65% recognition heuristic-consistent decisions; participants in Experiment 2 made 59% recognition heuristic-consistent decisions, on average. Both proportions were significantly greater than chance. Experiment 3 tested learning with feedback as an explanation for participants' apparent task based adjustment of their reliance on recognition as a decision cue. First, participants underwent a training phase in which they chose which of two cities they believed was more populous. They received immediate feedback on their accuracy, as well as the actual populations of each city. Participants then completed an experimental judgment task (similar to the training phase, but with no feedback). Participants in a low-recognition-validity training condition subsequently made significantly fewer recognition-consistent decisions than those in the medium- and high-recognition validity training conditions.
Richard Anderson, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Mary Hare, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Sherona Garrett-Ruffin, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
65 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Basehore, Z. D. (2015). Is Simpler Better? Testing the Recognition Heuristic [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1435053668

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Basehore, Zachariah. Is Simpler Better? Testing the Recognition Heuristic. 2015. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1435053668.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Basehore, Zachariah. "Is Simpler Better? Testing the Recognition Heuristic." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1435053668

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)