You make the call
Consistency, accuracy, and fairness: A study of discretionary penalties in the NFL
Kevin Snyder & Michael Lopez
Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior studies of referee behavior focus on identifying a bias in when certain calls are made [Kovash, Kenneth, & Levitt, Steven (2009). "Professionals do not play minimax: evidence from Major League Baseball and the National Football League (No. w15347)." National Bureau of Economic Research; Rosen, Peter A. and Rick L. Wilson. 2007. "An Analysis of the Defense First Strategy in College Football Overtime Games." Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports 3(2):1-17; Alamar, Benjamin. 2010. "Measuring Risk in NFL Playcalling." Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports 6:11.]. We extend this research by evaluating the consistency of specific discretionary penalties in professional football. In doing so, all NFL plays from 2002 to 2012 are considered, isolating the occurrence of holding and pass interference calls. Even after accounting for game and play specific variables, including team characteristics, type of play, and the game's score, we find the likelihood of both penalty types follows a quadratic trend, low at the beginning and ends of the game, but high in the middle. We suggest that these penalties are uniquely called with higher levels of discretion, in an attempt by referees to imply fairness in the flow of the game.
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Vera Hoorens & Susanne Bruckmüller
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, November 2015, Pages 753-766
Abstract:
Differences between groups, individuals, or objects can be framed in multiple ways. One can, for instance, say that men generally earn more than women or that women generally earn less than men. Showing that these logically equivalent expressions are not psychologically equivalent, we demonstrate a robust more-less asymmetry in the use of and responses to comparative statements. More specifically, we show that people use "more than" statements more often than "less than" statements (Study 1); like "more than" statements better (Studies 2 and 3), agree more with opinions expressed through "more than" statements (Studies 4 and 5), and are more likely to consider factual "more than" statements to be true (Study 6). Supporting a cognitive fluency explanation, a manipulation that makes people expect disfluency while processing "less than" statements reduces this otherwise robust more-less asymmetry (Study 7). By combining comparative framing effects with cognitive fluency, the present research brings together 2 research fields in social cognition, shedding new light on both.
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Framing Effects On Physicians' Judgment And Decision Making
Thanh Bui, Heather Krieger & Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby
Psychological Reports, October 2015, Pages 508-522
Abstract:
This study aimed to assess physicians' susceptibility to framing effects in clinical judgment and decision making. A survey was administered online to 159 general internists in the United States. Participants were randomized into two groups, in which clinical scenarios varied in their framings: frequency vs percentage, with cost information vs without, female patient vs male patient, and mortality vs survival. Results showed that physicians' recommendations for patients in hypothetical scenarios were significantly different when the predicted probability of the outcomes was presented in frequency versus percentage form and when it was presented in mortality rate vs survival rate of the same magnitude. Physicians' recommendations were not different for other framing effects.
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Overcoming Algorithm Aversion: People Will Use Algorithms If They Can (Even Slightly) Modify Them
Berkeley Dietvorst, Joseph Simmons & Cade Massey
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, June 2015
Abstract:
Although evidence-based algorithms consistently outperform human forecasters, people consistently fail to use them, especially after learning that they are imperfect. In this paper, we investigate how algorithm aversion might be overcome. In incentivized forecasting tasks, we find that people are considerably more likely to choose to use an algorithm, and thus perform better, when they can modify its forecasts. Importantly, this is true even when they are severely restricted in the modifications they can make. In fact, people's decision to use an algorithm is insensitive to the magnitude of the modifications they are able to make. Additionally, we find that giving people the freedom to modify an algorithm makes people feel more satisfied with the forecasting process, more tolerant of errors, more likely to believe that the algorithm is superior, and more likely to choose to use an algorithm to make subsequent forecasts. This research suggests that one may be able to overcome algorithm aversion by giving people just a slight amount of control over the algorithm's forecasts.
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Is Age Really Cruel to Experts? Compensatory Effects of Activity
Nemanja Vaci, Bartosz Gula & Merim Bilalić
Psychology and Aging, forthcoming
Abstract:
Age-related decline may not be as pronounced in complex activities as it is in basic cognitive processes, but ability deterioration with age is difficult to deny. However, studies disagree on whether age is kinder to more able people than it is to their less able peers. In this article, we investigated the "age is kinder to the more able" hypothesis by using a chess database that contains activity records for both beginners and world-class players. The descriptive data suggested that the skill function across age captures the 3 phases as described in Simonton's model of career trajectories: initial rise to the peak of performance, postpeak decline, and eventual stabilization of decline. We therefore modeled the data with a linear mixed-effect model using the cubic function that captures 3 phases. The results show that age may be kind to the more able in a subtler manner than has previously been assumed. After reaching the peak at around 38 years, the more able players deteriorated more quickly. Their decline, however, started to slow down at around 52 years, earlier than for less able players (57 years). Both the decline and its stabilization were significantly influenced by activity. The more players engaged in playing tournaments, the less they declined and the earlier they started to stabilize. The best experts may not be immune to aging, but their previously acquired expertise and current activity enable them to maintain high levels of skill even at an advanced age.
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Sabrina Cohen-Hatton & R.C. Honey
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
Decisions made by operational commanders at emergency incidents have been characterized as involving a period of information gathering followed by courses of action that are often generated without explicit plan formulation. We examined the efficacy of goal-oriented training in engendering explicit planning that would enable better communication at emergency incidents. While standard training mirrored current operational guidance, goal-oriented training incorporated "decision controls" that highlighted the importance of evaluating goals, anticipated consequences, and risk/benefit analyses once a potential course of action has been identified. In Experiment 1, 3 scenarios (a house fire, road traffic collision, and skip fire) were presented in a virtual environment, and in Experiment 2 they were recreated on the fireground. In Experiment 3, the house fire was recreated as a "live burn," and incident commanders and their crews responded to this scenario as an emergency incident. In all experiments, groups given standard training showed the reported tendency to move directly from information gathering to action, whereas those given goal-oriented training were more likely to develop explicit plans and show anticipatory situational awareness. These results indicate that training can be readily modified to promote explicit plan formulation that could facilitate plan sharing between incident commanders and their teams.
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Joyce Ehrlinger, Ainsley Mitchum & Carol Dweck
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Knowing what we don't yet know is critical for learning. Nonetheless, people typically overestimate their prowess - but is this true of everyone? Three studies examined who shows overconfidence and why. Study 1 demonstrated that participants with an entity (fixed) theory of intelligence, those known to avoid negative information, showed significantly more overconfidence than those with more incremental (malleable) theories. In Study 2, participants who were taught an entity theory of intelligence allocated less attention to difficult problems than those taught an incremental theory. Participants in this entity condition also displayed more overconfidence than those in the incremental condition, and this difference in overconfidence was mediated by the observed bias in attention to difficult problems. Finally, in Study 3, directing participants' attention to difficult aspects of the task reduced the overconfidence of those with more entity views of intelligence. Implications for reducing biased self-assessments that can interfere with learning were discussed.
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The Effects of Social Context and Acute Stress on Decision Making Under Uncertainty
Oriel FeldmanHall et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Uncertainty preferences are typically studied in neutral, nonsocial contexts. This approach, however, fails to capture the dynamic factors that influence choices under uncertainty in the real world. Our goal was twofold: to test whether uncertainty valuation is similar across social and nonsocial contexts, and to investigate the effects of acute stress on uncertainty preferences. Subjects completed matched gambling and trust games following either a control or a stress manipulation. Those who were not under stress exhibited no differences between the amount of money gambled and the amount of money entrusted to partners. In comparison, stressed subjects gambled more money but entrusted less money to partners. We further found that irrespective of stress, subjects were highly attuned to irrelevant feedback in the nonsocial, gambling context, believing that every loss led to a greater chance of winning (the gamblers' fallacy). However, when deciding to trust a stranger, control subjects behaved rationally, treating each new interaction as independent. Stress compromised this adaptive behavior, increasing sensitivity to irrelevant social feedback.
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Mental skills training with basic combat training soldiers: A group-randomized trial
Amy Adler et al.
Journal of Applied Psychology, November 2015, Pages 1752-1764
Abstract:
Cognitive skills training has been linked to greater skills, self-efficacy, and performance. Although research in a variety of organizational settings has demonstrated training efficacy, few studies have assessed cognitive skills training using rigorous, longitudinal, randomized trials with active controls. The present study examined cognitive skills training in a high-risk occupation by randomizing 48 platoons (N = 2,432 soldiers) in basic combat training to either (a) mental skills training or (b) an active comparison condition (military history). Surveys were conducted at baseline and 3 times across the 10-week course. Multilevel mixed-effects models revealed that soldiers in the mental skills training condition reported greater use of a range of cognitive skills and increased confidence relative to those in the control condition. Soldiers in the mental skills training condition also performed better on obstacle course events, rappelling, physical fitness, and initial weapons qualification scores, although effects were generally moderated by gender and previous experience. Overall, effects were small; however, given the rigor of the design, the findings clearly contribute to the broader literature by providing supporting evidence that cognitive training skills can enhance performance in occupational and sports settings. Future research should address gender and experience to determine the need for targeting such training appropriately.
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The Evolutionary Logic of Honoring Sunk Costs
Mukesh Eswaran & Hugh Neary
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although economics claims that sunk costs should not figure in current decision-making, there is ample evidence to suggest that people squander resources by honoring bygones. We argue that such wastage of resources was tolerated in our evolutionary past by Nature because it served fitness-enhancing functions. In this study, we propose and model one such function. We demonstrate how the honoring of sunk costs could have arisen as a commitment device that Nature found expedient for scenarios where conflicts over temptations between the emotional and rational centers of the brain might sabotage long-term investments. By applying this idea to the self-concept, we argue that this model provides a rationale for cognitive dissonance, a well-established phenomenon in social psychology.
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Seasonal affective disorder and seasoned art auction prices: New evidence from old masters
Doron Kliger et al.
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, December 2015, Pages 74-84
Abstract:
Psychological evidence predicts that environmental conditions such as seasons and weather are associated with mood and the finance literature has documented links between them and daily stock market returns. In this paper we examine how these conditions affect art auction prices in England during 1756-1909. We find that the amount of daylight on the auction day has a significant positive effect on selling prices in all our model specifications. In addition, we find in some specifications direct positive effects stemming from the hours of sunshine during the day, precipitation, temperatures, and whether daylight hours are getting longer or shorter.
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The Selective Laziness of Reasoning
Emmanuel Trouche et al.
Cognitive Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Reasoning research suggests that people use more stringent criteria when they evaluate others' arguments than when they produce arguments themselves. To demonstrate this "selective laziness," we used a choice blindness manipulation. In two experiments, participants had to produce a series of arguments in response to reasoning problems, and they were then asked to evaluate other people's arguments about the same problems. Unknown to the participants, in one of the trials, they were presented with their own argument as if it was someone else's. Among those participants who accepted the manipulation and thus thought they were evaluating someone else's argument, more than half (56% and 58%) rejected the arguments that were in fact their own. Moreover, participants were more likely to reject their own arguments for invalid than for valid answers. This demonstrates that people are more critical of other people's arguments than of their own, without being overly critical: They are better able to tell valid from invalid arguments when the arguments are someone else's rather than their own.
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Alin Coman & Jessica Berry
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
When speakers selectively retrieve previously learned information, listeners often concurrently, and covertly, retrieve their memories of that information. This concurrent retrieval typically enhances memory for mentioned information (the rehearsal effect) and impairs memory for unmentioned but related information (socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting, SSRIF), relative to memory for unmentioned and unrelated information. Building on research showing that anxiety leads to increased attention to threat-relevant information, we explored whether concurrent retrieval is facilitated in high-anxiety real-world contexts. Participants first learned category-exemplar facts about meningococcal disease. Following a manipulation of perceived risk of infection (low vs. high risk), they listened to a mock radio show in which some of the facts were selectively practiced. Final recall tests showed that the rehearsal effect was equivalent between the two risk conditions, but SSRIF was significantly larger in the high-risk than in the low-risk condition. Thus, the tendency to exaggerate consequences of news events was found to have deleterious consequences.
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Cameron Hassall et al.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Perceived ownership has been shown to impact a variety of cognitive processes: attention, memory, and - more recently - reward processing. In the present experiment we examined whether or not perceived ownership would interact with the construct of value - the relative worth of an object. Participants completed a simple gambling game in which they either gambled for themselves or for another while electroencephalographic data were recorded. In a key manipulation, gambles for oneself or for another were for either small or large rewards. We tested the hypothesis that value affects the neural response to self-gamble outcomes, but not other-gamble outcomes. Our experimental data revealed that while participants learned the correct response option for both self and other gambles, the reward positivity evoked by wins was impacted by value only when gambling for oneself. Importantly, our findings provide additional evidence for a self-ownership bias in cognitive processing, and further demonstrate the insensitivity of the medial-frontal reward system to gambles for another.
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The Use of Uncertainty Forecasts in Complex Decision Tasks and Various Weather Conditions
Susan Joslyn & Margaret Grounds
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research on weather-related decision-making suggests that the inclusion of numeric uncertainty estimates in weather forecasts improves decision quality over single value forecasts or specific advice. However, it is unclear if the benefit of uncertainty estimates extends to more complex decision tasks, presumably requiring greater cognitive effort, or to tasks in which the decision is clear-cut, perhaps making the additional uncertainty information unnecessary. In the present research, participants completed a task in which they used single value weather forecasts, either alone, with freeze probabilities, advice, or both, to decide whether to apply salt to roads in winter to prevent icing or to withhold salt and risk a penalty. Participants completed either a simple binary choice version of the task or a complex version with 3 response options and accompanying rules for application. Some participants were shown forecasts near the freezing point, such that the need for salt was ambiguous, whereas other participants were shown forecasts well below the freezing point. Results suggest that participants with uncertainty estimates did better overall, and neither the task complexity nor the coldness of the forecasts reduced that advantage. However, unexpectedly colder forecasts lead to poorer decisions and an advantage for specific advice.