Papers by Ulrich Hoffrage
Many models of (un)ethical decision making assume that people decide rationally and are in princi... more Many models of (un)ethical decision making assume that people decide rationally and are in principle able to evaluate their decisions from a moral point of view. However, people might behave unethically without being aware of it. They are ethically blind. Adopting a sensemaking approach, we argue that ethical blindness results from a complex interplay between individual sensemaking activities and context factor
Overconfidence
Cognitive Illusions, 2022
Evolution and Human Behavior, 2000
heuristics need an automatic frequency counter for ordering cues. In fact, only a few heuristics ... more heuristics need an automatic frequency counter for ordering cues. In fact, only a few heuristics order cues, and these orderings can arise from evolutionary, social, or individual learning, none of which requires automatic frequency counting. The idea that cue validities cannot be computed because memory does not encode missing information is misinformed; it implies that measures of co-occurrence are incomputable and would invalidate most theories of cue learning. They also questioned the recognition heuristic’s psychological plausibility on the basis of their belief that it has not been implemented in a memory model, although it actually has been implemented in ACT-R (L. J. Schooler & R. Hertwig, 2005). On the positive side, M. R. Dougherty et al. discovered a new mechanism for a less-is-more effect. The authors of the present article specify minimal criteria for psychological plausibility, describe some genuine challenges in the study of heuristics, and conclude that fast and frug...
Group Report: Is There Evidence for an Adaptive Toolbox?
Bounded Rationality, 2002
KNAW Narcis. Back to search results. Publication Group report: Is there evidence for an adaptive ... more KNAW Narcis. Back to search results. Publication Group report: Is there evidence for an adaptive toolbox? (2001). Pagina-navigatie: Main. ...
Environment Systems and Decisions, 2017
Note that this version is the authors' pre-print, after copy-editing but before type-setting. It ... more Note that this version is the authors' pre-print, after copy-editing but before type-setting. It may not exactly replicate the final version. It is not the copy of record.
Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2016
This section of JARMAC includes a series of commentaries on articles published in the September, ... more This section of JARMAC includes a series of commentaries on articles published in the September, 2015, special issue of JARMAC: "Modeling and aiding intuition in organizational decision making" (Marewski & Hoffrage, 2015). The commentaries focus on research programs such as naturalistic decision making, heuristics-and-biases, ACT-R, and CLARION. They feature topics ranging from evolution to decision styles. In this introduction, we provide a brief overview of those contributions, alongside with concluding words on this project of pulling together multiple and very different strands on intuition.
Empirische Evidenz f�r einfache Heuristiken
Psychol Rundsch, 2001
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2014
We present an approach to teaching evidence-based management (EBMgt) that trains future managers ... more We present an approach to teaching evidence-based management (EBMgt) that trains future managers how to produce local evidence. Local evidence is causally interpretable data, collected on-site in companies to address a specific business problem. Our teaching method is a variant of problem-based learning, a method originally developed to teach evidence-based medicine. Following this method, students learn an evidence-based problem-solving cycle for addressing actual business cases. Executing this cycle, students use and produce scientific evidence through literature searches and the design of local, experimental tests of causal hypotheses. We argue the value of teaching EBMgt with a focus on producing local evidence, how it can be taught, and what can be taught. We conclude by outlining our contribution to the literature on teaching EBMgt and by discussing limitations of our approach. KEYWORDS: Evidence-based management, problem-based learning, problem-solving, case method, case-based teaching, teaching research methods, pedagogy Teaching EBMgt with a Focus on Local Evidence 3 TEACHING EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT WITH A FOCUS ON PRODUCING LOCAL EVIDENCE Maria advises a very well-known charity. Deeply concerned about an ever decreasing volume of donations, this charity has partnered with several online shops. When purchasing books, cards and other goods in these shops, customers can indicate that they agree to round up the amount charged to their credit cards (e.g., from $9.50 to $10) and donate the difference. Yet, the donation influx from these partnerships is negligible. After having reviewed the scientific literature on consumer behavior and donations, Maria proposes that the online shops ought to implement a different default: Rather than setting up the websites such that customers do not donate unless they indicate they would like to do so, all purchases should automatically be rounded up, unless customers indicate they prefer not to do so. Although research provides evidence for the effectiveness of this default principle (e.g.,
Journal of Business Research, 2015
Using computer simulation, we investigate the impact of different strategies on the financial per... more Using computer simulation, we investigate the impact of different strategies on the financial performance of VCs. We compare simple heuristics such as equal weighting and fast and frugal trees with more complex machine learning and regression models and analyze the impact of three factors: VC learning, the statistical properties of the investment environment, and the amount of information available in a business plan. We demonstrate that the performance of decision strategies and the relative quality of decision outcomes change critically between environments in which different statistical relationships hold between information contained in business plans and the likelihood of financial success. The Equal Weighting strategy is competitive with more complex investment decision strategies and its performance is robust across environments. Learning only from those plans that the simulated VC invested in, drastically reduces the VC's potential to learn from experience. Lastly, the results confirm that decision strategies differ in respect to the impact of added information on the outcomes of decisions. Finally, we discuss real-world implications for the practice of VCs and research on VC decision making.
Simple Heuristics in a Social World, 2012
Schelling (1969, 1971a,b, 1978) observed that macro-level patterns do not necessarily reflect mic... more Schelling (1969, 1971a,b, 1978) observed that macro-level patterns do not necessarily reflect micro-level intentions, desires or goals. In his classic model on neighborhood segregation which initiated a large and influential literature, individuals with no desire to be segregated from those who belong to other social groups nevertheless wind up clustering with their own type. Most extensions of Schelling's model have replicated this result. There is an important mismatch, however, between theory and observation, which has received relatively little attention. Whereas Schelling-inspired models typically predict large degrees of segregation starting from virtually any initial condition, the empirical literature documents considerable heterogeneity in measured levels of segregation. This paper introduces a mechanism that can produce significantly higher levels of integration and, therefore, brings predicted distributions of segregation more in line with real-world observation. As in the classic Schelling model, agents in a simulated world want to stay or move to a new location depending on the proportion of neighbors they judge to be acceptable. In contrast to the classic model, agents' classifications of their neighbors as acceptable or not depend lexicographically on recognition first and group type (e.g., ethnic stereotyping) second. The FACE-recognition model nests classic Schelling: When agents have no recognition memory, judgments about the acceptability of a prospective neighbor rely solely on his or her group type (as in the Schelling model). A very small amount of recognition memory, however, eventually leads to different classifications that, in turn, produce dramatic macro-level effects resulting in significantly higher levels of integration. A novel implication of the FACE-recognition model concerns the large potential impact of policy interventions that generate modest numbers of face-to-face encounters with members of other social groups.
When One Cue is not Enough: Combining Fast and Frugal Heuristics with Compound Cue Processing
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2007
One-reason decision-making heuristics as proposed by Gigerenzer, Todd, and the ABC Research Group... more One-reason decision-making heuristics as proposed by Gigerenzer, Todd, and the ABC Research Group (1999) have been shown to perform accurately. However, such strategies cannot deal with compound cues. We propose the Take The Best Configural Cue (TTB-Configural) as a fast and frugal heuristic that processes compound cues. In a series of three experiments, we analysed whether participants used this heuristic when making cue-based inferences on which of two alternatives had a higher criterion value. In two of the experiments, two cues were amalgamated into a valid compound cue by applying the AND or the OR logical rule, respectively. In the third experiment, there was no valid compound cue. Within each experiment, we also manipulated causal mental models through instructions. In the configural causal model, cues were said to act through the same causal mechanism. In the elemental causal model, cues were said to act through different causal mechanisms. In the neutral causal model, the c...
Psychological Review, 2008
The Open Psychology Journal, 2010
Making decisions can be hard, but it can also be facilitated. Simple heuristics are fast and frug... more Making decisions can be hard, but it can also be facilitated. Simple heuristics are fast and frugal but nevertheless fairly accurate decision rules that people can use to compensate for their limited computational capacity, time, and knowledge when making decisions. These heuristics are effective to the extent that they can exploit the structure of information in the environment in which they operate. They require knowledge about the predictive value of probabilistic cues. However, it is often difficult to keep track of all the available cues in the environment and how they relate to any relevant criterion. We suggest that knowledge about the causal structure of the environment helps decision makers focus on a manageable subset of cues, thus effectively reducing the potential computational complexity inherent in even relatively simple decision-making tasks. Specifically, we claim that causal knowledge can act as a meta-cue for identifying highly valid cues and help to estimate cue-validities. Causal knowledge, however, can also bias people's decisions. We review experimental evidence that tested these hypotheses.
Memory, 2003
Once people know the outcome of an event, they tend to overestimate what could have been anticipa... more Once people know the outcome of an event, they tend to overestimate what could have been anticipated in foresight. Although typically considered to be a robust phenomenon, this hindsight bias is subject to moderating circumstances. In tbeir meta-analysis, Christensen-Szalanski and Willham (1991) observed that tbe more experience people have with tbe task under consideration, the smaller is the resulting hindsigbt bias. This observation is one benchmark against wbicb tbe explanatory power of process models of bindsight bias can be measured. Therefore, we used it to put the recently proposed RAff model (Hoffrage, Hertwig, & Gigerenzer, 2000) to another test. Our findings were consistent witb the "expertise effect." Specifically, we observed-using computer simulations of the RAff model-that the more comprehensive people's knowledge is in foresigbt, the smaller is their hindsight bias. In addition, we made two counterintuitive observations: First, the relation between foresight knowledge and hindsight bias appears to be independent of how knowledge is processed. Second, even if foresight knowledge is false, it can reduce hindsight bias. We conclude with a discussion of the functional value of hindsight bias.
Compound cue processing within the fast and frugal heuristics approach in nonlinearly separable environments
Learning and Motivation, 2007
Three experiments investigated whether participants used Take The Best (TTB) Configural, a fast a... more Three experiments investigated whether participants used Take The Best (TTB) Configural, a fast and frugal heuristic that processes configurations of cues when making inferences concerning which of two alternatives has a higher criterion value. Participants were presented with a ...
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Papers by Ulrich Hoffrage