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Experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions

Human behavior is often assumed to be irrational, full of errors, and affected by cognitive biases. One of these biases is base-rate neglect, which happens when the base rates of a specific category are not considered when making decisions. We argue here that while naïve subjects demonstrate base-ra...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Link, Daniel, Raab, Markus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9038831/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34704200
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-02024-6
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author Link, Daniel
Raab, Markus
author_facet Link, Daniel
Raab, Markus
author_sort Link, Daniel
collection PubMed
description Human behavior is often assumed to be irrational, full of errors, and affected by cognitive biases. One of these biases is base-rate neglect, which happens when the base rates of a specific category are not considered when making decisions. We argue here that while naïve subjects demonstrate base-rate neglect in laboratory conditions, experts tested in the real world do use base rates. Our explanation is that lab studies use single questions, whereas, in the real world, most decisions are sequential in nature, leading to a more realistic test of base-rate use. One decision that lends itself to testing base-rate use in real life occurs in beach volleyball—specifically, deciding to whom to serve to win the game. Analyzing the sequential choices in expert athletes in more than 1,300 games revealed that they were sensitive to base rates and adapted their decision strategies to the performance of the opponent. Our data describes a threshold at which players change their strategy and use base rates. We conclude that the debate over whether decision makers use base rates should be shifted to real-world tests, and the focus should be on when and how base rates are used.
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spelling pubmed-90388312022-05-07 Experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions Link, Daniel Raab, Markus Psychon Bull Rev Brief Report Human behavior is often assumed to be irrational, full of errors, and affected by cognitive biases. One of these biases is base-rate neglect, which happens when the base rates of a specific category are not considered when making decisions. We argue here that while naïve subjects demonstrate base-rate neglect in laboratory conditions, experts tested in the real world do use base rates. Our explanation is that lab studies use single questions, whereas, in the real world, most decisions are sequential in nature, leading to a more realistic test of base-rate use. One decision that lends itself to testing base-rate use in real life occurs in beach volleyball—specifically, deciding to whom to serve to win the game. Analyzing the sequential choices in expert athletes in more than 1,300 games revealed that they were sensitive to base rates and adapted their decision strategies to the performance of the opponent. Our data describes a threshold at which players change their strategy and use base rates. We conclude that the debate over whether decision makers use base rates should be shifted to real-world tests, and the focus should be on when and how base rates are used. Springer US 2021-10-26 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9038831/ /pubmed/34704200 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-02024-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Brief Report
Link, Daniel
Raab, Markus
Experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions
title Experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions
title_full Experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions
title_fullStr Experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions
title_full_unstemmed Experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions
title_short Experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions
title_sort experts use base rates in real-world sequential decisions
topic Brief Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9038831/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34704200
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-02024-6
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