A fine-grained analysis of the jumping-to-conclusions bias in schizophrenia: Data-gathering, response confidence, and information integration
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2009, Vol 4, Issue 7
Abstract
Impaired decision behavior has been repeatedly observed in schizophrenia patients. We investigated several cognitive mechanisms that might contribute to the jumping-to-conclusions bias (JTC) seen in schizophrenia patients: biases in information-gathering, information weighting and integration, and overconfidence, using the process tracing paradigm Mouselab. Mouselab allows for an in-depth exploration of various decision-making processes in a structured information environment. A total of 37 schizophrenia patients and 30 healthy controls participated in the experiment. Although showing less focused and systematic information search, schizophrenia patients practically considered all pieces of information and showed no JTC in the sense of collecting less pieces of evidence. Choices of patients and controls both approximated a rational solution quite well, but patients showed more extreme confidence ratings. Both groups mainly used weighted additive decision strategies for information integration and only a small proportion relied on simple heuristics. Under high stress induced by affective valence plus time pressure, however, schizophrenia patients switched to equal weighting strategies: less valid cues and more valid ones were weighted equally.
Authors and Affiliations
Andreas Glöckner and Steffen Moritz
The glow of grime: Why cleaning an old object can wash away its value
For connoisseurs of antiques and antiquities, cleaning old objects can reduce their value. In five experiments (total N = 1,019), we show that lay people also often judge that old objects are worth less when cleaned, and...
Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men?
Across many real-world domains, men engage in more risky behaviors than do women. To examine some of the beliefs and preferences that underlie this difference, 657 participants assessed their likelihood of engaging in va...
Representations of moral violations: Category members and associated features
I present a novel way to conceptualize Turiel and colleagues’ Social Domain Theory (SDT), and Haidt and colleagues’ Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), as theories of how concepts of moral violations are mentally represented...
How do jurors argue with one another?
We asked jurors awaiting trial assignment to listen to a recorded synopsis of an authentic criminal trial and to make a choice among 4 verdict possibilities. Each participant juror then deliberated with another juror who...
True-and-error models violate independence and yet they are testable
Birnbaum (2011) criticized tests of transitivity that are based entirely on binary choice proportions. When assumptions of independence and stationarity (iid) of choice responses are violated, choice proportions could le...