DEBIASING EFFECT OF COUNTERFACTUALS

• Authors: Strachanová Daša
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Often, the decision-making situation is unclear, and we do not have enough relevant information. In this case we use shortcuts, which can lead to cognitive biases. Cognitive biases can affect our decision-making processes, and we are not able to make the decision in an unbiased way. They are present in a wide range of situations, and they can affect our job, relationships, and decisions about investments. Larrick (2004) defined three kinds of debiasing. The first type of debiasing interventions is motivational practices such as incentives or accountability. The second type of debiasing interventions involves cognitive methods like considering the opposite method, training or counterfactual priming. The third type of debiasing interventions is modern technologies such as the pros and cons lists or group decision-making. The aim of our study was to investigate the effectiveness of counterfactual priming, as a cognitive intervention, in reducing three cognitive biases: confirmation bias, as the tendency to search for information in line with our assumptions, the status quo bias, as the preference of the current state, and the attribution effect, as the tendency to attribute behaviour based more on personality than on situational context.

Keywords

EN

COGNITIVE BIASES; COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING; DEBIASING; CONFIRMATION BIAS

• Publisher: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Social Sciences
• Journal: Človek a spoločnosť. Internetový časopis pre pôvodné teoretické a výskumné štúdie z oblasti spoločenských vied
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 1 – 10

Contributors

author

Strachanová Daša

• Institute of Experimental Psychology, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Identifiers

DOI

http://doi.org/10.31577/cas.2019.03.556