Debiasing Decisions: Improved Decision Making With a Single Training Intervention
Morewedge and colleagues tested whether reasoning biases can be trained away, a question on which the field had largely given up. Earlier attempts at training had achieved little, which pushed researchers towards changing incentives and redesigning how choices are presented instead. Here, participants received a single intervention, either playing a computer game or watching an instructional video, addressing three biases each in two experiments. Both produced substantial reductions in biased responding immediately, and the reductions were still present at least two months later. Games, which gave personalised feedback and practice, outperformed videos. The important result is that the improvement generalised: bias reduction appeared on problems in different contexts and in formats that had not been taught. The authors do not present training as a replacement for better incentives and presentation but as an addition to them. This vault cites it as the strongest evidence that debiasing training can work.
Morewedge and colleagues tested whether reasoning biases can be trained away, a question on which the field had largely given up. Earlier attempts at training had achieved little, which pushed researchers towards changing incentives and redesigning how choices are presented instead. Here, participants received a single intervention, either playing a computer game or watching an instructional video, addressing three biases each in two experiments. Both produced substantial reductions in biased responding immediately, and the reductions were still present at least two months later. Games, which gave personalised feedback and practice, outperformed videos. The important result is that the improvement generalised: bias reduction appeared on problems in different contexts and in formats that had not been taught. The authors do not present training as a replacement for better incentives and presentation but as an addition to them. This vault cites it as the strongest evidence that debiasing training can work.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
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Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Reductions in several biases including sunk cost, still present at three months. Abstract only.
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- Why You Finish the Series You Stopped Enjoying, Why We Act
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The source
https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732215600886
DOI: 10.1177/2372732215600886