In Spiderman we trust: The influence of familiar media characters on the decision-making of primary school children.

Children are increasingly active consumers in the media world and are thus confronted with a wide range of information. Making good decisions in such an environment is a major challenge. Weighting valid information in decision-making is an important skill that children must learn and apply.

The impact of physical load on duration estimation in sport.

We investigated whether physical load has an influence on the accuracy of duration estimation of sporting activities presented in real time and slow motion. 86 participants were studied in two single sessions of 45 min each. Our results showed no general effects for physical load, when comparing physical load versus rest.

Medical decision making beyond evidence: Correlates of belief in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and homeopathy.

Many people believe in and use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to address health issues or prevent diseases. Empirical evidence for those treatments is either lacking or controversial due to methodological weaknesses. Thus, practitioners and patients primarily rely on subjective references rather than credible empirical evidence from systematic research.

Preschoolers' competence to use advice in everyday decision contexts.

When relying on the advice of others in decision making, one must consider the fact that advice-givers may vary in terms of predictive accuracy, that is, their history of being correct. We investigated 5- and 6-year-olds' competence in weighting advice in decision making according to predictive accuracy. Contrary to previous child decision research that draws a rather cautious picture on preschoolers' weighting competence, we created a child-friendly decision paradigm with an everyday context based on preparatory studies (e.

When preservice teachers' prior beliefs contradict evidence from educational research.

Background: Knowledge from educational research frequently contradicts preservice teachers' prior beliefs about educational topics. Such contradictions can seriously affect their attitudes towards educational research and can counteract efforts taken to establish teaching as a research-based profession.

Aims: Inspired by Munro's (2010, J.

On the Adaptive Value of Paranormal Beliefs - a Qualitative Study.

Ten female and five male participants (age range 28-50 years) were recruited at esoteric fairs or via esoteric chatrooms. In a guided face-to-face interview, they reported origins and contents of their beliefs in e.g.

From perception to inference: Utilization of probabilities as decision weights in children.

In a probabilistic inference task (three probabilistic cues predict outcomes for two options), we examined decisions from 233 children (5-6 vs. 9-10 years). Contiguity (low vs.

Paranormal beliefs and individual differences: story seeking without reasoned review.

In a sample of 599 participants (60% female, 18-81 years), we tested the hypotheses that cognitive ability and the big-six personality traits suffice to explain the individual-difference component of paranormal beliefs (belief in magic, astrology, esoterism, supernatural beings, and spirituality). Additionally, we measured 14 other potential predictors that were found to correlate with paranormal beliefs in prior research (e.g.

Children's Neglect of Probabilities in Decision Making with and without Feedback.

We investigated whether children prefer feedback over stated probabilistic information in decision making. 6-year-olds', 9-year-olds', and adults' making was examined in an environment where probabilistic information about choice outcome had to be actively searched ( = 166) or was available without search ( = 183). Probabilistic information was provided before choices as predictions of cues differing in validity.

Sonification and visualization of predecisional information search: Identifying toolboxes in children.

Prior evidence has suggested that preschoolers and elementary schoolers search information largely with no systematic plan when making decisions in probabilistic environments. However, this finding might be due to the insensitivity of standard classification methods that assume a lack of variance in decision strategies for tasks of the same kind. Using a novel approach, we explore strategy variability in existing data that documented unsystematic searches in children (Betsch, Lehmann, Lindow, Lang, & Schoemann, 2016).

When knowledge activated from memory intrudes on probabilistic inferences from description - the case of stereotypes.

To make decisions in probabilistic inference tasks, individuals integrate relevant information partly in an automatic manner. Thereby, potentially irrelevant stimuli that are additionally presented can intrude on the decision process (e.g.

Lost in search: (Mal-)adaptation to probabilistic decision environments in children and adults.

Adaptive decision making in probabilistic environments requires individuals to use probabilities as weights in predecisional information searches and/or when making subsequent choices. Within a child-friendly computerized environment (Mousekids), we tracked 205 children's (105 children 5-6 years of age and 100 children 9-10 years of age) and 103 adults' (age range: 21-22 years) search behaviors and decisions under different probability dispersions (.17; .

The impact of attention on judgments of frequency and duration.

Previous studies that examined human judgments of frequency and duration found an asymmetrical relationship: While frequency judgments were quite accurate and independent of stimulus duration, duration judgments were highly dependent upon stimulus frequency. A potential explanation for these findings is that the asymmetry is moderated by the amount of attention directed to the stimuli. In the current experiment, participants' attention was manipulated in two ways: (a) intrinsically, by varying the type and arousal potential of the stimuli (names, low-arousal and high-arousal pictures), and (b) extrinsically, by varying the physical effort participants expended during the stimulus presentation (by lifting a dumbbell vs.

Utilizing probabilities as decision weights in closed and open information boards: a comparison of children and adults.

Decisions in preschoolers (6 years), elementary schoolers (9.7 years), and adults (21 years) were studied with an information board crossing three probabilistic cues (validities: .83, .

Single-process versus multiple-strategy models of decision making: evidence from an information intrusion paradigm.

When decision makers are confronted with different problems and situations, do they use a uniform mechanism as assumed by single-process models (SPMs) or do they choose adaptively from a set of available decision strategies as multiple-strategy models (MSMs) imply? Both frameworks of decision making have gathered a lot of support, but only rarely have they been contrasted with each other. Employing an information intrusion paradigm for multi-attribute decisions from givens, SPM and MSM predictions on information search, decision outcomes, attention, and confidence judgments were derived and tested against each other in two experiments. The results consistently support the SPM view: Participants seemingly using a "take-the-best" (TTB) strategy do not ignore TTB-irrelevant information as MSMs would predict, but adapt the amount of information searched, choose alternative choice options, and show varying confidence judgments contingent on the quality of the "irrelevant" information.

Do people learn option or strategy routines in multi-attribute decisions? The answer depends on subtle factors.

Various studies have shown that established decision routines may become detrimental in changing environments. Routines can be formed at the level of options or at the level of strategies which has been demonstrated in different lines of research. It is unclear, however, which routinization level is spontaneously preferred if both are possible and equally successful.

Utilization of probabilistic cues in the presence of irrelevant information: a comparison of risky choice in children and adults.

We studied risky choices in preschoolers, elementary schoolers, and adults using an information board paradigm crossing two options with two cues that differ in their probability of making valid predictions (p=.50 vs. p=.

Decisions beyond boundaries: when more information is processed faster than less.

Bounded rationality models usually converge in claiming that decision time and the amount of computational steps needed to come to a decision are positively correlated. The empirical evidence for this claim is, however, equivocal. We conducted a study that tests this claim by adding and omitting information.

The influence of narrative v. statistical information on perceiving vaccination risks.

Background: Health-related information found on the Internet is increasing and impacts patient decision making, e.g. regarding vaccination decisions.

The influence of vaccine-critical websites on perceiving vaccination risks.

This large-scale Internet-experiment tests whether vaccine-critical pages raise perceptions of the riskiness of vaccinations and alter vaccination intentions. We manipulated the information environment (vaccine-critical website, control, both) and the focus of search (on vaccination risks, omission risks, no focus). Our analyses reveal that accessing vaccine-critical websites for five to 10 minutes increases the perception of risk of vaccinating and decreases the perception of risk of omitting vaccinations as well as the intentions to vaccinate.

Origins of the sample-size effect in explicit evaluative judgment.

This research considers situations in which individuals explicitly form attitude judgments toward a target object after considering a sample of information. Previous research shows sample-size effects under such conditions: Increasing sample size can produce more extreme judgments. Commonly, these effects are attributed to summative processes in information integration.

Multiple-reason decision making based on automatic processing.

It has been repeatedly shown that in decisions under time constraints, individuals predominantly use noncompensatory strategies rather than complex compensatory ones. The authors argue that these findings might be due not to limitations of cognitive capacity but instead to limitations of information search imposed by the commonly used experimental tool Mouselab (J. W.

Intuition beyond recognition: when less familiar events are liked more.

In a laboratory experiment, we compare the relative impact of two possible determinants of intuitive evaluative judgments: ease of recognition and total value of prior encounters with a target. Participants encode daily return values of shares on the stock market while watching videotaped ads on the computer screen. This dual-task procedure ensures that participants subsequently lack relevant event memories and thus have to rely on their intuition when evaluating the targets.