Is it a judgment of representativeness? Re-examining the birth sequence problem.

Although all birth orders in the "birth sequence problem" are equiprobable, most participants judge the less representative order as less likely than the more representative order. But this well-known problem confounds representativeness with the direction in which birth orders are compared. We hypothesized and corroborated in three experiments (total N = 1,136) that participants pragmatically infer the birth orders' relative prevalence from the direction of comparison. Experiment 1 found that participants judged the less representative sequence as more common when we reversed the comparison. Experiment 2 reproduced these results despite removing representativeness as a cue. In Experiment 3, participants preferred to place the relatively common sequence as the referent in an inverted "speaker" problem. Our results turn the iconic problem's interpretation on its head: Rather than indicating flawed human cognition, the birth sequence problem illustrates people's ability to adaptively extract subtle linguistic meaning beyond the literal content.

The One That Got Away: Overestimation of Forgone Alternatives as a Hidden Source of Regret.

Past research has established that observing the outcomes of forgone alternatives is an important driver of regret. In this research, we predicted and empirically corroborated a seemingly opposite result: Participants in our studies were more likely to experience regret when they did not observe a forgone outcome than when it was revealed. Our prediction drew on two theoretical observations. First, feelings of regret frequently stem from comparing a chosen option with one's belief about what the forgone alternative would have been. Second, when there are many alternatives to choose from under uncertainty, the perceived attractiveness of the almost-chosen alternative tends to exceed its reality. In four preregistered studies (Ns = 800, 599, 150, and 197 adults), we found that participants predictably overestimated the forgone path, and this overestimation caused undue regret. We discuss the psychological implications of this hidden source of regret and reconcile the ostensible contradiction with past research.

Do publications in low-impact journals help or hurt a CV?

Using psychology professors as participants, the present study investigates how publications in low-impact psychology journals affect evaluations of a hypothetical tenure-track psychology job applicant. Are "weak" publications treated as evidence for or against a candidate's ability? Two experiments revealed that an applicant was rated as stronger when several weak publications were added to several strong ones and was rated as weaker when the weak publications were removed. A third experiment showed that the additional weak publications were not merely viewed as a signal of additional strong publications in the future; instead, the weak publications themselves appear to be valued. In a fourth and final experiment, we found that adding a greater number of weak publications also strengthened the applicant, but not more so than adding just a few. The study further suggests that the weak publications may signal ability, as applicants with added weak publications were rated as both more hardworking and more likely to generate innovative research ideas. Advice for tenure-track psychology applicants: Do not hesitate to publish in even the weakest journals, as long as it does not keep you from publishing in strong journals. Implications of the market rewarding publications in low-impact journals are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Illusory inconsistencies in judgment: Stimulus-evoked reference sets and between-subjects designs.

Asked to judge the subjective size of numbers in a between-subjects design, participants rated 9 as larger than 221 (Birnbaum, 1999). The 9 > 221 effect seems to indicate that different stimuli evoke different contexts for comparison, and sounds a warning for the interpretation of between-subjects comparisons. We show that, contrary to appearances, the effect is not a result of stimulus-evoked reference sets. Instead, it is an artifact of the original 1-10 response scale and task instructions, which encourage a conflation of the response scale and the reference set. When ratings are expressed on a 1-1000 scale, or on a non-numerical slider scale, the effect reverses. However, we also show that stimuli can evoke their own comparative contexts, generating illusions of inconsistency in between-subjects designs. We report two novel findings - a 9 > 009 effect and a -2 > 2 effect - which are best explained by stimulus-evoked reference sets. Thus, while revealing that the 9 > 221 effect is an artifact of the original response scale, our study ultimately affirms Birnbaum's warning about the comparison of between-subjects ratings.

When payoffs look like probabilities: Separating form and content in risky choice.

Paralleling research in perception, behavioral models of risky choice posit "psychophysical" transformations of material outcomes and probabilities. Prospect theory assumes a value function that is concave for gains and convex for losses, and an inverse S-shaped probability weighting function. But in typical experiments, form and content are confounded: Probabilities are represented on a bounded numerical scale, whereas representations of monetary gains (losses) are unbounded above (below). To unconfound form and content, we conducted experiments using a probability-like representation of outcomes and an outcome-like representation of probability. We show that interchanging numerical representations can interchange the resulting psychophysical functions: A proportional (rather than absolute) representation of outcomes leads to an inverse S-shaped value function for gains. This alternative value function generates novel framing effects, a common ratio effect for bounded gains, and a "framing interaction," where gain-loss framing matters less for proportional outcomes. In addition, we show that an absolute (rather than proportional) representation of probability reduces sensitivity to large probabilities. These findings highlight the deeply constructive nature of the psychophysics of risky choice, and suggest that traditional models may reflect subjective reactions to numerical form rather than substantive content. (PsycINFO Database Record