1,721,300 research outputs found
Mitigating climate change: Therole of reasoning errors, environmental knowledge and moral positions
No full textThe robust beauty of ordinary information
Full text linkHeuristics embodying limited information search and noncompensatory processing of information can yield robust performance relative to computationally more complex models. One criticism raised against heuristics is the argument that complexity is hidden in the calculation of the cue order used to make predictions. We discuss ways to order cues that do not entail individual learning. Then we propose and test the thesis that when orders are learned individually, people's necessarily limited knowledge will curtail computational complexity while also achieving robustness. Using computer simulations, we compare the performance of the take-the-best heuristic--with dichotomized or undichotomized cues--to benchmarks such as the naïve Bayes algorithm across 19 environments. Even with minute sizes of training sets, take-the-best using undichotomized cues excels. For 10 environments, we probe people's intuitions about the direction of the correlation between cues and criterion. On the basis of these intuitions, in most of the environments take-the-best achieves the level of performance that would be expected from learning cue orders from 50% of the objects in the environments. Thus, ordinary information about cues--either gleaned from small training sets or intuited--can support robust performance without requiring Herculean computations
The Heart Has Its Reasons: Social Rationality in Mate Choice
No full textThe specific circumstances in which an individual encounters their mate options may influence how she chooses and, ultimately, whom she chooses. In particular, the choice environment may affect the cues we pay attention to, how we combine them and, ultimately (and significantly), our reproductive fate. This chapter consolidates the current state of knowledge regarding choice environment effects on mating behavior. This chapter's thesis is that human mate choice is adapted to the choice environment in which it is made: We are sensitive to changes in the environment and adapt our judgments and choice strategies accordingly, thereby exhibiting ecological and social rationality—the topic of this volume. This chapter promotes the view that mating-related judgment and choice depend very much on the environmental conditions facing the chooser, while also being shaped by the past recurring conditions in which these behaviors evolved. To substantiate this perspective, the chapter describes anthropological, sociological, and psychological research showing that human mating-related judgments and choice are context-sensitive in meaningful ways. In particular, the chapter shows how the cues and strategies used in mate choice are influenced by environmental structure, considered first at the population level and second at the level of individual choosers. The chapter concludes by focusing in on one important aspect of the mate choice environment in specific modern settings and its impact on heuristic and cue use: the number of potential mates available
Adaptive information search and judgment strategies in solitary and competitive tasks
Full text linkA substantial body of judgment and decision-making research focuses on decisions made under risk, where all relevant option outcome and probability information is known a priori. However, most real-world decision tasks are made under uncertainty, where such population- level information is unknown. Against this background, how can, do, and should organisms obtain and use information in order to improve their judgments and decisions under uncertainty? This dissertation addresses these questions in two distinct domains: external information search in competitive tasks (papers 1 and 2) and internal search in the context of the inner-crowd (papers 3 and 4). In paper 1, we develop a new paradigm called the Competitive Sampling Game (CSG) to study how organisms adjust search in the presence of both natural uncertainty (i.e., gamble parameters) and social uncertainty (i.e., behavior of others). The paradigm produces simulation and empirical results showing that organisms should and do dramatically reduce search in the presence of competition to almost minimal levels. In paper 2, we expand on the initial results of the CSG to show how different levels of competition drive the evolution of decision strategies. In a second domain, we address how people can improve their judgments by harnessing a diverse inner-crowd using dialectical bootstrapping. In paper 3, we apply dialectical bootstrapping to a Bayesian reasoning paradigm to show how dialectical instructions induce strategy change and how people can become more Bayesian by averaging biased non-Bayesian judgments in their inner-crowd. In paper 4, we apply the inner-crowd to a cue-based estimation task and model the effects of different estimation strategies on final estimates and confidence. Our results suggest that people can use their confidence judgments to outperform the simple average of their inner-crowd. Moreover, dialectical bootstrapping increases these effects
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Why simple heuristics make life both easier ans harder: A social-psychological perspective
No full textVariations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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