Procedural debiasing of primacy/anchoring effects in clinical-like judgments.
Primacy (or anchoring) effects in clinical judgment occur when information presented at an early stage unduly influences a judgment compared to the effect of the same information presented at a later stage. Using recent theoretical models of these effects, three debiasing methods were developed and tested for their efficacy. Contrary to some recent failures to find anchoring effects, both single-cue and sequence anchoring manipulations produced medium-size effects on personality trait ratings and generalized to predictions of behavior. A consider-the-opposite procedure that involved cue sorting by diagnosticity debiased single-cue anchoring, but comparable results were obtained by subjects who simply took notes while reviewing each cue prior to judgment. Bias inoculation was marginally successful at reducing single-cue anchoring. Methodological issues as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.
Mumma
G H
GH
Department of Psychology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock 79409, USA.
Wilson
S B
SB
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015982:Bias; D003463:Cues; D015987:Effect Modifier, Epidemiologic; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008568:Memory; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011594:Psychometrics; D013781:Texas; D013997:Time Factors