Differences in decisions affected by cognitive biases: examining human values, need for cognition, and numeracy

Abstract

A better understanding of factors that can affect preferences and choices may contribute to more accurate decision-making. Several studies have investigated the effects of cognitive biases on decision-making and their relationship with cognitive abilities and thinking dispositions. While studies on behaviour, attitude, personality, and health worries have examined their relationship with human values, research on cognitive bias has not investigated its relationship to individual differences in human values. The purpose of this study was to explore individual differences in biased choices, examining the relationships of the human values self-direction, conformity, power, and universalism with the anchoring effect, the framing effect, the certainty effect, and the outcome bias, as well as the mediation of need for cognition and the moderation of numeracy in these relationships. We measured individual differences and within-participant effects with an online questionnaire completed by 409 Brazilian participants, with an age range from 18 to 80 years, 56.7% female, and 43.3% male. The cognitive biases studied consistently influenced choices and preferences. However, the biases showed distinct relationships with the individual differences investigated, indicating the involvement of diverse psychological mechanisms. For example, people who value more self-direction were less affected only by anchoring. Hence, people more susceptible to one bias were not similarly susceptible to another. This can help in research on how to weaken or strengthen cognitive biases and heuristics.