Metacognitive myopia in change detection: A collective approach to overcome a persistent anomaly.

Abstract

Going beyond the origins of cognitive biases, which have been the focus of continued research, the notion of metacognitive myopia refers to the failure to monitor, control, and correct for biased inferences at the metacognitive level. Judgments often follow the given information uncritically, even when it is easy to find out or explicitly explained that information samples are misleading or invalid. The present research is concerned with metacognitive myopia in judgments of change. Participants had to decide whether pairs of binomial samples were drawn from populations with decreasing, equal, or increasing proportions p of a critical feature. Judgments of p changes were strongly affected by changes in absolute sample size n, such that only increases (decreases) in p that came along with increasing (decreasing) n were readily detected. Across 4 experiments these anomalies persisted even though the distinction of p and n was strongly emphasized through outcome feedback and full debriefing (Experiment 1-4), simultaneous presentation (Experiments 2-4), and recoding of experienced samples into descriptive percentages (Experiment 3-4). In Experiment 4, a joint attempt was made by 10 scientists working in 7 different institutions to develop an effective debiasing training, suggesting how multilab-collaboration might improve the quality of science in the early stage of operational research designing. Despite significant improvements in change judgments, debiasing treatments did not eliminate the anomalies. Possible ways of dealing with the metacognitive deficit are discussed.

Strategic thinking in the shadow of self-enhancement: Benefits and costs

“…Yet, in their former role, self-enhancement helps them, whereas in the latter role it hurts them. To not understand this difference amounts to an instance of metacognitive myopia (Fiedler et al, 2020). The idea that irrational selfenhancement is pervasive, and that its benefits to the guesser are fortuitous, is corroborated by the finding that most respondents prefer the role of the chooser, again revealing metacognitive myopia.…”

Social and Cognitive Aspects of the Vulnerability to Political Misinformation

“…One could hope, for example, that people would be able to rely on the source of the news they consume and avoid systematically misleading news providers or rely on contextual cues like weird user names (e.g., John1969765439) suggesting that the source is a bot or a troll. Research on meta-cognitive myopia teaches us that, in various contexts, people promptly utilize the information that is available to them (Fiedler, 2007;Juslin et al, 2007), but fail to critically assess its special characteristics, sources, and history, even when such "meta-information" is readily available to them (Fiedler, 2000(Fiedler, , 2012Fiedler et al, 2020;Kareev et al, 2002). For example, when people are asked to judge changes in proportions, they appear to largely conflate changes in proportions with changes in the absolute sample size on the basis of which proportions need to be estimated (Fiedler et al, 2020).…”

“…Research on meta-cognitive myopia teaches us that, in various contexts, people promptly utilize the information that is available to them (Fiedler, 2007;Juslin et al, 2007), but fail to critically assess its special characteristics, sources, and history, even when such "meta-information" is readily available to them (Fiedler, 2000(Fiedler, , 2012Fiedler et al, 2020;Kareev et al, 2002). For example, when people are asked to judge changes in proportions, they appear to largely conflate changes in proportions with changes in the absolute sample size on the basis of which proportions need to be estimated (Fiedler et al, 2020). In simple words, people largely neglect the size of the samples whose proportions they need to estimate and compare.…”

“…In simple words, people largely neglect the size of the samples whose proportions they need to estimate and compare. This happens even if people receive explicit instructions and feedback on the way they estimate proportions (Fiedler et al, 2020).…”