Metacognitive Myopia in Hidden-Profile Tasks: The Failure to Control for Repetition Biases

Abstract

The failure to exploit collective wisdom is evident in the conspicuous difficulty to solve hidden-profile tasks. While previous accounts focus on group-dynamics and motivational biases, the present research applies a metacognitive perspective to an ordinary learning approach. Assuming that evaluative learning is sensitive to the frequency with which targets are paired with positive versus negative attributes, selective repetition of targets’ assets and deficits will inevitably bias the resulting evaluations. As selective repetition effects are ubiquitous, metacognitive monitoring and control functions are required to correct for repetition biases. However, three experiments show that metacognitive myopia prevents judges from correction, even when explicitly warned to ignore selective repetition (Experiment 1), when same-speaker repetitions rule out social validation (Experiment 2) and when blatant debriefing enforces superficial corrections (Experiment 3). For a comprehensive understanding of collective judgments and decisions, it is essential to take metacognitive monitoring and control into account.

Metacognitive myopia and the overutilization of misleading advice

“…They often follow the information given uncritically, regardless of its validity. Metacognitive myopia is evident in the inability not to be influenced by selectively repeated arguments in preference learning (Unkelbach, Fiedler, & Freytag, ) or in collective decision making (Fiedler, Hofferbert & Woellert, ). People continue to be influenced by misleading information they have themselves recognized to be wrong (Fiedler, Armbruster, Nickel, Walther, & Asbeck, ) and even after full debriefing about invalid feedback (Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard, ).…”

Reversing the Cumulative Redundancy Bias to Demonstrate Metacognitive Flexibility in Cue Utilization

“…The 14-fold leading status of Team A was coded as if it reflected 14 independent outcomes providing increasing evidence for the superiority of A over B. This bias is in line with previous evidence on the metacognitive inability to discount redundant information (e.g., Fiedler et al, 2018;Unkelbach et al, 2007).…”

Dyadic judgments based on conflicting samples: The failure to ignore invalid input

“…Prior to the analysis of the dyadic contingency judgments, the esti- decision-making (Fiedler, 2000(Fiedler, , 2012Fiedler, Hütter, Schott, & Kutzner, 2019, Fiedler, Hofferbert, & Wöllert, 2018Unkelbach et al, 2007;Juslin et al, 2007;Mahmoodi et al, 2015). Individuals' inferences often follow the given samples of information in an uncritical and naïve way.…”

“…A growing body of evidence points to a conspicuous neglect of metacognitive monitoring and control functions (Ackerman & Thompson, 2017;Nelson, 1996). This deficit in quality control of one's own cognitive processes constitutes a serious impediment of rational thought at the individual level (Fiedler, 2000(Fiedler, , 2012Fiedler, Hütter, Schott, & Kutzner, 2019, Fiedler, Hofferbert, & Wöllert, 2018Unkelbach, Fiedler, & Freytag, 2007). The experiments reported below extend MM to dyadic groups, testing whether dyads fed with conflicting information can jointly overcome MM when they are sensitized to validity issues.…”

“…Group judgments may thus reflect an uncritical opinion-negotiation process (Fiedler et al, 2018;Mahmoodi et al, 2015). 1 One might question participants' ability to understand the logic of conditional sampling.…”