The Rumsfeld effect: The unknown unknown.

Hampton, James A.; Aina, Bayo; Andersson, Jessica; Mirza, Humaira Z.; Parmar, Sejal

doi:10.1037/a0025376

Cited by 9 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The finding that the level of judged answerability was fairly strongly correlated between the two scales indicates that there is some stability in the processes generating answerability judgments. This result is also in line with the conclusion reached by Hampton et al (2012) that people in the context of general knowledge statements can show agreement on what are known unknowns. However, as discussed below, some differences were found between the two scales with respect to their sensitivity for the participants’ thought activity prior to making the answerability judgment.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…In this context, Frey and Scoboria (2012) suggested a certain mental ability called “skill” that denotes the ability to separate an answerable from a non-answerable question with respect to information (not) seen. In experimental memory research “Don’t know” judgments have been studied for various types of simple semantic and episodic information (e.g., Kolers and Palef, 1976 ; Glucksberg and McCloskey, 1981 ; Hampton et al, 2012 ). Glucksberg and McCloskey (1981) concluded that when people attempt to answer a question, a memory search is first made to identify facts that may be relevant to the question, and if found, then such facts are further considered in detail in order to assess if they can be used to answer the question.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Glucksberg and McCloskey (1981) concluded that when people attempt to answer a question, a memory search is first made to identify facts that may be relevant to the question, and if found, then such facts are further considered in detail in order to assess if they can be used to answer the question. In a study with several experiments, Hampton et al (2012) tested if people can use awareness of their ignorance to deliver improved test consistency over time. Their results showed that there is certain factual knowledge that the participants saw as “known unknowns”, that is, facts that they consistently knew that they did not know.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Does Anyone Know the Answer to that Question? Individual Differences in Judging Answerability

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Occasionally people may attempt to judge whether a question can be answered today, or if not, if it can be answered in the future. For example, a person may consider whether enough is known about the dangers of living close to a nuclear plant, or to a major electricity cable, for them to be willing to do so, and state-authorities may consider whether questions about the dangers of new technologies have been answered, or in a reasonable future can be, for them to be willing to invest money in research aiming develop such technologies. A total of 476 participants, for each of 22 knowledge questions, either judged whether it was answerable today (current answerability), or judged when it could be answered (future answerability). The knowledge questions varied with respect to the expected consensus concerning their answerability: consensus questions (high expected consensus), non-consensus questions (lower expected consensus), and illusion questions (formulated to appear answerable, but with crucial information absent). The questions’ judged answerability level on the two scales was highly correlated. For both scales, consensus questions were rated more answerable than the non-consensus questions, with illusion questions falling in-between. The result for the illusion questions indicates that a feeling of answerability can be created even when it is unlikely that somebody can come up with an answer. The results also showed that individual difference variables influenced the answerability judgments. Higher levels of belief in certainty of knowledge, mankind’s knowledge, and mankind’s efficacy were related to judging the non-consensus questions as more answerable. Participants rating the illusion questions as answerable rated the other answerability questions as more, or equally, answerable compared to the other participants and showed tendencies to prefer a combination of more epistemic default processing and less intellectual processing.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Does Anyone Know the Answer to that Question? Individual Differences in Judging Answerability

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…McCloskey and Glucksberg (1978) had students categorize lists of exemplars in semantic categories, the lists including many borderline and uncertain cases (see also Hampton, Aina, Andersson, Mirza, & Parmar, 2012). The categorization task was repeated after a period of a month, and within-individual consistency was considerably greater than between-individual consensus.…”

Section: Evidence Of Individual Variation In Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When intensions do not map onto extensions: Individual differences in conceptualization.

Hampton¹,

Passanisi²

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Concepts are represented in the mind through knowledge of their extensions (the class of items to which the concept applies) and intensions (features that distinguish that class of items). A common assumption among theories of concepts is that the 2 aspects are intimately related. Hence if there is systematic individual variation in concept representation, the variation should correlate between extensional and intensional measures. A pair of individuals with similar extensional beliefs about a given concept should also share similar intensional beliefs. To test this notion, exemplars (extensions) and features (intensions) of common categories were rated for typicality and importance respectively across 2 occasions. Withinsubject consistency was greater than between-subjects consensus on each task, providing evidence for systematic individual variation. Furthermore, the similarity structure between individuals for each task was stable across occasions. However, across 5 samples, similarity between individuals for extensional judgments did not map onto similarity between individuals for intensional judgments. The results challenge the assumption common to many theories of conceptual representation that intensions determine extensions and support a hybrid view of concepts where there is a disconnection between the conceptual resources that are used for the 2 tasks. Permanent repository link

show abstract

“…In contrast to interindividual variability, intraindividual variability has not caught on as a hallmark of vague categories. Although it has been acknowledged that vague categories have borderline cases for which an individual might feel equally inclined to apply and to deny the category label (Schiffer, 2003)—evidenced by increased categorization reaction times and lower confidence ratings (Koriat & Sorka, 2015), as well as competing responses to the same stimulus at a given time (Malt, 1990)—within-subject inconsistencies in categorization rarely constitute the topic of investigation themselves (see Hampton, Aina, Andersson, Mirza, & Parmar, 2012, for a notable exception). Intraindividual categorization differences tend to be accounted for in terms of shifting thresholds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing Criterial Vagueness in Inconsistencies

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sixty undergraduate students made category membership decisions for each of 132 candidate exemplar-category name pairs (e.g., chess – Sports) in each of two separate sessions. They were frequently inconsistent from one session to the next, both for nominal categories such as Sports and Fish, and ad hoc categories such as Things You Rescue from a Burning House. A mixture model analysis revealed that several of these inconsistencies could be attributed to criterial vagueness: participants adopting different criteria for membership in the two sessions. This finding indicates that categorization is a probabilistic process, whereby the conditions for applying a category label are not invariant. Individuals have various functional meanings of nominal categories at their disposal and entertain competing goals for ad hoc categories.

show abstract

The Rumsfeld effect: The unknown unknown.

Cited by 9 publications

References 32 publications

Does Anyone Know the Answer to that Question? Individual Differences in Judging Answerability

Does Anyone Know the Answer to that Question? Individual Differences in Judging Answerability

When intensions do not map onto extensions: Individual differences in conceptualization.

Revealing Criterial Vagueness in Inconsistencies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About