Judging from experience: experienced sequences are predicted better than described sequences

Petko Kusev, Paul van Schaik, Asgeir Juliusson, Yvette Kiley

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

When attempting to predict future events, people commonly rely on historical data. Events in a time series can be experienced sequentially (dynamic mode), as in learning about decisions from experience (e.g., Kusev et al., in press, JEP:HPP), or, as with learning about decisions from descriptions, they can also be retrospectively viewed holistically (static mode) – not experienced individually in real time. In one experiment, we studied the influence of presentation mode (dynamic and static) on three sorts of judgments: (i) predictions of the next event (forecast), (ii) estimation of the average value of all the events in the presented series (average) and (iii) judged satisfaction of workers given that the series represented their monthly income (satisfaction). Relative to the static mode participants‘ responses in dynamic mode were anchored on more recent events for all three types of judgments but with different consequences – hence dynamic presentation improved prediction accuracy, but not estimation.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Event52nd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society - Seattle, United States
Duration: 3 Nov 20116 Nov 2011

Conference

Conference52nd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySeattle
Period3/11/116/11/11

Bibliographical note

When attempting to predict future events, people commonly rely on historical data. Events in a time series can be experienced sequentially (dynamic mode), as in learning about decisions from experience (e.g., Kusev et al., in press, JEP:HPP), or, as with learning about decisions from descriptions, they can also be retrospectively viewed holistically (static mode) \ not experienced individually in real time. In one experiment, we studied the influence of presentation mode (dynamic and static) on three sorts of judgments: (i) predictions of the next event (forecast), (ii) estimation of the average value of all the events in the presented series (average) and (iii) judged satisfaction of workers given that the series represented their monthly income (satisfaction). Relative to the static mode participants\ responses in dynamic mode were anchored on more recent events for all three types of judgments but with different consequences \ hence dynamic presentation improved prediction accuracy, but not estimation.

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