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Contextual Influences on Omission Neglect in the Fault Tree Paradigm
Author(s) -
Silvera David H.,
Kardes Frank R.,
Harvey Nigel,
Cronley Maria L.,
Houghton David C.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of consumer psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.433
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1532-7663
pISSN - 1057-7408
DOI - 10.1207/s15327663jcp1502_4
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , closure (psychology) , neglect , psychology , cognition , cognitive psychology , computer science , tree (set theory) , decision tree , fault tree analysis , contrast (vision) , econometrics , social psychology , artificial intelligence , mathematics , economics , paleontology , mathematical analysis , neuroscience , psychiatry , reliability engineering , market economy , biology , engineering
Fault trees are used to organize potential causes of a problem to facilitate better judgments about potential problem solutions. However, fault trees can lead to biased judgments because decision makers tend to overestimate the likelihood of problem causes that are explicitly mentioned in the fault tree and underestimate the likelihood of problem causes that are not. In this research, we examined the impact of context information and need for cognitive closure on these estimates. In 2 experiments, participants with a low need for cognitive closure used the informational content of experimenter provided and self‐generated context information as a basis for making likelihood estimates. In contrast, participants with a high need for closure did not use experimenter provided context information at all but used the ease of producing self‐generated context information (rather than informational content) as a basis for their likelihood estimates.