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Psychological Research
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research 8/2023

25-05-2023 | Review

The effect of incentivization on the conjunction fallacy in judgments: a meta-analysis

Auteurs: Eldad Yechiam, Dana Zeif

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 8/2023

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Abstract

The conjunction fallacy is a classical judgment bias that was argued to be a robust cognitive illusion insensitive to the positive effect of incentivization. We conducted a meta-analysis of the literature (n = 3276) and found that although most studies did not report a significant effect of incentivization, the results across studies show a significant positive effect for incentivization, d = 0.19, with an odds ratio of 1.40 for answering correctly when incentivized. There was no moderating effect of payoff size despite the differences in incentive value between studies. Additionally, the effect was relatively smaller when examining absolute differences in the probability of correct judgment instead of odds ratios, suggesting that it may be partly driven by studies with low baseline performance. These findings join those of other judgment-bias studies to suggest a small but nevertheless robust debiasing effect of incentivization.
vorige artikel Improving children’s ability to remember intentions: a literature review on strategies to improve prospective memory during childhood
volgende artikel Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought
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1
Likewise, the liberal paternalism (or “nudge”) approach was originally based on the assumption that people cannot in practice increase their cognitive effort (e.g., through incentives) so as to overcome judgment and decision biases (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).
 
2
Reviews of this literature concluded either that incentives had a positive effect on judgment performance (Hertwig & Ortmann, 2001) or that it had a very limited effect (Camerer & Hogarth, 1999).
 
3
On average the rate of correct choices in the non-incentivized condition was 45% compared to 55% in the incentivized condition.
 
4
Rather, the two metrics were used as robustness tests. Formally comparing the two statistics likely requires a larger number of studies.
 
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Metagegevens
Titel
The effect of incentivization on the conjunction fallacy in judgments: a meta-analysis
Auteurs
Eldad Yechiam
Dana Zeif
Publicatiedatum
25-05-2023
Uitgeverij
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in
Psychological Research / Uitgave 8/2023
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01837-5

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