This review proposes that implicit learning processes are the cognitive substrate of social intuition. This hypothesis is supported by (a) the conceptual correspondence between implicit learning and social intuition (nonverbal communication) and (b) a review of relevant neuropsychological (Huntington's and Parkinson's disease), neuroimaging, neurophysiological, and neuroanatomical data. It is concluded that the caudate and putamen, in the basal ganglia, are central components of both intuition and implicit learning, supporting the proposed relationship. Parallel, but distinct, processes of judgment and action are demonstrated at each of the social, cognitive, and neural levels of analysis. Additionally, explicit attempts to learn a sequence can interfere with implicit learning. The possible relevance of the computations of the basal ganglia to emotional appraisal, automatic evaluation, script processing, and decision making are discussed. These "feelings " have an efficiency of operation which it is impossi-ble for thought to match. Even our most highly intellectualized operations depend upon them as a "fringe " by which to guide our inferential movements. They give us our sense of rightness and wrongness, of what to select and emphasize and follow up, and what

Modern theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience indicate that there are two fundamental ways in which human beings comprehend risk. The “analytic system ” uses algorithms and normative rules, such as the probability calculus, formal logic, and risk assessment. It is relatively slow, effortful, and requires conscious control. The “experiential system ” is intuitive, fast, mostly automatic, and not very accessible to conscious awareness. The experiential system enabled human beings to survive during their long period of evolution and remains today the most natural and most common way to respond to risk. It relies on images and associations, linked by experience to emotion and affect (a feeling that something is good or bad). This system represents risk as a feeling that tells us whether it’s safe to walk down this dark street or drink this strange-smelling water. Proponents of formal risk analysis tend to view affective responses to risk as irrational. Current wisdom disputes this view. The rational and the experiential systems operate in parallel and each seems to depend on the other for guidance. Studies have demonstrated that analytic reasoning cannot be effective unless it is guided by emotion and affect. Rational decision making requires proper integration of both modes of

People often choose intuitive rather than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. The authors suggest that these intuitive biases arise because intuitions often spring to mind with subjective ease, and the subjective ease leads people to hold their intuitions with high confidence. An investigation of predictions against point spreads found that people predicted intuitive options (favorites) more often than equally valid (or even more valid) nonintuitive alternatives (underdogs). Critically, though, this effect was largely determined by people’s confidence in their intuitions (intuitive confidence). Across naturalistic, expert, and laboratory samples (Studies 1–3), against personally determined point spreads (Studies 4–11), and even when intuitive confidence was manipulated by altering irrelevant aspects of the decision context (e.g., font; Studies 12 and 13), the authors found that decreasing intuitive confidence reduced or eliminated intuitive biases. These findings indicate that intuitive biases are not inevitable but rather predictably determined by contextual variables that affect intuitive confidence.

People are often presumed to be vulnerable to a desirability bias, namely, a tendency to be overoptimistic about a future outcome as a result of their preferences or desires for that outcome. In this article, this form of wishful thinking is distinguished from the more general concepts of motivated reasoning and overoptimism, and the evidence for this bias is reviewed. The authors argue that despite the prevalence of the idea that desires bias optimism, the empirical evidence regarding this possibility is limited. The potential for desires to depress rather than enhance optimism is discussed, and the authors advocate for greater research attention to mediators of both types of effects. Nine possible mediational accounts are described, and critical issues for future research on the desirability bias are discussed.

Allen Newell, typically a cheery and optimistic man, often expressed frustration over the state of progress in cognitive science. He would point to such things as the “schools ” of thought, the changes in fashion, the dominance of controversies,

This paper begins to answer the call to broaden current theories of individual decision-making by including in them the effects of human mood. Grounding our arguments in psychological literature on the effects of mood on information processing, motivation, and decision heuristics, we develop hypotheses about how mood can significantly affect individuals' use of structured decision protocols. In support of our hypotheses, results from an experimental study of complex decision-making suggest that, in situations where a structured decision protocol is the usual method of decision-making, individuals in moderately negative moods are significantly more likely than those in moderately positive moods to: (1) carefully execute all the steps of a structured decision protocol, (2) execute the steps of a structured decision protocol in the correct order, and (3) rely on the outcome of the structured decision protocol as the primary basis for the decision. We discuss these findings in terms of the...

This paper focuses less on examining how well jurors evaluate DNA evidence and more on the psychological question of how jurors assess the value of DNA evidence. Toward this end, I heed the advice of Smith et al. (1996, p. 79) and offer a theory for predicting when legal decision makers will be moreand less impressed byDNAmatch statistics. Following a discussion of the broad theory and its significance for cases involving DNA evidence, three experiments with using a mock juror paradigm are presented. The experiments show how subtly different presentations of the identical DNA match statistics in a murder case affect (a) estimates of the chance that the suspect is the source of the matching DNA evidence, (b) estimates of the chance that the suspect is guilty, and (c) verdicts

The way people respond to the chance that an unlikely event will occur depends on how the event is described. We propose that people attach more weight to unlikely events when they can easily generate or imagine examples in which the event has occurred or will occur than when they cannot. We tested this idea in two experiments with mock jurors using written murder scenarios. The results suggested that jurors attach more weight to the defendant's claim that an incriminating DNA match is merely coincidental when it is easy for them to imagine other individuals whose DNA would also match than when it is not easy for them to imagine such individuals. We manipulated the difficulty of imagining such examples by varying the description of the DNA-match statistic. Some of the variations that influenced the jurors were normatively irrelevant.

Please do not cite or circulate without permissionAre Crowds Wise 2 Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to go beyond these demonstrations to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds ’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way those decisions are elicited. We tested these hypotheses in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) that features prices that are widely believed to reflect crowd wisdom. A season-long experiment in which a diverse sample of enthusiastic NFL football fans wagered more than $20,000 on NFL football games found that the crowd was systematically biased and unwise: Faulty intuitions led bettors to predict “favorites ” more than “underdogs ” against point spreads that disadvantaged favorites. This bias persisted even among bettors who were told that the point spreads were biased against favorites. Moreover, the crowd’s bias increased over time, a result that may have been caused by attributions for success and failure that caused participants to “learn ” that intuitive choices were wise. However, when the crowd was asked to predict game outcomes by estimating point differentials rather than by predicting against point spreads, its predictions were unbiased and wiser. Thus, the same crowd of bettors can emerge wise or unwise, depending on how predictions are elicited. Are Crowds Wise 3 The wisdom-of-crowds hypothesis predicts that the independent judgments of a crowd of individuals (as measured by any form of central tendency) will be relatively accurate, even when most of the individuals in the crowd are ignorant and error-prone (Surowiecki, 2004). Examples

www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp When good decisions have bad outcomes: The impact of aVect