CAREER: A Memory Processes Account of Judgment Under Uncertainty

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

A fundamental component of judgment and decision making is hypothesis evaluation, a process that is embedded in many real-world tasks. For example, physicians presumably consider the likelihood of various diseases prior to issuing a diagnosis, mechanics presumably assess the likelihood of various causes of automobile failure before investing time and money in repairs, and auditors presumably evaluate the likelihood of various sources of accounting errors prior to pursuing the sources of errors. Tied to the process of hypothesis evaluation is the process of hypothesis generation. Hypothesis generation involves the generation, or recall, of the to-be-evaluated hypotheses. Hypothesis generation is an equally important component of judgment, as the outcome of the generation process determines which alternative hypotheses ultimately are evaluated by the decision maker. The purpose of the present research is to examine both the hypothesis evaluation and hypothesis generation aspects of judgment within the context of mainstream memory theory. In particular, this research will focus on testing and extending a memory model (Minerva-DM) to account for how people make judgments of probability and how they generate hypotheses. The overall goal of this research is to provide an integrative theory of likelihood judgment and hypothesis generation while accounting for most of the likelihood judgment phenomena in the judgment-under-uncertainty literature.