Leftmost-digit-bias in an enumerated public sector? An experiment on citizens’ judgment of performance information
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2013, Vol 8, Issue 3
Abstract
Numerical performance information is increasingly important to political decision-making in the public sector. Some have suggested that biases in citizens’ processing of numerical information can be exploited by politicians to skew citizens’ perception of performance. I report on an experiment on how citizens evaluate numerical performance information from a public school context. The experiment is conducted with a large and diverse sample of the Danish population (N=1156). The analysis shows a strong leftmost-digit-bias in citizens’ evaluation of school grading information. Thus, very small changes in reported average grades, which happen to shift the leftmost grade digit, can lead to very large shifts in citizens’ evaluation of performance. The rightmost digit on the grade is almost fully ignored.
Authors and Affiliations
Asmus Leth Olsen
Judging competing theoretical accounts by their empirical content and parsimony: Reply to Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015)
Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015) offer an alternative theoretical explanation for our finding that defection entails more cognitive conflict than cooperation (Kieslich & Hilbig, 2014). Although we completely agree that diffe...
An exploration of the motivational basis of take-some and give-some games
Surprisingly little research has investigated the particular motives that underlie choice behavior in social dilemma situations. The main aim of the present research was to ask whether behavior in take-some games (such a...
Partner selection supported by opaque reputation promotes cooperative behavior
Reputation plays a major role in human societies, and it has been proposed as an explanation for the evolution of cooperation. While the majority of previous studies equates reputation with a transparent and complete his...
Dishonest helping and harming after (un)fair treatment
People experience fair and unfair treatment daily, and at times may react by breaking ethical rules and lying. Here, we assess the extent to which individuals engage in dishonest behavior aimed at helping or harming othe...
An illusion of control modulates the reluctance to tempt fate
The tempting fate effect is that the probability of a fateful outcome is deemed higher following an action that “tempts” the outcome than in the absence of such an action. In this paper we evaluate the hypothesis that th...