Cognitive abilities and superior decision making under risk: A protocol analysis and process model evaluation

By Edward T. Cokely, Colleen M . Kelley. Judgment and Decision Making, 2009

452 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Individual differences in cognitive abilities and skills can predict normatively superior and logically consistent judgments and decisions. The current experiment investigates the processes that mediate individual differences in risky choices. We assessed working memory span, numeracy, and cognitive impulsivity and conducted a protocol analysis to trace variations in conscious deliberative processes. People higher in cognitive abilities made more choices consistent with expected values; however, expected-value choices rarely resulted from expected-value calculations. Instead, the cognitive ability and choice relationship was mediated by the number of simple considerations made during decision making — e.g., transforming probabilities and considering the relative size of gains. Results imply that, even in simple lotteries, superior risky decisions associated with cognitive abilities and controlled cognition can reflect metacognitive dynamics and elaborative heuristic search processes, rather than normative calculations. Modes of cognitive control (e.g., dual process dynamics) and implications for process models of risky decision-making (e.g., priority heuristic) are discussed.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Neuroscience, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9041329f3b7087e99d5c24614a098719429ed4f1

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Citations in the corpus

Assessing miserly information processing: An expansion of the Cognitive Reflection Test (2014, background): “Likewise, Cokely and Kelley (2009) found a correlation between performance on the CRT and the proportion of choices consistent with expected value.”
On the distinction between rationality and intelligence: Implications for understanding individual differences in reasoning. (2012, background): “…conjunction fallacy, and so on—on each of these tasks, some people give the standard normative response (Bruine de Bruin, Parker, & Fischhoff , 2007; Cokely & Kelley, 2009; Del Missier, Mantyla, & Bruine de Bruin, 2010; Dohmen et al., 2009; Finucane & Gullion, 2010; Frederick, 2005; Klaczynski,…”
Decision-making Competence, Executive Functioning, and General Cognitive Abilities (2012, background): “…in fluid intelligence and numeracy are related to performance on various decision‐making tasks (e.g. Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007; in press; Cokely & Kelley, 2009; Dieckmann, 2008; Finucane & Guillon, 2010; Mata, Schooler, & Rieskamp, 2007; Peters et al., 2006), with the magnitude of the…”
Executive functions in decision making: An individual differences approach (2010, background): “…provide a predictive contribution to decision-making performance that goes beyond the contribution of individual differences in more general cognitive measures (such as fluid intelligence and numeracy; e.g., Bruine de Bruin et al., 2009; Cokely & Kelley, 2009; Mata, Schooler, & Rieskamp, 2007).”
Measuring Risk Literacy: The Berlin Numeracy Test (2012, background): “…to be a predictor of decision strategies, affective reactions, comprehension and normative choices across many risky economic, health, and consumer decisions (Banks, O’Dea, & Oldﬁeld, 2010; Cokely & Kelley, 2009; Lipkus & Peters, 2009; Peters & Levin, 2008; Peters et al., 2006; Reyna et al., 2009).”
Correlations of cognitive reflection with judgments and choices (2010, background): “Based on Cokely et al.’s (2009) and in Cokely and Kelley’s (2009) results we predicted a positive correlation of CRT with the five estimation variables: NatCh, Epop, Erat, rLgPop, rLgRat.”
Analytic-thinking predicts hoax beliefs and helping behaviors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (2020, background): “For example, higher CRT scores predict resistance to conjunction fallacies (Oechssler et al., 2009) and reduced susceptibility to framing effects (Cokely & Kelley, 2009; Frederick, 2005).”
Beyond Comprehension (2012, background): “Cokely and Kelley (2009) presented participants with 40 hypothetical choices between certain and risky options (e.g., $125 or 30% chance to win $900).”
Do you know more when it matters less? (2010, methodology): “Further research using higher fidelity methods (e.g., process tracing or protocol analysis, Cokely & Kelley, 2009; Ericsson & Simon, 1980, 1993) is needed to see how knowledge attribution fits into our increasing understanding of human cognition.22 A worry might arise based in the controversial…”
Predicting biases in very highly educated samples: Numeracy and metacognition (2014, methodology): “Consider the protocol analysis conducted by Cokely and Kelley (2009) examining deliberative processes in simple risky lotteries.”
How distinct are intuition and deliberation? An eye-tracking analysis of instruction-induced decision modes (2009, result): “They are also in line with process analyses of decisions under risk showing that expected-value choices rarely result from deliberate calculations of weighted sums ( Cokely & Kelley, 2009; Glockner & Herbold, 2008).”