SJDM posts
DraftFCB's Institute of Decision Making is at the SJDM conference too, and tweeting on tag #SJDM if you want to keep up with some of the interesting research results in real time. Today's highlights for me were: Martin Hilbert of USC has built an information processing model which can potentially explain seven different cognitive biases. In the model, external signals are stored in memory; and then retrieved again when required to make a decision. Assume that the channels into and out of memory are subject to random noise, and then place the following two constraints on the noise: first, that there is less noise than signal (i.e. our beliefs are more likely to be close to reality than not) and second, that the noise is symmetrically distributed (unbiased). From these assumptions, we can derive Bayesian likelihood, placement bias, subadditivity, hard-easy, overconfidence and conservatism effects. Martin also predicts a seventh bias which has not yet been observed, which h...