Is knowledge the key? An experiment on debiasing architectural decision-making -- a pilot study

Abstract

The impact of cognitive biases on architectural decisionmaking has been proven by previous research. In this work, we endeavour to create a debiasing treatment that would minimise the impact of cognitive biases on architectural decision-making. We conducted a pilot study on two groups of students, to investigate whether a simple debiasing presentation reporting on the influences of cognitive biases, can provide a debiasing effect. The preliminary results show that this kind of treatment is ineffective. Through analysing our results, we propose a set of modifications that could result in a better effect.