What you should want from your professional: The impact of educational information on people’s attitudes toward simple actuarial tools.

Abstract

in Ontario, Canada. His primary research program involves improving law enforcement procedures through psychological science, with a particular focus on investigative interviewing. He is also interested in people's perception of decision making strategies used by practitioners both inside and outside the justice system. KIRK LUTHER received his MSc and PhD in experimental psychology from Memorial University. His research pertains primarily to the study of human behavior within the criminal justice system, including topics on investigative interviewing, safeguarding legal rights, and bounded rationality.

Education increases decision-rule use: An investigation of education and incentives to improve decision making.

“…decision-makers' actual decision-rule use, instead of only use intentions (e.g., Eastwood & Luther, 2016) or self-reported use. Furthermore, this allowed us to investigate the effect of educational information on prediction accuracy.…”

“…Another, more fundamental, reason is that many decision makers lack relevant knowledge of evidence-based decision-making practices (Fisher et al, 2020; Jackson et al, 2018; Lawler, 2007; Rynes, 2012; Rynes et al, 2002; Sanders et al, 2008). For example, decision makers believe that they can learn from their prediction errors, can accurately identify incorrect decision-rule predictions that warrant deviation from a rule, and can make more accurate holistic judgments with experience (Dietvorst et al, 2015; Eastwood & Luther, 2016; Highhouse, 2008; Leonard & Swap, 2004). However, in noisy contexts such as human performance prediction, these beliefs are incorrect (Dawes, 1971; Goldberg, 1968; Grove et al, 2000; Jackson et al, 2019; Karelaia & Hogarth, 2008; Yu & Kuncel, 2020).…”

“…Given that knowledge gaps constitute a major reason why decision-making research findings are not translated into practice (Banks et al, 2016; Fisher et al, 2020; Gill, 2018; Terpstra & Rozell, 1997), it is remarkable that there seem to exist only two studies in the context of holistic versus mechanical combination in which participants were told that decision-rule predictions are more accurate than holistic predictions. In one of the two vignette studies, Eastwood and Luther (2016) found that participants who received information that using a specific decision rule would result in more accurate predictions than holistic predictions reported higher willingness to use such a rule in practice than participants who did not receive such information. In another study, Arkes et al (1986) found that participants who were told that decision-rule predictions are more valid than holistic predictions made more accurate predictions than participants who were told that holistic predictions are more valid than decision-rule predictions, or participants who were told that these methods are about equally valid.…”

“…Although the existing studies provide valuable insights, Eastwood and Luther (2016) only investigated the effect of educational information on participants’ willingness to use a decision rule. Hence, no conclusions can be drawn about actual rule use.…”

Implementing evidence-based assessment and selection in organizations: A review and an agenda for future research

“…For example, Kaplan et al (2001) showed in an accountancy bond rating task that decision makers were more likely to use a mechanical rule when they could design the rule. Furthermore, informing decision makers in a legal judgment scenario that mechanical rule predictions are more accurate than holistic predictions increased their intention to support the use a mechanical rule in practice (Eastwood & Luther, 2016).…”