Information environment and cognitive decision processes

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Klaus Fiedler
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2009 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 117086090

• Final Report Year: 2016

Final Report Abstract

In diesem Projekt wurden insgesamt 18 Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter beschäftigt, nebst zahlreichen studentischen Hilfskräften und Studierenden der Psychologie, die im Rahmen ihrer Diplomarbeiten ebenfalls mit Teilaspekten dieses Projektes befasst waren. Mit ihrer Hilfe wurden während des Förderzeitraums insgesamt 47 Zeitschriften-Artikel veröffentlicht, die direkt oder indirekt durch das Koselleck-Projekt ermöglicht wurden, sowie zwei herausgegebene Bücher und eine gesonderte Sektion in der Zeitschrift „Social Cognition“, gemeinsam mit der früheren Mitarbeiterin Mandy Hütter, die inzwischen als Professorin an der Universität Tübingen arbeitet. Auch die übrigen Mitarbeiter*innen haben entweder im Förderzeitraum oder kurz danach ihre Promotion abgeschlossen oder waren seinerzeit bereits promoviert. Den thematischen Mittelpunkt des Projektes bildete der vom Antragsteller propagierte kognitiv-ökologische Ansatz zur Erforschung adaptiver Kognition, gemäß der Annahme, dass eine zentrale Voraussetzung für das Verstehen intrapsychologischer (kognitiver und motivationaler) Prozesse darin besteht, zunächst die Verteilung und die Struktur der Informationsumwelt zu beschreiben, welche den Input für intrapsychische Prozesse darstellen. Ein immer wieder aufgezeigtes empirisches Ergebnis dieses Ansatzes besteht in der Demonstration, dass vermeintlich kognitive Ursachen von irrationalen Urteilen und Entscheidungen bereits in der Umwelt angelegt sind. Ökologische Verzerrungen und selektive Stimulierung liefern demnach immer wieder alternative Erklärungen für vermeintliche mentale Beschränkungen. Im Rahmen des Projektes wurden derartige Befunde besonders in den folgenden Paradigmen gesammelt und publiziert: - Neue theoretische Entwicklungen und Anwendungen von Pseudokontingenzen (Fiedler & Freytag, 2004; Fiedler et al., 2007) und Multi-Level Problemen - Vertiefung der empirischen Arbeiten und der publizierten Debatte über die Möglichkeit eines „small-sample advantage“ im Sinne von Kareev (2000) and Fiedler & Kareev, 2006, 2008) - Theoretische und empirische Fortentwicklungen des “Information sampling”-Ansatzes in der Kommunikation und bei Gruppen-Entscheidungen - Strategische Einflüsse bei Priming-Effekten und ihrer Sensitvität für kontextuelle Regelmäßigkeiten der Stimulus-Serie - Sowie Grundlagen-Arbeiten am konzeptuellen Bezugsrahmen für den kognitiv-ökologischen Ansatz der Rationalitätsforschung. Abgesehen von der personellen Förderung junger Mitarbeiter*innen und der Publikation zahlreicher Artikel, haben die Arbeiten im Rahmen dieses Projektes sicher dazu beigetragen, neue personelle und curriculare Strukturen zu schaffen sowie Netzwerke zwischen Forschern und Laboren herzustellen.

Publications

• (2012). Bayesian logic and trial-by-trial learning. Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1090 - 1095). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society
  von Sydow, M. & Fiedler, K.
  
• (2013). A process-dissociation analysis of semantic illusions. Acta Psychologica, 144, 433–443
  Mata, A., Ferreira, M. B., & Reis, J.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.08.001)
• (2013). Afterthoughts on precognition: No cogent evidence for anomalous influences of consequent events on preceding cognition. Theory & Psychology, 23(3), 323-333
  Fiedler, K., & Krueger, J. I.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0959354313485504)
• (2013). Applying sampling theories to attitude learning in a virtual school class environment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 122, 222-231
  Fiedler, K., Wöllert, F., Tauber, B., & Hess, P.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.08.001)
• (2013). Flexibility in motivated reasoning: Strategic shifts of reasoning modes in covariation judgment. Social Cognition, 31, 465–481
  Mata, A., Ferreira, M. B., & Sherman, S. J.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1521/soco_2012_1004)
• (2013). Fluency and behavior regulation: Adaptive and maladaptive consequences of a good feeling. In C. Unkelbach, R. Greifender (Eds.) , The experience of thinking: How the fluency of mental processes influences cognition and behaviour (pp. 234-254). New York, NY US: Psychology Press
  Fiedler, K.
  
• (2013). How majority members become associated with rare attributes: Ecological correlations in stereotype formation. Social Cognition, 31, 427-442
  Vogel, T., Kutzner, F., Fiedler, K., & Freytag, P.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1521/soco_2012_1002)
• (2013). Implicit misattribution of evaluative responses: Contingency-unaware evaluative conditioning requires simultaneous stimulus presentations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(3), 638–643
  Hütter, M., & Sweldens, S.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029989)
• (2013). Memory and emotion. In T. Perfect and S. Lindsay (Eds.), Handbook of Applied Memory. London: Sage Publications
  Fiedler, K., & Hütter, M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446294703.n9)
• (2013). On the automatic effects of advertising: the uncontrollability of evaluative conditioning effects. In S. Botti & A. Labroo (Eds.), Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 41, p. 66-70). Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research
  Hütter, M. & Sweldens, S.
  
• (2013). Pseudocontingencies derived from categorically organized memory representations. Memory & Cognition, 41, 1185-1199
  Vogel, T., Freytag, P., Kutzner, F., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-013-0331-8)
• (2013). Pseudocontingencies: Logically unwarranted but smart inferences. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(4), 324-329
  Fiedler, K., Kutzner, F., & Vogel, T.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413480171)
• (2013). Psychological distance and judgments of causal impact. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 1184-1189
  Hansen, J., Rim, S., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.05.012)
• (2013). Reasoning about others' reasoning. Journal of Experimental Socil Psychology, 49(3), 486-491
  Mata, A., Fiedler, K., Ferreira, M. B., & Almeida, T.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.01.010)
• (2013). Recommendations for increasing replicability in psychology. European Journal of Personality, 27(2), 108-119
  Asendorpf, J. B., Conner, M., De Fruyt, F., De Houwer, J., Denissen, J.J. A., Fiedler, K., Fiedler, S., Funder, D. C., Kliegl, R., Nosek, B. A.,Perugini, M., Roberts, B. W., Schmitt, M., van Aken, M. A. G., Weber, H., & Wicherts, J. M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/per.1919)
• (2013). Replication is more than hitting the lottery twice. European Journal of Personality, 27(2), 138-144
  Asendorpf, J.P., Conner, M. De Fruyt F. De Houwer, J. Denissen, J.J. A., Fiedler, K., Fiedler, S., Funder, D.C., Kliegl, R. Nosek, B., Perugini, M., Roberts, B.W. Schmitt, M., van Aken, M.A.G., Weber, H., and Wicherts, J.M.
  
• (2013). Social thinking and interpersonal behavior. New York, NY US: Psychology Press.
  Forgas, J. P., Fiedler, K., & Sedikides, C.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203139677)
• (2013). Social thinking and interpersonal behavior: Classical theories and contemporary approaches. In J. P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, C. Sedikides (Eds.) , Social thinking and interpersonal behavior (pp. 1-20). New York, NY US: Psychology Press
  Forgas, J. P., Fiedler, K., & Sedikides, C.
  
• (2013). The formation of attitudes and social judgments in a virtual school class environment. In J. P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, C. Sedikides (Eds.) , Social thinking and interpersonal behavior (pp. 183-200). New York, NY US: Psychology Press
  Fiedler, K.
  
• (2013). The metacognitive advantage of deliberative thinkers: A dual-process perspective on overconfidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 353–373
  Mata, A., Ferreira, M. B., & Sherman, S. J.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033640)
• (2014). Adjective-noun order as representational structure: Native language grammar influences perception of similarity and recognition memory. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 21, 193–197
  Mata, A., Percy, E. J., & Sherman, S. J.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-013-0479-z)
• (2014). Affect and cognitive processes in educational contexts. In R. Pekrun, L. Linnenbrink-Garcia, R. Pekrun, L. Linnenbrink-Garcia (Eds.) , International handbook of emotions in education (pp. 36-55). New York, NY, US: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group
  Fiedler, K., & Beier, S.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203148211.ch3)
• (2014). From intrapsychic to ecological theories in social psychology: Outlines of a functional theory approach. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44(7), 657-670
  Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2069)
• (2014). Inferring correlations: From exemplars to categories. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
  Vogel, T., Kutzner, F., Freytag, P., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0586-5)
• (2014). Influence of judges' behaviors on perceived procedural justice. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 44, 46-59
  Beier, S., Eib, C., Oehmann, V., Fiedler, P., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12199)
• (2014). Language and attribution: Implicit causal and dispositional information contained in words. In T. M. Holtgraves, T. M. Holtgraves (Eds.) , The Oxford handbook of language and social psychology (pp. 250-264). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press
  Fiedler, K., & Krüger, T.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199838639.013.006)
• (2014). Regressive judgment: Implications of a universal property of the empirical world. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5), 361-367
  Fiedler, K., & Unkelbach, C.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414546330)
• (2014). Research practices that can prevent an inflation of falsepositive rates. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(2), 107-118
  Murayama, K., Pekrun, R., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1088868313496330)
• (2014). Response category width as a psychophysical manifestation of construal level and distance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(4), 501-512
  Krüger, T., Fiedler, K., Koch, A., & Alves, H.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213517009)
• (2014). Sprache als Mittel der Beeinflussung in der Kommunikation. In M. Blanz, A. Florack & U. Piontkowski (Hrsg.) Kommunikationswissenschaft. Eine Einführung für Sozial- und Verhaltenswissenschaftler
  Fiedler, K., & Krueger, T.
  
• (2014). Strategic interactions, affective reactions, and fast adaptations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1112-1126
  Kareev, Y., Avrahami, J., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0034641)
• (2014). The art of exerting verbal influence through powerful lexical stimuli. In J. P. Forgas, O. Vincze, J. László, J. P. Forgas, O. Vincze, J. László (Eds.) , Social cognition and communication (pp. 43-61). New York, NY, US: Psychology Press
  Fiedler, K., & Mata, A.
  
• (2014). The limits of automaticity. In J. W. Sherman, B. Gawronski, Y. Trope (Eds.) , Dual-process theories of the social mind (pp. 497-513). New York, NY, US: Guilford Press
  Fiedler, K., & Hütter, M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.15496/publikation-5752)
• (2014). The presenter’s paradox revisited: An evaluation mode account. Journal of Consumer Research, 41, 1127–1136
  Krüger, T., Mata, A., & Ihmels, M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1086/678393)
• (2014). The role of language comprehension in reasoning: How "goodenough" representations induce biases. Cognition, 133, 457–463
  Mata, A., Schubert, A., & Ferreira, M. B.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.07.011)
• (2014). Using metacognitive cues to infer others’ thinking. Judgment and Decision Making, 9, 349–359
  Mata, A., & Almeida, T.
  
• (2014). What is learned from repeated pairings? On the scope and generalizability of evaluative conditioning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 631-643
  Hütter, M., Kutzner, F., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033409)
• (2015). Computer simulation. In B. Gawronski, G. V. Bodenhausen, B. Gawronski, G. V. Bodenhausen (Eds.), Theory and explanation in social psychology (pp. 347-370). New York, NY, US: Guilford Press
  Fiedler, K., & Kutzner, F. L.
  
• (2015). From Lost Letters to Conditional E-Mail Responses: A Method to Assess Biased Behavior Online. International Journal of Internet Science, 10(1), 49-69
  Schott, M., & Bluemke, M.
  
• (2015). Functional research and cognitive-process research in behavioural science: An unequal but firmly connected pair. International Journal of Psychology
  Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12163)
• (2015). Goal-driven reasoning overcomes cell D neglect in contingency judgments. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 27, 238–249
  Mata, A., Garcia-Marques, L., Ferreira, M. B., & Mendonça, C.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2014.982129)
• (2015). Higher order influences on evaluative priming: Processing styles moderate congruity effects. Cognition & Emotion
  Alexopoulos, T. Lemonnier, A., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1080666)
• (2015). Information sampling and reasoning biases: Implications for research in judgment and decision making. In G. Keren and G. Wu (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making. New York: Wiley
  Fiedler, K., & Kutzner, F.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118468333.ch13)
• (2015). Mediation analysis with structural equation models: Combining theory, design, and statistics. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45(4), 460-481
  Danner, D., Hagemann, D., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2106)
• (2015). No correlation, no evidence for attention shift in category learning: Different mechanisms behind illusory correlations and the inverse base-rate effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(1), 58-75
  Kutzner, F. L., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038462)
• (2015). Social psychology and politics. New York, NY, US: Psychology Press
  Forgas, J. P., Fiedler, K., & Crano, W. D.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315717104)
• (2015). Strategic numeracy: Self-serving reasoning about health statistics. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 37, 165-173
  Mata, A., Sherman, S. J., Ferreira, M. B., & Mendonça, C.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2015.1018991)
• (2015). The social psychology of politics: Homo politicus revisited. In J. P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, W. D. Crano, J. P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, W. D. Crano (Eds.), Social psychology and politics (pp. 1-17). New York, NY, US: Psychology Press
  Forgas, J. P., Fiedler, K., & Crano, W. D.
  
• (2015). The tragedy of democratic decision making. In J. P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, W. D. Crano, J. P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, W. D. Crano (Eds.), Social psychology and politics (pp. 193-208). New York, NY, US: Psychology Press
  Fiedler, K., Hofferbert, J., Woellert, F., Krüger, T., & Koch, A.
  
• (2015). Toward a deeper understanding of the ecological origins of distance construal. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 5778-86
  Fiedler, K., Jung, J., Wänke, M., Alexopoulos, T., & de Molière, L.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.11.002)
• (2015). Unpacking the exploration–exploitation tradeoff: A synthesis of human and animal literatures. Decision, 2(3), 191-215
  Mehlhorn, K., Newell, B. R., Todd, P. M., Lee, M. D., Morgan, K., Braithwaite, V. A., & ... Gonzalez, C.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/dec0000033)
• (2016). Anomalies in the detection of change: When changes in sample size are mistaken for changes in proportions. Memory & Cognition, 44(1), 143-161
  Fiedler, K., Kareev, Y., Avrahami, J., Beier, S., Kutzner, F., & Hütter, M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-015-0537-z)
• (2016). Conceptual, theoretical, and methodological challenges in evaluative conditioning research. Social Cognition, 34(5), 343–356
  Hütter, M., & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2016.34.5.343)
• (2016). Development and Examination of the Linguistic Category Model in a Computerized Text Analysis Method. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 1 –13
  Seih, Y.-T., Beier, S., & Pennebaker, J. W.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X16657855)
• (2016). Heuristics and biases: Beyond Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) judgment under uncertainty. In M.W. Eysenck & D. Groome (Eds.), Cognitive psychology: Revisiting the classic studies (pp. 146-161)
  Fiedler, K. & von Sydow, M.
  
• (2016). Illusory correlations. In R. Pohl (Eds.), Cognitive illusions: Fallacies and biases in thinking, judgment, and memory (2nd edition). New York: Psychology Press
  Fiedler, K.
  
• (2016). Motivated implicit theories of personality: My weaknesses will go away, but my strengths are here to stay. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 415-429
  Steimer, A., & Mata, A.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216629437)
• (2016). Questionable research practices revisited. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(1), 45-52
  Fiedler, K., & Schwarz, N.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615612150)
• (2016). Recommendations for increasing replicability in psychology. In A. E. Kazdin, A. E. Kazdin (Eds.) , Methodological issues and strategies in clinical research (4th ed.) (pp. 607-622). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association
  Asendorpf, J. B., Conner, M., de Fruyt, F., De Houwer, J., Denissen, J. A., Fiedler, K., & ... Wicherts, J. M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/14805-038)
• (2016). Relational integrativity of prime-target pairs moderates congruity effects in evaluative priming. Memory & Cognition, 44(4), 565-579
  Ihmels, M., Freytag, P., Fiedler, K., & Alexopoulos, T.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-015-0581-8)
• (2016). Seeking advice: A sampling approach to advice taking. Judgment and Decision Making, 11(4), 401-415
  Hütter, M., & Ache, F.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.15496/publikation-13917)
• (2016). The symmetric nature of affective brand associations: Equal effectiveness of forward versus backward evaluative conditioning. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(1), 61-68
  Kim, C., Sweldens, S., & Hütter, M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615599237)
• (2016). Understanding responses to moral dilemmas: Deontological inclinations, utilitarian inclinations, and general action tendencies. In J. P. Forgas, L. Jussim, & P. A. M. Van Lange (Eds.), Social psychology of morality (pp. 91-110). New York, NY: Psychology Press
  Gawronski, B., Conway, P., Armstrong, J., Friesdorf, R., & Hütter, M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.15496/publikation-15372)
• (2017). False negatives. In S. O. Lilienfeld & I. D. Waldman (Eds.) Psychological science under scrutiny: Recent challenges and proposed remedies
  Fiedler, K. & Schott, M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119095910.ch4)
• (2017). Pseudocontingencies – An alternative theoretical perspective on stereotypes. European Review of Social Psychology
  Kutzner, F. & Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2016.1260238)
• (2017). Pseudocontingencies. In M. Waldmann (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of causal reasoning. Oxford University Press
  Fiedler, K. & Kutzner, F.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199399550.013.14)
• (2017). Special issue section on Evaluative Conditioning in Social Cognition
  Hütter, M., & Fiedler, K. (eds.)
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2016.34.5.343)
• (2017). What constitutes strong psychological science? The (neglected) role of diagnosticity and apriori theorizing. Perspectives on Psychological Science
  Fiedler, K.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616654458)