Social cognition : effects of outcome knowledge and order of information on judgement under uncertainty

• Main Author: Pennington, Donald C.
• Published: University of Warwick 1980
• Subjects: 150; BF Psychology
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.279632

This thesis investigates how (1) outcome knowledge; (2) information order influence judgement under uncertainty. Previous research has indicated that when we know the outcome of some event (hindsight) perceptions are biased so that we see the outcome as more likely than when we do not have such knowledge (foresight). The major line of empirical enquiry in this thesis is to discover the conditions under which hindsight bias of this kind does and does not occur. In particular, an attempt is made to discover how information order effects hindsight bias. The thesis is divided into three parts. In PART 1 the first chapter shows how hindsight bias is not an isolated phenomena but one which fits into a coherent body of research in cognitive social psychology. The second and third chapters critically review previous research on hindsight bias and information order respectively. PART II details eight experiments carried out which investigate the effect of outcome knowledge and information order on different types of judgement under uncertainty. Experiments 1-3 investigated the effect of outcome knowledge and information order on subjective likelihoods. Experiment 4 examined information order with respect to juror judgements. Experiments 5-7 used material describing contemporary social/political events. Experiment 8 used factual material about sex roles. These experiments are discussed in PART III of this thesis, which consists of two chapters. In the first chapter. Chapter 13, a general discussion is given to the findings of the eight experiments. The last chapter in this thesis considers cognitive processes that may be involved in hindsight judgements and concludes by considering the implications of this research for a model of man as an intuitive scientist.