Papers by Maya Bar-hillel
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
The e-journal i-Perception recently published a critique by Rodway, Schepman and Thoma (2016) tit... more The e-journal i-Perception recently published a critique by Rodway, Schepman and Thoma (2016) titled: Reachability does not explain the middle preference: A comment on Bar-Hillel (2015). Their comment (hitherto called RST) ends thus: "Bar-Hillel's explanation of the middle preference ... is not supported by the evidence. An explanation in terms of the "middle-is-best" heuristic is still persuasive and is better ..." (RST, p. 4). Let me explain these two principles and their supposed confrontation as set up by RST. My 2015 article (hitherto called MBH), in the words of its title, is about "Position effects in choice from simultaneous displays" (and explicitly not, as RST erroneously state, also about "serial choice tasks (where all options are presented one after the other)" (RST, p. 2). The reachability principle (Bar-Hillel, Peer & Acquisti, 2014) states that "when other things are equal-as when choosing from evidently identical objects [such as Coke bottles on a supermarket shelf]-the object located where it is easiest to reach or to reach for will be favored" (MBH, p. 423). The "middle-is-best" heuristic, declared by RST as superior to reachability, is RST's renaming of the more commonly called "center-stage effect"-consumers' belief concerning product presentations in stores and markets that "options placed in the center of a simultaneously presented array are the most popular" (Valenzuela & Raghubir, 2009, p. 185). This belief about deliberately designed displays is an extension of a more basic belief about deliberate seating and standing arrangements for people, according to which "important people sit in the middle" (Raghubir & Valenzuela, 2006, p. 66). RST correctly say that "Bar-Hillel states that she takes no issue with this [the center-stage] account" (RST, p. 3), but then proceed to pit the two accounts against each other nonetheless. For example, they charge that reachability "does not appear to have played any role ... [in explaining] the preference for the person in the middle of a photograph of job candidates" (RST, p. 2). Quite true-but neither did reachability ever purport otherwise. On the other hand, RST neglect to point out that the center-stage effect can play no role in explaining studies, addressed at length in MBH, where it is an edge that is preferred, rather than the middle. For one example (there are more in MBH), Rozin et al. (2011) found that moving a salad-bar item from the edge to the middle of the display of trays diminishes, rather than enhances, its popularity. Two implications of RST's title are misleading. First, reachability is not meant to explain preference (a state of mind), but rather choice (an action). Second, it never pretended to explain all cases of middle advantage, but rather only those where the competing items are evidently identical. Preference and choice are of course intimately connected-but they are not the same. The distinction is especially important exactly where reachability is most apt, and the "middleis-best" belief is least apt, namely the case of motor choice (rather than mere evaluation) from evidently identical items. It is unlikely that people facing a supermarket shelf stocked with Coke bottles have a "preference" for one over another, namely that they think there is a "best" bottle in the display, let alone that it is in its middle. But if they nonetheless must pick a single one of them, which one they will reach for is likely determined by reachability. Similarly, people might
Advances in Psychology, 1983
Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the base rate fallacy controversy. The importance of co... more Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the base rate fallacy controversy. The importance of considering base rates before making causal attributions is one that is instilled in all humans in the course of training in experimental methodology. But base rates play an important role in other inferential formats too, especially in Bayesian ones. There is evidence aplenty that in those contexts, they are largely ignored in favor of the diagnostic information at hand. This is the phenomenon known as the “base rate fallacy.” The probability of uncertain outcomes is often judged by the extent to which they represent their source or generating process. The features by which this similarity or representativeness is assessed are not necessarily those that figure in the normative derivation of the requested probability. Kahneman and Tversky derived the prediction that if an event is to be judged vis a vis several alternative possible sources or several alternative possible outcomes, these will be ranked by the similarity between them and the event and the ranking will not be affected by how likely each source or outcome is initially.
CHANCE, 1998
In 1994, Statistical Science published astonishing statistical evidence proving the existence of ... more In 1994, Statistical Science published astonishing statistical evidence proving the existence of a hidden code in the Book of Genesis relating to future events. New research deprives this evidence of its import by proving that the same code can be found in the Hebrew translation of War and Peace.
Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, 2006
Law and Human Behavior, 2002
Polygraph test results are by and large ruled inadmissible evidence in criminal courts in the US,... more Polygraph test results are by and large ruled inadmissible evidence in criminal courts in the US, Canada, and Israel. This is well-conceived with regard to the dominant technique of polygraph interrogation, known as the Control Question Technique (CQT), because it indeed does not meet the required standards for admissible scientific evidence. However, a lesser known and rarely practiced technique, known as the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT), is capable, if carefully administered, of meeting the recently set Daubert criteria. This paper describes the technique, and argues for considering its admissibility as evidence in criminal courts.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 1993
ABSTRACT S. L. Martin and W. Terris (see record 1991-28965-001) recently attributed to a number o... more ABSTRACT S. L. Martin and W. Terris (see record 1991-28965-001) recently attributed to a number of psychologists a concept they called the false-positive argument (FPA), according to which a test should not be used if an individual who fails is more likely to be qualified than unqualified, and they attempted to clarify the conditions under which the FPA may be appropriate. It is argued that in none of the articles cited by Martin and Terris is the FPA truly posited and also that they failed to clarify the conditions under which the FPA might be appropriate. These conditions depend on the costs and payoffs associated with the various outcomes of the decision problem, as is demonstrated through the use of a threshold utility model. Finally, the examples used by Martin and Terris deal with the detection of deception but were discussed without proper consideration of the contexts in which lie-detection techniques are typically used. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Journal of Applied Psychology, 1986
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 1986
The present article examines two methods of polygraph-assisted lie detection: the Control Questio... more The present article examines two methods of polygraph-assisted lie detection: the Control Question Technique (CQT) and the Guilty Knowledge Technique (GKT). It presents the rationale for both, arguing that only the latter is well grounded in psychological theory. It then surveys the empirical support for claims of the polygraph's ability to detect deception, arguing that such support often comes from studies that are methodologically flawed by contamination of various sorts-&pecially studies of the COT. The article then explores the legal implications of introducing polygraph test results, as presently gathered, into the criminal courtroom.
Waste not want not" expresses our culture's aversion to waste. "I could have gotten the same thin... more Waste not want not" expresses our culture's aversion to waste. "I could have gotten the same thing for less" is a sentiment that can diminish pleasure in a transaction. We study people's willingness to "pay" to avoid this spoiler. In one scenario, participants imagined they were looking for a rental apartment, and had bought a subscription to an apartment listing. If a cheaper subscription had been declined, respondents preferred not to discover post hoc that it would have sufficed. Specifically, they preferred ending their quest for the ideal apartment after seeing more, rather than fewer, apartments, so that the length of the search exceeds that available within the cheaper subscription. Other scenarios produced similar results. We conclude that people may sometimes prefer to be wasteful in order to avoid feeling wasteful.
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 1998
Expert clinicians were given batteries of psychodiagnostic test results (Rorschach, TAT, Draw-A-P... more Expert clinicians were given batteries of psychodiagnostic test results (Rorschach, TAT, Draw-A-Person, Bender-Gestalt, Wechsler) to analyze. For half, a battery came along with a suggestion that the person suers from Borderline Personality disorder, and for half, that battery was accompanied by a suggestion that he suers from Paranoid Personality disorder. In Study 1, the suggestion was made indirectly, through a background story that preceded the test results. In Study 2, the suggestion was made directly, by the instructions given. The experts saw in the tests what they hypothesized to be there. In particular, the target diagnoses were rated higher when they were hypothesized than when they were not.
Jena Economic Research …, 2011
Waste not want not" expresses our culture's aversion to waste. "I could have gotten the same thin... more Waste not want not" expresses our culture's aversion to waste. "I could have gotten the same thing for less" is a sentiment that can diminish pleasure in a transaction. We study people's willingness to "pay" to avoid this spoiler. In one scenario, participants imagined they were looking for a rental apartment, and had bought a subscription to an apartment listing. If a cheaper subscription had been declined, respondents preferred not to discover post hoc that it would have sufficed. Specifically, they preferred ending their quest for the ideal apartment after seeing more, rather than fewer, apartments, so that the length of the search exceeds that available within the cheaper subscription. Other scenarios produced similar results. We conclude that people may sometimes prefer to be wasteful in order to avoid feeling wasteful.
Statistical Science, 1999
A paper of Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg in this journal in 1994 made the extraordinary claim that ... more A paper of Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg in this journal in 1994 made the extraordinary claim that the Hebrew text of the Book of Genesis encodes events which did not occur until millennia after the text was written. In reply, we argue that Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg's case is fatally defective, indeed that their result merely reflects on the choices made in designing their experiment and collecting the data for it. We present extensive evidence in support of that conclusion. We also report on many new experiments of our own, all of which failed to detect the alleged phenomenon. Contents
A Nobel Prize in Economics was given to the psychologist Daniel Kahneman for his joint research w... more A Nobel Prize in Economics was given to the psychologist Daniel Kahneman for his joint research with the late psychologist Amos Tversky on decision making under uncertainty and on subjective judgments of uncertainty. The two proposed Prospect Theory as a descriptive alternative to Utility Theory, the reigning normative theory of choice under uncertainty. Kahneman and Tversky argued that human psychology prevents people from being rational in the sense required by Utility Theory -- consistency -- for two main reasons. First, people are more sensitive to changes in position (economic or otherwise) than to final positions, a fact ignored by Utility Theory. Thus, they value a 50% discount on a 100NIS item more than a 5% discount on a 1000 NIS item. Moreover, they are more sensitive to changes for the worse than to changes for the better. Second, we are sensitive not just to outcomes, but to outcomes-under-a-description, which makes us inconsistent from a consequentialist veiwpoint (e.g....
Since its inception, psychology has studied position effects. But the position was a temporal one... more Since its inception, psychology has studied position effects. But the position was a temporal one in sequential presentation, and the dependent variables related to memory and learning. This paper attempts to survey position effects when position is spatial (namely, position=location), all stimuli are presented simultaneously, and the dependent variable is choice. Unlike the ubiquitous "serial position curve", position effects in simultaneous choice are not consistent. A middle bias (advantage to being away from the edges) is the most common, but advantages to being first, last, or both, have also been recorded.
Recent research in psychology, especially that called "The New Unconscious", is discove... more Recent research in psychology, especially that called "The New Unconscious", is discovering strange and unintuitive phenomena, some of which raise interesting challenges for the law. This paper discusses some of these challenges. For example, if much of our mental life occurs out of our awareness and control, and yet is subject to easy external manipulation, what implications does this have for holding defendants responsible for their deeds? For that matter, what implications does this have for trusting judges to judge and act as they should, and would, if their own mental processes were fully conscious and controlled? Some provocative ideas are suggested, such as how to make prison terms shorter and more deterring at the same time; assisting judges in overcoming inconsistency and biases; etc.
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Papers by Maya Bar-hillel