Svenson Ola, Gonzalez Nichel, Memon Amina, Lindholm Torun
Decision Research, Eugene, OR, USA.
Risk Analysis, Social and Decision Research Unit, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Scand J Psychol. 2018 Apr;59(2):127-134. doi: 10.1111/sjop.12418. Epub 2017 Dec 15.
Cognitive representations of decision problems are dynamic. During and after a decision, evaluations and representations of facts change to support the decision made by a decision maker her- or himself (Svenson, 2003). We investigated post-decision distortion of facts (consolidation). Participants were given vignettes with facts about two terminally ill patients, only one of whom could be given lifesaving surgery. In Study 1, contrary to the prediction, the results showed that facts were distorted after a decision both by participants who were responsible for the decisions themselves and when doctors had made the decision. In Study 2 we investigated the influence of knowledge about expert decisions on a participant's own decision and post-decisional distortion of facts. Facts were significantly more distorted when the participant's decision agreed with an expert's decision than when the participant and expert decisions disagreed. The findings imply that knowledge about experts' decisions can distort memories of facts and therefore may obstruct rational analyses of earlier decisions. This is particularly important when a decision made by a person, who is assumed to be an expert, makes a decision that is biased or wrong.
决策问题的认知表征是动态的。在决策过程中及决策之后，对事实的评估和表征会发生变化，以支持决策者自己做出的决策（斯文森，2003）。我们研究了决策后对事实的扭曲（巩固）。向参与者提供了有关两名绝症患者的事实的短文，其中只有一人可以接受挽救生命的手术。在研究1中，与预测相反，结果表明，无论是由参与者自己负责做出决策，还是由医生做出决策，在决策后事实都会被扭曲。在研究2中，我们研究了关于专家决策的知识对参与者自己的决策以及决策后对事实的扭曲的影响。当参与者的决策与专家的决策一致时，事实被扭曲的程度明显大于参与者和专家的决策不一致时。研究结果表明，关于专家决策的知识会扭曲对事实的记忆，因此可能会阻碍对早期决策的理性分析。当一个被认为是专家的人做出有偏见或错误的决策时，这一点尤为重要。
