University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain.
University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2023 Sep;239:104007. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.104007. Epub 2023 Aug 11.
Previous research indicates that economic scarcity affects people's judgments, decisions, and cognition in a variety of contexts, and with various consequences. We hypothesized that scarcity could sometimes reduce cognitive biases. Specifically, it could reduce the causal illusion, a cognitive bias that is at the heart of superstitions and irrational thoughts, and consists of believing that two events are causally connected when they are not. In three experiments, participants played the role of doctors deciding whether to administer a drug to a series of patients. The drug was ineffective, because the percentage of patients recovering was identical regardless of whether they took the drug. We manipulated the budget available to buy the drugs, tough all participants had enough for all their patients. Even so, participants in the scarce group reduced the use of the drug and showed a lower causal illusion than participants in the wealthy group. Experiments 2 and 3 added a phase in which the budget changed. Participants who transitioned from scarcity to wealth exhibited a reduced use of resources and a lower causal illusion, whereas participants transitioning from wealth to scarcity were unaffected by their previous history.
先前的研究表明，在各种情境下，经济匮乏会影响人们的判断、决策和认知，产生各种后果。我们假设，匮乏有时会减少认知偏差。具体来说，它可以减少因果错觉，这是迷信和非理性思维的核心，表现为相信两个没有因果关系的事件之间存在因果关系。在三个实验中，参与者扮演医生的角色，决定是否给一系列病人服用药物。该药物无效，因为无论病人是否服用药物，康复的病人百分比都相同。我们操纵了购买药物的预算，尽管所有参与者的预算都足以支付他们所有的病人。即便如此，稀缺组的参与者减少了药物的使用，表现出的因果错觉低于富裕组的参与者。实验 2 和 3 增加了一个预算发生变化的阶段。从匮乏到富裕的参与者表现出资源使用减少和因果错觉降低，而从富裕到匮乏的参与者则不受其先前经历的影响。
