TY - JOUR
T1 - Heuristic Vetoing
T2 - Top-Down Influences of the Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic Can Override the Bottom-Up Information in Visual Images
AU - Branch, Fallon
AU - Park, Erin
AU - Hegdé, Jay
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by grant #W911NF-15-1-0311 from the Army Research Office (ARO) to JH.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2022 Branch, Park and Hegdé.
PY - 2022/5/20
Y1 - 2022/5/20
N2 - When making decisions under uncertainty, human subjects do not always act as rational decision makers, but often resort to one or more mental “shortcuts”, or heuristics, to arrive at a decision. How do such “top-down” processes affect real-world decisions that must take into account empirical, “bottom-up” sensory evidence? Here we use recognition of camouflaged objects by expert viewers as an exemplar case to demonstrate that the effect of heuristics can be so strong as to override the empirical evidence in favor of heuristic information, even though the latter is random. We provided the viewers a random number that we told them was the estimate of a drone reconnaissance system of the probability that the visual image they were about to see contained a camouflaged target. We then showed them the image. We found that the subjects’ own estimates of the probability of the target in the image reflected the random information they were provided, and ignored the actual evidence in the image. However, when the heuristic information was not provided, the same subjects were highly successful in finding the target in the same set of images, indicating that the effect was solely attributable to the availability of heuristic information. Two additional experiments confirmed that this effect was not idiosyncratic to camouflage images, visual search task, or the subjects’ prior training or expertise. Together, these results demonstrate a novel aspect of the interaction between heuristics and sensory information during real-world decision making, where the former can be strong enough to veto the latter. This ‘heuristic vetoing’ is distinct from the vetoing of sensory information that occurs in certain visual illusions.
AB - When making decisions under uncertainty, human subjects do not always act as rational decision makers, but often resort to one or more mental “shortcuts”, or heuristics, to arrive at a decision. How do such “top-down” processes affect real-world decisions that must take into account empirical, “bottom-up” sensory evidence? Here we use recognition of camouflaged objects by expert viewers as an exemplar case to demonstrate that the effect of heuristics can be so strong as to override the empirical evidence in favor of heuristic information, even though the latter is random. We provided the viewers a random number that we told them was the estimate of a drone reconnaissance system of the probability that the visual image they were about to see contained a camouflaged target. We then showed them the image. We found that the subjects’ own estimates of the probability of the target in the image reflected the random information they were provided, and ignored the actual evidence in the image. However, when the heuristic information was not provided, the same subjects were highly successful in finding the target in the same set of images, indicating that the effect was solely attributable to the availability of heuristic information. Two additional experiments confirmed that this effect was not idiosyncratic to camouflage images, visual search task, or the subjects’ prior training or expertise. Together, these results demonstrate a novel aspect of the interaction between heuristics and sensory information during real-world decision making, where the former can be strong enough to veto the latter. This ‘heuristic vetoing’ is distinct from the vetoing of sensory information that occurs in certain visual illusions.
KW - Bayesian inference
KW - camouflage-breaking
KW - camouflage-learning
KW - cognitive rules of thumb
KW - judgment and decision making
KW - mental shortcuts
KW - visual search
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U2 - 10.3389/fnins.2022.745269
DO - 10.3389/fnins.2022.745269
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85131740270
SN - 1662-4548
VL - 16
JO - Frontiers in Neuroscience
JF - Frontiers in Neuroscience
M1 - 745269
ER -