Thinking and Decision Making - Englich and Mussweiler

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

• carried out a study on system 1 thinking, by investigating the effect of ‘anchoring bias’ ( a heuristic where one relies on the first piece of information given to make a subsequent judgement) on courtroom sentencing.

Question 2

Method

Answer 2

• The sample consisted of young trial judges
• presented with an alleged rape case and asked to assist in the sentencing process
• half of the participants were told the prosecutor demanded a 34 month sentence; the other half told 2 month sentence
• after 15 minutes they were given a questionnaire asking if the case was too low, adequate or too high,, what sentence they would recommend and how certain they were about their decision

Question 3

Results

Answer 3

the results showed that participants given the low 2-month anchor gave considerably lower sentence than the participants who were given the higher 34-month anchor.

Question 4

Conclusion

Answer 4

Therefore, this study supports the dual-processing model as system 1 thinking was used because they had limited time to study the case, therefore, their decision and thinking process was reliant on an anchoring bias heuristic. This allowed them to make a quick and intuitive decision, evidence of system 1 thinking, by relying on the anchor that was given to them. Therefore, this also suggests that system 1 thinking is more prone to errors in judgement and incorrect decisions.