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Reducing the feature positive effect by alerting people to its existence
1Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, rassin@fsw.eur.nl.
Learning & Behavior
|July 3, 2014
Summary
The feature-positive effect (FPE), a learning bias, was reduced by instructing participants to consider absent stimuli. This suggests awareness can mitigate this common cognitive bias.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Learning Science
- Decision Making
Background:
- The feature-positive effect (FPE) describes a bias in associative learning.
- Organisms better detect associations between present stimuli than absent ones.
- FPE is a long-standing, yet poorly understood, cognitive bias.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if FPE can be mitigated by directing attention to absent stimuli.
- To test the hypothesis that awareness of stimulus absence diagnosticity reduces FPE.
Main Methods:
- Experimental manipulation of participant instructions.
- Assessment of associative learning performance under different conditions.
- Focus on the diagnosticity of absent cues.
Main Results:
- Instructions alerting participants to the importance of absent stimuli significantly reduced the FPE.
- The cognitive bias associated with FPE was demonstrably lessened.
Conclusions:
- The feature-positive effect is malleable and can be influenced by instructional cues.
- Directing attention to the diagnosticity of absent stimuli offers a method to remedy FPE.
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