Abstract
We are often confronted with new causal information about the world, such as what causes a disease. What we think we know may influence if and how we choose to use this new information. Yet as prior work has shown, we are not always successful at evaluating our own knowledge. We explored how helping people better understand what they know about a domain can influence their ability to use new causal information in a decision-making context. Participants self-assessed their knowledge (Experiment 1) or completed an objective assessment of their knowledge (Experiment 2) of diabetes, before making diabetes-related decisions, either with or without new causal information. Without a knowledge assessment, participants were less accurate with new causal information compared to without such information, replicating previous work. However, reassessing their knowledge increased participants' decision-making accuracy with causal information. We discuss why helping people realize the limits of their causal understanding may make them better supplement it with new information.
Original language | English |
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Pages | 1849-1855 |
Number of pages | 7 |
State | Published - 2020 |
Event | 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Developing a Mind: Learning in Humans, Animals, and Machines, CogSci 2020 - Virtual, Online Duration: 29 Jul 2020 → 1 Aug 2020 |
Conference
Conference | 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Developing a Mind: Learning in Humans, Animals, and Machines, CogSci 2020 |
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City | Virtual, Online |
Period | 29/07/20 → 1/08/20 |
Keywords
- causality
- decision making
- diabetes
- illusion of explanatory depth