Searching for the Whole Truth: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Humility to Boost Better Search on Debated Topics

We often use search engines when seeking information for opinion-forming and decision-making on debated topics. However, searching for resources on debated topics to gain well-rounded knowledge is cognitively demanding, leaving us vulnerable to cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias. This can impede well-informed decision-making, and on...

The influence of cognitive bias on crisis decision-making: Experimental evidence on the comparison of bias effects between crisis decision-maker groups

A crisis requires the affected population, governments or non-profit organizations, as well as crisis experts, to make urgent and sometimes life-critical decisions. With the urgency and uncertainty they create, crises are particularly amenable to inducing cognitive biases that influence decisionmaking. However, there is limited empirical...

Application of cumulative prospect theory in understanding energy retrofit decision: A study of homeowners in the Netherlands

Retrofitting residential buildings can help mitigate the effects of climate change. Cognitive biases are systematic deviations from rationality in decision making and can lead to inaction, delay, and uncertain decisions. Understanding the cognitive biases involved in residential renovation decisions and developing interventions to overcome...

Barriers for Homeowners in Decisions to Undertake Government-Led Energy Efficiency Renovation Projects in Northern China

The Chinese government has taken actions to promote energy efficiency through the renovation of residential buildings in the Northern Heating Region. Homeowners have been encouraged to undertake government-led energy efficiency renovation; however, their decisions to undertake the renovation are affected by several barriers. The lack of...

Analyzing anchoring bias in attribute weight elicitation of SMART, Swing, and best-worst method

In this study, the existence of anchoring bias—people's tendency to rely on, evaluate, and decide based on the first piece of information they receive—is examined in two multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) methods, simple multi-attribute rating technique (SMART), and Swing. Data were collected from university students for a transportation...

On the Interplay of Data and Cognitive Bias in Crisis Information Management: An Exploratory Study on Epidemic Response

Humanitarian crises, such as the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic, challenge information management and thereby threaten the digital resilience of the responding organizations. Crisis information management (CIM) is characterised by the urgency to respond despite the uncertainty of the situation. Coupled with high stakes, limited resources and a...

This Item Might Reinforce Your Opinion: Obfuscation and Labeling of Search Results to Mitigate Confirmation Bias

During online information search, users tend to select search results that confirm previous beliefs and ignore competing possibilities. This systematic pattern in human behavior is known as confirmation bias. In this paper, we study the effect of obfuscation (i.e., hiding the result unless the user clicks on it) with warning labels and the...

How do user opinions influence their interaction with web search results?

Understanding the influence of users' opinions on their search behavior together with their inherent biases in web search has garnered widespread interest in recent times. This is largely due to the implications of promoting critical thinking, explaining phenomena such as political polarization, or the manifestation of echo chambers. It is...

Equalizing bias in eliciting attribute weights in multiattribute decision-making: experimental research

One of the most important steps in formulating and solving a multiattribute decision-making (MADM) problem is weighting the attributes. Most existing weighting methods are based on judgments by experts/decision-makers, which are prone to several cognitive biases, making it necessary to examine these biases in MADM weighting methods and...

A Checklist to Combat Cognitive Biases in Crowdsourcing

Recent research has demonstrated that cognitive biases such as the confirmation bias or the anchoring effect can negatively affect the quality of crowdsourced data. In practice, however, such biases go unnoticed unless specifically assessed or controlled for. Task requesters need to ensure that task workflow and design choices do not trigger...

Biased decision-making in the building sector: A study on the psychological factors that influence the adoption of sustainable building methods

This thesis explores whether cognitive bias and hassle perceptions influence the adoption of sustainable building measures. A survey research and in-depth interviews were used to do so. It appears that innovation in the building sector is hindered by an internal resistance against change. This seems to be fuelled by a lack of knowledge, risk...

How cognitive biases influence the data verification of safety indicators: A case study in rail

The field of safety and incident prevention is becoming more and more data based. Data can help support decision making for a more productive and safer work environment, but only if the data can be, is and should be trusted. Especially with the advance of more data collection of varying quality, checking and judging the data is an...

Cognitive biases can affect moral intuitions about cognitive enhancement

Research into cognitive biases that impair human judgment has mostly been applied to the area of economic decision-making. Ethical decision-making has been comparatively neglected. Since ethical decisions often involve very high individual as well as collective stakes, analyzing how cognitive biases affect them can be expected to yield important...