In selection decisions, decision makers often struggle to ignore irrelevant information, such as candidates’ age, gender and attractiveness, which can lead to suboptimal decisions. One way to correct the effects of these irrelevant attributes is to consider them as suppressor variables. That is, penalize individuals who unjustifiably benefit from them. Previous research demonstrated that people have difficulties doing so. New research by DMEP members Hagai Rabinovitch and Yoella Bereby-Meyer along with David Budescu, recently published in Cognition, examined the mechanism at the core of people’s ability to do so. The authors found that triggering a more deliberate, System 2 based thinking, did not improve participants’ ability to correct for this bias. The majority of those who were successful did so even when denied the opportunity to deliberate. The authors suggest that logic intuition—not deliberation—is the basis for successfully considering irrelevant information as suppressor variables. These results are in line with a revised dual-process approach, in which solving reasoning problems can occur directly through System 1 and does not require an override by a System 2’s-based process. As deliberation is not enough, it is important to discuss the effect of irrelevant information on decision makers to improve selection decisions.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105105
