Heuristic Vetoing: Top-Down Influences of the Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic Can Override the Bottom-Up Information in Visual Images.

ABSTRACT: When making decisions under uncertainty, human subjects do not always act as rational decision makers, but often resort to one or more mental "shortcuts", or heuristics, to arrive at a decision. How do such "top-down" processes affect real-world decisions that must take into account empirical, "bottom-up" sensory evidence? Here we use recognition of camouflaged objects by expert viewers as an exemplar case to demonstrate that the effect of heuristics can be so strong as to override the empirical evidence in favor of heuristic information, even though the latter is random. We provided the viewers a random number that we told them was the estimate of a drone reconnaissance system of the probability that the visual image they were about to see contained a camouflaged target. We then showed th

SUBMITTER: Branch F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9163416 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature