The Tendency to Fall for Distracting Information While Making Judgments

Abstract

Despite much research on thinking biases such as the representativeness, availability, and anchoring heuristics, a psychometrically sound measurement instrument for assessing the degree of heuristic thinking is still missing. Therefore, it was the goal of this study to develop and validate a new test to assess the degree of heuristic thinking associated with three particular thinking heuristics (i.e., the representativeness, availability, and anchoring heuristics). The resulting Objective Heuristic Thinking Test (OHTT) was evaluated with regard to its internal consistency, factor structure, construct validity, and stability in an internet sample (N = 300) and an independent laboratory sample (N = 55). Exploratory factor analyses resulted in three latent factors that represented the three OHTT subscales (i.e., representativeness, availability, and anchoring factors). Results revealed a low to sufficient internal consistency for each of the three scales. Further analyses indicated convergent correlations of the OHTT scales with related constructs such as field-independency. Furthermore, good stability of the test scores was shown. Conclusions are drawn regarding possible future applications of the OHTT as a promising tool for studying the origins of heuristic thinking processes.