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How they will make their decision will be influenced by their context and how
the choices are framed. Decisions based on gains will be slightly risk-aversive;
decisions to avoid a loss will lead to choosing riskier options. So be careful how
you frame the options, either as a gain or a loss.
If the users do not get feedback about their choices, their choice quality will
remain the same, but they will become more confident in their choices. If they do
get feedback, they can learn how to make decisions more accurately and quicker
using a variety of knowledge sources including recognizing a situation as being
like a previous situation, and also recalling a useful answer. So, provide feedback
in your systems when you can.
Finally, their choices can be situated within a large context, including geog-
raphy and social relationships. Good designers will learn about these factors in a
variety of ways. Good designs will take these multiple factors into account, and
attempt to minimize the biases that will hurt the users, and take advantage of
biases that can help users. The breakout box on biases in reasoning provides a set
of examples applied to a simple task, and the breakout box on incompetence
provides both serious and humorous insights into limitations of human reasoning.
So when you can get context, use it to frame your interface's interactions.
6.4.6.1 Breakout Box: Biases in Reasoning
We can illustrate how biases affect reasoning using the classic Wason ( 1960 )
selection task. This is an example of an abstract deductive reasoning task that
should be solved using rules of logic:
Every card (shown in Fig. 6.15 ) has a letter on one side and a number on the other. Given
a set of four cards as shown below, which cards would you need to turn over in order to
prove or disprove the rule that ''If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even
number on the other side.''
Most people opt for the A card and the 4 card. Selecting only the A and the 4
card only gathers evidence to prove the rule, however, and is an example of
confirmation bias. In other words, often people only look for evidence that sup-
ports (or confirms) their hypothesis. In this case, the hypothesis is the rule that they
were given. The correct solution, however, is that the A card and the 7 card should
be turned over. If the A card has an even number on the other side that is evidence
to support the rule; if it has an odd number it disproves the rule. The 7 card has to
be turned over because if it has a vowel on the other side, this also disproves the
rule. The 4 card does not have to be turned over because if there is a vowel on the
other side, the rule is satisfied and if there is a consonant then the rule would not
apply.
The way this and many problems are framed, however, has a major influence on
people's performance. If the problem is made less abstract by using real objects
that people are more likely to encounter in their daily lives, more people give the
correct answer. Johnson-Laird et al. ( 1972 ), for example, framed the problem in a
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