Summary: A new study reveals that people often overestimate the amount of information they have when making decisions, a phenomenon researchers call the “illusion of information adequacy.”
Participants who were only given partial information about a situation were just as confident in their decisions as those who had the complete story. They believed they had enough facts and thought others would likely make the same choice. However, when some participants were later presented with the opposing view, many were open to changing their decision, suggesting that having more complete information can bridge misunderstandings.
Key Facts
- People feel confident in decisions, even with only partial information.
- This “illusion of information adequacy” leads to overconfidence in judgments.
- Additional information often leads to more informed, balanced decision-making.
Source: Ohio State University
If you smugly believe you’re right in a disagreement with a friend or colleague, a new study suggests why you may actually be wrong.
Researchers found that people naturally assume they have all the information they need to make a decision or support their position, even when they do not.
The researchers called it the “illusion of information adequacy.”
“We found that, in general, people don’t stop to think whether there might be more information that would help them make a more informed decision,” said study co-author Angus Fletcher, a professor of English at The Ohio State University and member of the university’s Project Narrative.
“If you give people a few pieces of information that seems to line up, most will say ‘that sounds about right’ and go with that.”
The study was published today in the journal PLOS ONE. Fletcher completed the work with co-authors Hunter Gehlbach, an educational psychologist at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education, and Carly Robinson, a senior researcher at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.
The study involved 1,261 Americans who participated online.
They were split into three groups who read an article about a fictional school that lacked adequate water. One group read an article that only gave reasons why the school should merge with another that had adequate water; a second group’s article only gave reasons for staying separate and hoping for other solutions; and the third control group read all the arguments for the schools merging and for staying separate.
The findings showed that the two groups who read only half the story – either just the pro-merging or the just the anti-merging arguments – still believed they had enough information to make a good decision, Fletcher said. Most of them said they would follow the recommendations in the article they read.
“Those with only half the information were actually more confident in their decision to merge or remain separate than those who had the complete story,” Fletcher said.
“They were quite sure that their decision was the right one, even though they didn’t have all the information.”
In addition, participants who had half the information said that they thought that most other people would make the same decision they did.
There was one piece of good news from the study, Fletcher said. Some of the participants who had read only one side of the story later read the arguments for the other side. And many of those participants were willing to change their minds about their decision, once they had all the facts.
That may not work all the time, especially on entrenched ideological issues, he said. In those cases, people may not trust new information, or they may try to reframe it to fit their preexisting views.
“But most interpersonal conflicts aren’t about ideology. They are just misunderstandings in the course of daily life,” Fletcher said.
These findings offer a complement to research on what is called naïve realism, the belief people have that their subjective understanding of a situation is the objective truth, Fletcher explained. Research on naïve realism often focuses on how people have different understandings of the same situation.
But the illusion of information adequacy shows that people may share the same understanding – if they both have enough information.
Fletcher, who studies how people are influenced by the power of stories, said people should make sure they have the full story about a situation before they take a stand or make a decision.
“As we found in this study, there’s this default mode in which people think they know all the relevant facts, even if they don’t,” he said.
“Your first move when you disagree with someone should be to think, ‘Is there something that I’m missing that would help me see their perspective and understand their position better?’ That’s the way to fight this illusion of information adequacy.”
About this psychology research news
Author: Jeff Grabmeier
Source: Ohio State University
Contact: Jeff Grabmeier – Ohio State University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“The illusion of information adequacy” by Angus Fletcher et al. PLOS ONE
Abstract
The illusion of information adequacy
How individuals navigate perspectives and attitudes that diverge from their own affects an array of interpersonal outcomes from the health of marriages to the unfolding of international conflicts.
The finesse with which people negotiate these differing perceptions depends critically upon their tacit assumptions—e.g., in the bias of naïve realism people assume that their subjective construal of a situation represents objective truth.
The present study adds an important assumption to this list of biases: the illusion of information adequacy. Specifically, because individuals rarely pause to consider what information they may be missing, they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation.
Participants in our preregistered study (N = 1261) responded to a hypothetical scenario in which control participants received full information and treatment participants received approximately half of that same information.
We found that treatment participants assumed that they possessed comparably adequate information and presumed that they were just as competent to make thoughtful decisions based on that information.
Participants’ decisions were heavily influenced by which cross-section of information they received.
Finally, participants believed that most other people would make a similar decision to the one they made.
We discuss the implications in the context of naïve realism and other biases that implicate how people navigate differences of perspective.
