Sampling Effects through Self-Truncated Information Search

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Klaus Fiedler
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 420128411

The purpose of the present continuation proposal is to obtain extended funding for one additional year for a research project supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Although the research conducted with this grant (devoted to “Sampling effects through self-truncated information search”) was successful not just in terms of empirical results and publication output, but also in terms of theoretical progress, conference activities, and fruitful collaboration with other research groups, the obtained findings have raised new challenging questions that call for continued research. In particular, the empirical results we have obtained so far on the impact of self-truncated information search and on the interplay of what we call Brunswikian and Thurstonian sampling turned out to be much stronger, and led to more refined interactions than we had expected originally. It would thus be a pity not to pursue these promising new ideas. Specifically, we intend to use the proposed continued funding for four lines of research: (1) We intend to conduct a new series of computer simulations to understand the negative correlation between amount of information and decision quality that is regularly brought about through self-truncated search. (2) One experiment will be specifically designed to test distinct ways of manipulating Thurstonian sampling effects on impression formation. (3) The aim of another experiment is to deepen our understanding of stopping rules in the context of intergroup judgment, explaining outgroup homogeneity and ingroup heterogeneity as a result of different truncation strategies. Furthermore, (4) we plan to conduct one more experiment in which we apply the notion of self-truncation effects in the meaningful applied context of advice taking.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants