IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/riskan/v37y2017i3p471-486.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seeing What You Want to See: How Imprecise Uncertainty Ranges Enhance Motivated Reasoning

Author

Listed:
  • Nathan F. Dieckmann
  • Robin Gregory
  • Ellen Peters
  • Robert Hartman

Abstract

In this article, we consider a novel criterion for evaluating representations of uncertainty ranges, namely, the extent to which a representation enhances motivated reasoning. In two studies, we show that perceptions of the distribution underlying ambiguous numerical ranges are affected by the motivations and worldviews of end users. This motivated reasoning effect remained after controlling for objective numeracy and fluid intelligence but was attenuated when the correct interpretation was made clear. We suggest that analysts and communicators explicitly consider the potential for motivated evaluation when evaluating uncertainty displays.

Suggested Citation

  • Nathan F. Dieckmann & Robin Gregory & Ellen Peters & Robert Hartman, 2017. "Seeing What You Want to See: How Imprecise Uncertainty Ranges Enhance Motivated Reasoning," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 471-486, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:37:y:2017:i:3:p:471-486
    DOI: 10.1111/risa.12639
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12639
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/risa.12639?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schweitzer, Maurice E & Hsee, Christopher K, 2002. "Stretching the Truth: Elastic Justification and Motivated Communication of Uncertain Information," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 185-201, September.
    2. Piercey, M. David, 2009. "Motivated reasoning and verbal vs. numerical probability assessment: Evidence from an accounting context," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 330-341, March.
    3. Dan M. Kahan & Ellen Peters & Maggie Wittlin & Paul Slovic & Lisa Larrimore Ouellette & Donald Braman & Gregory Mandel, 2012. "The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(10), pages 732-735, October.
    4. Hsee, Christopher K., 1995. "Elastic Justification: How Tempting but Task-Irrelevant Factors Influence Decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 330-337, June.
    5. Nathan F. Dieckmann & Ellen Peters & Robin Gregory & Martin Tusler, 2012. "Making sense of uncertainty: advantages and disadvantages of providing an evaluative structure," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(7), pages 717-735, August.
    6. Nathan F. Dieckmann & Robert Mauro & Paul Slovic, 2010. "The Effects of Presenting Imprecise Probabilities in Intelligence Forecasts," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(6), pages 987-1001, June.
    7. Nathan F. Dieckmann & Paul Slovic & Ellen M. Peters, 2009. "The Use of Narrative Evidence and Explicit Likelihood by Decisionmakers Varying in Numeracy," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(10), pages 1473-1488, October.
    8. Lynn Frewer & Steve Hunt & Mary Brennan & Sharron Kuznesof & Mitchell Ness & Chris Ritson, 2003. "The views of scientific experts on how the public conceptualize uncertainty," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 75-85, January.
    9. repec:cup:judgdm:v:7:y:2012:i:1:p:25-47 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ana Beatriz Galvão & James Mitchell, 2024. "Communicating Data Uncertainty: Multiwave Experimental Evidence for UK GDP," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 56(1), pages 81-114, February.
    2. repec:wrk:wrkemf:30 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ana Beatriz Galvão & James Mitchell & Johnny Runge, 2019. "Communicating Data Uncertainty: Experimental Evidence for U.K. GDP," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2019-20, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    4. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    5. Lewis, Andrew & Vu, Patrick & Duch, Raymond & Chowdhury, Areeq, 2023. "Deepfake Detection With and Without Content Warnings," OSF Preprints cb7rw, Center for Open Science.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:16:y:2021:i:2:p:363-393 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Shoots-Reinhard, Brittany & Goodwin, Raleigh & Bjälkebring, Pär & Markowitz, David M. & Silverstein, Michael C. & Peters, Ellen, 2021. "Ability-related political polarization in the COVID-19 pandemic," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    8. repec:wrk:wrkemf:22 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. David R. Mandel & Daniel Irwin, 2021. "Facilitating sender-receiver agreement in communicated probabilities: Is it best to use words, numbers or both?," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(2), pages 363-393, March.
    10. Branden B. Johnson, 2019. "Experiments in Lay Cues to the Relative Validity of Positions Taken by Disputing Groups of Scientists," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(8), pages 1657-1674, August.
    11. Carissa Bonner & Lyndal J. Trevena & Wolfgang Gaissmaier & Paul K. J. Han & Yasmina Okan & Elissa Ozanne & Ellen Peters & Daniëlle Timmermans & Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher, 2021. "Current Best Practice for Presenting Probabilities in Patient Decision Aids: Fundamental Principles," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 41(7), pages 821-833, October.
    12. Toshio Fujimi & Masahide Watanabe & Hirokazu Tatano, 2021. "Public trust, perceived accuracy, perceived likelihood, and concern on multi-model climate projections communicated with different formats," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 26(5), pages 1-20, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nathan F. Dieckmann & Ellen Peters & Robin Gregory, 2015. "At Home on the Range? Lay Interpretations of Numerical Uncertainty Ranges," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(7), pages 1281-1295, July.
    2. Shalvi, Shaul & Dana, Jason & Handgraaf, Michel J.J. & De Dreu, Carsten K.W., 2011. "Justified ethicality: Observing desired counterfactuals modifies ethical perceptions and behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 181-190, July.
    3. repec:cup:judgdm:v:14:y:2019:i:6:p:683-695 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Hung-Lin Tao, 2013. "Informational Ambiguity and Survey Bias: Husbands’ and Wives’ Reports on Their Contribution to Their Families," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 111(3), pages 713-724, May.
    5. Arleta Rasmußen, 2015. "Reporting behavior: a literature review of experimental studies," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 23(2), pages 283-311, June.
    6. Jun Han & Hun‐Tong Tan, 2010. "Investors' Reactions to Management Earnings Guidance: The Joint Effect of Investment Position, News Valence, and Guidance Form," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 81-104, March.
    7. Jeffrey Hales, 2007. "Directional Preferences, Information Processing, and Investors' Forecasts of Earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(3), pages 607-628, June.
    8. Mayorga, Diane & Trotman, Ken T., 2016. "The effects of a reasonable investor perspective and firm's prior disclosure policy on managers' disclosure judgments," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 50-62.
    9. Noval, Laura J. & Molinsky, Andrew & Stahl, Günter K., 2018. "Motivated dissimilarity construal and self-serving behavior: How we distance ourselves from those we harm," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 145-158.
    10. Francesca Gino & Lamar Pierce, 2010. "Lying to Level the Playing Field: Why People May Dishonestly Help or Hurt Others to Create Equity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 89-103, September.
    11. Shoots-Reinhard, Brittany & Goodwin, Raleigh & Bjälkebring, Pär & Markowitz, David M. & Silverstein, Michael C. & Peters, Ellen, 2021. "Ability-related political polarization in the COVID-19 pandemic," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    12. DeKay, Michael L. & Patiño-Echeverri, Dalia & Fischbeck, Paul S., 2009. "Distortion of probability and outcome information in risky decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 79-92, May.
    13. Robert N. Collins & David R. Mandel, 2019. "Cultivating credibility with probability words and numbers," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(6), pages 683-695, November.
    14. Robin Gregory & Nathan Dieckmann & Ellen Peters & Lee Failing & Graham Long & Martin Tusler, 2012. "Deliberative Disjunction: Expert and Public Understanding of Outcome Uncertainty," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(12), pages 2071-2083, December.
    15. Anna Rabinovich & Thomas A. Morton, 2012. "Unquestioned Answers or Unanswered Questions: Beliefs About Science Guide Responses to Uncertainty in Climate Change Risk Communication," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(6), pages 992-1002, June.
    16. Eric Schniter & Roman M. Sheremeta & Timothy W. Shields, 2013. "Limitations to Signaling Trust with All or Nothing Investments," Working Papers 13-24, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    17. Yaniv Shani & Gil Appel & Shai Danziger & Ron Shachar, 2020. "When and Why Consumers “Accidentally” Endanger Their Products," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5757-5782, December.
    18. Casey A. Klofstad & Joseph E. Uscinski & Jennifer M. Connolly & Jonathan P. West, 2019. "What drives people to believe in Zika conspiracy theories?," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-8, December.
    19. Michel, Hanno, 2020. "From local to global: The role of knowledge, transfer, and capacity building for successful energy transitions," Discussion Papers, Research Group Digital Mobility and Social Differentiation SP III 2020-603, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    20. Branden B. Johnson, 2017. "Explaining Americans’ responses to dread epidemics: an illustration with Ebola in late 2014," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(10), pages 1338-1357, October.
    21. Li, Xilin & Hsee, Christopher K., 2021. "Free-riding and cost-bearing in discrimination," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 80-90.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:37:y:2017:i:3:p:471-486. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.