Award Abstract #0518811
Fluency as a Substitute for Validity in Cue Selection

NSF Org:	SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences
Initial Amendment Date:	August 17, 2005
Latest Amendment Date:	June 11, 2007
Award Number:	0518811
Award Instrument:	Continuing grant
Program Manager:	Jacqueline R. Meszaros SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
Start Date:	September 1, 2005
Expires:	August 31, 2009 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:	$336108
Investigator(s):	Daniel Oppenheimer doppenhe@princeton.edu (Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:	Princeton University Off. of Research & Proj. Admin. Princeton, NJ 08544 609/258-3090
NSF Program(s):	DECISION RISK & MANAGEMENT SCI
Field Application(s):
Program Reference Code(s):	OTHR, 0000
Program Element Code(s):	1321

ABSTRACT

When making judgments, people typically use a variety of cues. For example, a legal case may involve a number of pieces of evidence that jurors could use to judge guilt or innocence. Similarly, a patient may exhibit multiple symptoms that can help a doctor diagnosis an ailment. Some cues are more likely than others to successfully predict an outcome and many previous models have assumed that people give more weight to more valid cues. However, it is not always obvious which cues are the most valid, and the use of cue validity for cue weighting is relatively implausible on both theoretical and empirical grounds.

This project proposes that cue weighting may be based on fluency rather than validity. By fluency, we mean the ease with which information is processed. Fluency has been shown to be an important cognitive tool in many domains, because people always have access to their own fluency experiences, and fluency is correlated with so many things. In particular, cue fluency likely to be correlated with cue validity, because of the basic cognitive mechanisms of associative learning and priming. Therefore fluency is both a cognitively plausible and ecologically valid mechanism for cue weighting. This project uses a wide array of converging paradigms to explore this possibility.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Alter, Adam L. & Oppenheimer, Daniel M..  "Predicting Stock Price Fluctuations Using Processing Fluency.,"  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  v.103,  2006,  p. 9369.


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