Cognitive abilities and superior decision making under risk: A protocol analysis and process model evaluation
Open accessAbstract
Individual differences in cognitive abilities and skills can predict normatively superior and logically consistent judgments and decisions. The current experiment investigates the processes that mediate individual differences in risky choices. We assessed working memory span, numeracy, and cognitive impulsivity and conducted a protocol analysis to trace variations in conscious deliberative processes. People higher in cognitive abilities made more choices consistent with expected values; however, expected-value choices rarely resulted from expected-value calculations. Instead, the cognitive ability and choice relationship was mediated by the number of simple considerations made during decision making — e.g., transforming probabilities and considering the relative size of gains. Results imply that, even in simple lotteries, superior risky decisions associated with cognitive abilities and controlled cognition can reflect metacognitive dynamics and elaborative heuristic search processes, rather than normative calculations. Modes of cognitive control (e.g., dual process dynamics) and implications for process models of risky decision-making (e.g., priority heuristic) are discussed.
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Cokely and Kelley (2009) found a correlation of .27 between performance on the CRT and the proportion of choices consistent with expected value.
“Likewise, Cokely and Kelley (2009) found a correlation of .27 between performance on the CRT and the proportion of choices consistent with expected value.”
From The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks (2011) · cites this paper as Cokely & Kelley, 2009
These results converge with a body of other work indicating that susceptibility to these biases varies considerably.
“These results converge with a body of other work indicating that the susceptibility to these biases varies considerably (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007;Cokely & Kelley, 2009;Del Missier, Mantyla, & Bruine de Bruine, 2010;Dohmen, Falk, Huffman, Marklein, & Sunde, 2009;Klaczynski, 2001;Oechssler et al., 2009;Stanovich & West, 1998a, 1998c, 1999, 2000, 2008b;West et al., 2008).”
From The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks (2011) · cites this paper as Cokely & Kelley, 2009
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- Authors
- Cokely, E. T., & Kelley, C. M.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Human Development (DE)
- Florida State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Cokely, Edward T.
- ORCID
- Cokely, Edward T.
- Venue
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2009-02
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 20-33
- ISSN
- 1930-2975 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2167079436
- Cited by
- 427
- References
- 80
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 27 · 2016: 35 · 2015: 37 · 2014: 33 · 2013: 34 · 2012: 28
- FWCI
- 14.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Judgment and Decision Making (publishedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Florida State University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Leadership, Behavior, and Decision-Making Studies
- Keywords
- risky decision making, individual differences in cognitive ability, working memory span, numeracy, cognitive impulsivity, protocol analysis, deliberative processes, expected value, metacognition, heuristic search, dual-process models, priority heuristic, cognitive control, probability transformation
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