Center-of-inattention: Position biases in decision-making

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Abstract

This paper examines centrality of physical position as a cue that leads to systematic biases in people’s decisions to retain or eliminate a participant from a group. Termed the “center-stage” effect, we argue that people use their belief that “important people sit in the middle” as a schematic cue that they substitute for individuating performance information for individuals who occupy central positions when the goal is to eliminate all but one of the group members. This leads to the errors of those in center-positions being overlooked: or making them the “centers-of-inattention.” Study 1 examines people’s lay beliefs regarding positions using two stylized placement tasks (a group interview and classroom seating scenarios). These suggest that people believe that more attention is paid to those in the center than those on the extremes. Study 2 tests the center-stage effect using observational data from a real television show, The Weakest Link. Results show that players assigned at random to central positions are more likely to win the game than those in extreme positions. Study 3, a laboratory experiment manipulating attention paid to the game shows that observers overlook the errors of players in the center to a greater extent than the errors of players in extreme positions. Study 4 replicates the game in the laboratory with direct process measures to show that players playing the game make the same error. Study 5 shows that in a stylized group interview setting, participants who believe that “important people sit in the middle” find the performance of candidates in the extreme position easier to recall than the performance of those in the central position, and are more likely to choose them. Study 6 shows that the “center-stage” effects are weaker when the end-game rule allows for two (vs one) contestants to be retained. Overall results converge to show that the use of the “center-stage” heuristic substitutes for the effortful processing of individuating information, leading to a biased (favorable) assessment of people in the center. Implications for decision-making are discussed.

Section snippets

Literature review

Prior research on people perception has not only shown inconclusive results but has also not disentangled why these effects occur when they do (e.g., McArthur, 1981, Taylor and Fiske, 1975). There are a number of possible reasons why a position effect on people perception (favoring the center) may exist, if it does. These are grouped under “salience effects,” “attributional effects,” and “social norms” and are described below in the context of a task where the goal is to identify the best

The center-of-inattention hypothesis

We revisit the issue of attention as a potential antecedent of position effects and suggest that differential levels of attention paid to players’ errors in different positions affects their likelihood of being retained. The key issue of importance is that in certain tasks (such as promotions, retention, and hiring) observers or participants must attend to the errors of players (rather than just aspects of their good performance) to make decisions regarding which person to retain and which

Study 1: Stylized choice experiments: The “center-stage” schema

The purpose of these stylized choice experiments was to examine people’s lay beliefs regarding the advantage of certain positions in different situations. Participants were undergraduates at two west-coast universities, University of California at Berkeley, and San Francisco State University, who undertook the study for partial course credit (n = 188). All participants were told to imagine a scenario and then make a choice regarding which position they would occupy or which position they believed

Study 2: Weak links in human performance perceptions

This study examines biases in voting behavior in a TV game show where players are assigned at random to different starting positions. The use of the television game serves as a natural laboratory to examine tenets of rational decision theory, which has strong precedents in the analysis of economic behavior with games such as Jeopardy! (Metrick, 1995), The Price is Right (Bennett and Hickman, 1993, Berk et al., 1996), Card Sharks (Gertner, 1993), and Let’s Make a Deal, which was hosted by Monty

Procedure

Experimental participants were undergraduates at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley who undertook the study during a class on experimental design (n = 22). We used a one way 2 level between subjects design manipulating attention (low/high). Participants observed selected segments of an episode of The Weakest Link.6 After watching the introductions of the players, all participants saw round 1 of the game. At this stage, we introduced a

Study 4: Give me the money

This study replicates the game The Weakest Link in the lab and collects process measures of recall of performance of players to directly test the assertion that position effects are due to biased recall of the performance of players in different positions when one is actually playing the game.

Study participants

Study participants were 111 students enrolled in an introductory marketing class at San Francisco State University who completed the study for partial course credit.

Procedure

We used an interview paradigm. Study participants were told “You are a manager that has just opened a sales office in Hong Kong. You are now looking to hire a business student to work in your Hong Kong sales office as an intern during the summer semester. You have posted an announcement at HKUST for the job. Five students applied

Procedure

Experimental participants were undergraduates at U.C. Berkeley who undertook the study for partial course credit (n = 81). The design was a 2 (end-game rule: cooperative/competitive) between subjects design. Participants observed selected segments of an episode of The Weakest Link.

General discussion

In this paper, we proposed that there exists a location advantage of being in the central positions in a group and that such an advantage is caused by limited attention to performance inaccuracies of the player in that position. We tested these propositions with different studies using different methods and measures. Based on prior research that argued that position effects were either due to attention with central positions being more vivid (Taylor & Fiske, 1975), or attribution or social

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    We appreciate the assistance of NBC studios for making available the taped episodes used to code the data in Study 2. We appreciate the help of Barbara Mellers for helping analyze data for Study 2, the assistance of Judi Strebel for conducting Study 1, Marie-Claire Meissels for conducting Study 3, and Catherine Wong for preparing the stimuli for Study 5. The order of authorship is alphabetical and reflects equal contribution.

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