Marc Jekel

University of Cologne | UOC · Department of Psychology

Probabilistic inference constitutes a class of choice tasks in which individuals rely on probabilistic cues to choose the option that is best on a given criterion. We apply a machine learning approach to a data set of 62,311 choices in randomly generated probabilistic inference tasks to evaluate existing models and identify directions for further i...

Sustainable human resource management is gaining importance in organizations due to its role in developing a sustainable work environment and well-being. This paper discusses the relationship between employee perceptions of sustainable human resource management and job satisfaction in 54 countries. We propose that sustainable HRM is positively asso...

Heuristics (shortcut solution rules) can help adaptation to uncertainty by leading to sufficiently accurate decisions with little information. However, heuristics would fail under extreme uncertainty where information is so scarce that any heuristic would be highly misleading for accuracy-seeking. Thus, under very high levels of uncertainty, decisi...

Increased execution of replication studies contributes to the effort to restore credibility of empirical research. However, a second generation of problems arises: the number of potential replication targets is at a serious mismatch with available resources. Given limited resources, replication target selection should be well-justified, systematic...

Increased execution of replication studies contributes to the effort to restore credibility of empirical research. However, a second generation of problems arises: the number of potential replication targets is at a serious mismatch with available resources. Given limited resources, replication target selection should be well-justified, systematic,...

Previous research has shown that the tendency to search information for an option increases with option attractiveness. This attraction search effect (ASE) can be explained by the integrated coherence-based decision and search (iCodes) model. In a preregistered study (N = 202), we investigated whether the ASE increases when participants are made aw...

The Integrated Coherence-Based Decision and Search (iCodes) model proposed by Jekel et al. ( Psychological Review, 125 (5), 744–768, 2018) formalizes both decision making and pre-decisional information search as coherence-maximization processes in an interactive network. Next to bottom-up attribute influences, the coherence of option information ex...

We provide ratings for a representative set of 2,000 German first names with regard to perceived sex, foreign origin (yes/no), and familiarity. In two studies participants ( N = 736 and N = 237) estimated intelligence, education, attractiveness, religiousness, age, warmth, and competence of persons with the respective name. Descriptive results show...

The Hagen Cumulative Science Project is a large-scale replication project based on students’ thesis work. In the project, we aim to (i) teach students to conduct the entire research process for conducting a replication according to current open science standards and (ii) contribute to cumulative science by increasing the number of direct replicatio...

Hypotheses derived from models can be tested in an empirical study: If the model reliably fails to predict behavior, it can be dismissed or modified. Models can also be evaluated before data are collected: More useful models have a high level of empirical content (Popper in Logik der Forschung, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 1934), i.e., they make precise...

Adaptive actors must be able to use probabilities as decision weights. In a computerized multi-attribute task, the authors examined the decisions of children (5–6 years, n = 44; 9–10 y., n = 39) and adults (21–22 y., n = 31) in an environment that fosters the application of a weighted-additive strategy that uses probabilities as weights (WADD: choo...

A common assumption of many established models for decision making is that information is searched according to some prespecified search rule. While the content of the information influences the termination of search, usually specified as a stopping rule, the direction of search is viewed as being independent of the valence of the retrieved informa...

Proper methods for model comparisons require including reasonable models and all data. In an article in this issue, we highlight that excluding some models was common in parts of the literature supposedly supporting fast-and-frugal heuristics and show in comprehensive simulations and exemplified reanalyses of studies by Rieskamp that this can—under...

Over the years several non-equivalent probabilistic measures of coherence have been discussed in the philosophical literature. In this paper we examine these measures with respect to their empirical adequacy. Using test cases from the coherence literature as vignettes for psychological experiments we investigate whether the measures can predict the...

Model comparisons based on choices are a common method to assess adaptive strategy selection models. We show that one common methodological choice prevailing in parts of this work makes it hard to draw sound conclusions concerning the central questions of how often people indeed use simplified strategies (e.g., fast-and-frugal heuristics) and wheth...

Recent research makes increasing use of eye-tracking methodologies to generate and test process models. Overall, such research suggests that attention, generally indexed by fixations (gaze duration), plays a critical role in the construction of preference, although the methods used to support this supposition differ substantially. In 2 studies we e...

Empirically analyzing empirical evidence One of the central goals in any scientific endeavor is to understand causality. Experiments that seek to demonstrate a cause/effect relation most often manipulate the postulated causal factor. Aarts et al. describe the replication of 100 experiments reported in papers published in 2008 in three high-ranking...

There is broad consensus that human cognition is adaptive. However, the vital question of how exactly this adaptivity is achieved has remained largely open. Herein, we contrast two frameworks which account for adaptive decision making, namely broad and general single-mechanism accounts vs. multi-strategy accounts. We propose and fully specify a sin...

In a highly uncertain world, individuals often have to make decisions in situations with incomplete information. We investigated in three experiments how partial cue information is treated in complex probabilistic inference tasks. Specif-ically, we test a mechanism to infer missing cue values that is based on the discrimination rate of cues (i.e.,...

Whereas classic work in judgment and decision making has focused on the deviation of intuition from rationality,more recent research has focused on the performance of intuition in real-world environments. Borrowing from both approaches, we investigate to which extent competing models of intuitive probabilistic decision making overlap with choices a...

Recent theorizing on the relation between victim sensitivity and unethical behavior predicts that victim sensitivity is related to an asymmetrical focus on cues associated with untrustworthiness compared to cues associated with trustworthiness. This hypothesis and its consequences for the accuracy of social predictions are investigated in this arti...

One major statistical and methodological challenge in Judgment and Decision Making research is the reliable identification of individual decision strategies by selection of diagnostic tasks, that is, tasks for which predictions of the strategies differ sufficiently. The more strategies are considered, and the larger the number of dependent measures...

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether job satisfaction mediates between leader-member exchange and nurse turnover intentions. Limited knowledge is available on the mediating role of job satisfaction between leader-member exchange and turnover intentions in the nursing field. This is a cross-sectional survey study. Data were collec...

One major challenge to behavioral decision research is to identify the cognitive processes underlying judgment and decision making. Gloeckner (2009) has argued that, compared to previous methods, process models can be more efficiently tested by simultaneously analyzing choices, decision times, and confidence judgments. The Multiple-Measure Maximum...