Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Entscheidungspsychologie


Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Blog

Archive for November, 2015

Superforecasting

superforecasting

Phillip Tetlock and Dan Gardner have a new book out – Superforecasting. The book gives an entertaining overview of Tetlock’s work on forecasting, including a large scale forecasting tournament – the good judgment project – in which over 2800 laypeople were asked (across years) to make real-world predictions, such as “will any country withdraw from the Euro zone in the next 3 months?”. I found it particularly interesting that Tetlock and Gardner pitch these efforts as an attempt to introduce evidence-based decision making to policy, in a similar vein as evidence-based practices have taken hold in medicine and sports.

For those University of Basel students interested in the topic, there will be a seminar on forecasting taught by Renato Frey next semester.

Erfolgreiches Vorhersagen: Grundprinzipien, die Rolle der Psychologie, und Anwendungstechniken

Die Zukunft geht mit Unsicherheit einher – deshalb interessieren sich Menschen brennend für die verschiedensten Vorhersagen: Welchen Krankheitsverlauf prognostiziert ein medizinisches Testresultat? Wird eine Finanzkrise eintreten oder nicht? Nicht selten werden wir auch selbst zu „Propheten”, wie zum Beispiel wenn es darum geht, den nächsten Fussballweltmeister vorherzusagen. Vorhersagen sind allerdings nicht nur faszinierend, sondern oft auch komplex und schwierig. Auf welchen Informationen sollten unsere Vorhersagen im Idealfall basieren, und auf welchen Informationen basieren sie tatsächlich? Wie gut sind die Vorhersagen von Menschen vs. Maschinen? In diesem Seminar behandeln wir die Grundprinzipien und die Psychologie von erfolgreichem Vorhersagen und untersuchen insbesondere, wie gut diverse Vorhersagetechniken unter verschiedenen Bedingungen funktionieren.

Tuesday, 10.15-11.45 Missionsstrasse 64a (ehem. Nebenhaus). Link to Vorlesungsverzeichnis.

 

 

Aldert Vrij

aldert

This week we have Dr. Aldert Vrij, Professor of Applied Social Psychology, University of Portsmouth, UK, visiting and giving a talk in our colloquium (see abstract below). 

A cognitive approach to lie detection

This talk starts with a literature review of a new, cognitive, approach to nonverbal and verbal lie detection. The core of the approach is that investigators can magnify the difference in cognitive load that liars and truth tellers experience through specific interventions, resulting in liars displaying more diagnostic cues to deception. A discussion of the cognitive lie-detection approach, which consists of three techniques, (a) imposing cognitive load, (b) encouraging interviewees to say more, and (c) asking unexpected questions, is followed by a qualitative analysis of the available cognitive lie detection research examining whether the approach results in more cues to deceit.

 

 

Paolo Ghisletta

ghisletta

We had Prof. Dr. Paolo Ghisletta, from the University of Geneva, visit us this week and give us a great introduction to structural equation modelling (abstract below) as well as a workshop to the doctoral students in the Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Ph.D. Program.

An introduction to structural equation modeling

Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is a general set of techniques that proposes a formal statistical statement about the relations among a chosen set of variables. As such, SEM subsumes the General Linear Model (e.g., linear regression, t-test, analysis of variance). However, one of the major advantages of SEM consists in allowing for testing complicated theories that include latent (unmeasured) variables. Thanks to modern software development, the use of SEM has increased exponentially in the last two decades, also in the social sciences and in psychology. In this introductory lecture we will discuss of the main principles underlying SEM, its major advantages but also drawbacks, and how to use SEM in practice. Several examples will be illustrated.