Debiasing Training Programs

Better Processes

Conveying information should be easier as recipients’ judgments improve. Skilled individuals should acquire new information more readily, as well as know more already (by observing their environment more effectively). Training programs, designed to improve judgment by redirecting heuristic processes, arose early in the research. By the mid-1970s, courses had been created for military and intelligence officers in the United States and Israel (Heuer, 1999; Lanir, 1978; Lipschitz, 1983). High school curricula followed (Baron & Brown, 1991; Beyth-Marom et al., 1985), fitting educators’ increasing demand for critical thinking skills, as did a (UK) Open University course on “Risk” (Dowie, 1983), among others. Larrick et al. (1990) report an ambitious training program, whose impacts generalized to similar problems presented outside classroom settings. These courses represent complex debiasing interventions, with elements ranging from mere exhortation and warning (Table 41.1, middle) to attempts to change how individuals approach tasks (Table 41.1, bottom). Although the courses could grade participants’ performance on textbook exercises, they could not evaluate effects on real-world performance.

One context where real-world training effects have been evaluated is with social skills programs, shown to reduce teens’ rates of risk behaviors, such as smoking, unsafe sex, and driving after drinking (Dryfoos, 1990). These programs aim to help teens understand and resist temptations, in part by addressing judgmental biases. For example, course leaders explain how the availability of other teens’ overt risk behaviors (and claims thereof) leads to overestimating their prevalence – whereas less salient avoidance of risk behavior is underestimated. That lesson is reinforced in group discussions of strategies for avoiding risk behaviors. These exercises attempt to make otherwise abstract base rates concrete – in addition to securing public commitment to better behavior. Showing students the (surprisingly) high rate of responsible drinking is part of social marketing approaches found to reduce binge drinking on college campuses (Wechsler et al., 2000).

Nonetheless, assessing the role of improved judgment in these complex interventions is difficult. That is true even for the many programs with decision-making modules. It would be nice to believe that these modules are critical to the programs’ successes. However, their content is often rather general, akin to warning manipulations, with little attention to redirecting cognitive processes. A review of evaluations concluded that none allowed evaluating changes in decision-making competence (Beyth-Marom et al., 1991). A cynical possibility is that decision-making modules enhance programs’ more manipulative elements by seemingly respecting teens’ rights and abilities to make independent choices (Institute of Medicine, 1999). A more upbeat conclusion is found in the observation that teens who perform better on behavioral decision-making tasks are less likely to engage in antisocial behaviors, even after controlling for intelligence (verbal and non) and peer influence (Parker & Fischhoff, 2001). If those skills can be taught, then better real-world choices might result.