When explaining others’ behaviors, achievements, and failures, it is common for people to attribute too much influence to disposition and too little influence to structural and situational factors. We examine whether this tendency leads even experienced professionals to make systematic mistakes in their selection decisions, favoring alumni from academic institutions with high grade distributions and employees from forgiving business environments. We find that candidates benefiting from favorable situations are more likely to be admitted and promoted than their equivalently skilled peers. The results suggest that decision-makers take high nominal performance as evidence of high ability and do not discount it by the ease with which it was achieved. These results clarify our understanding of the correspondence bias using evidence from both archival studies and experiments with experienced professionals. We discuss implications for both admissions and personnel selection practices.

When explaining others' behaviors, achievements, and failures, it is common for people to attribute too much influence to disposition and too little influence to structural and situational factors. We examine whether this tendency leads even experienced professionals to make systematic mistakes in their selection decisions, favoring alumni from academic institutions with high grade distributions and employees from forgiving business environments. We find that candidates benefiting from favorable situations are more likely to be admitted and promoted than their equivalently skilled peers. The results suggest that decision-makers take high nominal performance as evidence of high ability and do not discount it by the ease with which it was achieved. These results clarify our understanding of the correspondence bias using evidence from both archival studies and experiments with experienced professionals. We discuss implications for both admissions and personnel selection practices.

Introduction

To examine associations of history of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) with loss of consciousness (LOC) with dementia incidence and memory decline.

Methods

We studied 2718 participants from the 1992 enrollment cohort of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) aged 65 years or older in 2000. History of TBI with LOC was self-reported in 1992. Dementia was assessed using four algorithms established in HRS. Participants were followed from 2000 to 2014 with repeated measures of dementia and memory performance. Cox models and linear mixed-effects models were used.

Results

In 1992, 11.9% of the participants reported a history of TBI with LOC. In fully adjusted models for all four algorithms, participants with a history of TBI with LOC had no statistically significant difference in dementia incidence nor in memory decline, compared to participants without TBI history.

Discussion

Our study did not find evidence of a long-term association between history of TBI with LOC (of unknown frequency and severity) and dementia incidence or memory decline.

Objective

Income volatility presents a growing public health threat. To our knowledge, no previous study examined the relationship among income volatility, cognitive function, and brain integrity.

Methods

We studied 3,287 participants aged 23-35 years in 1990 from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults prospective cohort study. Income volatility data were created using income data collected from 1990 to 2010 and defined as SD of percent change in income and number of income drops ≥25% (categorized as 0, 1, or 2+). In 2010, cognitive tests (n = 3,287) and brain scans (n = 716) were obtained.

Results

After covariate adjustment, higher income volatility was associated with worse performance on processing speed (β = -1.09, 95% confidence interval [CI] -1.73 to -0.44) and executive functioning (β = 2.53, 95% CI 0.60-4.50) but not on verbal memory (β = -0.02, 95% CI -0.16 to 0.11). Similarly, additional income drops were associated with worse performance on processing speed and executive functioning. Higher income volatility and more income drops were also associated with worse microstructural integrity of total brain and total white matter. All findings were similar when restricted to those with high education, suggesting reverse causation may not explain these findings.

Conclusion

Income volatility over a 20-year period of formative earning years was associated with worse cognitive function and brain integrity in midlife.

This research examines the development of confidence and accuracy over time in the context of forecasting. Although overconfidence has been studied in many contexts, little research examines its progression over long periods of time or in consequential policy domains. This study employs a unique data set from a geopolitical forecasting tournament spanning three years in which thousands of forecasters predicted the outcomes of hundreds of events. We sought to apply insights from research to structure the questions, interactions, and elicitations to improve forecasts. Indeed, forecasters' confidence roughly matched their accuracy. As information came in, accuracy increased. Confidence increased at approximately the same rate as accuracy, and good calibration persisted. Nevertheless, there was evidence of a small amount of overconfidence (3%), especially on the most confident forecasts. Training helped reduce overconfidence, and team collaboration improved forecast accuracy. Together, teams and training reduced overconfidence to 1%. Our results provide reason for tempered optimism regarding confidence calibration and its development over time in consequential field contexts.

Five university-based research groups competed to recruit forecasters, elicit their predictions, and aggregate those predictions to assign the most accurate probabilities to events in a 2-year geopolitical forecasting tournament. Our group tested and found support for three psychological drivers of accuracy: training, teaming, and tracking. Probability training corrected cognitive biases, encouraged forecasters to use reference classes, and provided forecasters with heuristics, such as averaging when multiple estimates were available. Teaming allowed forecasters to share information and discuss the rationales behind their beliefs. Tracking placed the highest performers (top 2% from Year 1) in elite teams that worked together. Results showed that probability training, team collaboration, and tracking improved both calibration and resolution. Forecasting is often viewed as a statistical problem, but forecasts can be improved with behavioral interventions. Training, teaming, and tracking are psychological interventions that dramatically increased the accuracy of forecasts. Statistical algorithms (reported elsewhere) improved the accuracy of the aggregation. Putting both statistics and psychology to work produced the best forecasts 2 years in a row.