Disregard of scale

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The disregard of the standard ( English scope neglect or scope insensitivity ) is a cognitive distortion that occurs when the assessment of a problem is not placed in a multiplicative relationship to its size.

classification

The disregard of scale is a certain form of disregard of the extent in which the size of a thing is ignored when it would be logically relevant for the evaluation.

Empirical evidence from experimental psychology

In a study, the participants were asked how much they would be willing to pay to prevent migrating birds from drowning in ponds polluted by oil by using protective nets. The participants were divided into three groups and were told that either 2,000 or 20,000 or 200,000 migrating birds were affected. The study reports that the average willingness to pay for the three experimental groups to protect the birds was $ 80, $ 78, and $ 88, respectively. When study participants are asked about their willingness to pay to save 2,000 birds, the average result is almost the same as when it comes to saving 20,000 or 200,000 birds.

Other studies that looked at willingness to pay to avert harm have also found a logarithmic relationship or no relationship at all to the size of the problem.

Bird completely clogged with oil after a tanker accident

Nobel laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman explained the phenomenon of disregard for standards by evaluating situations as a prototype, a refinement of the representativeness heuristic .

"The story [...] probably evokes for many readers a mental representation of a prototypical incident, perhaps an image of an exhausted bird, its feathers soaked in black oil, unable to escape,"

"The story [...] probably conjures up a mental representation of a prototypical incident, presumably the image of an exhausted, immobile bird with its feathers soaked in black oil."

- Daniel Kahneman

According to Kahneman, the willingness of the test participants to pay depended primarily on this image in their heads.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner: Superforecasting - The art of correct forecast.
  2. ^ Daniel Kahneman: Evaluation by moments, past and future . In: Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky (Ed.): Choices, Values ​​and Frames . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 978-0-521-62749-8 , pp. 708 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ William F. Desvouges, Reed Johnson, Richard Dunford, Kevin Boyle, Sarah Hudson, Nicole K. Wilson: Measuring Non-Use Damages Using Contingent Valuation: An Experimental Evaluation of Accuracy (=  Research Triangle Institute Monograph . No. 92-1 ). 2nd Edition. RTI Press, Research Triangle Parl 1992, ISBN 1-937450-00-7 , doi : 10.3768 / rtipress.2009.bk.0001.1009 ( rti.org [PDF]).
  4. ^ W. Michael Hanemann: Valuing the environment through contingent valuation. In: The Journal of Economic Perspectives. 1994, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 19-43.
  5. ↑ Daniel Kahneman, Ilana Ritov, David Schkade: Economic Preferences or Attitude Expressions? An Analysis of Dollar Responses to Public Issues . In: Journal of Risk and Uncertainty . Volume 19, December 1999, p. 203-235 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-94-017-1406-8_8 ( geog.ucsb.edu [PDF]).
  6. ↑ Daniel Kahneman, Ilana Ritov, David Schkade: Economic Preferences or Attitude Expressions? .... 1999, p. 212.