Examining the Effect of Information Order on Expert Judgment

Abstract

An experiment with trained Army air defense personnel performing a paper-and-pencil representation of their substantive task was performed to test the predictions of the Hogarth–Einhorn (1992) model for belief updating. For a simple task with a short series of information, the model predicted a significant information order by response mode interaction. The experiment supported the model′s predictions. When information was presented sequentially and a probability estimate was obtained after each piece of information, the order in which the same information was presented significantly affected the final mean probability estimates. In contrast, when all the information was presented at once and a probability estimate was obtained at that time, information order had no effect. There were, however, large individual differences. Moreover, order and response mode cumulatively accounted for less than 10 percent of the total variation in the participants′ probability estimates. These findings, and their implications, are discussed.