How long will it take me to get to the office? How many calories does this meal have? What is the carbon footprint of this product? Estimating quantities or numbers is part of our daily life and the subjective answers to these questions influence our behavior considerably. Thus, the exactness of our estimates is important. For research on this topic, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has awarded funding in the amount of almost 362,000 euros to Mannheim psychologist Dr. David Izydorcyzk of the Chair of Experimental Psychology.
In research, there are some mathematical models which try to show and describe judgment and estimation processes. However, these models have only been tested in lab settings. Another research field uses realistic tasks – for example estimating the sugar content of food or the carbon footprint of products and investigates simple training methods which should help to improve the estimates people give. However, theories in this field are formulated imprecisely.
With this project, Izydorczyk wants to bring together both perspectives. The researcher hopes to get more insights into the cognitive processes which are the basis for human judgment and decisions in realistic scenarios: Which information do people use for their estimates, how do they combine this information and how do they learn this? Izydorczyk also wants to develop a training method, which is based on theories and evidence, efficient and easy to implement, to improve the exactness of judgments and which can be implemented in medical and other socially relevant contexts.