University of Tasmania
Browse
108038 journal article.pdf (323.5 kB)

Post-error recklessness and the hot hand

Download (323.5 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 18:34 authored by Williams, P, Heathcote, A, Nesbit, K, Eidels, A
Although post-error slowing and the “hot hand” (streaks of good performance) are both types of sequential dependencies arising from the differential influence of success and failure, they have not previously been studied together. We bring together these two streams of research in a task where difficulty can be controlled by participants delaying their decisions, and where responses required a degree deliberation, and so are relatively slow. We compared performance of unpaid participants against paid participants who were rewarded differentially, with higher reward for better performance. In contrast to most previous results, we found no post-error slowing for paid or unpaid participants. For the unpaid group, we found post-error speeding and a hot hand, even though the hot hand is typically considered a fallacy. Our results suggest that the effect of success and failure on subsequent performance may differ substantially with task characteristics and demands. We also found payment affected post-error performance; financially rewarding successful performance led to a more cautious approach following errors, whereas unrewarded performance led to recklessness following errors.

History

Publication title

Judgment and Decision Making

Volume

11

Pagination

174-184

ISSN

1930-2975

Department/School

School of Psychological Sciences

Publisher

Society for Judgment and Decision Making

Place of publication

United States

Rights statement

Copyright 2016 The Authors. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in psychology

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Categories

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC