Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

The study of Schwarz et al. (1991)

It has been shown that people overestimate the

frequency of men resp. women if the names of one

sex, but not the other, were very famous and thus

highly available (Tversky and Kahneman, 1973);

Availability was measured by how many names

participants were able to recall.

Contributor © POSbase 2003

There are two ways how to explain this finding:

(1) The number of famous names was overestimated

because participants recall more of them (how Tversky

& Kahneman measured availability).

(2) The number of famous names was overestimated

because participants recall them more easily (how

Tversky & Kahneman defined availability).

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

Experiment:

The participants had to list either six or twelve

episodes from their own lifes in which they were

self-assertive. It is easier to recall six such

behaviors, but amount of recall is higher with

when twelve such behaviors can be listed.

Afterwards, they had to rate their self-

assertiveness.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

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Hypothesis:

(1) If participants use the amount of recall as information, they

are expected to feel themselves more assertive after recalling

twelve rather than six self-assertive episodes.

(2) If participants use the ease of recall as information, they are

expected to feel themselves more assertive after recalling six

rather than twelve self-assertive episodes.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

5

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Number of recalled instances

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Assertive

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

The results show clearly that participants use ease of

recall as information:

They judged themseves to be more assertive after

recalling six rather than twelve self-assertive

behaviors.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

In another condition, participants were asked to list either six

or twelve episodes from their own lifes in which they behaved

unassertive.

If participants again use ease of recall, they are expected to

rate themselves as being more assertive after recalling twelve

rather than six unassertive behaviors.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

In other words: If it is so easy to recall six unassertive

behaviors, I can‘t be too assertive after all; and if it is so

difficult to recall twelve unassertive behaviors, I must be

quite assertive!

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Number of recalled instances

Rate

d A

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iveness

AssertiveUnassertive

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

Again, participants use ease of recall as information when

judging self-assertiveness.

In order to examine the underlying processes, Schwarz et al.

(1991) replicated the former experiment, but played meditation

music in the background.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

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In one condition, participants were told that the music

facilitates the recall of assertive behaviors, whereas the

other participants were told that music facilitates the recall

of unassertive behaviors.

Predictions:

Participants whose subjective experience contradicted the alleged

side effect of the music would consider this experience particularly

diagnostic and would use it in their self-assessment, whereas

participants whose experience was in line with the alleged side

effect of music would discount the experience and use amount of

recall instead.

If participants did not use ease of recall as information, diagnosticity

of experienced ease would not change self-assessments.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

For example, if participants had to recall six

assertive behaviors and were told that music

facilitates the recall of assertive behaviors, they

think that ease of recall is due to music and

discount the experience; for them, experienced

ease is not diagnostic as information for the

judgment of assertiveness.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

However, if they had to recall six assertive

behaviors and were told that music facilitates

the recall of unassertive behavior, ease of

recall becomes highly diagnostic because the

expectation that music facilitates unassertive

behaviors contradicts the experience of ease of

recalling assertive behaviors.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

Diagnosticity of Ease of Recall

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AssertiveUnassertive

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AssertiveUnassertive

LowHigh

© POSbase 2003

When diagnosticity of experienced ease of recall

was high, participants relied on ease of recall, as in

the former study. However, if diagnosticity of

experienced ease of recall was low, participants

relied on amount of recall.

The authors interpreted this pattern of findings as

evidence that ease of recall, and not some other

information, causes variations in assertiveness

ratings.

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

Besides diagnosticity of recall, other variables have been

found that moderate the effects of experienced ease of recall

on judgments:

Processing motivation (Rothman & Schwarz, 1998);

Direct access to information in memory

(Haddock et al., 1999);

Naïve theories about the meaning of experienced ease of

recall (Winkielman & Schwarz, 2001).

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003

Ease of recall has been shown to influence several types of

variables:

Frequency estimates (Wänke et al., 1995)

Judgments of risk (Grayson & Schwarz, 1998; Rothman &

Schwarz, 1998)

Attitudes toward a product (Wänke, Bohner, & Jurkowitsch,

1997)

Debiasing hindsight (Sanna, Schwarz, & Stocker, 2001).

Availability:Ease of amount of recall?

© POSbase 2003