Garrett, Neil;
Sharot, Tali;
(2023)
There is no belief update bias for neutral events: failure to replicate Burton et al. (2022).
Journal of Cognitive Psychology
, 35
(8)
pp. 876-886.
10.1080/20445911.2023.2245112.
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Abstract
In a recent paper, Burton et al. claim that individuals update beliefs to a greater extent when learning an event is less likely compared to more likely than expected. Here, we investigate Burton’s et al.’s, findings. First, we show how Burton et al.’s data do not in fact support a belief update bias for neutral events. Next, in an attempt to replicate their findings, we collect a new data set employing the original belief update task design, but with neutral events. A belief update bias for neutral events is not observed. Finally, we highlight the statistical errors and confounds in Burton et al.’s design and analysis. This includes mis-specifying a reinforcement learning approach to model the data and failing to follow standard computational model fitting sanity checks such as parameter recovery, model comparison and out of sample prediction. Together, the results find little evidence for biased updating for neutral events.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | There is no belief update bias for neutral events: failure to replicate Burton et al. (2022) |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/20445911.2023.2245112 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2023.2245112 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Optimism; belief updating;asymmetric learning |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10187924 |
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