- What, if anything, is cognitively distinctive about the participants who were susceptible to the faulty intuition that the evidence was worthless or who tended to imitate this heuristic in others?
- What patterns in social information are responsible for the study's main effect?

Syracuse University

The study found a significant effect of condition for all four preregistered hypotheses but no effect of position and no interaction between condition and position. A social context has thus amplified the jumping to conclusions (JTC) bias, increasing the likelihood that people would make costly decisions on the basis of insufficient evidence.

Graphs and Results for Social information Experiment

Sulik, J., Efferson, C., &amp; McKay, R. (2021). Collectively jumping to conclusions: social information amplifies the tendency to gather insufficient data. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vpnxh 

Collectively Jumping to Conclusions: Social Information Amplifies the Tendency to Gather Insufficient Data

H1: Participants will gather less evidence (draw fewer beads) in the social condition than in the asocial condition ("JTC in a relative sense").
The study showed that the draws to decision in the social condition were significantly lower than the asocial condition (figure 3a), therefore, social information amplified JTC in a relative sense.


H2: Participants will be more likely to jump to conclusions (making objectively premature decisions) in the social condition than in the asocial condition (“JTC in an absolute sense”).
Results showed that participants were significantly more likely to jump to conclusions in the social condition relative to the asocial control (figure 3b). Thus, the social context amplified the JTC bias.


H3: Participants in the social condition will make their decisions about the majority color of the urn at a point of lower objective certainty than will participants in the asocial condition.
Results showed that participants in the social condition decided at a significantly lower objective certainty.


H4: Participants will be more likely to form inaccurate beliefs about the state of the world in the social condition, relative to the asocial control.
Results showed that participants in the social condition were significantly less accurate.

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