University course choice and the use of heuristics and biases as decision making mechanisms: a study in Brazil
Main Article Content
Abstract
The choice of a higher education course is one of the most important decisions individuals make, as it usually directs the choice of career or profession. Therefore, it is a complex decision, and it is thus possible that young individuals rely on heuristics and biases to facilitate the decision-making process. Considering that, we explored whether and how heuristics and biases affected college students’ judgments and decisions regarding courses. We developed a questionnaire and applied it to a sample of students in Brazil, and we analyzed the collected data using CATPCA and additional statistical methods. We found that students suffered from sunk-cost bias, in addition to the anchoring and representativeness heuristics. Additionally, we found no evidence of a framing effect. We conclude that heuristics and biases were relevant factors in students’ judgments and decisions, but they did not dominate them, operating, instead, in conjunction with traditional aspects of analysis and choice.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
La RACC aplicará la licencia internacional de atribuciones comunes creativas (Reconocimiento 4.0 Internacional: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Bajo esta licencia, se permite cualquier explotación de la obra, incluyendo la explotación con fines comerciales y la creación de obras derivadas, la distribución de las cuales también está permitida sin ninguna restricción. Esta licencia es una licencia libre según la Freedom Defined. La única condición es que siempre y en todos los casos se cite a los autores y a la fuente original de publicación (i.e., RACC). Esta licencia fue desarrollada para facilitar el acceso abierto, gratuito y libre a trabajos originales científicos y artísticos.
How to Cite
References
Almeida, C. (11 de abril, 2018). Concluir o ensino superior triplica a renda, mostra IBGE. Associação Brasileira de Mantenedoras do Ensino Superior. Recuperado de: https://abmes.org.br/noticias/detalhe/2746/concluir-o-ensino-superior-triplica-a-renda-mostra-ibge/.
Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985). The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35(1), 124–140. doi: 10.1016/0749-5978(85)90049-4
Baker, R., Bettinger, E., Jacob, B., & Marinescu, I. (2018). The effect of labor market information on community college students’ major choice. Economics of Education Review, 65, 18–30. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.05.005.
Beratšová, A., Krchová, K., Gažová, N., & Jirásek, M. (2016). Framing and bias: A literature review of recent findings. Central European Journal of Management, 3(2), 23-32. doi: 10.5817/cejm2016-2-2.
Białek, M. (2017). Not that neglected! Base rates influence related and unrelated judgments. Acta Psychologica, 177, 10–16. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.04.003.
Cunha Jr., M., & Caldieraro, F. (2009). Sunk-cost effects on purely behavioral investments. Cognitive Science, 33(1), 105-113. doi: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2008.01005.x.
De Neys, W., & Glumicic, T. (2008). Conflict monitoring in dual-process theories of thinking. Cognition, 106(3), 1248–1299. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.06.002.
DellaVigna, S. (2009). Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field. Journal of Economic Literature, 47(2), 315–372. doi: 10.1257/jel.47.2.315.
Englich, B., & Soder, K. (2009). Moody experts—How mood and expertise influence judgmental anchoring. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(1), 41–50.
Fricke, H., Grogger, J., & Steinmayr, A. (2018). Exposure to academic fields and college major choice. Economics of Education Review, 64, 199–213. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.04.007.
Furnham, A., & Boo, H. C. (2011). A literature review of the anchoring effect. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 40(1), 35–42. doi: 10.1016/j.socec.2010.10.008
Guler, I. (2007). Throwing good money after bad? Political and institutional influences on sequential decision making in the venture capital industry. Administrative Science Quarterly, 52(2), 248–285. doi: 10.2189/asqu.52.2.248
Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2014). Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.). Edinburgh: Pearson.
Haita-Falah, C. (2017). Sunk-cost fallacy and cognitive ability in individual decision-making. Journal of Economic Psychology, 58, 44-59. doi: 10.1016/j.joep.2016.12.001.
Harrison, N. (2016). Student choices under uncertainty: Bounded rationality and behavioral economics. En A. Mountford-Zimdars & N. Harrison (Eds.), Access to higher education: Theoretical perspectives and contemporary challenges (pp. 85–100). Abingdon: Routledge.
Hastings, J. S., Neilson, C. A., Ramirez, A., & Zimmerman, S. D. (2016). (Un)informed college and major choice: Evidence from linked survey and administrative data. Economics of Education Review, 51, 136-151. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.06.005.
Hirschi, A. (2011). Career-choice readiness in adolescence: Developmental trajectories and individual differences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 79(2), 340–348. doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2011.05.005.
Hoppe, E. I., & Kusterer, D. J. (2011). Behavioral biases and cognitive reflection. Economics Letters, 110(2), 97–100. doi: 10.1016/j.econlet.2010.11.015
Hütter, M., & Fiedler, K. (2019). Advice taking under uncertainty: The impact of genuine advice versus arbitrary anchors on the judgment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 85, 103829. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103829.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1973). On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, 80(4), 237–251. doi: 10.1037/h0034747.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-292. doi: 10.2307/1914185.
Kulcsár, V., Dobrean, A., & Gati, I. (2020). Challenges and difficulties in career decision making: Their causes, and their effects on the process and the decision. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 116, 103346. doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2019.103346.
Levin, I. P., Schneider, S. L., & Gaeth, G. J. (1998). All frames are not created equal: A typology and critical analysis of framing effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76(2), 149–188. doi:10.1006/obhd.1998.2804.
Lewis, M. A., & Neighbors, C. (2006). Social norms approaches using descriptive drinking norms education: A review of the research on personalized normative feedback. Journal of American College Health, 54(4), 213–218. doi: 10.3200/jach.54.4.213-218.
Martins, F. dos S., & Machado, D. C. (2018). Uma análise da escolha do curso superior no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Estudos de População, 35(1), 1–24. doi: 10.20947/s0102-3098a0056.
McGuigan, M., McNally, S., & Wyness, G. (2016). Student awareness of costs and benefits of educational decisions: Effects of an information campaign. Journal of Human Capital, 10(4), 482–519. doi: 10.1086/689551.
Meulman, J. J., Van der Kooij, A. J., & Heiser, W. J. (2004). Principal components analysis with nonlinear optimal scaling transformations for ordinal and nominal data. En D. Kaplan (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (pp. 49–70). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Nalbantoglu, F. Y., & Cetin, H. G. (2018). Career Indecision and Career Anxiety in High School Students: an Investigation through Structural Equation Modelling. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 18(78), 23-42. doi: 10.14689/ejer.2018.78.2.
Oppenheimer, D. M., LeBoeuf, R. A., & Brewer, N. T. (2008). Anchors aweigh: A demonstration of cross-modality anchoring and magnitude priming. Cognition, 106(1), 13–26. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2006.12.008.
Pennycook, G., & Thompson, V. A. (2012). Reasoning with base rates is routine, relatively effortless, and context-dependent. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(3), 528–534. doi: 10.3758/s13423-012-0249-3.
Pennycook, G., & Thompson, V. A. (2016). Base-rate neglect. En R. F. Pohl (Ed.), Cognitive illusions: Intriguing phenomena in thinking, judgment, and memory (pp. 44–61). London: Psychology Press.
Redekopp, D. E. (2016). Irrational career decision-making: connecting behavioural economics and career development. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 45(4), 441–450. doi: 10.1080/03069885.2016.1264569.
Roth, S., Robbert, T., & Straus, L. (2014). On the sunk-cost effect in economic decision-making: a meta-analytic review. Business Research, 8(1), 99–138. doi: 10.1007/s40685-014-0014-8.
Ruder, A. I., & Van Noy, M. (2017). Knowledge of earnings risk and major choice: Evidence from an information experiment. Economics of Education Review, 57, 80–90. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.02.001.
Schilling, M. F., Watkins, A. E., & Watkins, W. (2002). Is human height bimodal? The American Statistician, 56(3), 223–229. doi: 10.1198/00031300265.
Schultz, P. W. (1999). Changing behavior with normative feedback Interventions: A field experiment on curbside recycling. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 21(1), 25–36. doi: 10.1207/s15324834basp2101_3.
Smith, K. (1988). The Use of Cognitive Heuristics in College Choice. (Ph.D. dissertation). Loyola University Chicago, USA. Retrieved from: https://ecommons.luc.edu/.
Stark, E., Baldwin, A. S., Hertel, A. W., & Rothman, A. J. (2016). Understanding the framing effect: do affective responses to decision options mediate the influence of frame on choice? Journal of Risk Research, 20(12), 1585–1597. doi: 10.1080/13669877.2016.1200654.
Thaler, R. H. (1999). Mental accounting matters. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12(3), 183–206. doi: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0771(199909)12:3<183::aid-bdm318>3.0.co;2-f.
Thaler, R. H. (2016). Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, and Future. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2790606.
Tomczak, P., & Traczyk, J. (2017). The mechanism of non-numerical anchoring heuristic based on magnitude priming: is it just the basic anchoring effect in disguise? Polish Psychological Bulletin, 48(3), 401-410. doi: 10.1515/ppb-2017-0046.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131. doi: 10.1126/science.185.4157.1124
Tversky, A, & Kahneman, D. (1981). The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458. doi: 10.1126/science.7455683.
Wiswall, M., & Zafar, B. (2015). Determinants of College Major Choice: Identification using an Information Experiment. The Review of Economic Studies, 82(2), 791–824. doi: 10.1093/restud/rdu044.
Xia, X. (2016). Forming wage expectations through learning: Evidence from college major choices. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 132, 176–196. doi: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.10.013.
Zimmerman, F. J. (2009). Using behavioral economics to promote physical activity. Preventive Medicine, 49(4), 289–291. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2009.07.008.