The specific prediction is that increasingly powerful levels of incentives will be associated with greater differences in error detection performance among different levels of base rate expectations. The study is being conducted as a laboratory experiment. The experimental task is from the domain of employee benefits. Subjects use personnel data to calculate the pension benefit for the employees of two firms. Errors were embedded in the data based on an analysis of the task in consultation with a domain expert.
Subjects have ninety minutes to perform the experimental task.
The expectations about the base rate of errors factor will be manipulated through direct experience rather than through information about the base rate of errors as was done in the prior study. For the control condition, subjects will only perform the pension calculations for the target company. A filler task will proceed the pension calculations for the control group to control for subject fatigue. Dependent variables are the proportion of errors detected and the proportion of accurate values incorrectly identified as errors. Students are used because, compared to experienced professionals, they have weaker a priori expectations about the base rate of errors in data.