Johannes Siebert

Category: Research

  • Enhancing misinformation correction: New variants and a combination of awareness training and counter-speech to mitigate belief perseverance bias

    Enhancing misinformation correction: New variants and a combination of awareness training and counter-speech to mitigate belief perseverance bias

    Belief perseverance bias refers to individuals’ tendency to persevere in biased opinions even after the misinformation that initially shaped those opinions has been retracted. This study contributes to research on reducing the negative impact of misinformation by mitigating the belief perseverance bias. The study explores the previously proposed awareness-training and counter-speech debiasing techniques, further developing them by introducing new variants and combining them. We investigate their effectiveness in mitigating the belief perseverance bias after the retraction of misinformation related to a real-life issue in an experiment involving N = 876 individuals, of whom 364 exhibit belief perseverance bias. The effectiveness of the debiasing techniques is assessed by measuring the difference between the baseline opinions before exposure to misinformation and the opinions after exposure to a debiasing technique. Our study confirmed the effectiveness of the awareness-training and counter-speech debiasing techniques in mitigating the belief perseverance bias, finding no discernible differences in the effectiveness between the previously proposed and the new variants. Moreover, we observed that the combination of awareness training and counter-speech is more effective in mitigating the belief perseverance bias than the single debiasing techniques.

    Siebert, Jana, Siebert, Johannes U. “Enhancing misinformation correction: New variants and a combination of awareness training and counter-speech to mitigate belief perseverance bias”. PLoS ONE 19(2): e0299139, 2024, 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299139

  • Developing and Validating the Multidimensional Proactive Decision-Making Scale

    Developing and Validating the Multidimensional Proactive Decision-Making Scale

    The crucial research questions are how their proactivity in decision situations can characterize individuals, the eventual consequences of proactivity in decision situations, and how the degree of proactivity affects satisfaction with one’s decisions. The scale on Proactive Decision Making (PDM) that has been theoretically developed from literature and empirically validated in cooperation with Prof. Reinhard Kunz (University of Cologne) allows for describing the degree of proactivity of individuals with six dimensions. Two dimensions cover proactive personality traits: ‘striving for improvement’ and ‘showing initiative’. The four dimensions ‘systematical identification of objectives’, ‘systematical identification of information’, ‘systematical identification of alternatives’, and “using a ‘decision radar’ concern proactive cognitive skills and integrate the ideas and concepts of value-focused thinking and decision quality into the PDM-scale.

    This scale provides the basis for analyzing many research questions. For instance, proactive individuals are significantly more satisfied with their decisions, and the scale can explain up to 50% of the variance of decision satisfaction. In another study, the scale was used a priori and ex-post to analyze the impact of an online course on decision-making on the participants. In line with hypotheses derived from literature, the degree of the proactive personality traits remains stable while the degree of the proactive cognitive skills improved through the training significantly. Furthermore, we were able to link proactive cognitive skills to life satisfaction. Scholars who teach courses on decision-making can use these results to claim the relevance and impact of their courses.

    Publications

    Siebert, Johannes; Kunz, Reinhard. “Developing and Validating the Multidimensional Proactive Decision-Making Scale”. Special Issue „Behavioral Operations Research“ in European Journal of Operational Research 249(3) 2016, 864-877, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2015.06.066

    Siebert, Johannes; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of Proactive Decision Making on Life Satisfaction”, European Journal of Operational Research 280(1), 2020, 1171-1187, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.011

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of decision training on individuals’ decision-making proactivity”, European Journal of Operational Research, 294 (1) 2021, 264-282,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.01.010

  • Improving decision making competence of adolescents

    Improving decision making competence of adolescents

    The first decision many young people make is “what do I do after school?” For the most part, different options are presented at best. Often, young people then choose one of the obvious alternatives or alternatives suggested by others without thinking more deeply about what they personally actually want and what their objectives are. For example, you often hear young people say, “My mother is a doctor, so I’m studying medicine,” or “My father is an entrepreneur. I’m studying business,” or even “My parents didn’t study. I should definitely not make the same mistake.” In principle, these decisions may seem “reasonable” from an objective point of view; in individual cases, however, it is urgently necessary to consider each individual’s interests, wishes, and prerequisites.

    Before choosing a field of study, everyone should ask themselves the central question of whether training or studying is a better fit for a young person’s objectives and desires. Today, however, this is often left entirely out of the equation. As a result, and due to poor preliminary considerations when making career decisions, 28 percent of all bachelor’s students dropped out of their studies in 2015, and 25 percent of training contracts were terminated prematurely. In addition to economic consequences such as increased training costs or a shortage of skilled workers, there are also sometimes significant individual consequences, as dropping out of a training program is often seen as a severe failure.

    In a large research project in northern Bavaria, we are investigating how young people can best be trained in decision-making skills so that they are well equipped to make better and more proactive decisions that will have a significant impact on their lives. (www.KLUGentscheiden.de). In addition, I am working closely with the Alliance for Decision Education to promote decision education worldwide.

  • Minimizing the impact of fake news on the real world by debiasing the belief perseverance bias

    Minimizing the impact of fake news on the real world by debiasing the belief perseverance bias

    Fake news is false news stories packaged and published as if they were genuine with the intention to mislead the reader to damage an agency, an entity, or a person or to increase an internet click revenue. During the 2016 US presidential election campaign, fake news became a global phenomenon, in particular, due to the growing use of social media as a source for news. The proliferation of fake news online has been of increased concern to the European Parliament since. However, no agreement on how to tackle this issue has been reached. 

    Debiasing refers to attempts to eliminate or at least reduce biases. Only a few debiasing methods have been introduced for the belief-perseverance and confirmation biases so far. Although it was suggested already in early publications that effective debiasing methods should include a combination of various debiasing techniques, scholars have instead focused on isolated debiasing techniques. Moreover, the already limited experimental empirical research on debiasing motivational biases has focused primarily on investigating the efficacy of single debiasing methods without comparing the efficacy of different debiasing methods and without studying their efficiency. Due to missing experimentally-driven comparisons of debiasing methods within one experiment, there are only limited implications for practical applications in terms of which debiasing method to use in order to achieve the best debiasing effect. 

    The PerFake project aims to fill in this research gap and contribute to the advancement in the research field by: 

    1. improving the existing debiasing methods, developing new ones, and combining them; 
    2. comparing the efficacy of various debiasing methods and their combinations;
    3. measuring and comparing the efficiency of multiple debiasing methods and their combinations. 

    The efficacy and efficiency of the debiasing methods will be tested in two questionnaire-based experiments in order to derive recommendations. For the first experiment, we will use and adapt an experimental setting from the literature in which belief perseverance has already been demonstrated. The experimental setting of the second experiment will then be designed in a way to be as close as possible to the fake news environment in order to be able to derive conclusions and recommendations that are applicable in practice.

  • Developing methods for identifying, structuring and comparing objectives

    Developing methods for identifying, structuring and comparing objectives

    • Dr. Johannes Siebert, Universität Bayreuth

    Veröffentlichung

    Siebert, Johannes; von Winterfeldt, Detlof; John, Richard. “Identifying and Structuring the Objectives of the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) and its Followers.” Decision Analysis (INFORMS), 2016, 13(1), 26-50

    Siebert, Johannes U.; von Winterfeldt, Detlof. „Comparative Analysis of Terrorists’ Objectives Hierarchies“, Decision Analysis (INFORMS) June 2020, 17(2), 97-114, https://doi.org/10.1287/deca.2019.0400

    Identifying the objectives of a hostile organization whose decision-makers are not interested in cooperation or even contact with them might be dangerous. In such a case, the methods to identify objectives in a cooperative organizations cannot be applied. We developed a method to identify the objectives of a hostile organization using expert interviews and published speeches of their leaders. The method can also be applied in more moderate cases and could find widespread application, for example, to identify a competitor’s objectives. Furthermore, we developed a method to compare the objectives hierarchies of two or more organizations of one organization over time. The identification of such differences is crucial if they have a substantial impact. For example, to ensure the protection of the civilian population in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States concerning attacks by the terrorist group Islamic State it is necessary to identify similarities and differences of the objectives of Al Qaeda and Islamic State. The results can be used to analyze which measures that had been successful and effective against Al Qaeda could be transferred against Islamic State which not.

    Die Ziele des Islamischen Staats: Neue Studie zu den Führungspersonen des IS und seinen Anhängern
  • Developing the decision support system “Entscheidungsnavi”

    Developing the decision support system “Entscheidungsnavi”

    • Dr. Johannes Siebert, Universität Bayreuth

    Veröffentlichung

    von Nitzsch Rüdiger, Tönsfeuerborn Mendy., Siebert Johannes U. (2020) Decision Skill Training with the Entscheidungsnavi. In: de Almeida A.T., Morais D.C. (eds) Innovation for Systems Information and Decision. INSID 2020. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 405. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64399-7_2

    Siebert, Johannes; Rüdiger von Nitzsch. “Das Jobauswahlproblem für Berufseinsteiger: Eine entscheidungstheoretische Anwendung – Teil 1: Problemstrukturierung in Ziele, Alternativen und Unsicherheiten“, Wissenschaftliche Beiträge, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliches Studium, October 2018

    Rüdiger von Nitzsch; Siebert, Johannes. „Das Jobauswahlproblem für Berufseinsteiger: Eine entscheidungstheoretische Anwendung – Teil 2: Ermittlung der besten Alternative mit dem ENTSCHEIDUNGSNAVI“, Wissenschaftliche Beiträge, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliches Studium, November 2018

    Rüdiger von Nitzsch; Siebert, Johannes. „Systematische Entscheidungshilfe durch das ENTSCHEIDUNGSNAVI: Hintergründe und Erläuterungen“

    My objective improving individual and organizational decision-making. Therefore, my colleague von Nitzsch (RWTH Aachen) and I develop a web-based decision support system for decisions with multiple objectives (www.entscheidungsnavi.de, more information the project: www.proaktiv-entscheiden.de). The special about the entscheidungsnavi is sophisticated support which allows decision-makers to structure their decision problem appropriately. Furthermore, the latest research results on decision-making biases and behavior, in general, are considered to ensure high-quality results

  • Developing more and better alternatives (individually as well as in groups)

    Developing more and better alternatives (individually as well as in groups)

    Dr. Johannes Siebert, Universität Bayreuth

    Papers

    Siebert, Johannes; Keeney, Ralph L. “Creating More and Better Alternatives for Decisions Using Objectives”. Operations Research, September/October 2015, 63(5), 1144-1158, 1

    Siebert, Johannes. “Can Novices Create Alternatives of the Same Quality as Experts?”,  Decision Analysis (INFORMS) 2016, 13(4), 278-291

    Many individuals and organizations spend most of their effort evaluating alternatives without ensuring that the best possible alternative is to be chosen. Therefore, we analyzed how individuals and organizations can systematically create more and better alternatives to improve the outcome of their decision-making. The main idea is to use objectives as a stimulus in alternative creation (Keeney 1992). In cooperation with Ralph Keeney (Duke University, USA), I conducted five experiments. The participants created alternatives for essential decisions they were highly involved with. In summary, these experiments provided extensive evidence that using objectives for creating alternatives impacts the number and quality of alternatives created significantly. The results were used to derive a guideline for creating alternatives in critical decision situations.

  • Designing a Media-Specific Balanced Scorecard by Applying Value-Focused Thinking

    Designing a Media-Specific Balanced Scorecard by Applying Value-Focused Thinking

    Dr. Johannes Siebert, Universität Bayreuth

    Publications

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard „Entwicklung einer Balanced Scorecard mit Value-focused Thinking am Beispiel eines mittelgroßen Medienunternehmens“. Controlling: Zeitschrift für erfolgsorientierte Unternehmenssteuerung, March 2016, 210-215. DOI:  10.15358/0935-0381-2016-3-209

    Kunz, Reinhard; Siebert, Johannes; Mütterlein. “Combining Value-Focused Thinking and Balanced Scorecard to Improve Decision-Making in Strategic Management”, Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, September-December, 2016, 225-241 DOI: 10.1002/mcda.1572

    Kunz, Reinhard; Siebert, Johannes; Mütterlein, Joschka. „A Media-Specific Balanced Scorecard Based on Value-Focused Thinking“, Journal of Media Business Studies, 13(4), 2016, 257-275. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16522354.2016.1220114

    The Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan and Norton 1992) is one of the five management tools used most often and has been implemented by nearly 40 percent of the companies (Rigby and Bilodeau 2013). Yet, there is no theoretically sound approach for developing a balanced scorecard. Value-focused thinking is a decision-making philosophy that fits perfectly to Balanced Scorecard creation. It provides methods and techniques for the identification and structuring of objectives that are suitable to systematically derive a scorecard from a means-ends network. However, such a means-ends network is often too complex for enduring use in strategic management. By adapting the network’s structure to the Balanced Scorecard’s layout, the profound and clear set of derived objectives and their measures provide a reasonable basis for applying methods of multi-criteria decision-making in an organization. In a case study, we develop a media-specific Balanced Scorecard to provide media decision-makers with a model that takes characteristics of media management into account and that helps to manage their company successfully. Using a scientifically sound approach that is based on value-focused thinking (Keeney, 1992), we interview the publisher, the CEO, nine management representatives, and ten key employees of a German medium-sized local newspaper company. Overall, 698 distinct objectives and 1,009 relationships are identified. By concentrating on the most important objectives, we derive a Balanced Scorecard with 33 objectives and 65 relationships, which are organized in seven perspectives. Because of its innovativeness, this project was runner-up in the final of the Practice Awards der Decision Analysis Society (INFORMS).