Judgment by outcomes: When is it justified?

Abstract Use of outcome information in judgment is often taken to be an error of inference. In many cases, however, the outcome provides information about what was known to the decision maker but not to the judge of the decision. This fact makes it difficult to demonstrate nonnormative use of outcome information, and several investigators have not overcome the difficulty. We suggest three ways in which truly nonnormative use of outcome information can be shown.

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