Numeracy – the ability to understand and work with numbers – is associated with a wide range of social and health-related outcomes, including socioeconomic status, employment, literacy, reasoning, and life satisfaction. A substantial body of evidence has also shown links between numeracy and decision-making, prompting the question of how it relates to finer-grained measures of reasoning, judgment and affect/emotion.

 

In the current study, Zhu and Feldman repeated four influential experiments from a study by Peters et al. (2006), which reported links between numeracy and performance on a variety of decision-making tasks, including attribute framing, frequency-percentage framing, susceptibility to affective influences, and various cognitive biases. The authors also explored several extended questions, including refinements of the original hypotheses and an examination of the relationship between numeracy and confidence in numeric judgments (subjective numeracy).

 

The results broadly constitute a successful replication, with higher numeracy associated with weaker attribute framing and susceptibility to bias. The relationship between numeracy and the frequency-percentage framing effect – that is, the change in decision-making when numbers are presented as frequencies (e.g. 5 out of 100) rather than percentages (e.g. 5%) – was inconclusive for the main analysis that treated numeracy as a categorical variable (low vs. high); however the link emerged reliably in exploratory analyses that considered numeracy as a continuous variable. The outcomes of the extended analyses were mixed, revealing evidence for a potentially weak relationship between numeracy and confidence.

 

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewer's comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria and awarded a positive recommendation.
 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/r73fb

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that was used to answer the research question was generated until after IPA. 

 

 

 

 

1. Zhu, M. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting the links between numeracy and decision making: Replication Registered Report of Peters et al. (2006) with an extension examining confidence. Acceptance of Version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/62wqb

 

2. Peters, E., Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., Mertz, C. K., Mazzocco, K., & Dickert, S. (2006). Numeracy and decision making. Psychological Science, 17, 407-413. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2006.01720.x

Numeracy – the ability to understand and work with numbers – is associated with a wide range of social and health-related outcomes, including socioeconomic status, employment, literacy, reasoning, and life satisfaction. A substantial body of evidence has also shown links between numeracy and decision-making, prompting the question of how it relates to finer-grained measures of reasoning, judgment and affect/emotion.

 

In the current study, Zhu and Feldman propose to replicate four influential experiments from a study by Peters et al. (2006), which demonstrated links between numeracy and performance on a variety of decision-making tasks, including attribute framing, frequency-percentage framing, susceptibility to affective influences, and various cognitive biases. The authors also propose several extended questions, including refinements of the original hypotheses and an examination of the relationship between numeracy and confidence in numeric judgments (subjective numeracy).

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/r73fb

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA. 

 

 

 

 

1. Zhu, M. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting the links between numeracy and decision making: Replication of Peters et al. (2006) with an extension examining confidence, in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/r73fb

 

2. Peters, E., Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., Mertz, C. K., Mazzocco, K., & Dickert, S. (2006). Numeracy and decision making. Psychological Science, 17, 407-413. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2006.01720.x