### abstract ###
we compared turkish and english students' soccer forecasting for english soccer matches
although the turkish students knew very little about english soccer  they selected teams on the basis of familiarity with the team or its identified city  their prediction success was surprisingly similar to knowledgeable english students-consistent with goldstein and gigerenzer's  CITATION  characterization of the recognition heuristic
the turkish students made forecasts for some of the matches with additional information-the half-time scores
in this and a further study  where british students predicting matches for foreign teams could choose whether or not to use half-time information  we found that predictions that could be made by recognition alone were influenced by the half-time information
we consider the implications of these findings in the context of goldstein and gigerenzer's  CITATION  suggestion that   no other information can reverse the choice determined by recognition  and a recent more qualified statement  CITATION  indicating that two processes  recognition and evaluation guide the adaptive selection of the recognition heuristic
### introduction ###
how does knowledge affect judgment and decision-making
while much judgment research has considered the role of expertise  goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  have made the startling claim that  under certain circumstances  ignorance can benefit judges attempting to make inferences from their knowledge
for example  goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  asked both american and german students which is the bigger city  san antonio or san diego
sixty-two percent of the americans correctly named san diego-but  NUMBER  percent  of the german students were correct
all of the german students had heard of san diego but only about half had heard of san antonio
half of the german students would therefore be able to apply a recognition heuristic-if you recognise one and not the other  pick the city you recognise
as people usually hear about the bigger cities of foreign countries before the smaller ones-i e   recognition correlates with the criterion being predicted-this cue will have some validity
because the american students had heard of both cities they couldn't utilise this cue and had to rely on other  apparently less valid  cues
in terms of accuracy  it seems that  when it comes to using knowledge to make inferences  less can sometimes mean more
specifically  when the validity of the recognition cue exceeds the validity of the knowledge that can be applied when both items are recognised  a  less is more  effect is predicted
to corroborate this  less is more  effect  goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  administered two quizzes to  NUMBER  university of chicago students-one about the biggest  NUMBER  german cities and one about the biggest  NUMBER  american cities
each quiz was comprised of  NUMBER  randomly selected pairs of the biggest  NUMBER  cities for the country
they found that the american students were slightly more accurate about german cities than american cities
furthermore  goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  cited hoffrage  CITATION  who apparently found that german students were slightly more accurate albeit non-significantly at making decisions about american cities than about german cities
despite a lifetime of experience and learning about the cities in one's native country it seems that one can be more accurate when making decisions about the cities in a country that is considerably less familiar
since these initial experiments  further research  CITATION  has extended our understanding of the conditions when a less-is-more effect may occur
in another experiment to confirm that the recognition heuristic predicted inferences goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  found that subjects adhered to the predictions of the recognition heuristic on  NUMBER  percent  of the occasions that it was applicable and concluded that the recognition heuristic captured the vast majority of inferences
the more general theoretical point that goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  drew from these demonstrations is that a very simple one-reason heuristic using very limited knowledge can make surprisingly accurate decisions
even ignorance can sometimes be helpful because a simple mental heuristic like the recognition heuristic operates so as to take advantage of the structure of information to make good inferences
in particular  the recognition heuristic is successful when ignorance  specifically a lack of recognition  is systematically rather than randomly distributed  that is  when it is strongly correlated with the criterion
of particular interest to us here is goldstein and gigerenzer's  CITATION  suggestion that the recognition heuristic uses a noncompensatory rule
even when other information about a recognized alternative is available  it never overrides the weight placed on simple recognition   if one object is recognized and the other is not  then the inference is determined  no other information about the recognized object is searched for and  therefore  no other information can reverse the choice determined by recognition   CITATION
consistent with their suggestion that the recognition heuristic utilises a non-compensatory decision rule  goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  reported evidence that use of the recognition cue was unaffected by the presence of other conflicting information
we give a more detailed account of their study in the general discussion but  in short  they taught their respondents that cities with soccer teams were bigger than those without in  NUMBER  percent  of possible city pairings
yet  when confronted with a choice between a city they recognised and knew did not have a soccer team and one they did not recognise but that might have a soccer team  respondents chose the recognised city in  NUMBER  percent  of the pairs
thus  additional diagnostic information about soccer teams and city sizes had no measurable impact on decisions where the recognition heuristic was applicable
a number of subsequently published studies clearly show that recognition  at least in a general sense  plays a role in prediction  CITATION  including for soccer matches  CITATION
these studies did not test the non-compensatory use of recognition-critical for distinguishing the recognition heuristic from similar but distinct proposals such as the availability heuristic  CITATION   which attribute judgment to the relative ease of retrieval  or the fluency heuristic  CITATION   which assumes the most fluently processed item has the highest criterion value
nevertheless other studies have challenged the non-compensatory use of recognition
for example newell and shanks  CITATION  found in two cue-learning experiments that people did not place any special status on recognition
most of their subjects learned to use recognition-based information when it was a good predictor and to essentially ignore it when it was a poor predictor
they found little evidence that recognition is treated any differently from other cues in the environment
note that  although these results show that laboratory-induced recognition may be overruled by  given  information supplied by the experimenter  they do not show that natural pre-experimental recognition can be over-ruled by information drawn from memory
in their recent review of research into the recognition heuristic gigerenzer and goldstein  CITATION  discuss what they identify as  misunderstanding   NUMBER   pp  NUMBER - NUMBER  and emphasise that studies focusing on inferences from given information or experimentally induced recognition are beyond the domain of the recognition heuristic
newell and shanks's  CITATION  study and others that have tested the non-compensatory use of recognition  CITATION  have been criticised by pachur  broder  and  marewski  CITATION  who argued that most of the studies testing the non-compensatory use of recognition used experimental situations that differ in potentially critical ways from the situations for which goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  formulated the heuristic
according to pachur et al CITATION  an ideal test of the recognition heuristic uses natural cue knowledge  rather than teaching it in the same laboratory setting in which choices are elicited-a failing of even goldstein and gigerenzer's test of non-compensatory cue use-and natural pre-experimental recognition-a failing of newell and shanks's two cue-learning experiments
moreover  according to pachur et al   research should test cases where recognition is a good predictor of the criterion and also preclude the possibility that knowledge other than cue knowledge could inform decisions-conclusive criterion knowledge e g   knowing that a recognized city is very small and so guessing that another unrecognized city is bigger could allow decision makers to make judgments without engaging in the inductive inference that goldstein and were theorizing about
the experiments presented here investigate how people use recognition and are exempt from the issues raised by pachur et al -although  like goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION   we do test the impact of information from  givens   namely presented information rather than information drawn from memory
while this issue was not referred to by goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION   it was mentioned in gigerenzer and goldstein  CITATION   which first introduced the recognition heuristic
it is further emphasized by gigerenzer and goldstein  CITATION   who identify the presumption that the recognition heuristic applies to inferences from  givens  as a misconception and describe tests of the recognition heuristic using inferences from given information as going  beyond the domain of the recognition heuristic 
although their own test of the impact of conflicting information tested subjects' use of given information and an experimenter-supplied cue validity  CITATION  it did not provide what gigerenzer and goldstein  CITATION  describe as cue information about unrecognized objects-which may be why goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  made no reference to the notion that their own test was beyond the domain of the recognition heuristic
indeed they concluded   this result supports the hypothesis that the recognition heuristic was applied in a noncompensatory way  p  NUMBER 
in our first study we examined the judgmental predictions of two different groups of subjects who  like the american and german students studied by goldstein and gigerenzer  would be expected to have different knowledge of a domain
this study-conducted in  NUMBER   long before we read about the recognition heuristic-was cited by goldstein and gigerenzer  CITATION  as  rather fortuitously we must admit  it illustrated the surprising benefit of ignorance for judgment
we studied turkish and english students' predictions of english soccer matches
we expected the turkish subjects to have very little knowledge of the domain while the british subjects would have a good deal of knowledge
although predicting soccer matches is not quite the same as making inferences about city sizes  we were able to test the accuracy of subjects' predictive inferences by comparing the forecasts with the outcomes of the games
given the turkish subjects' very limited knowledge of english soccer  we envisaged that relative familiarity with the names of the english cities and towns that often make up the names of soccer clubs might very often be their only basis for making forecasts
so  although we did not have the recognition heuristic in mind when we designed this study  we measured subjects' familiarity with city names-including those for which they had no familiarity at all-in order to examine the relationship between this variable and their forecasts
we were also able to study the effect of providing additional diagnostic information on the turkish subjects' judgments
after they made their initial forecasts we provided them with the half-time scores of the matches to investigate whether their forecasts with additional information reflected any integration of the additional information in their judgment
