A left digit effect has been broadly observed across judgment and decision-making contexts ranging from product evaluation to medical treatment decisions to number line estimation. For example, $3.00 is judged to be a much greater cost than $2.99, and “801” is estimated strikingly too far to the right of “798” on a number line. Although the consequences of the effects for judgment and decision behavior have been documented, the sources of the effects are not well established. The goal of the current work is to extend investigations of the left digit effect to a new complex judgment activity and to assess whether the magnitude of the effect at the individual level can be predicted from performance on a simpler number skills task on which the left digit effect has also recently been observed. In three experiments (N = 434), adults completed a judgment task in which they rated the strength of hypothetical applicants for college admission and a self-paced number line estimation task. In all experiments, a small or medium left digit effect was found in the college admissions task, and a large effect was found in number line estimation. Individual-level variation was observed, but there was no relationship between the magnitudes of the effects in the two tasks. These findings provide evidence of a left digit effect in a novel multiattribute judgment task but offer no evidence that such performance can be predicted from a simple number skills task such as number line estimation.

中文翻译：

---

复杂判断任务中的左数效应：评估假设的大学申请者

从产品评估到医疗决策再到数线估计，在判断和决策环境中广泛观察到左数效应。例如，3.00 美元被认为比 2.99 美元的成本高得多，而“801”在数轴上的估计离“798”的右侧太远了。尽管已经记录了对判断和决策行为的影响的后果，但影响的来源尚未确定。当前工作的目标是将左数字效应的研究扩展到一个新的复杂判断活动，并评估是否可以从一个更简单的数字技能任务的表现来预测个体水平上的影响程度最近也观察到了效果。在三个实验中（N = 434），成年人完成了一项判断任务，其中他们对假设的大学录取申请者的实力进行评分，并完成了一项自定进度的数字线估计任务。在所有实验中，在大学招生任务中发现了小或中左数效应，在数线估计中发现了大效应。观察到个体水平的变化，但在两个任务中的影响大小之间没有关系。这些发现为新的多属性判断任务中的左指效应提供了证据，但没有证据表明可以从简单的数字技能任务（如数线估计）中预测这种表现。