Analysis And Comparison Of The Lens And Subjective Probability Information Processing Paradigms

When comparisons are to be made with environmental conditions, two basic paradigms have been used by accounting researchers to model and evaluate financial judgments; the Brunswick Lens and subjective probability (SP) paradigms. Here the Lens and SP paradigms are analyzed and compared in terms of the typical research questions addressed, the assumptions and technical properties of the models, descriptive statistics generated, environmental comparisons typically made and the effort required to utilize the paradigms. Several previously neglected aspects of the paradigms will be discussed. The analysis leads to the suggestion that while the Lens and SP paradigms are utilized for essentially the same research questions, the SP setting is a more complete yet more complex and costly paradigm for studying human information processing.