Judgement, Bias and Heuristics in the Analysis of Photographic Images

The testing procedure employed in this paper are designed to bring together the intuitive short time-slice judgement of those assessing images and to compare it with their more deliberative judgement using a set of ten signifiers of expertise in photography.  The testing procedure does not impose a definition of the meaning of the ten construct-signifiers although given the group sizes employed, idiosyncrasies in belief or understanding, at the aggregate level, are unlikely to be significant.  If justifiability is important in photographic assessment, then we would argue that an ability to achieve a high R²Y under test is a good candidate criterion.  Individuals achieving a high score tend (i) to bring more elements of expertise into their intuitive judgement than those with lower scores, (ii) they tend to be more confident in their judgement, and (iii) they tend to be more aware than others of narrative power in their image assessment.  However, our research suggests that the process of acquiring non-academic photographic qualifications may lead to reliance upon a construct-heuristic and a degree of ‘blocking’ in the intuitive assessment of the higher order image constructs of ‘narrative power’ and ‘creativity’.

Ryan, R.J. (2020) Judgement, Bias and Heuristics in the Analysis of Photographic Images, (forthcoming)

A draft copy of this article can be obtained by email at [email protected].  The paper is in pre-publication draft form and is for review only.  It should not be quoted without my permission.