People are, on the whole, poor at considering background information when making individual decisions. At first glance this might seem like a strength that ¹______ the ability to make judgments which are unbiased by ²______ factors. But Dr. Uri Simonsohn speculated that an inability to consider the big ³______ was leading decision-makers to be biased by the daily samples of information they were working with. ⁴______, he theorised that a judge ⁵______ of appearing too soft ⁶______ crime might be more likely to send someone to prison ⁷______ he had already sentenced five or six other defendants only to forced community service on that day.

To ⁸______ this idea, he turned to the university-admissions process. In theory, the ⁹______ of an applicant should not depend on the few others ¹⁰______ randomly for interview during the same day, but Dr. Simonsohn suspected the truth was ¹¹______.

He studied the results of 9,323 MBA interviews ¹²______ by 31 admissions officers. The interviewers had ¹³______ applicants on a scale of one to five. This scale ¹⁴______ numerous factors into consideration. The scores were ¹⁵______ used in conjunction with an applicant’s score on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, a standardised exam which is ¹⁶______ out of 800 points, to make a decision on whether to accept him or her.

Dr. Simonsohn found if the score of the previous candidate in a daily series of interviewees was 0.75 points or more higher than that of the one ¹⁷______ that, then the score for the next applicant would ¹⁸______ by an average of 0.075 points. This might sound small, but to ¹⁹______ the effects of such a decrease a candidate would need 30 more GMAT points than would otherwise have been ²⁰______.