Journal of Behavioral Decision Making最新文献

When participants are shown a series of stimuli, their responses differ depending on whether they respond after each stimulus or only at the end of the series, in what we call a measurement effect. These effects have received paltry attention compared with more well-known order effects and pose a unique challenge to theories of decision-making. In a series of two preregistered experiments, we consistently find measurement effects such that responding to a stimulus reduces its impact on later stimuli. While previous research has found such effects in noncumulative tasks, where participants are instructed only to respond to the most recent stimulus, this may be the first demonstration of these effects when participants are asked to combine information across either two or four stimuli. We present modeling results showing that although several extant classical and quantum models fail to predict the direction of these effects, new versions can be created that can do so. Ways in which these effects can be described using either quantum or classical models are discussed, as well as potential connections with other well-known phenomena like the dilution effect.

The increasing inequality rate within countries worldwide makes social comparisons more evident. In seven experiments, we demonstrate that people comparing themselves to others in a superior socioeconomic position (upward comparison) judge that wealthier others should donate more time and money to charity. However, social comparison to others in an inferior position (downward comparison) does not always increase monetary donations. This discrepancy in prescriptions for monetary donations between those who make upward and downward social comparisons is driven by judgments about relative spare money; while people making upward comparisons believe that others have more spare money, people making downward comparisons only think they have more spare money, and should donate more, when reminded of their hierarchical position at the time of judgment. Low meritocracy beliefs exacerbate the difference between the prescriptions of how much oneself and others should donate given their socioeconomic position. This differential pattern among individuals making upward and downward social comparisons helps to propagate economic inequality. People making upward comparisons prescribe to wealthier others the responsibility to donate to charity, who in turn may not think they should donate more money. These findings have implications for charitable and non-profit organizations and contribute to research on social comparison, inequality, and judgments about monetary and time donations.

At some point in their lives, most people have told a lie, intentionally hurt someone else, or acted selfishly at the expense of another. Despite knowledge of their moral failings, individuals are often able to maintain the belief that they are moral people. This research explores one mechanism by which this paradoxical process occurs: the tendency to represent one's past immoral behaviors in concrete or mechanistic terms, thus stripping the action of its moral implications. Across five studies, we document this basic pattern and provide evidence that this process impacts evaluations of an act's moral wrongness. We further demonstrate an extension of this effect, such that when an apology describes an immoral behavior using mechanistic terms, it is viewed as less sincere and less forgivable, likely because including low-level or concrete language in an apology fails to communicate the belief that one's actions were morally wrong.

Meta-information is information about information that can be used as cues to guide judgments and decisions. Three types of meta-information that are routinely used in intelligence analysis are source reliability, information credibility, and classification level. The first two cues are intended to speak to information quality (in particular, the probability that the information is accurate), and classification level is intended to describe the information's security sensitivity. Two experiments involving professional intelligence analysts (N = 25 and 27, respectively) manipulated meta-information in a 6 (source reliability) × 6 (information credibility) × 2 (classification) repeated-measures design. Ten additional items were retested to measure intra-individual reliability. Analysts judged the probability of information accuracy based on its meta-informational profile. In both experiments, the judged probability of information accuracy was sensitive to ordinal position on the scales and the directionality of linguistic terms used to anchor the levels of the two scales. Directionality led analysts to group the first three levels of each scale in a positive group and the fourth and fifth levels in a negative group, with the neutral term “cannot be judged” falling between these groups. Critically, as reliability and credibility cue inconsistency increased, there was a corresponding decrease in intra-analyst reliability, interanalyst agreement, and effective cue utilization. Neither experiment found a significant effect of classification on probability judgments.

Scientific reasoning ability, the ability to reason critically about the quality of scientific evidence, can help laypeople use scientific evidence when making judgments and decisions. We ask whether individuals with greater scientific reasoning ability are also better calibrated with respect to their ability, comparing calibration for skill with the more widely studied calibration for knowledge. In three studies, participants (Study 1: N = 1022; Study 2: N = 101; and Study 3: N = 332) took the Scientific Reasoning Scale (SRS; Drummond & Fischhoff, 2017), comprised of 11 true–false problems, and provided confidence ratings for each problem. Overall, participants were overconfident, reporting mean confidence levels that were 22.4–25% higher than their percentages of correct answers; calibration improved with score. Study 2 found similar calibration patterns for the SRS and another skill, the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), measuring the ability to avoid intuitive but incorrect answers. SRS and CRT scores were both associated with success at avoiding negative decision outcomes, as measured by the Decision Outcomes Inventory; confidence on the SRS, above and beyond scores, predicted worse outcomes. Study 3 added an alternative measure of calibration, asking participants to estimate the number of items answered correctly. Participants were less overconfident by this measure. SRS scores predicted correct usage of scientific information in a drug facts box task and holding beliefs consistent with the scientific consensus on controversial issues; confidence, above and beyond SRS scores, predicted worse drug facts box performance but stronger science-consistent beliefs. We discuss the implications of our findings for improving science-relevant decision-making.

People regularly make sense of distributions that are complicated by noise. How do individuals determine whether an outlying observation should be incorporated into one's understanding of the true distribution of the population or considered a fluke that ought to be disregarded? In a simple prediction task, we examine how individuals incorporate outliers and compare their behavior to various prescriptive models (e.g., averaging and tests of discordancy). We find that, on average, individuals do discount outlying values and that their outlier detection strategies approximate approaches that statisticians have recommended for Gaussian distributions, even when the observed distributions are not Gaussian. However, there are notable differences in treatment of outliers across individuals.

Cooperation often coexists with defection in social interactions. Individuals may choose non-cooperation in social dilemmas either out of fear (fear of being exploited by a non-cooperative player) or out of greed (the desire to increase private payoff by defecting from a cooperative player). However, the developmental trajectories of such motives in social interactions remain unclear. In order to find out how fear and greed influence children's cooperative behaviors differentially, children aged 7 to 11 were tested in Study 1 using a modified repeated one-shot prisoner's dilemma game (PDG) in which the incentives to be greedy or fearful were parametrically and independently manipulated. Results showed that children were sensitive to the greed effect at age 7 and their sensitivity was stable across middle childhood, while only 11-year-old children were significantly affected by fear when the greed level was low. These findings suggest that in the context of PDG, sensitivity to social threat increases with age across middle childhood especially under low temptation to exploit others, and the greed motive may be less influenced by age in this period. By continuing to use the same experiment with young adults, Study 2 revealed that young adults also demonstrated a diminished fear motive when the greed level was low in the PDG. Moreover, the sensitivity to social motives of 11-year-olds was comparable to the levels of young adults. Together, the present findings confirm that two different social motives underlie the development of cooperation in middle childhood.

Investors are often inclined to keep losing stocks too long, despite this being irrational. This phenomenon is part of the disposition effect (“people ride losers too long, and sell winners too soon”). The current research examines the role of hope as a potential explanation of why people ride losers too long. Three correlational studies (1A, 1B, and 2) find that people's trait hope is positively associated with their inclination to keep losing stocks, regardless of their risk-seeking tendency (Study 2). Further, three experimental studies (3, 4, and 5) reveal that people are inclined to hold on to losing (vs. not-losing) stocks because of their hope to break even and not because of their hope to gain. Studies 4 and 5 provide process evidence confirming the role of hope and indicate potential interventions to decrease people's tendency to keep losing stocks by reducing the hope. The findings contribute to the limited empirical literature that has investigated how emotions influence the disposition effect by providing empirical evidence for the role of hope. Moreover, the findings add to the literature of hope by revealing its role in financial decision-making and show a “dark side” of this positive emotion.

Individuals often face financial incentives that challenge their desire to behave honestly. Strategically making excuses to justify dishonesty allows them to give in to the temptation of financial benefit and retain their moral self-image. In the context of insurance underwriting, the stakes are high, as providing false information or redacting information allows customers to reduce premiums. This is particularly true for smoking disclosures that carry great weight in life insurance. We conduct a field study with a large insurance company with the aim of neutralizing justification strategies that individuals deploy for reducing the costs of dishonest smoking disclosures to insurers. First, we raise awareness of the negative consequences dishonesty could have on other policy holders to counteract that individuals could attenuate or ignore such adverse consequences. Second, we make salient the pro-social efforts of the insurer to work against a potentially negative perception of the insurance industry that may feed the excuse of insurance companies being deserving of harm. The study presents field evidence that messages containing information about the social consequences of one's actions or the pro-social behavior of a second party can influence normative behavior, particularly honesty.

Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death globally, yet it remains a common behavior. Interventions that increase the concreteness of future smoking outcomes have been suggested to be effective, but little research has examined what type of future outcomes should be highlighted, and in what way. The present study therefore explores the efficacy of two types of framings of smoking cessation consequences: Benefit appeal (time vs. money) and valence (gain vs. loss). A randomized controlled field experiment with 2935 participants conducted via a digital therapeutics app found an interplay between appeal type and valence such that messages focusing on money were most likely to lead to immediate reduced smoking behavior when framed as a gain, rather than loss. Effects on motivation or long-term smoking cessation were not detected. The results shed light on psychological differences between money and time, between attitudes and behaviors, and between short-term and long-term behavior change. This study highlights the importance of considering both benefit appeal and valence framing when designing smoking cessation messages.