Journal of Behavioral Decision Making最新文献

There is ongoing debate over the usefulness of and need for attention checks in online experiments. This paper investigates the value of these tests in decisions-from-experience (i.e., multi-trial repeated choice) tasks. In five studies (Ntotal = 1519), we comprehensively compared the behavior of attentive and inattentive participants (i.e., those who passed or failed a simple attention check) among online participants; and also compared those results to the results of lab studies reported elsewhere. We found meaningful differences between the behavior of attentive and inattentive participants even at the first trial. Overall, attentive participants were more likely to notice less-obvious average values of the different alternatives, while inattentive participants exhibited higher sensitivity to typical outcomes. The findings show that even one simple attention test is sufficient to differentiate between attentive and inattentive participants in repetitive tasks. Importantly, our results fully replicated three previously run lab studies among attentive participants, but not inattentive ones. This finding highlights the importance of using attention tests to avoid spurious conclusions.

Experts are usually valued for their knowledge. However, do they possess metaknowledge, that is, knowing how much they know as well as the limits of that knowledge? The current research examined expert metaknowledge by comparing experts' and nonexperts' confidence when they made correct versus incorrect choices as well as the difference in-between (e.g., Murphy's Resolution and Yate's Separation). Across three fields of expertise (climate science, psychological statistics, and investment), we found that experts tended to display better metaknowledge than nonexperts but still showed systematic and important imperfections. They were less overconfident than nonexperts in general and expressed more confidence in their correct answers. However, they tend to exhibit low Murphy's Resolution similar to nonexperts and gave endorsed wrong answers with equal to higher confidence than did their nonexpert peers. Thus, it appears that expertise is associated with knowing with more certainty what one knows but conceals awareness of what one does not know.

Advice taking and related research is dominated by deterministic weighting indices, specifically ratio-of-differences-based formulas for investigating informational influence. Their arithmetic is intuitively simple, but they pose several measurement problems and restrict research to a particular paradigmatic approach. As a solution, we propose to specify how strongly peoples' judgments are influenced by externally provided evidence by fitting corresponding mixed-effects regression models. Our approach explicitly distinguishes between endogenous components, such as updated beliefs, and exogenous components, such as independent initial judgments and advice. Crucially, mixed-effects regression coefficients of various exogenous sources of information also reflect individual weighting but are based on a conceptually consistent representation of the endogenous judgment process. The formal derivation of the proposed weighting measures is accompanied by a detailed elaboration on their most important technical and statistical subtleties. We use this modeling approach to revisit empirical findings from several paradigms investigating algorithm aversion, sequential collaboration, and advice taking. In summary, we replicate and extend the original finding of algorithm appreciation and initially demonstrate a lack of evidence for both systematic order effects in sequential collaboration as well as differential weighting of multiple pieces of advice. In addition to opening new avenues for innovative research, appropriate modeling of information sampling and utilization has the potential to increase the reproducibility and replicability of behavioral science. Furthermore, the proposed method is relevant beyond advice taking, as mixed-effects regression weights can also inform research on related cognitive phenomena such as multidimensional belief updating, anchoring effects, hindsight bias, or attitude change.

Gambles that involve a large but unlikely gain coupled with a small but likely loss—like a lottery ticket—are known as positively skewed. There is evidence that people tend to prefer these positively skewed choices, leading to what is called a positive-skew bias. In this study, we attempt to better understand under what conditions people are more drawn towards positively skewed, relative to symmetric, gambles. Based on the animal literature, there is reason to believe that preference for skewed gambles is dependent on the strength of the skew, with a greater preference for more strongly skewed options. In two online studies (Study 1: N = 209; Study 2: N = 210), healthy participants across the lifespan (ages 22–85) made a series of choices between a positively skewed risky gamble and either a certain outcome (Study 1) or risky symmetric gamble (Study 2). Logistic regression analyses revealed that people were more likely to choose moderately and strongly skewed gambles over certain outcomes, with the exception of when there were large potential losses (Study 1). However, a stronger skewness did not increase preference for positively skewed gambles over symmetric gambles, findings that also may depend on the valence of the expected outcome (Study 2). Taken together, these results suggest that there may be a greater preference for more strongly positively skewed gambles, but it (1) is dependent on what other gamble is presented and (2) is most prevalent for positive expected values. Additionally, contrary to previous findings, we did not find strong evidence of an age-related increase in positive skew bias in either study. However, exploratory analyses revealed that decision making strategy and cognitive abilities may play a role.

Selection decisions are often affected by irrelevant variables such as gender or race. People can discount this irrelevant information by adjusting their predictions accordingly, yet they fail to do so intuitively. In five online studies (N = 1077), participants were asked to make selection decisions in which the selection test was affected by irrelevant attributes. We examined whether in such decisions people are willing to be advised by algorithms, human advisors or prefer to decide without advice. We found that people fail to adjust for irrelevant information by themselves, and those who received advice from an algorithm or human advisor made better decisions. Interestingly, although most participants stated they prefer advice from human advisors, they tend to rely equally on algorithms in actual selection tasks. The sole exception is when they are forced to choose between an algorithm and a human advisor. In that case, they pick human advisors. We conclude that while algorithms may not be people's preferred source of advice in selection decisions, they are equally useful and can be implemented.

Five experiments were conducted to explore trait impulsivity as a possible contributor to the magnitude of the Brand Positivity Effect, and to provide a more sophisticated empirical account of the role of selective processing in driving it than reported in prior research. Although the experiments considered very different choice categories including a product, a service, an experience, and a public good, data were convergent in several ways: (a) the Brand Positivity Effect in judgment, choice intention, and non-hypothetical choice was replicated, (b) non-intrusive process-tracing methodology established that selective processing is related to the magnitude of the Brand Positivity Effect, and (c) the Brand Positivity Effect was demonstrated to be a robust phenomenon that is observed regardless of individuals' trait impulsivity.

Failures to obtain rewards influence what people choose to do next and how quickly they execute a chosen action, which are two components of motivated behavior. For instance, in risky decisions, losses can induce faster responses and sometimes increase risk-taking, which may lead to detrimental consequences in some situations (such as gambling). Pauses might reduce these motivational influences of prior outcomes. To examine this question, participants alternated between a guess game, in which they won or lost money, and a choice game, in which they chose between a high probability of winning a small amount of money and a low probability of winning a large amount of money. The pause between a guess and a choice game was made either short (0 or 300 ms) or long (3000 ms). In four experiments, prior outcomes consistently influenced decision speed, such that people chose faster after a loss than after a win. However, prior outcomes did not consistently influence people's choices. In contrast, pauses increased decision quality, such that participants chose the option with a higher expected value more often, without substantially reducing decision speed. Pauses may improve decision quality by influencing predecisional attention allocation to relevant information, as its effect was absent when the overall task attention was high (Experiment 3). These findings have implications for both safer gambling and risky decision research. Future work can examine the underlying computational and cognitive processes and the generalizability of these findings to other contexts and populations.

Two studies and one pilot study (N_total = 531) explore how observers react to men and women who cry in either good faith or in bad faith (i.e., with intention to manipulate). Using role congruity theory as a framework, we theorize that crying perceived as manipulative is less congruent with female stereotypes compared to male stereotypes. Accordingly, we find that women who cry in bad faith evoke less empathy and more anger from observers, who in turn judged them more harshly and are less willing to support them on a series of organizational outcomes. The same pattern did not emerge for men, for whom crying in good or bad faith did not seem to matter. This is in line with the idea that crying is overall less acceptable for men. In sum, we suggest that crying can have negative repercussions at work. This calls for greater attention to crafting interventions that can reduce discrimination and biases, ultimately fostering more positive workplace climates.

Studies of contextual choice typically use three option choice sets to evaluate how preference relations depend on the values of a third decoy option. However, often real-world decisions are made using choice sets with many more than three alternatives, such as in online shopping. Three experiments tested for attraction and compromise decoy effects in choice sets that varied the number and ordering of alternatives using a within-subjects preferential choice grocery shopping task. In Experiment 1, attraction and compromise effects were significantly reduced as alternatives increased from three to nine. Experiment 2 found significantly greater attraction effects in nine alternative choice sets ordered by attributes compared with a random ordering. Experiment 3 used eye tracking and found significant attraction effects in choice sets with 3, 9, and 15 alternatives, but the effect was reduced with increasing alternatives. Eye tracking revealed that participants engaged in more by-dimension comparisons as the number of alternatives increased, but, contrary to previous research, the proportion of by-alternative to by-dimension transitions was not linearly predictive of decoy effects. With increased alternatives, the proportion of the total information attended to decreased, leading to worse choice outcomes, and participants were more likely to engage in a lexicographic decision-making strategy.

The psychological consequences of prosocial behavior depend on people's perceptions of their own volition. Building on this, we hypothesized that people who donate increase their volition and the benefits of donations by judging donation requests as polite (non-coercive), whereas non-donors reduce their volition and the drawback of refusing to donate by judging the request as less polite (too coercive). Three weeks after providing baseline politeness judgments about a fundraising request, participants re-evaluated the same request as potential donors (experimental group) or observers (control group) and reported how they felt (N_time1 = 605, N_time2 = 294). Relative to past perceptions, donors judged the request as more polite than control participants. Non-donors redefined the request as less polite than donors, but not less than control participants. Both donors and non-donors benefited from redefining the request as more polite. We discuss how altering one's perception of a request is a multi-purpose self-serving cognition.