Journal of Behavioral Decision Making最新文献

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.

Affective decision-making (ADM) is recognized as the ability to effectively reappraise stimuli during these decisions to make choices that maximize long-term outcomes. Currently, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is the gold-standard measure of ADM. Previous research has shown that other commonly used decision-making tasks such as the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) and Columbia Card Task (CCT) are unrelated to the IGT and may assess distinct decision-making constructs from ADM. Yet the exact decision-making constructs that these tasks assess may be dependent on the scoring method utilized. One-hundred and eight-four participants (18–58 years; M = 26.29, SD = 7.79) completed the IGT, BART, and CCT. The relationships between these tasks while utilizing both traditional and novel scoring methods for the BART and CCT were investigated. Results showed that whether using the novel or traditional scoring methods, the BART failed to produce any meaningful relationships with the IGT or CCT. The BART may capture unique decision-making processes involved during conditions of uncertainty, whereas the other tasks involve decision-making processes under conditions of known risk. Alternatively, the lack of meaningful relationships may be due to the stochastic design of the BART. Conversely, the novel and traditional scoring methods for the CCT, which were not significantly correlated with each other, were both related to the IGT. Ultimately, this study showed that the CCT can capture different decision-making constructs depending on the scoring methods used. The traditional scoring method, the total number of cards flipped, assesses risk propensity, whereas the newly developed optimal–suboptimal difference score assesses ADM.

Research has demonstrated that delays in realizing pro-social decisions significantly influence pro-social choices. However, the impact of time delay may vary by context. A key contextual factor is decision observability (i.e., the visibility of one's decision to others). Using a dictator game task with delayed rewards, the current study examined the effects of observability on intertemporal pro-social choices. Subjects were randomly assigned to either an Anonymous group, where payment was private, or an Observable group, involving public payment. They had to decide between the selfish option (which only benefited the subject) and the generous option (sharing money with another person in a specific delay condition). Our data revealed that subjects were less eager to forgo money when time delay increased and showed more selfishness toward specific people, independent of decision observability. This pattern was aligned with a hyperbolic discounting model. Notably, observability mitigated the impact of time delay; subjects were more inclined to donate to temporally distant individuals when their decisions were observable instead of anonymous. In addition, we discuss the practical implications of observability for designing intertemporal donation appeals.

Intelligence agencies communicate uncertainty to decision-makers through verbal probability phrases that correspond to numerical ranges (i.e., probability lexicons) and ordinal levels of confidence. However, decision-makers may misinterpret the relationship between these concepts and form inappropriate interpretations of intelligence analysts' uncertainty. In two experiments, four ways of conveying second-order probability to decision-makers were compared: (a) probability and confidence phrases written in the text of a report, (b) the addition of a probability lexicon, (c) the addition of a probability lexicon that varied numerical ranges according to the level of confidence (i.e., revised lexicon), and (d) a probability phrase written in text followed by a numerical range that varied according to the level of confidence. The revised lexicon was expected to improve interpretations of second-order probability. The 275 participants in Experiment 1 and 796 participants in Experiment 2 provided numerical estimates corresponding to analytic judgments provided in descriptions about three overseas military operations and also indicated their support for approving or delaying the operations. The results demonstrated that providing the numerical range in the text of the report or providing a probability lexicon, improved interpretations of probability phrases above the verbal phrase-only condition, but not interpretations of confidence. Participants were unable to correctly interpret confidence with respect to the precision of their estimate intervals and their decisions about the operations. However, in Experiments 2 and 3 the effects on these variables of providing decision-makers with information about the source of the analyst's uncertainty were examined. In Experiment 3 (n = 510), providing this information improved correspondence between confidence level and approval of the operation. Recommendations are provided regarding additional methods of improving decision-makers' interpretation of second-order probability conveyed in intelligence reporting.