Journal of Behavioral Decision Making最新文献

There is theoretical and practical interest in characterizing the factors that affect the use of advice when making decisions. Here, we investigated how the timing of advice affects its utilization. We conducted three experiments to compare the integration of advice shown before versus after participants had the chance themselves to evaluate evidence relevant to a decision. We used a perceptual discrimination task in a judge–advisor system, allowing careful control over both the participants' task performance and the task structure across conditions except for the timing of advice. Across all experiments, we found that advice provided after stimulus presentation was agreed with more, and influenced participants' judgments to a greater extent, than advice provided beforehand. In Experiment 1, we observed this tendency to hold when advice varied in accuracy and, in Experiment 2, across variations in task difficulty. Experiment 2 also revealed participants' preference for poststimulus advice when they were given choice over when to receive advice. In Experiment 3, we found greater influence of poststimulus advice to hold both for binary judgments and continuous estimations. These results provide interesting implications for research on the mechanisms of advice integration.

Recent theories of decision-making, such as Decision by Sampling, suggest that people lack stable preferences. Instead, preferences are malleable and constructed in the moment by comparisons of target attributes to small samples of attribute values active in working memory. Manipulating the distribution of attribute values observed before a choice has therefore been suggested to affect subsequent choices. In a series of four experiments, we investigate if prior exposure to different distributions of attribute values affect subsequent pairwise, two-alternative forced choices and listwise choices between multiple options. We also investigate if these suggested effects are attenuated by domain expertise. We typically find that listwise choices are affected by prior experience of attributes in the predicted manner but that the pairwise choices are not. This occurs even when we hold range constant, and the effect is reduced but not eliminated by substantial domain expertise. We propose that this format dependence of the malleability of choices is an important challenge for any theory of their cognitive origin.

Decision-makers frequently rely on advice from advisors, yet little is known about the factors influencing advisors' willingness to give advice (WTGA). This paper explores WTGA through three studies, investigating its relationship to advice quality, an advisor's motivations, and abilities. Our findings show that advisors frequently demonstrate a willingness to give advice even when their solution to the specific problem is incorrect, resulting in the dissemination of poor-quality advice. We find that both the helping and influence motives predict WTGA, with the helping motivation playing a more dominant role. Finally, we find that WTGA varies significantly as a function of advisors' perceptions of their ability to solve advice problems but is not consistently linked to their actual ability in the domain. This research highlights the importance of understanding the motivations and abilities of advisors in order to improve the quality of advice, with implications for decision-makers who rely on such guidance.

Individual difference researchers observe that conscientiousness predicts job but not negotiation performance. This may reflect a genuine absence of this trait's impact on negotiation. But this could also be due to methodological choices in studies to date. Most studies relied on small sample sizes and highly structured negotiation problems that limit opportunities for preparation. This paper takes a novel approach to examining conscientiousness in negotiation by (1) deploying a complex simulation that demands considerable planning effort, (2) examining variation in planning behavior, and (3) using dyadic data analysis methods with an adequately powered sample. In the two samples comprising Studies 1A and 1B (combined N = 566), higher conscientiousness predicted more value claimed, and counterpart conscientiousness predicted less value claimed in settlements. Follow-up studies examined planning behavior. Study 2 (N = 301) demonstrated that conscientious negotiators spent more time planning and placed greater import on information relevant to the negotiation. Conscientiousness correlated positively with peer ratings of distributive efficiency. Study 3 (N = 153) not only replicated the positive relationship between conscientiousness and greater time spent planning but also identified a U-shaped relationship between the trait and effortful planning behaviors. The results suggest that conscientiousness represents a previously underappreciated contributor to effective negotiation. By loosening the constraints on bargaining present in most negotiation studies, we observed a pattern consistent with many prior studies of job performance—conscientiousness predicts individual outcomes and planning behavior. These studies highlight a need to expand the empirical and theoretical exploration of negotiation processes beyond the bargaining phase.

Consumers are drawn to the promise of certainty that precise forecasts seem to provide, even though they are often misleading. Yet we know less about how consumers respond when precise forecasts prove inaccurate. In this paper, we investigate how inaccurate precise compared to range forecasts affect consumer judgments and decisions over time in an investment context. Specifically, we assess how they affect consumers' loyalty towards the forecaster as well as their willingness to make the same kind of investment again. Consumers were less trusting of and loyal to investment management firms that communicated inaccurate precise forecasts compared to firms that communicated inaccurate range forecasts, which acknowledged uncertainty. But we did not find evidence that consumers changed their minds as to the sector into which they wanted to invest. In other words, they seem to punish the firm for inaccurate forecasts, but this did not shift their preference for their type of investment. Interestingly, these effects largely persisted when consumers encountered similar inaccurate forecasts 1 week later, suggesting they do not learn to be suspicious of precise forecasts in general from exposure to inaccurate forecasts. Overall, our findings show that it is not in firms' interest to communicate overly precise forecasts under uncertainty as they risk punishment by consumers.

Zhang, Y., Compare, Camerer, C. F., & Tashjian, S. M. (2025). Determinants of Economic Risk Preferences Across Adolescence. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 38(1), e70007. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.70007.

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This series of five studies examines a bias in moral judgment where harm inflicted on a single individual is perceived as more morally wrong than similar harm experienced by multiple individuals. To explain this bias, we introduce the “Why Me?” Model (WMM), which suggests that people tend to interpret harm directed at a single individual as personally targeted. This perception intensifies the judgment that the harm is more severe and morally egregious. Studies 1 and 2 explored how the victim's perception of personal targeting mediates this bias, whereas Studies 3–5 investigated specific boundary conditions of the WMM. Consistent with our predictions, the bias disappeared when participants were given explicit reasons for the harm (Study 3) or when they could directly compare scenarios involving one versus multiple victims (Study 4). Finally, Study 5 demonstrated that this bias arises from a tendency to perceive an act as more harmful when it is personally targeted at an individual, compared to when it affects several individuals, even when there is no difference in the perceived unfairness or general intentionality of these two conditions.

Paying more than one could have paid to obtain the same outcome is wasteful. In four experiments, we show that waste aversion can lead people to prefer a more wasteful outcome over a more frugal outcome, as long as it eliminates the feeling of wastefulness. In Study 1, we measured participants' satisfaction with lottery outcomes to find that they are less satisfied with their obtained outcome relative to an inferior, dominated, outcome—if they are aware of a counter-factual in which they could have paid less to achieve the dominant outcome. Study 2 revealed that responsibility for the decision that led to the outcome does not intensify the effect, suggesting that wastefulness is a more prominent explanation for the effect than regret. Study 3 extended the results from outcome satisfaction to decisions. Participants altered their choice of whether to continue or terminate searching for an apartment based on their awareness of a counterfactual that renders the process leading to the outcome as wasteful or not. Waste aversion leads participants to extend their search beyond what they would do based purely on their preferences and expectations. Study 4 replicated these findings with payoff-relevant decisions. Taken together, these four studies establish that waste aversion leads to higher satisfaction with dominated outcomes in real-world experiences. The effect does not rely on decision regret, and may lead to suboptimal decisions.