Journal of Behavioral Decision Making最新文献

One of the most pervasive findings in attribute framing research is the valence consistent shift; that is, positively valenced frames (e.g., 95% natural ingredients) are preferred over semantically equivalent but negatively valenced frames (e.g., 5% artificial ingredients). Despite the robustness of this finding, it has primarily been observed in judgments of prospective or hypothetical consumption. When valenced frames are presented during or immediately prior to an actual consumption experience, evidence for the valence consistent shift is weaker and less conclusive. In the present research, we propose and show that individuals' susceptibility to a valenced frame encountered around the time of a related consumption experience depends on whether they focus primarily on their cognitions or their emotions during the experience. Specifically, five experiments provide evidence that the valence consistent shift is attenuated in visual, auditory, and (simulated) gustatory consumption contexts when individuals are prompted to rely more on affective (vs. cognitive) inputs. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

Passive risks are risks brought on, or magnified, by inaction (e.g., not getting vaccinated). They differ from active risks, which are incurred by actions people take, that put them at risk (such as smoking). Although (active) risk taking has been extensively studied, much less is known about passive risk taking and the personal tendencies associated with such behavior. We propose two individual traits—self-control (SC) and time perspective—that affect the inclination to take passive and active risks, albeit in distinct ways, contributing to the differentiation between the two types of risks. In four studies, we examine a model that suggests that a future time perspective mediates the association between SC and passive risk taking, while a present-hedonistic time perspective mediates the association between SC and active risk taking. The findings, based on both self-report questionnaires and actual behavior, support the model and its theoretical basis. Implications and future direction are discussed.

Health risks, when presented as ratios (e.g., two out of seven people), are challenging to understand, but visual displays can foster accurate understanding. We conducted three experiments to test how characteristics of numbers (Experiment 1), icon arrays (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), and number lines (Experiments 1 and 3) influenced people's ability to accurately estimate the risk of experiencing side effects. Participants in each experiment saw smaller- (e.g., 2 out of 7) and larger-component (e.g., 264 out of 924) equivalent ratios in one of three conditions: with number lines only, with icon arrays only, or in the form of Arabic numerals with no accompanying visual. We found that risk estimates were more accurate when presented in 10 × 10 icon arrays, long horizontal 1 × 99 arrays, or number lines. We theorize that hypothetical risks can be estimated more accurately when the display affords easy translation to a percentage.

We examine whether gender gaps in competitive performance are moderated by the size of the competition. We hypothesize that women underperform in large, relative to small, competitions and that smaller competitions close gender performance gaps by enhancing women's performance. Study 1 demonstrates this effect using behavioral data from real marathon competitions. Study 2 experimentally replicates the effect with real behavior. Study 3 provides further experimental support that gender performance gaps are exacerbated under competition and that, in these situations, small groups help bring women's performance up to par with men's. We conclude with a discussion about how making simple structural changes can reduce gender equity gaps in organizations.

This paper is a meta-analysis of experimental studies dealing with the impact of incidental emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, and anger) on financial risk-taking, so as to explain traditional heterogeneity of outcomes in the literature. After devising a standard search strategy and including studies that comply with a list of eligibility criteria, we code 114 effect sizes at the treatment level from 26 selected articles, and a battery of moderator variables representing design and sample characteristics. Meta-regressions with adjusted predictions find causal impact of fear on risk aversion, albeit to a small extent. On the contrary, average null effects characterize happiness, sadness, and anger. It also turns out that when studies provide financial incentives, country-level individualism moderates the relationship between emotions and risk-taking by increasing risk propensity. We discuss possible interpretations of our findings.

More extreme temperature and precipitation events are defining features of climate change, and higher volatility in asset prices is a defining feature of globalization. Four experiments (two preregistered; total N = 2086) found that exposure to a high degree of variability in a given domain shifted people's preferences toward more popular products, that is, products rated by a larger number of consumers. This finding replicated across different experimental manipulations of variability, including graphs depicting either high or low variability in annual rainfall or temperature (Experiments 1 and 2), and in the experienced outcomes of dice rolls, which were manipulated to be perceived as having high or low variability (Experiment 3). The results generalized across different consumer choices, including services (Experiment 1) and products (Experiments 2 and 3). After exposure to higher variability, participants who received a more popular but lower rated option felt less anxious than those who received a less popular but higher rated option, indicating that choosing popular products serves to reduce the anxiety induced by higher variability (Experiment 4). This research highlights both a novel consequence of exposure to greater variability and a novel antecedent of people's preference for popular options.

The public display of election poll results is often manipulated to influence voter predictions about the race. Narrow scaling is one such manipulation that involves truncating the chart's vertical axis such that its range extends closely around the values of the bars. This manipulation exacerbates the visual difference between bars, making the margin appear larger than an unbiased representation would suggest. The current research examines whether narrow scaling of a bar chart depicting the degree of support for political candidate affects voters' predictions about election outcomes. In three experiments, conducted during the 2022 US gubernatorial and senate elections, we displayed published polls to potential voters using a wide- or a narrow-scaled bar chart. We found that when the scale is narrow, voters are more likely to predict that the leading candidate in the poll will win the election and by a larger margin. This scaling bias occurs despite voters' relative skepticism about narrow-scaled polls. We further find that the scaling effect is attenuated when the poll margin is relatively large and enhanced when numerical value labels are removed from the graphic display.

The aim of the present research was to investigate the involvement of mental imagery in people's choices under risk. We tested the general idea that decision makers can use visual mental images (visual mental simulations) to pre-experience how rewarding or threatening future outcomes of risky behavior will be and try out the potential consequences of their risky activities. The paper reports the results of three preregistered studies (including one experiment) showing that the valence of mental imagery is related to the willingness to take risky actions and that people spontaneously use mental imagery as an informative decision input. In Study 1, we found that the more positive mental images people produced when faced with risk, the more willing they were to take risky actions representing different risk domains. Study 2 extended the results of Study 1, indicating that the valence of mental imagery has a causal effect on participants' risk taking willingness. Qualitative analysis based on independent judges' evaluations conducted in Studies 1 and 2 documented that, when requested, participants could easily generate visual mental images illustrating the consequences of their risky choices. Finally, with Study 3, we found that participants declared using mental imagery as a decision input (i.e., a source of information that helps them make choices) even when they were not instructed to do so. However, the frequency of reporting images as decision inputs differed across risky activities.

People exhibit scope insensitivity: Their expressed valuation of a problem is not proportionate with its scope or size. To address scope insensitivity in charitable giving, Hsee et al. (2013) developed the (Classical) Unit Asking technique, where people are first asked how much they are willing to donate to support a single individual, followed by how much they are willing to donate to support a group of individuals. In this paper, we explored the mechanisms, extensions, and limitations of the technique. In particular, we investigated an extension of the technique, which we call Sequential Unit Asking (SUA). SUA asks people a series of willingness-to-donate questions, in which the number of individuals to be helped increases in a stepwise manner until it reaches the total group size. Across four studies investigating donation judgments (total $�N�=�2045$), we did not find evidence that willingness to donate (WTD) judgments to the total group increased with larger groups. Instead, our results suggest that Unit Asking (sequential or classical) increases donation amounts only through a single one-off boost. Further, we find evidence in three out of four studies that the SUA extension increases WTD judgments over Classical Unit Asking. In a fifth study ($�N�=�537$) using a contingent valuation design (instead of donation judgments), we find scope sensitivity using all asking techniques. We conclude that, while it is difficult to create scope sensitivity in WTD judgments, SUA should be considered a promising approach to increase charitable donations.

This research explores the hypothesis that third-party decision makers will be less likely to switch from a suboptimal default payoff to a more efficient alternative one when payoff receipts have been identified than when they have not, even when identification conveys no relevant information. While Studies 1 and 2 establish this identifiability effect by manipulating identifiability with real names (“S. Jones” / “R. Smith”) in realistic decision making vignettes, Studies 3 and 4 replicate the effect by manipulating identifiability with simple designations (“Participant A” / “Participant B”) in incentivized decision paradigms that involve real monetary payoffs. And while Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate the identifiability effect among third-party decision makers choosing to switch from a default payoff to a more efficient alternative payoff, Study 3 instantiates the identifiability effect even when changing the status quo is mandatory. Finally, both Studies 3 and 4 probed for possible psychological mechanisms, finding that analytical processing mode, in particular, may play a role in these third-party allocations.