Journal of Behavioral Decision Making最新文献

Betting more after losses (i.e., “loss-chasing”) is a central clinical feature of disordered gambling. According to prospect theory, increasing risk-seeking following losses could arise from a failure to “re-reference.” By contrast, successful re-referencing between successive decisions closes the mental account, and any losses are regarded as final or realized; gamblers should not chase realized losses. The present study sought to test this “realization effect” among gamblers using an ecologically valid online gambling task. We were further interested in whether the effectiveness of the loss realization varied as a function of problem gambling severity. Using online recruitment of past-year gamblers stratified on the Problem Gambling Severity Index, we tested a group without gambling problems (n = 227), a group with at-risk gambling (n = 239), and a group with gambling problems (n = 223). Over a sequence of nine bets, after the sixth bet, half of the participants underwent a simulated realization procedure that entailed cashing out from the gambling website and redepositing their remaining funds on another website. The feedback comparison group were shown their account balance after the sixth bet but did not withdraw or transfer their funds. In line with the realization effect, the group with non-problem gambling significantly reduced their bet after cashing out. The realization procedure did not significantly ameliorate loss-chasing in the groups with at-risk gambling or gambling problems. We conclude that the realization effect can be elicited in an online gambling context but that stronger interventions for realizing losses may be required for people experiencing gambling problems.

Default nudges—making the desired option the standard option—are often criticized for hampering autonomy. However, laboratory research suggests this expectation of autonomy loss is not reflected in nudgees' experienced autonomy. In this study, we investigated whether this finding translates to a real-world setting by implementing a default nudge to increase food donations in the supermarket (Experiment 1). Upon entering the supermarket, customers were asked to donate a food item for charity and were handed a shopping cart/basket that was empty (control) or contained a food item meant for donation (default nudge). Donations were collected after checkout, and customers rated their experienced autonomy of their choice to donate. We replicated this study and added a vignette condition portraying the default nudge to measure expected autonomy for the same situation (Experiment 2). The results show the default nudge reduced participants' expected autonomy but not their experienced autonomy, shedding new light on the relation between nudging and autonomy. Furthermore, this novel form of the default nudge was found to be successful in increasing food donations in the supermarket, further expanding the field where this nudge has been successful.

Subjective experiences of resource scarcity can make individuals short-term oriented, capture attention, and trigger feelings of unfairness. However, the impact of scarcity on information processing and ethical decision-making remains poorly understood. This eye-tracking study explored how acute financial scarcity affects selective information search and ethical decision-making in an economic task with competing incentives (N = 60, 12,000 observations). Results revealed that participants experiencing financial scarcity displayed a strong attentional bias towards financially tempting information, although they ultimately did not behave more unethically. These findings might reveal a “moral boundary” dictating when attentional biases translate into decision-making. Our results contribute to understanding how individuals in scarcity contexts process and prioritize information in ethical decision-making, helping organizations and policymakers combat stereotypes surrounding resource-deprived individuals, and design evidence-based policy interventions promoting ethical behavior in financially scarce situations.

Decision makers often prefer safe wins over risky gambles, even if the latter promise higher payoffs than the former. One mechanism that explains this choice pattern is the certainty effect, whereby probabilities of 0 and 1 are interpreted accurately but intermediate probabilities are distorted by diminishing sensitivity. We tested an alternative explanation that was recently proposed, the idea that people would be motivated by avoiding zero outcomes rather than being attracted to sure gains. This zero-outcome aversion in gain-domain choices was called the zero effect. By analogy, we proposed that decision makers would approach zero outcomes in the loss domain. Two eye-tracking experiments investigated visual attention as a key component of the zero effect in the gain domain (Experiment 1) and the loss domain (Experiment 2). Choices were consistent with the zero effect. In the gain domain, gambles were chosen less frequently if they included a zero outcome. In contrast, zero-outcome gambles were chosen more frequently in the loss domain. Eye movements and pupillometry indicated that zero outcomes in both domains (a) were less frequently fixated than other outcomes and (b) were associated with increased arousal. We concluded that domain-specific affective responses to zero outcomes aligned with approach/avoidance motivation. These distinct motivations in turn biased information search and choice behavior.

Expert judgment often involves estimating magnitudes, such as the frequency of deaths due to a pandemic. Three experiments (Ns = 902, 431, and 755, respectively) were conducted to examine the effect of outcome framing (e.g., half of a threatened group expected to survive vs. die), probability level (low vs. high), and probability format (verbal, numeric, or combined) on the estimated frequency of survivals/deaths. Each experiment found an interactive effect of frame and probability level, which supported the hypothesis that forecasted outcomes received by participants were implicitly quantified as lower bounds (i.e., “at least half”). Responding in a manner consistent with a lower-bound “at least” interpretation was unrelated to incoherence (Experiments 1 and 2) and positively related to numeracy (Experiments 1 and 3), verbal reasoning (Experiment 3), and actively open-minded thinking (Experiments 2 and 3). The correlational results indicate that implicit lower bounding is an aspect of linguistic inference and not a cognitive error. Implications for research on framing effects are discussed.

Vividly imagining personally relevant, future episodes (episodic future thinking) reduces delay discounting, with potential to provide many applied benefits. It is not clear whether the events imagined must involve the self, or whether vividly imagining future events that will happen to another person would also reduce delay discounting. In the current study, two groups of students wrote about future events, we then cued them to vividly imagine these future events while making delay-amount trade-off decisions (e.g., would you choose $500 now or $1000 in one year?). One group imagined future events happening to themselves, and another group to a specific person they knew. We compared discounting to a control condition where participants were simply instructed to “choose.” Only the group that imagined personally relevant, future events demonstrated reduced delay discounting. This suggests that episodic future thinking more effectively reduces delay discounting when future events happen to the self rather than another person. The group that imagined personally relevant future events were not more able to report the experimental hypotheses suggesting that this difference was not primarily driven by demand characteristics.