Most recent papers:

• Score blending: How scale response grouping biases perceived standing.
  Ryan Hauser, Norbert Schwarz.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 19, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Numerical values—from test scores to credit scores—inform us of our relative standing and can shape our decisions. The values are usually presented in a continuous format (which places scores on a single line) or a grouped format (which separates scores into several score groups). We investigate whether and how the presentation format affects one's perception of their standing in a distribution and subsequent decision making. We show that when values are grouped, individuals merge the values within each group, a phenomenon we term score blending, which leads to an underweighting of intragroup score shifts and an overweighting of intergroup score shifts. Across six studies (N = 2,108) and a variety of paradigms (e.g., test taking and financial decision making), we observe robust effects of score blending, even when score groups are explicitly described as meaningless and generated randomly. The effect persists when the score is merely recalled without the scale present and can bias key decision parameters with behavioral consequences. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  October 19, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2107   open full text
• The polite wiggle‐room effect in charity donation decisions.
  Marie Juanchich, Miroslav Sirota, Jean‐François Bonnefon.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 19, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract We extend research on charity donations by exploring an everyday tactic for increasing compliance: asking politely. We consider three possible effects of politeness on charity donations: a positive effect, a negative effect, and a wiggle‐room effect where the perception of the request is adjusted to decline donating without feeling selfish. Results from six experiments systematically supported the polite wiggle‐room effect. In hypothetical donations contexts, indirect requests were judged more polite. In real donation contexts, though, indirect requests were not judged as more polite and had no consistent effect on donation decision. Rather, the decision to donate predicted the perceived politeness of the request, independently of its phrasing. Experiment 4 provided causal evidence that participants justified their donation decisions by adjusting their perception of the request. The polite wiggle‐room effect has important implications for organizations that seek to increase compliance while maintaining a positive image. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  October 19, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2103   open full text
• Is the victim Max (Planck) or Moritz? How victim type and social value orientation affect dishonest behavior.
  Ivan Soraperra, Ori Weisel, Matteo Ploner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Does the potential victim of dishonest behavior—a family or a bank, a pensioner or an insurance firm—affect the propensity to engage in such behavior? We investigate the effect of victim type—an individual person or an impersonal institution—on dishonest behavior and test whether it interacts with potential perpetrators' social value orientation (prosocial or proself). In a between‐subjects design, we allowed experimental participants (N = 368) to misreport private information in order to increase (decrease) their profit (loss) at the expense of either another participant or the experimenter's budget. Both prosocials and proselfs engaged in dishonesty, but proselfs did so much more. Furthermore, prosocials reduced their dishonesty when the victim was another person, rather than an institution, but proselfs did not. A direct implication is that the dishonesty of prosocials may be curbed by increasing the salience of the adverse effect their dishonesty has on other individual people but that such interventions will not be effective for proselfs. In contrast with recent results, we did not find a general effect of increased dishonesty under a loss (vs. gain) frame. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  October 17, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2104   open full text
• Development and validation of the General Risk Propensity Scale (GRiPS).
  Don C. Zhang, Scott Highhouse, Christopher D. Nye.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 26, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Despite the widespread interest in understanding and identifying risk takers by psychologists, clinicians, and economists, the risk literature currently lacks consensus regarding the nature of risk taking and its measurement. Existing measures of risk taking are predominantly domain‐specific despite emerging support for risk taking as a domain‐general disposition. In the present paper, we examine the nature of risk taking as a domain‐general personality disposition and develop a concise measure: the General Risk Propensity Scale (GRiPS). Data from 1,523 participants across five studies provided evidence for its construct validity. The GRiPS converged with other self‐report measures of risk taking and provided incremental prediction of work, academic, and life outcomes over and above the five‐factor model of personality and the Domain‐Specific Risk Taking Scale. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  September 26, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2102   open full text
• Issue Information.
  
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 17, 2018
  --- - |2 No abstract is available for this article. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 471-472, October 2018.
  

  September 17, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2046   open full text
• The test taker's fallacy: How students guess answers on multiple‐choice tests.
  Chan Jean Lee.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 06, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Many students and applicants take multiple‐choice tests to demonstrate their competence and achievement. When they are unsure, they guess the most likely answer to maximize their score. Despite the impact of guessing on test reliability and individual performance, studies have not examined how patterns of answer sequences in multiple‐choice tests affect guessing. This research presents the test taker's fallacy, which refers to an individual's tendency to expect a different answer to appear for the next question given a run of the same answer choices. The test taker's fallacy exhibits negative recency, similar to the gambler's fallacy. However, extending the sequential judgment literature, the test taker's fallacy shows that negative recency arises even when sequences may or may not be randomly generated. In three studies, including a survey and experiments, the test taker's fallacy is robustly observed. The test taker's fallacy is consistent with the operation of the representativeness heuristic. This research explains what and how test takers guess given a streak of answers and extends judgment under uncertainty to the test‐taking context. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  September 06, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2101   open full text
• What shapes the probability weighting function? Influence of affect, numeric competencies, and information formats.
  Dafina Petrova, Jakub Traczyk, Rocio Garcia‐Retamero.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 04, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Research suggests that people are less sensitive to variations in probability in affect‐rich compared with affect‐poor risky choices. This effect is modeled by a more curved probability weighting function (PWF). We investigated the role of different numeric competencies and the effectiveness of several intervention strategies to decrease this affect‐laden probability distortion. In two experiments, we manipulated the affect‐richness of a risky prospect. In Experiment 1 (N = 467), we measured numeracy and symbolic‐number mapping (i.e., the ability to accurately map numbers onto their underlying magnitudes). The affect‐based manipulations showed the expected effects only in participants with more accurate symbolic‐number mapping, who also reported more differentiated emotional reactions to the various probabilities and displayed more linear PWFs. Instructions to focus on the probability information decreased probability distortion and revealed differences in the use of probability information on the basis of symbolic‐number mapping ability. In Experiment 2 (N = 417), we manipulated the format in which the probability information was presented: using visual aids versus no visual aids and a positive frame (e.g., one person wins) versus combined frame (e.g., one person wins and 99 persons do not win). The affect‐based manipulations had no effect but both the visual aids and combined frame decreased probability distortion. Whereas affect‐richness manipulations require further research, results suggest that probability weighting is at least partially driven by the inability to translate numerical information into meaningful and well‐calibrated affective intuitions. Visual aids and simple framing manipulations designed to calibrate these intuitions can help decision makers extract the gist and increase sensitivity to probabilities. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  September 04, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2100   open full text
• Self–other differences in multiattribute decision making: Compensatory versus noncompensatory decision strategies.
  Curtis D. Von Gunten, Laura D. Scherer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract When making decisions where options involve multiple attributes, a person can choose to use a compensatory, utility maximizing strategy, which involves consideration and integration of all available attributes. Alternatively, a person can choose a noncompensatory strategy that extracts only the most important and reliable attributes. The present research examined whether other‐oriented decisions would involve greater reliance on a noncompensatory, lexicographic decision strategy than self‐oriented decisions. In three studies (Mturk workers and college students), the difference in other‐oriented versus self‐oriented decisions in a medical decision context was explained by a subsample of participants that chose the death minimizing operation on all 10 decisions (Study 1) and a subsample of participants who self‐reported that they used a strategy that minimized the chance of death on every decision (i.e., a lexicographic mortality heuristic; Study 2). In Study 2, tests of mediation found that self‐reported use of the mortality heuristic completely accounted for the self–other effect on decisions. In Study 3, participants were more likely to report prospectively that they would adopt the mortality heuristic when making decisions for others than for themselves, suggesting that participants were not mistakenly inferring a lexicographic decision strategy from their past behavior. The results suggest that self–other effects in multiattribute choice involve differential use of compensatory versus noncompensatory decision strategies and that beyond this group difference, individual differences in the use of these strategies also exist within self‐oriented and other‐oriented decisions. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  August 17, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2099   open full text
• Mapping risk perceptions in dynamic risk‐taking environments.
  Oliver Schürmann, Renato Frey, Timothy J. Pleskac.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 14, 2018
  --- - |2 Risk‐taking behavior is rarely a single action made in isolation but is often repeated and dynamic. Yet the role that risk perceptions play in risk taking have often been studied using descriptions of isolated single‐shot activities. To better understand the link between risk perceptions and risk‐taking behavior, we investigated risk perception in a dynamic choice environment, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). In the BART, participants repeatedly inflate a virtual balloon earning points if the balloon does not explode. Across two studies, we measured risk perceptions by asking people to estimate the probability that the balloon would explode at different levels of inflation. Our results show that the probability ratings deviate both from the actual probabilities of an explosion and from those predicted by the most successful cognitive model of the BART. Yet the probability estimates correlated with the actual choice behavior. Moreover, we found that the very first experience in the BART was a critical factor in determining the perceptions of the risks in the task, and in turn subsequent risk‐taking behavior. Taken together, the results help reveal the critical role that risk perceptions play in risky behavior and potentially can be used to improve our ability to identify real‐world risk takers. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  August 14, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2098   open full text
• Age differences in financial decision making: The benefits of more experience and less negative emotions.
  Wiebke Eberhardt, Wändi Bruine de Bruin, JoNell Strough.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 14, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The emerging literature on aging and decision making posits that decision‐making competence changes with age, as a result of age differences in various cognitive and noncognitive individual‐differences characteristics. In a national life‐span sample from the United Kingdom (N = 926), we examined age differences in financial decisions, including performance measures of sunk cost and credit card repayment decisions, and self‐report measures of money management and financial decision outcomes. Participants also completed four individual‐differences characteristics that have been proposed as relevant to financial decision making, including two cognitive ones (numeracy and experience‐based knowledge) and two noncognitive ones (negative emotions about financial decisions). First, we examined how age was related to the four financial decision‐making measures and the four individual‐differences characteristics. Older age was correlated to better scores on each of the four financial decision‐making measures, more experience‐based knowledge, less negative emotions about financial decisions, whereas numeracy and motivation were not significantly correlated with age. Second, we found that considering both the two cognitive and the two noncognitive individual‐differences characteristics increased predictions of financial decision making, as compared with considering either alone. Third, we examined how these four individual‐differences characteristics contributed to age differences in financial decision making. Older adults' higher levels of experience‐based knowledge and lower levels of negative emotions seemed to especially benefit their financial decision making. We discuss implications for theories on aging and decision making, as well as for interventions targeting financial decisions. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  August 14, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2097   open full text
• Decision making in the prisoner's dilemma game: The effect of exit on cooperation and social welfare.
  Tessa Haesevoets, Dries H. Bostyn, Chris Reinders Folmer, Arne Roets, Alain Van Hiel.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The prisoner's dilemma game is a mixed‐motive game that offers two players the simultaneous choice between a cooperative and a defective alternative. An often neglected aspect of such a binary‐choice game, however, is that in many real‐life encounters, people can choose not only to cooperate or defect, but they also have a third option: to exit the social dilemma. Although in the literature a consensus has emerged that the addition of an exit opportunity benefits cooperation, there is only scant research into its effect on social welfare. In order to allow a direct comparison of cooperation rates and welfare levels across binary‐choice and trinary‐choice games, in this study, we used a design in which the same participants played similar games with and without an exit option (i.e., a within‐subjects design), and this in a range of structural variations. The findings of our study indicated that the aggregated outcome of both players is generally lower in games with an exit option than in games without an exit option. Moreover, our results showed that the efficiency of the exit option strongly depends on the specific outcome structure of the game (in terms of its endowment size, (a)symmetry, and level of noncorrespondence). In the discussion, it is argued that the implementation of an exit option as a strategy to increase social welfare should be critically assessed. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  July 17, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2096   open full text
• Age differences in moral judgment: Older adults are more deontological than younger adults.
  Simon McNair, Yasmina Okan, Constantinos Hadjichristidis, Wändi Bruine Bruin.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 19, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In 2 studies, an older and a younger age group morally evaluated dilemmas contrasting a deontological judgment (do not harm others) against a utilitarian judgment (do what is best for the majority). Previous research suggests that deontological moral judgments are often underpinned by affective reactions and utilitarian moral judgments by deliberative thinking. Separately, research on the psychology of aging has shown that affect plays a more prominent role in the judgments and decision making of older (vs. younger) adults. Yet age remains a largely overlooked factor in moral judgment research. Here, we therefore investigated whether older adults would make more deontological judgments on the basis of experiencing different affective reactions to moral dilemmas as compared with younger adults. Results from 2 experiments indicated that older adults made significantly more deontological moral judgments. Mediation analyses revealed that the relationship between age and making more deontological moral judgments is partly explained by older adults exhibiting significantly more negative affective reactions and having more morally idealistic beliefs as compared with younger adults. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  June 19, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2086   open full text
• Extreme malleability of preferences: Absolute preference sign changes under uncertainty.
  Joachim Vosgerau, Eyal Peer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 13, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Malleability of preferences is a central tenet of behavioral decision theory. How malleable preferences really are, however, is a topic of debate. Do preference reversals imply preference construction? We argue that to claim preferences are construed, a demonstration of more extreme preference malleability than simple preference reversals is required: absolute preference sign changes within participants. If respondents value a prospect positively in 1 condition but negatively in a different condition, preferences cannot be considered stable. Such absolute preference sign changes are possible under uncertainty. In 2 incentive‐compatible experiments, we found participants were willing to pay to take part in a gamble and also demanded to be compensated to take part in a subsequent gamble with identical outcomes and probabilities. Such absolute preference sign changes within participants led to simultaneous risk aversion and risk seeking for the same risky prospect, suggesting that, at least in the domain of risky decisions, consumers' preferences are indeed malleable and construed. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  June 13, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2088   open full text
• Much ado about nothing: The zero effect in life‐saving decisions.
  Yufeng Zhang, Paul Slovic.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 06, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Zero is a special value in our daily lives, and previous research on how zero values affect decision making leaves many questions to be explored. The present research examined the zero effect in life‐saving decisions and found that people expressed strong preferences for options offering a possibility that no one will die, even when the expected loss was relatively high. The prominence effect (the notion that the option with possibly zero deaths is easy to defend and justify) was proposed as one possible explanation. Furthermore, we also found that the zero effect in these life‐saving decisions occurs only in loss framing rather than gain framing. We discuss the relationships between the zero effect, framing, and evaluation mode in life saving and other domains. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  June 06, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2089   open full text
• The loss‐bet paradox: Actuaries, accountants, and other numerate people rate numerically inferior gambles as superior.
  Ellen Peters, M.G. Fennema, Kevin E. Tiede.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 06, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Psychologists have convincingly demonstrated that preferences are not always stable and, instead, are often “constructed” based on information available in the judgment or decision context. In 4 studies with experts (accountants and actuaries in Studies 1 and 2, respectively) and a diverse lay population (Studies 3 and 4), the evidence was consistent with the highly numerate being more likely than the less numerate to construct their preferences by rating a numerically inferior bet as superior (i.e., the bets effect). Thus, the effect generalizes beyond a college student sample, and preference construction differs by numeracy. Contrary to prior thinking about preference construction, however, high expertise and high ability (rather than low) consistently related to the paradoxical phenomenon. Results across studies including Study 3's experimental modifications of the task supported the hypothesized number comparison process (and not a lack of expertise with monetary outcomes and probabilities or numeracy‐related differences in attention to numbers) as the effect's underlying cause. The bets effect was not attenuated by Study 4's instructions to think about what would be purchased with bet winnings. Task results combined with free‐response coding supported the notion that highly numerate participants have a systematic and persistent inclination for doing simple and complex number operations that drive their judgments (even after controlling for nonnumeric intelligence). Implications for 3 types of dual‐process theories are discussed. The results were inconsistent with default‐interventionist theories, consistent or unclear with respect to fuzzy trace theory, and consistent with interactive theories. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  June 06, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2085   open full text
• Examining the trade‐off between confidence and optimism in future forecasts.
  Olga Stavrova, Anthony M. Evans.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 25, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Confident business forecasters are seen as more credible and competent (“confidence heuristic”). We explored a boundary condition of this effect by examining how individuals react to the trade‐off between confidence and optimism. Using hypothetical scenarios, we examined this trade‐off from the perspectives of judges (i.e., business owners who hired analysts to make sales predictions) and forecasters (i.e., the analysts hired to make predictions). Participants were assigned to the role of either judges or forecasters and were asked to rate 2 potential forecasts. In the “no trade‐off” condition, the 2 forecasts were aligned in optimism and confidence (the more confident forecast was also more optimistic); in the “trade‐off” condition, the more confident forecast was less optimistic. In Experiment 1, judges were more likely to positively evaluate confident forecasters when confident forecasters were the more (vs. less) optimistic ones. Experiment 2 demonstrated that forecasters were aware of judges' preferences for optimism and strategically relied on methods that resulted in more optimistic (but less reliable) predictions. Experiment 3 directly compared the perspectives of judges and forecasters, revealing that forecasters overestimated judges' preferences for optimism over confidence. The present studies show that forecasters and judges have different views of the trade‐off between confidence and optimism and that forecasters may unnecessarily sacrifice accuracy for optimism. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  May 25, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2087   open full text
• Competitive escalation and interventions.
  Sebastian Hafenbrädl, Jan K. Woike.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 22, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Competitive escalation occurs frequently in managerial environments, when decisions create sunk costs and decision makers compete under time pressure. In a series of experiments using a minimal dollar auction paradigm, we test interventions to prevent competitive escalation. Without any intervention, most people, including experienced managers, escalate and lose money by bidding more than the price is worth (e.g., more than 10 € for 10 €). We test several interventions, in which we provide individuals with different types of experience: direct experience in structurally identical and in structurally similar situations, as well as direct experience in similarly competitive situations (lacking the escalation dimension). We also study indirect experience based on vicariously learning about the situation's consequences (experienced by others) and based on mental simulation by setting oneself a limit regarding where to exit the competition. In 3 experiments (N = 1,229), we find that direct experience in exactly the same or a structurally similar situation allows individuals to prevent subsequent escalation, whereas direct experience in a similar situation without escalation does not. Indirect experience based on vicarious learning successfully reduces competitive escalation, whereas a goal‐setting intervention that has proven instrumental in reducing classic escalation of commitment is not effective. This pattern of variation in the effectiveness of different interventions is consistent with the theory of a hot‐cold empathy gap that prevents people from anticipating how they will experience a competitive situation before entering it. As a methodological contribution, we developed a deception‐free computer‐player dollar‐auction for online participants and a dynamic chicken game. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  May 22, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2084   open full text
• Systematicity of Search Index: A new measure for exploring information search patterns.
  Sonja Perkovic, Nicola J. Bown, Gulbanu Kaptan.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 24, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Many studies on information search in multi‐attribute decision making rely on the analysis of transitions from 1 piece of information to the next. One challenge is to categorize information search that includes an equal amount of alternative‐ and attribute‐wise transitions. We propose a measure, the Systematicity of Search Index (SSI), for exploring information search based on sequences of either alternative‐ or attribute‐wise transitions. The SSI explores information search in terms of systematicity or the proportion of nonrandom search, that is, search that is alternative‐ or attribute‐wise, corrected for chance. Our experiment confirms the validity of the SSI and shows that the SSI can shed light on processes not captured by the measures analysing single transitions, such as Payne's Search Index. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  April 24, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2082   open full text
• The effect of active participation on performance and understanding on the Iowa gambling task.
  Sean Vanhille, Brittany Palmer, William Hayes, William Overman.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 23, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The Iowa gambling task (IGT) was developed as a neuropsychological assessment of “real‐life” decision making in a laboratory setting by Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, and Anderson in . The IGT was originally implemented as a manual task during which the participants selected paper cards. The task has since evolved into a computerized assessment tool (Psychological Assessment Resources IGT or PAR™IGT) that uses only virtual cards and reinforcement schedules that are somewhat different from those in the original version. Caution should be used when psychological assessments change from manual to virtual formats. Such changes may unintentionally introduce confounds that render the 2 tests nonequivalent as shown with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task by Steinmetz, Brunner, Loarer, and Houssemand in . In this study, we compared IGT performance when participants used either a laptop computer or a touchscreen tablet. Each device was used in 2 conditions: “involved” and “noninvolved.” Participants in the involved condition turned over physical cards and mimicked their own selections by clicking (laptop) or reaching out and touching (tablet) the corresponding virtual cards. Participants in the noninvolved condition only made selections of virtual cards, whereas an adjacent experimenter turned over the corresponding physical cards. Results showed that performance systematically and significantly improved as degree of physical involvement increased in the following order: laptop noninvolved (lowest performance), tablet noninvolved, laptop involved, and tablet involved (highest performance). In addition, participants' verbalized understanding of the task was significantly more accurate with increased physical involvement. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  April 23, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2083   open full text
• Explaining reluctance to benefit from others' misfortune.
  Gert‐Jan Lelieveld, Yoel Inbar, Eric Dijk.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The current article investigates decisions where people are not causing harm to others, but only benefit from the harm. Specifically, we assessed people's willingness to benefit from other's chance‐caused misfortunes. In 5 studies, examining real behavior of individuals in a television game show (Study 1) and using experimental betting tasks (Studies 2–5), we show that people are reluctant to benefit from the misfortunes of others. Although in all studies participants' decisions were objectively unrelated to the likelihood of misfortune befalling others, subsequent analyses indicate that people erroneously feel that benefitting from others' misfortune increases the likelihood that such harm will actually occur. The results are discussed in relation to the literature on moral decision‐making and magical thinking. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  April 17, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2081   open full text
• Switch rates do not influence weighting of rare events in decisions from experience, but optional stopping does.
  Kevin W. Soo, Benjamin M. Rottman.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 06, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The current research investigates how people decide which of two options produces a better reward by repeatedly sampling from the options. In particular, it investigates the roles of two features of search, optional stopping and switch rate, on participants' final judgments of which option is better. First, in two studies, we found evidence for a new optional stopping effect; when participants stopped sampling right after experiencing a rare outcome, they made decisions as if they overweighted the rare outcome. Second, we investigated an effect proposed by Hills and Hertwig (2010) that people who frequently switch between options when sampling are more likely to make decisions consistent with underweighting rare outcomes. We conducted a theoretical analysis examining how switch rate can influence underweighting and how the type of decision problem moderates this effect. Informed by the theoretical analysis, we conducted four studies designed to test this effect with high power. None of the studies produced significant effects of switch rate. Lastly, the studies replicated a prior finding that optional stopping and switch rate are negatively correlated. In sum, this research elaborates a fuller understanding of the relation between search strategies (switch rate and optional stopping) on how people decide which option is better and their tendency to overweight versus underweight rare outcomes. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  April 06, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2080   open full text
• Income tax and the motivation to work.
  Scott Rick, Gabriele Paolacci, Katherine Burson.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 22, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Does income tax influence the motivation to work? We propose that the degree of effort exertion in the presence of income tax depends on people's attitudes toward two key components of taxation: redistribution and government intervention. For people favorable toward both, working while taxed is aligned with personal identity and may actually enhance motivation. All others, however, may find taxes demotivating. In two incentive‐compatible labor experiments, framing wages as subject to an income tax significantly increased productivity among people chronically favorable toward both redistribution and government intervention. For everyone else, taxes did not reliably influence productivity. An objectively equivalent intervention that did not redistribute a portion of participants' wages (framed as a wage “match” rather than a “tax”) did not motivate anyone to work harder. Our findings suggest that the net effect of income tax on productivity partly depends on the distribution of attitudes toward redistribution and government intervention. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  February 22, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2078   open full text
• Communication of anger versus disappointment in bargaining and the moderating role of power.
  Eric Dijk, Ilja Beest, Gerben A. Kleef, Gert‐Jan Lelieveld.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 22, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Emotional expressions can have a pervasive impact on bargaining behavior and outcomes. This widely documented phenomenon implies that in their communications, bargainers may adjust their apparent emotions. In the current paper, we developed a paradigm to study the communication of anger and disappointment, two of the most commonly experienced emotions in bargaining. The results of three experiments show that bargainers often adjust the intensity of their emotions in their communicated emotions. The findings show a differentiated pattern, revealing that bargainers rather exaggerate their disappointment than their anger, especially when the target of their communication is in a high power position. The results are discussed and related to the social functional approach of emotions. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  February 22, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2079   open full text
• Robust, domain‐specific effects of prior context in risk preferences for pension choice.
  Sarah Bird, Adam J.L. Harris.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 12, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Evidence that context changes measured risk preferences raises concerns about the practice of measuring financial risk attitude in one context to guide investment choice. We found that participants who first made choices between pairs of high (low) risk pension funds subsequently preferred higher (lower) risk funds when offered a choice from a wider range of funds. This effect was also observed when the riskiness of the initial pension funds was manipulated within subjects. Effects were not influenced by order, or attenuated by a bias warning. Tests across the domains of recreational and financial risk found that context effects are domain specific and that they influence both choices and judgments. Our results are consistent with theories of relative judgement. However, we also observed some evidence of sensitivity to absolute values. From an applied perspective, understanding such contextual sensitivity is important for recognising the limitations of risk profiling tools as part of a regulated financial advice process. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, EarlyView.
  

  February 12, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2077   open full text
• Understanding ‘Unlikely (20% Likelihood)’ or ‘20% Likelihood (Unlikely)’ Outcomes: The Robustness of the Extremity Effect.
  Sarah C. Jenkins, Adam J.L. Harris, R.M. Lark.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 23, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Calls to communicate uncertainty using mixed, verbal‐numerical formats (‘unlikely [0–33%]’) have stemmed from research comparing mixed with solely verbal communications. Research using the new ‘which outcome’ approach to investigate understanding of verbal probability expressions suggests, however, that mixed formats might convey disadvantages compared with purely numerical communications. When asked to indicate an outcome that is ‘unlikely’, participants have been shown to often indicate outcomes with a value exceeding the maximum value shown, equivalent to a 0% probability —an ‘extremity effect’. Recognising the potential consequences of communication recipients expecting an ‘unlikely’ event to never occur, we extend the ‘which outcome’ work across four experiments, using verbal, numerical, and verbal‐numerical communication formats, as well as a previously unconsidered numerical‐verbal format. We examine how robust the effect is in the context of consequential outcomes and over non‐normal distributions. We also investigate whether participants are aware of the inconsistency in their responses from a traditional ‘how likely’ and ‘which outcome’ task. We replicate and extend previous findings, with preference for extreme outcomes (including above maximum values) observed in both verbal and verbal‐numerical formats. Our results suggest caution in blanket usage of recently recommended verbal‐numerical formats for the communication of uncertainty. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 572-586, October 2018.
  

  January 23, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2072   open full text
• Distinguishing the Ratio Bias from Unsystematic Error: Situation and Individual‐difference Effects.
  Eric R. Stone, Andrew M. Parker, Lauren D. Townsend.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 23, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract People often perceive the occurrence of events to be less likely when the likelihood of the event is expressed in ratios consisting of smaller numbers versus larger numbers, an effect known as the ratio bias. This work presents a theoretical framework for the conditions that need to be met for the ratio bias to occur. In doing so, we contrast effects on the ratio bias to those on unsystematic error, which have often been confounded in previous research. We find that the ratio bias is weaker (1) when both sets of numbers are relatively large than when both sets of numbers are relatively small; (2) for scenarios involving lottery tickets than for scenarios involving drawing balls from a bin; and (3) when a physical display depicting the numbers is provided to participants. Each of these factors reduced the ratio bias without reducing unsystematic error. Additionally, we show that unsystematic error is lower among people who (1) reason on the basis of proportions rather than on the basis of the numerator and denominator individually; (2) score higher on the rational scale of the Rational–Experiential Inventory; and (3) are of higher numeracy. We use these results to distinguish causes of error generally from those on the ratio bias specifically and discuss the implications for our understanding of when the ratio bias occurs. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 587-601, October 2018.
  

  January 23, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2068   open full text
• The Advantage of Democratic Peer Punishment in Sustaining Cooperation within Groups.
  Stefan Pfattheicher, Robert Böhm, Rebekka Kesberg.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 16, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In social dilemma situations, individuals benefit from uncooperative behavior while exploiting resources of the collective. One prominent solution to prevent uncooperative behavior and to increase cooperation is to establish a system of costly peer punishment, that is, the possibility for every individual involved in the dilemma to impose costly punishment on interaction partners. However, recent research revealed that, in contrast to a situation without punishment, peer punishment is inefficient and maladaptive in the sense that the total payoff is reduced and punishment of cooperative individuals (i.e., antisocial punishment) is possible. In the present work, we propose that a system of democratic peer punishment, that is, direct and equal participation of each individual in the punishment decision‐making process with punishment only executed when a majority has voted for its execution, can address the shortcomings of a peer punishment system. Using iterated public goods games, we show higher cooperation levels, higher total payoffs, and reduced executed punishment in the democratic compared with a peer punishment system. Moreover, we document that fairness perceptions, satisfaction, and interpersonal trust are increased in the democratic punishment system. Implications for how cooperation and democratic punishment systems may evolve are discussed. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 562-571, October 2018.
  

  January 16, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2050   open full text
• Comparing What to What, on What Scale? The Impact of Item Comparisons and Reference Points in Communicating Risk and Uncertainty.
  Tim Rakow, Emily Blackshaw, Christina Pagel, David S. Spiegelhalter.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 11, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The mandated public availability of individual hospital's audit data for children's heart surgery in the UK creates a challenging scenario for communicating these complex and sensitive data to diverse audiences. On the basis of this scenario, we conducted three experiments with the aim of understanding how best to help lay people understand these data and the practical goal of improving the public presentation of these data. The experiments compared different outcome measures for displaying the survival rate (percentage scale versus the ratio of the predicted/observed rates) and presentation formats (individual hospital versus all hospitals shown) for outcomes data presented relative to prediction intervals generated by a risk model that adjusts for case mix. Our data highlight how easily inappropriate comparisons can influence evaluations of complex data: for instance, both a survival ratio of 1 and the presence of other hospitals seemingly provided reference points that resulted in inappropriately harsh evaluations of some hospitals. By drawing on evaluability theory, we demonstrate how to enhance people's understanding of these complex data while also discouraging inappropriate comparisons, which has implications for communicating risk and uncertainty and for choice architecture design in a range of contexts. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 547-561, October 2018.
  

  January 11, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2073   open full text
• The Effect of Experience on Context‐dependent Decisions.
  Eyal Ert, Tomás Lejarraga.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 11, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Does the well‐documented “decoy effect” emerge in decisions from experience among risky options? We conducted a series of experiments where participants made choices between gambles, and we varied whether participants learned about the options from description, experience, or both. Our results consistently showed no traces of the decoy effect when participants learned from experience. Even when participants read precise descriptions of the options, actually experiencing those options eliminated the decoy effect. Moreover, in decisions under risk (decisions from description), the decoy effect is less robust than previously thought. The decoy effect only emerged in an experimental design in which we used two decoys generating attraction for different options but did not emerge when only one decoy was used. Increasing the distance between the decoy and the target did not make the decoy effect emerge in decisions from experience but seemed to reduce the decoy effect in decisions from description. Overall, we identify two boundary conditions for the decoy effect in decisions under risk: First, it is not robust to situations that involve learning from experience; and second, the attraction of a single decoy may not be sufficient to observe a decoy effect. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 535-546, October 2018.
  

  January 11, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2064   open full text
• A Measure of Delay Discounting Within the Academic Domain.
  Rebecca A. Olsen, Anne C. Macaskill, Maree J. Hunt.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 10, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract It is important to better understand the decision‐making processes involved in student procrastination, in order to develop interventions that reduce this common problem. Students may procrastinate because studying produces delayed reinforcers; however, no task measuring delay discounting of academic outcomes currently exists. In Experiment 1, we developed and piloted a measure of academic discounting modeled on titrating‐amount tasks successfully used in the discounting literature. Participants made hypothetical choices between working for money (the smaller, sooner reinforcer) and working on an assignment that was due at various times (the larger, later reinforcer). Participants showed systematic decreases in the subjective value of the assignment as a function of delay, and the hyperbolic and hyperboloid models described the shape of this decrease in value well. In general, larger delayed rewards are discounted less steeply than smaller delayed rewards (the magnitude effect). In Experiment 2, we observed the magnitude effect in academic discounting: Participants discounted a “not important” assignment more steeply than an “important” assignment. In the hyperboloid model, this change was captured by an increase in the s parameter. Results provide support for the validity of the academic discounting task. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 522-534, October 2018.
  

  January 10, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2074   open full text
• Integrating Fast and Frugal Heuristics with a Model of Memory‐based Cue Generation.
  Ashley Lawrence, Rick P. Thomas, Michael R. Dougherty.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 05, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Although the fast and frugal heuristics have been studied extensively, relatively little attention has been paid to how cues are generated to be used within the heuristics. The goal of this paper is to propose and test a memory‐based model of how cues are generated and used in cue‐based inferences. The current study advances theory by integrating the fast and frugal heuristics with HyGene, a memory‐based model of how decision makers generate and evaluate hypotheses. Using archival data in which memory retrieval variables were not directly manipulated, we demonstrate that participants' cue selection behavior is consistent with memory‐based retrieval. Further, by directly manipulating memory retrieval within a cue‐based stock‐forecasting task, we demonstrate that memory processes underlie cue use. Participants' cue use varied depending on the relationship between cue validity and the frequency with which the cues were seen during learning. The HyGene model provided the best account of the empirical data, providing further evidence for the critical role of memory in judgment and decision making. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 487-507, October 2018.
  

  January 05, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2069   open full text
• Detection and Selection Decisions with Conditional Feedback: Interaction of Task Uncertainty and Base Rate.
  Robert James Holzworth, Thomas R. Stewart, Jeryl L. Mumpower.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 05, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Effects of task uncertainty on decision thresholds in a multiple cue decision task were examined under two types of feedback and three base rate conditions. In most such decision experiments, participants receive feedback after every trial (full feedback) with a single (usually .5) base rate. Our experiment explored conditional (decision‐contingent) feedback, in a task representing a detection problem (passenger screening) in which the decision maker receives no feedback unless the decision is positive (search the passenger). Increased uncertainty made all dependent measures worse. Task uncertainty had detrimental effects on both judgment and decision making, and interacted with effects of feedback and base rate. Decision performance was better with full feedback than with conditional feedback, but not by much. There may be no single unifying explanation for results of our base rate manipulation. Conditional feedback generally resulted in fewer positive decisions than full feedback, but not in the low (.1) base rate condition. Results provide partial support for constructivist encoding and for accuracy maximization with moderate and high base rates, but not with a low base rate. Our results indicated lower selection rates with conditional feedback compared with full feedback in moderate and high base rate conditions, and a more exploratory strategy with higher selection rates with conditional feedback compared with full feedback when base rate was low. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 508-521, October 2018.
  

  January 05, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2062   open full text
• Salience Versus Proportional Reasoning: Rethinking the Mechanism Behind Graphical Display Effects.
  Eric R. Stone, Emily C. Reeder, Jonathan Parillo, Cynthia Long, LeeAnn Walb.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 02, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Two experiments examined predictions from two separate explanations for previously observed display effects for communicating low‐probability risks: foreground:background salience and proportional reasoning. According to foreground:background salience, people's risk perceptions are based on the relative salience of the foreground (number of people harmed) versus the background (number of people at risk), such that calling attention to the background makes the risk seem smaller. Conversely, the proportional reasoning explanation states that what matters is whether the respondent attends to the proportion, which conveys how small the risk is. In Experiment 1, we made the background more salient via color and bolding; in contrast to the foreground:background salience prediction, this manipulation did not influence participants' risk aversion. In Experiment 2, we separately manipulated whether the foreground and the background were displayed graphically or numerically. In keeping with the proportional reasoning hypothesis, there was an interaction whereby participants given formats that displayed the foreground and background in the same modality (graphs or numbers, thereby making the proportion easier to form) saw the probability as smaller and were less risk averse than participants given the information in different modalities. There was also a main effect of displaying the background graphically, providing some support for foreground:background salience. In total, this work suggests that the proportional reasoning account provides a good explanation of many display effects related to communicating low‐probability risks, although there is some role for foreground:background salience as well. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 473-486, October 2018.
  

  January 02, 2018   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2051   open full text
• Geopolitical Forecasting Skill in Strategic Intelligence.
  David R. Mandel, Alan Barnes.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 20, 2017
  Extending research by the authors on intelligence forecasting, the forecasting skill of 3622 geopolitical forecasts extracted from strategic intelligence reports was examined. The codable subset of forecasts (N = 2013) was expressed with verbal probabilities (e.g., likely) and translated to numeric probability equivalents. This subset showed very good calibration and discrimination, but also underconfidence. There was no support for the hypothesis that forecasting skill was good mainly because of the general ease of forecasting topics. First, forecasting skill was as good among authoritative key judgments as in the general set. Second, forecasts that were assigned high degrees of certainty, indicative of ease, (p ≤ 0.05 or p ≥ 0.95) did not discriminate as well as less certain forecasts (0.05 < p < 0.95), and these subsets did not differ in calibration. Sensitivity and benchmarking tests further revealed that if the 1609 uncodable forecasts were all assigned forecast probabilities of .5 (i.e., if all followed a “cautious ignorance” rule), skill characteristics would still show a large effect size improvement over a variety of guesswork strategies. The findings support a cautiously optimistic assessment of forecasting skill in strategic intelligence and indicate that such skill is not primarily attributable to the selection of easy forecasting topics. However, the large proportion of uncodable cases suggests that intelligence forecasts could be improved by avoiding imprecise language that affects not only the codability but also, in all likelihood, the interpretability and indicative value of forecasts for intelligence consumers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 20, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2055   open full text
• The Effects of Differing Knowledge Transfer Strategies on Group Decision Making and Performance.
  Sheli D. Sillito Walker, Bryan L. Bonner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 13, 2017
  Encouraging reflection on one's existing knowledge in a group setting increases shared understanding, makes information available for problem solving, and makes it easier for members to show and to be shown the merit of others' preferences. However, it is also possible that attempting to constrain the process by which problem solvers manage this reflection process may prevent them from effectively tailoring their approach to different problems. The current research focuses on how the nature of different knowledge transfer strategies impacts problem solving processes and outcomes by examining manipulations of, or constraints to, problem solvers' approach to knowledge transfer. Participants were directed to generate associated knowledge in preparation for answering a series of estimation items, either in a group or individually. We found that groups using a shared reflection process (as opposed to reflecting at an individual member level) were able to give more weight to the inputs of their more expert members and that groups outperformed individuals. We discuss the process of promoting knowledge transfer in a group context relative to an individual context and relate this to the concept of task demonstrability. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 13, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2053   open full text
• Better Safe than Sorry: Risking Irresponsibility by Seeking Uncertainty.
  Gro Hege Haraldsen Nordbye, Anine H. Riege, Karl Halvor Teigen.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 06, 2017
  Research findings differ as to whether choosing a risky option is an efficient strategy for decision makers seeking to avoid responsibility for potential failures. A risky choice may leave the final outcome to chance factors, but the decision maker can still be held responsible for choosing risk. Further, it is unclear whether a risky choice is a responsible choice. The present article investigates the putative relationship between risk‐taking and responsibility by drawing a distinction between being responsible for the outcome (R1) versus acting responsibly (R2). Four experiments were performed, in which participants were presented with scenarios describing decision makers facing a choice between a risky (uncertain) option and a riskless (certain) option, framed in terms of losses or equivalent gains. The results showed that decision makers who chose the risky alternative were judged to have acted in a less responsible manner (R2), while still being held equally responsible for the outcome (R1), unless they were ignorant of the risks involved. Choosing risk did not absolve decision makers from blame, despite being less causal and less in control than those who chose the riskless option. Risky decision makers were also judged to be more personally involved. The dissociation between R1 and R2 ratings confirms earlier findings and serves to clarify an alleged relationship between risky choices and responsibility aversion. Framing effects for own choices were found in both scenarios. In contrast, responsibility ratings were only slightly affected by frame. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 06, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2049   open full text
• The Role of Independence and Stationarity in Probabilistic Models of Binary Choice.
  Michel Regenwetter, Clintin P. Davis‐Stober.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 06, 2017
  After more then 50 years of probabilistic choice modeling in economics, marketing, political science, psychology, and related disciplines, theoretical and computational advances give scholars access to a sophisticated array of modeling and inference resources. We review some important, but perhaps often overlooked, properties of major classes of probabilistic choice models. For within‐respondent applications, we discuss which models require repeated choices by an individual to be independent and response probabilities to be stationary. We show how some model classes, but not others, are invariant over variable preferences, variable utilities, or variable choice probabilities. These models, but not others, accommodate pooling of responses or averaging of choice proportions within participant when underlying parameters vary across observations. These, but not others, permit pooling/averaging across respondents in the presence of individual differences. We also review the role of independence and stationarity in statistical inference, including for probabilistic choice models that, themselves, do not require those properties. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 06, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2037   open full text
• The Role of Anticipated Regret in Advice Taking.
  Konstantina Tzini, Kriti Jain.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 20, 2017
  Across five studies, we demonstrate that anticipated future regret influences receptiveness to advice. While making a revision to one's own judgment based on advice, people can anticipate two kinds of future regret: (a) the regret of following non‐beneficial advice and (b) the regret of ignoring beneficial advice. In studies 1a (scenario task) and 1b (judgment task), we find that anticipated regret from erring after following advice is greater than anticipated regret from erring after ignoring advice. Furthermore, receptiveness decreases as the difference between anticipated regret from following and from ignoring advice increases. In study 2, we demonstrate that perceived justifiability of one's own initial decision is greater than that of advice. This difference in perceived justifiability influences anticipated regret and that, in turn, influences receptiveness. In study 3, we investigate the effect of advisor's expertise on perceived justifiability, anticipated regret, and receptiveness. In study 4, we propose and test an intervention to improve receptiveness based on self‐generation of advice justifications. Participants who were asked to self‐generate justifications for the advice were more receptive to it. This effect was mediated by perceived justifiability and anticipated regret. These findings shed further light on what prevents people from being receptive to advice and how this can be improved. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 20, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2048   open full text
• Why Improvement Can Trump Consistent Strong Performance: The Role of Effort Perceptions.
  Monica Soliman, Roger Buehler.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 11, 2017
  How do evaluators form comparative judgments of improved versus consistently strong performance records with equivalent recent performance? We propose that evaluators judge those with improved records to be more deserving of future opportunities (e.g., a promotion) and that this can be explained – at least in part – by perceptions of effort investments. Specifically, evaluators rely on improvement to judge effort and hence devalue consistent strong performance. Five studies supported these propositions. Evaluators perceived greater effort investment and trait effort in individuals with improved profiles than those with consistent profiles and consequently thought that those with improved profiles were more deserving of future opportunities. We discuss implications of these results across various decision contexts. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 11, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2039   open full text
• Evidence for Opportunity Cost Neglect in the Poor.
  Arnoud Plantinga, Job M.T. Krijnen, Marcel Zeelenberg, Seger M. Breugelmans.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 11, 2017
  People often neglect opportunity costs: They do not fully take into account forgone alternatives outside of a particular choice set. Several scholars have suggested that poor people should be more likely to spontaneously consider opportunity costs, because budget constraints should lead to an increased focus on trade‐offs. We did not find support for this hypothesis in five high‐powered experiments (total N = 2325). The experiments used different products (both material and experiential) with both high and low prices (from $8.50 to $249.99) and different methods of reminding participants of opportunity costs. High‐income and low‐income participants showed an equally strong decrease in willingness to buy when reminded of opportunity costs, implying that both the rich and the poor neglect opportunity costs. © 2017 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  September 11, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2041   open full text
• How Incidental Confidence Influences Self‐Interested Behaviors: A Double‐Edged Sword.
  Claire I. Tsai, Jia Lin Xie.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 08, 2017
  The present research investigates how incidental confidence influences self‐interested behaviors. It is well established that being in a psychological state of lower confidence causes people to experience psychological aversion that they are motivated to reduce. We study the transfer effect of confidence; people strive to compensate for lower confidence in one domain by obtaining higher status in other unrelated domains. Prior research has linked money with status and suggested that money can increase confidence. Building on this research, we proposed and showed in four experiments that lower incidental confidence increased self‐interested behaviors that brought financial gains. Drawing on research on competitive altruism, we also predicted and found that when altruism, rather than money, was seen as the primary source of status, the effect of incidental confidence reversed such that lower incidental confidence decreased self‐interested behaviors. Data ruled out alternative explanations and provided consistent evidence for the proposed compensatory mechanism. We also discussed theoretical and practical implications of the present research. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 08, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2032   open full text
• Emotions Know Best: The Advantage of Emotional versus Cognitive Responses to Failure.
  Noelle Nelson, Selin A. Malkoc, Baba Shiv.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 08, 2017
  Making mistakes or failing at tasks is a common occurrence in human life. People can respond to and cope with failure in many ways. In this research, we examine potential advantages of relatively emotional (versus cognitive) responses to failure. In particular, we study how effort and time spent in subsequent tasks depend on whether people predominantly focus on their emotions or their cognitions as they respond to a failure. We demonstrate that, left to their own means, people's cognitions upon a failure are mainly justificatory in nature and thus do not automatically have the commonly believed reflective, self‐improving qualities. We further argue and demonstrate that a relative focus on cognitions following a failure can prevent improvement in subsequent episodes, but a focus on emotions can allow for learning and, therefore, increased effort. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 08, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2042   open full text
• The Hidden Cost of Insurance on Cooperation.
  Philippe P.F.M. Calseyde, Gideon Keren, Marcel Zeelenberg.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 05, 2017
  A common solution to mitigate risk is to buy insurance. Employing the trust game, we find that buying insurance against the risk of betrayal has a hidden cost: trustees are more likely to act opportunistically when trustors choose to be insured against the breach of trust. Supposedly, trustees are less likely to cooperate when trustors buy insurance because choosing insurance implicitly signals that the trustor expects the trustee to behave opportunistically, paradoxically encouraging trustees not to cooperate. These results shed new light on the potential drawbacks of financial safeguards that are intended to minimize the risky nature of trust taking: the presumed safeguard against the risk of betrayal may, under certain circumstances, increase the probability of betrayal. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 05, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2033   open full text
• Pseudocontingencies in Consumer Choice: Preference for Prevalent Product Categories Decreases with Decreasing Set Quality.
  Tobias Vogel, Florian Kutzner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 05, 2017
  Building on theorizing about contingency inferences, the present research deals with the impact of product category prevalence on consumer choice. We argue that a category's prevalence in the choice set can signal high quality, but the validity depends on the aggregate quality of the choice set. With ever more low‐quality products in the set, high prevalence should increasingly signal poor rather than high quality. When choosing from a poor‐quality set, choices should thus favor products from the rare category. In four experiments, we show that poor‐quality sets increase the proportion of consumers choosing products from a rare category. Furthermore, we show that these effects increase when base rates of a category and quality become more extreme. Finally, Experiment 4 shows that contingency inferences partly mediate the effect of set quality on choice. The results extend previous research on contingency inferences, indicating the adaptive use of base‐rate information in consumer decision making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 05, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2034   open full text
• The Effect of Transparency on Framing Effects in Within‐Subject Designs.
  Balazs Aczel, Aba Szollosi, Bence Bago.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 04, 2017
  A long‐lasting assumption about the framing effect is that if the participants discover the purpose of the experiment in a within‐subject design, then this test transparency would trigger them to override their initial answer and make coherent choices. For this reason, researchers try to mask the connection between the two parts of the test by inserting filling questions or a time delay between the two parts of the test. In this research, we explored the extent to which these customarily used masking solutions are effective in increasing test sensitivity for the framing effect. In three experiments, we assessed the effect of masking on the tests of the attribute framing and the risky‐choice framing effects. Contradicting the general belief, our results indicate that these effects are already measurable without any masking or delay and we found no convincing evidence that the attempts to decrease task transparency provide worthwhile benefits for general tests of the effect. Beyond their practical relevance, the results question whether the test is a good measure of coherence rationality and better suit those accounts that suggest that the two parts of the framing tasks cannot be regarded as identical. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 04, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2036   open full text
• Children's Sensitivity to Cost and Reward in Decision Making across Distinct Domains of Probability, Effort, and Delay.
  Lisa M. Gatzke‐Kopp, Nilam Ram, David M. Lydon‐Staley, David DuPuis.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 31, 2017
  Many behavioral paradigms used to study individuals' decision‐making tendencies do not capture the decision components that contribute to behavioral outcomes, such as differentiating decisions driven toward a reward from decisions driven away from a cost. This study tested a novel decision‐making task in a sample of 403 children (age 9 years) enrolled in an ongoing longitudinal study. The task consisted of three blocks representing distinct cost domains (delay, probability, and effort), wherein children were presented with a deck of cards, each of which consisted of a reward and a cost. Children elected whether to accept or skip the card at each trial. Reward–cost pairs were selected by using an adaptive algorithm to strategically sample the decision space in the fewest number of trials. Using person‐specific regression models, decision preferences were quantified for each cost domain with respect to general tolerance (intercept), as well as parameters estimating the effect of incremental increases in reward or cost on the probability of accepting a card. Results support the relative independence of decision‐making tendencies across cost domains, with moderate correlations observed between tolerance for delay and effort. Specific decision parameters showed unique associations with cognitive and behavioral measures including executive function, academic motivation, anxiety, and hyperactivity. Evidence indicates that sensitivity to reward is an important factor in incentivizing decisions to work harder or wait longer. Dissociating the relative contributions of reward and cost sensitivity in multiple domains may facilitate the identification of heterogeneity in suboptimal decision making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 31, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2038   open full text
• Do Smarter People Employ Better Decision Strategies? The Influence of Intelligence on Adaptive Use of the Recognition Heuristic.
  Martha Michalkiewicz, Katja Arden, Edgar Erdfelder.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 29, 2017
  Within the adaptive toolbox approach, it has repeatedly been shown that, on average, people tend to adapt their decision strategies to the decision context. Building upon these results, we investigated whether individuals systematically differ in their ability to successfully adapt to the situation when applying the fast‐and‐frugal recognition heuristic (RH). In decisions between recognized and unrecognized choice objects, individuals can base their choices solely on recognition, as predicted by the RH, or they can use further knowledge retrieved from memory. Since intelligence has been conceived as the ability to successfully adapt to different situations, we expected intelligence to influence the degree of adaptive use of the RH. To test this hypothesis, we first re‐analyzed data that referred to a decision domain for which RH‐use is known to perform well. As expected, individual RH‐use increased with general intelligence. Next, we designed an experiment addressing individual RH‐use in two new decision domains, one domain for which RH‐use was less effective than knowledge‐use and another domain for which both strategies were about equally effective. In addition, we tested whether fluid or crystallized intelligence best predicts adaptive use of the RH. RH‐use was found to decrease with fluid but not crystallized intelligence when RH‐use was less effective than use of further knowledge. In contrast, there was no significant association between either type of intelligence and RH‐use when none of the two strategies was optimal. We conclude that adaptive use versus non‐use of the RH is moderated by fluid intelligence. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. StartCopTextCopyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 29, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2040   open full text
• Present Bias and Everyday Self‐Control Failures: A Day Reconstruction Study.
  Liam Delaney, Leonhard K. Lades.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 22, 2017
  Everyday life is full of self‐control problems. The economist's favorite explanation for self‐control problems is present bias. This paper tests whether experimentally elicited present bias predicts self‐control problems in everyday life. We measure present bias by using a standard incentivized delay discounting task and everyday self‐control by using the day reconstruction method (DRM). Because this is the first study to measure everyday self‐control by using the DRM, we also validate the method by showing that its data replicate key results from the seminal Everyday Temptation Study. We find that present bias does not predict everyday self‐control. This points to a distinction between decreasing impatience (as measured in delay discounting tasks) and visceral influences (as occurring in everyday life) as determinants of self‐control problems. We argue that decision making research can benefit from the DRM as a cost‐effective tool that complements lab and field experiments to better understand economic preference measures and their correlates in everyday life decision making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 22, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2031   open full text
• Holistic Information Integration in Child Decision Making.
  Stefanie Lindow, Anna Lang, Tilmann Betsch.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 02, 2017
  Weighted‐additive (WADD) strategies require decision makers to integrate multiple values weighted by their relevance. From what age can children make choices in line with such a WADD‐strategy? We compare multi‐attribute decisions of children (6–7; 8–10; 11–12‐year‐olds) with adults in an open information‐board environment without pre‐decisional information search. In two experiments, we classify decision strategies based on individual choice patterns and find that in all age groups the majority of participants are users of a WADD‐strategy. Simple decision heuristics such as lexicographic strategies were applied rarely by children and not at all by adults. In two additional follow‐up studies, we further investigate the underlying process of WADD‐application by analysing decision latencies in combination with a retrospective think‐aloud study. Results suggest that children did not apply WADD‐strategies in a deliberate fashion in our experiments. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the ability to make good and quick decisions by holistically integrating information is already present in young children. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 02, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2029   open full text
• Commonalities and Differences Among Frames: A Unification Model.
  John J. Seta, Catherine E. Seta, Michael McCormick.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 02, 2017
  We provide a review and a theoretically unifying model of framing effects. Beginning with a review of findings that prospect theory, fuzzy‐trace theory, and traditional dual process models do and do not explain, we develop a model of framing based partly on Bless and Schwarz's (2010) inclusion/exclusion model of assimilation and contrast. Our model is the first of its kind to be applied to all three valence framing manipulations and presents common mechanisms explaining findings in the framing literature that were previously difficult to conceptualize within a single theory (e.g., matching effects and cognitive effort). The model also accounts for why all three framing manipulations are influenced by differences between holistic/contextual versus analytic processing as well as the presence, absence, and direction of effects produced by different versions of framing manipulations. It also predicts contrast effects (Implications and Future Directions section) and applies to manipulations involving a frame and judgmental target. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 02, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2028   open full text
• The Role of Inference in Attribute Framing Effects.
  Lim M. Leong, Craig R. M. McKenzie, Shlomi Sher, Johannes Müller‐Trede.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 02, 2017
  Previous research has shown that a speaker's choice between logically equivalent frames is influenced by reference point information, and that listeners draw accurate inferences based on the frame. Less clear, however, is whether these inferences play a causal role in generating attribute framing effects. Two experiments are reported, which suggest that frame‐dependent inferences are sufficient to generate attribute framing effects, and that blocking such inferences may block framing effects. Experiment 1 decomposed the typical framing design into two parts: One group of participants saw a target described in one of two attribute frames and reported their estimates (inferences) of the typical attribute value. These estimates were then given to a second group of yoked participants, who evaluated the target. Although this latter group was not exposed to different attribute frames, they nevertheless exhibited a “framing effect” as a result of receiving systematically different inferences. In contrast, Experiment 2 shows that experts—who are familiar with an attribute's distribution and are therefore less likely to draw strong frame‐based inferences—exhibit a diminished framing effect. Together, these findings underscore the role of inferences in the generation and attenuation of attribute framing effects. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 02, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2030   open full text
• Die‐by Framing both Lengthens and Shortens Life: Further Evidence on Constructed Beliefs in Life Expectancy.
  David A. Comerford, Jenny Robinson.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 28, 2017
  Decisions regarding consumption over the lifespan require some estimate of how long that lifespan is likely to be. Payne et al. (2013) found that respondents' estimates of their own life expectancy are on average 8.6 years shorter when elicited using a die‐by frame than when elicited by a live‐to frame. If decision makers act on these life expectancies, then an arbitrary detail of framing will lead to drastically different choices. We propose that the framing effect is sensitive to the iterative probabilistic elicitation procedure employed by the previous literature. Study 1 compares the framing effect across the iterative probabilistic procedure and a point estimate procedure that simply asks respondents the age they will live to/die by. The iterative probabilistic procedure implies a life expectancy six years shorter in the die‐by frame than in the live‐to frame, replicating the results of Payne et al. (2013). With the point estimate procedure, however, the framing effect reverses: the die‐by frame increases life expectancy by three years. In Study 2, we test for the framing effect using a point estimate procedure on a representative sample of 2000 Britons. Again, and in contrast with the previous literature, we find that the die‐by frame implies longer life. Our results reinforce the previous literature that beliefs around life expectancy are constructed. We recommend caution when attempting to debias life expectancy estimates or using life expectancies in choice architecture. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 28, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2027   open full text
• Can People Identify “Deceptive” or “Misleading” Items that Tend to Produce Mostly Wrong Answers?
  Asher Koriat.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 04, 2017
  In many domains, two‐alternative forced‐choice questions produce more correct responses than wrong responses across participants. However, some items, dubbed “deceptive” or “misleading”, produce mostly wrong answers. These items yield poor calibration and poor resolution because the dominant, erroneous response tends to be endorsed with great confidence, even greater than that of the correct response. In addition, for deceptive items, group discussion amplifies rather than mitigates error while enhancing confidence in the erroneous response. Can participants identify deceptive items when they are warned about their existence? It is argued that people's ability to discriminate between deceptive and non‐deceptive items is poor when the erroneous responses are based on the same process assumed to underlie correct responses. Indeed, participants failed to discriminate between deceptive and non‐deceptive perceptual items when they were warned that some of the items (Experiment 1) or exactly half of the items (Experiment 2) were deceptive. A similar failure was observed for general‐knowledge questions (Experiment 3) except when participants were informed about the correct answer (Experiment 4). Possibly, for these tasks, people cannot escape the dangers lurking in deceptive items. In contrast, the results suggest that participants can identify deceptive problems for which the wrong answer stems from reliance on a fast, intuitive process that differs from the analytic mode that is likely to yield correct answers (Experiment 5). The practical and theoretical implications of the results were discussed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 04, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2024   open full text
• Giving, Fast and Slow: Reflection Increases Costly (but Not Uncostly) Charitable Giving.
  Kellen Mrkva.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 03, 2017
  Are people intuitively generous or stingy? Does reflection make people more willing to give generous amounts to charity? Findings across the literature are mixed, with many studies finding no clear relationship between reflection and charitable giving (e.g., Hauge, Brekke, Johansson, Johansson‐Stenman, & Svedsäter, ; Tinghög et al., ), while others find that reflection negatively affects giving (e.g., Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, ), and still others find that reflection is positively associated with giving (e.g., Lohse, Goeschl, & Diederich, ). I demonstrate that reflection consistently increases costly giving to charity. In Study 1, people were initially reluctant to give costly amounts of money to charity, but those who reflected about the decision were more willing to give. In Studies 2–3, I isolated the role of costly stakes by randomly assigning people to either an uncostly donation ($0.40) or costly donation condition (e.g., $100), and randomly assigning them to decide under time pressure or after reflecting. Reflection increased their willingness to give costly amounts, but did not influence their willingness to give uncostly amounts. Similarly, the relationship between decision time and giving was positive when the stakes were costly but was relatively flat when the stakes were uncostly (Study 4). Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 03, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2023   open full text
• How Does Explicit Versus Implicit Risk Information Influence Adolescent Risk‐Taking Engagement?
  Anaïs Osmont, Sylvain Moutier, Grégory Simon, Lison Bouhours, Olivier Houdé, Mathieu Cassotti.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 30, 2017
  Adolescents have been shown to be more likely to engage in risky behaviors in daily life. Many studies have indicated that adolescents could make advantageous choices when they receive explicit information but could fail to choose advantageously when they are not informed about risks. The current study aimed to examine the influence of explicit risk information (i.e., when risk information is directly available) versus implicit risk information (i.e., when risk information has to be learned from feedback) on risk‐taking engagement, in order to clarify whether the enhanced risk‐taking observed in decision making under ambiguity in adolescents results from either a greater exploration of ambiguous situations (i.e., a higher ambiguity tolerance) or a specific difficulty associated with learning based on previous choices' outcomes. Adolescents and young adults completed a new adaptation of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. They were required to accumulate as many points as possible by inflating balloons associated with variable break points and avoiding explosions. This adaptation involved a manipulation of the information level with two conditions, an “informed” condition and a “noninformed” condition, in which the participants had to learn the matching of colors with balloons' resistances based on feedback. The results demonstrated that providing explicit risk information allows adolescents to be as efficient as adults at the end of the game. In contrast, adolescents failed to adjust risk‐taking to the balloon resistance in the noninformed condition. These findings critically suggest that this failure reflects a specific impairment of feedback‐based learning ability but not a global excess of risk‐taking during adolescence. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 30, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2026   open full text
• People Wait Longer when the Alternative is Risky: The Relation Between Preferences in Risky and Inter‐temporal Choice.
  Ashley Luckman, Chris Donkin, Ben R. Newell.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 30, 2017
  In two experiments, we demonstrate that despite indicating indifference when probed about risk or delay in isolation, when forced to explicitly trade‐off between the two, participants prefer delayed over risky rewards. This pattern of findings sets a boundary condition for any common utility‐based comparison process involving both risk and delay. Furthermore, this change from indifference‐in‐isolation to delay‐preference‐in‐a‐trade‐off strengthens as reward amount increases. Exploratory modeling results suggest that the shift in preference can be explained by allowing for different discount rates for delay‐only choices compared with when delay is in competition with risk. This explanation is better than one in which probability weighting is different between risk‐only choices and risks considered in the presence of a delay. Together, the empirical and modeling work lays a path for future investigations of why and when people's evaluation of the properties of risky and delayed choices vary as a function of the alternatives on offer. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 30, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2025   open full text
• Construal‐level Mindsets Enhance Behavioral Persistence in Response to Incentive Valence.
  Atul A. Kulkarni, Hong Yuan.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 29, 2017
  In this research, we find that incentive valence and construal‐level mindsets can interact to influence behavioral persistence on challenging tasks. An abstract mindset improves persistence in response to positively framed incentives whereas a concrete mindset improves persistence in response to negatively framed incentives. This interaction effect can be observed even when the cues inducing construal‐level mindsets are not related to the incentives or the incentivized tasks. Participants in our studies were either positively or negatively incentivized to solve a set of difficult anagrams, and were primed with an abstract or a concrete mindset using spatial (Study 1) and social (Study 2) cues. The participants persisted longer in response to the positively framed incentive when primed with spatially or socially remote cues. In contrast, for the negatively framed incentive, participants persisted longer when primed with spatially or socially proximal cues. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 29, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2020   open full text
• Inducing Thought Processes: Bringing Process Measures and Cognitive Processes Closer Together.
  Michael Schulte‐Mecklenbeck, Anton Kühberger, Benjamin Gagl, Florian Hutzler.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 06, 2017
  The challenge in inferring cognitive processes from observational data is to correctly align overt behavior with its covert cognitive process. To improve our understanding of this overt–covert mapping in the domain of decision making, we collected eye‐movement data during decisions between gamble‐problems. Participants were either free to choose or instructed to use a specific choice strategy (maximizing expected value or a choice heuristic). We found large differences in looking patterns between free and instructed choices. Looking patterns provided no support for the common assumption that attention is equally distributed between outcomes and probabilities, even when participants were instructed to maximize expected value. Eye‐movement data are to some extent ambiguous with respect to underlying cognitive processes. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 06, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2007   open full text
• The Sticky Anchor Hypothesis: Ego Depletion Increases Susceptibility to Situational Cues.
  Sachin Banker, Sarah E. Ainsworth, Roy F. Baumeister, Dan Ariely, Kathleen D. Vohs.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 30, 2017
  Self‐control depletion has been linked both to increased selfish behavior and increased susceptibility to situational cues. The present research tested two competing hypotheses about the consequence of depletion by measuring how people allocate rewards between themselves and another person. Seven experiments analyzed behavior in standard dictator games and reverse dictator games, settings in which participants could take money from another person. Across all of these experiments, depleted participants made smaller changes to the initial allocation, thereby sticking closer to the default position (anchor) than non‐depleted participants. These findings provide support for a “sticky anchor hypothesis,” which states that the effects of depletion on behavior are influenced by the proximal situational cues rather than by directly stimulating selfishness per se. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 30, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2022   open full text
• Probabilities Associated with Precise and Vague Forecasts.
  Erik Løhre, Karl Halvor Teigen.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 22, 2017
  Forecasts of future outcomes, such as the consequences of climate change, are given with different degrees of precision. Logically, more precise forecasts (e.g., a temperature increase of 3–4°) have a smaller probability of capturing the actual outcome than less precise forecasts (e.g., a temperature increase of 2–6°). Nevertheless, people often trust precise forecasts more than vague forecasts, perhaps because precision is associated with knowledge and expertise. In five experiments, we ask whether people expect highly confident forecasts to be associated with wider or narrower outcome ranges than less confident forecasts (Experiments 1, 2, and 5), and, conversely, whether they expect precise forecasts to be issued with higher or lower confidence than vague forecasts (Experiments 3 and 4). The results revealed two distinct ways of thinking about confidence intervals, labeled distributional (wide intervals seen as more probable than narrow intervals) and associative (wide intervals seen as more uncertain than narrow intervals). Distributional responses occurred somewhat more often in within‐subjects designs, where wide and narrow prediction intervals and high and low probability estimates can be directly compared, whereas separate evaluations (in between‐subjects design) suggested associative responses to be slightly more frequent. These findings are relevant for experts communicating forecasts through confidence intervals. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 22, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2021   open full text
• The Common Ratio Effect in Choice, Pricing, and Happiness Tasks.
  Mark Schneider, Mikhael Shor.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 16, 2017
  The Allais common ratio effect is one of the most robust violations of rational decision making under risk. In this paper, we conduct a novel test of the common ratio effect in which we elicit preferences for the common ratio choice alternatives in choice, pricing, and happiness rating tasks. We find large shifts in preference patterns across tasks, both within and between subjects. In particular, we find that both the consistency and distribution of responses differ systematically across tasks, with modal choices replicating the Allais preference pattern, modal happiness ratings exhibiting consistent risk aversion, and modal prices maximizing expected value. We discuss the predictions of various cognitive explanations of the common ratio effect in the context of our experiment. We find that a dual process framework provides the most complete account of our results. Surprisingly, we also find that although the Allais pattern was the modal behavior in the choice task, none of the 158 respondents in our experiment exhibited the Allais pattern simultaneously in choice, happiness, and pricing tasks. Our results constitute a new paradox for the leading theories of choice under risk. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 16, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2017   open full text
• Remembering Friends as Not So Friendly in Competitive and Bargaining Social Interactions.
  Shai Danziger, David Disatnik, Yaniv Shani.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 16, 2017
  From children's schoolyard play to executives' boardroom negotiations, competitive and bargaining interactions are common to everyday life. Sometimes, the interacting parties are socially close and sometimes not. In this research, we examine how friendship influences memory for actions in such interactions. Dyads consisting of either friends or strangers played a competitive card game (Study 1) or the ultimatum game (Studies 2 and 4) and then recalled the interaction. We find that participants remembered friends' play as more competitive (Study 1) and less generous (Studies 2 and 4) than strangers' play, even when friends' actual play was more generous than that of strangers (Studies 2 and 4). Friendship did not affect recall for one's own play. In a workplace setting, Study 3 reveals people expect more of work colleagues who are friends than of work colleagues who are acquaintances. Study 4 tests our complete model and shows that people expect more of friends than of strangers and that this difference in expectations explains the less favorable memory for friend's actions. Our findings are consistent with a negative disconfirmation account whereby people expect their friends to be less competitive and more generous, and when these expectations are violated, people remember friends' actions more negatively than they actually were. Much research shows positive effects of friendship norms on actual behavior. We demonstrate a negative effect on people's memory of friends' behavior in competitive and bargaining social interactions. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 16, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2019   open full text
• What Provides Justification for Cheating—Producing or Observing Counterfactuals?
  Claudia Bassarak, Margarita Leib, Dorothee Mischkowski, Sabrina Strang, Andreas Glöckner, Shaul Shalvi.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 15, 2017
  When people can profit financially by lying, they do so to the extent to which they can justify their lies. One type of justification is the observation and production of desirable counterfactual information. Here, we disentangle observing and producing of desired counterfactuals and test whether the mere observation is sufficient or whether one actually needs to produce the information in order to justify lying. By employing a modified version of the Die‐Under‐Cup task, we ask participants to privately roll a die three times and to report the outcome of the first die roll (with higher values corresponding to higher payoffs). In all three conditions, participants produce (roll the die) and observe the first die roll, which is relevant for pay. We manipulate whether participants produce and observe versus only observe the second and third die roll outcomes, which are both irrelevant for pay. Results reveal that people lie to the same extent—when producing and observing the counterfactuals, and when merely observing them. It seems that merely observing counterfactual information is sufficient to allow people to use this information to justify their lies. We further test whether creativity and moral disengagement are associated with dishonesty and replicate the finding showing that unethical behavior increases with creativity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 15, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2013   open full text
• Variability in Decision Strategies Across Description‐based and Experience‐based Decision Making.
  Sangsuk Yoon, Khoi Vo, Vinod Venkatraman.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 09, 2017
  Individuals are known to make systematically different decisions when the probabilities in risky choice problems are described or experienced. This difference, known as the description–experience gap, has been reliably replicated across several studies using binary choice gambles. Yet little is known whether these differences exist in more complex gambles in the absence of rare outcomes, and whether they are associated with systematic differences in the use of decision heuristics and strategies across formats. Using three‐outcome mixed gambles, we found that participants showed a strong preference for alternatives that maximized the overall probability of winning when such an option was available in the description condition, and chose more randomly otherwise. In the experience condition, preferences were more homogenous across trials types, with participants choosing the alternative with extreme values more often relative to the description condition. However, when we controlled for the experienced outcomes, both natural mean heuristic (choosing the alternative with highest sampled mean or expected value) and overall probability of winning heuristic reliably predicted choice on each trial. In fact, expected value was the strongest predictor of preferences in a conditional logistic regression model that included extreme values, expected value, and overall probability of winning variables simultaneously. Yet expected value did not predict preferences in decisions from description. Together, these findings provide evidence for an explicit dissociation in decision strategies across description and experience formats. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 09, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2009   open full text
• Reinforcement, Rationality, and Intentions: How Robust Is Automatic Reinforcement Learning in Economic Decision Making?
  Sabine Hügelschäfer, Anja Achtziger.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 03, 2017
  Reinforcement learning is often observed in economic decision making and may lead to detrimental decisions. Because of its automaticity, it is difficult to avoid. In three experimental studies, we investigated whether this process could be controlled by goal intentions and implementation intentions. Participants' decisions were investigated in a probability‐updating task in which the normative rule to maximize expected payoff (Bayes' rule) conflicted with the reinforcement heuristic as a simple decision rule. Some participants were asked to set goal intentions designated to foster the optimization of rational decision making, while other participants were asked to furnish these goal intentions with implementation intentions. Results showed that controlling automatic processes of reinforcement learning is possible by means of goal intentions or implementation intentions that focus decision makers on the analysis of decision feedback. Importantly, such beneficial effects were not achieved by simply instructing participants to analyze the feedback, without defining a goal as the desired end state from a first‐person perspective. Regarding intentions supposed to shut down reinforcement processes by controlling negative affect, effects were more complex and depended on the specified goal‐directed behavior. The goal intention to suppress the disappointment elicited by negative feedback was not effective in controlling reinforcement processes. Furnishing this goal with an implementation intention even backfired and strengthened unwanted reinforcement processes. In contrast, asking participants to keep cool in response to negative decision outcomes through the use of goal intentions or implementation intentions increased decisions in line with Bayes' rule. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 03, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2008   open full text
• Measuring Probabilistic Reasoning: The Construction of a New Scale Applying Item Response Theory.
  Caterina Primi, Kinga Morsanyi, Maria Anna Donati, Silvia Galli, Francesca Chiesi.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 03, 2017
  Probabilistic reasoning skills are important in various contexts. The aim of the present study was to develop a new instrument (the Probabilistic Reasoning Scale – PRS) to accurately measure low levels of probabilistic reasoning ability in order to identify people with difficulties in this domain. Item response theory was applied to construct the scale, and to investigate differential item functioning (i.e., whether the items were invariant) across genders, educational levels, and languages. Additionally, we tested the validity of the scale by investigating the relationships between the PRS and several other measures. The results revealed that the items had a low level of difficulty. Nonetheless, the discriminative measures showed that the items can discriminate between individuals with different trait levels, and the test information function showed that the scale accurately assesses low levels of probabilistic reasoning ability. Additionally, through investigating differential item functioning, the measurement equivalence of the scale at the item level was confirmed for gender, educational status, and language (i.e., Italian and English). Concerning validity, the results showed the expected correlations with numerical skills, math‐related attitudes, statistics achievement, IQ, reasoning skills, and risky choices both in the Italian and British samples. In conclusion, the PRS is an ideal instrument for identifying individuals who struggle with basic probabilistic reasoning, and who could be targeted by specific interventions. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 03, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2011   open full text
• On Narrow Norms of Rationality and Questionable Data Analyses: A Comment on Jekel and Glöckner.
  Jörg Rieskamp.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 26, 2017
  In many areas of psychology, it has been argued that people are equipped with a repertoire of strategies to solve the problems they face. Past work has also shown that in situations in which people receive feedback about the correctness of their inferences, substantial learning effects occur, such that simple heuristics that perform well in an environment also do well in describing people's inferences (e.g., Rieskamp, 2006; Rieskamp & Otto, 2006). This work has been challenged by Jekel and Glöcker (2016), who argued that the simple heuristic was compared with a weak competitor. In this work, I reply to this challenge by showing that the competing compensatory strategy is not a weak competitor on either normative or descriptive empirical grounds. I show that the conclusions of past work also hold when including—as suggested—additional compensatory strategies as competing models. The theoretical and empirical analysis demonstrates that the conclusions of Jekel and Glöckner rely on narrow theoretical assumptions and questionable reanalyses of past results. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 26, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2016   open full text
• Evaluating Effort: Influences of Evaluation Mode on Judgments of Task‐specific Efforts.
  Timothy L. Dunn, Derek J. Koehler, Evan F. Risko.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 12, 2017
  The claim that humans adapt their actions in ways that avoid effortful processing (whether cognitive or physical) is a staple of various theories of human behavior. Although much work has been carried out focusing on the determinants of such behaviors, less attention has been given to how individuals evaluate effort. In the current set of experiments, we utilized the general evaluability theory to examine the evaluability of effort by examining subjective value functions across different evaluation modes. Individuals judged the anticipated effort of four task‐specific efforts indexed by stimulus rotation, items to be remembered, weight to be lifted, and stimulus degradation across joint (i.e., judged comparatively) and single evaluation modes (i.e., judged in isolation). General evaluability theory hypothesizes that highly evaluable attributes should be consistently evaluated (i.e., demonstrate similar subjective value functions) between the two modes. Across six experiments, we demonstrate that the perceived effort associated with items to be remembered, weight to be lifted, and stimulus degradation can be considered relatively evaluable, while the effort associated with stimulus rotation may be relatively inevaluable. Results are discussed within the context of subjective evaluation, internal reference information, and strategy selection. In addition, methodological implications of evaluation modes are considered. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 12, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2018   open full text
• Seeing into the Future: Future Time Orientation as a Moderator of Temporal Distance Effects on Educators' Decisions.
  Tehila Kogut, Tal Eyal, Idit Sharon.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 12, 2017
  Research suggests that the temporal distance from decision outcomes leads to divergent decisions for the near and the distal future. As such, high‐level idealistic concerns and values dominate decisions for the distant future, whereas low‐level pragmatic concerns play a greater role in decisions for the near future. We examined how individual differences in future time orientation are related to decisions vis‐à‐vis the near versus the distal future. The results of three studies, with participants with varying levels of expertise—students (Studies 2 and 3), teachers (Study 1), and school principals (Study 2)—show that principals tend to be overall more idealistic in their choices. Yet discrepancies between decisions for the near versus the distal future exist among all three levels of expertise. However, this dominance of idealistic over pragmatic concerns for more distant future decisions effect was smaller the higher the future time orientation was (whether measured or manipulated). Implications for educational and managerial decision making and training are discussed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 12, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2015   open full text
• Effects of Gender on Costly Punishment.
  Laura Mieth, Axel Buchner, Raoul Bell.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 12, 2017
  Women are often believed to be more cooperative and less egoistic than men. In the present study, we examined whether people punish women for failing to live up to these benevolent gender stereotypes. Participants played a prisoner's dilemma game with female and male partners who either cooperated or defected. Participants were offered a costly punishment option. They could spend money to decrease the payment of their partners. In Experiment 1, participants spent more money to punish the defection of female in comparison to male partners, but this effect of partner gender on punishment was indirect rather than direct: Participants were more likely to cooperate with female partners than with male partners, which gave them more opportunity for moralistic punishment. In Experiments 2 and 3, we examined the effects of the participants' own gender on cooperation and punishment of female and male partners. Female participants cooperated more with female partners than with male partners while male participants treated female and male partners equally. We conclude that the effect of facial gender on punishment are indirect rather than direct. The results also showed that women, in contrast to men, tended to make decisions that can be considered more social and less rational from an economic point of view, consistent with social‐role theory and evolutionary accounts. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 12, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2012   open full text
• On the Counterfactual Nature of Gambling Near‐misses: An Experimental Study.
  Yin Wu, Eric Dijk, Hong Li, Michael Aitken, Luke Clark.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 03, 2017
  Research on gambling near‐misses has shown that objectively equivalent outcomes can yield divergent emotional and motivational responses. The subjective processing of gambling outcomes is affected substantially by close but non‐obtained outcomes (i.e. counterfactuals). In the current paper, we investigate how different types of near‐misses influence self‐perceived luck and subsequent betting behavior in a wheel‐of‐fortune task. We investigate the counterfactual mechanism of these effects by testing the relationship with a second task measuring regret/relief processing. Across two experiments (Experiment 1, n = 51; Experiment 2, n = 104), we demonstrate that near‐wins (neutral outcomes that are close to a jackpot) decreased self‐perceived luck, whereas near‐losses (neutral outcomes that are close to a major penalty) increased luck ratings. The effects of near‐misses varied by near‐miss position (i.e. whether the spinner stopped just short of, or passed through, the counterfactual outcome), consistent with established distinctions between upward versus downward, and additive versus subtractive, counterfactual thinking. In Experiment 1, individuals who showed stronger counterfactual processing on the regret/relief task were more responsive to near‐wins and near‐losses on the wheel‐of‐fortune task. The effect of near‐miss position was attenuated when the anticipatory phase (i.e. the spin and deceleration) was removed in Experiment 2. Further differences were observed within the objective gains and losses, between “clear” and “narrow” outcomes. Taken together, these results help substantiate the counterfactual mechanism of near‐misses. © 2017 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2010   open full text
• Is What You Feel What They See? Prominent and Subtle Identity Signaling in Intergroup Interactions.
  Ted Matherly, Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 09, 2017
  Individuals often signal group affiliations to others, and the display of such identity signals is frequently rather subtle. While prior work has focused on understanding an individual's choices of subtle versus prominent signals, in this work, we look at the downstream consequences of such choices. Specifically, we explore how the prominence of identity signals may affect one's behavior in intergroup interactions. Drawing from literature on processing fluency, we propose that the use of difficult to process (subtle) identity signals in intergroup interactions leads signalers to experience identity threat, lowering confidence in their identity and leading them to engage in behaviors to recover from this experience. Across three different identity domains (college affiliation, political affiliation, and brand loyalty), we show that when individuals use difficult to process identity signals, they derogate out‐group members in communication and behave less cooperatively in intergroup interactions. We find that these effects depend upon the observability of the signals by out‐group members and only occur for individuals who are highly identified with the in‐group. We also find that the effects are attenuated when behavior towards members of the out‐group is made public. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 09, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2004   open full text
• Do People Order Cues by Retrieval Fluency when Making Probabilistic Inferences?
  Cvetomir M. Dimov, Daniela Link.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 09, 2017
  In multiple‐cue probabilistic inferences, people infer alternatives' unknown values on decision criteria, using alternatives' attributes as cues. Some inferential strategies, like take‐the‐best, assume that people consider relevant cues sequentially in order of decreasing validity. This assumption has been deemed cognitively implausible by some, who suggest memory retrieval principles to guide cue order. We test whether memory‐based inferences are better described by a model considering cues in order of validity or in order of memory retrieval. In an experiment, we manipulated the frequency with which cues appeared in a learning phase, increasing retrieval fluency of cue values related to the more frequently appearing cue. In a subsequent decision phase, participants made a series of two‐alternative decisions based on the learned cue values. We compared two sequential sampling models, which differed in whether cues are sampled in order of subjective cue validity or in order of retrieval fluency. To model retrieval order of cues in the fluency sampling model, we used the declarative memory theory embedded in the ACT‐R cognitive architecture. Most participants' decisions were best described by the model sampling cues in order of memory retrieval. Only a minority of participants were classified as sampling cues by validity. Our result suggests that retrieval fluency is the primary driver of cue order in inferences from memory, irrespective of the cues' validities. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 09, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2002   open full text
• Old and New Directions in Strategy Selection.
  Jerome R. Busemeyer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 09, 2017
  Research on strategy selection, which has progressed a great deal over the past 50 years, is briefly reviewed. Past challenges that the field has faced, and new directions that have emerged in this field, are reviewed. As the articles featured in this special issue demonstrate, the topic of strategy selection continues to garner strong interest and make steady progress. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 09, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2005   open full text
• The Influence of Time Estimation and Time‐Saving Preferences on Learning to Make Temporally Dependent Decisions from Experience.
  Nathaniel J. S. Ashby, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 08, 2017
  In this paper, we merge research related to experiential learning, temporal perception, and the value of time and money by examining decisions where the timing of action (response) determines the outcome received. We predicted that time‐saving preferences and impatience would decrease maximization (i.e., taking action when it returned the largest reward), and that the constraints of temporal perception would compound their effects. Across three studies, participants undershot on average (i.e., responded earlier than the period of time during which a response would return the maximal reward) showed a preference for shorter‐delay options and often did not find the maximal reward. In addition, participants' reliance on temporal perception increased undershooting, increased preferences for shorter‐delay options, and reduced maximization. Nevertheless, participants who found the maximal reward continued to maximize at a high rate rather than opting for shorter delays and smaller rewards. Thus, while most participants appeared to have a preference for saving time, most behaved as reward maximizers rather than temporal discounters. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 08, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2006   open full text
• Internet Safety and the Silver Surfer: The Relationship Between Gist Reasoning and Adults' Risky Online Behavior.
  Claire M. White, Michaela Gummerum, Stacey Wood, Yaniv Hanoch.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 08, 2017
  Currently, fewer older adults are online compared with younger generations. However, with many new initiatives aiming to significantly increase the number of older internet users, they will increasingly be exposed to potential victimisation from internet fraud, a fundamental issue affecting all adult internet users. Despite this, little research has examined online risk‐taking across the adult lifespan or adults' reasoning about risky online behaviors. Using fuzzy trace theory, we investigated adults' online risk‐taking behavior and intentions, and whether these behaviors were related to different ways of reasoning about risk, namely, gist reasoning (using qualitative, intuitive knowledge) and verbatim reasoning (using quantitative, specific knowledge). Participants (326 adults, 18–79 years old, Mage = 49.54 years) reported their past risk‐taking behavior, future online risk intentions, gist and verbatim reasoning about online risk, sensation seeking, and time spent online. Age was negatively correlated with past risk‐taking, time online, future risk intentions, and sensation seeking. However, time spent online was positively related to future risk intentions, suggesting that spending more time using the internet could lead individuals to take more risks. Increased verbatim reasoning predicted increased intentions to take online risks, while gist reasoning predicted reduced intentions to take risks online. Our findings extend online risk research applying fuzzy trace theory to adolescents and young adults and suggest that online safety training incorporating gist‐based reasoning strategies could benefit all adults and, in particular, older generations. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 08, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2003   open full text
• Causal Models Drive Preference between Drugs that Treat a Focal versus Multiple Symptoms.
  Kelly Saporta‐Sorozon, Shai Danziger, Steven Sloman.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 25, 2017
  This research examines the effects of causal beliefs on drug preference. In three studies, 374 undergraduate participants imagined that they suffered from a focal symptom and then indicated their preference between a drug claiming to treat only the focal symptom (single treatment) and a drug claiming to treat the focal symptom and a nonfocal symptom (dual treatment) they thought resulted from a common‐cause or from a different cause. Participants who thought that the symptoms resulted from different causes significantly preferred the single treatment drug more and the dual treatment drug less than participants who thought the symptoms resulted from a common‐cause. Process analysis yielded a significant mediation effect. Specifically, an individual's causal model determines preference by affecting the estimates of the potential gain and loss associated with using each drug. Participants who held a common‐cause model concerning the source of the symptoms thought they would be more likely to need the nonfocal treatment provided by the dual treatment drug and less likely to suffer from side effects when taking this drug, than those with a different‐cause model. The results demonstrate the influence of causal structure on judgment and choice. © 2017 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  January 25, 2017   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1999   open full text
• Associations Between Delay Discounting and Risk‐Related Behaviors, Traits, Attitudes, and Outcomes.
  Sandeep Mishra, Martin L. Lalumière.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 19, 2016
  Delay discounting—preference for immediate, smaller rewards over distal, larger rewards—has been argued to be part of the “generality of deviance”, which describes the co‐occurrence of various forms of impulsive and risky behaviors among individuals. Some studies have linked laboratory‐measured delay discounting to behaviors, traits, attitudes, and outcomes associated with risk, but these associations have been inconsistent. Furthermore, many of these studies have been conducted with exclusively undergraduate samples, or in samples offering low statistical power. In a large community sample (n = 328) diverse in age and socioeconomic status, we examined associations between two measures of behavioral delay discounting (single‐shot and canonical k‐parameter estimation) and behavioral risk‐taking, personality traits associated with risk, domain‐specific risk attitudes, gambling and problem gambling, antisocial behavior, and criminal outcomes. In addition, we explored whether a novel response time latency measure of delay discounting explained variance in these risk‐related outcomes. Results indicated that behavioral delay discounting was consistently associated with all variables related to impulse control: high trait impulsivity, low trait self‐control, risk‐averse attitudes toward financial investment, risk‐prone attitudes toward gambling and health/safety risks, gambling and problem gambling, antisocial conduct, and criminal outcomes. Latency‐measured delay discounting was inconsistently associated with behavioral delay discounting and risk‐related measures. Together, results suggest that delay discounting is associated with poor impulse control consistent with a generality of deviance account. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  December 19, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2000   open full text
• The Effect of Expected Value on Attraction Effect Preference Reversals.
  George D. Farmer, Paul A. Warren, Wael El‐Deredy, Andrew Howes.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 19, 2016
  The attraction effect shows that adding a third alternative to a choice set can alter preference between the original two options. For over 30 years, this simple demonstration of context dependence has been taken as strong evidence against a class of parsimonious value‐maximising models that evaluate alternatives independently from one another. Significantly, however, in previous demonstrations of the attraction effect alternatives are approximately equally valuable, so there was little consequence to the decision maker irrespective of which alternative was selected. Here we vary the difference in expected value between alternatives and provide the first demonstration that, although extinguished with large differences, this theoretically important effect persists when choice between alternatives has a consequence. We use this result to clarify the implications of the attraction effect, arguing that although it robustly violates the assumptions of value‐maximising models, it does not eliminate the possibility that human decision making is optimal. © 2016 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  December 19, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.2001   open full text
• The Heart and the Head: On Choosing Experiences Intuitively and Possessions Deliberatively.
  Iñigo Gallo, Sanjay Sood, Thomas C. Mann, Thomas Gilovich.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 11, 2016
  An enduring question in the field of judgment and decision making is when people are likely to choose on the basis of intuition and when they are likely to pursue a more deliberative decision strategy. Here, we attempt to shed light on that question by examining whether people tend to weight intuition more heavily when making experiential purchases, and to weight deliberation more heavily when making material purchases. Results from seven studies indicate that they do. In Study 1 (and a replication), participants expressed an explicit preference for choosing experiential purchases intuitively and material purchases analytically. In Study 2 (and a replication), participants anticipated experiencing more regret after going against reason for material purchases and going against intuition for experiential purchases. Participants in Study 3 who were asked to think about an experiential purchase wanted to see the relevant information presented by alternative, which facilitates intuitive/holistic processing, more than did those who were asked to consider a material purchase. In two additional studies, participants who were induced to think intuitively chose experiential purchases more often (Study 4) and reported a higher willingness to pay for them (Study 5) compared with participants induced to think analytically. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 11, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1997   open full text
• The Impact of “Display‐Set” Options on Decision‐Making.
  Uma R. Karmarkar.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 03, 2016
  The way a choice set is constructed can have a significant influence on how individuals perceive and evaluate their options, and make decisions between them. Here, I examine whether a “display set” of visible but unavailable options can exert these same types of influences on whether or not to choose a single (target) item. Across a series of experiments, purchase intent is increased when the display set and target are drawn from the same category, but decreased when the display and target items are mismatched. This effect is shown to depend on perceived similarity, such that increasing display‐target similarity increases purchase intent towards the target. Furthermore, contrary to the predictions made by previous neural and behavioral research on choice sets, the relative value and/or number of display‐only items have no significant impact on these decisions. These findings reveal a novel choice behavior in commonly encountered settings such as online marketplaces. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1998   open full text
• Are We All Overconfident in the Long Run? Evidence from One Million Marathon Participants.
  Michał Krawczyk, Maciej Wilamowski.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 28, 2016
  In this project, we measured overconfidence in a large, heterogeneous sample making familiar, repeated choices in a natural environment that provided direct feedback. Specifically, in study 1, we elicited predictions of own finishing time among participants of the 2012 Warsaw Marathon. The participants' prediction errors were highly correlated with the change in pace over the course of the run: overly optimistic forecasters slowed down more in the second half. In study 2, we consequently took this slowdown as a proxy for overconfidence and used existing field data of one million participants in several large marathons for which split times are available (but own predictions are not). Both studies indicate that men as well as the youngest and oldest participants tend to be more confident. In study 2, we were able to investigate national and cultural dimensions. We found confirmation of previously reported findings of relative overconfidence in Asians. Additionally, we show some largely novel results, in particular that relatively conservative societies tend to be relatively overconfident. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 28, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1984   open full text
• Confidently Biased: Comparisons with Anchors Bias Estimates and Increase Confidence.
  Andrew R. Smith, Lindsay D. Marshall.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 28, 2016
  Across a wide variety of situations, exposure to anchors has been shown to bias people's estimates. What is not known, however, is whether externally provided anchors influence the confidence that people have in their estimates. Our studies had two goals. First, we tested whether exposure to anchors influenced people's subjective confidence levels (Studies 1 and 2). These studies revealed that people who made estimates after making comparisons with externally provided anchors tended to be more confident in their estimates than people who did not see anchors. The second goal was to test two explanations as to why anchors increase people's confidence. In Study 3, we tested the explanation that anchors increase confidence because participants thought the anchors provided useful information. In Study 4, we tested the explanation that exposure to anchors causes people to consider a narrower range of plausible values as compared to when not exposed to anchors. Support was found only for the explanation that comparisons with anchors increase confidence because people who are exposed to anchors consider a narrower range of plausible values. Taken together, these studies reveal the powerful influence anchors can have—they not only bias estimates, but also increase people's confidence in their biased estimates. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 28, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1996   open full text
• How to Identify Strategy Use and Adaptive Strategy Selection: The Crucial Role of Chance Correction in Weighted Compensatory Strategies.
  Marc Jekel, Andreas Glöckner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 14, 2016
  Model comparisons based on choices are a common method to assess adaptive strategy selection models. We show that one common methodological choice prevailing in parts of this work makes it hard to draw sound conclusions concerning the central questions of how often people indeed use simplified strategies (e.g., fast‐and‐frugal heuristics) and whether they select between them adaptively. Conclusions from this work are biased insofar that more complex weighted compensatory strategies, such as Franklin's Rule, that are considered alternatives to fast‐and‐frugal heuristics are specified in a way that leads to a systematic underestimation of the degree to which they are relied on. Specifically, the common practice of not correcting cue validities for chance level results in a substantial disadvantage for weighted compensatory strategies. Model recovery simulations and a reanalysis of published data correspondingly show overestimation of the reliance on fast‐and‐frugal heuristics for various environments used in prominent studies. Furthermore, our results indicate that the magnitude of this overestimation is contingent on the structure of the environment so that strategy selection is mimicked without any material basis. As a result, even completely rational individuals would be erroneously classified as adaptive users of simple strategies. We recommend that chance corrected implementations of weighted compensatory strategies should be included in all future studies investigating the usage of adaptive strategies and argue that comprehensive re‐analyses of previous work are warranted. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 14, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1983   open full text
• Cultural Variations in Reasons for Advice Seeking.
  Li‐Jun Ji, Ning Zhang, Ye Li, Zhiyong Zhang, Gillian Harper, Mark Khei, Jie Li.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 03, 2016
  Five studies examined cultural differences in reasons for advice‐seeking behaviors. Content analyses in Study 1A and self‐ratings in Study 1B consistently revealed that Euro‐Canadians were more likely than East Asians (mainly Chinese) to seek advice for informational reasons, whereas East Asians were more likely than Euro‐Canadians to seek advice for relational reasons. Study 2A showed that Chinese displayed a higher level of relationship concern than Euro‐Canadians in deciding from whom to seek advice in a decision dilemma. Study 2B found that, although Chinese and Euro‐Canadians did not differ from each other on willingness to pay for informational advice, Chinese were willing to pay more for building a relationship with the advisor through advice seeking than Euro‐Canadians were. Study 3 explored how the advice giver might perceive an advice seeker in terms of their competence and the closeness of their relationship after advice was sought for various reasons. We found that relationally oriented advice seeking increased the perceived competence of the advice seeker among Chinese more than among Euro‐Canadians. Information‐oriented advice seeking increased the perceived closeness between the advice seeker and advice giver among Chinese more than among Euro‐Canadians. Implications for other aspects of advice exchange are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1995   open full text
• Scrutinizing the Emotional Nature of Intuitive Coherence Judgments.
  Thea Zander, Ana L. Fernandez Cruz, Martin P. Winkelmann, Kirsten G. Volz.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 23, 2016
  Dual‐system models propose that cognitive processing can occur either intuitively or deliberately. Unlike deliberate decision strategies, intuitive ones are assumed to have an emotional component attached to the decision process. We tested if intuitive decisions are indeed accompanied by an emotional response while deliberate decisions are not. Specifically, we conducted a psychophysiological study in which participants were instructed to decide either intuitively or deliberately if three simultaneously presented words were semantically coherent or incoherent (triad task). The degree of emotionality of these two decision strategies (intuitive vs. deliberate) was compared using changes in electrodermal activity (EDA) and the reaction time (RT) effect of an affective priming paradigm as primary measurements. Based on a valence‐arousal model, our results revealed that intuitive and deliberate judgments do not differ as to their emotional valence but that they do differ in emotional arousal. Most notably, sympathetic activation during intuitive judgments was significantly lower compared to sympathetic activation during deliberate judgments. Our results reflect that a relaxed state of mind—manifested in low sympathetic activity—could underlie the holistic processing that is assumed to facilitate the proliferation of semantic associations during coherence judgments. This suggests that coherence judgments made under an (instructed) intuitive decision mode have a specific psychophysiological signature and that arousal is the differentiating component between intuitive and deliberate decision strategies. © 2016 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  September 23, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1982   open full text
• Embracing Chance Tactically: A Different Perspective on Risk Taking.
  Orit E. Tykocinski, Inbal Amir, Shahar Ayal.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 26, 2016
  Although they value certainty, people are willing to take risks to avoid losses. Consequently, they are risk‐seeking in the domain of losses but risk‐avoidant in the domain of gains. This behavior, frequently demonstrated in framing experiments, is traditionally explained in terms of prospect theory. We suggest a different account whereby involving chance in one's decisions may serve a strategic impression‐formation function. In the domain of losses actors may embrace chance to distance themselves from the outcomes and deflect possible blame. Given potential gains, however, actors may avoid uncertainty to enhance their association with valued outcomes. We test this idea by manipulating the level of actors' personal responsibility for the decision outcomes. The results of four studies consistently showed that when personal responsibility is high, the original framing effect is replicated (i.e., greater risk‐taking when choices are framed in terms of losses rather than gains). However, when because of assigned role or decision circumstances, actors experience low personal responsibility for the outcomes, and the classic framing effect is eliminated. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 26, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1981   open full text
• Stress and Risky Decision Making: Cognitive Reflection, Emotional Learning or Both.
  Boban Simonovic, Edward J. N. Stupple, Maggie Gale, David Sheffield.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 19, 2016
  Stressful situations hinder judgement. Effects of stress induced by anticipated public speaking on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) were examined. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) was used to examine the relationship between reflective thinking and IGT performance. The stress manipulation increased blood pressure and was associated with poorer IGT and CRT performance. Stressed participants were slower to avoid the disadvantageous decks. Moreover, CRT scores correlated with optimal deck selections indicating the importance of reflective thinking for good performance on the IGT. These correlations were observed in relatively early trials, which challenges the view that analytic thinking is not important when card contingencies are being learned. Data revealed that IGT performance in healthy individuals is not always optimal; stress levels impair performance. A mediation analysis was consistent with the proposal that the stress manipulation reduced IGT performance by impeding reflective thinking. Thus, reflective processing is an important explanation of IGT performance in healthy populations. It was concluded that more reflective participants appear to learn from the outcomes of their decisions even when stressed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 19, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1980   open full text
• How Well Do We Know Our Inner Daredevil? Probing the Relationship Between Self‐Report and Behavioral Measures of Risk Taking.
  Jonathan J. Rolison, Thorsten Pachur.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 10, 2016
  To measure a person's risk‐taking tendency, research has relied interchangeably on self‐report scales (e.g., “Indicate your likelihood of engaging in the risky behavior”) and more direct measures, such as behavioral tasks (e.g., “Do you accept or reject the risky option?”). It is currently unclear, however, how the two approaches map upon each other. We examined the relationship between self‐report likelihood ratings for risky choice in a monetary gamble task and actual choice, and tested how the relationship is affected by task ambiguity (i.e., when part of the information about risks and benefits is missing) and age. Five hundred participants (aged 19–85 years) were presented with 27 gambles, either in an unambiguous or an ambiguous condition. In a likelihood rating task, participants rated for each gamble the likelihood that they would accept it. In a separate choice task, they were asked to either accept or reject each gamble. Analyses using a signal‐detection approach showed that people's likelihood ratings discriminated between accept and reject cases in their choices rather well. However, task ambiguity weakened the association between likelihood ratings and choice. Further, older adults' likelihood ratings anticipated their choices more poorly than younger adults'. We discuss implications of these findings for existing approaches to the study of risk‐taking propensity, which have often relied on self‐reported risk tendency for ambiguous activities. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 10, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1979   open full text
• The Gist of Delay of Gratification: Understanding and Predicting Problem Behaviors.
  Valerie F. Reyna, Evan A. Wilhelms.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 10, 2016
  Delay of gratification captures elements of temptation and self‐denial that characterize real‐life problems with money and other problem behaviors such as unhealthy risk taking. According to fuzzy‐trace theory, decision makers mentally represent social values such as delay of gratification in a coarse but meaningful form of memory called “gist.” Applying this theory, we developed a gist measure of delay of gratification that does not involve quantitative trade‐offs (as delay discounting does) and hypothesize that this construct explains unique variance beyond sensation seeking and inhibition in accounting for problem behaviors. Across four studies, we examine this Delay‐of‐gratification Gist Scale by using principal components analyses and evaluating convergent and divergent validity with other potentially related scales such as Future Orientation, Propensity to Plan, Time Perspectives Inventory, Spendthrift‐Tightwad, Sensation Seeking, Cognitive Reflection, Barratt Impulsiveness, and the Monetary Choice Questionnaire (delay discounting). The new 12‐item measure captured a single dimension of delay of gratification, correlated as predicted with other scales, but accounted for unique variance in predicting such outcomes as overdrawing bank accounts, substance abuse, and overall subjective well‐being. Results support a theoretical distinction between reward‐related approach motivation, including sensation seeking, and inhibitory faculties, including cognitive reflection. However, individuals' agreement with the qualitative gist of delay of gratification, as expressed in many cultural traditions, could not be reduced to such dualist distinctions nor to quantitative conceptions of delay discounting, shedding light on mechanisms of self‐control and risk taking. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 10, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1977   open full text
• Race for Power in Public Good Games with Unequal, Unstable Punishment Power.
  Angela Dorrough, Andreas Glöckner, Borah Lee.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 10, 2016
  Decentralized punishment can maintain contributions to a public good at a high level. This positive effect holds even for situations involving inequality in punishment power, meaning that the relative costs for punishment differ between persons. We extend this line of research by examining the additional influence of instability of and thus potential competition for punishment power in public good experiments. As in previous research, inequality is operationalized by assigning the role of a ‘strong player’ to one group member, who can punish others at a reduced cost compared to other players. Instability is operationalized by the fact that the role assignment can change across rounds and is contingent on behavior in previous rounds. Three experiments show that under unequal, unstable (punishment‐) power, individuals behave more competitively and engage in a race for power resulting in detrimental effects for the group. Specifically, we find that (i) unstable power goes along with a disproportionate use of punishment; (ii) not inequality by itself but rather the combination of instability and inequality causes this effect; and (iii) this excessive use of punishment is found not only when the role of the strong player is assigned to individuals who previously behaved rather selfishly but also when prosocial behavior leads to the top, speaking for a generalizability of our findings. Implications for organizational settings are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 10, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1976   open full text
• Reconciling Compensatory and Noncompensatory Strategies of Cue Weighting: A Causal Model Approach.
  Abigail B. Sussman, Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Matthew M. LaMonaca.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 08, 2016
  When forming a judgment about any unknown item, people must draw inferences from information that is already known. This paper examines causal relationships between cues as a relevant factor influencing how people determine the amount of weight to place on each piece of available evidence. We propose that people draw from their beliefs about specific causal relationships between cues when determining how much weight to place on those cues, and that understanding this process can help reconcile differences between predictions of compensatory and lexicographic heuristic strategies. As causal relationships change, different cues become more or less important. Across three experiments, we find support for the use of causal models in determining cue weights, but leave open the possibility that they work in concert with other strategies as well. We conclude by discussing relative strengths and weaknesses of the causal model approach relative to existing models, and suggest areas for future research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 08, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1978   open full text
• Social Value Orientation Moderates the Effects of Intuition versus Reflection on Responses to Unfair Ultimatum Offers.
  Maik Bieleke, Peter M. Gollwitzer, Gabriele Oettingen, Urs Fischbacher.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 03, 2016
  We investigated whether social value orientation (SVO) moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective information processing on responses to unfair offers. We measured SVO one week prior to an ultimatum game experiment in which participants had to accept or reject a series of 10 ultimatum offers including very low (unfair) ones. Before making these decisions, participants mentally contrasted their individual goals with the obstacle of pondering at length or acting in a hasty way; then they made the plan to adopt an intuitive or a reflective mode of processing (intuitive and reflective condition, respectively), or made no such plans (control condition). Participants with rather high (prosocial) SVO scores were more likely to accept unfair offers in the reflective than the intuitive condition. This effect also evinced for a subset of selfish individuals; however, the majority with rather low (selfish) scores made similar decisions in both conditions. This pattern of results suggests that SVO moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective modes of processing on responses to low ultimatum offers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1975   open full text
• Real‐World Correlates of Performance on Heuristics and Biases Tasks in a Community Sample.
  Maggie E. Toplak, Richard F. West, Keith E. Stanovich.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 02, 2016
  In the current study, we sought to examine whether performance on several heuristics and biases tasks and thinking dispositions was associated with real‐life correlates in a community sample of adults. We examined performance on five heuristics and biases tasks (ratio bias, belief bias in syllogistic reasoning, cognitive reflection, probabilistic and statistical reasoning, and rational temporal discounting), three thinking dispositions (actively open‐minded thinking, future orientation, and avoidance of superstitious thinking), and a questionnaire assessing real‐world correlates in several domains (substance use, driving behavior, financial behavior, gambling behavior, electronic media use, and secure computing). Our heuristics and biases tasks and thinking disposition measures were modestly associated with several real‐world outcomes, including the domains of secure computing, financial behaviors, and the total scores. That is, better performance on the heuristics and biases measures was associated with fewer negative outcomes. We found that the associations were generally higher in males than in females. Heuristics and biases performance and thinking dispositions were unique predictors of real‐world outcomes after statistically controlling for educational attainment and sex differences. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 02, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1973   open full text
• The Reinforcing Value of Lottery Tickets, and the Synergetic Effect of Distinct Reinforcements.
  Adi Luria, Ido Erev, Ernan Haruvy.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 01, 2016
  We present two experiments that explore the reinforcing value of lottery tickets. Participants are faced with a repeated choice task between a safe alternative and a risky prospect that provides a chance to win a lottery ticket to be played at the end of the study. Study 1 considers situations in which the risky option leads to a slightly higher expected value than the safe alternative. It shows that the risk‐taking rate increases with the probability to win the lottery ticket, but it is below 50% even when this probability is high. Study 2 shows limited sensitivity to the expected value of the risky prospect. The results can be explained with the assumption that participants rely on small samples of past experiences, and that their reaction to lottery tickets reflects large variability. The relationship between the current results and previous research on the synergetic effect of distinct reinforcements and the “pat on the back paradox” is discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 01, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1972   open full text
• The Enhancing Effect of Overconfidence on Subsequent Learning Performance: Potential Mediation Effects of Dissatisfaction and Effort.
  Yanling Bi, Pei Liu, Shu Li, Baoshan Zhang.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 29, 2016
  Three studies were conducted to investigate whether individuals whose performance on a learning task fell short of their previous overconfident self‐assessment would apply more effort on a subsequent task to resolve their dissatisfaction and thereby achieve better subsequent performance than individuals who made accurate or underconfident self‐assessments. Specifically, Study 1 and Study 2 used overestimation, and Study 3 used overplacement to predict subsequent performance by measuring students' self‐assessments before the first task, their level of dissatisfaction with their actual performance on that task, the effort they applied in learning, and their performance on the subsequent task. Furthermore, Study 3 divided the participants randomly into a false feedback group (the control group) and a real feedback group (the experimental group). The results showed that when controlling for prior performance, participants who were more overconfident tended to express greater dissatisfaction and increase more effort to achieve their desired outcomes when they perceived a gap between their desired performance and their actual performance. Notably, they achieved better subsequent performance, whereas those in the control group who were overconfident neither applied more effort in subsequent learning nor increased their subsequent performance when they received “unbiased feedback.” The implications of these findings for education are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 29, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1974   open full text
• Revisiting the Effects of Anger on Risk‐Taking: Empirical and Meta‐Analytic Evidence for Differences Between Males and Females.
  Rebecca A. Ferrer, Alexander Maclay, Paul M. Litvak, Jennifer S. Lerner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 05, 2016
  That anger elicited in one situation can carry over to drive risky behavior in another situation has been described since the days of Aristotle. The present studies examine the mechanisms through which and the conditions under which such behavior occurs. Across three experiments, as well as a meta‐analytic synthesis of the data, results reveal that incidental anger is significantly more likely to drive risky decision making among males than among females. Moreover, the experiments document that, under certain circumstances, such risk‐taking pays off financially. Indeed, the present experiments demonstrate that, because the expected‐value‐maximizing strategy in these studies rewarded risk‐taking, angry‐male individuals earned more money than did both neutral‐emotion males and angry females. In sum, these studies found evidence for robust disparities between males and females for anger‐driven risk‐taking. Importantly, although men did not experience more anger than women, they did show a heightened tendency to respond to anger with risk‐taking. Published 2016. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.

  July 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1971   open full text
• Encouraging Prosocial Decisions: The Role of Fairness Salience and Uncertainty.
  Dustin J. Sleesman, Donald E. Conlon.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 14, 2016
  Although the decision to engage in prosocial behavior has received research attention, the literature offers a limited understanding of fairness and uncertainty as antecedents. We propose that one can encourage prosocial decision making simply by invoking the notion of fairness because of its effects on the perceived trustworthiness of the invoking party. We also elucidate the complex role of uncertainty in prosocial decisions in that it has a negative effect while also serving to strengthen the positive effect of fairness salience. Our ideas are tested in two prosocial decision contexts, including participative pricing (i.e., “pay what you want”) and charitable giving. Data from an archival study of a naturally occurring event and two controlled experiments offer support for our arguments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 14, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1970   open full text
• Reciprocating (More) Specifically to You: The Role of Benefactor's Identifiability on Direct and Upstream Reciprocity.
  Eliran Halali, Tehila Kogut, Ilana Ritov.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 13, 2016
  Research suggests that benefiting from someone's voluntary, intentional, costly effort encourages reciprocal prosocial behavior, as well as promoting upstream reciprocity, that is, increases reciprocal actions by the recipient for the benefit of an unrelated third party. The current study examines the role of the identifiability of the benefactor in determining the extent to which people engage in direct and upstream reciprocity. Results of three studies reveal that while an identified benefactor tends to engender greater direct reciprocal reactions than an unidentified one, this strong reaction toward the identified benefactor does not hold to the same extent when upstream reciprocity is considered (regardless of identification of the third party). On the other hand, when the benefactor is unidentified, levels of direct and upstream reciprocity remain similar. Moderated‐mediation analysis suggests that ethical commitment associated with the universal norm of reciprocity explains the decrease in prosociality between reactions toward the benefactor himself or herself and toward a third party under the identified condition. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 13, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1966   open full text
• When Sharing Is Not Caring: Does (un)Certainty About Bill Payment Method Lead Diners to Consume More and Spend More Money?
  Yaniv Shani.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 02, 2016
  Previous work has demonstrated that unacquainted participants in an experimental, restaurant‐like setting consume more when they know in advance that the bill will be split evenly rather than paid according to individual consumption. Real life, however, often differs from these experimental settings in two important ways. First, unlike random groups of participants, diners who eat together are frequently friends or colleagues. Second, payment method (even vs. individual payment) is usually unknown (i.e. uncertain) at the time people place their orders, and is determined when the check arrives. The current research tests the ecological validity of the association between consumption amount and payment method. Study 1 was conducted in a natural setting with organic groups of diners. Some were asked to state their desired payment method before ordering (Certain condition); others did so only after asking for the check (Uncertain condition). In both conditions, even payment (as opposed to individual payment) was associated with greater consumption amount. However, overall, consumption amount was lower among diners in the Uncertain condition than among those in the Certain condition. Study 2 presents a controlled follow‐up experiment showing that eliminating diners' prior expectations regarding the payment method—by informing them that the payment method will be randomly determined after the consumption decision—eliminates the relationship between payment method and consumption amount. This study further indicates that when diners are uncertain what the payment method will be, even bill‐splitting has negative implications for their subsequent social interactions, expressed in retribution tendencies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 02, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1963   open full text
• Decision Making in Environments with Non‐Independent Dimensions.
  Sudeep Bhatia.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 01, 2016
  This paper tests whether the dimensions involved in preferential choice tasks are evaluated independently from one another. Common decision heuristics satisfy dimensional independence, and multi‐strategy models that assume that decision makers use a repertoire of these heuristics predict that they are unable to represent and respond to dimensional dependencies in the decision environment. In contrast, some single‐strategy models are able to violate dimensional independence, and subsequently adapt to environments that feature interacting dimensions. Across five experiments, this paper documents systematic violations of the assumption of dimensional independence. This suggests that decision makers are able to modify their behavior to respond to dimensional dependencies in their environment, and in turn those models that are unable to do this do not provide a full account of human strategy selection and behavior change. This paper ends with a discussion of ways in which some existing models can be modified to incorporate violations of dimensional independence. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 01, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1964   open full text
• For the Win: Risk‐Sensitive Decision‐Making in Teams.
  Josh Gonzales, Sandeep Mishra, Ronald D. Camp.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 01, 2016
  Risk‐sensitivity theory predicts that decision‐makers should prefer high‐risk options in high need situations when low‐risk options will not meet these needs. Recent attempts to adopt risk‐sensitivity as a framework for understanding human decision‐making have been promising. However, this research has focused on individual‐level decision‐making, has not examined behavior in naturalistic settings, and has not examined the influence of multiple levels of need on decision‐making under risk. We examined group‐level risk‐sensitive decision‐making in two American football leagues: the National Football League (NFL) and the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Play decisions from the 2012 NFL (Study 1; N = 33 944), 2013 NFL (Study 2; N = 34 087), and 2012 NCAA (Study 3; N = 15 250) regular seasons were analyzed. Results demonstrate that teams made risk‐sensitive decisions based on two distinct needs: attaining first downs (a key proximate goal in football) and acquiring points above parity. Evidence for risk‐sensitive decisions was particularly strong when motivational needs were most salient. These findings are the first empirical demonstration of team risk‐sensitivity in a naturalistic organizational setting. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 01, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1965   open full text
• How Fragile Is Conditional Cooperation? A Field Experiment with Smartphones during the 2014 Soccer World Cup.
  Johann Graf Lambsdorff, Marcus Giamattei, Katharina Werner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 01, 2016
  We conducted an experiment in a highly cooperative environment to find out how a disruption, similar to a broken window, affects behavior. A centipede game was framed as a game of soccer and run with smartphones during a soccer public viewing event, that is, a Bavarian beer garden with a large screen displaying a soccer game. We provided some subjects with information that was supportive to cooperation and others with disruptive information, aimed at inducing a broken window effect. The disruption reduced the willingness to cooperate at the final stage of the game. But expectations regarding teammates remained unaffected such that cooperation at earlier stages remained high. Cooperation is thus not as fragile as one might fear. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 01, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1968   open full text
• The Spreading of Alternatives: Is it the Perceived Choice or Actual Choice that Changes our Preference?
  Jiayi Luo, Rongjun Yu.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 31, 2016
  After making a difficult choice, the preference rating of a chosen alternative tends to increase, and the rating of the rejected one tends to decrease. Such a change of preference is called spreading of alternatives. It is unclear whether it is the choice itself, or the choice one believes one has made that leads to preference change. Using a facial attractiveness task, we addressed this question by setting up an experiment to measure how the actual choice and perceived choice changed the preference. In the current study, participants first rated the attractiveness of female faces, and then made a choice between two faces that they had rated the same, after which, they re‐rated the female faces. Notably, in the re‐rating session, participants were given either veridical, false, or no feedback about their prior choice. This way, we were able to measure the functions of actual choice and perceived choice in rating changes. Results showed that both actual action and perceived action exert significant influence in shaping preference. The veridical feedback enhanced the spreading of alternatives effect whereas the false feedback weakened this effect, indicating that preference can be modulated by explicit manipulation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 31, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1967   open full text
• Alternative Lens Model Equations for Dichotomous Judgments about Dichotomous Criteria.
  Robert M. Hamm, Huiqin Yang.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 31, 2016
  The Brunswik lens model typically represents a judge's accuracy using parameters derived from linear regression. This is not optimal if the judgment or the ecological criterion is dichotomous. Alternative approaches, modeling dichotomies using logistic regression, or linearizing judgments with confidence ratings, have not been compared with the same data. Four techniques for deriving lens model equation parameters were compared: (i) linear and (ii) logistic regression applied to dichotomous patient outcomes and judgments; (iii) linear regression with confidence‐adjusted judgments but dichotomous patient outcomes; and (iv) a hybrid with a linear model of the confidence‐adjusted judgments and a logistic model of the patient outcomes. Judgment accuracy (ra) was slightly higher with confidence adjustment of the categorical judgments. The logistic lens model accounted for a higher proportion of ra than the linear lens model; the confident‐linear and hybrid lens models were intermediate. For up to a quarter of participants, different methods identified different cues as most important. Display condition differences in achievement ra and in lens model components are similar with all lens model methods. Each of the three alternative lens model equation methods improves on the linear lens model equation's decomposition of the accuracy of dichotomous judgments. Confidence adjustment improves achievement although it requires additional work from the subjects. The logistic lens model equation explains the highest proportion of achievement, but with a small stimulus set, it is more vulnerable to cue intercorrelations than either the linear or the confident linear lens model equation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 31, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1969   open full text
• The Average Fuel‐Efficiency Fallacy: Overestimation of Average Fuel Efficiency and How It Can Lead to Biased Decisions.
  Eyal Gamliel, Eyal Peer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 31, 2016
  People falsely believe that equal increases in vehicles' fuel efficiency (e.g., miles per gallon (MPG)) will result in equal fuel savings. Whereas previous research on this “MPG illusion” has focused on people's biased choices of upgrading vehicle models, it has not examined a more common situation, namely, estimating a given vehicle's fuel efficiency based on the average of two efficiency values (e.g., in the city and on highways). In such situations, we find an additional bias in people's judgment and choice, the average fuel‐efficiency fallacy, in which people falsely believe that the combined fuel efficiency (e.g., of city and highway MPG) is a simple—instead of a harmonic—mean of the two values. Owing to the curvilinear relationship between fuel efficiency and fuel consumption, the combined fuel‐efficiency value would always be lower than the simple average, resulting in consistent overestimations of the actual fuel efficiency. In a series of studies, we demonstrate how this fallacy of overestimating combined fuel efficiency leads to suboptimal choices between vehicles. In addition, we find that the solution prescribed for the MPG illusion—using gallons per 100 miles—does reduce, but not eliminate, the average fuel‐efficiency fallacy, and that comprehension of the gallons per 100 miles measure is a precursory condition for this nudge to have any effect. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 31, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1961   open full text
• A Dual‐Process Diffusion Model.
  Carlos Alós‐Ferrer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 03, 2016
  This paper presents a simple formal analytical model delivering qualitative predictions for response times in binary‐choice experiments. It combines a dual‐process/multi‐strategy approach with the standard diffusion model, modeling a utility decision process and a heuristic decision process as diffusion processes of evidence accumulation. For experiments with objective alternatives (including many tasks in judgment and decision making), the model predicts that errors will be quicker than correct responses in case of process conflict and slower in case of alignment, capturing a well‐documented asymmetry regarding slow or fast errors. Further, the model also predicts that correct responses are slower in case of conflict than in case of alignment, capturing the well‐known Stroop effect. The model is also extended to cover experiments with subjective alternative evaluations, that is, preferential choice. In this case, results depend on whether trials are hard or easy, that is, on whether the heuristic can be interpreted as relatively automatic or not. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1960   open full text
• Strategy Selection Versus Strategy Blending: A Predictive Perspective on Single‐ and Multi‐Strategy Accounts in Multiple‐Cue Estimation.
  Stefan M. Herzog, Bettina Helversen.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 25, 2016
  The claim that a person can use different strategies or processes to solve the same task is pervasive in decision making, categorization, estimation, reasoning, and other research fields. Yet such multi‐strategy approaches differ widely in how they envision that the different strategies are coordinated and therefore do not represent one unitary approach. Toolbox models, for example, assume that people shift from one strategy to another as they adapt to specific task environments based on past experience. Unlike such multi‐strategy selection approaches, multi‐strategy blending approaches assume that the outputs of different strategies are blended into a joint, hybrid response (i.e., “wisdom of strategies” in one mind). The goal of this article is twofold. First, we discuss strategy blending as a conceptual alternative to strategy selection for modeling human judgment. Second, we investigate the predictive performance of the different approaches in synthetic and real‐world environments. Taking a normative perspective, we study the coordination of rule‐based and exemplar‐based processes in estimation tasks. Our simulations using synthetic and real‐world environments indicate that, for medium‐sized samples, multi‐strategy blending approaches lead to more accurate estimates than relying on a single strategy or selecting a strategy based on past experience—possibly because neither rule‐ nor exemplar‐based processes in isolation are sufficient to capture statistical regularities that enable accurate estimates. This suggests that multi‐strategy blending approaches can be advantageous to the degree that they rely on qualitatively different strategies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 25, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1958   open full text
• Modeling Between‐Subject Variability in Decision Strategies via Statistical Clustering: A p‐Median Approach.
  Nicholas Brown, Sanghyuk Park, Douglas Steinley, Clintin P. Davis‐Stober.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 22, 2016
  We present a statistical methodology for clustering decision makers according to similar choice behavior. We apply a p‐median clustering algorithm that identifies an “exemplar” for each cluster, a decision maker who best represents that cluster. We demonstrate that information about group behavior can be inferred by examining the behavior of each cluster's exemplar. The method is exploratory, providing information about the prevalence of decision strategies without researchers needing to specify candidate strategies a priori. The method is also very general and can be applied to a wide range of decision‐making data structures. We illustrate our method by re‐analyzing two existing choice data sets. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1957   open full text
• Should Versus Want: On the Relative Contribution of Injunctive Norms and Preferences on Trust Decisions.
  Isabel Thielmann, Benjamin E. Hilbig.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 22, 2016
  Despite much research on the determinants of trust among strangers, its mechanisms are understood only rudimentarily. Recently, it has been proposed that people trust strangers because they believe they should, thus complying with an injunctive norm even if it conflicts with their preferences. However, given the boldness of this claim and in light of independent arguments and earlier findings that suggest otherwise, the hypothesis requires critical scrutiny. Thus, we tested whether the decision to trust (in the trust game) is indeed more strongly driven by what people think they should entrust rather than what they want to entrust in two studies. We consistently found a stronger influence of “want” than of “should” on trust decisions even when controlling for the fairness aspect inherent in the trust game. Thus, our findings speak against a predominant role of injunctive norms for trust behavior and confirm that the latter is mostly driven by preferences. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1962   open full text
• Safety in Numbers: Why the Mere Physical Presence of Others Affects Risk‐taking Behaviors.
  Eileen Y. Chou, Loran F. Nordgren.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 22, 2016
  As social mammals, being in a group signals a state of relative security. Risk‐taking behavior in other social mammals formed the basis for our prediction that the mere physical presence of others, absent any social interaction, would create a psychological state of security that, in turn, would promote greater risk‐taking behavior. We investigated whether, why, and when the mere physical presence of others affects risk‐taking behaviors in three contexts: acceptance of greater financial volatility, attitudes toward risky gambles, and actual gambling behaviors. Results indicate that people in the mere physical presence of others make riskier decisions than people making identical decisions alone, and that feelings of security were the psychological mechanism behind this effect. Our results also suggest that the effect is contingent on whether people are surrounded by others who belong to the same social group. A meta‐analysis across all studies presented in this research reveals a highly reliable mere‐presence effect. Together, these results demonstrate that the mere physical presence of others can have a potent impact on risk‐taking behaviors. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1959   open full text
• Structure of the Dospert: Is There Evidence for a General Risk Factor?
  Scott Highhouse, Christopher D. Nye, Don C. Zhang, Thaddeus B. Rada.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 05, 2016
  The Domain‐specific Risk‐taking scale was designed to assess risk taking in specific domains. This approach is unconventional in personality assessment but reflects conventional wisdom in the decision community that cross‐situational consistency in risk taking is more myth than reality. We applied bifactor analysis to a large sample (n = 921) of responses to the Domain‐specific Risk Taking. Results showed that, in addition to domain‐specific facets, there does appear to be evidence for a general risk‐taking disposition. And this general appetite for risk appears to be useful for predicting real‐world outcomes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1953   open full text
• The Selection of Freebies and the Preference for Freebie Promotions—A Perspective on Item Characteristics.
  Hsin‐Hsien Liu, Hsuan‐Yi Chou.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 01, 2016
  Research on consumer decision making has mainly focused on individual products; however, many products are purchased with other items as part of a promotional package. This paper explores how the characteristics (hedonic versus utilitarian) of the items in freebie promotional packages (e.g., buy one item and get a different item for free) influence consumers' preference for the promotional package. Additionally, the authors examine how the characteristics of the focal item influence consumers' choice of either a hedonic or a utilitarian freebie item. Five experiments, rooted in the concepts of consumer avoidance of overloading negative emotions and motivation to seek hedonic pleasure, show that a package with one utilitarian and one hedonic item generates higher purchase intentions and willingness to pay than a package with either two hedonic or two utilitarian items. Furthermore, consumers who purchase a hedonic (utilitarian) focal item are more likely to choose a utilitarian (hedonic) freebie. These effects exist not only in hypothetical scenarios but also in an incentive‐compatible design. Moreover, the impact of the focal item characteristics on consumer choice of freebie is moderated by acquisition format and time separation. The authors also explore the internal mechanism influencing consumers' freebie choices. The findings have significant implications for both theory and practice. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 01, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1955   open full text
• An Expectancy Theory Approach to Group Coordination: Expertise, Task Features, and Member Behavior.
  Michael R. Baumann, Bryan L. Bonner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 01, 2016
  Working in a group requires coordination. The current paper examines coordination in terms of member‐level behavioral choices. Extending expectancy theory to a collaborative group setting, we interpret past findings on expertise and hypothesize that component features (specifically their difficulty and worth relative to each other) impact member behavior and hence coordination both directly and by moderating the role of expertise. Findings were largely as predicted, suggesting that an expectancy theory perspective may be a useful tool for the study and understanding of coordination. An exploratory examination of recordings of group interaction suggested that although most of our groups discussed coordination strategies, the strategies discussed did not generally map to the behavioral choices observed. Implications for coordination in general and transactive memory specifically are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 01, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1954   open full text
• The Effects of Expertise on the Hindsight Bias.
  Melissa A. Z. Knoll, Hal R. Arkes.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 29, 2016
  We present data from three experiments examining the effects of objective and subjective expertise on the hindsight bias. In Experiment 1, participants read an essay about baseball or dogs and then answered questions about the baseball essay to the best of their ability, as if they had not read the essay, or to the best of their ability, although they read about dogs. Participants also completed a quiz about baseball rules and terminology, which was an objective measure of expertise. Results demonstrated that as participants' baseball expertise increased, their inability to act as if they never read the essay also increased; expertise exacerbated the hindsight bias. To test the effects of subjective expertise on hindsight bias and investigate factors underlying the relationship, participants in Experiment 2 ranked five topics in order of expertise and gave feeling‐of‐knowing (FOK) ratings for questions from these topics. Foresight participants then saw each question again and answered the questions; hindsight participants saw the questions and answers and gave the probability they would have known the answers had they not been provided. Hindsight bias increased with subjective expertise as did average FOK ratings. In Experiment 3, we experimentally manipulated perceived expertise but found that neither average FOK ratings nor hindsight bias was affected by experimentally induced expertise. Taken together, the results demonstrate that expertise exacerbates both objective and subjective hindsight bias but that an FOK, which likely exists only when expertise is naturally acquired, is necessary to engender the detrimental effect of expertise on the hindsight bias. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 29, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1950   open full text
• The Effect of Emotion on Visual Attention to Information and Decision Making in the Context of Informed Consent Process for Clinical Trials.
  Rebecca A. Ferrer, Jennifer Tehan Stanley, Kaitlin Graff, William M. P. Klein, Nina Goodman, Wendy L. Nelson, Silvia Salazar.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 28, 2016
  The aim of this study was to examine the influence of emotion on visual information processing and decision making in the context of informed consent. Researchers are ethically obligated to ensure informed consent in clinical trials; however, many volunteers have unrealistic expectations about the value of an experimental therapy. Moreover, suboptimal participation rates for clinical trials may be partially attributable to perceptions that ethical obligations to volunteers are not met. This study examines whether discrete negative emotions (fear, anger, and sadness) differentially influence information processing, visual attention, and decisions in the context of clinical trial informed consent. Community participants completed a standard emotion induction (or control) and then read an actual consent form from a clinical trial while eye movements were tracked. Fear and anger produced the most prominently different patterns of systematic processing and visual attention, such that fear induced longer fixations to information presented, whereas anger induced shorter fixations. Moreover, among women only, fear increased decisions to participate, compared with anger and neutral emotion. Examinations of associations between eye‐tracking variables and self‐reported outcomes indicated that for angry participants only, less systematic processing was associated with greater decisions to participate. Negative emotions of any kind decreased accurate perceptions of trial benefit. These patterns suggest a complex interplay among emotion, processing style, and decision making. Future research is necessary to further probe these effects among potential clinical trial volunteers. Published 2016. This article is a U.S Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

  March 28, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1871   open full text
• Improving Accuracy on Bayesian Inference Problems Using a Brief Tutorial.
  Alaina N. Talboy, Sandra L. Schneider.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 15, 2016
  Research suggests that most people struggle when asked to interpret the outcomes of diagnostic tests such as those presented as Bayesian inference problems. To help people interpret these difficult problems, we created a brief tutorial, requiring less than 10 minutes, that guided participants through the creation of an aid (either graph or table) based on an example inference problem and then showed the correct way to calculate the positive predictive value of the problem (i.e., likelihood that positive tests correctly indicate presence of condition). Approximately 70% of those in each training condition found the correct response on at least one problem in the format for which they were trained. Just under 55% of those in the control condition (i.e., no training) were able to find the correct response on at least one table or graph problem. We demonstrated a relationship between numeracy and performance on both problem formats, although we did not find evidence for a relationship between graph literacy and performance for either problem format. Potential improvements to and applications of the tutorial are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 15, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1949   open full text
• Individual Differences in Delay Discounting: Differences are Quantitative with Gains, but Qualitative with Losses.
  Joel Myerson, Ana A. Baumann, Leonard Green.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 07, 2016
  Research on delay discounting and inter‐temporal choice has yielded significant insights into decision making. Although research has focused on delayed gains, the discounting of losses is potentially important in precisely those areas where the discounting of gains has proved informative (e.g., substance use and abuse). Participants in the current study completed both a questionnaire consisting of choices between immediate and delayed gains and an analogous questionnaire consisting of choices between immediate and delayed losses. For almost all participants, the likelihood of choosing the delayed gain decreased with increases in the wait until it would be received. In contrast, when losses (i.e., payments) were involved, different participants showed quite different patterns of choices. More specifically, although the majority of the participants became increasingly likely to choose to pay later as the delay was increased, some participants appeared to be debt averse, in that they were more likely to choose the immediate payment option when the delay was long than when it was brief. These debt‐averse participants also were more likely to choose to wait for a larger delayed gain than other participants and scored lower on Impulsiveness than those who showed the typical pattern of discounting delayed losses. Taken together, these results suggest that in the case of delayed gains, people differ only quantitatively (i.e., in how steeply they discount), whereas in the case of delayed losses, people differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively, contrary to the common assumption that a single impulsivity trait underlies choices between immediate and delayed outcomes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 07, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1947   open full text
• Causal Reasoning Under Ambiguity: An Illustration of Modeling Mixture Strategies.
  Yiyun Shou, Michael Smithson.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 02, 2016
  Causal reasoning with ambiguous observations requires subjects to estimate and evaluate the ambiguous observations. Detecting how people process ambiguous observations can be complicated by individual differences in causal reasoning. This paper proposes a hierarchical model that accounts for the uncertainty in both the distribution of the functional form selection and the distribution of the ambiguity treatment selection. The model provides an alternative to self‐report measures for identifying subjects' strategic choices in reasoning about causal relationships under ambiguity. The posterior distribution of the causal estimates is determined by both the functional form and the ambiguity processing strategy adopted by the reasoner. Our model is tested in a simulation study where it demonstrates its ability to recover the strategies and functional forms adopted by simulated subjects across a range of hypothetical conditions. In addition, the model is applied to the results of an experimental study. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 02, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1948   open full text
• Priming Risky Choice: Do Risk Preferences Need Inferences?
  Ben R. Newell, Brad Shaw.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 24, 2016
  The notion that subtle influences, often falling outside awareness, can bias behaviour has a strong grip on both theoretical perspectives and the public imagination. We report three experiments that examined this idea in the context of risky choice. Experiment 1 (N = 100) appeared to find evidence for an interaction whereby participants primed but not reminded of the prime showed an assimilation effect (e.g. participants primed to be risk seeking became more risk seeking) whereas those who were primed and reminded showed a contrast effect (e.g. became less risk seeking). However, two further experiments (N = 180, N = 128) failed to find any evidence for this interaction, and none of the experiments found evidence for the asymmetry in awareness predicted by an ‘unconscious’ assimilation but ‘conscious’ contrast account. The data were analysed using both Null Hypothesis Significance Testing and Bayesian methods, and the implications of the conclusions arising from each are discussed. Whatever one's statistical predilection, the results imply a reduction of confidence in the belief that risk preferences need no inferences. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 24, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1945   open full text
• Caution! Warnings as a Useless Countermeasure to Reduce Overconfidence? An Experimental Evaluation in Light of Enhanced and Dynamic Warning Designs.
  Dominik L. Schall, Dominik Doll, Alwine Mohnen.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 19, 2016
  People often display excessive overconfidence when providing interval estimates, which biases decision‐making. Research has investigated the various measures to effectively reduce overconfidence, and the use of warnings has subsequently been considered to have a negligible reduction effect. We demonstrate with two separate experiments that the impact of warnings has to be reviewed in light of dynamic warning designs and cognitive warning process models. In experiment 1, in contrast to previous studies that only used unstructured warnings, we implement a warning incorporating some core elements of a structured warning design based on research in the fields of human factors and ergonomics. Furthermore, accounting for recent developments in the warning literature, we distinguish between static and dynamic warning design. In experiment 2, we examine the effectiveness of different elements of dynamic warnings. We show that a significantly higher reduction of overconfidence can be achieved by combining a structured warning content with a dynamic stimulus change to increase the warning's noticeability. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 19, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1946   open full text
• Nodule Detection with Eye Movements.
  Michel Wedel, Jin Yan, Eliot L. Siegel, Hongshuang ( Alice) Li.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 17, 2016
  Radiologists often miss nodules that may represent lung cancer on chest radiographs. We investigated whether eye movements collected during the search for lung nodules by large samples of laypeople may provide information that could assist radiologists in their detection. For that purpose, we developed a partially invisible Markov model with partially unobserved states and analyzed eye tracking data of over 100 laypeople who reviewed 14 chest X‐ray images, of which seven contained a potentially cancerous nodule. We used the luminance value of the pixels in the X‐ray images as prior information on the possible location of a nodule and identified six regions of interest on each image that may contain a nodule. Our study demonstrated that the eye movements recorded from laypersons contained information that may assist radiologists in the detection of nodules in chest X‐rays, which has important implications for crowdsourcing of search for pulmonary nodules, which are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 17, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1935   open full text
• Accountability Systems and Group Norms: Balancing the Risks of Mindless Conformity and Reckless Deviation.
  Shefali V. Patil, Philip E. Tetlock, Barbara A. Mellers.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 17, 2016
  In dynamic task environments, decision makers are vulnerable to two types of errors: sticking too closely to the rules (excessive conformity) or straying too far from them (excessive deviation). We explore the effects of process and outcome accountability on the susceptibility to these errors. Using a multiple‐cue probability‐learning task, we show that process accountability encourages conformity errors and outcome accountability promotes deviation errors. Two additional studies explore the moderating effects of self‐focused and other‐focused group norms. Self‐focused norms reduce the effect of process accountability on excessive conformity. Other‐focused norms reduce the effect of outcome accountability on excessive deviation. Our results qualify prevailing claims about the benefits of process over outcome accountability and show that those benefits hinge on prevailing group norms, on the effectiveness of prescribed decision rules, and on the amount of irreducible uncertainty in the prediction task. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 17, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1933   open full text
• Different Attentional Patterns for Regret and Disappointment: An Eye‐tracking Study.
  Nadège Bault, Pierre Wydoodt, Giorgio Coricelli.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 09, 2016
  The unfavorable comparison between the obtained and expected outcomes of our choices may elicit disappointment. When the comparison is made with the outcome of alternative actions, emotions like regret can serve as a learning signal. Previous work showed that both anticipated disappointment and regret influence decisions. In addition, experienced regret is associated with higher emotional responses than disappointment. Yet it is not clear whether this amplification is due to additive effects of disappointment and regret when the outcomes of alternative actions are available, or whether it reflects the learning feature of regret signals. In this perspective, we used eye‐tracking to measure the visual pattern of information acquisition in a probabilistic lottery task. In the partial feedback condition, only the outcome of the chosen lottery was revealed, while in the complete feedback condition, participants could compare their outcome with that of the non‐chosen lottery, giving them the opportunity to experience regret. During the decision phase, visual patterns of information acquisition were consistent with the assessment of anticipated regret, in addition to a clear assessment of lotteries' expected values. During the feedback phase, subjective ratings and eye‐tracking results confirmed that participants compared their outcome with the outcome of the non‐chosen lottery in the complete feedback condition, particularly after a loss, and ignored the non‐realized outcome of the chosen option. Moreover, participants who made more visual saccades consistent with counterfactual comparisons during the feedback period anticipated regret more in their decisions. These results are consistent with the proposed adaptive function of regret. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 09, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1938   open full text
• Multiple Framing: Verbal, Facial, and Vocal Cues in Risky Choice.
  Steven Garelik, X.T. (Xiao‐Tian) Wang.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 09, 2016
  Verbal framing effects have been widely studied, but little is known about how people react to multiple framing cues in risk communication, where verbal messages are often accompanied by facial and vocal cues. We examined joint and differential effects of verbal, facial, and vocal framing on risk preference in hypothetical monetary and life–death situations. In the multiple framing condition with the factorial design (2 verbal frames × 2 vocal tones × 4 basic facial expressions × 2 task domains), each scenario was presented auditorily with a written message on a photo of the messenger's face. Compared with verbal framing effects resulting in preference reversal, multiple frames made risky choice more consistent and shifted risk preference without reversal. Moreover, a positive tone of voice increased risk‐seeking preference in women. When the valence of facial and vocal cues was incongruent with verbal frame, verbal framing effects were significant. In contrast, when the affect cues were congruent with verbal frame, framing effects disappeared. These results suggest that verbal framing is given higher priority when other affect cues are incongruent. Further analysis revealed that participants were more risk‐averse when positive affect cues (positive tone or facial expressions) were congruently paired with a positive verbal frame whereas participants were more risk‐seeking when positive affect cues were incongruent with the verbal frame. In contrast, for negative affect cues, congruency promoted risk‐seeking tendency whereas incongruency increased risk‐aversion. Overall, the results show that facial and vocal cues interact with verbal framing and significantly affect risk communication. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 09, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1942   open full text
• Explaining High Conjunction Fallacy Rates: The Probability Theory Plus Noise Account.
  Fintan Costello, Paul Watts.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 09, 2016
  The conjunction fallacy occurs when people judge the conjunctive probability P(A ∧ B) to be greater than a constituent probability P(A), contrary to the norms of probability theory. This fallacy is a reliable, consistent and systematic part of people's probability judgements, attested in many studies over at least 40 years. For some events, these fallacies occur very frequently in people's judgements (at rates of 80% or more), while for other events, the fallacies are very rare (occurring at rates of 10% or less). This wide range of fallacy rates presents a challenge for current theories of the conjunction fallacy. We show how this wide range of observed fallacy rates can be explained by a simple model where people reason according to probability theory but are subject to random noise in the reasoning process. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 09, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1936   open full text
• A Scanpath Analysis of the Risky Decision‐Making Process.
  Lei Zhou, Yang‐Yang Zhang, Zuo‐Jun Wang, Li‐Lin Rao, Wei Wang, Shu Li, Xingshan Li, Zhu‐Yuan Liang.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 05, 2016
  In the field of eye tracking, scanpath analysis can reflect the sequential and temporal properties of the cognitive process. However, the advantages of scanpath analysis have not yet been utilized in the study of risky decision making. We explored the methodological applicability of scanpath analysis to test models of risky decision making by analyzing published data from the eye‐tracking studies of Su et al. (2013); Wang and Li (2012), and Sun, Rao, Zhou, and Li (2014). These studies used a proportion task, an outcome‐matched presentation condition, and a multiple‐play condition as the baseline for comparison with information search and processing in the risky decision‐making condition. We found that (i) the similarity scores of the intra‐conditions were significantly higher than those of the inter‐condition; (ii) the scanpaths of the two conditions were separable; and (iii) based on an inspection of typical trials, the patterns of the scanpaths differed between the two conditions. These findings suggest that scanpath analysis is reliable and valid for examining the process of risky decision making. In line with the findings of the three original studies, our results indicate that risky decision making is unlikely to be based on a weighting and summing process, as hypothesized by the family of expectation models. The findings highlight a new methodological direction for research on decision making. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1943   open full text
• Combining Emotion Appraisal Dimensions and Individual Differences to Understand Emotion Effects on Gift Giving.
  Ilona E. De Hooge.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 05, 2016
  Multiple studies have revealed that emotion appraisal dimensions can predict the effects of emotions on decision making. For example, givers' intention to buy gifts depends on whether they feel positive or negative (valence) and on whether the feeling is caused by the givers themselves or by gift receivers (agency). However, there is little understanding of how the effects of such appraisal dimensions might depend on individual characteristics. The current research addresses this gap by studying the interaction effects of emotions and individual characteristics on gift giving. Study 1 demonstrates that emotion effects on gift‐giving behavior are explained by two things: the cause of those emotions (self or others, agency) and whether those emotions are positive or negative (valence). Moreover, four studies reveal that these effects depend on the givers' interpersonal orientation. For high interpersonally oriented givers, who care mostly about interpersonal relationships, emotion effects on gift giving depend on both valence and agency. In contrast, for low interpersonally oriented givers, who care mostly about their own gains, emotion effects on gift giving depend only on valence. Together, these findings suggest that although a focus on appraisal dimensions can be useful, individual characteristics should also be taken into account when trying to understand emotion effects on gift giving, in particular, and on decision making, in general. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1944   open full text
• The Impact of Culture on Loss Aversion.
  Mei Wang, Marc Oliver Rieger, Thorsten Hens.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 05, 2016
  Based on the literature on the relationship between culture, emotion, and loss aversion, we derive that culture can influence the degree of loss aversion. To test our hypotheses, we conduct a standardized survey in 53 countries worldwide that includes the questions from the Hofstede survey on cultural dimensions as well as lottery questions on loss aversion. The results show that individualism, power distance, and masculinity increase loss aversion as predicted, whereas the impact of uncertainty avoidance is less significant. Moreover, we also find a relation between the distribution of major religions in a country and loss aversion. In comparison, the connection of loss aversion to macroeconomic variables seems to be much smaller. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1941   open full text
• Individual Differences in Decision Making Depend on Cognitive Abilities, Monitoring and Control.
  Simon A. Jackson, Sabina Kleitman, Lazar Stankov, Pauline Howie.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 03, 2016
  Decision making is the process by which actions are constructed and initiated. Across many research streams, this can be explained in terms of three broad cognitive processes: cognitive abilities that construct judgements and potential courses of action, and interacting monitoring and control processes that determine when to initiate them as behaviour. The aim of this research was to investigate the generality of individual differences in these processes, and their power to predict patterns of decision behaviour identified in our previous research. Undergraduate participants (N = 364) completed nine tests assessing cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, control thresholds and various patterns of decision behaviour. The tests differed in their cognitive ability requirements and the nature of the payoffs associated with decisions. Cognitive abilities were a strong predictor of individuals' decision competence and optimality, while monitoring confidence and control thresholds were strong and unique predictors of their overall decisiveness, and reckless and hesitant errors. These results were strongest when the measures of cognitive abilities and monitoring confidence were derived from tests with the same cognitive requirements as the tests used to derive the decision behaviours and when the control threshold measure was derived from tests with the same decision payoffs as the test used to derive the decision behaviours. This effect was particularly pronounced for control thresholds, highlighting the domain‐specific nature of cognitive control processes. These findings demonstrate how cognitive abilities, monitoring output and control thresholds interact with cognitive requirements and context‐specific payoffs to drive individual differences in decision‐making behaviour. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1939   open full text
• Numeracy Predicts More Effortful and Elaborative Search Strategies in a Complex Risky Choice Context: A Process‐Tracing Approach.
  John D. Jasper, Chandrima Bhattacharya, Ryan Corser.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 03, 2016
  The goal of the current study was to explore information search and processing differences between individuals who are less and more numerate in an attempt to better understand the mechanisms that might differentiate the choices they make. We did so using a computerized process‐tracing system known as MouseTrace, which presented monetary gambles in an alternative × attribute matrix with outcome (dollar amount) and probability information as attributes. This information was initially occluded but could be revealed by clicking on the cell that contained the desired information. Beginning with nine gambles offering the chance of gaining or losing a specified amount, participants (N = 110) narrowed down the options (to three and then one) using an inclusion or exclusion strategy. Consistent with previous research, inclusion was a more effortful strategy, and individuals who were higher in numeracy were more likely to select prospects with the highest expected value. Process measures revealed these individuals expended more effort (i.e., attended to and sought out more information and processed it in greater depth) and exhibited more compensatory processing than those who were lower in numeracy, but this sometimes depended on whether one was asked to include or exclude. These results serve as further evidence that individuals with higher levels of numeracy often engage in more elaborative processing of the decision task, which tends to lead to more optimal choices. However, they also suggest that individuals are adaptive and that the specific situation can matter. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1934   open full text
• Comparative Optimism and Event Skewness.
  Jason P. Rose, Olivia Aspiras, Erin Vogel, Heather Haught, Lindsay Roberts.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 03, 2016
  Comparative judgment biases—wherein a majority of people report being above‐ or below‐average in their abilities, traits, or future events—are a robust phenomenon in psychology. A recent explanation for these biases has focused on people's awareness that many comparative judgment domains form skewed distributions, and, hence, a majority of people can feasibly be above or below average. Indeed, this prior research found that comparative biases for abilities emerged more for skewed (vs. normal) distributions. In the current research, we attempted to (i) conceptually replicate this finding in a comparative likelihood context and (ii) provide evidence of an alternative explanation for the prior results. Replicating prior research, three correlational studies and one experimental study found that event skewness was related to direct comparative likelihood judgments for health events, such that comparative optimism emerged more for events judged or manipulated to come from positively skewed distributions than from negatively skewed distributions. However, event skewness was unrelated to indirect comparisons (absolute self minus absolute other). Moreover, consistent with an egocentric‐processes account, absolute self‐judgments were more predictive of direct comparisons than were absolute other judgments and showed the same association with event skewness as direct comparisons. Implications for explaining and interpreting comparative judgment biases are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1940   open full text
• The Seller's Sense: Buying–Selling Perspective Affects the Sensitivity to Expected Value Differences.
  Eldad Yechiam, Taher Abofol, Thorsten Pachur.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 20, 2016
  Previous work comparing pricing decisions by buyers and sellers has primarily focused on the endowment effect, the phenomenon that selling prices exceed buying prices. Here, we examine whether pricing decisions by buyers and sellers also vary in sensitivity to differences between objects' expected values (EVs). Both a loss‐aversion account (which posits that losses are weighted more heavily than gains) and a loss‐attention account (which posits increased attention to a task when it involves possible losses) predict that pricing decisions by sellers should exhibit higher sensitivity. The latter, however, additionally predicts that this pattern should only emerge under certain conditions. In studies 1 and 2, we reanalyzed two published datasets in which participants priced monetary lotteries as sellers or buyers. It emerged that sellers showed greater EV sensitivity (defined as the rank correlation between the set price for each lottery and its EV) except in a condition with an extended deliberation time of 15 seconds. In study 3, the buyer–seller difference in EV sensitivity was replicated even when the pricing task was presented repeatedly, while in study 4, it was eliminated when buying and selling trials were randomly mixed. The reduction of the “seller's sense” in long deliberation and mixed trials settings supports an attentional resource‐based account of the differences between sellers and buyers in their EV sensitivity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  January 20, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1937   open full text
• Eliciting Subjective Probabilities through Pair‐wise Comparisons.
  Han‐Hui Por, David V. Budescu.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 19, 2016
  We propose and test a novel approach for eliciting subjective joint probabilities. In the proposed approach, judges compare pairs of possible outcomes and identify which of the two is more likely and by how much. These pair‐wise comparative judgments create a matrix of ratio judgments from which the target probabilities are extracted using the rows' (or columns') geometric means. In Study 1, subjects provided direct assessments of the likelihood of joint events (e.g., sunny days and stock market gains) and also made pair‐wise comparisons of the same joint events. Subjects in Study 2 learnt the distribution of hypothetical events pairs and provided direct and ratio estimates. In both studies, the ratio estimates were significantly more accurate than the direct estimates. The results suggest that it is possible to elicit probabilistic estimates without explictly asking for probabilities and that the pair‐wise approach is a candidate for complementing or replacing traditional elicitation approaches. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  January 19, 2016   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1929   open full text
• “I can see it in your eyes”: Biased Processing and Increased Arousal in Dishonest Responses.
  Guy Hochman, Andreas Glöckner, Susann Fiedler, Shahar Ayal.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 29, 2015
  According to self‐maintenance theory, people notice their dishonest acts and thus experience ethical dissonance between their misconduct and their positive moral self. In this view, dishonesty is facilitated by justifications that redefine moral boundaries. By contrast, the bounded ethicality approach suggests that biased perception prevents people from becoming aware of their dishonesty. We tested the key process assumptions behind these accounts using pupillary responses and fixation data and found physiological evidence for both kinds of mechanisms. In particular, physiological arousal increased at the initial stage of cheating responses. This suggests that people are on some level aware of their wrongdoings. At the same time, however, we found attentional biases that can reduce the likelihood for detecting potentially disadvantageous information. We suggest that dishonest acts come at the internal cost of increased tension, which people aim to avoid by pre‐emptive biased processing as well as post hoc justifications. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  December 29, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1932   open full text
• When Does Construction Enhance Product Value? Investigating the Combined Effects of Object Assembly and Ownership on Valuation.
  Lukasz Walasek, Tim Rakow, William J. Matthews.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 29, 2015
  Recent findings have shown that even without the ability to customize a product, individuals pay more for goods that they assembled. In this paper we examine which components of this creation process account for the increase in valuation, and whether it operates equally for owners and non‐owners of the self‐assembled object. Based on the self‐extension theory of ownership, we propose a psychological mechanism by which the assembly process strengthens the self–object association. In three experiments, we find that—although witnessing the assembly process or assembling a similar product can increase participants' evaluation of, and attachment to, a product that they own—a greater and more consistent increase in valuation and attachment arises when owners assemble their product themselves. Seemingly, merely learning about the assembly process plays only a small role in enhancing value; for substantial increases in value, one must actually assemble the product oneself. Contrary to the previous findings on the effects of labour on willingness to pay, we find little effect of product assembly among non‐owners of the product. We suggest that self‐assembly encourages objects to be incorporated into the self, but that this occurs most effectively when one owns the product. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  December 29, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1931   open full text
• The Phantom Decoy Effect in Perceptual Decision Making.
  Jennifer S. Trueblood, Jonathan C. Pettibone.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 29, 2015
  A phantom decoy is an alternative that is superior to another “target” option but is unavailable at the time of choice. In value‐based decisions involving phantom decoys (e.g., consumer choices), individuals often show increased preference for the similar, inferior target option over a non‐dominated competitor alternative. Unlike value‐based decisions that are driven by subjective goals, perceptual decisions typically have an outside criterion that defines the goal of the task (e.g., target is present or absent). Despite their obvious differences, past research has documented a number of commonalities between both types of decisions. In a set of three experiments, we examine the influence of phantom options on simple perceptual decisions and point out a critical difference between perceptual and value‐based decisions. Our results show that in perceptual choice, participants prefer competitor options to target options, the opposite of the pattern typically found in consumer choice. We use the results of the experiments to examine the predictions of four different models of context effects including loss aversion and dynamic, preference accumulation models. We find that accumulation models provide the best explanation for our results as well as being able to generalize to other context effects. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  December 29, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1930   open full text
• Confidence in Dyadic Decision Making: The Role of Individual Differences.
  Jonathon P. Schuldt, Christopher F. Chabris, Anita Williams Woolley, J. Richard Hackman.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 29, 2015
  Groups typically express more confidence than individuals, yet how individual‐level confidence combines during collaborative decision tasks is not well understood. We prescreened 686 community members using a novel confidence measure (a true/false trivia test) intentionally designed to be difficult (accuracy rates were not significantly better than chance) and randomly assigned 72 individuals to collaborate on a matched version of the same test in dyads composed of two low‐confidence individuals, two high‐confidence individuals, or one of each (“mixed”). Consistent with past research, we found that the confidence expressed by dyads was higher than the confidence expressed by individuals; importantly, however, this pattern varied markedly by dyad type, with low‐confidence dyads showing the largest increase, mixed dyads showing a moderate increase, and high‐confidence dyads showing no increase—despite the fact that all dyads showed similarly low accuracy (about 55%). These results highlight the conditions under which groups express greater confidence than individuals and offer insights for the composition of collaborative decision‐making teams. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  December 29, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1927   open full text
• Unraveling the Aging Skein: Disentangling Sensory and Cognitive Predictors of Age‐related Differences in Decision Making.
  Fabio Del Missier, Patrik Hansson, Andrew M. Parker, Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Lars‐Göran Nilsson, Timo Mäntylä.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 09, 2015
  Age‐related differences in sensory functioning, processing speed, and working memory have been identified as three significant predictors of the age‐related performance decline observed in complex cognitive tasks. Yet, the assessment of their relative predictive capacity and interrelations is still an open issue in decision making and cognitive aging research. Indeed, no previous investigation has examined the relationships of all these three predictors with decision making. In an individual‐differences study, we therefore disentangled the relative contribution of sensory functioning, processing speed, and working memory to the prediction of the age‐related decline in cognitively demanding judgment and decision‐making tasks. Structural equation modeling showed that the age‐related decline in working memory plays an important predictive role, even when controlling for sensory functioning, processing speed, and education. Implications for research on decision making and cognitive aging are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  December 09, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1926   open full text
• The (In)visibility of Psychodiagnosticians' Expertise.
  Michael Schulte‐Mecklenbeck, Nanon L. Spaanjaars, Cilia L. M. Witteman.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 10, 2015
  This study investigates decision making in mental health care. Specifically, it compares the diagnostic decision outcomes (i.e., the quality of diagnoses) and the diagnostic decision process (i.e., pre‐decisional information acquisition patterns) of novice and experienced clinical psychologists. Participants' eye movements were recorded while they completed diagnostic tasks, classifying mental disorders. In line with previous research, our findings indicate that diagnosticians' performance is not related to their clinical experience. Eye‐tracking data provide corroborative evidence for this result from the process perspective: experience does not predict changes in cue inspection patterns. For future research into expertise in this domain, it is advisable to track individual differences between clinicians rather than study differences on the group level. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 10, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1925   open full text
• Everybody Will Win, and All Must Be Hired: Comparing Additivity Neglect with the Nonselective Superiority Bias.
  Anine H. Riege, Karl Halvor Teigen.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 10, 2015
  Two streams of research looking at referent‐dependent judgments from slightly different angles are subadditivity research and research on the nonselective superiority bias. Both biases violate basic formal constraints: the probabilities of a set of exclusive events cannot add up to more than 100%, and a set of attractive candidates cannot all be rated as superior to the group mean. We examine in three experiments how these two biases are related, by asking the same participants to perform both kinds of tasks on the same material. Both biases appear to be widespread, even for sets where all alternatives are presented together, but they differ in the way they are affected by response format and experimental setup. Thus, presenting participants with an unbiased set of ratings will reduce but not normalize their probability estimates of the same alternatives; while presenting them with an unbiased (additive) set of probabilities will make most alternatives appear inferior to the group mean, inverting the superiority bias. Self‐reports reveal that additivity neglect and the nonselective superiority bias can be based on two main response‐strategies: (i) considering each alternative independently or (ii) comparing alternatives, while neglecting their complementarity. In both cases, assessments will be the outcome of a compromise between the perceived “absolute” merits of each alternative, its standing relative to referents, and properties of the response scale. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 10, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1924   open full text
• Action Dynamics in Intertemporal Choice Reveal Different Facets of Decision Process.
  Jiuqing Cheng, Claudia González‐Vallejo.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 10, 2015
  Two experiments were conducted to examine decision process in intertemporal choice with spatial and temporal action dynamic measures generated from cursor movement. The effects of the context valence (gain and loss) and magnitude of the payoffs (small and large) were investigated. Other factors examined were differences between decisions made at versus away from the indifference point and response variability dependent on what was selected (delayed versus non‐delayed/less‐delayed payoff). Using principal components analysis, decision process is described with three orthogonal components. General decision difficulty is encompassed by two components: (1) Conflict, depicted by Idle time and deviations from a direct choice path, and (2) decision uncertainty or Wavering, described by left‐right directional flips. A general Locomotion factor was also present. In Experiment 1, Conflict was best at capturing the gain/loss and magnitude context effects. Greater Conflict was observed in the loss context and the small magnitude condition. When choices were closer to the indifference point, Wavering was most salient. In Experiment 2, when selecting larger, delayed payoffs, both Conflict and Wavering increased suggesting that controlling the temptation of selecting the sooner, smaller reward entails effort. By analyzing trajectories, the study advances knowledge of the construct validity of different action dynamic measures and supports the distinction of decision uncertainty and decision conflict. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 10, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1923   open full text
• Ambiguity Attitudes over Time.
  Yuanyuan Liu, Ayse Onculer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 09, 2015
  Previous research demonstrates that individuals exhibit a stronger level of ambiguity aversion for high probabilities than for low probabilities. Given that risky and ambiguous prospects are often unresolved until a future date (e.g., investment decisions, new product launches, and medical interventions), this study examines the impact of time on ambiguity preferences at different probability levels. Our experimental results indicate that although ambiguity preferences for low‐probability events remain constant, a robust effect of time occurs for high‐probability events. More specifically, temporal distance mitigates ambiguity aversion. This effect is consistent for different elicitation methods (preference rating and probability–ambiguity trade‐off tasks). We propose a dual‐process model (affective versus cognitive processing styles) to explain our results. Affective processing for high‐probability lotteries resolved in the current period increases ambiguity aversion, while cognitive processing leads to less ambiguity‐averse choices for future lotteries. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 09, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1922   open full text
• Tracing Attitude Expressions: An Eye‐Tracking Study.
  Roxanne I. Giesen, Arnout R. H. Fischer, Heleen Dijk, Hans C. M. Trijp.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 02, 2015
  Attitudes represent object evaluations, comprising complex underlying cognitive and affective knowledge structures. When people are asked to judge an object, they can use their primary response (i.e., the immediate object‐evaluation linkage) or underlying affective and cognitive knowledge structures. In many situations, a primary response satisfices, but if not, more elaboration is required. Both processes are fundamentally different but may lead to the same attitude. For monitoring underlying processes during attitude expression, we developed an innovative eye‐tracking procedure using eye‐gaze on response scale options. This procedure was applied in three studies to identify the extent to which elaboration differs for attitude objects with weak or strong, univalent or mixed object evaluations (i.e., univalent, neutral and ambivalent). In Study 1, the overall judgment preceded processing of more specific affective and cognitive linkage evaluations. In Studies 2 and 3, the order was reversed, and affective and cognitive bases were assessed prior to overall attitude outcomes. For attitude objects with strong univalent or strong mixed object evaluations, we found similar outcomes on underlying processes. For weak object evaluations, cognition was found to be more predictive and easily accessible if an overall judgment was required first; affect for these objects was more predictive if people had to elaborate on affect and cognition first. We concluded that both affective and cognitive attitudes may require substantial elaboration, albeit in different situations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 02, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1920   open full text
• Should you Sleep on it? The Effects of Overnight Sleep on Subjective Preference‐based Choice.
  Uma R. Karmarkar, Baba Shiv, Rebecca M. C. Spencer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 29, 2015
  Conventional wisdom and studies of unconscious processing suggest that sleeping on a choice may improve decision making. Although sleep has been shown to benefit several cognitive tasks, including problem solving, its impact on everyday choices remains unclear. Here we explore the effects of ‘sleeping on it’ on preference‐based decisions among multiple options. In two studies, individuals viewed several attributes describing a set of items and were asked to select their preferred item after a 12‐hour interval that either contained sleep or was spent fully awake. After an overnight period including sleep, individuals showed increases in positive perceptions of the choice set. This finding contrasts with previous research showing that sleep selectively enhances recall for negative information. In addition, this increase in positive recall did not translate into a greater desire to purchase their preferred item or into an overall benefit for choice satisfaction. Time‐of‐day controls were used to confirm that the observed effects could not be explained by circadian influences. Thus, we show that people may feel more positive about the choice options but not more confident about the choice after ‘sleeping on’ a subjective decision. We discuss how the valence of recalled choice set information may be important in understanding the effects of sleep on multi‐attribute decision making and suggest several avenues for future research. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 29, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1921   open full text
• Public and Private Values.
  Dan Ariely, Anat Bracha, Jean‐Paul L'Huillier.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 29, 2015
  In this paper, we experimentally examine whether looking at other people's pricing decisions is a type of a decision rule that people over‐apply even when it is not applicable, as in the case of private‐value goods. In Study 1, we find evidence that this is indeed the case—individual valuation of a subjective experience under full information, elicited using incentive compatible mechanism, is highly influenced by values of others. In Study 2, we find that people expect to use this rule to some degree with respect to actual consumption of goods, especially goods with some public value (music), and less so for private‐value goods (noise). However, people expect to use the rule to a very large extent when they are required to express their valuation of a good using a dollar figure (Study 3). These results can shed light on price behavior as rigidities and rents. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 29, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1919   open full text
• Eye Movements in Strategic Choice.
  Neil Stewart, Simon Gächter, Takao Noguchi, Timothy L. Mullett.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 29, 2015
  In risky and other multiattribute choices, the process of choosing is well described by random walk or drift diffusion models in which evidence is accumulated over time to threshold. In strategic choices, level‐k and cognitive hierarchy models have been offered as accounts of the choice process, in which people simulate the choice processes of their opponents or partners. We recorded the eye movements in 2 × 2 symmetric games including dominance‐solvable games like prisoner's dilemma and asymmetric coordination games like stag hunt and hawk–dove. The evidence was most consistent with the accumulation of payoff differences over time: we found longer duration choices with more fixations when payoffs differences were more finely balanced, an emerging bias to gaze more at the payoffs for the action ultimately chosen, and that a simple count of transitions between payoffs—whether or not the comparison is strategically informative—was strongly associated with the final choice. The accumulator models do account for these strategic choice process measures, but the level‐k and cognitive hierarchy models do not. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  October 29, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1901   open full text
• Behaving Optimistically: How the (Un)Desirability of an Outcome Can Bias People's Preparations for It.
  Jillian O' Rourke Stuart, Paul D. Windschitl, Andrew R. Smith, Aaron M. Scherer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 20, 2015
  Past research on the desirability bias and on bracing for bad news has focused on the potential influence of outcome desirability on people's stated expectations. The present studies examined its influence on behavior—that is, what is done in anticipation of, or preparation for, an uncertain outcome. In five studies, the desirability of possible outcomes for an event, which was uncertain and uncontrollable by the participant, was manipulated, and preparation behavior was measured. Study 1 used a hypothetical‐events paradigm. Studies 2 and 3 involved a computer activity in which behavior was tracked on a trial‐by‐trial basis. In Studies 4 and 5, the uncertain event was the ending of a videotaped basketball game. Rather than exhibiting bracing or a reluctance to tempt fate, participants tended to behave in a manner consistent with an optimistic desirability bias. In a subset of studies, predictions and likelihood judgments were also solicited; the differential effects of outcome desirability on these measures are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 20, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1918   open full text
• Discounting by Probabilistic Waiting.
  Ariana Vanderveldt, Leonard Green, Howard Rachlin.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 13, 2015
  In everyday life, many probabilistic situations may be characterized as probabilistic waiting. A gambler, for example, bets repeatedly at the racetrack, the casino, or the card table. The gambler may not win on the first try, but if a gamble is repeated enough times, a win is almost certain to occur eventually. If repeated gambles are structured as strings of losses ending in a win (probabilistic waiting) and the amount won is discounted by the delay caused by the series of losses, then strings with many losses will be discounted more than those with fewer losses, thereby causing subjective value of the series of gambles as a whole to increase. The current study used the opposite effect that amount has on the degree of delay and probability discounting as a marker to determine whether people evaluate situations involving probabilistic waiting as they evaluate situations involving delayed outcomes or as situations involving probabilistic outcomes. We find that the more likely a probabilistic waiting situation is to end in reward (e.g., a gamble is repeated indefinitely until reward is obtained), the more that situation conforms to delay discounting; the less likely a probabilistic waiting situation is to end in reward (e.g., a fixed, small number of gambles), the more that situation conforms to probability discounting. We argue that the former situation is applicable to pathological gambling, and that people with steep delay discount functions would therefore be more likely to have gambling problems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 13, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1917   open full text
• Eye‐tracking Social Preferences.
  Ting Jiang, Jan Potters, Yukihiko Funaki.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 13, 2015
  We hypothesize that if people are motivated by a particular social preference, then choosing in accordance with this preference will lead to an identifiable pattern of eye movements. We track eye movements while subjects make choices in simple three‐person distribution experiments. We characterize each choice in terms of three different types of social preferences: efficiency, maxi‐min, and envy. For the characterization, we use either the choice data or the eye movement data. The evidence indicates that distributional choices are broadly consistent with the choice rule implied by eye movements. In other words, what subjects appear to be interested in when you look at their choices corresponds to what they appear to be interested in when you look at their eye movements. This correspondence lends credibility to the behavioral relevance of social preferences models. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 13, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1899   open full text
• Development and Validation of the Scientific Reasoning Scale.
  Caitlin Drummond, Baruch Fischhoff.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 12, 2015
  Scientific findings and innovations play an important role in a range of decisions faced by nonscientists, yet little is known about the skills that nonscientists need in order to read and evaluate scientific evidence. Drawing on research in public understanding of science, cognitive developmental psychology, and behavioral decision research, we develop an individual difference measure of scientific reasoning skills, defined as the skills needed to evaluate scientific findings in terms of the factors that determine their quality. We present the results of three studies assessing its psychometric validity. Our results indicate that the Scientific Reasoning Scale (SRS) is internally consistent and distinct from extant measures of scientific literacy. Participants with higher SRS scores are more likely to have beliefs consistent with the scientific consensus on potentially contentious issues, above and beyond education, political and religious beliefs, and scores on two widely used measures of scientific literacy. Participants with higher SRS scores also had better performance on a task requiring them to analyze scientific information. Our results suggest that the SRS provides a theoretically informed contribution to decoding lay responses to scientific results and controversies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 12, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1906   open full text
• Odor Semantics and Visual Cues: What We Smell Impacts Where We Look, What We Remember, and What We Want to Buy.
  May O. Lwin, Maureen Morrin, Chiao Sing Trinetta Chong, Su Xin Goh.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 22, 2015
  The current research uses eye‐tracking technology in a consumer context to explore the interactive effects of olfactory and visual cues on consumers' eye gaze patterns. We manipulate the semantic correspondence between pictorial objects depicted in print advertisements and odors smelled (or not) while looking at the ads. The results indicate that smelling a scent that shares learned semantic associations with an object in the advertisement diverts consumers' eye gazes to the semantically related object in the ad, with positive downstream effects on advertising recall and purchase intent. This is the first study we are aware of demonstrating multisensory integration of odors and pictures on consumer eye gaze patterns with clear implications for consumer choice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 22, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1905   open full text
• Meta‐analytic Investigations of the Relation Between Intuition and Analysis.
  Yi Wang, Scott Highhouse, Christopher J. Lake, Nicole L. Petersen, Thaddeus B. Rada.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 18, 2015
  Over 50 years of research on cognitive style has converged on the importance of individual differences in use of intuition and analysis. This program of research is characterized, however, by two incompatible perspectives about the relation between intuition and analysis. The distinction concerns whether intuition and analysis are opposite poles of a single dimension or whether they are orthogonal constructs. Two studies report meta‐analytic investigations of the relation between intuition and analysis. A meta‐analysis of the existing research base (k = 80; n = 27 501) showed that intuition and analysis are uncorrelated. A second meta‐analysis of combinations of subscales from different cognitive style measures (n = 511) supported the results of the first meta‐analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis also supported the existence of two uncorrelated constructs. Overall, the findings support the view that intuition and analysis are independent constructs, rather than opposite ends of a bipolar continuum. In addition, the findings suggest measures of analysis or rationality are not interchangeable. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 18, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1903   open full text
• Narcissism and Performance on Behavioral Decision‐making Tasks.
  Amy B. Brunell, Melissa T. Buelow.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 13, 2015
  Three studies examined narcissism and behavioral decision making. Decision‐making tasks included the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Studies 1–3), Balloon Analogue Risk Task (Studies 1–3), Columbia Card Task (CCT; Studies 2 and 3), and Game of Dice Task (Study 3). To tease apart the contributions of grandiose narcissism (i.e., narcissism found in the general population), pathological narcissism, and narcissistic traits (i.e., grandiosity, entitlement, and exploitativeness) in decision making, we assessed grandiose narcissism in Studies 1 (n = 380) and 2 (n = 244), pathological narcissism in Study 2, and the narcissistic traits in Study 3 (n = 312). Grandiose and pathological narcissism failed to predict decision making regardless of whether or not decision making included immediate feedback. In Study 3, the narcissistic trait of grandiosity (i.e., having an inflated sense of self‐importance) was associated with greater risk taking on the CCT‐hot (i.e., provided immediate feedback), and entitlement was associated with greater risk taking on the IGT. Measurement and applied implications are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 13, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1900   open full text
• Inferring Others' Hidden Thoughts: Smart Guesses in a Low Diagnostic World.
  Chris N. H. Street, Walter F. Bischof, Miguel A. Vadillo, Alan Kingstone.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 09, 2015
  People are biased toward believing that what others say is what they truly think. This effect, known as the truth bias, has often been characterized as a judgmental error that impedes accuracy. We consider an alternative view: that it reflects the use of contextual information to make the best guess when the currently available information has low diagnosticity. Participants learnt the diagnostic value of four cues, which were present during truthful statements between 20% and 80% of the time. Afterwards, participants were given contextual information: either that most people would lie or that most would tell the truth. We found that people were biased in the direction of the context information when the individuating behavioral cues were nondiagnostic. As the individuating cues became more diagnostic, context had less to no effect. We conclude that more general context information is used to make an informed judgment when other individuating cues are absent. That is, the truth bias reflects a smart guess in a low diagnostic world. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 09, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1904   open full text
• How Information Availability Interacts with Visual Attention during Judgment and Decision Tasks.
  Philip Pärnamets, Roger Johansson, Kerstin Gidlöf, Annika Wallin.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 07, 2015
  Decisions in front of a supermarket shelf probably involve a mix of visually available information and associated memories—and interactions between those two. Several cognitive processes, such as decision making, search, and various judgments, are therefore likely to co‐occur, and each process will influence visual attention. We conducted two eye‐tracking experiments capturing parts of these features by having participants make either judgments or decisions concerning products that had been previously encoded. Half the time, participants made their choices with full information about the available products and half the time with crucial task‐relevant information removed. By comparing participants' use of visual attention during decisions and search‐based and memory‐based judgments, we can better understand how visual attention is differently employed between tasks and how it depends on the visual environment. We found that participants' visual attention during decisions is sensitive to evaluations already made during encoding and strongly characterized by preferential looking to the options later to be chosen. When the task environment is rich enough, participants engage in advanced integrative visual behavior and improve their decision quality. In contrast, visual attention during judgments made on the same products reflects a search‐like behavior when all information is available and a more focused type of visual behavior when information is removed. Our findings contribute not only to the literature on how visual attention is used during decision making but also to methodological questions concerning how to measure and identify task‐specific features of visual attention in ecologically valid ways. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 07, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1902   open full text
• Clarification Regarding Rand et al. (2015) “Social Context and the Dynamics of Cooperative Choice”.
  David G. Rand.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 27, 2015
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  August 27, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1898   open full text
• Probabilistic Inferences Under Emotional Stress: How Arousal Affects Decision Processes.
  Szymon Wichary, Rui Mata, Jörg Rieskamp.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 27, 2015
  Many models of decision making neglect emotional states that could affect individuals' cognitive processes. The present work explores the effect of emotional stress on people's cognitive processes when making probabilistic inferences. Two contrasting hypotheses are tested against one another: the uncertainty‐reduction and attention‐narrowing hypotheses of how emotional stress affects decision making. In the experimental study, emotional stress was induced through the use of highly aversive pictures immediately before each decision. Emotional state was assessed by both subjective (state anxiety, arousal, and pleasantness ratings) and objective (skin conductance) measures. The results show that emotional stress impacts decision making; in particular, emotionally aroused participants seem to have focused on the most important information and selected simpler decision strategies relative to participants in a control condition. The results are in line with the attention‐narrowing hypothesis and suggest that emotional stress can impact decision making through limited predecisional information search and the selection of simpler decision strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 27, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1896   open full text
• A Review and Taxonomy of Choice Architecture Techniques.
  Robert Münscher, Max Vetter, Thomas Scheuerle.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 14, 2015
  We present a taxonomy of choice architecture techniques that focus on intervention design, as opposed to the underlying cognitive processes that make an intervention work. We argue that this distinction will facilitate further empirical testing and will assist practitioners in designing interventions. The framework is inductively derived from empirically tested examples of choice architecture and consists of nine techniques targeting decision information, decision structure, and decision assistance. An inter‐rater reliability test demonstrates that these techniques can be used in an intersubjectively replicable way to describe sample choice architectures. We conclude by discussing limitations of the framework and key issues concerning the use of the techniques in the development of new choice architectures. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 14, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1897   open full text
• Now or Later? Attentional Processing and Intertemporal Choice.
  Ana M. Franco‐Watkins, Richard E. Mattson, Marc D. Jackson.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 14, 2015
  The tendency to discount future prospects in lieu of smaller immediate outcomes is known as temporal discounting. The current work used eye‐tracking methodology to examine attentional processing to different elements of choice during an intertemporal decision task. Our findings reveal that those who tend to prefer the immediate option demonstrate attentional biases that were predictive of choice. When losses were at stake, selective attention biases also predicted unique variance in self‐report measures of risk taking, impulsivity, and self‐control beyond what was accounted for by a discounting parameter (k), a typical method for summarizing intertemporal choice data. Overall, our findings suggest that eye‐tracking measures of selective attention may allow for a better theoretical understanding of the mechanisms and processes involved in intertemporal choice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 14, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1895   open full text
• Acting for the Greater Good: Identification with Group Determines Choices in Sequential Contribution Dilemmas.
  Poonam Arora, Jennifer Logg, Richard Larrick.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 23, 2015
  In mixed‐motive interactions, defection is the rational and common response to the defection of others. In some cases, however, group members not only cooperate in the face of defection but also compensate for the shortfalls caused by others' defection. In one field and two lab studies, we examined when group members were willing to compensate for versus match defection using sequential dilemmas. We found that the level of identification with the broader group increased willingness to compensate for intragroup defection, even when it was personally costly. Compensating for a defecting partner's actions, however, is not an act of unconditional cooperation: It is accompanied by a lack of trust in the errant group member and a desire to be perceived as more ethical. Cooperation by others, on the other hand, is matched independent of whether the cooperator was an in‐group or out‐group member. We find similar patterns of compensation and matching when the personal cost involved contributing money or effort. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 23, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1892   open full text
• How People with Low and High Graph Literacy Process Health Graphs: Evidence from Eye‐tracking.
  Yasmina Okan, Mirta Galesic, Rocio Garcia‐Retamero.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 16, 2015
  Graphs facilitate the communication of important quantitative information, often serving as effective decision support tools. Yet, graphs are not equally useful for all individuals, as people differ substantially in their graph literacy—the ability to understand graphically presented information. Although some features of graphs can be interpreted using spatial‐to‐conceptual mappings that can be established by adults and children with no graphing experience (e.g., “higher bars equal larger quantities”), other features are linked to arbitrary graph conventions (e.g., axes labels and scales). In two experiments, we examined differences in the processes underlying the comprehension of graphs presenting medical information in individuals with low and high graph literacy. Participants' eye movements were recorded while they interpreted graphs in which information in conventional features was incongruent with that conveyed by spatial features. Results revealed that participants with low graph literacy more often relied on misleading spatial‐to‐conceptual mappings and misinterpreted the data depicted. Higher graph literacy was often associated with more time spent viewing the conventional features containing essential information for accurate interpretations. This suggests that individuals with high graph literacy are better able to identify the task‐relevant information in graphs, and thus attend to the relevant features to a larger extent. Theoretical, methodological, and prescriptive implications for customization of decision‐support systems are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 16, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1891   open full text
• Experience‐Based Decisions Favor Riskier Alternatives in Large Sets.
  Takao Noguchi, Thomas T. Hills.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 16, 2015
  Research on risky choice has been predominantly based on studies of choices between two alternatives, but their findings are often generalized to environments with more than two alternatives. One prominent claim of this research is that choices differ with respect to risk when alternatives are described (the description paradigm) as opposed to sampled (the sampling paradigm). Here, we demonstrate that the difference in choices is sensitive to the number of alternatives in a choice set: with a growth in set size, alternatives with rare payoffs become more likely to be chosen in the sampling paradigm. This increased risk‐taking is due to the statistical property of payoffs: with a growth in set size, at least one riskier alternative becomes much more likely to deliver an attractive sample payoff at a higher frequency than its underlying probability. The increased risk‐taking eventually diminishes the difference between the description and the sampling paradigms in the gain domain. Further, we show that the increase in risk‐taking is difficult to avoid, even if each alternative is thoroughly sampled. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 16, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1893   open full text
• A Closer Look at the Yardstick: A New Discount Rate Measure with Precision and Range.
  Haewon Yoon, Gretchen B. Chapman.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 14, 2015
  In intertemporal choice research, choice tasks (i.e., choosing between $80 today and $100 in a year) are often used to elicit a discount rate. The discount rate derived from a choice task, however, is largely restricted by the granularities and ranges of the questions asked. We examined this restriction in three popular discount rate measurements using simulations and experiments, and we propose an alternative procedure (Three‐option Adaptive Discount rate measure (ToAD)), which is capable of measuring a wide range of discount rates (from approximately .035% to 350 000% annual percentage rate) with high precision using 10 questions, in under a minute. ToAD can be easily implemented in online surveys (i.e., Qualtrics). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 14, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1890   open full text
• Relational Mobility Increases Social (but Not Other) Risk Propensity.
  Liman Man Wai Li, Takeshi Hamamura, Glenn Adams.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 14, 2015
  In recent years, we have witnessed a resurgent focus on ecological features, especially various forms of mobility that afford social psychological processes. Extending this work, the current research examined whether relational mobility affects risk propensity. We conducted three studies using both correlational (Studies 1 and 3) and experimental (Study 2) methods. Results provide support for the hypothesis that perceptions of relational mobility are associated with risk propensity in the domain of interpersonal behaviors but not other risk domains (health, financial, etc.). Findings in Study 3 suggested that the association between relational mobility and propensity for risky interpersonal behaviors may stem from the effect of relational mobility in lowering subjective risk (but not in increasing expected benefits) of such behaviors. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 14, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1894   open full text
• How Affect Shapes Risky Choice: Distorted Probability Weighting Versus Probability Neglect.
  Renata S. Suter, Thorsten Pachur, Ralph Hertwig.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 01, 2015
  People's choices between prospects with relatively affect‐rich outcomes (e.g., medical side effects) can diverge markedly from their choices between prospects with relatively affect‐poor outcomes (e.g., monetary losses). We investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying this “affect gap” in risky choice. One possibility is that affect‐rich prospects give rise to more distortion in probability weighting. Another is that they lead to the neglect of probabilities. To pit these two possibilities against each other, we fitted cumulative prospect theory (CPT) to the choices of individual participants, separately for choices between options with affect‐rich outcomes (adverse medical side effects) and options with affect‐poor outcomes (monetary losses); additionally, we tested a simple model of probability neglect, the minimax rule. The results indicated a qualitative difference in cognitive mechanisms between the affect‐rich and affect‐poor problems. Specifically, in affect‐poor problems, the large majority of participants were best described by CPT; in affect‐rich problems, the proportion of participants best described by the minimax rule was substantially higher. The affect gap persisted even when affect‐rich outcomes were supplemented by numerical information, thus providing no support for the thesis that choices in affect‐rich and affect‐poor problems diverge because the information provided in the former is nonnumerical. Our findings suggest that the traditional expectation‐based framework for modeling risky decision making may not readily generalize to affect‐rich choices. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 01, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1888   open full text
• The Development and Testing of a New Version of the Cognitive Reflection Test Applying Item Response Theory (IRT).
  Caterina Primi, Kinga Morsanyi, Francesca Chiesi, Maria Anna Donati, Jayne Hamilton.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 14, 2015
  The cognitive reflection test (CRT) is a short measure of a person's ability to resist intuitive response tendencies and to produce a normatively correct response, which is based on effortful reasoning. Although the CRT is a very popular measure, its psychometric properties have not been extensively investigated. A major limitation of the CRT is the difficulty of the items, which can lead to floor effects in populations other than highly educated adults. The present study aimed at investigating the psychometric properties of the CRT applying item response theory analyses (a two‐parameter logistic model) and at developing a new version of the scale (the CRT‐long), which is appropriate for participants with both lower and higher levels of cognitive reflection. The results demonstrated the good psychometric properties of the original, as well as the new scale. The validity of the new scale was also assessed by measuring correlations with various indicators of intelligence, numeracy, reasoning and decision‐making skills, and thinking dispositions. Moreover, we present evidence for the suitability of the new scale to be used with developmental samples. Finally, by comparing the performance of adolescents and young adults on the CRT and CRT‐long, we report the first investigation into the development of cognitive reflection. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 14, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1883   open full text
• Decision Pattern Analysis as a General Framework for Studying Individual Differences in Decision Making.
  Simon A. Jackson, Sabina Kleitman, Lazar Stankov, Pauline Howie.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 12, 2015
  This paper investigated decision pattern analysis (DPA) as a general and standard framework for studying individuals' consistent decision making behavior within and between contexts. DPA classifies decisions on the basis of judgement accuracy and the goal orientation of the decided‐upon action. Over repeated decisions, patterns of individuals' decision behavior are described by five variables: competence, optimality, recklessness, hesitancy and decisiveness. A fictitious medical decision making test and three standard cognitive ability tests (extended with confidence ratings and a ‘submit answer for marking’ decision) were used to investigate the psychometric properties of these DPA variables. Internal consistency of the decision patterns ranged from good to excellent. Convergent validity was assessed via cognitive abilities, metacognitive confidence and a control criterion imposed on confidence that determines the decision to be made: the point of sufficient certainty. Personality variables were included to assess discriminant validity. As hypothesised, cognitive abilities showed positive correlations with competence and optimality. High confidence, low points of sufficient certainty and a greater discrepancy between them were associated with higher decisiveness and recklessness, and lower hesitancy. Personality measures showed mixed and generally weak correlations with the DPA variables. These convergent and discriminant results also held after controlling for all variables in regression. The results provide preliminary psychometric support for DPA as a general framework of behavioral decision making. DPA has the potential to be exploited in many contexts for uses that, to date, have been unachievable in a psychometrically valid manner. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 12, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1887   open full text
• Ostracism Reduces Reliance on Poor Advice from Others during Decision Making.
  Kaileigh A. Byrne, Thomas P. Tibbett, Lauren N. Laserna, Adrienne R. Carter‐Sowell, Darrell A. Worthy.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 12, 2015
  Decision making is rarely context‐free, and often, both social information and non‐social information are weighed into one's decisions. Incorporating information into a decision can be influenced by previous experiences. Ostracism has extensive effects, including taxing cognitive resources and increasing social monitoring. In decision making situations, individuals are often faced with both objective and social information and must choose which information to include or filter out. How will ostracism affect the reliance on objective and social information during decision making? Participants (N = 245) in Experiment 1 were randomly assigned to be included or ostracized in a standardized, group task. They then performed a dynamic decision making task that involved the presentation of either non‐social (i.e. biased reward feedback) or social (i.e., poor advice from a previous participant) misleading information. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 105) completed either the ostracism non‐social condition or social misleading information condition with explicit instructions stating that the advice given was from an individual who did not partake in the group task. Ostracized individuals relied more on non‐social misleading information and performed worse than included individuals. However, ostracized individuals discounted misleading social information and outperformed included individuals. Results of Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1. Across two experiments, ostracized individuals were more critical of advice from others, both individuals who may have ostracized them and unrelated individuals. In other words, compared with included individuals, ostracized individuals underweighted advice from another individual but overweighed non‐social information during decision making. We conclude that when deceptive objective information is present, ostracism results in disadvantageous decision making. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 12, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1886   open full text
• Exploring the Generalization Process from Past Behavior to Predicting Future Behavior.
  Lasana Harris, Victoria K. Lee, Elizabeth H. Thompson, Rachel Kranton.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. June 12, 2015
  Substantial evidence in social psychology documents that traits predict behavior. Research in behavioral economics establishes prior behavioral information—the actual behavior of another person in the past—influences future decision making, suggestive of the role of traits in guiding future behavior, but agnostic to the specific psychological mechanism. Yet the entire generalization process from past behavior to predicting future behavior has not been fully explored. Additionally, previous paradigms do not adequately dissociate prediction from explanation, and provide participants with trait information, or rely on participants to generate the appropriate trait. Here, we combine literature and experimental approaches in social psychology and behavioral economics to explore the generalization process from prior behavior that guides future decisions. Across three studies utilizing consequential economic game paradigms and online questionnaires, an initial group of participants (employees) played a time estimation game and a charity donations game before a second group of participants (employers) viewed the behavior of the first group, then decided whether to invest in employees in a trust game and rock guessing game. Although participants infer trait warmth and competence from the behavioral information in the first two games, estimates of normative behavior predicted investment decisions on the warmth‐relevant games better than trait inferences. These results dissociate generalizations guided by warmth and competence behavioral information, and question the extent to which traits always serve as heuristics to predict behavior. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  June 12, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1889   open full text
• Sensitivity to Affective Information and Investors' Evaluation of Past Performance: An Eye‐tracking Study.
  Enrico Rubaltelli, Sergio Agnoli, Laura Franchin.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 28, 2015
  In the present work, we used the eye‐tracking methodology to investigate how affective reactions influence investment decision making. In addition, we looked at individual differences in terms of people's sensitivity to affective information and how efficiently they regulate it, that is, trait emotional intelligence. We demonstrated that people who are more sensitive to affective information have larger pupil dilation when looking at the past performance of a stock fund. In addition, we also found that participants' larger pupil dilation had an impact on their investment decisions (whether people were more likely to sell their shares, hold on to the investment, or buy more shares). A larger pupil dilation led people to be more consistent and willing to invest more money on a fund regardless from its past performance (positive or negative). We also tested the hypothesis that individuals with a larger pupil dilation should be more influenced by a fund's past performance (e.g., selling their shares more often when the past performance of the fund was negative and buying additional shares more often when the past performance was positive). However, results did not support this explanation. Finally, our data revealed that the effect of individual differences in trait emotional intelligence on investment decisions was significantly mediated by pupil dilation. In the discussion, we explored the relationship between our results and previous evidence on the role of pupil dilation in processing information under uncertainty and the role of affect in decision making. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 28, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1885   open full text
• Positive and Negative Affect in Loss Aversion: Additive or Subtractive Logic?
  Hui Tang, Zhe Liang, Kun Zhou, Gui‐Hai Huang, Li‐Lin Rao, Shu Li.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 21, 2015
  Previous studies explain loss aversion as the result of a situation in which the expected negative emotions derived from a potential loss exceed the expected positive emotions derived from a potential gain (subtractive logic). We questioned this view and proposed additive logic, in which a linear combination between negative and positive emotions can be used as summed anticipatory affect intensity (SAAI) to explain loss aversion. By disproving two implicit hypotheses of subtractive logic, Study 1 showed that the additive logic of expected positive and negative affect was more effective than the subtractive logic in predicting loss aversion. Study 2 used real monetary gains and losses to verify the conclusion in Study 1. Using state‐trait theory to comprehensively consider the state and trait aspects of affect intensity, we further deduced that the immediate expected affect intensity might originate from the difference of an individual trait in affect intensity. Study 3 proved this hypothesis and showed that SAAI plays an intermediary role between affect intensity and loss aversion. Furthermore, Study 4 used real gamblers in casinos in Macau as its sample and obtained the same conclusion regarding loss aversion in real life as was found in the laboratory. Finally, we explained the effect of SAAI on loss aversion and indicated the contribution and significance of this study. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 21, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1884   open full text
• Eye See What You Are Saying: Testing Conversational Influences on the Information Gleaned from Home‐Loan Disclosure Forms.
  Mark A. LeBoeuf, Jessica M. Choplin, Debra Pogrund Stark.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 17, 2015
  The federal government mandates the use of home‐loan disclosure forms to facilitate understanding of offered loans, enable comparison shopping, and prevent predatory lending. Predatory lending persists, however, and scant research has examined how salespeople might undermine the effectiveness of these forms. Three eye‐tracking studies (a laboratory simulation and two controlled experiments) investigated how conversational norms affect the information consumers can glean from these forms. Study 1 was a laboratory simulation that recreated in the laboratory; the effects that previous literature suggested is likely happening in the field, namely, that following or violating conversational norms affects the information that consumers can glean from home‐loan disclosure forms and the home‐loan decisions they make. Studies 2 and 3 were controlled experiments that isolated the possible factors responsible for the observed biases in the information gleaned from these forms. The results suggest that attentional biases are largely responsible for the effects of conversation on the information consumers get and that perceived importance plays little to no role. Policy implications and how eye‐tracking technology can be employed to improve decision‐making are considered. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 17, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1881   open full text
• Cautious Defection: Group Representatives Cooperate and Risk Less than Individuals.
  Pavel Atanasov, Howard Kunreuther.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 15, 2015
  Individuals often make decisions that affect groups, yet the propensities of group representatives are not as well understood than those of independent decision makers or deliberating groups. We ask how responsibility for group payoffs—in the absence of group deliberation—affects the choice. The experiment utilizes the Interdependent Security Dilemma paradigm. In its deterministic version, the game is identical to a finitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma. In the stochastic version, potential losses are larger but uncertain, occurring with a predefined probability when one or both players choose to forgo investment in protection. Participants were assigned to play either as individuals, or as representatives of three‐person groups, with each member's choices equally likely to determine the group's payoffs. In the deterministic condition, individuals were more likely to invest (cooperate) than group representatives (80% vs. 62% of rounds). In the stochastic condition, the pattern was reversed as representatives were slightly, but not significantly, more likely to invest than individuals (46% vs. 40%). The significant interaction effect suggested that group representatives were not only less cooperative but also more risk averse than individuals. A follow‐up study supported this account by showing participants who construed the invest strategy as low‐risk than those who perceived this strategy to be high risk. Overall, group representatives exhibited a tendency to act more competitively and more cautiously than individuals acting alone. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 15, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1880   open full text
• Late‐life Depression, Suicidal Ideation, and Attempted Suicide: The Role of Individual Differences in Maximizing, Regret, and Negative Decision Outcomes.
  Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Alexandre Y. Dombrovski, Andrew M. Parker, Katalin Szanto.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 11, 2015
  Suicide rates are highest in adults of middle and older age. Research with psychiatric patients has shown that proneness to feel regret about past decisions can grow so intense that suicide becomes a tempting escape. Here, we examine the additional role of individual differences in maximizing, or the tendency to strive for the best decision, rather than one that is good enough. We provided individual‐difference measures of maximizing, regret proneness, and negative life decision outcomes (as reported on the Decision Outcome Inventory) to a nonpsychiatric control group, as well as three groups of psychiatric patients in treatment for suicide attempts, suicidal ideation, or non‐suicidal depression. We found that scores on the three individual‐difference measures were worse for psychiatric patients than for nonpsychiatric controls and were correlated to clinical assessments of depression, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation. More importantly, maximizing was associated with these clinical assessments, even after taking into account maximizers' worse life decision outcomes. Regret proneness significantly mediated those relationships, suggesting that maximizers could be at risk for clinical depression because of their proneness to regret. We discuss the theoretical relevance of our findings and their promise for clinical practice. Ultimately, late‐life depression and suicidal ideation may be treated with interventions that promote better decision making and regret regulation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 11, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1882   open full text
• Cognitive Reflection Predicts Real‐Life Decision Outcomes, but Not Over and Above Personality and Decision‐Making Styles.
  Marie Juanchich, Chris Dewberry, Miroslav Sirota, Sunitha Narendran.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 06, 2015
  The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), designed to assess the ability to inhibit intuition to process a problem analytically, predicts people's performance in many normative judgement and decision‐making tasks (e.g., Bayesian reasoning, conjunction fallacy and ratio bias). However, how the CRT predicts normative decision‐making performance is unclear, and little is known about the extent to which the CRT predicts real‐life decision outcomes. We investigate the role of the CRT in predicting real‐life decision outcomes and examine whether the CRT predicts real‐life decision outcomes after controlling for two related individual differences: the Big Five personality traits and decision‐making styles. Our results show that greater CRT scores predict positive real‐life decision outcomes measured by the Decision Outcome Inventory. However, the effect size was small, and the relationship became non‐significant after statistically controlling for personality and decision‐making styles. We discuss the limited predictive role of cognitive reflection in real‐life decision‐making outcomes, along with the roles of personality and decision‐making styles. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 06, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1875   open full text
• The Effect of Recipient Identifiability and Neediness on Children's Sharing Behavior.
  Tehila Kogut, Paul Slovic, Daniel Västfjäll.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 28, 2015
  The identifiable victim effect refers to people's greater willingness to share resources with identified targets (about whom they have some identifying information) than to share with unidentified or statistical targets. Previous research examining adults' behavior suggests that identifiable targets arouse in the perceiver an intense emotional reaction that, in turn, increases sharing especially when the target is perceived as needy. In the current research, we examine whether the spontaneous reaction toward an identifiable, needy target and the increase in sharing with such a target appears in young children's sharing behavior and when in early childhood it develops. The results suggest that adding identifying information about a needy recipient increases sharing only in older children (above the age of 5.5) and in children who have acquired higher levels of theory of mind (independent of age). Mediation–moderation analysis suggests that theory of mind mediates the relation between age and sharing mainly when a specific, needy recipient is presented. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 28, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1879   open full text
• Decisions from Experience: From Monetary to Medical Gambles.
  Tomás Lejarraga, Thorsten Pachur, Renato Frey, Ralph Hertwig.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 17, 2015
  The description–experience gap refers to the robust finding that learning about uncertain options via description or experience results in systematically different choices. This gap has previously been studied primarily with monetary gambles. Here, we examine search and choice processes in decisions from experience involving medical outcomes (side effects of medication). We compare these processes both to decisions from experience involving monetary gambles and to decisions from description involving the same medical outcomes. As in the monetary domain, we found a description–experience gap in medical choices. Yet we also found four striking differences between medical and monetary choices. First, medical choices were significantly less consistent with the maximization of expected value than were monetary choices from description or experience. Second, medical choices gave rise to more strongly inverse S‐shaped probability weighting functions in decisions from description and experience, suggesting considerably lower probability sensitivity in the medical than the monetary domain. Third, participants gathered considerably less information in medical than in monetary decisions from experience. Finally, we found that minimax—a simple decision rule that aims to minimize the maximum possible loss—predicted medical choices substantially better than monetary choices, in decisions from both description and experience. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 17, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1877   open full text
• Verbalization of Decision Strategies in Multiple‐Cue Probabilistic Inference.
  Matthew M. Walsh, Kevin A. Gluck.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 17, 2015
  In multiple‐cue probabilistic inference, people choose between alternatives based on several cues, each of which is differentially associated with an alternative's overall value. Various strategies have been proposed for probabilistic inference (e.g., weighted additive, tally, and take‐the‐best). These strategies differ in how many cue values they require to enact and in how they weight each cue. Do decision makers actually use any of these strategies? Ways to investigate this question include analyzing people's choices and the cues that they reveal. However, different strategies often predict the same decisions, and search behavior says nothing about whether or how people use the information that they acquire. In this research, we attempt to elucidate which strategies participants use in a multiple‐cue probabilistic inference task by examining verbal protocols, a high‐density source of process data. The promise of verbal data is in their utility for testing detailed information processing models. To that end, we apply protocol analysis in conjunction with computational simulations. We find converging evidence across outcome measures, search measures, and verbal reports that most participants use simplifying heuristics, namely take‐the‐best. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 17, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1878   open full text
• Sex Differences in Psychological Factors Associated with Social Discounting.
  Elizabeth A. Olson, Isabelle M. Rosso, Lauren A. Demers, Shreya Divatia, William D. S. Killgore.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 07, 2015
  The social discounting paradigm is a powerful means of quantifying altruism in humans, who are typically willing to forgo some amount of personal earnings in exchange for increased earnings for another person. The amount of money that people are willing to forgo decreases with increasing social distance. In this study, we examined variables related to sex, intolerance of uncertainty, and empathy, all of which are theorized to affect the social discounting rate. Participants (27 men and 28 women) completed measures of intolerance of uncertainty, empathy, and social discounting. We found sex differences in psychological predictors of social discounting: in women, empathy (but not intolerance of uncertainty) predicts the social discounting rate, while in men, social discounting is associated with intolerance of uncertainty (but not empathy). Possible neurobiological, social, and cognitive explanations for this sex difference are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 07, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1876   open full text
• Are Longshots Only for Losers? A New Look at the Last Race Effect.
  Craig R. M. McKenzie, Shlomi Sher, Johannes Müller‐Trede, Charlette Lin, Michael J. Liersch, Anthony George Rawstron.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 29, 2015
  There is evidence that betting on longshots increases in the last race of a day of horse racing. Previous accounts have assumed that the phenomenon is driven by bettors who have lost money and are trying to recoup their losses. To test this assumption of “reference dependence,” three laboratory experiments simulated a day at the races: In each of several rounds, participants chose either (i) a gamble with a small probability of a large gain and a large probability of a small loss (the “longshot”) or (ii) a gamble with a moderate chance of a small gain or a small loss (the “favorite”). The first two experiments employed a game played for points, while a third experiment included monetary incentives and stimuli drawn from a real day of racing. These experiments provide a clear demonstration of the last race effect in a laboratory setting. However, the results indicate that the effect is largely reference independent: Participants were more likely to choose the longshot in the last round regardless of whether, and how much, they had won or lost in previous rounds. Winning or losing, bettors prefer to “go out with a bang” at the end of a series of gambles. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 29, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1873   open full text
• Intertemporal Similarity: Discounting as a Last Resort.
  Jeffrey R. Stevens.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 24, 2015
  Standard models of intertemporal choice assume that individuals discount future payoffs by integrating reward amounts and time delays to generate a discounted value. Alternative models propose that, rather than integrate across them, individuals compare within attributes (amounts and delays) to determine if differences in one attribute outweigh differences in another attribute. For instance, the similarity model 1) compares the two reward amounts to determine whether they are similar, 2) compares the similarity of the two time delays, and then 3) makes a decision based on these similarity judgments. Here, I tested discounting models against attribute‐based models that use similarity judgments to make choices. I collected intertemporal choices and similarity judgments for the reward amounts and time delays from participants in three experiments. All experiments tested the ability of discounting and similarity models to predict intertemporal choices. Model generalization analyses showed that the best predicting models started with similarity judgments and then, if similarity failed to make a prediction, resorted to discounting models. Similarity judgments also matched intertemporal choice data demonstrating both the magnitude and sign effects, thereby accounting for behavioral data that contradict many discounting models. These results highlight the possibility that attribute‐based models such as the similarity models provide alternatives to discounting that may offer insights into the process of making intertemporal choices. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 24, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1870   open full text
• A Goal‐Priming Approach to Cognitive Consistency: Applications to Judgment.
  Anne‐Sophie Chaxel, J. Edward Russo, Catherine Wiggins.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 20, 2015
  A fundamental criterion of judgment is consistency among beliefs. To augment traditional methods for studying cognitive consistency, we treat it as a goal and present a priming method for increasing its activation. Three studies use three criteria to validate the method: an increase in the biased evaluation of incoming information, speed in a lexical decision task, and participants' direct reports of greater goal activation. The method is then used to verify the role of the consistency goal in three diverse judgment phenomena. Priming cognitive consistency increases the search for postdecisional supporting information (selective exposure to information), the agreement between preference and prediction (the desirability bias or wishful thinking), and the adjustment of a socially unacceptable implicit attitude to conform to the corresponding explicit attitude. One conclusion is that the cause of these phenomena is not only motivated reasoning (driven directionally by a desired outcome) but also the purely cognitive and nondirectional process of simply making beliefs more consistent. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 20, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1874   open full text
• Areas of Interest as a Signal Detection Problem in Behavioral Eye‐Tracking Research.
  Jacob L. Orquin, Nathaniel J. S. Ashby, Alasdair D. F. Clarke.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 20, 2015
  Decision researchers frequently analyze attention to individual objects to test hypotheses about underlying cognitive processes. Generally, fixations are assigned to objects using a method known as area of interest (AOI). Ideally, an AOI includes all fixations belonging to an object while fixations to other objects are excluded. Unfortunately, due to measurement inaccuracy and insufficient distance between objects, the distributions of fixations to objects may overlap, resulting in a signal detection problem. If the AOI is to include all fixations to an object, it will also likely include fixations belonging to other objects (false positives). In a survey, we find that many researchers report testing multiple AOI sizes when performing analyses, presumably trying to balance the proportion of true and false positive fixations. To test whether AOI size influences the measurement of object attention and conclusions drawn about cognitive processes, we reanalyze four published studies and conduct a fifth tailored to our purpose. We find that in studies in which we expected overlapping fixation distributions, analyses benefited from smaller AOI sizes (0° visual angle margin). In studies where we expected no overlap, analyses benefited from larger AOI sizes (>.5° visual angle margins). We conclude with a guideline for the use of AOIs in behavioral eye‐tracking research. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 20, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1867   open full text
• Choosing Across Cultures: The Effect of Choice Complexity on Treatment Outcomes.
  Jill A. Brown, Masanori Oikawa, Jason P. Rose, Heather M. Haught, Haruka Oikawa, Andrew L. Geers.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 20, 2015
  Prior research has revealed that having choice over treatments can improve their efficacy. However, it is currently unknown if the benefits of treatment choice hold for complex decisions and different cultures. The effects of differing numbers of treatment options were explored across two cultural contexts: United States and Japan. Participants were exposed to an uncomfortable stimulus and provided with up to 15 placebo treatment options they believed would reduce discomfort. There was a significant interaction such that participants from Japan benefited most from fewer treatment options (2 and 5) compared with more treatment options (10 and 15). Participants from the United States, however, showed either no change in discomfort or less discomfort as the number of choices increased. Additionally, participants from Japan reported less satisfaction with the decision process when they had more treatment options to choose from whereas U.S. participants reported similar, if not slightly higher, satisfaction with more treatment options. Further, a second study indicated that a positive experience with the decision process mediated the relationship between choice complexity and treatment efficacy for Japanese participants. These data demonstrate the importance of culture and choice complexity when discussing treatment choice and resulting outcomes in the medical context. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 20, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1868   open full text
• Understanding the Construct of Maximizing Tendency: A Theoretical and Empirical Evaluation.
  Dev K. Dalal, Dalia L. Diab, Xiaoyuan ( Susan) Zhu, Timothy Hwang.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 19, 2015
  More attention is being given to the stable, dispositional tendency to maximize when making decisions. Within the growing body of research has been an exchange regarding the appropriate means of measuring maximizing tendency. Guided primarily by psychometric and statistical analyses, these studies have critiqued and revised existing maximizing tendency scales and/or introduced new measures. Importantly, many of these discussions seem to ignore theoretical considerations of the construct of maximizing. In this article, we revisit the original work of Herbert Simon, from where the theory of maximizing tendency was developed, and provide a theoretical account for how maximizers can be distinguished from satisficers and the implications therein for the measurement of maximizing tendency. Across two studies, we provide an updated psychometric, correlational, and behavioral comparison of the two most popular maximizing tendency scales: the Maximization Scale and the Maximizing Tendency Scale. Results demonstrate that the Maximizing Tendency Scale is more theoretically and psychometrically valid than the Maximization Scale. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 19, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1859   open full text
• Eyes on the Prize? Evidence of Diminishing Attention to Experienced and Foregone Outcomes in Repeated Experiential Choice.
  Nathaniel J. S. Ashby, Tim Rakow.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 19, 2015
  Recently, there has been increased interest in decisions‐from‐experience (where decision makers learn from observing the outcomes of previous choices), which provide valuable insights into the learning and preference construction processes underlying many daily decisions. Several process models have been developed to capture these processes, and while such models often fit the data well, many assume that the decision maker is a vigilant observer, processing each outcome. In two studies, we provide a critical test of this assumption using eye tracking to record directed visual attention when participants choose repeatedly among two options, each time being shown the outcome for their chosen option and for the foregone option. Consistently, we find that the vigilance assumption is not supported, with decision makers often not attending to outcome information. Moreover, (in)attention to outcomes is predictable, with vigilance decreasing as more choices are made, and being greater for obtained than for foregone outcomes, and when options deliver only gains as opposed to losses or a mixture of gains and losses. Furthermore, we find that this variation in attentional allocation plays a central role in the apparent indecisiveness (inconsistency) in choice, with increased attention to foregone outcomes predicting switches to that option on the next choice. Together, these findings highlight the value of eye tracking in investigations of decisions‐from‐experience, providing novel insight into the cognitive processes underlying them. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 19, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1872   open full text
• Temporal Discounting Mechanisms of Future‐oriented Coping: Evidence from Delay Discounting and Task Prioritization Paradigms.
  Yiqun Gan, Yu Wang, Ran Meng, Min Wen, Guangyu Zhou, Yingyue Lu, Miao Miao.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 18, 2015
  Four studies were conducted to examine the relationship between future‐oriented coping and temporal discounting under different situational conditions. In Study 1, 138 participants were primed with either stressful or neutral stimuli, followed by a delay‐discounting task. In Study 2, 118 participants were primed with either stressful or neutral stimuli, followed by a task‐prioritization activity. The results of both studies indicated that future‐oriented coping had a significant negative association with temporal discounting or the number of rational choices in the neutral‐priming condition, but the relationship was not significant in the stress‐priming condition. In Study 3, qualitative data revealed that the major reason for shifting choices from larger but later payoffs to smaller but sooner rewards in a stressful condition was to reduce the stressful mood, create a positive mood, and promote a sense of accomplishment. This explanation was corroborated by Study 4, in which one group was allowed to choose an immediate payoff and the other group was blocked from choosing that immediate payoff. We confirmed that post‐test anxiety was significantly lower in the immediate payoff group compared with the delayed‐payoff group in proactive and preventive coping, using pre‐test anxiety as a covariate. Preventive coping helped to reduce anxiety levels in a stressful condition only when there was a choice to obtain an immediate payoff. These findings underscore the relationship between future‐oriented coping and temporal discounting, as well as the flexibility of discounting in the face of stress. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 18, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1869   open full text
• Intelligence, Executive Functions, and Decision Making as Predictors of Antisocial Behavior in an Adolescent Sample of Justice‐Involved Youth and a Community Comparison Group.
  Geoff Brian Sorge, Tracey A. Skilling, Maggie E. Toplak.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 17, 2015
  A clinical sample of justice‐involved male adolescents and a community comparison group were compared on a battery of cognitive ability tasks (intelligence and executive functions), decision making measures, and other individual difference measures, including ratings of self‐control, recognition of morally debatable behaviors, and antisocial beliefs. The clinical sample displayed lower performance on cognitive abilities and decision making than the community comparison group. In particular, the clinical group displayed less otherside thinking and more hostile attribution biases in unintentional situations compared with the community comparison group. Cognitive abilities and the decision making performance predicted group membership. Then, group membership, ratings of self‐control, attitudes about morally debatable behaviors, and antisocial beliefs predicted ratings of antisocial behavior in the full sample. These findings suggest that measures of cognitive ability and decision making make separate contributions to explaining antisocial behaviors. In addition, the predictors of group membership and antisocial behavior did not overlap, suggesting that antisocial behavior engagement in clinical samples may be separable from the continuum of antisocial behavior across the full sample. Cognitive science models of decision making can provide a framework for understanding antisocial behavior in clinical and community samples of adolescents. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 17, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1864   open full text
• Experimental Tests of Risk Ladders in the Elicitation of Perceived Likelihood.
  Alexander Persoskie, Julie S. Downs.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 17, 2015
  Risk ladders have the potential to improve numeric judgments of low‐likelihood events by providing information about the likelihoods of comparison risks, thereby letting respondents make risk estimates “in context.” However, to date this tool has been studied systematically only in communication of risk, not in elicitation of perceived likelihoods. In three studies, we evaluated the benefits of risk ladders on the consistency, validity, and mean‐level accuracy of elicited likelihood judgments. When estimates for low‐likelihood hazards were elicited using different numeric response scales (e.g., “1 in x” and “x in 100,000”), scale type had a strong effect on the magnitudes of the elicited estimates, and viewing a risk ladder (Experiment 1) or comparison risks (Experiments 2 and 3) did not attenuate this effect of scale type. Similarly, we found no evidence that risk ladders or comparison risks improved the convergent validity of numeric estimates, as measured using correlations with risk ratings made on alternative scale types. Finally, viewing comparison risks tended to reduce gross overestimation of rare events, with relatively less change in estimates for mid‐likelihood and high‐likelihood hazards. This suggests that comparison risks can spread responses to cover a wider range of values but do not ameliorate scale effects. In the elicitation of numeric risk estimates, how you ask matters, even if you let people make estimates “in context” through the use of comparative risk information. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 17, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1858   open full text
• When Does Framing Influence Preferences, Risk Perceptions, and Risk Attitudes? The Explicated Valence Account.
  Michael Tombu, David R. Mandel.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 12, 2015
  When faced with an expected loss and a choice between a sure option and a risky option, the gain–loss framing of the problem has been shown to influence option preference. According to prospect theory, this framing effect is the result of contradictory attitudes about risks involving gains and losses. This article develops and tests an alternative explicated valence account (EVA), which proposes that preference reversals are caused by differences in the explicated outcome valences of the options under consideration. EVA can account for previous findings where framing effects are observed, eliminated, or even reversed. In two experiments, EVA successfully predicted when framing effects were observed, eliminated, and reversed. The findings also showed that although framing influenced risk perception, it did not influence risk attitudes. Copyright © 2015 Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada Journal of Behavioral Decision Making © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 12, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1863   open full text
• Maximization and Search for Alternatives in Decision Situations With and Without Loss of Options.
  Andrea L. Patalano, Emma L. Weizenbaum, Sydney L. Lolli, Alexandra Anderson.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 10, 2015
  Maximizing tendency has been associated with greater accumulation of choice alternatives prior to selection of a preference. It is not known whether this search behavior extends to situations in which accumulation of new choice alternatives comes with the potential loss of existing ones. In Study 1, we replicate the original finding of greater accumulation of choice alternatives, using a computer‐based laboratory task. We then provide evidence, in Studies 2 and 3, that when potential loss of existing options is incorporated into the task, maximization is associated with less rather than more search for additional options. Maximization components of decision difficulty and alternative search, but not high standards or satisficing, explain this behavior. Other task measures are also collected, but few maximization‐related differences are observed. The findings support an interpretation of maximizers as decision makers who are as concerned with the potential loss of existing options as with the loss of undiscovered future ones. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 10, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1856   open full text
• Risk‐Taking Tendencies in Prisoners and Nonprisoners: Does Gender Matter?
  Szymon Wichary, Thorsten Pachur, Mengduo Li.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 10, 2015
  Several investigations have found that prisoners are more likely than nonprisoners to engage in risky behavior, which may contribute to their propensity to commit criminal offenses. However, this research has been limited by an almost exclusive focus on male samples. Given the established link between risk taking and gender, it is thus unclear how findings on the risk‐taking propensities of prisoners also hold in women. The present study uses both a self‐report questionnaire (Domain‐Specific Risk Taking scale, DOSPERT) and a behavioral task (Balloon Analogue Risk Task, BART) to investigate risk‐taking tendencies in a Chinese prisoner group and a nonprisoner control group with balanced gender proportions. Across both genders, prisoners both indicated a higher risk‐taking tendency on the DOSPERT and showed more risk‐taking behavior on the BART than did nonprisoners. Importantly, the differences were considerably more pronounced in women than in men. Relative to nonprisoners, gender differences in risk taking were substantially smaller, or even reversed, in prisoners. Computational modeling of respondents' behavior in the BART revealed that the prisoners had higher reward sensitivity and lower response consistency than the nonprisoners; these differences were again more pronounced among women. Our results suggest that previous studies based primarily on male prisoners may have underestimated differences in risk taking between prisoners and nonprisoners, and that female prisoners may represent an even more extreme subpopulation than male prisoners. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 10, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1866   open full text
• Double Reference Points: the Effects of Social and Financial Reference Points on Decisions Under Risk.
  Jingyi Lu, Xiaofei Xie, Mei Wang, Xin Tang.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 06, 2015
  The existing literature is inconsistent about how social comparison affects risk attitudes. We propose a framework where the total utility is composed of the social and financial utilities. The financial utility is consistent with prospect theory (i.e., an S‐shaped utility function with a financial reference point), whereas the social utility is affected by both social and financial reference points. Therefore, social risk attitudes are determined by interaction between gains/losses in both social and financial contexts. On the basis of safety‐first principle, we propose that when experiencing financial gains, individuals tend to seek upside potential and take social risks (i.e., a convex social utility function). In contrast, when facing financial losses, people would be more risk seeking in social gains but more risk averse in social losses to maximize security (i.e., an inverse S‐shaped utility function). We also propose that the relative importance of financial and social utilities depends on the saliency of the reference points and size of stakes. Studies 1 and 2 showed that individuals were risk seeking in both social gains and losses with social reference points alone. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that when both financial and social reference points were salient, participants were risk averse in both social gains and losses when facing financial gains, but risk seeking in social gains and risk averse in social losses when facing financial losses. The hypotheses derived from the theoretical framework were in general supported by our experiments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 06, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1862   open full text
• What Goes Up Apparently Needn't Come Down: Asymmetric Predictions of Ascent and Descent in Rankings.
  Shai Davidai, Thomas Gilovich.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 06, 2015
  In eight studies, we document an upward mobility bias, or a tendency to predict that a rise in rankings is more likely than a decline. This asymmetry was observed in predictions of classroom performance, NBA and NFL standings, business school rankings, and employee performance rankings. The bias was found for entities people care about and want to see improve their standing, as well as entities in which people are not invested. It appears to result from people's tendency to give considerable weight to a focal agent's intentions and motivation, but to give less weight to the intentions of competitors and other factors that would thwart the focal agent's improvement. We show that this bias is most pronounced for implicit incremental theorists, who believe that performance is malleable (and hence assign more weight to intentions and effort). We discuss implications of this asymmetry for decision making and for an understanding of the underdog bias. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 06, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1865   open full text
• Investing Even in Uneven Contests: Effects of Asymmetry on Investment in Contests.
  Einav Hart, Judith Avrahami, Yaakov Kareev, Peter M. Todd.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 06, 2015
  Many competitions, such as political campaigns, innovative endeavors, sports, or courting rituals, require investment of nonrefundable resources: One contestant wins the prize for the invested amount, whereas all others lose their investments without receiving compensation. Frequently, contests are asymmetric, because of differing resources or prize valuations. Does asymmetry discourage the weaker contestants from investing? Do stronger contestants take this into account and also invest less? Or does the desire to win abolish these differences? Two experiments explored the effects of asymmetry between the contestants—arising from their resources or prizes—on nonrefundable investments. Subjects repeatedly competed in both symmetric and asymmetric contests, enabling within‐subject comparisons. We observed an effect of asymmetry only when it concerned resources: Subjects overall invested less when their resources were unequal, whereas inequality in the prizes did not influence investments. This pattern suggests that winning itself is motivating. The changes between consecutive investments can be explained by reactions to the previous outcome (win or loss): Across all contests, investment decreased following a win and increased following a loss. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 06, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1861   open full text
• My Recency, Our Primacy: How Social Connection Influences Evaluations of Sequences.
  Rajesh P. Bhargave, Nicole Votolato Montgomery.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 06, 2015
  Individuals have many life experiences (e.g., work and vacations) that consist of a series of interconnected episodes (i.e., temporal sequences). Assessments of such experiences are integral to daily life in that they facilitate future planning and behaviors for individuals. Therefore, these experiences often culminate in evaluations of their global affect. Past work has shown that retrospective, affective evaluations of these sequences generally exhibit an “end effect,” whereby a sequence's end intensity—but not its start intensity—is disproportionately weighted. Yet, researchers have largely investigated experiences that occur alone. In contrast, many real‐world experiences vary in their extent of social connection to others (e.g., working in an office with others versus alone in a cubicle). The present work fills this gap by showing the moderating role of social connection on how episodes are weighted in global affective ratings. Five studies involving two autobiographical experiences spanning several days each (workweek and spring break) and two brief simulated experiences show that high social connection leads to greater (lesser) weighting of the first (last) episode. To our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that these effects persist across different forms of social connection (i.e., interpersonal interaction versus semantic priming tasks) and are supported regardless of whether social connection occurs at encoding or retrieval of an experience. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 06, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1860   open full text
• Allais from Experience: Choice Consistency, Rare Events, and Common Consequences in Repeated Decisions.
  Jason L. Harman, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 05, 2015
  The Allais Paradox is a well‐known bias in which people's preferences result in contradictory choices between two normatively identical gamble pairs. Studies have shown that these preference reversals depend on how information is described and presented. In an experiment, we investigate the Allais gambles in several formats including an experiential paradigm, where participants make selections from two blank buttons and get an outcome as a result of a draw from distributions of outcomes in the selected gamble. Results indicate that a large proportion of Allais reversals are found in the traditional descriptive format, they are reduced when gambles are presented in a descriptive table format, and they disappear when choices are made from experience. Although a majority of participants made consistent choices from experience, the proportion of individual reversals is similar to that of descriptive choices. Detailed analyses of experiential choice suggest interesting behavioral differences between participants classified as consistent and those classified as reversals: consistent participants explore and maximize more than reversal participants. Furthermore, consistent participants demonstrate a different switching behavior after experiencing a rare outcome than do reversal participants. We find that, both, overweighting or underweighting of rare outcomes may occur within the course of an individual's experience; depending on the timing of those experiences, the magnitude of the outcomes observed, and the general accumulated value of the gambles. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 05, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1855   open full text
• Quantifying Supervisory Decision Making: Eye‐Tracking Technology Applications for the Promotion of Child Safety.
  Rachel N. S. Cavalari, Raymond G. Romanczyk.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 13, 2015
  Previous research has investigated various risk factors correlated with childhood injury, but few studies have successfully investigated these variables beyond participant self‐report. The present study utilized infrared eye‐tracking and computer‐based latency measures to evaluate caregiver supervision decisions in injury risk situations for typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder. The sample included 99 young women, ages 18–24 years, who are frequent non‐parental caregivers for children. Results indicated that participants altered their speed of response, child monitoring, and intervention decisions on the basis of idiosyncratic assessment of injury risk. Minimal significant differences emerged with regard to supervision behavior and chosen strategies when comparing children with autism spectrum disorder to typically developing children. Overall, results suggest that non‐parental caregivers integrate child characteristics and environmental risk factors when assessing risk and choosing interventions. Implications are discussed with regard to injury prevention programs emphasizing protective aspects of supervision for children across various settings. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 13, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1857   open full text
• Evidence for Implicit Risk: Delay Facilitates the Processing of Uncertainty.
  Michael T. Bixter, Christian C. Luhmann.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 13, 2015
  Humans and other animals discount the value of rewards over time. One explanation for this is that delayed rewards may be less certain than immediate rewards, what has been referred to as the implicit risk hypothesis. Although this explanation is widely accepted, little research has directly assessed the validity of the implicit risk hypothesis. In the current study, we present two experiments in which participants made decisions about rewards involving both delay and uncertainty. By manipulating the order in which information was presented, we were able to investigate whether delay information facilitates beliefs about uncertainty and vice versa. It was found that participants were more likely to prefer larger, delayed rewards when information about delay was presented before information about uncertainty than when the information was presented in the opposite order. Additionally, we describe a process model that implements the implicit risk hypothesis and show that it is consistent with the observed patterns of data. These results support the implicit risk hypothesis and suggest that information about delay facilitates the processing of information about uncertainty. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 13, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1853   open full text
• Do Bettors Correctly Perceive Odds? Three Studies of How Bettors Interpret Betting Odds as Probabilistic Information.
  Patric Andersson, Håkan Nilsson.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 10, 2015
  This paper reports on three studies investigating how accurately bettors (=people who regularly bet on sports events) interpret the probabilistic information implied by betting odds. All studies were based on data collected by web surveys prompting a total of 186 experienced bettors to convert sets of representative odds into frequency judgments. Bayesian statistical methods were used to analyze the data. From the results, the following conclusions were made: (i) On the whole, the bettors produced well‐calibrated judgments, indicating that they have realistic perceptions of odds. (ii) Bettors were unable to consciously adjust judgments for different margins. (iii) Although their interval judgments often covered the estimates implied by the odds, the bettors tended to overestimate the variation of expected profitable bets between months. The results are consistent with prior research showing that people tend to make accurate probability judgments when faced with tasks characterized by constant and clear feedback. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 10, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1851   open full text
• Age Differences in Risk: Perceptions, Intentions and Domains.
  Emily M. Bonem, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Richard Gonzalez.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 10, 2015
  Although it is commonly assumed that older people are more cautious and risk averse than their younger counterparts, the research on age differences in risk taking is mixed. While some research has found that older adults are less risk seeking, other research has found the opposite or no differences. One explanation is that age differences vary across risk domains. In two studies, we surveyed three adult age groups ranging in age from 18 to 83 on their risk perceptions and intentions of risky behaviors across several domains. Our studies showed that compared with young adults, older adults tend to see more risk in behaviors in health and ethical domains but less risk in behaviors from the social domain. A similar pattern occurred for participants' intentions of engaging in the risky behaviors. Older adults rated risky behaviors from health and ethical domains as less enjoyable and less likely to produce gains than young adults, whereas they rated risky behaviors from the social domain as more enjoyable, less unpleasant, and less likely to produce losses than young adults. These results suggest that age differences in risk preferences may vary across domains and may result from differing motivations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 10, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1848   open full text
• Physiological Correlates of Choice‐Induced Dissonance: An Exploration of HPA‐Axis Responses.
  Sasha Y. Kimel, Nestor Lopez‐Duran, Shinobu Kitayama.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 10, 2015
  Choice can produce a negatively arousing cognitive conflict (called dissonance), which is thought to motivate the chooser to spread their preferences for the relevant options (called Spreading of Alternatives, or SA). The current work aimed to determine the relationship between HPA‐axis activity and both choice‐induced dissonance and its reduction (i.e. SA) among individuals with varying cultural backgrounds. European–Americans and Asians made a choice between two equally attractive CDs either in the presence of a cue indicative of social eyes (i.e. public‐choice condition) or in the absence thereof (i.e. private‐choice condition). As predicted, European–Americans and Asians showed a reliable SA primarily in the private and public choice conditions, respectively. Importantly, a sharp decline of salivary cortisol was observed over the span of 30 min, and, moreover, this decline was reliably predicted by the magnitude of SA regardless of either culture or the choice being private vs. public. These results suggest that although choice‐induced dissonance is too weak to elicit an HPA‐axis stress response, SA is associated with variability in the decline of salivary cortisol during the laboratory task. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 10, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1845   open full text
• More Eagerness, More Suffering from Search Bias: Accuracy Incentives and Need for Cognition Exacerbate the Detrimental Effects of Excessive Searching in Finding Romantic Partners Online.
  Chun‐Chia Lee, Wen‐Bin Chiou.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 30, 2015
  The systematic use of Web search tools to browse and evaluate recommendations is widespread. Such tools may be crucial for users to truly benefit from the enormous selection of options available online. However, a recent study demonstrated that a greater number of search options triggered excessive searching and led to inferior decisions (i.e., the more‐means‐worse effect; Wu & Chiou, ). Given that individuals who are motivated to make accurate choices (the accuracy incentive) tend to engage in broader and more exhaustive searches, Experiment 1 examined how the accuracy incentive influenced the search process. The findings indicated that the accuracy incentive led to excessive searching and poorer choices. Moreover, the search ratio, an indicator of excessive searching, mediated the negative effect of the accuracy incentive on choice quality. Experiment 2 investigated the role of the need for cognition (NFC) in the more‐means‐worse effect. High‐NFC participants demonstrated an increased tendency toward excessive searching and exhibited poorer selectivity than did low‐NFC participants. The current research indicated that the accuracy incentive of online searchers may serve as a determinant of excessive searching and that online searchers characterized by high NFC may be more vulnerable to the negative effects of excessive searching. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  January 30, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1852   open full text
• Eye Movements in Risky Choice.
  Neil Stewart, Frouke Hermens, William J. Matthews.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 26, 2015
  We asked participants to make simple risky choices while we recorded their eye movements. We built a complete statistical model of the eye movements and found very little systematic variation in eye movements over the time course of a choice or across the different choices. The only exceptions were finding more (of the same) eye movements when choice options were similar, and an emerging gaze bias in which people looked more at the gamble they ultimately chose. These findings are inconsistent with prospect theory, the priority heuristic, or decision field theory. However, the eye movements made during a choice have a large relationship with the final choice, and this is mostly independent from the contribution of the actual attribute values in the choice options. That is, eye movements tell us not just about the processing of attribute values but also are independently associated with choice. The pattern is simple—people choose the gamble they look at more often, independently of the actual numbers they see—and this pattern is simpler than predicted by decision field theory, decision by sampling, and the parallel constraint satisfaction model. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  January 26, 2015   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1854   open full text
• Framing of Decisions: Effect on Active and Passive Risk Avoidance.
  Oswald Huber, Odilo W. Huber, Arlette S. Bär.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 16, 2014
  Decision makers intending to avoid risk in a decision situation can choose a less risky alternative (passive risk avoidance) or intervene actively in an alternative applying a risk‐defusing action (active risk avoidance). In Experiment 1 (64 participants), we compared active and passive risk defusing in two framing conditions. In the negative frame, in the uncertain alternative, a change to the worse was possible; in the positive frame, a change to an improvement was possible. Each participant decided in both framing conditions. As expected, active risk avoidance behavior for preventing a negative outcome (i.e., in the negative frame) was more likely than for promoting a positive one (i.e., in the positive frame). If decision makers did not or could not actively defuse the risk, they chose in correspondence to the classical pattern: risk avoidance in the positive frame and risk seeking in the negative one. We replicated the latter result in a second experiment (32 participants). The classical framing pattern in passive risk avoidance in both experiments is remarkable, because participants were not presented or did not search for exact probabilities. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 16, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1821   open full text
• Development and Validation of a New Measure of Intuition: The Types of Intuition Scale.
  Jean E. Pretz, Jeffrey B. Brookings, Lauren A. Carlson, Tamera Keiter Humbert, Michael Roy, Meghan Jones, Daniel Memmert.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 16, 2014
  The Types of Intuition Scale (TIntS) measures three types of intuition identified in a literature review by Pretz and Totz (): holistic, inferential, and affective. Holistic intuitions integrate diverse sources of information in a Gestalt‐like, non‐analytical manner; inferential intuitions are based on previously analytical processes that have become automatic; and affective intuitions are based on feelings. Current intuition measures inadequately assess these distinct types. We report four validity studies: Study 1 reports the reliability and factor structure of the TIntS and correlations with extant intuition and personality measures. Study 2 presents a confirmatory factor analysis. Studies 3 and 4 examine the predictive validity of the TIntS with respect to clinical decision making in occupational therapy and musical performance. Scales were internally consistent and stable over time, and factor analyses supported the predicted distinctions among them. Correlations with existing measures of intuition, personality, and behavior showed that the TIntS is unique in its assessment of all three types of intuition in one measure. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 16, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1820   open full text
• Are People Naïve Probability Theorists? A Further Examination of the Probability Theory + Variation Model.
  Christopher R. Fisher, Christopher R. Wolfe.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 27, 2014
  Two experiments tested predictions derived from the Probability Theory + Variation (PTV) model. PTV model assumes that judgments follow probability theory, but systematic errors arise from noise in the judgments. Experiment 1 compared the PTV model to a configural weighted averaging model in joint probability judgment and found more support for the PTV model in diagnostic cases. Specifically, noise was negatively correlated with semantic coherence and conjunction and disjunction fallacies increased when order effects produced more noise in conjunctions and disjunctions. Consistent with both models, judgments adhered stochastically to the addition law. Contrary to the integration rules of the PTV model, we failed to find increased noise in disjunctions compared to conjunctions. Experiment 2 tested predictions of the PTV model for conditional probability judgment. Consistent with the PTV model, noise was negatively correlated with semantic coherence in conditional probabilities and judgments adhered stochastically to Bayes' theorem. Conversion errors were generally more prevalent than conditional reversals, a finding that is not fully consistent with the PTV model. In general, the quantitative fit of the PTV model was relatively better for overlapping and subset problems compared to identical, independent and mutually exclusive problems, especially for semantic coherence. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 27, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1818   open full text
• Ownership Status and the Representation of Assets of Uncertain Value: The Balloon Endowment Risk Task (BERT).
  Lukasz Walasek, Rebecca J. Wright, Tim Rakow.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 24, 2014
  Owners tend to overvalue possessions relative to non‐owners: a phenomenon known as the endowment effect. In three experiments, using markets for goods of uncertain value, we investigated whether this can be partly attributed to misperceiving an asset's profitability or to uncertainty about a good's utility. To test our hypotheses, we devised the Balloon Endowment Risk Task, in which participants can sell or buy their right to participate in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. Once purchased/retained, a virtual balloon is pumped to accrue money, which is lost if the balloon bursts. Participants first learn about the risky asset (balloon) by observing others playing the Balloon Analogue Risk Task before they enter the market. In Experiment 1, we replicated the endowment effect; yet, owners and non‐owners predicted pumping the same number of times and subsequently did so when given that opportunity. In Experiments 2 and 3, the level of uncertainty about the balloon's profitability was manipulated by modifying the number of bursts that participants viewed in the initial learning stage. When more diagnostic information was provided, making the average burst point easier to estimate and reducing value uncertainty and increasing confidence in valuation, the endowment effect diminished although mean estimates of the average burst point did not differ between owners and non‐owners. Thus, endowment effects were partly attributable to value uncertainty but could not be explained by owners and non‐owners having divergent perceptions of the asset's payoff distribution. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 24, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1819   open full text
• Moving Onwards: An Action Continuation Strategy in Finding the Way.
  Wijnand A. P. Tilburg, Eric R. Igou.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 04, 2014
  In four studies, we examined people's strategies when deciding between multiple routes of equivalent length in way‐finding tasks. The results reveal the important role of continuing behavior when faced with a choice from multiple viable routes. After affirming the existence of asymmetric preferences for alternatives (Studies 1 and 2), we observed that variations of simple known‐environment mazes supported action continuation as prevailing process over alternative strategies such as preference for long initial path segments, paths with a least deviating angle, and a modified hill climbing strategy (Study 3). Moreover, asymmetric preferences disappeared with the absence of initial behavior to inform subsequent decision making (Study 4). Results are discussed within the context of decision making, navigation strategies, and everyday life path finding. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 04, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1817   open full text
• The Role of Subsidies in Coordination Games with Interconnected Risk.
  Min Gong, Geoffrey Heal, David H. Krantz, Howard Kunreuther, Elke U. Weber.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 17, 2014
  Can subsidies promote Pareto‐optimum coordination? We found that partially subsidizing the cooperative actions for two out of six players in a laboratory coordination game usually produced better coordination and higher total social welfare with both deterministic and stochastic payoffs. Not only were the subsidized players more likely to cooperate (choose the Pareto‐optimum action), but the unsubsidized players increased their expectations on how likely others would cooperate, and they cooperated more frequently themselves. After removal of the subsidy, high levels of coordination continued in most groups with stochastic payoffs but declined in deterministic ones. This carry‐over disparity between the deterministic and stochastic settings was consistent with the economic theories that agents were more likely to keep the status quo option under uncertainty than without uncertainty. Hence, players with stochastic payoffs were more likely to keep the high coordination level (status quo) brought by the subsidy in the previous subsidy session. A post‐game survey also indicated that with stochastic payoffs, players focused on risk reduction. Temporary subsidies promoted lasting coordination because even after subsidy was removed, players still assumed that others players would prefer reduced risks from cooperation. With deterministic payoffs, however, the subsidy might crowd out other rationales for coordination, with many players indicating that the subsidy was the only reason for anyone to cooperate. Hence, the coordination level dropped when the subsidy was removed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 17, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1816   open full text
• Gift Cards and Mental Accounting: Green‐lighting Hedonic Spending.
  Chelsea Helion, Thomas Gilovich.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 28, 2014
  In three studies, we examine the mental accounting rules that govern how gift cards are used. We predicted that their identity as gift cards would shift consumption from utilitarian to hedonic goods even in contexts where both types of goods are available and the consumer's needs are unchanged. In Study 1a, participants were asked to imagine that they had both a gift card and a specified amount of cash and needed to purchase both a hedonic item and a utilitarian item. When asked which currency they would use to buy which item, respondents were significantly more likely to say they would use the gift card to buy the hedonic item. Study 1b replicated this result and found that it was tied to participants' beliefs how different types of money should be used. In Study 2, we found that participants who were required to spend a certain amount of their compensation in a laboratory store spent more on hedonic goods if their payment was in the form of a gift card. In Study 3, we analyzed transactions at a campus bookstore and found that shoppers tended to spend disproportionately on hedonic goods when using their gift cards than when making credit card purchases. Taken together, these studies indicate that people tend to assign the monetary value of a gift card to a hedonic mental account and spend it accordingly. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  January 28, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1813   open full text
• High Level of Construal and Psychological Distance Reduce Melioration.
  Rotem Pick‐Alony, Nira Liberman, Yaacov Trope.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 22, 2014
  We examined how level of construal and psychological distance affected performance in a task in which value of alternatives depended on frequency of choice. Melioration, a sub‐optimal choice strategy that fails to take into account such value changes, has been found to be prevalent and difficult to change. Participants repeatedly chose between two buttons to earn as many coins as possible. Button A earned N coins, button B earned N + 3 coins, and N was the number of A presses in the last five trials. In this situation, B has a higher immediate payoff, but because choosing A increases the return from both buttons for the next five trials, maximizing A choices is the optimal strategy. We predicted that because a global perspective is needed to appreciate the dependency of value on frequency of choice, frequency of choosing the globally maximizing alternative (A) would increase when participants apply a higher level of construal and assume a more psychologically distal perspective. Study 1 manipulated construal level through segmenting the sequence of trials into segments of different size, with bigger segments representing higher level of construal. In Study 2, participants played a practice game, and we manipulated the probability of playing the actual game. Both a higher level of construal and a lower probability of playing the actual game (higher distance) increased the number of A choices. These results suggest that a broad perspective that is induced by high level of construal or by psychological distancing may reduce sub‐optimal, meliorating choice. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  January 22, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1814   open full text
• “All‐or‐None” Versus “Most‐or‐Some” Options in Risky Choice: Effects of Domain and Handedness.
  Stephen D. Christman, John D. Jasper.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 20, 2014
  Two methodological variants of Kahneman and Tversky's Asian disease scenario were investigated. One variant involved replacing the “all‐or‐none” outcome scenarios of the risky choice with “most‐or‐some” scenario outcomes, and the second variant involved replacing the negative domain of lives lost with a positive domain of jobs created. In addition, the effects of strength of handedness, a variable related to individual differences in risk perception, were examined. Results indicated that standard framing effects were obtained across both domains, with a decrease in risky choice under the gain domain. Scenario type also interacted with handedness, such that the all‐or‐none scenario yielded framing effects for consistent (strong)‐handers only, whereas the most‐or‐some scenario yielded framing effects for inconsistent (mixed)‐handers only (consistent‐handers are those who use the same hand exclusively for almost all activities). These results demonstrate that framing effects are strongly influenced by the presence versus absence of extreme/absolute outcomes and that individuals (in this case, decision makers with varying degrees of handedness strength) are differentially sensitive to different pieces of information. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  January 20, 2014   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1815   open full text
• The Trophy Effect.
  Christoph Bühren, Marco Pleßner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 18, 2013
  By extending a typical endowment effect experiment with the possibility of winning the endowment in a real effort contest, we found two reinforcing effects that led to a complete market failure. Subjects who won the item in the effortful competition had a very high willingness to accept (trophy winner effect). By contrast, subjects who were not successful had an extremely low willingness to pay for the same item (trophy loser effect). We disentangle different components of these effects and investigate the underlying emotional responses. Further, we analyze the duration of the effects and discuss economic implications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  December 18, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1812   open full text
• A Description–Experience Gap in Social Interactions: Information about Interdependence and Its Effects on Cooperation.
  Jolie M. Martin, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Ion Juvina, Christian Lebiere.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. December 07, 2013
  In social interactions, decision makers are often unaware of their interdependence with others, precluding the realization of shared long‐term benefits. In an experiment, pairs of participants played an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma under various conditions involving differing levels of interdependence information. Each pair was assigned to one of four conditions: “No‐Info” players saw their own actions and outcomes, but were not told that they interacted with another person; “Min‐Info” players knew they interacted with another person but still without seeing the other's actions or outcomes; “Mid‐Info” players discovered the other's actions and outcomes as they were revealed over time; and “Max‐Info” players were also shown a complete payoff matrix mapping actions to outcomes from the outset and throughout the game. With higher levels of interdependence information, we found increased individual cooperation and mutual cooperation, driven by increased reciprocating cooperation (in response to a counterpart's cooperation). Furthermore, joint performance and satisfaction were higher for pairs with more information. We discuss how awareness of interdependence may encourage cooperative behavior in real‐world interactions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  December 07, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1810   open full text
• Individual Differences in Antisocial Punishment in Public Goods Situations: The Interplay of Cortisol with Testosterone and Dominance.
  Stefan Pfattheicher, Anne Landhäußer, Johannes Keller.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 29, 2013
  This research investigates which endocrinological and psychological factors are associated with individuals' tendency to engage in destructive antisocial punishment, that is, to costly punish cooperative individuals in public goods situations. In this work, we focus on the interplay of endogenous cortisol with testosterone and dominance. We applied the dual‐hormone hypothesis according to which testosterone is positively associated with destructive and dominant behavior but only in individuals with low levels of cortisol. Study 1 shows that individuals are more likely to engage in destructive antisocial punishment in a public goods game with the option to punish when their testosterone level is high, given that their level of cortisol is low, which bolsters the dual‐hormone hypothesis. In contrast, no significant interaction effect of testosterone and cortisol emerges for the punishment of uncooperative free‐riders (altruistic punishment). In a second study, we build on these findings and document that self‐reported dominance is only positively associated with antisocial punishment (but not with altruistic punishment) when cortisol is low. In sum, the results indicate the importance of taking endocrinological and psychological factors (and their interactions) into account in order to reach a comprehensive understanding of individuals' behavior in social dilemma situations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 29, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1811   open full text
• Observed Variability and Values Matter: Toward a Better Understanding of Information Search and Decisions from Experience.
  Katja Mehlhorn, Noam Ben‐Asher, Varun Dutt, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 04, 2013
  The search for different options before making a consequential choice is a central aspect of many important decisions, such as mate selection or purchasing a house. Despite its importance, surprisingly little is known about how search and choice are affected by the observed and objective properties of the decision problem. Here, we analyze the effects of two key properties in a binary choice task: the options' observed and objective values, and the variability of payoffs. First, in a large public data set of a binary choice task, we investigate how the observed value and variability relate to decision‐makers' efforts and preferences during search. Furthermore, we test how these properties influence the chance of correctly identifying the objectively maximizing option, and how they affect choice. Second, we designed a novel experiment to systematically analyze the role of the objective difference between the options. We find that a larger objective difference between options increases the chance for correctly identifying the maximizing option, but it does not affect behavior during search and choice. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 04, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1809   open full text
• The Description–Experience Gap in Risky and Ambiguous Gambles.
  Varun Dutt, Horacio Arló‐Costa, Jeffrey Helzner, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 30, 2013
  Recent research in decision making reported a description–experience (DE) gap: opposite risky choices when decisions are made from descriptions (gambles in which probability distributions and outcomes are explicitly stated) and when decisions are made from experience (the knowledge of the gambles is obtained by sampling outcomes from unknown probability distributions before making a choice). The DE gap has been reported in gambles commonly involving a risky option (outcomes drawn from a fixed probability distribution) and a safe option (probability of the outcome is 1), or in gambles involving two risky options. Here, we extend the study of the DE gap to gambles in which people choose between a risky option and an ambiguous option (with two nested probability distributions, where the event‐generation mechanism is more opaque than that in the risky option). We report empirical evidence and show a DE gap in gambles involving risky and ambiguous options. Participants' choices are influenced by the information format and by the ambiguous option: participants are ambiguity‐seeking in experience and ambiguity‐averse in description in problems involving both gains and losses. In order to find reasons for our results, we investigate participants' sampling behavior, and this analysis indicates choices according to a cognitive model of experiential decisions (instance‐based learning). In experience, participants have small sample sizes, and participants choose options where high outcomes are experienced more frequently than expected. We discuss the implications of our results for the psychology of decision making in complex environments. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 30, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1808   open full text
• Choice Blindness and Preference Change: You Will Like This Paper Better If You (Believe You) Chose to Read It!
  Petter Johansson, Lars Hall, Betty Tärning, Sverker Sikström, Nick Chater.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 16, 2013
  Choice blindness is the finding that participants both often fail to notice mismatches between their decisions and the outcome of their choice and, in addition, endorse the opposite of their chosen alternative. But do these preference reversals also carry over to future choices and ratings? To investigate this question, we gave participants the task of choosing which of a pair of faces they found most attractive. Unknown to them, we sometimes used a card trick to exchange one face for the other. Both decision theory and common sense strongly suggest that most people would easily notice such a radical change in the outcome of a choice. But that was not the case: no more than a third of the exchanges were detected by the participants. We also included a second round of choices using the same face pairs, and two stages of post‐choice attractiveness ratings of the faces. This way we were able to measure preference strength both as choice consistency and by looking at measures of rating differences between chosen and rejected options. We found that the initially rejected faces were chosen more frequently in the second choice, and the perceived attractiveness of these faces was increased even in uncoupled individual ratings at the end of the experiment. This result is discussed in relation to Chen and Risen's recent criticism of the Free Choice Paradigm, as it shows that choices can affect future preferences. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 16, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1807   open full text
• Downsizing and Supersizing: How Changes in Product Attributes Influence Consumer Preferences.
  Ata Jami, Himanshu Mishra.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 08, 2013
  This paper investigates how changing the value of one attribute while keeping other attributes constant influences consumers' judgments and behaviors. We find that in two options, a proportionally equal change in one attribute tilts people's preference toward the option with higher (or lower) absolute magnitude of change when the change is desirable (or undesirable). We propose that when individuals face an attribute change, they use a deliberative and effortful response, known as System 2, to detect the change. However, they rely less on this system to evaluate the changed options. Instead, a more automatic System 1 processing influences their decision by making them apply the bigger‐is‐better heuristic (bigger‐is‐worse for an undesirable change) to prefer the option with the highest (lowest) absolute magnitude of change. Six studies demonstrate this phenomenon in both lab and real settings and support our hypothesis. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 08, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1806   open full text
• When Fluency Signals Truth: Prior Successful Reliance on Fluency Moderates the Impact of Fluency on Truth Judgments.
  Sabine G. Scholl, Rainer Greifeneder, Herbert Bless.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 16, 2013
  Repeated statements are more frequently judged to be true. One position relates this so‐called “truth effect” to metacognitive experiences of fluency, suggesting that repeated statements are more frequently judged to be true because they are processed more fluently. Although most prior research focused on why repetition influences truth judgments, considerably less is known about when fluency is used as information. The present research addresses this question and investigates whether reliance on fluency is moderated by learning experiences. Specifically, we focus on changes in the reliance on fluency over the course of time. A series of experiments reveals that fluency is more likely to be used in truth judgments when previous reliance on fluency has resulted in valid judgments, compared with when previous reliance on fluency was misleading. These findings suggest that reliance on fluency in judgments is a finely tuned process that takes prior experiences with fluency‐based judgments into account. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 16, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1805   open full text
• Special Issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making on “Applications and Innovations of Eye‐Movement Research in Judgment and Decision Making”.
  
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 11, 2013
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  September 11, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1798   open full text
• Domain Knowledge and Hindsight Bias among Poker Players.
  Dustin P. Calvillo, Abraham M. Rutchick.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 05, 2013
  Hindsight bias occurs when individuals believe that events were more predictable after they have occurred than they actually were before they occurred. Although hindsight bias is a well‐studied phenomenon, few studies have examined the role of expertise in this bias. Two experiments investigated the relation between the magnitude of hindsight bias and self‐reported poker expertise (Experiment 1) and assessed poker knowledge (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, self‐rated poker expertise was negatively correlated with hindsight bias. Experiment 2 employed memory and hypothetical hindsight conditions and found that poker knowledge was negatively correlated with hindsight bias in the memory condition, but unrelated to hindsight bias in the hypothetical condition. These results help elucidate the role of expertise in hindsight bias and provide additional support for the separate components view, which claims there are different forms of hindsight bias that are differentially affected by certain factors. Domain knowledge appears to be one of such factors. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 05, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1799   open full text
• Feeling the Numbers: On the Interplay Between Risk, Affect, and Numeracy.
  Dafina G. Petrova, Joop Pligt, Rocio Garcia‐Retamero.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. September 02, 2013
  People overweigh small and underweigh large risks, resulting in probability weighting functions with an inverted S‐shape. This bias is stronger for affect‐rich outcomes: For two outcomes of the same monetary value, people are less sensitive to probability variation for affect‐rich than for affect‐poor outcomes (e.g., winning a $100 voucher toward a romantic dinner versus an electricity bill). In the current research, we investigated the interactive influence of affect and cognitive skills on probability weighting. Participants decided about buying insurance against the loss of an object, given various probabilities of loss. The description of the object was neutral, affect‐rich, or affect‐rich followed by an affective reappraisal task. The reappraisal task consisted of thinking about effective coping strategies and possible positive consequences of the loss. We also investigated the effect of numeracy on probability weighting. In particular, we investigated whether people have different affective responses to risks depending on their numerical abilities. Participants showed more overweighting of small probabilities for an affect‐rich than for a neutral outcome. This effect was mediated by fear. When participants were given the opportunity to reappraise the loss of the affect‐rich object, the effect disappeared. After reappraisal, participants' decisions were influenced by both fear and hope and were more in line with expectations based on normative models. The latter applied in particular to participants who had higher numeracy; they showed more emotional sensitivity to risks and assigned weights closer to linearity. Implications for the role of emotions and numeracy in risk communication are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  September 02, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1803   open full text
• Charity Begins at Home: Cultural Differences in Social Discounting and Generosity.
  Tina Strombach, Jia Jin, Bernd Weber, Peter Kenning, Qiang Shen, Qingguo Ma, Tobias Kalenscher.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 31, 2013
  People often consider how their actions influence others when making decisions. However, we are not equally generous to everyone alike. Our willingness to share resources declines as a function of social distance between the decision maker and the recipient. This function is likely to be influenced by culture, but research on behavioral decision making is still lacking empirical evidence. In Western societies, individuals generally perceive themselves as autonomous and independent from others, whereas the distinction between self and close others is less sharply defined by Eastern individuals where relationships and group membership are more centralized. Therefore, the social discount function should reflect this difference in the distinction of self and others by a reduced decline in generosity over close social distances. A social decision‐making task was adapted to the intercultural context, and data were collected in Germany and China. For seven different social distances, we estimated how much money German and Chinese subjects were willing to forego to give a certain reward to another person. A hyperbolic model was fitted to the data. We found that other‐regarding generosity declines as a function of social distance independent of cultural identity. However, German subjects showed a marked drop in generosity across close social distances, which was significantly less pronounced in Chinese participants. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 31, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1802   open full text
• Emotions in Advice Taking: The Roles of Agency and Valence.
  Ilona E. Hooge, Peeter W. J. Verlegh, Stefanie C. Tzioti.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 31, 2013
  Recently, advice taking has received attention in decision‐making research, and some studies suggest that emotions may play a role in this process. Yet a clear account of how emotions influence advice taking is lacking. The current research introduces a parsimonious explanation by suggesting that such effects can be predicted on the basis of two emotion dimensions: valence (positivity or negativity) and agency (self‐focused versus other‐focused). In five experiments with different emotion inductions and different measures for advice taking, the effects of positive emotions such as gratitude and pride and of negative emotions such as anger and shame on advice taking were studied. The findings reveal that emotion valence and agency exert an influence on advice taking and that this interaction effect is mediated by the perceived ability of the advisor. Together, these findings provide a unique theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of emotions in advice taking. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 31, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1801   open full text
• Up or Down? How Culture and Color Affect Judgments.
  Feng Jiang, Su Lu, Xiang Yao, Xiaodong Yue, Wing tung Au.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 21, 2013
  In the Mainland China stock market, an upmarket is represented by the color red, whereas a downmarket is represented by the color green. Elsewhere, including the Chinese Hong Kong stock market, the color representations are the opposite. Three studies were conducted to examine the red‐up–green‐down effect for Mainland Chinese as well as the green‐up–red‐down effect for Hong Kong people. Study 1 showed that Mainland Chinese tended to predict greater economic growth (study 1a) and higher growth in consumption trends (study 1b) when the experimental materials were presented in red than in green, whereas Hong Kong participants exhibited the opposite tendencies. Study 2 found that Mainland Chinese implicitly associated red and green with up and down, respectively; Hong Kong people, however, implicitly associated green and red with up and down, respectively. Study 3 further indicated that Mainland Chinese were more likely to predict good outcomes when scenarios were presented in red, whereas Hong Kong participants were more likely to predict good outcomes when scenarios were presented in green. These findings suggest that culturally specific environment cues could influence human prediction and judgment. Implications for judgment generally are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 21, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1800   open full text
• The Influence of Skills, Message Frame, and Visual Aids on Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
  Rocio Garcia‐Retamero, Edward T. Cokely.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 05, 2013
  In a large three week longitudinal study, we investigated the efficacy of framed messages for promoting condom use in sexually active young adults. We also investigated the influence of key risk literacy skills (i.e., numeracy and graph literacy) and visual aids (i.e., icon arrays) on the efficacy of framed messages. Finally, we investigated the underlying psychological mechanisms of behavioral change on the ability of icon arrays to improve message effectiveness. Results showed that framed messages including icon arrays increased adherence to self‐reported condom use by giving rise to enduring changes in attitudes and behavioral intentions, which influenced behavior. Icon arrays were found to be most beneficial among young adults with relatively low numeracy as long as they had high graph literacy. These findings build on the previous research in risk communication and extend psychological theories of health‐related decision making such as the theory of planned behavior. These findings also map the conditions under which well‐constructed visual aids can be among the most effective, transparent, and ethically desirable means of risk communication. Implications for risk communication and informed medical decision making are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 05, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1797   open full text
• Altering the Shape of Punishment Distributions Affects Decision Making in a Modified Iowa Gambling Task.
  Corrine J. Seeley, Joshua G. A. Cashaback, Carlyle T. Smith, Richard J. Beninger.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 23, 2013
  Neuroeconomics research has shown that preference for gambling is altered by the statistical moments (mean, variance, and skew) of reward and punishment distributions. Although it has been shown that altered means can affect feedback‐based decision making tasks, little is known if the variance and skew will have an effect on these tasks. To investigate, we systematically controlled the variance (high, medium, and low) and skew (negative, zero, and positive) of the punishment distributions in a modified version of the Iowa Gambling Task. The Iowa Gambling Task has been used extensively in both academic and clinical domains to understand decision making and diagnose decision making impairments. Our results show that decision making can be altered by an interaction of variance and skew. We found a significant decrease over trials in choices from the decks with high variance and asymmetrically skewed punishments and from the decks with low variance and zero skew punishments. These results indicate that punishment distribution shape alone can change human perception of what is optimal (i.e., mean expected outcome) and may help explain what guides our day‐to‐day decisions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 23, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1795   open full text
• True Context‐dependent Preferences? The Causes of Market‐dependent Valuations.
  Nina Mazar, Botond Koszegi, Dan Ariely.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 23, 2013
  A central assumption of neoclassical economics is that reservation prices for familiar products express people's true preferences for these products; that is, they represent the total benefit that a good confers to the consumers and are, thus, independent of actual prices in the market. Nevertheless, a vast amount of research has shown that valuations can be sensitive to other salient prices, particularly when individuals are explicitly anchored on them. In this paper, the authors extend previous research on single‐price anchoring and study the sensitivity of valuations to the distribution of prices found for a product in the market. In addition, they examine its possible causes. They find that market‐dependent valuations cannot be fully explained by rational inferences consumers draw about a product's value and are unlikely to be fully explained by true market‐dependent preferences. Rather, the market dependence of valuations likely reflects consumers' focus on something other than the total benefit that the product confers to them. Furthermore, this paper shows that market‐dependent valuations persist when – as in many real‐life settings – individuals make repeated purchase decisions over time and infer the distribution of the product's prices from their market experience. Finally, the authors consider the implications of their findings for marketers and consumers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 23, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1794   open full text
• Early Positive Information Impacts Final Evaluations: No Deliberation‐Without‐Attention Effect and a Test of a Dynamic Judgment Model.
  Claudia González Vallejo, Jiuqing Cheng, Nathaniel Phillips, Janna Chimeli, Francis Bellezza, Jason Harman, G. Daniel Lassiter, Matthew J. Lindberg.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 23, 2013
  Evaluation judgments were affected by information order and not by subsequent unconscious versus conscious deliberation. In three experiments, we examined the influence of early positive information on final evaluations of four objects. Based on a task analysis, we predicted primacy effects in judgments in a sequential data acquisition task. Thinking periods following presentation were used to manipulate conscious or unconscious processing. In all three studies, we found no effects of thinking manipulations but instead found reliable order effects. We developed and tested an online judgment model on the basis of the belief updating model of Hogarth and Einhorn. The model accounted for large proportion of the individual level variability, and model comparison tests supported the presence of a primacy effect. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 23, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1796   open full text
• Extreme Outcomes Sway Risky Decisions from Experience.
  Elliot A. Ludvig, Christopher R. Madan, Marcia L. Spetch.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 11, 2013
  Whether buying stocks or playing the slots, people making real‐world risky decisions often rely on their experiences with the risks and rewards. These decisions, however, do not occur in isolation but are embedded in a rich context of other decisions, outcomes, and experiences. In this paper, we systematically evaluate how the local context of other rewarding outcomes alters risk preferences. Through a series of four experiments on decisions from experience, we provide evidence for an extreme‐outcome rule, whereby people overweight the most extreme outcomes (highest and lowest) in a given context. As a result, people should be more risk seeking for gains than losses, even with equally likely outcomes. Across the experiments, the decision context was varied so that the same outcomes served as the high extreme, low extreme, or neither. As predicted, people were more risk seeking for relative gains, but only when the risky option potentially led to the high‐extreme outcome. Similarly, people were more risk averse for relative losses, but only when the risky option potentially led to the low‐extreme outcome. We conclude that in risky decisions from experience, the biggest wins and the biggest losses seem to matter more than they should. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 11, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1792   open full text
• The Impact of Asymmetric Partial Feedback on Response‐Bias.
  Luke D. Smillie, Boon‐Kiat Quek, Len I. Dalgleish.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 11, 2013
  For many decisions we make, we are more likely to receive feedback about some outcomes than about others, and thus we must operate under conditions of asymmetric partial feedback. In this paper, we examine the effects of asymmetric partial feedback on decision making across three experiments. Experiment 1 examines the effects of four partial feedback schedules on decision making in a single‐attribute auditory detection task. Experiment 2 examines these same schedules in the context of a simulated experiment in which virtual participants perform a multi‐attribute choice task. Experiment 3 then examines effects of one partial feedback schedule representative of a real‐world decision‐making domain (personnel selection) using an ecologically informed multi‐attribute choice task. All three experiments reveal that asymmetric partial feedback primarily impacts on response‐bias, a parameter of signal detection theory. These findings can be explained in terms of decision makers' attempts to maximize accuracy and the fact that shifts in response‐bias will, under partial feedback, produce misleading impressions of greater accuracy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 11, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1793   open full text
• Intuitions in Conflict: Preference Reversals Due to Switch Between Sensitization and Diminishing Sensitivity.
  Mauricio Palmeira.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 03, 2013
  Sensitization occurs when the passage of time increases the intensity of the experience. Individuals have sensitization intuitions for some unpleasant experiences such as waiting and commuting. In contrast, diminishing sensitivity indicates that the impact of each additional unit of a stimulus decreases as the magnitude of the stimulus increases. In this article, we document a new preference reversal phenomenon due to switch between these two intuitions. When considering unpleasant experiences such as waiting and commuting in a judgment task that asks individuals to consider the impact of an additional unit of time to different baselines, we find that individuals respond in a way consistent with a sensitization intuition. However, when asked to make choices involving trade‐offs between longer unpleasant experiences and other attributes, participants respond in a way contrary to their sensitization intuitions and consistent with diminishing sensitivity. We reason that the automatic use of relative differences and diminishing sensitivity occurs because it facilitates trade‐offs considerations in a typical choice task. Our hypotheses are supported in a series of four studies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 03, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1791   open full text
• Identifying the Effects of Unjustified Confidence versus Overconfidence: Lessons Learned from Two Analytic Methods.
  Andrew M. Parker, Eric R. Stone.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 03, 2013
  One of the most common findings in behavioral decision research is that people have unrealistic beliefs about how much they know. However, demonstrating that misplaced confidence exists does not necessarily mean that there are costs to it. This paper contrasts two approaches toward answering whether misplaced confidence is good or bad, which we have labeled the overconfidence and unjustified confidence approach. We first consider conceptual and analytic issues distinguishing these approaches. Then, we provide findings from a set of simulations designed to determine when the approaches produce different conclusions across a range of possible confidence–knowledge–outcome relationships. Finally, we illustrate the main findings from the simulations with three empirical examples drawn from our own data. We conclude that the unjustified confidence approach is typically the preferred approach, both because it is appropriate for testing a larger set of psychological mechanisms as well as for methodological reasons. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 03, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1787   open full text
• Hedonic Evaluation over Short and Long Retention Intervals: The Mechanism of the Peak–End Rule.
  Xiaowei Geng, Ziguang Chen, Wing Lam, Quanquan Zheng.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 31, 2013
  The peak–end rule is used to explain how people make retrospective hedonic evaluations. This study advances our understanding of its mechanism by identifying the different effects of the rule on such evaluations over short and long retention intervals. The results of two experiments show that (i) respondents constructed their retrospective hedonic evaluations on the basis of the peak and end affects only over a short retention interval, not over a long one; and (ii) respondents relied on episodic information to construct their evaluations over a short retention interval, whereas they relied on both semantic and episodic information to construct their evaluations over a long retention interval. Our study also suggests that the “watershed” between short and long retention intervals is likely to lie between 3 and 7 weeks. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 31, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1755   open full text
• On the Decision to Explore New Alternatives: The Coexistence of Under‐ and Over‐exploration.
  Kinneret Teodorescu, Ido Erev.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 31, 2013
  The decision whether to explore new alternatives or to choose from familiar ones is implicit in many of our daily activities. How is this decision made? When will deviation from optimal exploration be observed? The current paper examines exploration decisions in the context of a multi‐alternative “decisions from experience” task. In each trial, participants could choose a familiar option (the status quo) or a new alternative (risky exploration). The observed exploration rates were more sensitive to the frequent outcome from choosing new alternatives than to the average outcome. That is, the implicit decision whether to explore a new alternative reflects underweighting of rare events: Over‐exploration was documented in “Rare Disasters” environments, and insufficient exploration was evident in “Rare Treasures” environments. In addition, the results reveal a decrease in exploration of new alternatives over time even when it is always optimal and some exploration even when it is never reinforcing. These results can be captured with models that share a distinction between “data collection” and “outcome‐driven” decision modes. Under the data collection mode, the decision maker collects information about the environment, to be used in future choices. Under the outcome‐driven mode, the decision maker relies on small samples of previous experiences with familiar versus unfamiliar alternatives, before the selection of a specific alternative. The predictive value of a two‐parameter “explorative sampler” quantification of these assumptions is demonstrated. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 31, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1785   open full text
• The Role of Numeracy and Intelligence in Health‐Risk Estimation and Medical Data Interpretation.
  Torstein Låg, Lars Bauger, Martin Lindberg, Oddgeir Friborg.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 16, 2013
  Despite ample evidence that numeracy is an important influence on patient understanding and use of health‐related information, there is a dearth of studies examining the concept's relationship to other individual differences measures that may underlie complex judgments in the health domain. In this study, we compared the relative contributions of selected extant numeracy measures and general intelligence and other measures to varied judgment and decision‐making outcomes. Two hundred participants completed numeracy items, subscales of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales, the need for cognition scale, and four relevant outcome measures including risk estimation and medical data interpretation. A numeracy scale constructed using item response and confirmatory factor analyses was consistently the strongest predictor across all outcome measures and accounted for unique variance over and above general intelligence. The results support the concept of numeracy as an independent construct that merits consideration in patient communication. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1788   open full text
• No Time to Waste: Restricting Life‐Span Temporal Horizons Decreases the Sunk‐Cost Fallacy.
  JoNell Strough, Leo Schlosnagle, Tara Karns, Philip Lemaster, Nipat Pichayayothin.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 11, 2013
  In three studies, we examined the influence of restricted and expansive temporal horizons on the sunk‐cost fallacy. The sunk‐cost fallacy occurs when prior investments instead of future returns influence decisions about future investments. When making decisions about future investments, rational decision makers base decisions on future consequences, not already‐invested costs that are “sunk” and cannot be recovered. In Study 1, we restricted young adult college students' temporal horizons by instructing them to imagine that they did not have much longer to live; this manipulation decreased the sunk‐cost fallacy. In Study 2, we replicated Study 1 and also found that the consequences of manipulating temporal horizons were most pronounced for prior investments of time and that prior investments of time and money had different implications for the sunk‐cost fallacy, depending on the social or nonsocial decision domain. In Study 3, we manipulated temporal horizons by instructing students to imagine their time as a college student was coming to an end. Results were mostly similar to Study 2 but also suggested that focusing on one's mortality may have unique consequences. Implications of the three studies for understanding age differences in sunk‐cost decisions, interventions to improve sunk‐cost decisions, and the situations in which interventions might be most needed are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 11, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1781   open full text
• The Effect of Intuitive Advice Justification on Advice Taking.
  Stefanie C. Tzioti, Berend Wierenga, Stijn M. J. Osselaer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 06, 2013
  How do you respond when receiving advice from somebody with the argumentation “my gut tells me so” or “this is what my intuition says”? Most likely, you would find this justification insufficient and disregard the advice. Are there also situations where people do appreciate such intuitive advice and change their opinion accordingly? A growing number of authors write about the power of intuition in solving problems, showing that intuitively made decisions can be of higher quality than decisions based on analytical reasoning. We want to know if decision makers, when receiving advice based on an intuitive cognitive process, also recognize the value of such advice. Is advice justified by intuition necessarily followed to a lesser extent than an advice justified by analysis? Furthermore, what are the important factors influencing the effect of intuitive justification on advice taking? Participants across three studies show that utilization of intuitive advice varies depending on advisor seniority and type of task for which the advice is given. Summarizing, the results suggest that decision makers a priori doubt the value of intuitive advice and only assess it as accurate if other cues in the advice setting corroborate this. Intuitively justified advice is utilized more if it comes from a senior advisor. In decision tasks with experiential products, intuitively justified advice can even have more impact than analytically justified advice. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 06, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1790   open full text
• A New Set of Moral Dilemmas: Norms for Moral Acceptability, Decision Times, and Emotional Salience.
  Lorella Lotto, Andrea Manfrinati, Michela Sarlo.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 01, 2013
  At the present time, the growing interest in the topic of moral judgment highlights the widespread need for a standardized set of experimental stimuli. We provide normative data for a sample of 120 undergraduate students using a new set of 60 moral dilemmas that might be employed in future studies according to specific research needs. Thirty dilemmas were structured to be similar to the Footbridge dilemma (“instrumental” dilemmas, in which the death of one person is a means to save more people), and thirty dilemmas were designed to be similar to the Trolley dilemma (“incidental” dilemmas, in which the death of one person is a foreseen but unintended consequence of the action aimed at saving more people). Besides type of dilemma, risk‐involvement was also manipulated: the main character's life was at risk in half of the instrumental dilemmas and in half of the incidental dilemmas. We provide normative values for the following variables: (i) rates of participants' responses (yes/no) to the proposed resolution; (ii) decision times; (iii) ratings of moral acceptability; and (iv) ratings of emotional valence (pleasantness/unpleasantness) and arousal (activation/calm) experienced during decision making. For most of the dependent variables investigated, we observed significant main effects of type of dilemma and risk‐involvement in both subject and item analyses. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 01, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1782   open full text
• Perceived Utility (not Sympathy) Mediates the Proportion Dominance Effect in Helping Decisions.
  Arvid Erlandsson, Fredrik Björklund, Martin Bäckström.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 26, 2013
  The proportion dominance effect (PDE) refers to a higher motivation to help when the victims are part of a small (you can help 56 out of 60) rather than a large (you can help 56 out of 560) reference group. In two studies using different experimental paradigms, we investigated possible mediators of the PDE. Study 1 (N = 168) was conducted in three separate steps in order to test each link of the mediator model independently. Students read six vignettes where it was possible to help a fixed number of victims but where the size of the reference group was either small or large. When the reference group was small, helping motivation and perceived utility were higher, whereas sympathy toward the victims and perceived rights were not. A within‐subject mediation analysis showed that perceived utility mediated the PDE. Study 2 (N = 36) presented four versions of a single helping situation in a joint evaluation mode where the size of the reference group became gradually smaller in each version. All participants compared and responded to each version. Helping motivation increased as the reference group became smaller, and this effect was mediated by perceived utility rather than by distress, sympathy, or perceived responsibilities. Our results suggest that unlike, for example, the identifiability and singularity effects, which have been suggested to be mediated by emotional reactions, the PDE is mediated by perceived utility. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 26, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1789   open full text
• Asymmetric Perception of Gains versus Non‐losses and Losses versus Non‐gains: The Causal Role of Regulatory Focus.
  Simona Sacchi, Luca Stanca.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 26, 2013
  Recent studies show that, while losses loom larger than equivalent non‐gains, gains loom larger than equivalent non‐losses. This finding has been interpreted within the framework of regulatory focus theory. In this study, we highlight the importance of considering the motivational focus independently of the framing and the valence of outcome, thus exploring the causal effect of regulatory focus on the asymmetric perception of gains versus non‐losses and losses versus non‐gains. In two studies, we examine the perceived effects of either actual or hypothetical changes in monetary wealth, while orthogonally manipulating framing, valence, and regulatory focus. We find a significant interaction between the three factors. The gain versus non‐loss asymmetry in perceived satisfaction is stronger in promotion focus, whereas the loss versus non‐gain asymmetry in perceived dissatisfaction is stronger in prevention focus. The results suggest that the effects of incentives framed in terms of (non)gains and (non)losses depend on their congruence with the individual's motivational state. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 26, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1786   open full text
• Individual Differences in Risky Decision Making: A Meta‐analysis of Sensation Seeking and Impulsivity with the Balloon Analogue Risk Task.
  Marco Lauriola, Angelo Panno, Irwin P. Levin, Carl W. Lejuez.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 22, 2013
  To represent the state‐of‐the‐art in an effort to understand the relation between personality and risk taking, we selected a popular decision task with characteristics that parallel risk taking in the real world and two personality traits commonly believed to influence risk taking. A meta‐analysis is presented based on 22 studies of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task from which correlations with sensation seeking and impulsivity assessments could be obtained. Results calculated on a total of 2120 participants showed that effect size for the relation of sensation seeking with risk taking was in the small–moderate range (r¯ = .14), whereas the effect size for impulsivity was just around the small effect size threshold (r¯ = .10). Although we considered participants' demographics as moderators, we found only significantly larger effect sizes for the older adolescents and young adults compared with other ages. The findings of the present review supported the view that inconsistencies in personality–risk research were mostly due to random fluctuations of specific effect sizes, rather than to lack of theoretical ties or to measurement unreliability. It is also concluded that studies aimed at relating individual differences in personality to performance in experimental decision tasks need an appropriate sample size to achieve the power to produce significant results. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 22, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1784   open full text
• The Impact of Trait Anxiety on Self‐frame and Decision Making.
  Jiaxi Peng, Wei Xiao, Yebing Yang, Shengjun Wu, Danmin Miao.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 18, 2013
  The present study investigated how trait anxiety influenced the formation of a self‐frame and decision making. Participants (N = 1044) responded to the Trait Anxiety Inventory. Those with trait anxiety scores ±1 Z score from the sample mean (N = 328) were recalled to respond to the self‐frame questionnaire. The results suggested that trait anxiety differences could result in differences in the editing of decision‐making information, thereby influencing the risky choice. Compared with the low trait anxiety group, participants from the high trait anxiety group showed a greater tendency to use negative vocabulary to construct their self‐frame and tended to choose conservative plans. Self‐frame suppressed the influence of trait anxiety on decision making. These results further confirmed the hypothesis that individual differences in personality traits might influence the processing of information in a framed decision task. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 18, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1783   open full text
• Choice‐making, Expectations, and Treatment Positivity: How and When Choosing Shapes Aversive Experiences.
  Jason P. Rose, Andrew L. Geers, Stephanie L. Fowler, Heather M. Rasinski.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. February 11, 2013
  Every day we use products and treatments with unknown but expected effects, such as using medication to manage pain. In many cases, we have a choice over which products or treatments to use; however, in other cases, people choose for us or choices are unavailable. Does choosing (versus not choosing) have implications for how a product or treatment is experienced? The current experiments examined the role of choice‐making in facilitating so‐called expectation assimilation effects—or situations in which a person's experiences (e.g., discomfort and pain) are evaluated in a manner consistent with their expectations. In Experiment 1, participants were initially exposed to a baseline set of aversive stimuli (i.e., sounds). Next, some participants were given expectations for two “treatments” (i.e., changes in screen display) that could ostensibly reduce discomfort. Critically, participants were either given a choice or not about which of the two treatments they preferred. Participants in a control condition were not provided with treatment expectations. Results revealed that discomfort experiences assimilated to expectations only when participants were provided with choice. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and provided evidence against the idea that demand characteristics and choice‐making unrelated to the core task (i.e., choices without associated expectations) could account for the results. Further, Experiment 2 showed that choosing reduced discomfort because of increased positivity about the treatment. Results are discussed in the context of extant research on choice‐making and expectation effects. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  February 11, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1775   open full text
• Selection of Decision Strategies After Conscious and Unconscious Thought.
  Thorsten Pachur, Eveline Aebi Forrer.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 31, 2013
  It is commonly assumed that the use of simple, non‐compensatory strategies is especially pronounced in memory‐based decisions, where information costs are high. At the same time, there is evidence that in memory‐based decisions, a compensatory processing of attributes is facilitated when the processing occurs unconsciously rather than consciously. We applied a strategy classification approach—developed in research on non‐compensatory heuristics—to test two key tenets of unconscious thought theory: the capacity principle and the weighting principle. Participants memorized attribute information about cars and were subsequently either directed to or diverted from thinking consciously about their preferences between the cars (conscious versus unconscious thought). Then, participants indicated in pair‐wise choices which car they would prefer and were classified (based on their choices) as using either one of two compensatory strategies (equal weight or weighted additive) or a non‐compensatory strategy (lexicographic heuristic). In line with the capacity principle, the number of participants best described by a compensatory strategy (the equal‐weight strategy) tended to be higher after unconscious thought than after conscious thought, whereas the number of participants best described by the lexicographic heuristic tended to be lower. Inconsistent with the weighting principle, participants in the unconscious thought condition were better described by the equal‐weight strategy than by the weighted‐additive strategy. In Experiment 2, in which participants were not instructed to form an impression while learning the attribute information, the use of the equal‐weight strategy was not more prevalent after unconscious thought. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  January 31, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1780   open full text
• How to Model Heterogeneity in Costly Punishment: Insights from Responders' Response Times.
  Urs Fischbacher, Ralph Hertwig, Adrian Bruhin.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. January 24, 2013
  We investigate what processes may underlie heterogeneity in social preferences. We address this question by examining participants' decisions and associated response times across 12 mini‐ultimatum games. Using a finite mixture model and cross‐validating its classification with a response time analysis, we identified four groups of responders: one group takes little to no account of the proposed split or the foregone allocation and swiftly accepts any positive offer; two groups process primarily the objective properties of the allocations (fairness and kindness) and need more time the more properties need to be examined; and a fourth group, which takes more time than the others, appears to take into account what they would have proposed had they been put in the role of the proposer. We discuss implications of this joint decision–response time analysis. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  January 24, 2013   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1779   open full text
• The Impact of Phantom Decoys on Choices and Perceptions.
  Daniele Scarpi, Gabriele Pizzi.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 13, 2012
  Phantoms are dominating, attractive alternatives that are unavailable at the time of choice. They occupy different positions in the attribute space, and their unavailability can be either known or unknown to individuals. Although different theories have offered explanations for the influence that phantoms exert on individual choices, they have largely overlooked phantom knowledge. Contradictory predictions can be drawn from these theories, and none provides a good account of the pattern of effects that emerges from our data. We suggest that these contradictions appear because the different theories do not address phantom location and knowledge jointly. When considering phantom knowledge together with location, we observe a consistent overall pattern of effects that encompasses all predictions that could be made on the basis of each theory. We find that known phantoms are stronger when close, and favor the target product, whereas unknown phantoms are stronger when far, and favor the competitor. Finally, we look beyond shifts in choice shares and find that phantom decoys can also affect individuals' post‐choice evaluations and reactions in terms of perceived justice, decision satisfaction, and repatronage intention. Our results show that post‐choice evaluations are driven by phantom knowledge, not phantom location. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 13, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1778   open full text
• Learning and Affect Following Near‐Miss Outcomes in Simulated Gambling.
  Luke Clark, Rui Liu, Rebecca McKavanagh, Alice Garrett, Barnaby D. Dunn, Michael R. F. Aitken.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. November 12, 2012
  Gambling near‐misses are non‐rewarded events that resemble a winning configuration. Past research using slot machines has shown that moderate rates of near‐misses increase gambling persistence, but the mechanisms supporting this persistence are unclear. One hypothesis is that near‐misses are mistakenly interpreted as signals of skill acquisition, supporting learning and fuelling the ‘illusion of control’. A slot machine simulation was administered to 60 volunteers, with ratings of the perceived chances of winning, pleasure and motivation to play following particular outcomes. Psychophysiological measures (electrodermal activity and heart rate) were taken, and gambling persistence was measured after 30 trials. Near‐misses were similar to full‐miss outcomes in that they were regarded as unpleasant. However, near‐misses were akin to win outcomes in that they increased motivations to play and electrodermal activity. Learning was evidenced by the expectancy of winning increasing following wins and decreasing after losses. Although there was no overall change in expectancy of winning after near‐misses across all participants, those subjects reporting a greater increase in the expectancy of winning following a near‐miss showed more persistent play, consistent with the learning hypothesis. Greater heart rate acceleration following near‐misses was also associated with persistence. We also observed differential effects of near‐misses where the reel stopped either side of the winning position (‘payline’): motivational effects were restricted to near‐misses stopping before the payline, whereas near‐misses that stopped after the payline were primarily aversive. The payline effects are not predicted by the learning hypothesis and may indicate an affective component to near‐misses, possibly linked to counterfactual processing. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  November 12, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1774   open full text
• Equilibrium Selection, Similarity Judgments, and the “Nothing to Gain/Nothing to Lose” Effect.
  Jonathan W. Leland.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 16, 2012
  Rubinstein and Leland have both demonstrated that many observed violations of expected and discounted utility can be explained if people employ similarity judgments to make choices. In this paper, I show that this decision process also explains which equilibria will be selected in single‐shot games with multiple equilibria and implies that play in games will be associated with anomalies in risky choice. Data supporting these predictions are presented. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 16, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1772   open full text
• When the Rule is Ruled Out: Exemplars and Rules in Decisions from Memory.
  Christine Platzer, Arndt Bröder.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 16, 2012
  What are the cognitive processes underlying people's decisions from memory? Previous research suggests that these processes can be best described by strategies that are based on abstract knowledge about the decision task (e.g., cue–criterion relations). However, recent results show that different cue presentation formats trigger the use of different decision strategies and that exemplar‐based strategies can account for memory‐based decisions as well. In three experiments, this effect was replicated, and mediation analyses identified the quality of the underlying knowledge representation as the critical variable that determines decision behavior. This supports the view that exemplar‐based reasoning is used as a backup system if cue abstraction is hindered. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 16, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1776   open full text
• True Overconfidence in Interval Estimates: Evidence Based on a New Measure of Miscalibration.
  Markus Glaser, Thomas Langer, Martin Weber.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 12, 2012
  Overconfidence is often regarded as one of the most prevalent judgment biases. Several studies show that overconfidence can lead to suboptimal decisions of investors, managers, or politicians. Recent research, however, questions whether overconfidence should be regarded as a bias and shows that standard “overconfidence” findings can easily be explained by different degrees of knowledge of agents plus a random error in predictions. We contribute to the current literature and ongoing research by extensively analyzing interval estimates for knowledge questions, for real financial time series, and for artificially generated charts. We thereby suggest a new method to measure overconfidence in interval estimates, which is based on the implied probability mass behind a stated prediction interval. We document overconfidence patterns, which are difficult to reconcile with rationality of agents and which cannot be explained by differences in knowledge as differences in knowledge do not exist in our task. Furthermore, we show that overconfidence measures are reliable in the sense that there exist stable individual differences in the degree of overconfidence in interval estimates, thereby testing an important assumption of behavioral economics and behavioral finance models: stable individual differences in the degree of overconfidence across people. We do this in a “field experiment,” for different levels of expertise of subjects (students on the one hand and professional traders and investment bankers on the other hand), over time, by using different miscalibration metrics, and for tasks that avoid common weaknesses such as a non‐representative selection of trick questions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 12, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1773   open full text
• Revisiting the Gain–Loss Separability Assumption in Prospect Theory.
  Han‐Hui Por, David V. Budescu.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. October 05, 2012
  A fundamental assumption of prospect theory is gain–loss separability (GLS)—the assertion that the overall utility of a prospect can be expressed as a function of the utilities of its positive and negative components. Violations of GLS may potentially limit the generalization of results from studies of single‐domain prospects to mixed prospects and systematically distort the predictions of the theory. Violations also have implications for how choices with positive and negative components should be presented to decision makers. Previous studies, using different elicitation methods, have documented different rates, and types, of systematic violations of GLS. We discuss the differences between two specific elicitation methods—binary choice and certainty equivalents—and report results of a new study of GLS using both methods and randomly generated prospects. We compare the extent and nature of GLS violations under the two elicitation methods using between‐subject and within‐subject analyses. We find (i) systematic violations of GLS under both methods, (ii) higher rates of violations under choice, (iii) higher sensitivity to the outcomes for the certainty equivalents, which is consistent with the predictions of the scale‐compatibility hypothesis, and (iv) different patterns of violations under the two methods, which are explained by method‐specific preferences. We discuss the psychological mechanisms underlying the findings and the implications for presenting information with gain and loss components. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  October 05, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1765   open full text
• Changes in Negative Reciprocity as a Function of Age.
  Yoella Bereby‐Meyer, Shelly Fiks.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. August 22, 2012
  Standard economic models assume people exclusively pursue material self‐interests in social interactions. However, people exhibit social preferences; that is, they base their choices partly on the outcomes others obtained in a social interaction. People care about fairness, and reciprocity affects behavior. This study examines the differences in negative reciprocity (costly punishment for unfair divisions) as a function of age. Sixty‐one kindergarteners (5‐year‐olds), 53 second graders (8‐year‐olds), and 57 sixth graders (12‐year‐olds) played a dictator game or a mini–ultimatum game either with a human proposer or with a random machine that determined the division between the two players. By keeping the divisions between the players constant and varying the source of the unfair proposal, we were able to differentiate between reciprocity‐based and inequality‐aversion preferences. We found that kindergarteners proposed and accepted unfair divisions regardless of the source of the offer, behaving according to the standard economic model. Children in the sixth grade tended to reject unfair offers from a human proposer but accept unfair divisions from a random device, indicating the emergence of negative reciprocity preferences by age eight (and contrary to inequality aversion). Children at this age also tended to give more fair offers in the ultimatum game than in the dictator game, indicating the emergence of strategic thinking. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  August 22, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1768   open full text
• Competitive Dynamics in Forecasting: The Interaction of Skill and Uncertainty.
  Theodoros Evgeniou, Lily Fang, Robin M. Hogarth, Natalia Karelaia.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 27, 2012
  The outcomes in many competitive tasks depend upon both skill and luck. Behavioral theories on risk taking in tournaments indicate that low‐skilled individuals may have incentives to take more risks than high‐skilled ones. We build on these theories and suggest, in addition, that when luck is more important in determining outcomes, the increase in risk taking is larger for low‐skilled than high‐skilled individuals. We test this hypothesis by analyzing stock analysts' forecasts of companies' earnings per share under market conditions that vary in volatility and thus imply different levels of luck in outcomes. Specifically, noting that forecasts that deviate widely from the consensus—which is observable by the analyst—potentially carry career‐related rewards but also reputational risks, we examine the degree of deviation from consensus exhibited by analysts of different skill levels (measured by both past forecasting accuracy and education) in different market conditions. We find that average deviations from consensus increase as markets become more volatile. At the same time, under conditions of high volatility, low‐skilled analysts exhibit larger increases in deviations from consensus than high‐skilled analysts. These field data results support our hypothesis based on of risk taking in tournaments. We discuss alternative interpretations such as, for example, self‐serving attributions and indicate directions for future research. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 27, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1766   open full text
• The Effect of Temporal Distance on Attitudes toward Imprecise Probabilities and Imprecise Outcomes.
  Selcuk Onay, Dolchai La‐ornual, Ayse Öncüler.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 17, 2012
  Many personal, managerial, and societal decisions involve uncertain or ambiguous consequences that will occur in the future. Yet, previous empirical research on ambiguity preferences has focused mainly on decisions with immediate outcomes. To close this gap in the literature, this paper examines ambiguity attitudes toward future prospects, particularly how they may differ from the attitudes toward comparable prospects in the present. On the basis of a recent paradigm, we first distinguish between two types of ambiguity: imprecise probabilities and imprecise outcomes. Then, in accordance with construal level theory, which shows that temporal distance increases the relative importance of outcomes over probabilities in evaluating prospects, we conjecture that temporal distance would moderate attitudes toward imprecise probabilities but amplify attitudes toward imprecise outcomes. Through a series of experiments, we demonstrate that when the prospects are in the future, individuals are less averse toward imprecise probabilities and more seeking toward imprecise outcomes. However, the effect is most prominent for prospects where both the probability and outcome dimensions are concurrently imprecise. The paper ends with a discussion on how dimension salience may have contributed to this result. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 17, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1763   open full text
• Good or Bad, We Want it Now: Fixed‐cost Present Bias for Gains and Losses Explains Magnitude Asymmetries in Intertemporal Choice.
  David J. Hardisty, Kirstin C. Appelt, Elke U. Weber.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 13, 2012
  Intertemporal tradeoffs are ubiquitous in decision making, yet preferences for current versus future losses are rarely explored in empirical research. Whereas rational‐economic theory posits that neither outcome sign (gains vs. losses) nor outcome magnitude (small vs. large) should affect delay discount rates, both do, and moreover, they interact: in three studies, we show that whereas large gains are discounted less than small gains, large losses are discounted more than small losses. This interaction can be understood through a reconceptualization of fixed‐cost present bias, which has traditionally described a psychological preference for immediate rewards. First, our results establish present bias for losses—a psychological preference to have losses over with now. Present bias thus predicts increased discounting of future gains but decreased (or even negative) discounting of future losses. Second, because present bias preferences do not scale with the magnitude of possible gains or losses, they play a larger role, relative to other motivations for discounting, for small magnitude intertemporal decisions than for large magnitude intertemporal decisions. Present bias thus predicts less discounting of large gains than small gains but more discounting of large losses than small losses. The present research is the first to demonstrate that the effect of outcome magnitude on discount rates may be opposite for gains and losses and also the first to offer a theory (an extension of present bias) and process data to explain this interaction. The results suggest that policy efforts to encourage future‐oriented choices should frame outcomes as large gains or small losses. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 13, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1771   open full text
• Choosing Between Lotteries: Remarkable Coordination Without Communication.
  Yoella Bereby‐Meyer, Simone Moran, Brit Grosskopf, Dolly Chugh.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 10, 2012
  The current research examines tacit coordination behavior in a lottery selection task. Two hundred participants in each of three experiments and 100 in a fourth choose to participate in one of two lotteries, where one lottery has a larger prize than the other. Independent of variations in the complexity of the mechanism of prize allocation, the prize amounts, and whether the lottery is the participant's first or second choice, we typically find that the percentage of participants who choose the high versus low‐prize lotteries does not significantly differ from the equilibrium predictions. This coordination is achieved without communication or experience. We additionally find that participants with an analytical thinking style and a risk‐averse tendency are more likely to choose the low‐prize lottery over the high‐prize lottery. This tendency seems to be stable across choices. The pattern of our results suggests that to achieve tacit coordination, having a subset of individuals who attend to the choices of others is sufficient. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 10, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1769   open full text
• Living and Learning: Reproducing Beliefs in Selective Experience.
  Ebba Elwin.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 04, 2012
  People's decisions shape their experience. For example, a recruitment officer decides between job applicants and cannot evaluate the suitability of rejected applicants. The selection decisions thus affect the content of the officer's experience of suitable and unsuitable applicants, and experiential learning is achieved from a selective sample of experiences. It is suggested that people's beliefs are sensitive to the content of the experienced sample, but the mind cannot adjust for the selectivity of the sample even when it results from the individual's own decisions. Two experiments with a recruitment task showed that incorrect prior beliefs survive experiential learning when the beliefs are reproduced and thus appear to be confirmed, in actual experience. When the task was to achieve high performance, incorrect prior beliefs persisted because they were reproduced in a smaller sample of selected job applicants. In contrast, when the task was focused on learning, a greater number of applicants were selected, and a more representative experience therefore revised incorrect beliefs. The actual content of the experienced sample is thus crucial for the persistence, as well as for the revision, of incorrect beliefs. Further, as predicted by the hypothesis of constructivist coding, when feedback was absent for rejected applicants, participants constructed “internal feedback” in line with the expectation that the rejected applicant was unsuitable. Thus, when fewer applicants were hired, participants came to believe that the actual proportion of suitable applicants was low. Finally, the implications for efforts to reduce bias and improve experiential learning are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 04, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1770   open full text
• The Effects of Personal Agency on Regret.
  Sunil H. Contractor, Piyush Kumar.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 03, 2012
  In this paper, we examine the role of personal agency as a key antecedent of regret that individuals experience when the outcome of their decision is unfavorable. In contrast to previous research that documents its exacerbating role, we find that personal agency mitigates regret under certain circumstances. A series of experimental studies show that personal responsibility for the decision may attenuate subjective perceptions of the extent of failure and mitigate regret. However, when the superior outcome of the foregone option is known and the failure of the chosen option is irreversible, personal agency may amplify regret. We also find that subjective failure perceptions mediate the relationship between personal agency and regret levels. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 03, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1760   open full text
• It Was a Most Unusual Time: How Memory Bias Engenders Nostalgic Preferences.
  Carey K. Morewedge.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. July 03, 2012
  Nostalgic preferences are widespread—people believe past movies, music, television shows, places, and periods of life to have been better than their present counterparts. Three experiments explored the cognitive underpinnings of nostalgic preferences. Participants rated past experiences to have been superior to similar present and recent experiences. These nostalgic preferences appeared to be due to the belief that the atypically positive experiences that participants recalled at the time of judgment were more representative of their past experiences than of their present experiences. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  July 03, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1767   open full text
• Forecasting Elections from Voters' Perceptions of Candidates' Ability to Handle Issues.
  Andreas Graefe, J. Scott Armstrong.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. May 20, 2012
  When deciding for whom to vote, voters should select the candidate they expect to best handle issues, all other things equal. A simple heuristic predicted that the candidate who is rated more favorably on a larger number of issues would win the popular vote. This was correct for nine out of ten U.S. presidential elections from 1972 to 2008. We then used simple linear regression to relate the incumbent's relative issue ratings to the actual two‐party popular vote shares. The resulting model yielded out‐of‐sample forecasts that were competitive with those from the Iowa Electronic Markets and established quantitative models. The issue‐index model has implications for political decision makers, as it can help to track campaigns and to decide which issues to focus on. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  May 20, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1764   open full text
• Deliberation Versus Intuition: Decomposing the Role of Expertise in Judgment and Decision Making.
  Koen A. Dijkstra, Joop Pligt, Gerben A. Kleef.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 18, 2012
  What produces better judgments: deliberating or relying on intuition? Past research is inconclusive. We focus on the role of expertise to increase understanding of the effects of judgment mode. We propose a framework in which expertise depends on a person's experience with and knowledge about a domain. Individuals who are relatively experienced but have modest knowledge about the subject matter (“intermediates”) are expected to suffer from deliberation and to benefit from a more intuitive approach, because they lack the formal knowledge to understand the reasons underlying their preferences. Individuals who are high (“experts”) or low (“novices”) on both experience and knowledge are expected to do well or poorly, respectively, regardless of decision mode. We tested these predictions in the domain of art. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that intermediates performed better when relying on intuition than after deliberation. Judgments of experts and novices were unaffected. In line with previous research relating processing style to judgment mode, Experiment 3 showed that the effect of processing style (global versus local) on judgment quality is similarly moderated by expertise. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 18, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1759   open full text
• Role‐Induced Bias in Court: An Experimental Analysis.
  Christoph Engel, Andreas Glöckner.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 11, 2012
  Criminal procedure is organized as a tournament with predefined roles. We show that assuming the role of a defense counsel or a prosecutor leads to role‐induced bias even if participants are asked to predict a court ruling after they have ceased to act in that role and if they expect a substantial financial incentive for being accurate. The bias is not removed either if participants are instructed to predict the court ruling in preparation of plea bargaining. In line with parallel constraint satisfaction models for legal decision making, findings indicate that role‐induced bias is driven by coherence effects, that is, systematic information distortions in support of the favored option. This is mainly achieved by downplaying the importance of conflicting evidence. These distortions seem to stabilize interpretations, and people do not correct for this bias. Implications for legal procedure are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 11, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1761   open full text
• Strategy Selection in Risky Choice: The Impact of Numeracy, Affect, and Cross‐Cultural Differences.
  Thorsten Pachur, Mirta Galesic.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 02, 2012
  Real‐world decisions often involve options with outcomes that are uncertain and trigger strong affect (e.g., side effects of a drug). Previous work suggests that when choosing among affect‐rich risky prospects, people are rather insensitive to probability information, potentially compromising decision quality. We modeled the strategies of less and more numerate participants in the United States and in Germany when choosing between affect‐rich prospects and between monetarily equivalent affect‐poor prospects. Using large probabilistic national samples (n = 1047 from the United States and Germany), Study 1 showed that compared with more numerate participants, less numerate participants chose the normatively better option (i.e., the one with the higher expected value) less often, guessed more often, and relied more on a simple risk‐minimizing strategy. U.S. participants—although less numerate—selected the normatively better option more frequently and were more consistent across affect‐rich and affect‐poor problems than the German participants. Using a targeted quota sample (n = 118 from Germany), Study 2 indicated that although both more and less numerate participants paid less attention to probability information in affect‐rich than in affect‐poor problems, the two numeracy groups relied on different outcome‐based heuristics: More numerate participants often followed the minimax heuristic, and less numerate participants the affect heuristic. The observed strategy differences suggest that attempts to improve decision‐making need to take into account individual differences in numeracy as well as cultural‐specific experiences in making trade‐offs. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 02, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1757   open full text
• Data Collection in a Flat World: The Strengths and Weaknesses of Mechanical Turk Samples.
  Joseph K. Goodman, Cynthia E. Cryder, Amar Cheema.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. April 02, 2012
  Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online labor system run by Amazon.com, provides quick, easy, and inexpensive access to online research participants. As use of MTurk has grown, so have questions from behavioral researchers about its participants, reliability, and low compensation. In this article, we review recent research about MTurk and compare MTurk participants with community and student samples on a set of personality dimensions and classic decision‐making biases. Across two studies, we find many similarities between MTurk participants and traditional samples, but we also find important differences. For instance, MTurk participants are less likely to pay attention to experimental materials, reducing statistical power. They are more likely to use the Internet to find answers, even with no incentive for correct responses. MTurk participants have attitudes about money that are different from a community sample's attitudes but similar to students' attitudes. Finally, MTurk participants are less extraverted and have lower self‐esteem than other participants, presenting challenges for some research domains. Despite these differences, MTurk participants produce reliable results consistent with standard decision‐making biases: they are present biased, risk‐averse for gains, risk‐seeking for losses, show delay/expedite asymmetries, and show the certainty effect—with almost no significant differences in effect sizes from other samples. We conclude that MTurk offers a highly valuable opportunity for data collection and recommend that researchers using MTurk (1) include screening questions that gauge attention and language comprehension; (2) avoid questions with factual answers; and (3) consider how individual differences in financial and social domains may influence results. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  April 02, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1753   open full text
• Confidence in Personal Preferences.
  Asher Koriat.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 27, 2012
  The first aim of this study was to test the self‐consistency model (SCM) of subjective confidence as it applies to personal preferences. According to SCM, participants presented with a two‐alternative forced‐choice (2AFC) item draw a small sample of representations of the item. Their confidence reflects the extent to which the choice is representative of the population of representations associated with the item, and the likelihood of making that choice on subsequent occasions. The second aim was to use confidence judgment as a clue to the dynamics of online preference construction. Participants were presented with 2AFC items measuring everyday personal preferences. The task was presented five times. In line with SCM, (i) when participants changed their preferences across presentations, they were systematically more confident when they made their more frequent choice; (ii) confidence in a choice in the item's first presentation predicted the likelihood of repeating that choice in subsequent presentations; (iii) despite the idiosyncratic nature of personal preferences, confidence was higher for consensual than for nonconsensual preferences; (iv) when participants predicted the preferences of others, they were also more confident when their predictions agreed with those of others; and (v) the confidence/accuracy correlation for predictions was positive for consensually correct but negative for consensually wrong predictions. These results suggest that confidence in preferences can help separate between the stable and variable contributions to preference construction in terms of the population of representations available in memory and the representations that are accessible at the time of preference solicitation, respectively. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 27, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1758   open full text
• Semantic Coherence and Inconsistency in Estimating Conditional Probabilities.
  Christopher R. Wolfe, Christopher R. Fisher, Valerie F. Reyna.
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. March 27, 2012
  Two studies examined semantic coherence and internal inconsistency fallacies in conditional probability estimation. Problems reflected five distinct relationships between two sets: identical sets, mutually exclusive sets, subsets, overlapping sets, and independent sets (a special case of overlapping sets). Participants estimated P(A), P(B), P(A|B), and P(B|A). Inconsistency occurs when this constellation of estimates does not conform to Bayes' theorem. Semantic coherence occurs when this constellation of estimates is consistent with the depicted relationship among sets. Fuzzy‐trace theory predicts that people have difficulty with overlapping sets and subsets because they require class‐inclusion reasoning. On these problems, people are vulnerable to denominator neglect, the tendency to ignore relevant denominators, making the gist more difficult to discern. Independent sets are simplified by the gist understanding that P(A) provides no information about P(B), and thus, P(A|B) = P(A). The gist for identical sets is that P(A|B) = 1.0, and the gist of mutually exclusive sets is that P(A|B) = 0. In Study 1, identical, mutually exclusive, and independent sets yielded superior performance (in internal inconsistency and semantic coherence) than subsets and overlapping sets. For subsets and overlapping sets, interventions clarifying appropriate denominators generally improved semantic coherence and inconsistency, including teaching people to use Euler diagrams, 2 × 2 tables, or relative frequencies. In Study 2, with problems about breast cancer and BRCA mutations, there was a strong correlation between inconsistency in conditional probability estimation and conjunction fallacies of joint probability estimation, suggesting that similar fallacious reasoning processes produce these errors. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  March 27, 2012   doi: 10.1002/bdm.1756   open full text