CiteULike: Group: ACS-Basel - with tag choice

Preschoolers' Current Desires Warp Their Choices for the Future

Atance — 2006-07-04T22:10:59-00:00

Psychological Science, Vol. 17, No. 7. (July 2006), pp. 583-587.

Thirst for confirmation in multi-attribute choice: Does search for consistency impair decision performance?

Natalia Karelaia — 2006-07-24T13:13:10-00:00

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 100, No. 1. (May 2006), pp. 128-143.

Experimental evidence suggests that people often do not feel comfortable with making decisions based on a single piece of evidence and that they systematically look for confirming evidence before choosing. The goal of this paper is to investigate whether such behavior is appropriate for multi-attribute binary choice. We model the experimentally observed "thirst for confirming redundancy" (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956) through a simple heuristic strategy (CONF) that needs two consistent cues to make a binary choice. Analytical expressions for the probabilities that CONF chooses correctly between two alternatives and takes a decision after considering fewer than all pieces of evidence are presented. Importantly, CONF is advantageously insensitive to cue ordering. The model performs equally well in both structured environments, where cues are ordered by validity, and unstructured environments, where the cues are not consulted in the order of their validity. We further compare the performance of CONF with the performance of other heuristics in a series of simulated three-cue environments, where the cues are continuous and vary in both predictive ability and inter-correlation. We show that across environments, CONF balances the advantages and disadvantages of other simple models. We conclude that confirmation-seeking in multi-attribute decision making is a simple, fast, and robust "ignorance" strategy that hedges your bets when you know that you might not know.

Agent-Specific Responses in the Cingulate Cortex During Economic Exchanges

Damon Tomlin — 2006-07-24T12:54:52-00:00

Science, Vol. 312, No. 5776. (19 May 2006), pp. 1047-1050.

Interactions with other responsive agents lie at the core of all social exchange. During a social exchange with a partner, one fundamental variable that must be computed correctly is who gets credit for a shared outcome; this assignment is crucial for deciding on an optimal level of cooperation that avoids simple exploitation. We carried out an iterated, two-person economic exchange and made simultaneous hemodynamic measurements from each player's brain. These joint measurements revealed agent-specific responses in the social domain ("me" and "not me") arranged in a systematic spatial pattern along the cingulate cortex. This systematic response pattern did not depend on metrical aspects of the exchange, and it disappeared completely in the absence of a responding partner. 10.1126/science.1125596

Neurobiological Substrates of Dread

Gregory Berns — 2006-05-05T22:58:53-00:00

Science, Vol. 312, No. 5774. (5 May 2006), pp. 754-758.

Given the choice of waiting for an adverse outcome or getting it over with quickly, many people choose the latter. Theoretical models of decision-making have assumed that this occurs because there is a cost to waiting--i.e., dread. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured the neural responses to waiting for a cutaneous electric shock. Some individuals dreaded the outcome so much that, when given a choice, they preferred to receive more voltage rather than wait. Even when no decision was required, these extreme dreaders were distinguishable from those who dreaded mildly by the rate of increase of neural activity in the posterior elements of the cortical pain matrix. This suggests that dread derives, in part, from the attention devoted to the expected physical response and not simply from fear or anxiety. Although these differences were observed during a passive waiting procedure, they correlated with individual behavior in a subsequent choice paradigm, providing evidence for a neurobiological link between the experienced disutility of dread and subsequent decisions about unpleasant outcomes. 10.1126/science.1123721

Quantifying persuasion effects on choice with the decision threshold of the stochastic choice model

Claudia Gonzalez-Vallejo — 2006-07-24T12:02:12-00:00

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 100, No. 2. (July 2006), pp. 250-267.

Three studies tested the stochastic difference choice model (proportional difference, PD, version in Gonzalez-Vallejo, 2002) in the domain of decision making under certainty. Consumer services and products, hotels defined by price and quality and MP3 players defined by price and memory size, served as choice pairs. The ordinal prediction relating the proportional difference variable, d (computed from stimuli pairs), and the observed choice proportions was supported. Model fitting showed that PD's estimated decision threshold measured within-person sensitivity to value attribute differences both at baseline and after persuasion manipulations. The threshold was also related to whether individuals were low or high in Need for Cognition (NFC, Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). Cross-validation strategies also showed PD to be descriptive and robust.

A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice

Herbert Simon — 2006-04-10T09:32:27-00:00

Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 69 (1955), pp. 99-118.

State-Dependent Learned Valuation Drives Choice in an Invertebrate

Lorena Pompilio — 2006-03-18T22:08:13-00:00

Science, Vol. 311, No. 5767. (17 March 2006), pp. 1613-1615.

Humans and other vertebrates occasionally show a preference for items remembered to be costly or experienced when the subject was in a poor condition (this is known as a sunk-costs fallacy or state-dependent valuation). Whether these mechanisms shared across vertebrates are the result of convergence toward an adaptive solution or evolutionary relicts reflecting common ancestral traits is unknown. Here we show that state-dependent valuation also occurs in an invertebrate, the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria (Orthoptera: Acrididae). Given the latter's phylogenetic and neurobiological distance from those groups in which the phenomenon was already known, we suggest that state-dependent valuation mechanisms are probably ecologically rational solutions to widespread problems of choice.

Doing Better but Feeling Worse: Looking for the Best Job Undermines Satisfaction

Sheena Iyengar — 2006-01-25T12:08:13-00:00

Psychological Science, Vol. 17, No. 2. (February 2006), pp. 143-150.

On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect

Ap Dijksterhuis — 2006-02-17T17:51:40-00:00

Science, Vol. 311, No. 5763. (17 February 2006), pp. 1005-1007.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing. On the basis of recent insights into the characteristics of conscious and unconscious thought, we tested the hypothesis that simple choices (such as between different towels or different sets of oven mitts) indeed produce better results after conscious thought, but that choices in complex matters (such as between different houses or different cars) should be left to unconscious thought. Named the "deliberation-without-attention" hypothesis, it was confirmed in four studies on consumer choice, both in the laboratory as well as among actual shoppers, that purchases of complex products were viewed more favorably when decisions had been made in the absence of attentive deliberation.

Decision making under conflict: decision time as a measure of conflict strength.

A Diederich — 2006-03-13T21:22:14-00:00

Psychon Bull Rev, Vol. 10, No. 1. (March 2003), pp. 167-176.

Conflict and choice are closely related in that choice produces conflict and conflict is resolved by making a choice. Although conflict was invoked in psychological approaches to decision making early on (Lewin, 1931/1964), no generally accepted measure of conflict strength has been established (Tversky & Shafir, 1992). The present study introduces a model (multiattribute decision field theory) that predicts a decision time pattern depending on the conflict situation. In a risky decision-making experiment with multiattribute choice alternatives, decision time is investigated as a possible measure of conflict strength. It is shown that the model can be fitted to a complex choice pattern.

The role of the amygdala in signaling prospective outcome of choice.

I Kahn — 2006-03-10T14:39:24-00:00

Neuron, Vol. 33, No. 6. (14 March 2002), pp. 983-994.

Can brain activity reveal a covert choice? Making a choice often evokes distinct emotions that accompany decision processes. Amygdala has been implicated in choice behavior that is guided by a prospective negative outcome. However, its specific involvement in emotional versus cognitive processing of choice behavior has been a subject of controversy. In this study, the human amygdala was monitored by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects were playing in a naturalistic choice paradigm against the experimenter. In order to win, players had to occasionally choose to bluff their opponent, risk "getting caught," and suffer a loss. A critical period, when choice has been made but outcome was still unknown, activated the amygdala preferentially following the choice that entailed risk of loss. Thus, the response of the amygdala differentiated between subject's covert choice of either playing fair or foul. These results support a role of the amygdala in choice behavior, both in the appraisal of inherent value of choice and the signaling of prospective negative outcomes.

On the benefits of thinking unconsciously: Unconscious thought can increase post-choice satisfaction

Ap Dijksterhuis — 2006-03-03T16:41:32-00:00

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof

This work compares conscious thought and unconscious thought in relation to quality of choice. Earlier work [Dijksterhuis, A. (2004). Think different: The merits of unconscious thought in preference development and decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 586-598] has shown that people make better choices after engaging in unconscious thought (i.e., unconscious activity during a period of distraction) rather than in conscious thought. However, the evidence was obtained for choices between hypothetical alternatives with quality of choice operationalized normatively. As quality of decision is essentially subjective, in the current experiment participants chose between real objects with quality operationalized as post-choice satisfaction. In a paradigm based on work by Wilson and colleagues [Wilson, T. D., Lisle, D., Schooler, J. W., Hodges, S. D., Klaaren, K. J., & LaFleur, S. J. (1993). Introspecting about reasons can reduce post-choice satisfaction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 331-339], participants were briefly presented with five art posters, and chose one either (a) immediately, (b) after thorough conscious thinking about each poster, or (c) after a period of distraction. Participants took their favorite poster home and were phoned 3-5 weeks later. As hypothesized, unconscious thinkers were more satisfied with their choice than participants in the other two conditions.

How Subjective Grouping of Options Influences Choice and Allocation: Diversification Bias and the Phenomenon of Partition Dependence

Craig Fox — 2005-12-06T10:44:39-00:00

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 134, No. 4. (November 2005), pp. 538-551.

The authors argue that people's tendency to diversify their allocations of money and consumption choices over alternatives gives rise to decisions that vary systematically with the subjective grouping of available options. These subjective groupings are influenced by subtle variations in the presentation of options or elicitation of preferences. Studies 1-4 demonstrate such "partition dependence" in allocations of money to beneficiaries, consumption experiences to future time periods, and choices to a menu of consumption options. Study 5 documents weaker partition dependence among individuals with greater relevant experience discriminating among options, and Study 6 shows that the effect is attenuated among participants with stronger or more accessible intrinsic preferences.

Temporal Discounting When the Choice Is Between Two Delayed Rewards

Leonard Green — 2005-11-02T11:59:54-00:00

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Vol. 31, No. 5. (September 2005), pp. 1121-1133.

The present experiments extend the temporal discounting paradigm from choice between an immediate and a delayed reward to choice between 2 delayed rewards: a smaller amount of money available sooner and a larger amount available later. Across different amounts and delays, the data were consistently well described by a hyperbola-like discounting function, and the degree of discounting decreased systematically as the delay to the sooner reward increased. Three theoretical models (the elimination-by-aspects, present-value comparison, and common-aspect attenuation hypotheses) were evaluated. The best account of the data was provided by the common-aspect attenuation hypothesis, according to which the common aspect of the choice alternatives (i.e., the time until the sooner reward is available) receives less weight in the decision-making process.

A consumer behavior approach to modeling monopolistic competition

Antony Davies — 2005-11-01T13:45:54-00:00

Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 6. (December 2005), pp. 797-826.

In this paper, we attempt to integrate research on consumer information processing and the consumer choice process with the goal of proposing a general framework for modeling consumer behavior in monopolistically competitive industries. Following a pattern of inductive reasoning, we posit a set of consumer behavior propositions that is consistent with observed results from context effects experiments and the phased decision-making literature. We propose that, faced with many competing brands in a monopolistically competitive environment, consumers can be said to construct consideration sets on the basis of non-compensatory rules and subsequently to choose from among competing brands within a consideration set on the basis of compensatory rules. We identify five product-market characteristics that consumers use as heuristics to maximize the probability of making the optimal brand choice while minimizing the cost of acquiring and processing information about competing brands. We propose that consumers use memory and stimuli based information to evolve their unique perceptions of these product-market characteristics. As a follow-up to our inductive approach, we show that the empirically documented context effects are consistent with our behavioral propositions. Finally, we use the propositions to explain several classic cases of consumer behavior observed in the beer, ice cream, and automobile industries.

Decision making heuristics and the elicitation of preferences: being fast and frugal about the future

John Cairns — 2005-10-28T16:42:37-00:00

Health Economics, Vol. 11, No. 7. (31 May 2002), pp. 655-658.

It has been suggested that individuals employ simple decision heuristics when answering stated preference questions. Evidence from discrete choice experiments of individuals failing to trade may indicate that they employ simple decision making heuristics. However, individuals might not trade because their preferences are not captured by the range of trade-offs they are offered. This is explored by offering a series of choices where the trade-offs implied by subsequent choices depend on the subject's responses to previous choices. The results suggest that individuals answer discrete choices without recourse to simplifying heuristics, and that information is generated on their preferences rather than on how they make such choices. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The role of desires in sequential impulsive choices

Utpal Dholakia — 2005-10-27T14:21:04-00:00

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 98, No. 2. (November 2005), pp. 179-194.

The present research provides evidence for a sequential mitigation effect, which is the phenomenon that participation in a prior impulsive choice task significantly reduces the decision maker's likelihood of choosing impulsively in a subsequent task. The results of five experiments: (a) provide evidence for the Sequential Mitigation Effect using different study materials and contexts (Experiments 1-3), (b) show that prior impulsive (as opposed to non-impulsive) choice is required for the effect to occur (Experiment 4), and (c) find that the decision maker's chronic sensitivity to positive and negative outcomes moderates the effect (Experiment 5). The results support the notion that desire for impulsive options functions as a limited motivational resource, and being consumed in the first task, is experienced to a lesser extent in the second task. The sequential mitigation effect may be characterized as a motivational contextual influence on decision making, complementing existing research showing that cognitive context effects influence sequential choices.

On self-referencing differences in judgment and choice

Sanjay Sood — 2005-10-27T13:53:16-00:00

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 98, No. 2. (November 2005), pp. 144-154.

Compared to judgment, choice is argued to elicit more self-referent processing and thereby produce greater subsequent recall of evaluated information. This response mode effect is shown to be dependent upon sufficient visualization to overcome the use of heuristic processing during choice. When visualizing prior to the task, choice leads to increased thinking about personal consumption occasions relative to judgment, leading to enhanced recall of vivid (vs. non-vivid) attributes. This proposed interaction of task and visualization was found in two experiments that assessed incidental recall following a choice or judgment task. In experiment 1, participants recalled more vivid product attribute information after choosing between options than after rating each option separately, but only when instructed to visualize during evaluation. To eliminate a comparison-based explanation of this effect, a second experiment was conducted that presented only one option in each category. Participants who evaluated their intention to purchase the option (a judgment equivalent of choice) demonstrated greater recall of vivid product attribute information than did participants who rated their liking for the option, and this recall difference was again moderated by instructions to visualize.

Using cheap talk as a test of validity in choice experiments

Fredrik Carlsson — 2005-10-13T17:35:12-00:00

Economics Letters, Vol. 89, No. 2. (November 2005), pp. 147-152.

In two experiments on the choice of consumer goods, the estimated marginal willingness to pay for food is found to be lower in the survey version with cheap talk. Our test can be seen as a test of hypothetical bias. This implies that we cannot reject the hypothesis of a hypothetical bias for marginal WTP in choice experiments.

Neuroeconomics: making risky choices in the brain

Daeyeol Lee — 2005-09-06T08:14:28-00:00

Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 8, No. 9. (September 2005), pp. 1129-1130.

[Journal Article; In English; United States]

When Things Don't Add Up: The Role of Perceived Fungibility in Repeated-Play Decisions

Michael Dekay — 2005-08-24T16:49:40-00:00

Psychological Science, Vol. 16, No. 9. (September 2005), pp. 667-672.

Previous research on repeated-play decisions has focused on choices with fungible outcomes. We investigated the perceived fungibility of outcomes over repeated plays of risky prospects in several situations, as well as the relationship between perceived fungibility and preferences for taking risks in those situations. Perceived fungibility varied substantially across participants and situations, with outcomes experienced by different people (e.g., medical outcomes for different patients) receiving lower scores than outcomes experienced by a single person. Higher perceived fungibility was associated with more favorable evaluations of repeated plays of risky prospects with positive expectations. Additionally, perceived fungibility moderated the effect of repetition, such that the increased attractiveness of repeated plays relative to a single play was diminished when perceived fungibility was low. Although evaluating the overall distribution of outcomes is arguably rational when monetary outcomes accrue to one person, treating each play as a separate event may be more appropriate when outcomes are not viewed as fungible.

Impulsiveness without discounting: the ecological rationality hypothesis.

DW Stephens — 2005-06-13T20:13:18-00:00

Proc Biol Sci, Vol. 271, No. 1556. (7 December 2004), pp. 2459-2465.

Observed animal impulsiveness challenges ideas from foraging theory about the fitness value of food rewards, and may play a role in important behavioural phenomena such as cooperation and addiction. Behavioural ecologists usually invoke temporal discounting to explain the evolution of animal impulsiveness. According to the discounting hypothesis, delay reduces the fitness value of the delayed food. We develop an alternative model for the evolution of impulsiveness that does not require discounting. We show that impulsive or short-sighted rules can maximize long-term rates of food intake. The advantages of impulsive rules come from two sources. First, naturally occurring choices have a foreground-background structure that reduces the long-term cost of impulsiveness. Second, impulsive rules have a discrimination advantage because they tend to compare smaller quantities. Discounting contributes little to this result. Although we find that impulsive rules are optimal in a simple foreground-background choice situation in the absence of discounting, in contrast we do not find comparable impulsiveness in binary choice situations even when there is strong discounting.

Investment Behavior and the Negative Side of Emotion

Baba Shiv — 2005-05-30T21:05:40-00:00

Psychological Science, Vol. 16, No. 6. (June 2005), pp. 435-439.

Can dysfunction in neural systems subserving emotion lead, under certain circumstances, to more advantageous decisions? To answer this question, we investigated how normal participants, patients with stable focal lesions in brain regions related to emotion (target patients), and patients with stable focal lesions in brain regions unrelated to emotion (control patients) made 20 rounds of investment decisions. Target patients made more advantageous decisions and ultimately earned more money from their investments than the normal participants and control patients. When normal participants and control patients either won or lost money on an investment round, they adopted a conservative strategy and became more reluctant to invest on the subsequent round; these results suggest that they were more affected than target patients by the outcomes of decisions made in the previous rounds.

On the psychology of 'if only': Regret and the comparison between factual and counterfactual outcomes

Eric van Dijk — 2005-05-30T13:16:30-00:00

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 97, No. 2. (July 2005), pp. 152-160.

People experience regret when they realize that they would have been better off had they decided differently. Hence, a central element in regret is the comparability of a decision outcome with the outcomes forgone. Up to now, however, the comparison process that is so essential to the experience of regret has not been the subject of psychological research. In this article, we tune in on the comparison dependency of regret. We argue that factors that reduce the tendency to compare attenuate regret, and demonstrate that uncertainty about counterfactual outcomes (Experiment 1), and incomparability of counterfactual and factual outcomes (Experiments 2 and 3) produce such effects.

The impact of the certainty context on the process of choice.

J Dickhaut — 2005-02-22T22:43:58-00:00

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, Vol. 100, No. 6. (18 March 2003), pp. 3536-3541.

In this study we examine how the introduction of a reference lottery with nonrandom outcomes alters the way in which choices among pairs of lotteries are made, even if it does not alter the choices. We use different domains (some of the lotteries produce gains, other losses) and different contexts (one member of the pair, the reference lottery, may be either risky or certain). In our experiment, the change from gain to loss domain affects choices: subjects are risk averse in the gain domain, but not in the loss domain. On the contrary, the context effect of the certain lottery does not affect choices. However, the introduction of the certainty reference lottery affects two behavioral variables, response time and brain activation, in a dramatic way. This result suggests that the certainty lottery promotes a different process through which preferences are revealed, even if the differences among lotteries may not be large enough to induce different choices.

Touché: the feeling of choice - Nature Neuroscience

2005-03-31T08:53:30-00:00

A new model by Machens et al. proposes a mechanism by which prefrontal cortex neurons can do two jobs that are normally thought to occur independently. In a stimulus comparison task, these model neurons both cast votes for a stimulus and make decisions.

Modeling Ambiguity in Decisions Under Uncertainty

Barbara Kahn — 2005-05-18T17:55:51-00:00

The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 15, No. 2. (1988), pp. 265-272.

We present a model for predicting consumers' choices under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity. We use the term ambiguity to distinguish the class of risky decisions for which the odds of an uncertain event are not precisely known. We show that our model predicts different decisions for individuals who are ambiguity averse, ambiguity seeking, or ambiguity indifferent, thus relaxing the constraint imposed on preferences by subjected expected utility theory.

A brain imaging study of the choice procedure

Aldo Rustichini — 2005-02-05T03:54:00-00:00

Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof

We study the behavior of subjects facing choices between certain, risky, and ambiguous lotteries. Subjects' choices are consistent with the economic theories modeling ambiguity aversion. Our results support the conjecture that subjects face choice tasks as an estimation of the value of the lotteries, and that the difficulty of the choice is an important explanatory variable (in addition to risk and ambiguity aversion).The brain imaging data suggest that such estimation is of an approximate nature when the choices involve ambiguous and risky lotteries, as the regions in the brain that are activated are typically located in parietal lobes. Thus such choices require mental faculties that are shared by all mammals, and in particular are independent of language. In contrast, choices involving partial ambiguous lotteries additionally produce an activation of the frontal region, which indicates a different, more sophisticated cognitive process.