CiteULike: Group: ACS-Basel - with tag prediction

Visceral Drives in Retrospect: Explanations About the Inaccessible Past

Nordgren — 2006-07-04T22:10:59-00:00

Psychological Science, Vol. 17, No. 7. (July 2006), pp. 635-640.

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.

Predicting the Near and Distant Future

Shiri Nussbaum — 2006-07-24T10:55:01-00:00

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 135, No. 2. (May 2006), pp. 152-161.

Four studies investigated individuals' confidence in predicting near future and distant future outcomes. Study 1 found that participants were more confident in theory-based predictions of psychological experiments when these experiments were expected to take place in the more distant future. Studies 2-4 examined participants' confidence in predicting their performance on near and distant future tests. These studies found that in predicting their more distant future performance, participants disregarded the format of the questions (e.g., multiple choice vs. open ended) and relied, instead, on their perceived general knowledge (e.g., history knowledge). Together, the present studies demonstrate that predictions of the more distant future are based on relatively abstract information. Individuals feel more confident in predicting the distant future than the near future when the predictions concern outcomes that are implied by relatively abstract information.

A Neural Substrate of Prediction and Reward

Wolfram Schultz — 2005-07-29T17:08:25-00:00

Science, Vol. 275, No. 5306. (14 March 1997), pp. 1593-1599.

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.

Decision and experience: why don't we choose what makes us happy?

Christopher K Hsee — 2005-12-04T06:07:02-00:00

Trends Cogn Sci (27 November 2005)

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest among psychologists and other social scientists in subjective well-being and happiness. Here we review selected contributions to this development from the literature on behavioral-decision theory. In particular, we examine many, somewhat surprising, findings that show people systematically fail to predict or choose what maximizes their happiness, and we look at reasons why they fail to do so. These findings challenge a fundamental assumption that underlies popular support for consumer sovereignty and other forms of autonomy in decision-making (e.g. marriage choice), namely, the assumption that people are able to make choices in their own best interests.

The social implications of planning: How public predictions bias future plans

Stephanie Pezzo — 2006-03-03T13:26:58-00:00

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 42, No. 2. (March 2006), pp. 221-227.

The planning fallacy, or tendency to underestimate how long a task will take to complete, is a robust phenomenon. Although several explanations have been offered (e.g., ignoring underestimations made in the past), we hypothesized that self-presentation concerns may also contribute to the bias, and that this effect may be exacerbated by a previous failure to complete a task on time. Half of our sample (n = 85) were led to believe that they failed to complete an initial task on time, and half were not. Predictions were then made for time to complete a second task either verbally to a familiar experimenter (high self-presentation) or anonymously (low self-presentation). Although verbal predictions exhibited the typical planning fallacy, anonymous predictions did not. Additionally, verbal predictions were less accurate, that is, less correlated with actual completion times, than were anonymous predictions. There was no significant difference in the bias as a result of the failure manipulation, nor was there an interaction between the self-presentation and failure conditions.

The role of motor contagion in the prediction of action

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore — 2005-10-13T17:37:13-00:00

Neuropsychologia, Vol. 43, No. 2. (2005), pp. 260-267.

It has been proposed that actions are intrinsically linked to perception [James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. New York, NY, USA: Holt; Jeannerod M. (1994). The representing brain - neural correlates of motor intention and imagery. Behavioural Brain Sciences, 17, 187-202; Prinz, W. (1997). Perception and action planning. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9, 129-154]. The idea behind these theories is that observing, imagining or in any way representing an action excites the motor programs used to execute that same action. There is neurophysiological evidence that neurons in premotor cortex of monkeys respond both during movement execution and during the observation of goal-directed action ('mirror neurons'). In humans, a proportion of the brain regions involved in executing actions are activated by the mere observation of action (the 'mirror system'). In this paper, we briefly review recent empirical studies of the mirror system, and discuss studies demonstrating interference effects between observed and executed movements. This interference, which might be a form of 'motor contagion', seems to arise specifically from the observation of biological movements, whether or not these movements are goal-directed. We suggest that this crude motor contagion is the first step in a more sophisticated predictive system that allows us to infer goals from the observation of actions.

Predicting the World Cup 2002 in soccer: Performance and confidence of experts and non-experts

Patric Andersson — 2005-06-21T07:38:26-00:00

International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof

This paper investigates the forecasting performance and confidence of experts and non-experts. 251 participants with four different levels of knowledge of soccer (ranging between expertise and almost ignorance) took part in a survey and predicted the outcome of the first round of World Cup 2002. The participating experts (i.e., sport journalists, soccer fans, and soccer coaches) and the non-experts were found to be equally accurate and better than chance. A simple prediction rule that followed world rankings outperformed most participants. Experts overestimated their performance and tended to be overconfident, while the opposite tendency was observed for the participants with limited knowledge. Providing non-experts with information did not improve their performance, but increased their confidence.