bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The motivated use of moral principles
Authors: Uhlmann Eric Luis , Pizarro David A. , Tannenbaum David , Ditto Peter H.
Published: January 2023

Five studies demonstrated that people selectively use general moral principles to rationalize preferred moral conclusions. In Studies 1a and 1b, college students and community respondents were presented with variations on a traditional moral scenario that asked whether it was permissible to sacrifice one innocent man in order to save a greater number of people. Political liberals, but not relatively more conservative participants, were more likely to endorse consequentialism when the victim had a stereotypically White American name than when the victim had a stereotypically Black American name. Study 2 found evidence suggesting participants believe that the moral principles they are endorsing are general in nature: when presented sequentially with both versions of the scenario, liberals again showed a bias in their judgments to the initial scenario, but demonstrated consistency thereafter. Study 3 found conservatives were more likely to endorse the unintended killing of innocent civilians when Iraqis civilians were killed than when Americans civilians were killed, while liberals showed no significant effect. In Study 4, participants primed with patriotism were more likely to endorse consequentialism when Iraqi civilians were killed by American forces than were participants primed with multiculturalism. However, this was not the case when American civilians were killed by Iraqi forces. Implications for the role of reason in moral judgment are discussed.
A re-examination of the effect of contextual group size on people’s attitude to risk
Authors: Shimizu Kazumi , Udagawa Daisuke
Published: January 2023

Using Kahneman and Tversky’s life-death decision paradigm, Wang and colleagues (e.g., Wang & Johnston, 1995; Wang, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c, 2008; Wang et al., 2001) have shown two characteristic phenomena regarding people’s attitude to risk when the contextual group size is manipulated. In both positive and negative frames, people tend to take greater risks in life-death decisions as the contextual group size becomes smaller; this risk-seeking attitude is greater when framed positively than negatively. (This second characteristic often leads to the disappearance of the framing effect in small group contexts comprising of 6 or 60 people.) Their results could shed new light on the effect of contextual group size on people’s risk choice. However these results are usually observed in laboratory experiments with university student samples. This study aims to examine the external validity of these results through different ways of experimentation and with a different sample base. The first characteristic was replicated in both a face-to-face interview with a randomly selected sample of the Japanese general public, and a web-based experiment with a non-student sample, but not the second.
The influence of group decision making on indecisiveness-related decisional confidence
Authors: Patalano Andrea L. , LeClair Zachary
Published: January 2023

Indecisiveness is an individual difference measure of chronic difficulty and delay in decision making. Indecisiveness is associated with low decisional confidence and distinct patterns of pre-choice information search behavior. The present study explored whether the confidence levels and search behaviors associated with individual indecisiveness also emerge in group decision making contexts. In this study, 97 decisive and indecisive participants were assigned to make a decision individually or in a homogenous three-person group. Indecisiveness score was found to predict participant decisional confidence in the individual condition but not in the group condition, with group participants being overall more confident than individuals. Similar results were obtained for other related measures of participants’ perceptions of the decision task. Surprisingly, no indecisiveness-related differences in information search were found, suggesting that other aspects of the group process contribute to increased confidence. The results provide initial evidence that indecisiveness does not influence group decision making and that, especially for indecisive individuals, working in groups may be a way to boost decisional confidence.
The empirical content of theories in judgment and decision making: Shortcomings and remedies
Authors: Glöckner Andreas , Betsch Tilmann
Published: January 2023

According to Karl Popper, we can tell good theories from poor ones by assessing theirempirical content(empirischer Gehalt), which basically reflects how much information they convey concerning the world. “The empirical content of a statement increases with its degree of falsifiability: the more a statement forbids, the more it says about the world of experience.” Two criteria to evaluate the empirical content of a theory are theirlevel of universality(Allgemeinheit) and theirdegree of precision(Bestimmtheit). The former specifies how many situations it can be applied to. The latter refers to the specificity in prediction, that is, how many subclasses of realizations it allows. We conduct an analysis of the empirical content of theories in Judgment and Decision Making (JDM) and identify the challenges in theory formulation for different classes of models. Elaborating on classic Popperian ideas, we suggest some guidelines for publication of theoretical work.
Applying thedecision moving windowto risky choice: Comparison of eye-tracking and mouse-tracing methods
Authors: Franco-Watkins Ana M. , Johnson Joseph G.
Published: January 2023

Currently, a disparity exists between the process-level models decision researchers use to describe and predict decision behavior and the methods implemented and metrics collected to test these models. The current work seeks to remedy this disparity by combining the advantages of work in decision research (mouse-tracing paradigms with contingent information display) and cognitive psychology (eye-tracking paradigms from reading and scene perception). In particular, we introduce a newdecision moving-windowparadigm that presents stimulus information contingent on eye fixations. We provide data from the first application of this method to risky decision making, and show how it compares to basic eye-tracking and mouse-tracing methods. We also enumerate the practical, theoretical, and analytic advantages this method offers above and beyond both mouse-tracing with occlusion and basic eye tracking of information without occlusion. We include the use of new metrics that offer more precision than those typically calculated on mouse-tracing data as well as those not possible or feasible within the mouse-tracing paradigm.
Terrorism, dread risk and bicycle accidents
Authors: Ayton Peter , Murray Samantha , Hampton James A.
Published: January 2023

Following the airplane attacks of September 11th, 2001 it is claimed that many Americans, dreading a repeat of these events, drove instead of flying, and that, consequently, there were extra car accidents, increasing the number of fatalities directly caused by the attacks by 1, 500. After the Madrid train bombings of March 11th, 2004, Spaniards, like Americans, avoided the attacked mode of travel, but no increase in car travel or fatal accidents resulted. Here we analyze behavioral concomitants of the July 7th 2005 bomb attacks on public transport in London. We find reduced underground train travel and an increase in rates of bicycling and, over the 6 months following the attacks, 214 additional bicyclist road casualties — a 15.4% increase. Nevertheless we found no detectable increase in car accidents. We conclude that, while fear caused by terrorism may initiate potentially dangerous behaviors, understanding the secondary effects of terrorism requires consideration of the environmental variables that enable fear to manifest in dangerous behaviors.
Magical thinking in predictions of negative events: Evidence for tempting fate but not for a protection effect
Authors: van Wolferen Job , Inbar Yoel , Zeelenberg Marcel
Published: January 2023

In this paper we test two hypotheses regarding magical thinking about the perceived likelihood of future events. The first is that people believe that those who “tempt fate” by failing to take necessary precautions are more likely to suffer negative outcomes. The second is the “protection effect”, where reminding people of precautions they have taken leads them to see related risks as less likely. To this end, we describe the results from three attempted direct replications of a protection effect experiment reported in Tykocinski (2008) and two replications of a tempting fate experiment reported in Risen and Gilovich (2008) in which we add a test of the protection effect. We did not replicate the protection effect but did replicate the tempting fate effect.
Representations of moral violations: Category members and associated features
Authors: Landy Justin F.
Published: January 2023

I present a novel way to conceptualize Turiel and colleagues’ Social Domain Theory (SDT), and Haidt and colleagues’ Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), as theories of how concepts of moral violations are mentally represented. I argue that SDT is best viewed as a theory of the features that are associated with concepts of moral violations, including wrongness, generalizability across cultures, and intrinsic harmfulness, and that MFT, in contrast, is best viewed as a theory of individual differences in what kinds of acts are categorized as moral violations (i.e., of category membership). This perspective generates a novel prediction: the same individual difference variables that predict variation in moral values according to MFT should predict ascription of the features predicted by SDT. That is, judgments of wrongness, generalizability, and intrinsic harmfulness should covary with the same predictors as do endorsed moral values, specifically, political orientation and analytic thinking. Three studies supported this hypothesis.
Assessing the sensitivity of information distortion to four potential influences in studies of risky choice
Authors: Miller Seth A. , DeKay Michael L. , Stone Eric R. , Sorenson Clare M.
Published: January 2023

The emergence of a leading alternative during the course of a decision is known to bias the evaluation of new information in a manner that favors that alternative. We report 3 studies that address the sensitivity of predecisional information distortion and its effects in hypothetical risky decisions with regard to 4 potential influences: choice domain, repeated choice, memory requirements, and intermediate progress questions. In Experiment 1 (N = 515), the magnitude of information distortion was similar in 5 choice domains (varied between participants) involving monetary gambles, song downloads, frequent-flyer miles, political decisions, or medical decisions. Information distortion mediated the relationship between our manipulation of initial preferences and participants’ final choices, with the magnitude of the indirect effect being roughly similar across domains. These results replicate and extend previous findings. Additionally, distortion decreased significantly over 4 similar decision problems (within participants), but remained significant in the fourth problem. In Experiment 2 (N = 214), information distortion increased significantly when previously viewed information remained available, apparently because reiterating that information strengthened emerging preferences. In Experiment 3 (N = 223), the removal of intermediate progress questions that measure information distortion and emerging preferences did not significantly affect final choices, again replicating previous results. We conclude that predecisional information distortion is a relatively stable and robust phenomenon that deserves a prominent role in descriptive theories of choice.
Learning affects top down and bottom up modulation of eye movements in decision making
Authors: Orquin Jacob L. , Bagger Martin P. , Loose Simone Mueller
Published: January 2023

Repeated decision making is subject to changes over time such as decreases in decision time and information use and increases in decision accuracy. We show that a traditional strategy selection view of decision making cannot account for these temporal dynamics without relaxing main assumptions about what defines a decision strategy. As an alternative view we suggest that temporal dynamics in decision making are driven by attentional and perceptual processes and that this view has been expressed in the information reduction hypothesis. We test the information reduction hypothesis by integrating it in a broader framework of top down and bottom up processes and derive the predictions that repeated decisions increase top down control of attention capture which in turn leads to a reduction in bottom up attention capture. To test our hypotheses we conducted a repeated discrete choice experiment with three different information presentation formats. We thereby operationalized top down and bottom up control as the effect of individual utility levels and presentation formats on attention capture on a trial-by-trial basis. The experiment revealed an increase in top down control of eye movements over time and that decision makers learn to attend to high utility stimuli and ignore low utility stimuli. We furthermore find that the influence of presentation format on attention capture reduces over time indicating diminishing bottom up control.
True-and-error models violate independence and yet they are testable
Authors: Birnbaum Michael H.
Published: January 2023

Birnbaum (2011) criticized tests of transitivity that are based entirely on binary choice proportions. When assumptions of independence and stationarity (iid) of choice responses are violated, choice proportions could lead to wrong conclusions. Birnbaum (2012a) proposed two statistics (correlation and variance of preference reversals) to test iid, using random permutations to simulatep-values. Cha, Choi, Guo, Regenwetter, and Zwilling (2013) defended methods based on marginal proportions but conceded that such methods wrongly diagnose hypothetical examples of Birnbaum (2012a). However, they also claimed that “true and error” models also satisfy independence and also fail in such cases unless they become untestable. This article presents correct true-and-error models; it shows how these models violate iid, how they might correctly identify cases that would be misdiagnosed by marginal proportions, and how they can be tested and rejected. This note also refutes other arguments of Cha et al. (2013), including contentions that other tests failed to violate iid “with flying colors”, that violations of iid “do not replicate”, that type I errors are not appropriately estimated by the permutation method, and that independence assumptions are not critical to interpretation of marginal choice proportions.
Decision conflict drives reaction times and utilitarian responses in sacrificial dilemmas
Authors: Rosas Alejandro , Bermúdez Juan Pablo , Aguilar-Pardo David
Published: January 2023

In the sacrificial moral dilemma task, participants have to morally judge an action that saves several lives at the cost of killing one person. According to the dual process corrective model of moral judgment suggested by Greene and collaborators (2001; 2004; 2008), cognitive control is necessary to override the intuitive, deontological force of the norm against killing and endorse the utilitarian perspective. However, a conflict model has been proposed more recently to account for part of the evidence in favor of dual process models in moral and social decision making. In this model, conflict, moral responses and reaction times arise from the interplay between individually variable motivational factors and objective parameters intrinsic to the choices offered. To further explore this model in the moral dilemma task, we confronted three different samples with a set of dilemmas representing an objective gradient of utilitarian pull, and collected data on moral judgment and on conflict in a 4-point scale. Collapsing all cases along the gradient, participants in each sample felt less conflicted on average when they gave extreme responses (1 or 4 in the UR scale). They felt less conflicted on average when responding to either the low- or the high-pull cases. The correlation between utilitarian responses and conflict was positive in the low-pull and negative in the high-pull cases. This pattern of data suggests that moral responses to sacrificial dilemmas are driven by decision conflict, which in turn depends on the interplay between an objective gradient of utilitarian pull and the moral motivations which regulate individual responsiveness to this gradient.
Pace yourself: Improving time-saving judgments when increasing activity speed
Authors: Peer Eyal , Gamliel Eyal
Published: January 2023

The time-saving bias describes people’s tendency to misestimate the time they can save by increasing the speed in which they perform an activity such as driving or completing a task. People typically underestimate time saved when increasing from a low speed and overestimate time saved when increasing from an already high speed. We suggest that this bias is the result of people’s failure to recognize the curvilinear relationship between increasing speed and reducing activity time: As initial speed rises, the same speed increases will yield smaller reductions in time. We explore a new technique to de-bias these faulty estimations: converting measurements of speed to a pace measure (e.g., minutes per fixed distance). Utilizing common driving scenarios, we show that participants who received pace data made more accurate estimations of journey duration at various speeds, time-savings at various speed increases and the required speed to complete a journey.
Why are gainers more risk seeking
Authors: Peng Jiaxi , Miao Danmin , Xiao Wei
Published: January 2023

The phenomenon that prior gains may increase people’s willingness to accept risky gambles is named as thehouse money effect(Thaler and Johnson, 1990). Many studies have shown that the “house money effect” is a robust phenomenon but few scholars explain the mechanism of it well. We suppose the reason for the house money effect is that the ante (starting amount) is from the prior gambling profits, and its potential loss has relatively low psychological value. To test this hypothesis, we designed a series of studies using two-stage gambles. A total of 915 university students participated. In Study 1, in addition to a standard condition (which replicated the basic effect), we test how people respond to “prospect theory, with memory” frame, a “concreteness” frame and “quasi-hedonic” editing. None of these types of frames result in a significant house money effect. In Study 2, we certify the reference point shift to 100 Yuan in the second-stage gamble, thus the house money effect can be regarded as the absence of loss aversion; Study 3, consisting of 3 sub-experiments, indicated that gambling profits and normal income will open different mental accounts which are spent quite differently. The pain of losing 100 Yuan allowance is more serious than that of losing 100 Yuan gambling wins. People will typically reject the gamble of 50/50 chance to gain or lose 100 Yuan if the ante is from the “normal income account”, but accept if the ante is from the “windfall account”. The results of the series of experiments prove the accuracy of our hypothesis mostly.
Divergence between individual perceptions and objective indicators of tail risks: Evidence from floodplain residents in New York City
Authors: Botzen W. J. Wouter , Kunreuther Howard , Michel-Kerjan Erwann
Published: January 2023

This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of individual perceptions of tail risks. It focuses not only on the probability, as has been studied by Nicholas Barberis and others, but also on anticipation of damage. We examine how those perceptions relate to experts’ estimates and publicly available risk information. Behavioural factors—availability bias, threshold models of choice, worry and trust—are found to have a significant impact on risk perceptions. The probability of tail events is overestimated, which is consistent with probability weighting in prospect theory. Potential damage is underestimated, one reason why individuals do not invest in protective measures.
Hierarchical Bayesian modeling of intertemporal choice
Authors: Chávez Melisa E. , Villalobos Elena , Baroja José L. , Bouzas Arturo
Published: January 2023

There is a growing interest in studying individual differences in choices that involve trading off reward amount and delay to delivery because such choices have been linked to involvement in risky behaviors, such as substance abuse. The most ubiquitous proposal in psychology is to model these choices assuming delayed rewards lose value following a hyperbolic function, which has one free parameter, named discounting rate. Consequently, a fundamental issue is the estimation of this parameter. The traditional approach estimates each individual’s discounting rate separately, which discards individual differences during modeling and ignores the statistical structure of the population. The present work adopted a different approximation to parameter estimation: each individual’s discounting rate is estimated considering the information provided by all subjects, using state-of-the-art Bayesian inference techniques. Our goal was to evaluate whether individual discounting rates come from one or more subpopulations, using Mazur’s (1987) hyperbolic function. Twelve hundred eighty-four subjects answered the Intertemporal Choice Task developed by Kirby, Petry and Bickel (1999). The modeling techniques employed permitted the identification of subjects who produced random, careless responses, and who were discarded from further analysis. Results showed that one-mixture hierarchical distribution that uses the information provided by all subjects suffices to model individual differences in delay discounting, suggesting psychological variability resides along a continuum rather than in discrete clusters. This different approach to parameter estimation has the potential to contribute to the understanding and prediction of decision making in various real-world situations where immediacy is constantly in conflict with magnitude.
Compassion fade and the challenge of environmental conservation
Authors: Markowitz Ezra M. , Slovic Paul , Västfjäll Daniel , Hodges Sara D.
Published: January 2023

Compassion shown towards victims often decreases as the number of individuals in need of aid increases, identifiability of the victims decreases, and the proportion of victims helped shrinks. Such “compassion fade” may hamper individual-level and collective responses to pressing large-scale crises. To date, research on compassion fade has focused on humanitarian challenges; thus, it remains unknown whether and to what extent compassion fade emerges when victims are non-human others. Here we show that compassion fade occurs in the environmental domain, but only among non-environmentalists. These findings suggest that compassion fade may challenge our collective ability and willingness to confront the major environmental problems we face, including climate change. The observed moderation effect of environmental identity further indicates that compassion fade may present a significant psychological barrier to building broad public support for addressing these problems. Our results highlight the importance of bringing findings from the field of judgment and decision making to bear on pressing societal issues.
Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection
Authors: Kahan Dan M.
Published: January 2023

Decision scientists have identified various plausible sources of ideological polarization over climate change, gun violence, national security, and like issues that turn on empirical evidence. This paper describes a study of three of them: the predominance of heuristic-driven information processing by members of the public; ideologically motivated reasoning; and the cognitive-style correlates of political conservativism. The study generated both observational and experimental data inconsistent with the hypothesis that political conservatism is distinctively associated with either unreflective thinking or motivated reasoning. Conservatives did no better or worse than liberals on the Cognitive Reflection Test (Frederick, 2005), an objective measure of information-processing dispositions associated with cognitive biases. In addition, the study found that ideologically motivated reasoning is not a consequence of over-reliance on heuristic or intuitive forms of reasoning generally. On the contrary, subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were themostlikely to display ideologically motivated cognition. These findings corroborated an alternative hypothesis, which identifies ideologically motivated cognition as a form of information processing that promotes individuals’ interests in forming and maintaining beliefs that signify their loyalty to important affinity groups. The paper discusses the practical significance of these findings, including the need to develop science communication strategies that shield policy-relevant facts from the influences that turn them into divisive symbols of political identity.
When uncertainty meets life: The effect of animacy on probability expression
Authors: Du Xue-Lei , Liu Shi-Hong , Xu Jie-Hong , Rao Li-Lin , Jiang Cheng-Ming , Li Shu
Published: January 2023

Everyone faces uncertainty on a daily basis. Two kinds of probability expressions, verbal and numerical, have been used to characterize the uncertainty that we face. Because our cognitive concept of living things differs from that of non-living things, and distinguishing cognitive concepts might have linguistic markers, we designed four studies to test whether people use different probability expressions when faced with animate or inanimate uncertainty. We found that verbal probability is the preferred way to express animate uncertainty, whereas numerical probability is the preferred way to express inanimate uncertainty. The “verbal-animate” and “numerical-inanimate” associations were robust enough to persist when tested with forced-choice response patterns regardless of the information (e.g., equally likely outcomes, frequencies, or personal beliefs) used to construct probabilities of events. When the response pattern was changed to free-responses, the associations were evident unless the subjects were asked to write their own probability predictions for vague uncertainty. Given that the world around us consists of both animate (i.e., living) and inanimate (i.e., non-living) things, “verbal-animate” and “numerical-inanimate” associations may play a major role in risk communication and may otherwise be useful for practitioners and consultants.
Bullshit makes the art grow profounder
Authors: Turpin Martin Harry , Walker Alexander C. , Kara-Yakoubian Mane , Gabert Nina N. , Fugelsang Jonathan A. , Stolz Jennifer A.
Published: January 2023

Across four studies participants (N= 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g.,The Deaf Echo), mundane titles (e.g.,Canvas 8), and no titles. Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer-generated abstract art, compared to when no titles were present (Study 1). Mundane titles did not enhance the perception of profoundness, indicating that pseudo-profound bullshit titles specifically (as opposed to titles in general) enhance the perceived profoundness of abstract art (Study 2). Furthermore, these effects generalize to artist-created abstract art (Study 3). Finally, we report a large correlation between profoundness ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit and “International Art English” statements (Study 4), a mode and style of communication commonly employed by artists to discuss their work. This correlation suggests that these two independently developed communicative modes share underlying cognitive mechanisms in their interpretations. We discuss the potential for these results to be integrated into a larger, new theoretical framework of bullshit as a low-cost strategy for gaining advantages in prestige awarding domains.
Cultivating credibility with probability words and numbers
Authors: Collins Robert N. , Mandel David R.
Published: January 2023

Recent research suggests that communicating probabilities numerically rather than verbally benefits forecasters’ credibility. In two experiments, we tested the reproducibility of this communication-format effect. The effect was replicated under comparable conditions (low-probability, inaccurate forecasts), but it was reversed for low-probability accurate forecasts and eliminated for high-probability forecasts. Experiment 2 further showed that verbal probabilities convey implicit recommendations more clearly than probability information, whereas numeric probabilities do the opposite. Descriptively, the findings indicate that the effect of probability words versus numbers on credibility depends on how these formats convey directionality differently, how directionality implies recommendations even when none are explicitly given, and how such recommendations correspond with outcomes. Prescriptively, we propose that experts distinguish forecasts from advice, using numeric probabilities for the former and well-reasoned arguments for the latter.
Interpersonal effects of expressed anger and sorrow in morally charged negotiation
Authors: Dehghani Morteza , Carnevale Peter J. , Gratch Jonathan
Published: January 2023

The expression of emotion can play a significant role in strategic decision-making. In this study, we hypothesized that emotion expression alters behavior in morally charged negotiation. We investigated the impact of facial displays of discrete emotions, specifically anger and sadness, in a morally charged multi-issue negotiation task. Our results indicate that if a negotiator associated moral significance to the object of the negotiation, displays of anger resulted in reduced concession making whereas displays of sadness increased concession making. Moral significance of the issues fostered an emotional matching mechanism of sorrow, where a sorrow expression from one party elicited a sorrow expression from the other. Taken together, the results indicate that emotional expressions can affect morally charged negotiation in ways that can inhibit as well as promote cooperation.
Cognitive reflection test and behavioral biases in Malaysia
Authors: Albaity Mohamed , Rahman Mahfuzur , Shahidul Islam
Published: January 2023

We asked whether behavioral biases are related to cognitive abilities of Malaysian youth. Frederick’s three-item Cognitive Reflection Test was used to understand the role of behavioral biases concerning behavioral economics and finance. The sample (n = 880) comprised of university students from different parts of Malaysia. We found significant CRT differences as a function of gender, race and age groups. In addition, lower scores on the CRT are correlated positively with time preference and conservatism, but not with risk preference or the conjunction fallacy.
A method to elicit beliefs as most likely intervals
Authors: Schlag Karl H. , van der Weele Joël J.
Published: January 2023

We show how to elicit the beliefs of an expert in the form of a “most likely interval”, a set of future outcomes that are deemed more likely than any other outcome. Our method, called the Most Likely Interval elicitation rule (MLI), asks the expert for an interval and pays according to how well the answer compares to the actual outcome. We show that the MLI performs well in economic experiments, and satisfies a number of desirable theoretical properties such as robustness to the risk preferences of the expert.
The attraction effect in motor planning decisions
Authors: Farmer George D. , El-Deredy Wael , Howes Andrew , Warren Paul A.
Published: January 2023

In motor lotteries the probability of success is inherent in a person’s ability to make a speeded pointing movement. By contrast, in traditional economic lotteries, the probability of success is explicitly stated. Decision making with economic lotteries has revealed many violations of rational decision making models. However, with motor lotteries people’s performance is often near optimal, and is well described by statistical decision theory. We report the results of an experiment testing whether motor planning decisions exhibit the attraction effect, a well-known axiomatic violation of some rational decision models. The effect occurs when changing the composition of a choice set alters preferences between its members. We provide the first demonstration that people do exhibit the attraction effect when choosing between motor lotteries. We also found that people exhibited a similar sized attraction effect in motor and traditional economic paradigms. People’s near-optimal performance with motor lotteries is characterized by the efficiency of their decisions. In attraction effect experiments performance is instead characterized by the violation of an axiom. We discuss the extent that axiomatic and efficiency measures can provide insight in assessing the rationality of decision making.
How much compensation is too much? An investigation of the effectiveness of financial overcompensation as a means to enhance customer loyalty
Authors: Haesevoets Tessa , Hiel Alain Van , Pandelaere Mario , Bostyn Dries H. , Cremer David De
Published: January 2023

The present paper examines the effectiveness of financial overcompensation as a means to enhance customer loyalty after a product failure. Overcompensation implies that customers are entitled to a refund that is larger than the purchase price. It is, however, still unclear whether large overcompensations entail saturation effects, or alternatively, result in an actual drop in customer loyalty. We predicted that the overcompensation-loyalty relationship is generally characterized by an inverted U-shaped function. In line with this prediction, the results of four studies showed that mild overcompensations had, on average, a positive effect on customer loyalty beyond equal compensation, but only up to compensation levels of approximately 150% of the purchase price of faulty products. Beyond this level, the effectiveness of overcompensation diminished, eventually leading to a general drop in customer loyalty. Despite this overall pattern, two studies revealed robust individual differences in how customers react to increasing overcompensation. A majority of customers increased their loyalty when the overcompensation enlarged, but the curve flattened out in the high range. However, there was also a smaller portion of customers who reacted negatively to every form of overcompensation. A practical implication of these findings, therefore, is that companies should not offer compensations that are greater than 150% of the initial price, as these do not contribute to greater loyalty in any category of customers.
Are good reasoners more incest-friendly? Trait cognitive reflection predicts selective moralization in a sample of American adults
Authors: Royzman Edward B. , Landy Justin F. , Goodwin Geoffrey P.
Published: January 2023

Two studies examined the relationship between individual differences in cognitive reflection (CRT) and the tendency to accord genuinely moral (non-conventional) status to a range of counter-normative acts — that is, to treat such acts as wrong regardless of existing social opinion or norms. We contrasted social violations that areintrinsicallyharmful to others (e.g., fraud, thievery) with those that are not (e.g., wearing pajamas to work and engaging in consensual acts of sexual intimacy with an adult sibling). Our key hypothesis was that more reflective (higher CRT) individuals would tend to moralize selectively — treating only intrinsically harmful acts as genuinely morally wrong — whereas less reflective (lower CRT) individuals would moralize more indiscriminately. We found clear support for this hypothesis in a large and ideologically diverse sample of American adults. The predicted associations were not fully accounted for by the subjects’ political orientation, sensitivity to gut feelings, gender, age, educational attainment, or their placement on a sexual morals-specific measure of social conservatism. Our studies are the first to demonstrate that, in addition to modulating the intensity of moral condemnation, reflection may also play a key role in setting the boundaries of the moral domain as such.
Change and status quo in decisions with defaults: The effect of incidental emotions depends on the type of default
Authors: Shevchenko Yury , von Helversen Bettina , Scheibehenne Benjamin
Published: January 2023

Affective states can change how people react to measures aimed at influencing their decisions such as providing a default option. Previous research has shown that when defaults maintain the status quo positive mood increases reliance on the default and negative mood decreases it. Similarly, it has been demonstrated that positive mood enhances the preference for inaction. We extend this research by investigating how mood states influence reliance on the default if the default leads to a change, thus pitting preference for status quo against a preference for inaction. Specifically, we tested in an online study how happiness and sadness influenced reliance on two types of default (1) a default maintaining status quo and (2) a default inducing change. Our results suggest that the effect of emotions depends on the type of default: people in a happy mood were more likely than sad people to follow a default when it maintained status quo but less likely to follow a default when it introduced change. These results are in line with mood maintenance theory.
To increase engagement, offer less: The effect of assortment size on children’s engagement
Authors: Maimaran Michal
Published: January 2023

In a world that offers children abundant activities from which to choose, understanding how to motivate children to engage longer in productive activities is crucial. This paper examines how the offered assortment size affects children’s engagement with their chosen option. In the first study, I show children prefer to choose from a larger set even though they think doing so is more difficult. Then, in Studies 2 and 3, four- to five-year-old children choose from either a small set (two options) or a large set (six or seven options). In study 2, children choose a book to look at and I measure how long they look at it. In Study 3, children choose a game to play with and I measure how long they play. Children spend more time looking at the book and playing with the game they choose from the small versus the large set. By contrast, the size of the choice set does not affect food consumption. Such findings contribute to our understanding of young children’s decision-making and have important implications for determining the optimal assortment size to offer children to increase engagement with desirable activities.
Decisional enhancement and autonomy: public attitudes towards overt and covert nudges
Authors: Felsen Gidon , Castelo Noah , Reiner Peter B.
Published: January 2023

Ubiquitous cognitive biases hinder optimal decision making. Recent calls to assist decision makers in mitigating these biases—via interventions commonly called “nudges”—have been criticized as infringing upon individual autonomy. We tested the hypothesis that such “decisional enhancement” programs that target overt decision making—i.e., conscious, higher-order cognitive processes—would be more acceptable than similar programs that affect covert decision making—i.e., subconscious, lower-order processes. We presented respondents with vignettes in which they chose between an option that included a decisional enhancement program and a neutral option. In order to assess preferences for overt or covert decisional enhancement, we used the contrastive vignette technique in which different groups of respondents were presented with one of a pair of vignettes that targeted either conscious or subconscious processes. Other than the nature of the decisional enhancement, the vignettes were identical, allowing us to isolate the influence of the type of decisional enhancement on preferences. Overall, we found support for the hypothesis that people prefer conscious decisional enhancement. Further, respondents who perceived the influence of the program as more conscious than subconscious reported that their decisions under the program would be more “authentic”. However, this relative favorability was somewhat contingent upon context. We discuss our results with respect to the implementation and ethics of decisional enhancement.
On the descriptive value of loss aversion in decisions under risk: Six clarifications
Authors: Ert Eyal , Erev Ido
Published: January 2023

Previous studies of loss aversion in decisions under risk have led to mixed results. Losses appear to loom larger than gains in some settings, but not in others. The current paper clarifies these results by highlighting six experimental manipulations that tend to increase the likelihood of the behavior predicted by loss aversion. These manipulations include: (1) framing of the safe alternative as the status quo; (2) ensuring that the choice pattern predicted by loss aversion maximizes the probability of positive (rather than zero or negative) outcomes; (3) the use of high nominal (numerical) payoffs; (4) the use of high stakes; (5) the inclusion of highly attractive risky prospects that creates a contrast effect; and (6) the use of long experiments in which no feedback is provided and in which the computation of the expected values is difficult. In addition, the results suggest the possibility of learning in the absence of feedback: The tendency to select simple strategies, like “maximize the worst outcome” which implies “loss aversion”, increases when this behavior is not costly. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Deliberation versus automaticity in decision making: Which presentation format features facilitate automatic decision making?
Authors: Söllner Anke , Bröder Arndt , Hilbig Benjamin E.
Published: January 2023

The idea of automatic decision making approximating normatively optimal decisions without necessitating much cognitive effort is intriguing. Whereas recent findings support the notion that such fast, automatic processes explain empirical data well, little is known about the conditions under which such processes are selected rather than more deliberate stepwise strategies. We investigate the role of the format of information presentation, focusing explicitly on the ease of information acquisition and its influence on information integration processes. In a probabilistic inference task, the standard matrix employed in prior research was contrasted with a newly created map presentation format and additional variations of both presentation formats. Across three experiments, a robust presentation format effect emerged: Automatic decision making was more prevalent in the matrix (with high information accessibility), whereas sequential decision strategies prevailed when the presentation format demanded more information acquisition effort. Further scrutiny of the effect showed that it is not driven by the presentation format as such, but rather by the extent of information search induced by a format. Thus, if information is accessible with minimal need for information search, information integration is likely to proceed in a perception-like, holistic manner. In turn, a moderate demand for information search decreases the likelihood of behavior consistent with the assumptions of automatic decision making.
Validation of the Adult Decision-Making Competence in Slovak students
Authors: Bavolar Jozef
Published: January 2023

A study using a high school and college sample (age 18–26) was conducted to validate the Slovak version of the Adult Decision-Making Competence. The results were similar to findings reported by Bruine de Bruin, Parker, and Fischhoff (2007) on the adult population in America. The internal consistency of component subscales and whole measure was confirmed as well as the factor structure. Gender differences in two of the six subscales were found. The results highlight the usefulness of A-DMC in assessing decision-making competence in Slovak language, but non-student samples are needed to enhance the generalisability of findings.
How generalizable is good judgment? A multi-task, multi-benchmark study
Authors: Mellers Barbara A. , Baker Joshua D. , Chen Eva , Mandel David R. , Tetlock Philip E.
Published: January 2023

Good judgment is often gauged against two gold standards – coherence and correspondence. Judgments are coherent if they demonstrate consistency with the axioms of probability theory or propositional logic. Judgments are correspondent if they agree with ground truth. When gold standards are unavailable, silver standards such as consistency and discrimination can be used to evaluate judgment quality. Individuals are consistent if they assign similar judgments to comparable stimuli, and they discriminate if they assign different judgments to dissimilar stimuli. We ask whether “superforecasters”, individuals with noteworthy correspondence skills (see Mellers et al., 2014) show superior performance on laboratory tasks assessing other standards of good judgment. Results showed that superforecasters either tied or out-performed less correspondent forecasters and undergraduates with no forecasting experience on tests of consistency, discrimination, and coherence. While multifaceted, good judgment may be a more unified than concept than previously thought.
When is it appropriate to reprimand a norm violation? The roles of anger, behavioral consequences, violation severity, and social distance
Authors: Eriksson Kimmo , Andersson Per A. , Strimling Pontus
Published: January 2023

Experiments on economic games typically fail to find positive reputational effects of using peer punishment of selfish behavior in social dilemmas. Theorists had expected positive reputational effects because of the potentially beneficial consequences that punishment may have on norm violators’ behavior. Going beyond the game-theoretic paradigm, we used vignettes to study how various social factors influence approval ratings of a peer who reprimands a violator of a group-beneficial norm. We found that ratings declined when punishers showed anger, and this effect was mediated by perceived aggressiveness. Thus the same emotions that motivate peer punishers may make them come across as aggressive, to the detriment of their reputation. However, the negative effect of showing anger disappeared when the norm violation was sufficiently severe. Ratings of punishers were also influenced by social distance, such that it is less appropriate for a stranger than a friend to reprimand a violator. In sum, peer punisher ratings were very high for a friend reprimanding a severe norm violation, but particularly poor for a stranger showing anger at a mild norm violation. We found no effect on ratings of whether the reprimand had the beneficial consequence of changing the violator’s behavior. Our findings provide insight into how peer punishers can avoid negative reputational effects. They also point to the importance of going beyond economic games when studying peer punishment.
Order effects in the results of song contests: Evidence from the Eurovision and the New Wave
Authors: Antipov Evgeny A. , Pokryshevskaya Elena B.
Published: January 2023

The results of song contests offer a unique opportunity to analyze possible distortions arising from various biases in performance evaluations using observational data. In this study we investigate the influence of contestants’ order of appearance on their ranking. We found that, in the New Wave Song Contest, expert judgments were significantly influenced by the contestant’s running number, an exogenous factor that, being assigned randomly, clearly did not influence the output quality. We also found weaker statistical evidence of such an ordering effect in Eurovision Song Contest finals of 2009–2012.