bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Investor regret: The role of expectation in comparing what is to what might have been
Authors: Huang Wen-Hsien , Zeelenberg Marcel
Published: January 2023

Investors, like any decision maker, feel regret when they compare the outcome of an investment with what the outcome would have been had they invested differently. We argue and show that this counterfactual comparison process is most likely to take place when the decision maker’s expectations are violated. Across five scenario experiments we found that decision makers were influenced only by forgone investment outcomes when the realized investment fell short of the expected result. However, when their investments exceeded prior expectations, the effect of foregone investment on regret disappeared. In addition, Experiment 4 found that individual differences in the need to maximize further moderated the effects of their expectations, such that maximizers always take into account the forgone investment. The final experiment found that when probed to make counterfactual comparisons, also investments that exceed expectations may lead to regret. Together these experiments reveal insights into the comparative processes leading to decision regret.
Atypical moral judgment following traumatic brain injury
Authors: Martins Ana T. , Faísca Luis M. , Esteves Francisco , Muresan Angélica , Reis Alexandra
Published: January 2023

Previous research has shown an association between emotions, particularly social emotions, and moral judgments. Some studies suggested an association between blunted emotion and the utilitarian moral judgments observed in patients with prefrontal lesions. In order to investigate how prefrontal brain damage affects moral judgment, we asked a sample of 29 TBI patients (12 females and 17 males) and 41 healthy participants (16 females and 25 males) to judge 22 hypothetical dilemmas split into three different categories (non-moral, impersonal and personal moral). The TBI group presented a higher proportion of affirmative (utilitarian) responses for personal moral dilemmas when compared to controls, suggesting an atypical pattern of utilitarian judgements. We also found a negative association between the performance on recognition of social emotions and the proportion of affirmative responses on personal moral dilemmas. These results suggested that the preference for utilitarian responses in this type of dilemmas is accompanied by difficulties in social emotion recognition. Overall, our findings suggest that deontological moral judgments are associated with normal social emotion processing and that frontal lobe plays an important role in both emotion and moral judgment.
The representativeness heuristic and the choice of lottery tickets: A field experiment
Authors: Krawczyk Michał Wiktor , Rachubik Joanna
Published: January 2023

The representativeness heuristic (RH) has been proposed to be at the root of several types of biases in judgment. In this project, we ask whether the RH is relevant in two kinds of choices in the context of gambling. Specifically, in a field experiment with naturalistic stimuli and a potentially extremely high monetary pay-out, we give each of our subjects a choice between a lottery ticket with a random-looking number sequence and a ticket with a patterned sequence; we subsequently offer them a small cash bonus if they switch to the other ticket. In the second task, we investigate the gambler’s fallacy, asking subjects what they believe the outcome of a fourth coin toss after a sequence of three identical outcomes will be. We find that most subjects prefer “random” sequences, and that approximately half believe in dependence between subsequent coin tosses. There is no correlation, though, between the initial choice of the lottery ticket and the prediction of the coin toss. Nonetheless, subjects who have a strong preference for certain number combinations (i.e., subjects who are willing to forgo the cash bonus and remain with their initial choice) also tend to predict a specific outcome (in particular a reversal, corresponding to the gambler’s fallacy) in the coin task.
Asymmetric dominance and the stability of constructed preferences
Authors: Shen Anyuan , Liu Shuguang
Published: January 2023

In this research, we explore how experience with an "attraction set" of options, designed to elicit an asymmetric-dominance (attraction) effect, affects choice making in a second "compromise set" designed to elicit a compromise effect. In Experiment 1, when a compromise set was presented, subjects who had chosen an asymmetrically dominating option from an attraction set were less likely to surrender to the compromise heuristic than their counterparts who had chosen the equivalent option from a binary set. Lower susceptibility to the compromise heuristic suggests that asymmetric dominance might have facilitated the learning of attribute preferences. In Experiment 2, subjects were asked to make six choices in the personal computer category. Subjects who had chosen any number of asymmetrically dominating options from the attraction condition were less susceptible to the compromise heuristic in a subsequent choice task than their counterparts who had chosen the same number of equivalent options from the binary condition. It was unlikely that the effect was caused by better memory of asymmetrically dominating options subjects had previously chosen. Results from the two experiments corroborated the reasoning that asymmetric dominance affects the learning of attribute weights and this effect persists in a subsequent choice task.
Choice-induced preference change and the free-choice paradigm: A clarification
Authors: Alós-Ferrer Carlos , Shi Fei
Published: January 2023

Positive spreading of ratings or rankings in the classical free-choice paradigm is commonly taken to indicate choice-induced change in preferences and has motivated influential theories as cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory. Chen and Risen [2010] argued by means of a mathematical proof that positive spreading is merely a statistical consequence of a flawed design. However, positive spreading has also been observed in blind choice and other designs where the alleged flaw should be absent. We show that the result in Chen and Risen [2010] is mathematically incorrect, although it can be recovered in a particular case. Specifically, we present a formal model of decision making that satisfies all assumptions in that article but implies that spreading need not be positive in the absence of choice-induced preference change. Hence, although the free-choice paradigm is flawed, the present research shows that reasonable models of human behavior need not predict consistent positive spreading. As a consequence, taken as a whole, previous experimental results remain informative.
Is that the answer you had in mind? The effect of perspective on unethical behavior
Authors: Schurr Amos , Ritov Ilana , Kareev Yaakov , Avrahami Judith
Published: January 2023

We explored how the perspective through which individuals view their actions influences their ethicality, comparing a narrow perspective that allows for evaluation of each choice in isolation, to a broad perspective that promotes an aggregate view of one’s choices. To examine unethical behavior we employed a computerized variation of a trivia game that challenges the player’s integrity because, rather than choosing the correct answer, players indicate whether the correct highlighted answer is the answer they had in mind. In Experiment 1 perspective was modified through the choice procedure: broad perspective evoked by an aggregate decision regarding the upcoming test items and narrow perspective evoked by a segregated decision regarding each upcoming test item. In Experiment 2 perspective was evoked through differential priming. Across both experiments, when given a monetary incentive to succeed, the adoption of a narrow perspective increased cheating, as evidenced by overall higher reported success rates.
A reason-based explanation for moral dumbfounding
Authors: Stanley Matthew L. , Yin Siyuan , Sinnott-Armstrong Walter
Published: January 2023

The moral dumbfounding phenomenon for harmless taboo violations is often cited as a critical piece of empirical evidence motivating anti-rationalist models of moral judgment and decision-making. Moral dumbfounding purportedly occurs when an individual remains obstinately and steadfastly committed to a moral judgment or decision even after admitting inability to provide reasons and arguments to support it (Haidt, 2001). Early empirical support for the moral dumbfounding phenomenon led some philosophers and psychologists to suggest that affective reactions and intuitions, in contrast with reasons or reasoning, are the predominant drivers of moral judgments and decisions. We investigate an alternative reason-based explanation for moral dumbfounding: that putatively harmless taboo violations are judged to be morally wrong because of the high perceived likelihood that the agents could have caused harm, even though they did not cause harm in actuality. Our results indicate that judgments about the likelihood of causing harm consistently and strongly predicted moral wrongness judgments. Critically, a manipulation drawing attention to harms that could have occurred (but did not actually occur) systematically increased the severity of moral wrongness judgments. Thus, many participants were sensitive to at least one reason — the likelihood of harm — in making their moral judgments about these kinds of taboo violations. We discuss the implications of these findings for rationalist and anti-rationalist models of moral judgment and decision-making.
Intuition speed as a predictor of choice and confidence in point spread predictions
Authors: Walker Alexander C. , Turpin Martin Harry , Fugelsang Jonathan A. , Koehler Derek J.
Published: January 2023

Previous research has revealed that intuitive confidence is an important predictor of how people choose between an intuitive and non-intuitive alternative when faced with information that opposes the intuitive response. In the current study, we investigated the speed of intuition generation as a predictor of intuitive confidence and participant choice in choice conflict situations. Participants predicted the outcomes of several National Basketball Association games, both with and without reference to a point spread. As hypothesized, the faster participants were to predict the outright winner of a game (i.e., generate an intuition) the more likely they were to predict the favourite against the point spread for that game (i.e., endorse the intuitive response). Overall, our findings are consistent with the notion that the speed of intuition generation acts as a determinant of intuitive confidence and a predictor of choice in situations featuring equally valid intuitive and non-intuitive alternatives.
Less-is-more effects without the recognition heuristic
Authors: Beaman C. Philip , Smith Philip T. , Frosch Caren A. , McCloy Rachel
Published: January 2023

Inferences consistent with “recognition-based” decision-making may be drawn for various reasons other than recognition alone. We demonstrate that, for 2-alternative forced-choice decision tasks, less-is-more effects (reduced performance with additional learning) are not restricted to recognition-based inference but can also be seen in circumstances where inference is knowledge-based but item knowledge is limited. One reason why such effects may not be observed more widely is the dependence of the effect on specific values for the validity of recognition and knowledge cues. We show that both recognition and knowledge validity may vary as a function of the number of items recognized. The implications of these findings for the special nature of recognition information, and for the investigation of recognition-based inference, are discussed.
Explaining human sampling rates across different decision domains
Authors: van de Wouw Didrika S. , McKay Ryan T. , Averbeck Bruno B. , Furl Nicholas
Published: January 2023

Undersampling biases are common in the optimal stopping literature, especially for economic full choice problems. Among these kinds of number-based studies, the moments of the distribution of values that generates the options (i.e., the generating distribution) seem to influence participants’ sampling rate. However, a recent study reported an oversampling bias on a different kind of optimal stopping task: where participants chose potential romantic partners from images of faces (Furl et al., 2019). The authors hypothesised that this oversampling bias might be specific to mate choice. We preregistered this hypothesis and so, here, we test whether sampling rates across different image-based decision-making domains a) reflect different over- or undersampling biases, or b) depend on the moments of the generating distributions (as shown for economic number-based tasks). In two studies (N= 208 andN= 96), we found evidence against the preregistered hypothesis. Participants oversampled to the same degree across domains (compared to a Bayesian ideal observer model), while their sampling rates depended on the generating distribution mean and skewness in a similar way as number-based paradigms. Moreover, optimality model sampling to some extent depended on the the skewness of the generating distribution in a similar way to participants. We conclude that oversampling is not instigated by the mate choice domain and that sampling rate in image-based paradigms, like number-based paradigms, depends on the generating distribution.
Game interrupted: The rationality of considering the future
Authors: Almy Brandon , Krueger Joachim I.
Published: January 2023

The “problem of points”, introduced by Paccioli in 1494 and solved by Pascal and Fermat 160 years later, inspired the modern concept of probability. Incidentally, the problem also shows that rational decision-making requires the consideration of future events. We show that naïve responses to the problem of points are more future oriented and thus more rational in this sense when the problem itself is presented in a future frame instead of the canonical past frame. A simple nudge is sufficient to make decisions more rational. We consider the implications of this finding for hypothesis testing and predictions of replicability.
How do defendants choose their trial court? Evidence for a heuristic processing account
Authors: Dhami Mandeep K. , Mandel David R.
Published: January 2023

In jurisdictions with two or more tiers of criminal courts, some defendants can choose the type of trial court to be tried in. This may involve a trade-off between the probability of acquittal/conviction and the estimated severity of sentence if convicted. For instance, in England and Wales, the lower courts have a higher conviction rate but limited sentencing powers, whereas the higher courts have a higher acquittal rate but greater sentencing powers. We examined 255 offenders’ choice of trial court type using a hypothetical scenario where innocence and guilt was manipulated. Participants’ choices were better predicted by a lexicographic than utility maximization model. A greater proportion of “guilty” participants chose the lower court compared to their “innocent” counterparts, and estimated sentence length was more important to the former than latter group. The present findings provide further support for heuristic decision-making in the criminal justice domain, and have implications for legal policy-making.
Charting the internal landscape: Affect associated with thoughts about major life domains explains life satisfaction
Authors: Miron-Shatz Talya , Diener Ed , Doniger Glen M. , Moore Tyler , Saphire-Bernstein Shimon
Published: January 2023

Studies of happiness have examined the impact of demographics, personality and emotions accompanying daily activities on life satisfaction. We suggest that how people feel while contemplating aspects of their lives, including their weight, children and future prospects, is a promising yet uncharted territory within the internal landscape of life satisfaction. In a sample of 811 American women, we assessed women’s feelings when thinking about major life domains and frequency of thoughts about each domain. Regression and dominance analyses showed that emotional valence of thoughts about major life domains was an important predictor of current and prior life satisfaction, surpassing, in descending order, demographics, participants’ feelings during recent activities, and their neuroticism and extraversion scores. Domains thought about more frequently were often associated with greater emotional valence. These results suggest that life satisfaction may be improved by modifying emotional valence and frequency of thoughts about life domains. Moreover, these thoughts appear to be an important and relatively stable component of well-being worthy of further study.
Do Europeans like nudges?
Authors: Reisch Lucia A. , Sunstein Cass R.
Published: January 2023

In recent years, many governments have shown a keen interest in “nudges” — approaches to law and policy that maintain freedom of choice, but that steer people in certain directions. Yet to date, there has been little evidence on whether citizens of various societies support nudges and nudging. We report the results of nationally representative surveys in six European nations: Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and the United Kingdom. We find strong majority support for nudges of the sort that have been adopted, or under serious consideration, in democratic nations. Despite the general European consensus, we find markedly lower levels of support for nudges in two nations: Hungary and Denmark. We are not, in general, able to connect support for nudges with distinct party affiliations.
It’s personal: The effect of personal value on utilitarian moral judgments
Authors: Millar Charles , Starmans Christina , Fugelsang Jonathan , Friedman Ori
Published: January 2023

We investigated whether the personal importance of objects influences utilitarian decision-making in which damaging property is necessary to produce an overall positive outcome. In Experiment 1, participants judged saving five objects by destroying a sixth object to be less acceptable when the action required destroying the sixth object directly (rather than as a side-effect) and the objects were personally important (rather than unimportant). In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that utilitarian judgments were not influenced by the objects’ monetary worth. Together these findings suggest that personal importance underlies people’s sensitivity to damaging property as a means for utilitarian gains.
Enlarging the market yet decreasing the profit: An experimental study of competitive behavior when investment affects the prize
Authors: Hart Einav , Avrahami Judith , Kareev Yaakov
Published: January 2023

In many competitive situations, our investments increase our gains: Developing better products or research proposals may lead to higher contracts or patents or larger grants. Does increasing investment in such cases always guarantee higher gains? We used an experimental repeated competition game in which prizes depended on contestants’ investments (n=108). Contestants invested more when they increased the potential prize (“enlarge the market”), yet in some cases this tendency was counterproductive (“decrease the profit”): Contestants in fact diminished their earnings, compared to sitting out the competition and keeping their initial funds. Moreover, when a contestant’s investment decreased an opponent’s prize, the contestant tended to invest less; this effect, in turn, led to higher overall gains for both contestants. This result implies that prosocial considerations are at play. Notably, in certain situations, excessive competitive tendencies may lead to a larger waste of resources.
Reference dependence, cooperation, and coordination in games
Authors: Schneider Mark , Leland Jonathan W.
Published: January 2023

The problems of how self-interested players can cooperate despite incentives to defect, and how players can coordinate despite the presence of multiple equilibria, are among the oldest and most fundamental in game theory. In this report, we demonstrate that a plausible and even natural specification of the reference outcome in a game simultaneously predicts systematic cooperation and defection in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, as well as equilibrium selection and out-of-equilibrium play in coordination games. The predictions hold even if players are purely self-interested, there are no salient labels, the game is played only once, and there is no communication of any kind. Furthermore, the predictions are unique, as opposed to the multiplicity of equilibria in the infinitely repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma and in coordination games. We apply experimental results to test the predictions of the model.
From group diffusion to ratio bias: Effects of denominator and numerator salience on intuitive risk and likelihood judgments
Authors: Price Paul C. , Matthews Teri V.
Published: January 2023

The group-diffusion effect is the tendency for people to judge themselves to be less likely to experience a negative outcome as the total number of people exposed to the threat increases — even when the probability of the outcome is explicitly presented (Yamaguchi, 1998). In Experiment 1 we replicated this effect for two health threat scenarios using a variant of Yamaguchi’s original experimental paradigm. In Experiment 2, we showed that people also judge themselves to be less likely to be selected in a lottery as the number of people playing the lottery increases. In Experiment 3, we showed that explicitly presenting the number of people expected to be selected eliminates the group-diffusion effect, and in Experiment 4 we showed that presenting the number expected to be affected by a health threat without presenting the total number exposed to the threat produces a reverse effect. We propose, therefore, that the group-diffusion effect is related to the ratio bias. Both effects occur when people make risk or likelihood judgments based on information presented as a ratio. The difference is that the group-diffusion effect occurs when the denominator of the relevant ratio is more salient than the numerator, while the ratio bias occurs when the numerator is more salient than the denominator.
The benefits of global scaling in multi-criteria decision analysis
Authors: Monat Jamie P.
Published: January 2023

When there are multiple competing objectives in a decision-making process, Multi-Attribute Choice scoring models are excellent tools, permitting the incorporation of both subjective and objective attributes. However, their accuracy depends upon the subjective techniques used to construct the attribute scales and their concomitant weights. Conventional techniques using local scales tend to overemphasize small differences in attribute measures, which may yield erroneous conclusions. The Range Sensitivity Principle (RSP) is often invoked to adjust attribute weights when local scales are used. In practice, however, decision makers often do not follow the prescriptions of the Range Sensitivity Principle and under-adjust the weights, resulting in potentially poor decisions. Examples are discussed as is a proposed solution: the use of global scales instead of local scales.
Editorial: Methodology in judgment and decision making research
Authors: Glöckner Andreas , Hilbig Benjamin E.
Published: January 2023

In this introduction to the special issue on methodology, we provide background on its original motivation and a systematic overview of the contributions. The latter are discussed with correspondence to the phase of the scientific process they (most strongly) refer to: Theory construction, design, data analysis, and cumulative development of scientific knowledge. Several contributions propose novel measurement techniques and paradigms that will allow for new insights and can thus avail researchers in JDM and beyond. Another set of contributions centers around how models can best be tested and/or compared. Especially when viewed in combination, the papers on this topic spell out vital necessities for model comparisons and provide approaches that solve noteworthy problems prior work has been faced with.
Herbert Simon’s spell on judgment and decision making
Authors: Katsikopoulos Konstantinos V. , Lan Cherng-Horng (Dan)
Published: January 2023

How many judgment and decision making (JDM) researchers have not claimed to be building on Herbert Simon’s work? We identify two of Simon’s goals for JDM research: He sought to understand people’s decision processes—the descriptive goal—and studied whether thesameprocesses lead to good decisions—the prescriptive goal. To investigate how recent JDM research relates to these goals, we analyzed the articles published in theJournal of Behavioral Decision Makingand inJudgment and Decision Makingfrom 2006 to 2010. Out of 377 articles, 91 cite Simon or we judged them as directly relating to his goals. We asked whether these articles areintegrative, in the following sense: For a descriptive article we asked if it contributes to building a theory thatreconcilesdifferent conceptualizations of cognition such as neural networks and heuristics. For a prescriptive article we asked if it contributes to building a method thatcombinesideas of other methods such as heuristics and optimization models. Based on our subjective judgments we found that the proportion of integrative articles was 67% of the prescriptive and 52% of the descriptive articles. We offer suggestions for achieving more integration of JDM theories. The article concludes with the thesis that although JDM researchers work under Simon’s spell, no one really knows what that spell is.
Diagnostic Task Selection for Strategy Classification in Judgment and Decision Making: Theory, Validation, and Implementation in R
Authors: Jekel Marc , Fiedler Susann , Glöckner Andreas
Published: January 2023

One major statistical and methodological challenge in Judgment and Decision Making research is the reliable identification of individual decision strategies by selection of diagnostic tasks, that is, tasks for which predictions of the strategies differ sufficiently. The more strategies are considered, and the larger the number of dependent measures simultaneously taken into account in strategy classification (e.g., choices, decision time, confidence ratings; Glöckner, 2009), the more complex the selection of the most diagnostic tasks becomes. We suggest the Euclidian Diagnostic Task Selection (EDTS) method as a standardized solution for the problem. According to EDTS, experimental tasks are selected that maximize the average difference between strategy predictions for any multidimensional prediction space. In a comprehensive model recovery simulation, we evaluate and quantify the influence of diagnostic task selection on identification rates in strategy classification. Strategy classification with EDTS shows superior performance in comparison to less diagnostic task selection algorithms such as representative sampling. The advantage of EDTS is particularly large if only few dependent measures are considered. We also provide an easy-to-use function in the free software package R that allows generating predictions for the most commonly considered strategies for a specified set of tasks and evaluating the diagnosticity of those tasks via EDTS; thus, to apply EDTS, no prior programming knowledge is necessary.
Methodological notes on model comparisons and strategy classification: A falsificationist proposition
Authors: Moshagen Morten , Hilbig Benjamin E.
Published: January 2023

Taking a falsificationist perspective, the present paper identifies two major shortcomings of existing approaches to comparative model evaluations in general and strategy classifications in particular. These are (1) failure to consider systematic error and (2) neglect of global model fit. Using adherence measures to evaluate competing models implicitly makes the unrealistic assumption that the error associated with the model predictions is entirely random. By means of simple schematic examples, we show that failure to discriminate between systematic and random error seriously undermines this approach to model evaluation. Second, approaches that treat random versus systematic error appropriately usually rely on relative model fit to infer which model or strategy most likely generated the data. However, the model comparatively yielding the best fit may still be invalid. We demonstrate that taking for granted the vital requirement that a model by itself should adequately describe the data can easily lead to flawed conclusions. Thus, prior to considering the relative discrepancy of competing models, it is necessary to assess their absolute fit and thus, again, attempt falsification. Finally, the scientific value of model fit is discussed from a broader perspective.
What might judgment and decision making research be like if we took a Bayesian approach to hypothesis testing?
Authors: Matthews William J.
Published: January 2023

Judgment and decision making research overwhelmingly uses null hypothesis significance testing as the basis for statistical inference. This article examines an alternative, Bayesian approach which emphasizes the choice between two competing hypotheses and quantifies the balance of evidence provided by the data—one consequence of which is that experimental results may be taken to strongly favour the null hypothesis. We apply a recently-developed “Bayesiant-test” to existing studies of the anchoring effect in judgment, and examine how the change in approach affects both the tone of hypothesis testing and the substantive conclusions that one draws. We compare the Bayesian approach with Fisherian and Neyman-Pearson testing, examining its relationship to conventionalp-values, the influence of effect size, and the importance of prior beliefs about the likely state of nature. The results give a sense of how Bayesian hypothesis testing might be applied to judgment and decision making research, and of both the advantages and challenges that a shift to this approach would entail.
Simple eye movement metrics can predict future decision making performance: The case of financial choices
Authors: Król Michał , Król Magdalena Ewa
Published: January 2023

Decisions are often delegated to experts chosen based on their past performance record which may be subject to noise. For instance, a person with little skill could still make a lucky decision that proves correct ex-post, while a skilled expert could make the best possible use of available information to reach a decision that, with hindsight, turns out incorrect. We aimed to show that one could assess decision skills more accurately when analyzing not only the observed decisions, but also the decision-making process. Incorporating eye-tracking into an established behavioral finance experimental framework, we found that making an eye transition between pieces of information that previous research associated with bias makes one less likely to make good financial decisions in future trials. Thus, even the simplest, easy to obtain eye metrics could allow us to more accurately judge if a person’s performance is a reflection of skill, or down to luck and unlikely to be reproduced in the future.
An exploratory investigation of the impact of evaluation context on ambiguity aversion
Authors: Güney Şule , Newell Ben R.
Published: January 2023

This paper explores how context influences the evaluation of risky and ambiguous bets in the classic two-colour Ellsberg task. In three experiments context was manipulated via the presence/absence of additional bets against which the risky and ambiguous bets could be compared. In Experiment 1, three bets were added that were ‘intermediate’ in the sense that the information they yielded regarding the proportion of coloured balls lay between that provided by the risky and ambiguous bets. The presence of these intermediate bets reduced the price gap between the risky and ambiguous bets – and hence ambiguity aversion – by reducing the pricing of the risky bet relative to a condition in which only the risky and ambiguous bets were presented. In Experiment 2, we examined the individual effect of each of those intermediate bets on the valuations and found that the specific type of additional bet did not significantly affect the extent of the respective price gap. Finally, in Experiment 3, we explored the impact of the presence of ‘filler’ bets that were not necessarily in between the risky and ambiguous bets in terms of the information they yield. We found that having these filler bets also reduced ambiguity aversion. Overall, the findings suggest that the presence of additional bet(s) changes people’s valuations, and narrows the well-documented gap between the risky and ambiguous bets of the Ellsberg task, regardless of whether these additional bet(s) yield relatively more or less information.
From foe to friend and back again: The temporal dynamics of intra-party bias in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Authors: Dunham Yarrow , Arechar Antonio A. , Rand David G.
Published: January 2023

Political identification is the basis of enduring conflict, suggesting that political attitudes are difficult to change. Here we show that in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, political identities underwent modification in response to salient political events. We investigate these dynamics in detail by collecting data at periodic intervals from mid-June 2016 through the general election (N = 3,958). We operationalize identification using prosocial giving in Dictator Games played between supporters of competing primary candidates recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. The observed dynamics differed across political parties. In-group bias among Democrats remained high until the Democratic National Convention, disappeared shortly thereafter, and then returned during the final stage of the election. Bias among Republicans was generally high until the final days of the election. The late resurgence of bias among Democrats was not reflected in voting intentions, but may have presaged the Democratic election loss.
Communicating clinical trial outcomes: Effects of presentation method on physicians’ evaluations of new treatments
Authors: Marcatto Francesco , Rolison Jonathan J. , Ferrante Donatella
Published: January 2023

Physicians expect a treatment to be more effective when its clinical outcomes are described as relative rather than as absolute risk reductions. We examined whether effects of presentation method (relative vs. absolute risk reduction) remain when physicians are provided the baseline risk information, a vital piece of statistical information omitted in previous studies. Using a between-subjects design, ninety five physicians were presented the risk reduction associated with a fictitious treatment for hypertension either as an absolute risk reduction or as a relative risk reduction, with or without including baseline risk information. Physicians reported that the treatment would be more effective and that they would be more willing to prescribe it when its risk reduction was presented to them in relative rather than in absolute terms. The relative risk reduction was perceived as more effective than absolute risk reduction even when the baseline risk information was explicitly reported. We recommend that information about absolute risk reduction be made available to physicians in the reporting of clinical outcomes. Moreover, health professionals should be cognizant of the potential biasing effects of risk information presented in relative risk terms.
A direct and comprehensive test of two postulates of politeness theory applied to uncertainty communication
Authors: Sirota Miroslav , Juanchich Marie
Published: January 2023

Applied to uncertainty communication, politeness theory postulates that when announcing bad news (1) speakers may intend not only to inform, but also to manage (e.g., save) the hearers’ or speakers’ own faces (i.e., face-managing intentions), and (2) speakers may perform face-managing intentions by altering the explicitly communicated probability. Previous research has assumed these two core postulates when explaining various reasoning and judgment phenomena in hearers, but has failed to test them empirically in a comprehensive and direct way: jointly in relation to speakers. To provide this critical evidence, we asked subjects to communicate a predefined numerical probability of two negative outcomes, using a verbal probability scale. Subjects reported their communication intentions afterwards. In line with the first politeness theory postulate, speakers intended not only to be informative but also to tactfully announce bad news or to avoid being blamed in case they made inaccurate (too low or too high) prediction. In line with the second politeness theory postulate, speakers altered their explicitly communicated probability more often and more substantially when adopting face-managing intentions than when adopting informative intentions. We discuss how this evidence corroborates the politeness theory and validates the previous research that focused on hearers.
Judging competing theoretical accounts by their empirical content and parsimony: Reply to Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015)
Authors: Kieslich Pascal J. , Hilbig Benjamin E.
Published: January 2023

Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015) offer an alternative theoretical explanation for our finding that defection entails more cognitive conflict than cooperation (Kieslich & Hilbig, 2014). Although we completely agree that different theoretical explanations for a result are possible, we maintain that the theoretical approach we tested (Rand et al., 2014) is parsimonious and falsifiable, excluding certain plausible results a priori. By comparison, the alternative framework proposed by Myrseth and Wollbrant requires several debatable assumptions to account for our findings, rendering it the more complex theory. Besides, their framework as a whole could have accounted for any possible finding in our experiment, making it impossible to falsify it with our data. We thus conclude that the notion by Rand et al.—that there is a spontaneous disposition to cooperate—has more empirical content while requiring fewer assumptions.
Bayesian and frequentist analysis of True and Error models
Authors: Birnbaum Michael H.
Published: January 2023

Birnbaum and Quispe-Torreblanca (2018) presented a frequentist analysis of a family of six True and Error (TE) models for the analysis of two choice problems presented twice to each participant. Lee (2018) performed a Bayesian analysis of the same models, and found very similar parameter estimates and conclusions for the same data. He also discussed some potential differences between Bayesian and frequentist analyses and interpretations for model comparisons. This paper responds to certain points of possible controversy regarding model selection that attempt to take into account the concept of flexibility or complexity of a model. Reasons to question the use of Bayes factors to decide among models differing in fit and complexity are presented. The partially nested inter-relations among the six TE models are represented in a Venn diagram. Another view of model complexity is presented in terms of possible sets of data that could fit a model rather than in terms of possible sets of parameters that do or do not fit a given set of data. It is argued that less complex theories are not necessarily more likely to be true, and when the space of all possible theories is not well-defined, one should be cautious in interpreting calculated posterior probabilities that appear to prove a theory to be true.
Lay understanding of probability distributions
Authors: Goldstein Daniel G. , Rothschild David
Published: January 2023

How accurate are laypeople’s intuitions about probability distributions of events? The economic and psychological literatures provide opposing answers. A classical economic view assumes that ordinary decision makers consult perfect expectations, while recent psychological research has emphasized biases in perceptions. In this work, we test laypeople’s intuitions about probability distributions. To establish a ground truth against which accuracy can be assessed, we control the information seen by each subject to establish unambiguous normative answers. We find that laypeople’s statistical intuitions can be highly accurate, and depend strongly upon the elicitation method used. In particular, we find that eliciting an entire distribution from a respondent using a graphical interface, and then computing simple statistics (such as means, fractiles, and confidence intervals) on this distribution, leads to greater accuracy, on both the individual and aggregate level, than the standard method of asking about the same statistics directly.
The insured victim effect: When and why compensating harm decreases punishment recommendations
Authors: van de Calseyde Philippe P. F. M. , Keren Gideon , Zeelenberg Marcel
Published: January 2023

An insurance policy may not only affect the consequences for victims but also for perpetrators. In six experiments we find that people recommend milder punishments for perpetrators when the victim was insured, although people believe that a sentence should not depend on the victim’s insurance status. The robustness of this effect is demonstrated by showing that recommendations can even be more lenient for crimes that are in fact more serious but in which the victim was insured. Moreover, even when harm was possible but did not materialize, people still prefer to punish crimes less severely when the (potential) victim was insured. The final two experiments suggest that the effect is associated with a change in (1) compassion for the victim and (2) perceived severity of the transgression. Implications of this phenomenon are briefly discussed.
Improving dynamic decision making through training and self-reflection
Authors: Donovan Sarah J. , Güss C. Dominik , Naslund Dag
Published: January 2023

The modern business environment requires managers to make effective decisions in a dynamic and uncertain world. How can such dynamic decision making (DDM) improve? The current study investigated the effects of brief training aimed at improving DDM skills in a virtual DDM task. The training addressed the DDM process, stressed the importance of self-reflection in DDM, and provided 3 self-reflective questions to guide participants during the task. Additionally, we explored whether participants low or high in self-reflection would perform better in the task and whether participants low or high in self-reflection would benefit more from the training. The study also explored possible strategic differences between participants related to training and self-reflection. Participants were 68 graduate business students. They individually managed a computer-simulated chocolate production company called CHOCO FINE and answered surveys to assess self-reflection and demographics. Training in DDM led to better performance, including the ability to solve initial problems more successfully and to make appropriate adjustments to market changes. Participants’ self-reflection scores also predicted performance in this virtual business company. High self-reflection was also related to more consistency in planning and decision making. Participants low in self-reflection benefitted the most from training. Organizations could use DDM training to establish and promote a culture that values self-reflective decision making.
The curious tale of Julie and Mark: Unraveling the moral dumbfounding effect
Authors: Royzman Edward B. , Kim Kwanwoo , Leeman Robert F.
Published: January 2023

The paper critically reexamines the well-known “Julie and Mark” vignette, a stylized account of two college-age siblings opting to engage in protected sex while vacationing abroad (e.g., Haidt, 2001). Since its inception, the story has been viewed as a rhetorically powerful validation of Hume’s “sentimentalist” dictum that moral judgments are not rationally deduced but arise directly from feelings of pleasure or displeasure (e.g., disgust). People’s typical reactions to the vignette are alleged to support this view by demonstrating that individuals are prone to becomemorally dumbfounded(Haidt, 2001; Haidt, Bjorklund, & Murphy, 2000), i.e., they tend to “stubbornly” maintain their disapproval of the act without supporting reasons. In what follows, we critically reassess the traditional account, predicated on the notion that, among other things, most subjects simply fail to be convinced that the siblings’ actions are truly harm-free, thus having excellent reasons to disapprove of these acts. In line with this critique, 3 studies found that subjects 1) tendednotto believe that the siblings’ actions were in fact harmless; 2) notwithstanding that, and in spite of holding a number of “counterargument-immune” reasons, subjects could be effectively maneuvered into exhibiting all the trademark signs of a morally dumbfounded state (which they subsequently recanted), and 3) with subjects’ beliefs about harm and standards of normative evaluation properly factored in, a more rigorous assessment procedure yielded a dumbfounding estimate of about 0. Based on these and related results, we contend that subjects’ reactions are wholly in line with the rationalist model of moral judgment and that their use in support of claims of moral arationalism should be reevaluated.
It pays to be nice, but not really nice: Asymmetric reputations from prosociality across 7 countries
Authors: Klein Nadav , Grossmann Igor , Uskul Ayse K. , Kraus Alexandra A. , Epley Nicholas
Published: January 2023

Cultures differ in many important ways, but one trait appears to be universally valued: prosociality. For one’s reputation, around the world, it pays to be nice to others. However, recent research with American participants finds that evaluations of prosocial actions are asymmetric—relatively selfish actions are evaluated according to the magnitude of selfishness but evaluations of relatively generous actions are less sensitive to magnitude. Extremely generous actions are judged roughly as positively as modestly generous actions, but extremely selfish actions are judged much more negatively than modestly selfish actions (Klein & Epley, 2014). Here we test whether this asymmetry in evaluations of prosociality is culture-specific. Across 7 countries, 1,240 participants evaluated actors giving various amounts of money to a stranger. Along with relatively minor cross-cultural differences in evaluations of generous actions, we find cross-cultural similarities in the asymmetry in evaluations of prosociality. We discuss implications for how reputational inferences can enable the cooperation necessary for successful societies.
Willingness to test for BRCA1/2 in high risk women: Influenced by risk perception and family experience, rather than by objective or subjective numeracy?
Authors: Miron-Shatz Talya , Hanoch Yaniv , Katz Benjamin A. , Doniger Glen M. , Ozanne Elissa M.
Published: January 2023

Genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer can help target prevention programs, and possibly reduce morbidity and mortality. A positive result ofBRCA1/2is a substantial risk factor for breast and ovarian cancer, and its detection often leads to risk reduction interventions such as increased screening, prophylactic mastectomy and oophorectomy. We examined predictors of the decision to undergo cancer related genetic testing: perceived risk, family risk of breast or ovarian cancer, and numeracy as predictors of the decision to test among women at high risk of breast cancer. Stepwise regression analysis of survey responses from 459 women registered in the Cancer Genetics Network revealed greater likelihood to test for women with more family history, higher perceived risk of mutation, or Ashkenazi descent. Neither subjective nor objective numeracy was associated with the decision to test, although we replicated an earlier finding that subjective numeracy predicted willingness to pay for testing. Findings underscore the need for genetic counselling that disentangles risk perception from objective information to promote better decision-making in the context of genetic testing. Highlighting these factors is crucial for public health campaigns, as well as to clinic-based testing and direct-to-consumer testing.