bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Is loss-aversion magnitude-dependent? Measuring prospective affective judgments regarding gains and losses
Authors: Mukherjee Sumitava , Sahay Arvind , Pammi V. S. Chandrasekhar , Srinivasan Narayanan
Published: January 2023

Prospect Theory proposed that the (dis)utility of losses is always more than gains due to a phenomena called ‘loss-aversion’, a result obtained in multiple later studies over the years. However, some researchers found reversed or no loss-aversion for affective judgments of small monetary amounts but, those findings have been argued to stem from the way gains versus losses were measured. Thus, it was not clear whether loss-aversion does not show with affective judgments for smaller magnitudes, or it is a measurement error. This paper addresses the debate concerning loss-aversion (in the prospect theoretic sense) and judgments about the intensity of gains and losses. We measured affective prospective judgments for monetary amounts using measurement scales that have been argued to be suitable for measuring loss-aversion and hence rule out any explanations regarding measurement. Both in a gambling scenario (Experiments 1 and 2) and in the context of fluctuating prices (Experiments 3a and 3b), potential losses never loomed larger than gains for low magnitudes, indicating that it is not simply a measurement error. Moreover, for the same participant, loss aversion was observable at high magnitudes. Further, we show that loss-aversion disappears even for higher monetary values, if contextually an even larger anchor is provided. The results imply that Prospect Theory’s value function is contextually dependent on magnitudes.
Outcomes and expectations in dilemmas of trust
Authors: Evans Anthony M. , Krueger Joachim I.
Published: January 2023

Rational trust decisions depend on potential outcomes and expectations of reciprocity. In the trust game, outcomes and expectations correspond to the structural factors of risk and temptation. Two experiments investigated how risk and temptation influenced information search and final decisions in the trust game. The central finding was that trustors underemphasized temptation relative to its effects on the expected value of trust. Instead, trustors made decisions egocentrically, focusing on potential outcomes. In Experiment 1, information search data revealed that trustors often made decisions without learning about the payoffs related to temptation. Experiment 2 investigated whether trustors were able to use temptation to form accurate expectations of reciprocity. Trustors understood, but underestimated, the relationship between temptation and the probability of reciprocity. Moreover, they did not fully consider expectations in their final trust decisions. Changes in potential outcomes had larger effects on trust than comparable changes in expectations. These results suggest that levels of trust are too high when the probability of reciprocity is low and too low when that probability is high.
A signal detection theory analysis of racial and ethnic disproportionality in the referral and substantiation processes of the U.S. child welfare services system
Authors: Mumpower Jeryl L. , McClelland Gary H.
Published: January 2023

Signal detection theory (SDT) was developed to analyze the behavior of a single judge but also can be used to analyze decisions made by organizations or other social systems. SDT quantifies the ability to distinguish between signal and noise by separating accuracy of the detection system from response bias—the propensity to over-warn (too many false positives) or under-warn (too many misses). We apply SDT techniques to national and state-level data sets to analyze the ability of the child welfare services systems to detect instances of child maltreatment. Blacks have higher rates of referral and the system is less accurate for them than for Whites or Hispanics. The incidence of false positives—referrals leading to unsubstantiated findings—is higher for Blacks than for other groups, as is the incidence of false negatives—children for whom no referral was made but who are in fact neglected or abused. The rate of true positives–children for whom a referral was made and for whom the allegation was substantiated–is higher for Blacks. Values of d′ (signal strength) are roughly the same for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics but there are pronounced group differences in C (a measure of the location of the decision threshold). Analyses show that the child welfare services system treats Blacks differently from Hispanics and Whites in ways that cannot be justified readily in terms of objective measures of group differences. This study illustrates the potential for JDM techniques such as SDT to contribute to understanding of system-level decision making processes.
Forecasting forecasts: The trend effect
Authors: Hohle Sigrid Møyner , Teigen Karl Halvor
Published: January 2023

People often make predictions about the future based on trends they have observed in the past. Revised probabilistic forecasts can be perceived by the public as indicative of such a trend. In five studies, we describe experts who make probabilistic forecasts of various natural events (effects of climate changes, landslide and earthquake risks) at two points in time. Prognoses that have been upgraded or downgraded from T1 to T2 were in all studies expected to be updated further, in the same direction, later on (at T3). Thus, two prognoses were in these studies enough to define a trend, forming the basis for future projections. This “trend effect” implies that non-experts interpret recent forecast in light of what the expert said in the past, and think, for instance, that a “moderate” landslide risk will cause more worry if it has previously been low than if it has been high. By transcending the experts’ most recent forecasts the receivers are far from conservative, and appear to know more about the experts’ next prognoses than the experts themselves.
The influence of identifiability and singularity in moral decision making
Authors: Wiss Johanna , Andersson David , Slovic Paul , Västfjäl Daniel , Tinghög Gustav
Published: January 2023

There is an increased willingness to help identified individuals rather than non-identified, and the effect of identifiability is mainly present when a single individual rather than a group is presented. However, identifiability and singularity effects have thus far not been manipulated orthogonally. The present research uses a joint evaluation approach to examine the relative contribution of identifiability and singularity in moral decision-making reflecting conflicting values between deontology and consequentialism. As in trolley dilemmas subjects could either choose to stay with the default option, i.e., giving a potentially life-saving vaccine to a single child, or to actively choose to deny the single child the vaccine in favor of five other children. Identifiability of the single child and the group of children was varied between-subjects in a 2x2 factorial design. In total 1,232 subjects from Sweden and the United States participated in three separate experiments. Across all treatments, in all three experiments, 32.6% of the subjects chose to stay with the deontological default option instead of actively choosing to maximize benefits. Results show that identifiability does not always have a positive effect on decisions in allocation dilemmas. For single targets, identifiability had a negative or no effect in two out of three experiments, while for the group of targets identifiability had a more stable positive effect on subjects’ willingness to allocate vaccines. When the effect of identifiability was negative, process data showed that this effect was mediated by emotional reactance. Hence, the results show that the influence of identifiability is more complex than it has been previously portrayed in the literature on charitable giving.
How many calories were in those hamburgers again? Distribution density biases recall of attribute values
Authors: Choplin Jessica M. , Wedell Douglas H.
Published: January 2023

Decisions that consumers make often rest on evaluations of attributes, such as how large, expensive, good, or fattening an option seems. Extant research has demonstrated that these evaluations in turn depend upon the recently experienced distribution of attribute values (e.g., positively or negatively skewed). In many situations decisions rely on recalling the attribute values of each option, a process that has been neglected in much of the previous literature. In two experiments, participants learned attribute information for labeled stimuli presented within either a positively or negatively skewed distribution and then they recalled values from labels after approximately one minute. The results demonstrated effects that are inconsistent with predictions of the category-adjustment model (Duffy, Huttenlocher, Hedges & Crawford, 2010) that recalled values would shift toward the mean of the distribution of values presented. Instead, results were consistent with predictions of the comparison-induced distortion model (Choplin & Hummel, 2002) that remembered values would depend on the density of stimuli within the attribute range. Reasons for these results, alternative models, and implications for decision-making are discussed.
It’s not fair: Folk intuitions about disadvantageous and advantageous inequity aversion
Authors: Shaw Alex , Choshen-Hillel Shoham
Published: January 2023

People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantageous inequity aversion), and more than others (advantageous inequity aversion). Here we study people’s folk intuitions about inequity aversion: what do people infer about others’ fairness concerns, when they observe their reactions to disadvantageous or advantageous inequity? We hypothesized that, people would not intuitively regard disadvantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness, but they would regard advantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness. In four studies, we used vignettes describing inequity aversion of a made up alien species to assess people’s folk intuitions about inequity aversion. The studies supported our main hypothesis that disadvantageous inequity aversion, without advantageous inequity aversion, does not fit people’s folk conception of fairness. Instead, participants reported it to be rooted in envy. According to these results, the claim that disadvantageous inequity aversion reveals a concern with fairness, does not readily accord with people’s intuitions. We connect these findings to other pieces of evidence in the literatures of behavioral economics, developmental psychology, and social psychology, indicating that lay people’s intuitions may be on the mark in this case. Specifically, unlike advantageous inequity aversion, disadvantageous inequity aversion need not be rooted in a sense of fairness.
When imagining future wealth influences risky decision making
Authors: Greenberg Adam Eric
Published: January 2023

The body of literature on the relationship between risk aversion and wealth is extensive. However, little attention has been given to examining how future realizations of wealth might affect (current) risk decisions. Using paired lottery choice experiments and exposing subjects experimentally to imagined future wealth frames, I find that individuals are more risk-seeking if they are asked to imagine that they will be wealthy in the future. Yet I find that individuals are not significantly more risk-averse if they are asked to imagine that they will be poor in the future. I discuss theoretical and policy implications of these findings, including why savings rates are so low in the United States.
American’s desire for less wealth inequality does not depend on how you ask them
Authors: Norton Michael I. , Ariely Dan
Published: January 2023

A large body of survey research offers evidence that citizens are not always fully aware of the economic and political realities in their respective countries. Norton and Ariely (2011) extended this research to the domain of wealth inequality, showing that Americans were surprisingly unaware of the shape of the wealth distribution in America. Using an alternative methodology, Eriksson and Simpson (2012) found that asking Americans to estimate the average wealth of quintiles, rather than the percent of wealth owned by each quintile, led to relatively more accurate estimates. We note, however, that the Eriksson and Simpson (2012) results do not challenge Norton and Ariely’s (2011) conclusion that Americans desire a much more equal distribution of wealth.
The available evidence suggests the percent measure should not be used to study inequality: Reply to Norton and Ariely
Authors: Eriksson Kimmo , Simpson Brent
Published: January 2023

In this reply, we reiterate the main point of our 2012 paper, which was that the measure of inequality used by Norton and Ariely (2011) was too difficult for it to yield meaningful results. We describe additional evidence for this conclusion, and we also challenge the conclusion that political differences in perceived and desired inequality are small.
Dishonest helping and harming after (un)fair treatment
Authors: Leib Margarita , Moran Simone , Shalvi Shaul
Published: January 2023

People experience fair and unfair treatment daily, and at times may react by breaking ethical rules and lying. Here, we assess the extent to which individuals engage in dishonest behavior aimed at helping or harming others after they experience (un)fair treatment. Across three financially incentivized experiments, recipients in a dictator game received a fair or unfair amount and then could, by means of dishonesty, inflate or deflate their counterparts’ pay. Results show that dishonest helping is a common and robust behavior. Individuals lie to help others after fair, unfair, and no prior treatment. Dishonest harming, however, is less prevalent. Only after unfair treatment, some, but not all, individuals engage in dishonest harming. Dishonest harming was associated with high levels of anger and disappointment, and low levels of gratitude. Interestingly, the source of (un)fairness, whether it is intentional or not, did not attenuate peoples’ behavior, suggesting that dishonest reactions to (un)fairness were driven by the mere (un)fair treatment, and not by a motivation to reciprocate an (un)fair counterpart.
The evaluability bias in charitable giving: Saving administration costs or saving lives?
Authors: Caviola Lucius , Faulmüller Nadira , Everett Jim. A. C. , Savulescu Julian , Kahane Guy
Published: January 2023

We describe the “evaluability bias”: the tendency to weight the importance of an attribute in proportion to its ease of evaluation. We propose that the evaluability bias influences decision making in the context of charitable giving: people tend to have a strong preference for charities with low overhead ratios (lower administrative expenses) but not for charities with high cost-effectiveness (greater number of saved lives per dollar), because the former attribute is easier to evaluate than the latter. In line with this hypothesis, we report the results of four studies showing that, when presented with a single charity, people are willing to donate more to a charity with low overhead ratio, regardless of cost-effectiveness. However, when people are presented with two charities simultaneously—thereby enabling comparative evaluation—they base their donation behavior on cost-effectiveness (Study 1). This suggests that people primarily value cost-effectiveness but manifest the evaluability bias in cases where they find it difficult to evaluate. However, people seem also to value a low overhead ratio for its own sake (Study 2). The evaluability bias effect applies to charities of different domains (Study 3). We also show that overhead ratio is easier to evaluate when its presentation format is a ratio, suggesting an inherent reference point that allows meaningful interpretation (Study 4).
Responsibility judgments of wins and losses in the 2013 chess championship
Authors: Nordbye Gro Hege Haraldsen , Teigen Karl Halvor
Published: January 2023

We report two studies on the perceived responsibility of opponents competing for a goal that can be attained by only one of them. Responsibility judgments were collected in seven samples of lay people and experts before, during, and after the World Chess Championship in 2013. Participants assessed the responsibility of the two players, their supporting teams, local conditions, and chance factors for four hypothetical outcomes (large and small loss/win for each player), along with probabilities for these outcomes, demonstrating subadditivity (sums exceeding 100%) in all samples, even among chess experts. The winner was consistently perceived to be more responsible than the loser, and more for outcomes with large than small margins. There was also an effect of focal player, as Carlsen was given more responsibility both for losses and wins than Anand, by the present (Norwegian) pro-Carlsen samples. However, this effect could be modified by describing the outcomes as Anand’s (rather than Carlsen’s) wins and losses. Thus the study adds to the valence framing literature by showing how responsibility judgments are affected by the way outcomes are framed.
Does moving from war zone change emotions and risk perceptions? A field study of Israeli students
Authors: Shahrabani Shosh , Benzion Uri , Rosenboim Mosi , Shavit Tal
Published: January 2023

The current field study uses data collected after the 2009 war between Israel and the Hamas militias in the Gaza Strip ended. The study compares recalled emotions and perceived risks among two groups of students, all of whom were exposed to rocket attacks. Individuals in the “left the war zone” group left the region under attack as a precautionary action, while the “stayed in the war zone” group remained in the region during war. The results indicate no significant differences in the levels of recalled fear and anger between the two groups, while the perceived self-risk from terror was higher among the “stayed in the war zone” group. Yet, a higher level of recalled fear was found among those who left the war zone and whose parents resided in the war zone, compared to those who left the war zone and whose parents resided outside the war zone. In addition, fearful people became more pessimistic about their level of personal risk from terror, but not about the routine risks. We conclude that civilians need attention even if they leave the war zone since leaving the attacked region as a precautionary action may mitigate perceived self-risk from terror but does not seem to eliminate the high level of negative emotions evoked by the terror attacks.
Gender differences in the endowment effect: Women pay less, but won’t accept less
Authors: Wieland Alice , Sundali James , Kemmelmeier Markus , Sarin Rakesh
Published: January 2023

We explore different contexts and mechanisms that might promote or alleviate the gender effect in risk aversion. Our main result is that we do not find gender differences in risk aversion when the choice is framed as a willingness-to-accept (WTA) task. When the choice is framed as a willingness-to-pay (WTP) task, men are willing to pay more and thus exhibit lower risk aversion. However, when the choice is framed as a willingness to accept task, women will not accept less than men. These findings imply gender differences in the endowment effect. We also find that the effect size of the gender difference in risk aversion is reduced or eliminated as the context changes from tasks framed as gambles to other domains; and that attitudes toward gambling mediate the gender effect in gambling framed tasks.
Who says “larger” and who says “smaller”? Individual differences in the language of comparison
Authors: Skylark William J. , Carr Joseph M. , McComas Claire L.
Published: January 2023

When comparing a pair of attribute values, English speakers can use a “larger” comparative (“A is larger/longer/higher/more than B”) or a “smaller” comparative (“B is smaller/shorter/lower/less than A”). This choice matters because it affects people’s inferences about the absolute magnitudes of the compared items, and influences the perceived truthfulness of the comparative sentence itself. In 4 studies (total N = 2335), we investigated the language that people use to describe ordinal relations between attributes. Specifically, we examined whether demography, emotion, and personality predict the tendency to use “larger” comparatives rather than “smaller” ones. Participants viewed pairs of items differing in a single attribute and indicated the word they would use to describe the relationship between them; they also completed a series of self-report measures. Replicating previous work, we found a robust tendency to use “larger” comparatives, both when people chose between two adjectives and when they freely produced their own words in a sentence completion task. We also found that this tendency was more pronounced in older participants, those with positive mood or outlook, and among people high in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. However, these effects were very small, with meta-analytic effect sizes indicating they explain less than 1% of the variance. We conclude that, although people’s use of comparative adjectives is influenced by properties of the items that are being compared, the way that people describe magnitude relations is relatively stable across variation in a range of important traits and dispositions, protecting decision-makers from a potentially undesirable source of bias in their inferences and representations of described options.
People respond to GM food with disgust more than fear: Comment on Royzman, Cusimano and Leeman (2017)
Authors: Inbar Yoel , Scott Sydney E.
Published: January 2023

Scott, Inbar and Rozin (2016) reported an association between greater disgust sensitivity (DS) and more negative attitudes towards genetically modified (GM) food. Royzman, Cusimano and Leeman (2017) replicated this association but argued that fear, not disgust, is the primary emotion associated with negative GM food attitudes. We believe that this conclusion is premature, because the “high-granularity” disgust scale variants on which it is based are theoretically and statistically questionable. We explain the issues with these disgust scale variants and report direct evidence showing that people respond to GM food with disgust more than fear.
‘Tis better to choose and lose than to never choose at all
Authors: Ashby Nathaniel J. S. , Rakow Tim , Yechiam Eldad
Published: January 2023

When decisions involve opting in or out of competition many decision makers will opt-in even when doing so leads to losses on average. In the current paper, we examine the generality of this effect in risky choices not involving competition. We found that re-framing a sure (certain) zero option as an option to observe the results of the other options without choosing would lead to increased consequential choice (i.e., increased selection of risky options rather than the zero option). Specifically, in two studies we compared the rate of consequential choice in a novel paradigm where decision makers decide to observe or to choose with consequence from a set of risky options (decisions-to-engage) to a full-feedback decisions-from-feedback paradigm where the choice set included a labeled sure zero option. Compared to decisions-from-feedback, participants were more likely to choose from mixed (risky) gambles with consequence (over a zero outcome) in decisions-to-engage. This occurred irrespective of whether doing so was advantageous (i.e., when choice led to monetary gains on average) or disadvantageous (i.e., when choice led to monetary losses on average), and when descriptions of the options outcomes and probabilities were provided (Study 2). These findings provide an important boundary condition for the positive effects of experience on the quality of choice, and suggest that decision makers’ preference for agency can sometimes induce poorer choices.
An interpretation of focal point responses as non-additive beliefs
Authors: Romm Aylit Tina
Published: January 2023

This paper provides a novel interpretation of focal point responses (0, 50, 100 percent) in terms of ambiguous beliefs dynamics that arise in new developments of decision theory such as Choquet expected utility theory. In particular, focal point responses that have been updated from nonfocal responses can be interpreted as non-additive beliefs that account for psychological bias. A focal point response of 100 that has been updated from a nonfocal response can be represented by a non-additive belief that has been updated according to the Overestimating Update Rule. A focal point response of zero that has been updated from a nonfocal response can be represented by a non-additive belief that has been updated according to the Underestimating Update Rule. Focal point responses given consistently over time are not subject to psychological bias, and can be represented by additive probability distributions. Estimation results show such a model to be a very good fit to the data.
MARTER: Markov True and Error model of drifting parameters
Authors: Birnbaum Michael H. , Wan Lucy
Published: January 2023

This paper describes a theory of the variability of risky choice that describes empirical properties of choice data, including sequential effects and systematic violations of response independence. The Markov True and Error (MARTER) model represents the formation and fluctuation of true preferences produced by stochastic variation of parameters over time, which produces changing true preference patterns. This model includes a probabilistic association between true preferences and overt responses due to random error. Computer programs have been developed to simulate data according to this model, to fit data to the TE model, and to test and analyze violations of iid (independent and identical distributions) that are predicted by the model. Data simulated from MARTER models show properties that are characteristic of real data, including violations of iid similar to those observed in previous empirical research. This paper also illustrates how methods based on analysis of binary response proportions do not and in many cases cannot correctly diagnose what model was used to generate the data. The MARTER model is extremely general and neutral with respect to models of risky decision making. For example, the transitive transfer of attention exchange (TAX) model and intransitive Lexicographic Semiorder (LS) models can both be represented as special cases of MARTER, and they can be tested against each other, even when binary choice proportions cannot discriminate which model was used to simulate the data. Software to simulate data according to this model, and to fit data to this model, to test this model, and to compare special case theories are included or linked to this article.
The effect of incentive structure on search in the secretary problem
Authors: Hsiao Yu-Chin , Kemp Simon
Published: January 2023

We tested the effectiveness of performance-based incentive structures using three incentive structures — commission base, best only and flat fee — and two levels of context — no context and house-selling — in an experiment in which participants made decisions in a variant of the secretary problem. Key measures of performance were the amount of search and the rounds in which the very best (optimal) offer was chosen. We found that having a commission-based proportional incentive did not produce better performance than having a flat payment for any of the performance measures considered. However, another performance-based incentive — the best only — increased the length of their searches and led to more optimal offers. These results applied both when there was no context and when the context was selling a house.
The category size bias: A mere misunderstanding
Authors: Perfecto Hannah , Nelson Leif D. , Moore Don A.
Published: January 2023

Redundant or excessive information can sometimes lead people to lean on it unnecessarily. Certain experimental designs can sometimes bias results in the researcher’s favor. And, sometimes, interesting effects are too small to be studied, practically, or are simply zero. We believe a confluence of these factors led to a recent paper (Isaac & Brough, 2014, JCR). This initial paper proposed a new means by which probability judgments can be led astray: the category size bias, by which an individual event coming from a large category is judged more likely to occur than an event coming from a small one. Our work shows that this effect may be due to instructional and mechanical confounds, rather than interesting psychology. We present eleven studies with over ten times the sample size of the original in support of our conclusion: We replicate three of the five original studies and reduce or eliminate the effect by resolving these methodological issues, even significantly reversing the bias in one case (Study 6). Studies 7–8c suggest the remaining two studies are false positives. We conclude with a discussion of the subtleties of instruction wording, the difficulties of correcting the record, and the importance of replication and open science.
On the meaning and measurement of maximization
Authors: Cheek Nathan N. , Schwartz Barry
Published: January 2023

Building on Herbert Simon’s critique of rational choice theory, Schwartz et al. (2002) proposed that when making choices, some individuals —maximizers— search extensively through many alternatives with the goal of making the best choice, whereas others —satisficers— search only until they identify an option that meets their standards, which they then choose. They developed the Maximization Scale (MS) to measure individual differences in maximization, and a substantial amount of research has now examined maximization using the MS, painting a picture of maximizers that is generally negative. Recently, however, several researchers have criticized the MS, and almost a dozen new measures of maximization have now been published, resulting in a befuddling and contradictory literature. We seek to clarify the confusing literature on the measurement of maximization to help make sense of the existing findings and to facilitate future research. We begin by briefly summarizing the understanding of maximizers that has emerged through research using Schwartz et al.’s MS. We then review the literature on the measurement of maximization, attempting to identify the similarities and differences among the 11 published measures of maximization. Next, we propose a two-component model of maximization, outlining our view of how maximization should be conceptualized and measured. Our model posits that maximization is best understood as the pursuit of the maximizationgoalof choosing the best option through the maximizationstrategyof alternative search; other constructs such as decision difficulty and regret are best considered outcomes or causes — rather than components — of maximization. We discuss the implications of our review and model for research on maximization, highlighting what we see as pressing unanswered questions and important directions for future investigations.
On the generality of the effect of experiencing prior gains and losses on the Iowa Gambling Task: A study on young and old adults
Authors: Rosi Alessia , Cavallini Elena , Gamboz Nadia , Russo Riccardo
Published: January 2023

Prospect Theory predicts that people tend to be more risk seeking if their reference point is perceived as a loss and more risk averse when the reference point is perceived as a gain. In line with this prediction, Franken, Georgieva, Muris and Dijksterhuis (2006) showed that young adults who had a prior experience of monetary gains make more safe choices on subsequent decisions than subjects who had an early experience of losses. There are no experimental studies on how experiencing prior gains and losses differently influences young and older adults on a subsequent decision-making task (the Iowa Gambling Task). Hence, in the current paper, adapting the methodology employed by Franken et al.’s (2006), we intended to test the generality of their effect across the life span. Overall, we found that subjects who experienced prior monetary gains or prior monetary losses did not display significant differences in safe/risky choices on subsequent performance in the Iowa Gambling task. Furthermore, the impact of prior gains and losses on risky/safe card selection did not significantly differ between young and older adults. These results showed that the effect found in the Franken et al.’s study (2006) is limited in its generality.
Predictions on the go: Prevalence of spontaneous spending predictions
Authors: Peetz Johanna , Simmons Melanie , Chen Jingwen , Buehler Roger
Published: January 2023

The present research examines the prevalence of predictions in daily life. Specifically we examine whether spending predictions for specific purchases occur spontaneously in life outside of a laboratory setting. Across community samples and student samples, overall self-report and diary reports, three studies suggest that people make spending predictions for about two-thirds of purchases in everyday life. In addition, we examine factors that increase the likelihood of spending predictions: the size of purchase, payment form, time pressure, personality variables, and purchase decisions. Spending predictions were more likely for larger, more exceptional purchases and for item and project predictions rather than time periods.
American attitudes toward nudges
Authors: Jung Janice Y. , Mellers Barbara A.
Published: January 2023

To successfully select and implement nudges, policy makers need a psychological understanding of who opposes nudges, how they are perceived, and when alternative methods (e.g., forced choice) might work better. Using two representative samples, we examined four factors that influence U.S. attitudes toward nudges – types of nudges, individual dispositions, nudge perceptions, and nudge frames. Most nudges were supported, although opt-out defaults for organ donations were opposed in both samples. “System 1” nudges (e.g., defaults and sequential orderings) were viewed less favorably than “System 2” nudges (e.g., educational opportunities or reminders). System 1 nudges were perceived as more autonomy threatening, whereas System 2 nudges were viewed as more effective for better decision making and more necessary for changing behavior. People with greater empathetic concern tended to support both types of nudges and viewed them as the “right” kind of goals to have. Individualists opposed both types of nudges, and conservatives tended to oppose both types. Reactant people and those with a strong desire for control opposed System 1 nudges. To see whether framing could influence attitudes, we varied the description of the nudge in terms of the target (Personal vs. Societal) and the reference point for the nudge (Costs vs. Benefits). Empathetic people were more supportive when framing highlighted societal costs or benefits, and reactant people were more opposed to nudges when frames highlighted the personal costs of rejection.
Risky Decision Making: Testing for Violations of Transitivity Predicted by an Editing Mechanism
Authors: Birnbaum Michael H. , Navarro-Martinez Daniel , Ungemach Christoph , Stewart Neil , Quispe-Torreblanca Edika G.
Published: January 2023

Transitivity is the assumption that if a person prefers A to B and B to C, then that person should prefer A to C. This article explores a paradigm in which Birnbaum, Patton and Lott (1999) thought people might be systematically intransitive. Many undergraduates choose C = ($96, .85; $90, .05; $12, .10) over A = ($96, .9; $14, .05; $12, .05), violating dominance. Perhaps people would detect dominance in simpler choices, such as A versus B = ($96, .9; $12, .10) and B versus C, and yet continue to violate it in the choice between A and C, which would violate transitivity. In this study we apply a true and error model to test intransitive preferences predicted by a partially effective editing mechanism. The results replicated previous findings quite well; however, the true and error model indicated that very few, if any, participants exhibited true intransitive preferences. In addition, violations of stochastic dominance showed a strong and systematic decrease in prevalence over time and violated response independence, thus violating key assumptions of standard random preference models for analysis of transitivity.
Cognitive reflection as a predictor of susceptibility to behavioral anomalies
Authors: Noori Mohammad
Published: January 2023

To study the effect of cognitive reflection on behavioral anomalies, we used the cognitive reflection test to measure cognitive reflection. The study was conducted on 395 Iranian university students and shows that subjects with lower cognitive reflection are significantly more likely to exhibit the conjunction fallacy, illusion of control, overconfidence, base rate fallacy, and conservatism. In addition, test scores are correlated with risk preferences. The results do not show any relationship between cognitive reflection and self-serving bias or status quo bias. We also find that gender is significantly related to illusion of control and self-serving bias.
How should we think about Americans’ beliefs about economic mobility?
Authors: Davidai Shai , Gilovich Thomas
Published: January 2023

Recent evidence suggests that Americans’ beliefs about upward mobility are overly optimistic. Davidai & Gilovich (2015a), Kraus & Tan (2015), and Kraus (2015) all found that people overestimate the likelihood that a person might rise up the economic ladder, and underestimate the likelihood that they might fail to do so. However, using a different methodology, Chambers, Swan and Heesacker (2015) reported that Americans’ beliefs about mobility are much more pessimistic. Swan, Chambers, Heesacker and Nero (2017) provide a much-needed summary of these conflicting findings and question the utility of measuring population-level biases in judgments of inequality and mobility. We value their summary but argue that their conclusion is premature. By focusing on measures that best tap how laypeople naturally think about the distribution of income, we believe that researchers can draw meaningful conclusions about the public’s perceptions of economic mobility. When more ecologically representative measures are used, the consistent finding is that Americans overestimate the extent of upward mobility in the United States. To explain the divergent findings in the literature, we provide evidence that the methods used by Chambers et al. (2015) inadvertently primed participants to think aboutimmobility rather than mobility. Finally, using a novel method to examine beliefs about economic mobility, we show that Americans indeed overestimate the degree of mobility in the United States.
Comparing fast thinking and slow thinking: The relative benefits of interventions, individual differences, and inferential rules
Authors: Lawson M. Asher , Larrick Richard P. , Soll Jack B.
Published: January 2023

Research on judgment and decision making has suggested that the System 2 process of slow thinking can help people to improve their decision making by reducing well-established statistical decision biases (including base rate neglect, probability matching, and the conjunction fallacy). In a large pre-registered study with 1,706 participants and 23,292 unique observations, we compare the effects of individual differences and behavioral interventions to test the relative benefits of slow thinking on performance in canonical judgment and decision-making problems, compared to a control condition, a fast thinking condition, an incentive condition, and a condition that combines fast and slow thinking. We also draw on the rule-based reasoning literature to examine the benefits of having access to a simple form of the rule needed to solve a specific focal problem. Overall, we find equivocal evidence of a small benefit from slow thinking, evidence for a small benefit to accuracy incentives, and clear evidence of a larger cost from fast thinking. The difference in performance between fast-thinking and slow-thinking interventions is comparable to a one-scale point difference on the 4-point Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). Inferential rules contribute unique explanatory power and interact with individual differences to support the idea that System 2 benefits from a combination of slower processes and knowledge appropriate to the problem.
Risky choice frames shift the structure and emotional valence of internal arguments: A query theory account of the unusual disease problem
Authors: Wall Daniel , Crookes Raymond D. , Johnson Eric J. , Weber Elke U.
Published: January 2023

We examine a Query Theory account of risky choice framing effects — when risky choices are framed as a gain, people are generally risky averse but, when an equivalent choice is framed as a loss, people are risk seeking. Consistent with Query Theory, frames affected the structure of participants’ arguments: gain frame participants listed arguments favoring the certain option earlier and more often than loss frame participants. These argumentative shifts mediated framing effects; manipulating participants initial arguments attenuated them. While emotions, as measured by PANAS, were related to frames but not related to choices, an exploratory text analysis of the affective valence of arguments was related to both. Compared to loss-frame participants, gain-frame participants expressed more positive sentiment towards the certain option than the risky option. Thisrelative-sentiment indexpredicted choices by itself but not when included with structure of arguments. Further, manipulated initial arguments did not significantly affect participant’s relative sentiment. Prior to changing choices, risky choice frames alter both the structure and emotional valence of participants’ internal arguments.
Effect of confidence interval construction on judgment accuracy
Authors: Mandel David R. , Collins Robert N. , Risko Evan F. , Fugelsang Jonathan A.
Published: January 2023

Three experiments (N= 550) examined the effect of an interval construction elicitation method used in several expert elicitation studies on judgment accuracy. Participants made judgments about topics that were either searchable or unsearchable online using one of two order variations of the interval construction procedure. One group of participants provided their best judgment (one step)priorto constructing an interval (i.e., lower bound, upper bound, and a confidence rating that the correct value fell in the range provided), whereas another group of participants provided their best judgmentlast,after the three-step confidence interval was constructed. The overall effect of this elicitation method was not significant in 8 out of 9 univariate tests. Moreover, the calibration of confidence intervals was not affected by elicitation order. The findings warrant skepticism regarding the benefit of prior confidence interval construction for improving judgment accuracy.
Note on Birnbaum and Wan (2020): True and error model analysis is robust with respect to certain violations of the MARTER model
Authors: Birnbaum Michael H. , Quan Bonny
Published: January 2023

The Markov True and Error (MARTER) model (Birnbaum & Wan, 2020) has three components: a risky decision making model with one or more parameters, a Markov model that describes stochastic variation of parameters over time, and a true and error (TE) model that describes probabilistic relations between true preferences and overt responses. In this study, we simulated data according to 57 generating models that either did or did not satisfy the assumptions of the True and Error fitting model, that either did or did not satisfy the error independence assumptions, that either did or did not satisfy transitivity, and that had various patterns of error rates. A key assumption in the TE fitting model is that a person’s true preferences do not change in the short time within a session; that is, preference reversals between two responses by the same person to two presentations of the same choice problem in the same brief session are due to random error. In a set of 48 simulations, data generating models either satisfied this assumption or they implemented a systematic violation, in which true preferences could change within sessions. We used the true and error (TE) fitting model to analyze the simulated data, and we found that it did a good job of distinguishing transitive from intransitive models and in estimating parameters not only when the generating model satisfied the model assumptions, but also when model assumptions were violated in this way. When the generating model violated the assumptions, statistical tests of the TE fitting models correctly detected the violations. Even when the data contained violations of the TE model, the parameter estimates representing probabilities of true preference patterns were surprisingly accurate, except for error rates, which were inflated by model violations. In a second set of simulations, the generating model either had error rates that were or were not independent of true preferences and transitivity either was or was not satisfied. It was found again that the TE analysis was able to detect the violations of the fitting model, and the analysis correctly identified whether the data had been generated by a transitive or intransitive process; however, in this case, estimated incidence of a preference pattern was reduced if that preference pattern had a higher error rate. Overall, the violations could be detected and did not affect the ability of the TE analysis to discriminate between transitive and intransitive processes.
No effects of synchronicity in online social dilemma experiments: A registered report
Authors: Evans Anthony M. , Kogler Christoph , Sleegers Willem W. A.
Published: January 2023

Online experiments have become a valuable research tool for researchers interested in the processes underlying cooperation. Typically, online experiments are asynchronous, participants complete an experiment individually and are matched with partners after data collection has been completed. We conducted a registered report to compare asynchronous and synchronous designs, where participants interact and receive feedback in real-time. We investigated how two features of synchronous designs, pre-decision matching and immediate feedback, influence cooperation in the prisoners dilemma. We hypothesized that 1) pre-decision matching (assigning participants to specific interaction partners before they make decisions) would lead to decreased social distance and increased cooperation; 2) immediate feedback would reduce feelings of aversive uncertainty and lead to increased cooperation; and 3) individuals with prosocial Social Value Orientations would be more sensitive to the differences between synchronous and asynchronous designs. We found no support for these hypotheses. In our study (N = 1,238), pre-decision matching and immediate feedback had no significant effects on cooperative behavior or perceptions of the interaction; and their effects on cooperation were not significantly moderated by Social Value Orientation. The present results suggest that synchronous designs have little effect on cooperation in online social dilemma experiments.