bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Decision conflict drives reaction times and utilitarian responses in sacrificial dilemmas
Authors: Rosas Alejandro , Bermúdez Juan Pablo , Aguilar-Pardo David 
Published: January 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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