bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Good luck, bad luck, and ambiguity aversion
Authors: Pulford Briony D. , Gill Poonam 
Published: January 2023

AbstractWe report a series of experiments investigating the influence of feeling lucky or unlucky on people’s choice of known-risk or ambiguous options using the traditional Ellsberg Urns decision-making task. We induced a state of feeling lucky or unlucky in subjects by using a rigged wheel-of-fortune game, which just missed either the bankrupt or the jackpot outcome. In the first experiment a large reversal of the usual ambiguity aversion effect was shown, indicating that feeling lucky made subjects significantly more ambiguityseekingthan usual. However, this effect failed to replicate in five refined and larger follow-up experiments. Thus we conclude that there is no evidence that feeling lucky reliably influences ambiguity aversion. Men were less ambiguity averse than women when there were potential gains to be had, but there were no gender differences when the task was negatively framed in terms of losses.
The average laboratory samples a population of 7,300 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers
Authors: Stewart Neil , Ungemach Christoph , Harris Adam J. L. , Bartels Daniel M. , Newell Ben R. , Paolacci Gabriele , Chandler Jesse 
Published: January 2023

AbstractUsing capture-recapture analysis we estimate the effective size of the active Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) population that a typical laboratory can access to be about 7,300 workers. We also estimate that the time taken for half of the workers to leave the MTurk pool and be replaced is about 7 months. Each laboratory has its own population pool which overlaps, often extensively, with the hundreds of other laboratories using MTurk. Our estimate is based on a sample of 114,460 completed sessions from 33,408 unique participants and 689 sessions across seven laboratories in the US, Europe, and Australia from January 2012 to March 2015.
The relationship between cognitive style and political orientation depends on the measures used
Authors: Yilmaz Onurcan , Saribay S. Adil 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThe present research investigated the reason for mixed evidence concerning the relationship between analytic cognitive style (ACS) and political orientation in previous research. Most past research operationalized ACS with the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), which has been criticized as relying heavily on numeracy skills, and operationalized political orientation with the single-item self-placement measure, which has been criticized as masking the distinction between social and economic conservatism. The present research recruited an Amazon Mechanical Turk sample and, for the first time, simultaneously employed three separate ACS measures (CRT, CRT2, Baserate conflict problems), a measure of attitudes toward self-critical and reflective thinking (the Actively Open-Minded Thinking Scale; AOT), and separate measures of social and economic conservatism, as well the standard measure of political orientation. As expected, the total ACS score (combination of the separate measures) was negatively related to social, but not economic, conservatism. However, the CRT by itself was not related to conservatism, in parallel with some past findings, while the two other measures of ACS showed the same pattern as the combined score. Trait reflectiveness (AOT) was related negatively to all measures of political conservatism (social, economic, and general). Results clearly suggest that the conclusion reached regarding the ACS-political orientation relationship depends on the measure(s) used, with the measure most commonly employed in past research (CRT) behaving differently than other measures. Future research must further pursue the implications of the known differences (e.g., reliance on numeracy vs. verbal skills) of ACS measures and distinguish different senses of reflectiveness.
Dual processes and moral conflict: Evidence for deontological reasoners’ intuitive utilitarian sensitivity
Authors: Białek Michal , Neys Wim De 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThe prominent dual process model of moral cognition suggests that reasoners intuitively detect that harming others is wrong (deontological System-1 morality) but have to engage in demanding deliberation to realize that harm can be acceptable depending on the consequences (utilitarian System-2 morality). But the nature of the interaction between the processes is not clear. To address this key issue we tested whether deontological reasoners also intuitively grasp the utilitarian dimensions of classic moral dilemmas. In three studies subjects solved moral dilemmas in which utilitarian and deontological considerations cued conflicting or non-conflicting decisions while performing a demanding concurrent load task. Results show that reasoners’ sensitivity to conflicting moral perspectives, as reflected in decreased decision confidence and increased experienced processing difficulty, was unaffected by cognitive load. We discuss how these findings argue for a hybrid dual process model interpretation in which System-1 cues both a deontological and utilitarian intuition.
Limited capacity to lie: Cognitive load interferes with being dishonest
Authors: van ’t Veer Anna E. , Stel Mariëlle , van Beest Ilja 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThe current study tested the boundary conditions of ethical decision-making by increasing cognitive load. This manipulation is believed to hinder deliberation, and, as we argue, reduces the cognitive capacity needed for a self-serving bias to occur. As telling a lie is believed to be more cognitively taxing than telling the truth, we hypothesized that participants would be more honest under high cognitive load than low cognitive load. 173 participants anonymously rolled a die three times and reported their outcomes — of which one of the rolls would be paid out — while either under high or low cognitive load. For the roll that determined pay, participants under low cognitive load, but not under high cognitive load, reported die rolls that were significantly different from a uniform (honest) distribution. The reported outcome of this roll was also significantly higher in the low load condition than in the high load condition, suggesting that participants in the low load condition lied to get higher pay. This pattern was not observed for the second and third roll where participants knew the rolls were not going to be paid out and where therefore lying would not serve self-interest. Results thus indicate that having limited cognitive capacity will unveil a tendency to be honest in a situation where having more cognitive capacity would have enabled one to serve self-interest by lying.
Using cognitive models to combine probability estimates
Authors: Lee Michael D. , Danileiko Irina 
Published: January 2023

AbstractWe demonstrate the usefulness of cognitive models for combining human estimates of probabilities in two experiments. The first experiment involves people’s estimates of probabilities for general knowledge questions such as “What percentage of the world’s population speaks English as a first language?” The second experiment involves people’s estimates of probabilities in football (soccer) games, such as “What is the probability a team leading 1–0 at half time will win the game?”, with ground truths based on analysis of large corpus of games played in the past decade. In both experiments, we collect people’s probability estimates, and develop a cognitive model of the estimation process, including assumptions about the calibration of probabilities and individual differences. We show that the cognitive model approach outperforms standard statistical aggregation methods like the mean and the median for both experiments and, unlike most previous related work, is able to make good predictions in a fully unsupervised setting. We also show that the parameters inferred as part of the cognitive modeling, involving calibration and expertise, provide useful measures of the cognitive characteristics of individuals. We argue that the cognitive approach has the advantage of aggregating over latent human knowledge rather than observed estimates, and emphasize that it can be applied in predictive settings where answers are not yet available.
The combined role of task, child’s age and individual differences in understanding decision processes
Authors: Levin Irwin P. , Bossard Elaine A. , Gaeth Gary J. , Yan Haoyang 
Published: January 2023

AbstractIt is important to understand the impact of individual differences in decision making from childhood to adulthood. This cohort-based study extends our knowledge by comparing decision making of children across the age range of 8 to 17 years and their parents. Based on prior research and theory focusing on different types of framing effects, we uncover several key differences across ages, including levels of risk taking and sensitivity to expected value differences between risky and riskless choices. Furthermore, we find that measures such as Numeracy and Surgency help explain both age-related and individual differences on our tasks, especially for decisions involving risk. We discuss the role of diverse task measures in understanding how individual difference factors affect different aspects of decision making, including the ability and effort to process numerical information and the ability to suppress affective reactions to stimulus labels.
Moral judgments of risky choices: A moral echoing effect
Authors: Parkinson Mary , Byrne Ruth M. J. 
Published: January 2023

AbstractTwo experiments examined moral judgments about a decision-maker’s choices when he chose a sure-thing, 400 out of 600 people will be saved, or a risk, a two-thirds probability to save everyone and a one-thirds probability to save no-one. The results establish a moral echoing effect — a tendency to credit a decision-maker with a good outcome when the decision-maker made the typical choices of the sure-thing in a gain frame or the risk in a loss frame, and to discredit the decision-maker when there is a bad outcome and the decision-maker made the atypical choices of a risk in a gain frame or a sure-thing in a loss frame. The moral echoing effect is established in Experiment 1 (n=207) in which participants supposed the outcome would turn well or badly, and it is replicated in Experiment 2 (n=173) in which they knew it had turned out well or badly, for judgments of moral responsibility and blame or praise. The effect does not occur for judgments of cause, control, counterfactual alternatives, or emotions.
Establishing the relevance of non-compensatory choice algorithms from stated choice surveys – an exploration
Authors: van de Kaa Evert Jan 
Published: January 2023

AbstractIn applied sciences large-scale surveys are a popular means to acquire insights in the choices that people make in different contexts. In transportation research, for example, tens of thousands stated their choices between alternatives characterized by cost and time attributes. In this study I explore the extent to which the data acquired in such studies may exhibit the co-occurrence of different choice algorithms within such survey populations. For that purpose I propose a novel version of the outcome-oriented approach. It is applied to the outcomes of two Dutch value-of-time surveys. If the recorded choice patterns are viewed apart, most could be the result of several different algorithms, in line with the main criticism of the outcome-oriented approach. The novel version considers the causal relationships between an individual’s personal circumstances, his use of a particular algorithm and the resulting choice pattern. It employs inferential statistics for analyses of the frequencies of the expected and actually recorded choice patterns within groups of respondents. Applied to the Dutch survey results this allowed disentangling, at the aggregate level, the overlap in explaining compensatory and non-compensatory algorithms to a large extent. It revealed that weighted additive (WADD) algorithms incorporating different degrees of loss aversion could explain most recorded choice behaviour while none of the many non-compensatory algorithms that were considered yielded a more than marginal explanation. Replications of this study, preferably by re-analysing other large-scale surveys with more complicated choice sets, is recommended to find out whether or not these findings are incidental.
Right-wing ideology and numeracy: A perception of greater ability, but poorer performance
Authors: Choma Becky L. , Sumantry David , Hanoch Yaniv 
Published: January 2023

AbstractRight-wing ideology and cognitive ability, including objective numeracy, have been found to relate negatively. Although objective and subjective numeracy correlate positively, it is unclear whether subjective numeracy relates to political ideology in the same way. Replicating and extending previous research, across two samples of American adults (ns= 455, 406), those who performed worse on objective numeracy tasks scored higher on right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), and they self-identified as more conservative on general, social, and economic continua. Controlling for objective numeracy, subjective numeracy related positively to measures of right-wing ideologies. In other words, those who strongly (vs. weakly) endorsed right-wing ideologies believed they are good with numbers yet performed worse on numeracy tasks. We discuss implications for the opposing direction of associations between ideology with objective versus subjective numeracy and similarities with literature on overconfidence.
Beyond reach: Do symmetric changes in motor costs affect decision making? A registered report
Authors: Zgonnikov Arkady , Atiya Nadim A. A. , O’Hora Denis , Rañò Iñaki , Wong-Lin KongFatt 
Published: January 2023

AbstractExecuting an important decision can be as easy as moving a mouse cursor or reaching towards the preferred option with a hand. But would we decide differently if choosing required walking a few steps towards an option? More generally, is our preference invariant to the means and motor costs of reporting it? Previous research demonstrated that asymmetric motor costs can nudge the decision-maker towards a less costly option. However, virtually all traditional decision-making theories predict that increasing motor costs symmetrically for all options should not affect choice in any way. This prediction is disputed by the theory of embodied cognition, which suggests that motor behavior is an integral part of cognitive processes, and that motor costs can affect our choices. In this registered report, we investigated whether varying motor costs can affect response dynamics and the final choices in an intertemporal choice task: choosing between a readily available small reward and a larger but delayed reward. Our study compared choices reported by moving a computer mouse cursor towards the preferred option with the choices executed via a more motor costly walking procedure. First, we investigated whether relative values of the intertemporal choice options affect walking trajectories in the same way as they affect mouse cursor dynamics. Second, we tested a hypothesis that, in the walking condition, increased motor costs of a preference reversal would decrease the number of changes-of-mind and therefore increase the proportion of impulsive, smaller-but-sooner choices. We confirmed the hypothesis that walking trajectories reflect covert dynamics of decision making, and rejected the hypothesis that increased motor costs of responding affect decisions in an intertemporal choice task. Overall, this study contributes to the empirical basis enabling the decision-making theories to address the complex interplay between cognitive and motor processes.
The decision paradoxes motivating Prospect Theory: The prevalence of the paradoxes increases with numerical ability
Authors: Millroth Philip , Nilsson Håkan , Juslin Peter 
Published: January 2023

AbstractProspect Theory (PT: Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) of risky decision making is based on psychological phenomena (paradoxes) that motivate assumptions about how people react to gains and losses, and how they weight outcomes with probabilities. Recent studies suggest that people’s numeracy affect their decision making. We therefore conducted a large-scale conceptual replication of the seminal study by Kahneman and Tversky (1979), where we targeted participants with larger variability in numeracy. Because people low in numeracy may be more dependent on anchors in the form of other judgments we also manipulated design type (within-subject design, vs. single-stimuli design, where participants assess only one problem). The results from about 1,800 participants showed that design type had no effect on the modal choices. The rate of replication of the paradoxes in Kahneman and Tversky was poor andpositivelyrelated to the participants’ numeracy. The Probabilistic Insurance Effect was observed at all levels of numeracy. The Reflection Effects were not fully replicated at any numeracy level. The Certainty and Isolation Effects explained by nonlinear probability weighting were replicated only at high numeracy. No participant exhibited all 9 paradoxes and more than 50% of the participants exhibited at most three of the 9 paradoxes. The choices by the participants with low numeracy were consistent with a shift towards a cautionary non-compensatory strategy of minimizing the risk of receiving the worst possible outcome. We discuss the implications for the psychological assumptions of PT.
Improved realism of confidence for an episodic memory event
Authors: Buratti Sandra , Martin Allwood Carl 
Published: January 2023

AbstractWe asked whether people can make their confidence judgments more realistic (accurate) by adjusting them, with the aim of improving the relationship between the level of confidence and the correctness of the answer. This adjustment can be considered to include a so-called second-order metacognitive judgment. The participants first gave confidence judgments about their answers to questions about a video clip they had just watched. Next, they attempted to increase their accuracy by identifying confidence judgments in need of adjustment and then modifying them. The participants managed to increase their metacognitive realism, thus decreasing their absolute bias and improving their calibration, although the effects were small. We also examined the relationship between confidence judgments that were adjusted and the retrieval fluency and the phenomenological memory quality participants experienced when first answering the questions; this quality was one of either Remember (associated with concrete, vivid details) or Know (associated with a feeling of familiarity). Confidence judgments associated with low retrieval fluency and the memory quality of knowing were modified more often. In brief, our results provide evidence that people can improve the realism of their confidence judgments, mainly by decreasing their confidence for incorrect answers. Thus, this study supports the conclusion that people can perform successful second-order metacognitive judgments.
A methodological approach to ratio bias
Authors: Passerini Gabriella , Macchi Laura , Bagassi Maria 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThe ratio-bias (RB) phenomenon is considered to provide systematic evidence of irrationality. When judging the probability of a low-probability event, many people judge it as less likely when it is expressed as a ratio of small numbers (e.g., 1-in-10) than when it is expressed as a ratio of large numbers (e.g., 10-in-100). Four experiments show that the phenomenon is increased by the experimental paradigm, which misleads subjects regarding the aim of the task by inducing equal-ratio neglect. One factor is constant across the texts of the Experiment 1–3: a particular sentence that induces subjects to neglect the equal ratio and invites them to express feelings about the outcome of the target event rather than giving a rational answer. This intent is strengthened by the formulation of the question (Experiment 1), which explicitly asks the subject to express thefeelingconnected to the lotteries and the absence of a third option (Experiment 1, 4), the right one, which expresses the “indifference” between the two options. In Experiment 4, the task lacks only the third option, and, simply by adding the option that allows subjects to express the correct answer, the RB disappears.
An item response theory and factor analytic examination of two prominent maximizing tendency scales
Authors: Weinhardt Justin M. , Morse Brendan J. , Chimeli Janna , Fisher Jamie 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThe current study examines the construct validity of the Maximization Scale (MS; Schwartz et al., 2002) and the Maximization Tendency Scale (MTS; Diab et al., 2008) as well as the nomological net of the maximizing construct. We find that both scales of maximizing suffer psychometrically, especially in their proposed dimensionality. Using confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory (IRT) we identify and remove three problematic items from the MTS and six problematic items from the MS. Additionally, we find that the MS appears to be measuring difficulty and restlessness with the search for the best alternative, whereas the MTS is more focused on the search for the best option, regardless of choice difficulty. We then examined these revised scales in relation to other psychological constructs in the nomological net for maximizing and found that maximizers may not be unhappy but are generally distressed in the decision-making context. Finally, we suggest that future maximizng research use revised form of the MTS that seems to us to be most consistent with the original concept of maximizing/satisficing.
Predecisional information distortion in physicians’ diagnostic judgments: Strengthening a leading hypothesis or weakening its competitor?
Authors: Nurek Martine , Kostopoulou Olga , Hagmayer York 
Published: January 2023

AbstractDecision makers have been found to bias their interpretation of incoming information to support an emerging judgment (predecisional information distortion). This is a robust finding in human judgment, and was recently also established and measured in physicians’ diagnostic judgments (Kostopoulou et al. 2012). The two studies reported here extend this work by addressing the constituent modes of distortion in physicians. Specifically, we studied whether and to what extent physicians distort information to strengthen their leading diagnosis and/or to weaken a competing diagnosis. We used the “stepwise evolution of preference” method with three clinical scenarios, and measured distortion on separate rating scales, one for each of the two competing diagnoses per scenario.In Study 1, distortion in an experimental group was measured against the responses of a separate control group. In Study 2, distortion in a new experimental group was measured against participants’ own, personal responses provided under control conditions, with the two response conditions separated by a month. The two studies produced consistent results. On average, we found considerable distortion of information to weaken the trailing diagnosis but little distortion to strengthen the leading diagnosis. We also found individual differences in the tendency to engage in either mode of distortion. Given that two recent studies found both modes of distortion in lay preference (Blanchard, Carlson & Meloy, 2014; DeKay, Miller, Schley & Erford, 2014), we suggest that predecisional information distortion is affected by participant and task characteristics. Our findings contribute to the growing research on the different modes of predecisional distortion and their stability to methodological variation.