Discounting by Probabilistic Waiting

In everyday life, many probabilistic situations may be characterized as probabilistic waiting. A gambler, for example, bets repeatedly at the racetrack, the casino, or the card table. The gambler may not win on the first try, but if a gamble is repeated enough times, a win is almost certain to occur eventually. If repeated gambles are structured as strings of losses ending in a win (probabilistic waiting) and the amount won is discounted by the delay caused by the series of losses, then strings with many losses will be discounted more than those with fewer losses, thereby causing subjective value of the series of gambles as a whole to increase. The current study used the opposite effect that amount has on the degree of delay and probability discounting as a marker to determine whether people evaluate situations involving probabilistic waiting as they evaluate situations involving delayed outcomes or as situations involving probabilistic outcomes. We find that the more likely a probabilistic waiting situation is to end in reward (e.g., a gamble is repeated indefinitely until reward is obtained), the more that situation conforms to delay discounting; the less likely a probabilistic waiting situation is to end in reward (e.g., a fixed, small number of gambles), the more that situation conforms to probability discounting. We argue that the former situation is applicable to pathological gambling, and that people with steep delay discount functions would therefore be more likely to have gambling problems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Willing,Wanting, Waiting

Book Information Culture and Equality. Culture and Equality Brian Barry, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001, xi + 399, US$19.95 (paper) By Brian Barry. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pp. xi + 399. US$19.95 (paper:),     

Self-Other Discrepancies in Waiting Time Decisions

Both anecdotal evidence and recently reported research suggest that people are risk-averse when faced with waiting time decisions. Four studies investigate whether there is a self-other discrepancy in how people make waiting time decisions themselves and how they predict others will make similar decisions. People are found to believe that others have valuations of time similar to their own. However, when faced with alternatives that involve risk in the duration of the wait, the results point to a self-other discrepancy, in that people report greater risk-aversion themselves than they think others would. Further, when faced with waiting time gains, people are themselves more risk-averse than they think others would be. Conversely, when faced with waiting time losses, people are themselves more risk-seeking than they think others would be. Overall, the results are consistent with the recently proposed risk-as-feelings hypothesis.     

Waiting Well: Tips for Navigating Painful Uncertainty

Waiting for uncertain news can be a source of anxiety and distraction. This paper explores the experience of waiting for news that is both uncertain and unchangeable and provides tips for waiting well under these circumstances. During difficult waiting periods people can mitigate anxiety, reduce disruptive rumination, and minimize later harm by (1) distracting themselves from their uncertainty, (2) managing their expectations, (3) looking for the silver lining in all outcomes, (4) keeping perspective regarding the news, and (5) planning ahead for the objective and psychological consequences of bad news.     

Extraversion and Arousal Procrastination: Waiting for the Kicks

Procrastination is a prevalent and complex psychological phenomenon that has been defined as the purposive delay in beginning or completing a task. Given the potential implications for a broad range of situations, including both academic performance and safety sensitive occupations, it seems reasonable and judicious to systematically examine this phenomenon. While there is growing interest in procrastination, our understanding of underlying explanatory factors remains quite limited. Eysenck’s (1967) theory of personality, and in particular his biologically-based theory of extraversion, could shed light on this phenomenon. The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationship between extraversion and arousal procrastination. In accordance with Eysenck’s theory that extraverts tend to seek external sources of arousal, it was hypothesized that they would be more likely than introverts to engage in arousal procrastination. Participants completed a series of counterbalanced questionnaires measuring extraversion and procrastination. Results indicated that extraversion significantly predicted the engagement in this type of procrastination. Limitations, implications, and future research are discussed.     

Territorial Defense in Parking Lots: Retaliation Against Waiting Drivers

Three studies showed that drivers leaving a public parking space are territorial even when such behavior is contrary to their goal of leaving. In Study 1 (observations of 200 departing cars), intruded-upon drivers took longer to leave than nonintruded-upon drivers. In Study 2, an experiment involving 240 drivers in which level of intrusion and status of intruder were manipulated, drivers took longer to leave when another car was present and when the intruder honked. Males left significantly sooner when intruded upon by a higher rather than lower status car, whereas females' departure times did not differ as a function of the status of the car. There was evidence that distraction might explain some of this effect. In Study 3, individuals who had parked at a mall were asked about how they would react to intruders. Compared to what they believed other people would do, respondents said they would leave faster if the car were just waiting for them to leave but they would take longer to leave if the driver in the car honked at them.     

An Extension of Osuna's Model for Stress Caused by Waiting

In an attempt to model the accumulation of stress caused by waiting, Osuna (1985) postulated that anxiety stems from a perceived harm or loss to the person's well being that he represented by an increasing function of the total time to service. This paper proposes an extension of this model to situations in which the psychological cost of waiting is not functionally related to time but merely correlated with it. It is shown that the properties of Osuna's model recently reexamined by Suck and Holling (1997) remain valid in this broader framework. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

Waiting for the bus: when base-rates refuse to be neglected

The paper reports the results from 16 versions of a simple probability estimation task, where probability estimates derived from base-rate information have to be modified by case knowledge. In the bus problem [adapted from Falk, R., Lipson, A., & Konold, C. (1994). The ups and downs of the hope function in a fruitless search. In G. Wright & P. Ayton (Eds.), Subjective probability (pp. 353-377). Chichester, UK: Wiley], a passenger waits for a bus that departs before schedule in 10% of the cases, and is more than 10 min delayed in another 10%. What are Fred's chances of catching the bus on a day when he arrives on time and waits for 10 min? Most respondents think his probability is 10%, or 90%, instead of 50%, which is the correct answer. The experiments demonstrate the difficulties people have in replacing the original three-category 1/8/1 partitioning with a normalized, binary partitioning, where the middle category is discarded. In contrast with typical studies of "base-rate neglect", or under-weighing of base-rates, this task demonstrates a reversed base-rate fallacy, where frequentistic information is overextended and case information ignored. Possible explanations for this robust phenomenon are briefly discussed.     

Consumer Perception and Evaluation of Waiting Time: A Field Experiment

We varied telephone waiting times for a commercial service in 2 different experiments. In the 1st experiment, the telephone rate was either 0 or fixed at Dfl 1 (approximately $0.40) per minute. Consumer perceptions of waiting times could be described best by a psychophysical power function. Furthermore, wait evaluations were mainly influenced by the difference between the consumers’ acceptable and perceived waiting times. The negative effect of perceived waiting time on wait evaluations was increased by the monetary costs of waiting. In the 2nd experiment, the waiting times were filled in different ways: with music, queuing information, and information about expected waiting time. Information about the expected waiting time significantly reduced the overestimation of waiting time, although it increased the negative effect of perceived waiting time on wait evaluations.