“Piensa” twice: On the foreign language effect in decision making

In this article, we assess to what extent decision making is affected by the language in which a given problem is presented (native vs. foreign). In particular, we aim to ask whether the impact of various heuristic biases in decision making is diminished when the problems are presented in a foreign language. To this end, we report four main studies in which more than 700 participants were tested on different types of individual decision making problems. In the first study, we replicated Keysar et al.’s (2012) recent observation regarding the foreign language effect on framing effects related to loss aversion. In the second section, we assessed whether the foreign language effect is present in other types of framing problems that involve psychological accounting biases rather than gain/loss dichotomies. In the third section, we studied the foreign language effect in several key aspects of the theory of decision making under risk and uncertainty. In the fourth study, we assessed the presence of a foreign language effect in the cognitive reflection test, a test that includes logical problems that do not carry emotional connotations. The absence of such an effect in this test suggests that foreign language leads to a reduction of heuristic biases in decision making across a range of decision making situations and provide also some evidence about the boundaries of the phenomenon. We explore several potential factors that may underlie the foreign language effect in decision making.     

Interpatch foraging in honeybees—rational decision making at secondary hubs based upon time and motivation

For honeybees, Apis mellifera, the hive has been well known to function as a primary decision-making hub, a place from which foragers decide among various directions, distances, and times of day to forage efficiently. Whether foraging honeybees can make similarly complex navigational decisions from locations away from the hive is unknown. To examine whether or not such secondary decision-making hubs exist, we trained bees to forage at four different locations. Specifically, we trained honeybees to first forage to a distal site “CT” 100?m away from the hive; if food was present, they fed and then chose to go home. If food was not present, the honeybees were trained to forage to three auxiliary sites, each at a different time of the day: A in the morning, B at noon, and C in the afternoon. The foragers learned to check site CT for food first and then efficiently depart to the correct location based upon the time of day if there was no food at site CT. Thus, the honeybees were able to cognitively map motivation, time, and five different locations (Hive, CT, A, B, and C) in two spatial dimensions; these are the contents of the cognitive map used by the honeybees here. While at site CT, we verified that the honeybees could choose between 4 different directions (to A, B, C, and the Hive) and thus label it as a secondary decision-making hub. The observed decision making uncovered here is inferred to constitute genuine logical operations, involving a branched structure, based upon the premises of motivational state, and spatiotemporal knowledge.     

Teaching a rational approach to career decision making: Who benefits most?

Who benefits most from rational decision-making training? Rational, intuitive, fatalistic, and dependent decision makers were compared on how much they learned from a rational decision-making training intervention. A Decision-Making Questionnaire was administered to 255 community college students to determine which style each used predominantly in three past career-related decisions. Subjects were randomly assigned to instruction in rational decision making or to a placebo intervention and later completed the Career Decision-Making Skills Assessment Exercise, a paper and pencil test on the application of rational decision-making principles. Individuals who had been highly impulsive, dependent, or fatalistic in prior course selections and those who exhibited dependency in prior job choices appeared to learn most from the rational training curriculum. Implications for when rational decision-making training should be prescribed are discussed.     

Gender and values: What is the impact on decision making?

In this study we investigated C. Gilligan's [(1982), In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press] suggestion that women and men, due to socialization, develop differently in terms of moral development [L. Kohlberg (1969), “Stage and Consequence: The Cognitive Development Approach to Socialization,” In D. G. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research, Chicago: Rand McNally]. We also considered whether men and women differ in terms of a related construct, values of equity and equality [K. A. Rasinski (1987), “What's Fair Is Fair or Is It? Value Differences Underlying Public Views About Social Justice,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 53, pp. 201–211]. It is our expectation that gender influences overall orientation in terms of the two sets of values, and that differences in values lead decision makers to weigh decision issues and to make final decisions differently. Results suggest that there are some gender-related differences in value systems, weights of decision issues, and final decisions.     

Jury decision making research: Are researchers focusing on the mouse and not the elephant in the room?

The concerns of jury research have extensively focused on subject selection, yet larger issues loom. We argue that observed differences between students and non-students in mock juror studies are inconsistent at best, and that researchers are ignoring the more important issue of jury deliberation. We contend that the lack of information on deliberating jurors and/or juries is a much greater threat to ecological validity and that some of our basic findings and conclusions in the literature today might be different if we had used juries, not non-deliberating jurors, as the unit of measure. Finally, we come full circle in our review and explore whether the debate about college and community samples might be more relevant to deliberating versus non-deliberating jurors.     

Group decision making in the planning team process: Myth or reality?

Based upon theories from organizational psychology, this study assessed the relationships among school staff role, participation, and satisfaction during planning Team meetings which decide special education placements and programming. A strong positive relationship was found between staff role and participation. Regular education teachers were lowest in participation and satisfaction whereas school psychologists were ranked the highest on both variables. Other staff roles did not necessarily show a one-to-one relationship between participation and satisfaction levels, yet within roles, the level of satisfaction increased with higher levels of participation. These findings were discussed in the context of interdisciplinary decision making and implementation of the placement team decision.     

When does duration matter in judgment and decision making?

Research on sequences of outcomes shows that people care about features of an experience, such as improvement or deterioration over time, and peak and end levels, which the discounted utility model (DU) assumes they do not care about. In contrast to the finding that some attributes are weighted more than DU predicts, Kahneman and coauthors have proposed that there is one feature of sequences that DU predicts people should care about but that people in fact ignore or underweight: duration. In this article, the authors extend this line of research by investigating the role of conversational norms (H. P. Grice, 1975), and scale-norming (D. Kahneman & T. D. Miller, 1986). The impact of these 2 factors are examined in 4 parallel studies that manipulate these factors orthogonally. The major finding is that response modes that reduce reliance on conversational norms or standard of comparison also increase the attention that participants pay to duration.     

Take the best or look at the rest? Factors influencing "one-reason" decision making

Aspects of an experimental environment were manipulated in 3 experiments to examine the parameters under which the "take-the-best" (TTB) heuristic (e.g., G. Gigerenzer & D. G. Goldstein, 1996) operates. Results indicated TTB use to be more prevalent when the cost of information was high, when validities of the cues were known, and when a deterministic environment was used. However, large individual variability in strategy use was observed as well as a significant proportion of behavior inconsistent with TTB, expecially its stopping rule. The results demarcate some of the heuristic's boundary conditions and also question the validity of TTB as a psychologically plausible and pervasive model of behavior.     

Rational or uncommitted? Depression and indecisiveness in interpersonal decision making

Two studies were run which tested the prediction that clinically depressed persons, known for difficulties in making a decision, would process predecisional information relevant to an interpersonal choice in a more impartial, less biased way than non-depressed persons. Both studies provided confirmation for this hypothesis. In each case, the depressed group focused less on specific alternatives, asked more criterion-based questions, and made decisions on the basis of information which was more evenly distributed over alternatives, thus conforming less to biasing, dominance structuring processes, than non-depressed participants. The depressed and non-depressed participants did not differ, however, in evaluative aspects of their decisions, suggesting a relative independence of affective and informational aspects of predecisional processes. The question arises: are depressed patients less biased and hence more rational when making decisions or are they just indifferent and uncommitted? The data have been discussed with reference to research on effortful versus automatic information processing in depression.     

Moral in whose eyes? Cross-cultural differences in moral decision making and behaviour

All people want to feel that they are morally adequate. People tend to evaluate their moral adequacy by judging their behaviour through their own eyes (first-person perspective) or the eyes of others (third-person perspective). People in all cultures use both perspectives, but there may be cultural variations in which perspective takes precedence. By conducting two studies, we explore the way people in face cultures are more likely to secure their moral self-regard through the eyes of others (vs. their own eyes), whereas the opposite is true in case of people from dignity cultures. Study 1 found that people from face culture (Korean participants) cheated to a lesser extent when others were invoked (vs. not invoked), but people from dignity culture (American participants) were not affected by this priming. Study 2 found that moral intentions were more strongly influenced by what participants perceived others to do in moral situations in face (vs. dignity) cultures. In contrast, moral intentions were found to be more strongly influenced by what they believed they should do in moral situations in dignity (vs. face) cultures.     

Anchor effects in decision making can be reduced by the interaction between goal monitoring and the level of the decision maker’s executive functions

Models of decision making postulate that interactions between contextual conditions and characteristics of the decision maker determine decision-making performance. We tested this assumption by using a possible positive contextual influence (goals) and a possible negative contextual influence (anchor) in a risky decision-making task (Game of Dice Task, GDT). In this task, making advantageous choices is well known to be closely related to a specific decision maker variable: the individual level of executive functions. One hundred subjects played the GDT in one of four conditions: with self-set goal for final balance (n?=?25), with presentation of an anchor (a fictitious Top 10 list, showing high gains of other participants; n?=?25), with anchor and goal definition (n?=?25), and with neither anchor nor goal setting (n?=?25). Subjects in the conditions with anchor made more risky decisions irrespective of the negative feedback, but this anchor effect was influenced by goal monitoring and moderated by the level of the subjects' executive functions. The findings imply that impacts of situational influences on decision making as they frequently occur in real life depend upon the individual's cognitive abilities. Anchor effects can be overcome by subjects with good cognitive abilities.     

Knowledge about the distribution of information and group decision making: When and why does it work?

Research has shown that decision-making groups with distributed information perform better when group members know which member is knowledgeable about what. Thus far research has been unable to identify the process responsible for this effect. In the present study, we propose that group members’ task representations mediate the effect of knowledge about the distribution of information on decision performance. Building on this proposition, we also propose that reflection about the task moderates the effect of knowledge about distributed information through its effect on task representations. These hypotheses were put to the test in an experimental study of decision-making groups (N = 125). As predicted, knowledge of distributed information interacted with reflection to affect decision quality. Findings confirmed the proposed mediating role of task representations and information elaboration.     

Children’s decision making: the effects of training,reinforcement, and memory aids

Previous research on children’s decision making [Cogn. Dev. 6 (1991a) 77] has found that, unlike older children and adults, young children are frequently unable to eliminate an alternative as soon as it is clear that it is unsuitable. More precisely, young children have difficulty ignoring irrelevant information and attending to relevant information when examining alternatives. The present study explored whether children’s tendency to ignore relevant information is due to the saliency of that information, the child’s lack of motivation, or memory limitations of the child. To test these hypotheses, 197 second and fifth graders were divided into four groups: a training group designed to overcome saliency concerns, a reinforcement group designed to overcome motivation problems, a marking group designed to overcome memory limitations, and a control group. Children in the training and reinforcement groups examined less irrelevant information than did children in the control group; however, marking unsuitable alternatives did not improve children’s performance. This left the role of memory unclear. Additionally, verbal skill level was related to the number of irrelevant items examined for all children, but accounted for a minimal amount of variance.     

Deference in Indians' decision making: introjected goals or injunctive norms?

We examine the claim that Indians are more likely than Americans to act deferentially in the presence of authority figures and explore 2 possible psychological mechanisms for this cultural difference: introjected goals and injunctive norms. Studies 1 and 2 showed that after reflecting upon an authority's expectations, Indians were more likely than Americans to make clothing and course choices consistent with the authority's expectations, but there was no such cultural difference for peers' expectations. Study 3 showed that merely activating the concept of authority figures, without highlighting specific expectations, was sufficient to influence Indians' choices but not their evaluations. Examining a more basic distinction underlying introjected goals versus injunctive norms, Study 4 showed that authority primes influenced Indians' sense of what they should do but not what they want to do. Study 5 showed that, inconsistent with the internalized goal mechanism, the effect of explicit authority primes did not increase after brief delays. However, Indian participants who were less likely to accommodate to the salient authority experienced more guilt across delay conditions, which supported the injunctive norms mechanism. The findings suggest that manipulating injunctive norms can be an effective means for inducing or eliminating deferential behaviors in Indian settings.     

Computational models of the “active self” and its disturbances in schizophrenia

The notion that self-disorders are at the root of the emergence of schizophrenia rather than a symptom of the disease, is getting more traction in the cognitive sciences. This is in line with philosophical approaches that consider an enactive self, constituted through action and interaction with the environment. We thereby analyze different definitions of the self and evaluate various computational theories lending to these ideas. Bayesian and predictive processing are promising approaches for computational modeling of the “active self”. We evaluate their implementation and challenges in computational psychiatry and cognitive developmental robotics. We describe how and why embodied robotic systems provide a valuable tool in psychiatry to assess, validate, and simulate mechanisms of self-disorders. Specifically, mechanisms involving sensorimotor learning, prediction, and self-other distinction, can be assessed with artificial agents. This link can provide essential insights to the formation of the self and new avenues in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.     

Emotional regulation of fertility decision making: What is the nature and structure of "baby fever"?

Baby fever-a visceral physical and emotional desire to have a baby-is well known in popular culture, but has not been empirically studied in psychology. Different theoretical perspectives suggest that desire for a baby is either superfluous to biological sex drives and maternal instincts, a sociocultural phenomenon unrelated to biological or evolutionary forces, or an evolved adpatation for regulating birth timing, proceptive behavior, and life history trajectories. A series of studies (involving 337 undergraduate participants and 853 participants from a general population Internet sample) found that: (a) a simple scale measure could elicit ratings of desire frequency; (b) these ratings exhibited significant sex differences; (c) this sex difference was distinct from a general desire for sexual activity; and (d) these findings generalize to a more diverse online population. Factor analyses of ratings for desire elicitors/inhibitors identified three primary factors underlying baby fever. Baby fever appears to be a real phenomenon, with an underlying multifactorial structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).