The Effect of Decision Strategy on Deciding to Defer Choice

Recent research has examined consumer decision making when the option of not choosing any of the alternatives is also provided. The findings from this research suggest that the decision to defer choice is sensitive to the uncertainty of choosing the most preferred option from the set of alternatives provided. Building on this research, the author tests whether the decision to defer choice is also influenced by task variables that influence decision uncertainty. In the first experiment, this proposition is tested for choice problems in which information on three relatively equally attractive alternatives is presented either sequentially or simultaneously. As predicted, the preference for the defer-choice option was greater when the three alternatives were presented simultaneously. A second study forced subjects into using one of four decision strategies in order to choose between two non-dominated alternatives. The preference for the no-choice option was found to be higher when the rule required explicit attribute tradeoffs and lower when it simplified choice. These results suggest that choice uncertainty is influenced by the decision strategy used to determine the preference among alternatives. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the results for marketers' communication strategies.     

Modulation of the leniency bias in the discursive dilemma

We experimentally approach the discursive dilemma to gain insight into people's procedural appropriateness judgments. We relied on a vignette in which three people had formed opinions about two skills (premises) of a candidate to decide whether to hire her/him (conclusion). The dilemma arises when different outcomes (hire vs. not hire) are achieved depending on whether the majority opinion is independently considered for each premise or for the global conclusion of each judge. Participants were asked to choose the procedure they thought to be more appropriate to reach a decision. In Experiment 1, we found a leniency effect (a bias to prefer the aggregation procedure that led to hiring the candidate), which was reduced by introducing the participant as a juror with an exogenously provided negative opinion about the candidate's skills. In Experiment 2, we replicated the opinion effect, even when subjects did not participate as jury members. In Experiment 3, we found that the leniency bias was only reduced when participants' negative opinion was aligned with a majority of negative premises, but not with a majority of negative conclusions. We discuss present findings in terms of the identification of empirical regularities that may affect people's procedural legitimacy judgments.     

个体自信度对双人决策的影响

群体决策是重要的社会现象, 个体自信度在群体决策中发挥了重要作用。本文开展了不同难度和信息交流方式下的双人决策实验, 通过分析自信度和个体决策以及决策调整行为的关系, 研究了个体自信度的交流对双人决策的影响。实验结果表明, 个体的自信度与选择的正确率高度正相关; 双人决策过程是个体根据对方的自信度和选择来不断调整自己的选择最终达成一致的过程, 并通过交互过程提高双人决策的正确率; 实验中双人决策的质量明显优于“自信度分享模型”和“更自信者主导决策模型”的预期结果, 表明群体决策不是通过分享自信度进行的贝叶斯优化整合过程, 也不是由更自信的个体完全主导的过程。     

得失不对称：跨期选择中自我-他人决策差异

采用跨期选择任务范式,考察得失情境下自我–他人决策差异。结果发现：（1）为自己决策比为他人决策更偏好于选择即刻选项;（2）损失情境比获益情境下更偏好于选择即刻选项;（3）获益情境下为自己决策与为他人决策在选择即刻选项上不存在显著差异,而损失情境下为自己决策比为他人决策更偏好于选择即刻选项,表明得失情境下自我–他人决策差异存在不对称性。     

Has the World Changed? My Neighbor Might Know: Effects of Social Context on Routine Deviation

Routines help individuals save decision effort and protect them from overreacting to volatile environments. Yet routines become dysfunctional if the environment changes fundamentally. Whether the environment has truly changed is often not easy to tell. We experimentally study adaptation to a change in a previously stable environment. Participants have to choose between one of the four decks of cards. Each deck represents a lottery, with a distribution of gains and losses initially unknown to participants. In the learning phase of the experiment, participants acquire the routine to choose the most attractive deck. Unbeknownst to participants, after an interruption, the lotteries represented by the competing decks are changed. We study how participants react to this change. We manipulate whether participants have access to choices by a confederate who most of the time makes the normative choice. In baseline condition, they never do. In the treatments, access is provided either during the learning phase, during the test phase, or during both phases. Participants are most likely to realize that the world has changed if they had access to the confederate's choices in both phases. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The lure of choice

We report three studies demonstrating the ‘lure of choice’ people prefer options that allow them to take further choices over those that do not, even when the extra choices cannot improve the ultimate outcome. In Studies 1 and 2, participants chose between two options: one solitary item, and a pair of items between which they would then make a further choice. Consistent with the lure of choice, a given item was more likely to be the ultimate choice when it was initially part of a choice pair than when it was offered on its own. We also demonstrate the lure of choice in a four‐door version of the Monty Hall problem, in which participants could either stick with their original choice or switch to one of two unopened doors. Participants were more likely to switch if they could first ‘choose to choose’ between the two unopened doors (without immediately specifying which) than if they had to choose one door straightaway. We conclude by suggesting that the lure of choice is due to a choice heuristic that is very reliable in the natural world, but much less so in a world created by marketers. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eye Movements in Risky Choice

We asked participants to make simple risky choices while we recorded their eye movements. We built a complete statistical model of the eye movements and found very little systematic variation in eye movements over the time course of a choice or across the different choices. The only exceptions were finding more (of the same) eye movements when choice options were similar, and an emerging gaze bias in which people looked more at the gamble they ultimately chose. These findings are inconsistent with prospect theory, the priority heuristic, or decision field theory. However, the eye movements made during a choice have a large relationship with the final choice, and this is mostly independent from the contribution of the actual attribute values in the choice options. That is, eye movements tell us not just about the processing of attribute values but also are independently associated with choice. The pattern is simple—people choose the gamble they look at more often, independently of the actual numbers they see—and this pattern is simpler than predicted by decision field theory, decision by sampling, and the parallel constraint satisfaction model. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

当局者迷,旁观者清?自我-他人决策的理性差异及其机制

生活充满抉择,由于知识经验的局限,人们常需寻求他人建议,抑或直接请他人代己决策.诸多研究探讨了自我决策、向他人建议,以及代他人决策之间的差异.探究这种差异的动因之一在于考察何种条件下的决策更优或更“理性”.以往研究表明,自我决策或他人决策(向他人建议或代他人决策)均有可能更易违背理性决策原则,隐含着他人决策优于自我决策的“当局者迷,旁观者清”这一传统智慧有一定的边界条件.研究者一般从认知(建构水平理论)、情绪(类型和卷入度),以及动机(调节聚焦理论)三种视角对自我-他人决策差异进行解释.本文作者提出基于理由的决策(reason-based account)假设来解释自我-他人决策在理性程度上的差异.未来研究可从决策过程及脑机制上深入考察自我-他人决策差异及其机制.     

Bridging the gap between joint and individual decisions: Deconstructing preferences in relationships

Most choice research has studied how people make decisions within a narrowly defined choice context and has not paid sufficient attention to the role of social context. We commend Simpson, Griskevicius, and Rothman for directing the attention of choice researchers to the study of joint decision making and current theories on relationships. Building on SGR, we propose that a relationship partner's influence varies with the type of decision at hand and with situational factors. We propose four possible types of decision episodes, defined by whether the decision stage and the consumption stage each occur singly or jointly, and explore how the decision type impacts the extent to which a decision maker will take a partner's preferences into account. We further discuss how situational factors, such as the environment in which the decision is made, as well as the mindset and cognitive resources of the decision maker, are likely to influence decision outcomes.     

Test of a Level of Aspiration model of group decision making: Non-obvious group preference reversal due to an irrelevant alternative

We conducted two experiments that investigated a non-obvious prediction of a Level of Aspiration (LOA) model of group decision making. In both experiments, groups chose among three alternatives, A, B, and C, with C always being least preferred by all of the group members. In each experiment, by manipulating the nature of alternative C, we created two conditions differing in whether only A or only B was acceptable to all members. In support of the LOA model, groups tended to choose the alternative acceptable to all members, even when (Experiment 2) a majority of members most preferred a different alternative. Implications of the results for the LOA model are discussed in the context of social choice theory.     

Between a rock and a hard place: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Individuals are frequently forced to make decisions from among undesirable choice-sets. Raise taxes or cut social services? Lay off workers or go bankrupt? Go deep in debt or forgo a college education? The research presented here suggests that in such situations, decision-makers are often evaluated negatively regardless of the choice they make. In Experiment 1, participants read about a judge deciding which of two seemingly unfit parents to award sole custody in a real-life divorce case. In Experiment 2, participants were led to believe that their partner in the experiment was forced to pick one of two unpleasant tasks for the participant to perform. In both cases, the decision and decision-maker were evaluated negatively regardless of the alternative chosen–and regardless of the fact that they were the only options in the choice-set. Discussion focuses on the source, scope, and consequences of this phenomenon.     

Ostracism Reduces Reliance on Poor Advice from Others during Decision Making

Decision making is rarely context‐free, and often, both social information and non‐social information are weighed into one's decisions. Incorporating information into a decision can be influenced by previous experiences. Ostracism has extensive effects, including taxing cognitive resources and increasing social monitoring. In decision making situations, individuals are often faced with both objective and social information and must choose which information to include or filter out. How will ostracism affect the reliance on objective and social information during decision making? Participants (N = 245) in Experiment 1 were randomly assigned to be included or ostracized in a standardized, group task. They then performed a dynamic decision making task that involved the presentation of either non‐social (i.e. biased reward feedback) or social (i.e., poor advice from a previous participant) misleading information. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 105) completed either the ostracism non‐social condition or social misleading information condition with explicit instructions stating that the advice given was from an individual who did not partake in the group task. Ostracized individuals relied more on non‐social misleading information and performed worse than included individuals. However, ostracized individuals discounted misleading social information and outperformed included individuals. Results of Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1. Across two experiments, ostracized individuals were more critical of advice from others, both individuals who may have ostracized them and unrelated individuals. In other words, compared with included individuals, ostracized individuals underweighted advice from another individual but overweighed non‐social information during decision making. We conclude that when deceptive objective information is present, ostracism results in disadvantageous decision making. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The decoy effect as a covert influence tactic

The purpose of this research was to determine whether individuals could use the decoy effect to influence others' choices. In study 1, undergraduates (n = 50) and executive master's of business administration (EMBA) students (n = 24) read an employee selection scenario in which they were randomly assigned to prefer one of two candidates that were equal in overall attractiveness, but that had different strengths and weaknesses. They were then asked to choose one of three inferior candidates to add to the choice set that would make their preferred candidate more likely to be chosen by other decision makers. The “correct” inferior candidate was asymmetrically dominated—dominated by one of the two existing candidates, but not the other. Participants chose the “correct” decoy candidate at better than chance levels. In study 2, undergraduates and EMBA students (total n = 66) completed a set of four decision tasks, in which they were asked to choose from potential decoy alternatives that would highlight their preferred job candidate or the product they preferred to sell to a customer. Participants again chose the correct option at better than chance levels. When participants provided free‐response reasons for their choices, these responses indicated a fairly strong recognition of the influential nature of creating a dominating relationship. Implications for understanding this effect and how it may be used by hiring managers, sales personnel, and others who attempt to influence others people's decisions at work, are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

决策中的延迟选择行为

延迟选择(choice deferral)指个体在应该作出选择的时候却决定不作选择,包括推迟选择(如选择延迟选项)或拒绝在可选项中选择一个选项。本文首先探讨了影响延迟选择行为的认知因素和情绪因素;随后讨论了当在决策情景中引入延迟选项时,延迟选项对决策者随后情绪体验和决策行为的影响;最后对未来研究进行了展望。     

Regret in Decision Making

Decision research has only recently started to take seriously the role of emotions in choices and decisions. Regret is the emotion that has received the most attention. In this article, we sample a number of the initial regret studies from psychology and economics, and trace some of the complexities and contradictions to which they led. We then sketch a new theory, decision justification theory (DJT), which synthesizes several apparently conflicting findings. DJT postulates two core components of decision–related regret, one associated with the (comparative) evaluation of the outcome, the other with the feeling of self–blame for having made a poor choice. We reinterpret several existing studies in DJT terms. We then report some new studies that directly tested (and support) DJT, and propose a number of research issues that follow from this new approach to regret.     

The Consumption Consequences of Couples Pooling Finances

When couples decide to share their lives, they must also decide how to pool their finances. In this article, we ask: Does the type of bank account from which one spends (joint vs. separate) affect the type of products one chooses to buy (utilitarian vs. hedonic)? Real‐world evidence from analyzing bank transaction records (study 5), as well as data collected from experiments in the field (studies 1 and 2) and lab (studies 3 and 4), converge to support the hypothesis that couple members who spend from a joint bank account are more likely to choose utilitarian (vs. hedonic) products, than those who spend from a separate bank account. We find that these different spending patterns are driven by an increased need to justify spending to one's partner that is experienced when money is pooled together. If a hedonic product becomes easier to justify (study 4), the effect of account type on spending patterns disappears. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for better understanding financial decision‐making within romantic couples.     

Religion and Decisions About Marriage,Residence, Occupation,and Children

Using data from the first wave of the Portraits of American Life Study (PALS), we consider the extent to which people report that religious factors influence their decisions about career choice, marriage, residency, and number of children. We find significant positive relationships between the importance of religion or religious faith and the perceived influence of religious factors on one's choice of occupation, decision about whether or whom to marry, decision about where to live, and decision about how many children to have. We also observe significant interactions between the importance of religion or religious faith and religious tradition, but we find no consistent patterns across our decision‐making outcomes. Our preliminary conclusions raise significant questions about the broader relationship between religion, perception, and decision making.     

Thinking about decisions: An integrative approach of person and task factors

Decisions vary. They may vary in both content and complexity. People also vary. An important way that people vary is how much they think. Some prior research investigating thinking and decision making largely conflicts with most traditional decision theories. For example, if considering an array of products to choose from, thinking more about the alternative's attributes should lead to a better decision. However, some research indicates that thinking more may also lead to focusing on irrelevant aspects of the decision and a less optimal outcome. We propose that this conflict in the literature exists because of a failure to consider the interaction between the individual and the decision task. To test this, we used separate methodologies that enhance or attenuate a person's thinking. In Study 1, we selected people who were especially high or low in need for cognition and had them complete a robust decision-making inventory, which included both complex and simple tasks. In Study 2, we manipulated participant's level of glucose, which acts as the brain's fuel to enhance or attenuate thinking ability. Both studies provide insight for understanding our central tenant that more thought leads to better decisions in complex tasks but does not influence simple decisions. These findings show how the individual's thinking can interact with the constructive elements of the task to shape decision choice.     

The Value of Task Conflict to Group Decisions

We tested the ability of task conflict to improve the quality of decisions made by four‐person groups. In a choice between two entrepreneurial investments, conflict was created by endowing group members with a preference for either one investment or the other. Because the decision was subjective, decision quality was necessarily judged by a process criterion, the reduction in the biased evaluation of new information to support the leading alternative. Groups in which conflict was installed exhibited less bias than individuals, who themselves exhibited less bias than groups without such conflict. Regardless of whether conflict was installed, groups that reached an early consensus exhibited the greatest information bias, while groups that experienced sustained conflict exhibited the least. Before achieving consensus, information bias was not significantly different from zero, but then rose steadily after that agreement. This result identifies one specific mechanism by which conflict can improve the process of group decisions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.