Binary choice under instructions to select versus reject

Two experiments examine differences in binary choice under select versus reject instructions. Three aspects of the choice process are examined: commitment to the chosen alternative, absolute magnitude of attribute evaluations, and information distortion during the choice process. Although the findings support previously hypothesized causes (Study 1), these results are reversed when the decision alternatives are uniformly negative (Study 2a). Accompanying verbal protocols (Study 2b) provide additional insights into the underlying decision process. The results consistently support a compatibility effect. Whenever there is a match between the valences of the alternatives and of the decision strategy, namely selecting a positive alternative or rejecting a negative one, there is greater accentuation of attribute differences, higher certainty in the final choice, and more information distortion. Metaphorically, the choice process seems to flow more smoothly in the compatible conditions.     

Which is the compromise option? Information format and task format as determinants

When consumers must make a decision but are uncertain of their preferences, they often select a compromise choice. Early studies emphasized the relational properties of choice alternatives and indicated that the middle option, whose attribute values fall between the values of other alternatives, is always the compromise option. More recent studies have suggested that when consumers rate two attributes with the same metrics, the attribute–balance choice whose two attributes have equal ratings, might represent the compromise choice. We propose that the different characteristics of the middle and attribute–balance options—which may be compatible with certain determinants such as information and task formats—might be more salient and affect the relative attractiveness of each option. The results of three experiments confirmed this prediction: the middle option was more attractive in list‐by‐attributes and rejecting conditions, whereas the attribute–balance option was more attractive in list‐by‐alternatives and choosing conditions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hindsight Bias and Inferences in Choice: The Mediating Effect of Cognitive Effort

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether inferences about missing attribute information made in a choice context are susceptible to hindsight bias and, more importantly, whether an increase in the amount of cognitive effort expended during the choice process diminishes the hindsight bias effect. The results of two experiments confirm our expectation that the strength of the hindsight bias effect is related to the extent of processing during choice. Hindsight bias is weakest when the subjects work hardest, that is, when the attractiveness of the partially described option is uncertain, when the attribute with missing information is most important, and when the importance of the attribute with missing information is ambiguous.     

Holistic Information Integration in Child Decision Making

Weighted‐additive (WADD) strategies require decision makers to integrate multiple values weighted by their relevance. From what age can children make choices in line with such a WADD‐strategy? We compare multi‐attribute decisions of children (6–7; 8–10; 11–12‐year‐olds) with adults in an open information‐board environment without pre‐decisional information search. In two experiments, we classify decision strategies based on individual choice patterns and find that in all age groups the majority of participants are users of a WADD‐strategy. Simple decision heuristics such as lexicographic strategies were applied rarely by children and not at all by adults. In two additional follow‐up studies, we further investigate the underlying process of WADD‐application by analysing decision latencies in combination with a retrospective think‐aloud study. Results suggest that children did not apply WADD‐strategies in a deliberate fashion in our experiments. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the ability to make good and quick decisions by holistically integrating information is already present in young children. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other: Expanding and Contracting Numerical Dimensions Produces Preference Reversals

ABSTRACT— The scales used to describe the attributes of different choice options are usually open to alternative expressions, such as inches versus feet or minutes versus hours. More generally, a ratio scale can be multiplied by an arbitrary factor (e.g., 12) while preserving all of the information it conveys about different choice alternatives. We propose that expanded scales (e.g., price per year) lead decision makers to discriminate between choice options more than do contracted scales (e.g., price per month) because they exaggerate the difference between options on the expanded attribute. Two studies show that simply increasing the size of an attribute's scale systematically changes its weight in both multiattribute preferences and willingness to pay: Expanding scales for one attribute shifts preferences to alternatives favored on that attribute.     

Stating Preference for the Ethereal but Choosing the Concrete: How the Tangibility of Attributes Affects Attribute Weighting in Value Elicitation and Choice

Marketers routinely make use of stated consumer preferences and the relative attribute‐importance weights implied by these preferences when making decisions on issues such as advertising messages and product design. Using this information as a basis for managerial decision making is risky, though, if stated preferences diverge from actual choices. Practical evidence that such a divergence is of concern is provided by the current trend toward the use of stated choice‐based conjoint analysis. This article examines differences between the attribute‐importance weights consumers use during value elicitation and the attribute weights revealed to influence actual choice. The results of an empirical analysis of automobile stated preference and purchase decisions, and an experiment and subsequent qualitative analysis of wine choice, converge to suggest that consumers’ attribute weightings differ in value elicitation versus choice in a reliable manner. Specifically, we demonstrate a tangibility effect—the tendency for tangible attributes to be weighted relatively more heavily than intangible attributes in choice as compared to in value elicitation. The process underlying the tangibility effect is discussed, as are the implications for researchers and managers.     

Reliance on Numerical Precision: Compatibility between Accuracy versus Efficiency Goals and Numerical Precision Level Influence Attribute Weighting in Two‐Stage Decisions

This research examines how the weighting of an attribute is jointly affected by attribute precision and decision stage. Building on prior work suggesting (a) that less (more) precise numerical values are easier to process (more accurate), (b) that decision‐makers' motivation to be efficient (accurate) is greater when creating a consideration set (making a final choice), and (c) that decision‐makers tend to overweight information that is compatible with their goals, we hypothesize that when creating a consideration set (making a choice) participants tend to assign greater weight to less (more) precise attributes. Five studies (two of them reported in the Appendix S1) offer triangulating evidence for these predictions. Overall, this work contributes to research on numerical cognition, efficiency versus accuracy trade‐offs, attribute weighting, and two‐stage decisions.     

Choice by value encoding and value construction: processes of loss aversion

Loss aversion and reference dependence are 2 keystones of behavioral theories of choice, but little is known about their underlying cognitive processes. We suggest an additional account for loss aversion that supplements the current account of the value encoding of attributes as gains or losses relative to a reference point, introducing a value construction account. Value construction suggests that loss aversion results from biased evaluations during information search and comparison processes. We develop hypotheses that identify the influence of both accounts and examine process-tracing data for evidence. Our data suggest that loss aversion is the result of the initial direct encoding of losses that leads to the subsequent process of directional comparisons distorting attribute valuations and the final choice.     

Induction from a single instance: formation of a novel category

This study examines whether preschoolers can use information from a known category to induce a characteristic attribute of a novel, contrasting category based on a single instance. We showed 32 four-year-olds three instances of a Given Category and one instance of a Target Category. These objects could vary along two attribute dimensions, such as color and shape. All instances of the Given Category shared identical values of one attribute (e.g., all were blue), but could have different values of the other attribute (e.g., a circle, a square, and a triangle). The single instance of the Target Category was different from the Given on both attribute dimensions (e.g., a red diamond). Children gave yes/no judgements as to whether additional objects were instances of the Target Category. There were two possible sources of information about the relevance of an attribute to classification: explicit (labeling) and implicit (variation in the Given Category). There were four conditions such that each source of information was either available or not. Both types of information were effective in eliciting inductions of the relevant kind of attribute and the characteristic value of this attribute in the novel category (explicit: p = .0004; implicit: p = .031). This suggests that children use an inductive bias that the instances of two related but distinct categories tend to be alike in the same way.     

On self-referencing differences in judgment and choice

Compared to judgment, choice is argued to elicit more self-referent processing and thereby produce greater subsequent recall of evaluated information. This response mode effect is shown to be dependent upon sufficient visualization to overcome the use of heuristic processing during choice. When visualizing prior to the task, choice leads to increased thinking about personal consumption occasions relative to judgment, leading to enhanced recall of vivid (vs. non-vivid) attributes. This proposed interaction of task and visualization was found in two experiments that assessed incidental recall following a choice or judgment task. In experiment 1, participants recalled more vivid product attribute information after choosing between options than after rating each option separately, but only when instructed to visualize during evaluation. To eliminate a comparison-based explanation of this effect, a second experiment was conducted that presented only one option in each category. Participants who evaluated their intention to purchase the option (a judgment equivalent of choice) demonstrated greater recall of vivid product attribute information than did participants who rated their liking for the option, and this recall difference was again moderated by instructions to visualize.     

Combining computer adaptive testing technology with cognitively diagnostic assessment

A major advantage of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is that it allows the test to home in on an examinee's ability level in an interactive manner. The aim of the new area of cognitive diagnosis is to provide information about specific content areas in which an examinee needs help. The goal of this study was to combine the benefit of specific feedback from cognitively diagnostic assessment with the advantages of CAT. In this study, three approaches to combining these were investigated: (1) item selection based on the traditional ability level estimate (theta), (2) item selection based on the attribute mastery feedback provided by cognitively diagnostic assessment (alpha), and (3) item selection based on both the traditional ability level estimate (theta) and the attribute mastery feedback provided by cognitively diagnostic assessment (alpha). The results from these three approaches were compared for theta estimation accuracy, attribute mastery estimation accuracy, and item exposure control. The theta- and alpha-based condition outperformed the alpha-based condition regarding theta estimation, attribute mastery pattern estimation, and item exposure control. Both the theta-based condition and the theta- and alpha-based condition performed similarly with regard to theta estimation, attribute mastery estimation, and item exposure control, but the theta- and alpha-based condition has an additional advantage in that it uses the shadow test method, which allows the administrator to incorporate additional constraints in the item selection process, such as content balancing, item type constraints, and so forth, and also to select items on the basis of both the current theta and alpha estimates, which can be built on top of existing 3PL testing programs.     

Response Mode Bias in the Formation of Preference: Boundary Conditions of the Prominence Effect

Prior research has discovered that the most prominent attribute has greater influence on the formation of preference in choice versus matching tasks. We extend the research on this phenomenon, which is known as the prominence effect (Tversky, Sattath, & Slovic, 1988), by examining its generalizability and by providing insight into the psychological processes involved. The effects of task characteristics (i.e., the number of attributes and alternatives) and the effects of subject characteristics (i.e., processing goal) on the prominence effect were examined. In the first experiment we found that the prominence effect reverses when the number of attributes increases from two to four. That is, the prominent attribute is given greater weight in matching tasks rather than in choice tasks. A second experiment demonstrated that processing goal does influence the robustness of the prominence effect. We found that the influence of the prominent attribute on the formation of preference did not differ in choice and matching tasks when subjects′ processing goal was to form an overall impression of each of the alternatives. A third experiment, which explored the interaction between the response mode and processing goal in the four attribute case replicated this finding. Findings from Experiment 1 were also extended so that the reverse prominence effect was found when subjects processing goal was to memorize the information. Implications of these results are discussed.     

The effect of “irrelevant” variables on decision making: Criterion shifts in preferential choice?

In decision research, it is widely assumed that decision makers have subjective experiences which indicate definitively, albeit with random fluctuations, whether or not one alternative is preferable to another. Further, it is assumed that subjects' choices reflect this underlying preference order. It follows from this position, as a logical consequence rather than an empirical observation, that if a manipulation affects people's choices, it does so by changing the way people subjectively experience the alternatives (presumably via people's encoding or combination of attribute information). In psychophysics, an analogous theoretical position has been relinquished. Specifically, it is no longer believed that observers in a detection experiment have subjective experiences which indicate definitively, albeit with error, whether a signal has been perceived. Rather, according to signal detection theory, the observer's sensory experience can be portrayed as a quantifiable sensation that must be converted into an overt report of “signal present” or “signal absent” by comparing the sensation with a criterion. In this paper, we describe two models of preferential choice, the lexicographic criterion model and a probabilistic criterion model, that replace the notion of definitive preference with an analogue of signal detection theory. In the models, the decision maker is represented as having quantifiable inclinations, rather than definitive preferences, that must be converted into an overt choice by comparing the inclinations with a criterion. By attributing the effects of experimental manipulations to shifts in the criterion, rather than to changes in people's inclinations, the model offers a testable alternative to the proposition that altered choices imply altered preferences.     

The experimenter module of the DSMAC (Dynamic Sequential MultiAttribute Choice) interface

The DSMAC (Dynamic Sequential MultiAttribute Choice) interface is a process-tracing methodology that permits a researcher to investigate subjects’ behaviors in an optional-stopping task. In such an environment, an individual decides after each piece of acquired information whether to make a choice between a pair of competing alternatives or to acquire additional information. DSMAC consists of two modules-an experimenter and a subject interface. The former allows the researcher to specify all of the relevant experimental parameters for a particular study, which is subsequently used as input by the latter. The bimodular nature of DSMAC significantly reduces the set-up time required for constructing novel stimuli for new experiments. DSMAC runs on a Macintosh computer. It is compatible with most Mactintosh models that use a system 7.0 (or higher) operating system. The source code was written in ThinkPascal 4.0.1.     

The Impact of Asymmetric Partial Feedback on Response‐Bias

For many decisions we make, we are more likely to receive feedback about some outcomes than about others, and thus we must operate under conditions of asymmetric partial feedback. In this paper, we examine the effects of asymmetric partial feedback on decision making across three experiments. Experiment 1 examines the effects of four partial feedback schedules on decision making in a single‐attribute auditory detection task. Experiment 2 examines these same schedules in the context of a simulated experiment in which virtual participants perform a multi‐attribute choice task. Experiment 3 then examines effects of one partial feedback schedule representative of a real‐world decision‐making domain (personnel selection) using an ecologically informed multi‐attribute choice task. All three experiments reveal that asymmetric partial feedback primarily impacts on response‐bias, a parameter of signal detection theory. These findings can be explained in terms of decision makers' attempts to maximize accuracy and the fact that shifts in response‐bias will, under partial feedback, produce misleading impressions of greater accuracy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modulation of motor area activity during observation of unnatural body movements

We investigated the processes underlying stimulus-response compatibility by using a lateralized auditory stimulus in a simple and choice reaction time (RT) paradigm. Participants were asked to make either a left or right key lift in response to either a control (80 dB) or startling (124 dB) stimulus presented to either the left ear, right ear, or both ears. In the simple RT paradigm, we did not find a compatibility effect for either control or startle trials but did find a right-ear advantage which we attribute to anatomical asymmetry of auditory pathways. In the choice RT paradigm, we found compatibility effects for both startle and control trials as well a high incidence of error for contralateral stimulus-response mapping. We attribute these results to automatic activation of the ipsilateral response, which must then be inhibited prior to initiation of the correct response. The presence of compatibility effects for startle trials also suggest that similar pathways are being used to initiate movements in a choice RT situation, as opposed to involuntary triggering that is thought to occur in a simple RT situation.     

Effect of perceived choice,expected outcome,and observed outcome of an action on the causal attributions of actors

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that actors' causal attributions for success and failure would be affected by the degree of perceived choice they had in taking an action. Actors either were assigned, or selected one of four therapeutic outlines which were expected to have either a positive or a negative effect, and which actually had either a positive or negative outcome on a purportedly phobic person. For negative outcomes, it was predicted that perceived choice would induce a sense of personal responsibility when a positive outcome was expected, and lead actors to attribute more responsibility to themselves as a result. Results supported this prediction. For positive outcomes, however, actors attributed responsibility to themselves regardless of expectancy or choice. Actors were also found to attribute generally more responsibility to themselves for positive than negative outcomes. Results were discussed in terms of self-esteem motivation and the information available to the actor.     

An eye fixation analysis of choice and judgment with multiattribute stimuli

The present paper examined the selection of processing heuristics for choice and judgment across a range of stimuli. Eye fixations were monitored while six subjects made choices or judgments of pairs of gambles, vacations, or gifts. Each stimulus was represented by three attributes that varied in the amount of dimensional interdependency. The two heuristics of interest were dimensional and holistic evaluation. Each manifested a characteristic pattern of eye fixations. Dimensional evaluation required alternating fixations from a single attribute of one stimulus to the same attribute of the other stimulus. Holistic evaluation was characterized by transitions from attribute to attribute within a single stimulus. The results demonstrated that when the stimulus attributes were either interdependent (gambles) or dissimilar (gifts), the processing heuristic was determined by stimulus characteristics. When the stimulus dimensions were neither interdependent nor dissimilar (vacations), the selection of a processing strategy was determined by the prescribed task. This study suggests that any global theory of choice or judgment must be validated over a wide range of stimuli.     

选项数量和属性重要性对决策中信息加工的影响

本研究采用决策过程研究方法中的信息板技术,以现实生活中的职业选择作为决策任务,考察了选项数量和选项属性的重要性对决策过程中信息加工的影响方式。结果表明:选项数量对决策过程的信息搜索深度、搜索模式和策略的补偿性产生了影响;选项属性的重要性并不影响决策者对属性的查看时间,但影响了决策者对属性的点击次数。     

Take-the-best and the influence of decision-inconsistent attributes on decision confidence and choices in memory-based decisions

Take-the-best (TTB) is a decision strategy according to which attributes about choice options are sequentially processed in descending order of validity, and attribute processing is stopped once an attribute discriminates between options. Consequently, TTB-decisions rely on only one, the best discriminating, attribute, and lower-valid attributes need not be processed because they are TTB-irrelevant. Recent research suggests, however, that when attribute information is visually present during decision-making, TTB-irrelevant attributes are processed and integrated into decisions nonetheless. To examine whether TTB-irrelevant attributes are retrieved and integrated when decisions are made memory-based, we tested whether the consistency of a TTB-irrelevant attribute affects TTB-users’ decision behaviour in a memory-based decision task. Participants first learned attribute configurations of several options. Afterwards, they made several decisions between two of the options, and we manipulated conflict between the second-best attribute and the TTB-decision. We assessed participants’ decision confidence and the proportion of TTB-inconsistent choices. According to TTB, TTB-irrelevant attributes should not affect confidence and choices, because these attributes should not be retrieved. Results showed, however, that TTB-users were less confident and made more TTB-inconsistent choices when TTB-irrelevant information was in conflict with the TTB-decision than when it was not, suggesting that TTB-users retrieved and integrated TTB-irrelevant information.