The Disjunction Effect and Reason-Based Choice in Games

This paper reports an experiment that extends previous find ings of the disjunction effect, sometimes described as a violation of Savage's sure-thing principle. Evidence of the disjunction ef fect is observed using elicited beliefs about others' actions (rather than controlled beliefs) in a prisoners' dilemma studied by Shafir and Tversky (1992) as well as in an asymmetric version of it and in a nondilemma game with a unique equilibrium. Debiasing tech niques as well as implications for these extensions are discussed.     

一种齐当别思想下的量子决策模型：对囚徒困境中的分离效应的解释

量子决策模型是近10年来提出的一种新型决策模型, 用以解释那些违背经典决策模型的现象。虽然当前的量子决策模型能够解释囚徒困境中的分离效应, 但其中却存在一些困难, 即会产生反常的概率关系以及无法精确拟合分离效应量较大的实验结果。本研究在分析当前量子决策模型困难的基础上, 结合齐当别思想对模型进行改进和优化。结果表明, 研究所构建的量子决策模型克服了当前模型中的困难, 并且能够预测囚徒困境博弈中由他人收益差距改变而引起的分离效应变化趋势。本研究还是一次启发式决策模型与计算式决策模型相结合的探索。     

The disjunction effect reexamined: Relevant methodological issues and the fallacy of unspecified percentage comparisons

Leonard J. Savage’s sure-thing principle (1954) is a key assumption of the consequentialist conception of decision making under uncertainty, which more-or-less assumes that decision makers are rational and thorough. The sure-thing principle states that if some option x is preferred given some other event A occurs, and if option x is preferred given this event A does not occur, then x should be preferred even when the outcome of A is unknown. Tversky and Shafir [Tversky, A., &; Shafir, E. (1992). The disjunction effect in choice under uncertainty. Psychological Science, 3(5) 305–309] claim that this basic principle is frequently violated in two-step gambles. They call such violations disjunction effects. Kuhberber, Komunska, and Perner [Kuhberber, A., Komunska, D., &; Perner, J. (2001). The disjunction effect: does it exist for two step gambles? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 85(2) 250–264] attempted to replicate Tversky and Shafir’s findings and claim their results show that people do not violate the sure-thing principle in repeated gambles. This article evaluates Kuhberger, Komunska, and Perner’s claims, suggesting they did not appropriately analyze their results, and further provides evidence that people do regularly violate the sure-thing principle in two-step gambles, providing further evidence for the reality of disjunction effects.     

再探究不确定状态下违背“确定事件”原则的原因?

确定事件原则是规范决策理论的基本原则之一。本研究通过选取具有不同文化背景的被试、构建和修改一系列问题情境来考察违背确定事件原则的原因。结果表明,在双重理由的分离情境中,确定事件原则被违背了;而在单一理由的分离情境中,确定事件原则得以遵循。实验结果支持“基于理由的假设”而不支持“思维惰性假设”。文章最后讨论了本研究的理论及现实意义。     

Why are auditory novels distracting? Contrasting the roles of novelty, violation of expectation and stimulus change

Past studies show that novel auditory stimuli, presented in the context of an otherwise repeated sound, capture participants’ attention away from a focal task, resulting in measurable behavioral distraction. Novel sounds are traditionally defined as rare and unexpected but past studies have not sought to disentangle these concepts directly. Using a cross-modal oddball task, we contrasted these aspects orthogonally by manipulating the base rate and conditional probabilities of sound events. We report for the first time that behavioral distraction does not result from a sound’s novelty per se but from the violation of the cognitive system’s expectation based on the learning of conditional probabilities and, to some extent, the occurrence of a perceptual change from one sound to another.     

Quantum structure in cognition

The broader scope of our investigations is the search for the way in which concepts and their combinations carry and influence meaning and what this implies for human thought. More specifically, we examine the use of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics as a modeling instrument and propose a general mathematical modeling scheme for the combinations of concepts. We point out that quantum mechanical principles, such as superposition and interference, are at the origin of specific effects in cognition related to concept combinations, such as the guppy effect and the overextension and underextension of membership weights of items. We work out a concrete quantum mechanical model for a large set of experimental data of membership weights with overextension and underextension of items with respect to the conjunction and disjunction of pairs of concepts, and show that no classical model is possible for these data. We put forward an explanation by linking the presence of quantum aspects that model concept combinations to the basic process of concept formation. We investigate the implications of our quantum modeling scheme for the structure of human thought, and show the presence of a two-layer structure consisting of a classical logical layer and a quantum conceptual layer. We consider connections between our findings and phenomena such as the disjunction effect and the conjunction fallacy in decision theory, violations of the sure thing principle, and the Allais and Elsberg paradoxes in economics.     

不确定性决策违背“确定事件原则”的心理机制再探

不确定性决策违背＂确定事件原则＂的心理机制再探从决策理由切入,在现实情境中考察了违背确定事件原则（sure-thing principle）的心理机制,检验了基于理由（reason-based）的假设。研究结果表明,违背确定事件原则的被试在不确定条件下知觉到的理由冲突程度显著高于遵循确定事件原则的被试在不确定条件下知觉到的理由冲突程度;违背确定事件原则的被试在不确定条件下知觉到的理由清晰程度显著低于其在两种确定条件下知觉到的理由清晰程度,而遵循确定事件原则的被试在不确定条件下知觉到的理由清晰程度则介于其在两种确定条件下知觉到的理由清晰程度之间。研究结果支持了基于理由的假设。     

Framing of decisions under ambiguity

This paper reports three experiments that illustrate framing of decision problems due to Ellsberg (1961) in which probabilities are ambiguous. Although the standard Ellsberg problems often induce violations of Savage's sure-thing principle, framing of the equivalent problems in a sequential format reduces these violations. Nevertheless, this has an ironic consequence of introducing another inconsistency in the decision makers' choices: An inconsistency between the standard and sequential formulations of the Ellsberg problems.     

A method of weighing qualitative preference axioms

A method is developed for determining the absolute and relative strengths of qualitative preference axioms in normative Bayesian decision theory. These strengths are calculated for the three most common qualitative axioms; transitivity, the sure-thing principle, and dominance. The relative strength of the latter two axioms with respect to transitivity is calculated for special cases, and a bound is derived which is applicable to a larger class of decision problems. Possible implications of this theoretical work for decision heuristics are discussed.     

Completeness of quantum logic

This paper is based on a semantic foundation of quantum logic which makes use of dialog-games. In the first part of the paper the dialogic method is introduced and under the conditions of quantum mechanical measurements the rules of a dialog-game about quantum mechanical propositions are established. In the second part of the paper the quantum mechanical dialog-game is replaced by a calculus of quantum logic. As the main part of the paper we show that the calculus of quantum logic is complete and consistent with respect to the dialogic semantics. Since the dialog-game does not involve the excluded middle the calculus represents a calculus of effective (intuitionistic) quantum logic.In a forthcoming paper it is shown that this calculus is equivalent to a calculus of sequents and more interestingly to a calculus of propositions. With the addition of the excluded middle the latter calculus is a model for the lattice of subspaces of a Hilbert space.On leave of absence from the Institut für Theoretische Physik der Universität zu Köln, W.-Germany.     

Feature centrality and property induction

A feature is central to a concept to the extent that other features depend on it. Four studies tested the hypothesis that people will project a feature from a base concept to a target concept to the extent that they believe the feature is central to the two concepts. This centrality hypothesis implies that feature projection is guided by a principle that aims to maximize the structural commonality between base and target concepts. Participants were told that a category has two or three novel features. One feature was the most central in that more properties depended on it. The extent to which the target shared the feature’s dependencies was manipulated by varying the similarity of category pairs. Participants’ ratings of the likelihood that each feature would hold in the target category support the centrality hypothesis with both natural kind and artifact categories and with both well-specified and vague dependency structures.     

From Outcomes to Acts: A Non-Standard Axiomatization of the Expected Utility Principle

This paper presents an axiomatization of the principle of maximizing expected utility that does not rely on the independence axiom or sure-thing principle. Perhaps more importantly the new axiomatization is based on an ex ante approach, instead of the standard ex post approach. An ex post approach utilizes the decision maker's preferences among risky acts for generating a utility and a probability function, whereas in the ex ante approach a set of preferences among potential outcomes are on the input side of the theory and the decision maker's preferences among risky acts on the output side.     

Levels of number knowledge during early childhood

Researchers have long disagreed about whether number concepts are essentially continuous (unchanging) or discontinuous over development. Among those who take the discontinuity position, there is disagreement about how development proceeds. The current study addressed these questions with new quantitative analyses of children’s incorrect responses on the Give-N task. Using data from 280 children, ages 2 to 4 years, this study showed that most wrong answers were simply guesses, not counting or estimation errors. Their mean was unrelated to the target number, and they were lower-bounded by the numbers children actually knew. In addition, children learned the number-word meanings one at a time and in order; they treated the number words as mutually exclusive; and once they figured out the cardinal principle of counting, they generalized this principle to the rest of their count list. Findings support the ‘discontinuity’ account of number development in general and the ‘knower-levels’ account in particular.     

Schrödinger logics

Schrödinger logics are logical systems in which the principle of identity is not true in general. The intuitive motivation for these logics is both Erwin Schrödinger's thesis (which has been advanced by other authors) that identity lacks sense for elementary particles of modern physics, and the way which physicists deal with this concept; normally, they understandidentity as meaningindistinguishability (agreemment with respect to attributes). Observing that these concepts are equivalent in classical logic and mathematics, which underly the usual physical theories, we present a higher-order logical system in which these concepts are systematically separated. A classical semantics for the system is presented and some philosophical related questions are mentioned. One of the main characteristics of our system is that Leibniz' Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles cannot be derived. This fact is in accordance with some authors who maintain that quantum mechanics violates this principle. Furthermore, our system may be viewed as a way of making sense some of Schrödinger's logical intuitions about the nature of elementary particles.The authors very much would like to thank the anonymous referee for his quite interesting suggestions, which contributed significantly to improve the paper.Presented byJan Zygmunt;     

Pursuing moral outrage: Anger at torture

Moral outrage—anger at violation of a moral standard—should be distinguished from anger at the harm caused by standard-violating behavior. Recent research that used experimental manipulation to disentangle these different forms of anger found evidence of personal and empathic anger, but not of moral outrage. We sought to extend this research by assessing anger at a more extreme moral violation: torture. If the person tortured is a member of one’s group (nationality), anger may not be over the moral violation but over the harm done to one of “us.” In an experiment designed to create the necessary appraisal conditions, we found clear evidence of identity-relevant personal anger (anger when a person from one’s nationality is tortured) but little evidence of moral outrage (anger even when a person from an identity-irrelevant nationality is tortured). Implications for understanding moral emotion and moral motivation are discussed.     

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE IN A SUPERPOSITION. AND WHY

This paper attempts an interpretation of Everett's relative state formulation of quantum mechanics that avoids the commitment to new metaphysical entities like worlds or minds. Starting from Everett's quantum mechanical model of an observer, it is argued that an observer's belief to be in an eigenstate of the measurement (corresponding to the observation of a well-defined measurement outcome) is consistent with the fact that she objectively is in a superposition of such states. Subjective states corresponding to such beliefs are constructed. From an analysis of these subjective states and their dynamics it is argued that Everett's pure wave mechanics is subjectively consistent with von Neumann's classical formulation of quantum mechanics. It follows from the argument that the objective state of a system is in principle unobservable. Nevertheless, an adequate concept of empirical reality can be constructed.     

Outcomes and intentions in children’s,adolescents’, and adults’ second- and third-party punishment behavior

Theories of morality maintain that punishment supports the emergence and maintenance of moral behavior. This study investigated developmental differences in the role of outcomes and the violator’s intentions in second-party punishment (where punishers are victims of a violation) and third-party punishment (where punishers are unaffected observers of a violation). Four hundred and forty-three adults and 8-, 12-, and 15-year-olds made choices in mini-ultimatum games and newly-developed mini-third-party punishment games, which involved actual incentives rather than hypothetical decisions. Adults integrated outcomes and intentions in their second- and third-party punishment, whereas 8-year-olds consistently based their punishment on the outcome of the violation. Adolescents integrated outcomes and intentions in second- but not third-party punishment.     

囚徒困境决策中分离效应验证性与机制研究

Savage于1954年提出"确定事件原则"这一概念,Tversky和Slafir(1992)通过实验发现,人们在不确定条件下的决策过程中,会出现违背确定事件原则的现象,并把这种现象称为"分离效应"。尽管已经有很多对于二次赌博中分离效应的机制研究并产生很多分歧,但对于囚徒困境范式中是否存在分离效应以及其机制并没有一致的结果。本文对囚徒困境中的分离效应进行了验证性实验,虽然整体结果上与Shafir与Tversky(1992)的结论相吻合,但被试专业背景对结果有显著效应。同时,按照Lambdin和Burdsal(2007)对分离效应的操作定义,结果发现分离效应没有出现,文章对其原因进行了讨论。     

The Testing Principle: Inductive Reasoning and the Ellsberg Paradox

We postulate the Testing Principle : that individuals ''act like statisticians'' when they face uncertainty in a decision problem, ranking alternatives to the extent that available evidence allows. The Testing Principle implies that completeness of preferences, rather than the sure-thing principle, is violated in the Ellsberg Paradox. In the experiment, subjects chose between risky and uncertain acts in modified Ellsberg-type urn problems, with sample information about the uncertain urn. Our results show, consistent with the Testing Principle, that the uncertain urn is chosen more often when the sample size is larger, holding constant a measure of ambiguity (proportion of balls of unknown colour in the urn). The Testing Principle rationalises the Ellsberg Paradox. Behaviour consistent with the principle leads to a reduction in Ellsberg-type violations as the statistical quality of sample information is improved, holding ambiguity constant. The Testing Principle also provides a normative rationale for the Ellsberg paradox that is consistent with procedural rationality.     

Forms of Quantum Nonseparability and Related Philosophical Consequences

Standard quantum mechanics unquestionably violates the separability principle that classical physics (be it point-like analytic, statistical, or field-theoretic) accustomed us to consider as valid. In this paper, quantum nonseparability is viewed as a consequence of the Hilbert-space quantum mechanical formalism, avoiding thus any direct recourse to the ramifications of Kochen-Specker’s argument or Bell’s inequality. Depending on the mode of assignment of states to physical systems – unit state vectors versus non-idempotent density operators – we distinguish between strong/relational and weak/deconstructional forms of quantum nonseparability. The origin of the latter is traced down and discussed at length, whereas its relation to the all important concept of potentiality in forming a coherent picture of the puzzling entangled interconnections among spatially separated systems is also considered. Finally, certain philosophical consequences of quantum non-separability concerning the nature of quantum objects, the question of realism in quantum mechanics, and possible limitations in revealing the actual character of physical reality in its entirety are explored.