Emotion,Decision, and Risk: Betting on Gambles versus Betting on People

We examined the effects of two emotions, fear and anger, on risk‐taking behavior in two types of tasks: Those in which uncertainty is generated by a randomizing device (“lottery risk”) and those in which it is generated by the uncertain behavior of another person (“person‐based risk”). Participants first completed a writing task to induce fear or anger. They then made choices either between lotteries (Experiment 1) or between actions in risky two‐person decisions (Experiments 2 and 3). The experiments involved substantial real‐money payoffs. Replicating earlier studies (which used hypothetical rewards), Experiment 1 showed that fearful participants were more risk‐averse than angry participants in lottery‐risk tasks. However—the key result of this study—fearful participants were substantially less risk‐averse than angry participants in a two‐person task involving person‐based risk (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 offered options and payoffs identical to those of Experiment 2 but with lottery‐type risk. Risk‐taking returned to the pattern of Experiment 1. The impact of incidental emotions on risk‐taking appears to be contingent on the class of uncertainty involved. For lottery risk, fear increased the frequency of risk‐averse choices and anger reduced it. The reverse pattern was found when uncertainty in the decision was person‐based. Further, the effect was specifically on differences in willingness to take risks rather than on differences in judgments of how much risk was present. The impact of different emotions on risk‐taking or risk‐avoiding behavior is thus contingent on the type, as well as the degree, of uncertainty the decision maker faces. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Salient Volunteering Behavior Increases Monetary Risk‐taking

Research finds that engaging in prosocial behavior has many positive psychological outcomes (e.g., enhanced well‐being, optimism, perceived control, and a boost in self‐concept), and research on monetary risk‐taking reveals these psychological outcomes are associated with increased risk‐taking. Merging these findings, we propose that when people's volunteering behavior is made salient in their minds, they take more monetary risks. Making research participants’ volunteering behavior salient by having them recall an act of prior volunteering (studies 1 and 3), choosing whether to volunteer (study 2), or choosing one of two volunteering activities (study 4), four experiments (and a fifth reported in the Appendix S2) reveal increased risk‐taking across several monetary‐risk outcomes (incentive‐compatible gambles, allocation of a windfall gain, and a behavioral risk‐taking measure involving escalating risk). Lastly, when the decision maker attributes a decision to volunteer to an external source, the effect of salient volunteering on monetary risk‐taking attenuates.     

Decision making under time pressure, modeled in a prospect theory framework

The current research examines the effects of time pressure on decision behavior based on a prospect theory framework. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants estimated certainty equivalents for binary gains-only bets in the presence or absence of time pressure. In Experiment 3, participants assessed comparable bets that were framed as losses. Data were modeled to establish psychological mechanisms underlying decision behavior. In Experiments 1 and 2, time pressure led to increased risk attractiveness, but no significant differences emerged in either probability discriminability or outcome utility. In Experiment 3, time pressure reduced probability discriminability, which was coupled with severe risk-seeking behavior for both conditions in the domain of losses. No significant effects of control over outcomes were observed. Results provide qualified support for theories that suggest increased risk-seeking for gains under time pressure.     

压力下一搏：压力如何影响个体风险寻求

压力促使个体风险寻求已得到许多研究的验证和支持, 但对于该现象背后的根本机制缺乏深入探讨和整合。模型指出, 压力诱发认知资源损耗和心理需要失衡, 导致个体执行控制功能减弱, 奖赏寻求增加, 这两者引起对风险选项价值的高估、风险感知的降低和启发式决策策略的使用, 最终导致风险寻求。期望效用论、预期理论、双系统理论和风险敏感理论的视角能各有侧重地解析模型中的路径。最后, 基于模型梳理了边界条件, 并提出未来可关注压力下执行功能、认知和情绪的交互以及慢性压力的影响和调控。     

Choosing an inferior alternative

We show how decision makers can be induced to choose a personally inferior alternative, a strong violation of rational decision making. First, the inferior alternative is installed as the leading option by starting with information that supports this alternative. Then, the decision maker uses the natural process of distorting new information to support whichever alternative is leading. This leader-supporting distortion overcomes the inherent advantages of the superior alternative. The end result is a tendency to choose the self-identified inferior alternative. We trace the choice process to reveal the amount of distortion and its influence on preference. Self-reported awareness of distortion to support the inferior alternative is not related to the amount of distortion. The absence of valid awareness suggests that the manipulation that produces this preference violation is unlikely to be detected and that the distortion is unlikely to be corrected by the decision maker. As expected, given the lack of awareness, final confidence is just as high when the inferior alternative is chosen as when the superior one is. The discussion considers how to prevent an adversary from manipulating one's decisions using this technique.     

Better Safe than Sorry: Risking Irresponsibility by Seeking Uncertainty

Research findings differ as to whether choosing a risky option is an efficient strategy for decision makers seeking to avoid responsibility for potential failures. A risky choice may leave the final outcome to chance factors, but the decision maker can still be held responsible for choosing risk. Further, it is unclear whether a risky choice is a responsible choice. The present article investigates the putative relationship between risk‐taking and responsibility by drawing a distinction between being responsible for the outcome (R1) versus acting responsibly (R2). Four experiments were performed, in which participants were presented with scenarios describing decision makers facing a choice between a risky (uncertain) option and a riskless (certain) option, framed in terms of losses or equivalent gains. The results showed that decision makers who chose the risky alternative were judged to have acted in a less responsible manner (R2), while still being held equally responsible for the outcome (R1), unless they were ignorant of the risks involved. Choosing risk did not absolve decision makers from blame, despite being less causal and less in control than those who chose the riskless option. Risky decision makers were also judged to be more personally involved. The dissociation between R1 and R2 ratings confirms earlier findings and serves to clarify an alleged relationship between risky choices and responsibility aversion. Framing effects for own choices were found in both scenarios. In contrast, responsibility ratings were only slightly affected by frame. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Differences in risk-defusing behavior in deciding for oneself versus deciding for other people

In naturalistic risky decision-making tasks, risk-defusing behavior plays a central role. A risk-defusing operator (RDO) is an action carried out by the decision maker in order to decrease the risk of an alternative. Post-event RDOs (i.e., applied after the occurrence of a negative event) are more risky, but are associated with lower costs than pre-event RDOs (i.e., applied before the occurrence of a negative event). Two studies examine whether the choice between pre-event and post-event RDOs is influenced by detection probability, by involvement type (i.e., whether the decision has consequences for the decision maker or for other people), and by the interaction between these two variables. The results indicate that the effect of detection probability on choice was stronger if other people were involved than if the decision makers themselves were involved. Thus, in naturalistic risky decision tasks with consequences for themselves, people take detection probabilities into account to a lesser extent than in decisions with consequences for other people.     

Seeking positive experiences can produce illusory correlations

Individuals tend to select again alternatives about which they have positive impressions and to avoid alternatives about which they have negative impressions. Here we show how this sequential sampling feature of the information acquisition process leads to the emergence of an illusory correlation between estimates of the attributes of multi-attribute alternatives. The sign of the illusory correlation depends on how the decision maker combines estimates in making her sampling decisions. A positive illusory correlation emerges when evaluations are compensatory or disjunctive and a negative illusory correlation can emerge when evaluations are conjunctive. Our theory provides an alternative explanation for illusory correlations that does not rely on biased information processing nor selective attention to different pieces of information. It provides a new perspective on several well-established empirical phenomena such as the ‘Halo’ effect in personality perception, the relation between proximity and attitudes, and the in-group out-group bias in stereotype formation.     

Nameless + harmless = blameless: When seemingly irrelevant factors influence judgment of (un)ethical behavior

People often make judgments about the ethicality of others’ behaviors and then decide how harshly to punish such behaviors. When they make these judgments and decisions, sometimes the victims of the unethical behavior are identifiable, and sometimes they are not. In addition, in our uncertain world, sometimes an unethical action causes harm, and sometimes it does not. We argue that a rational assessment of ethicality should not depend on the identifiability of the victim of wrongdoing or the actual harm caused if the judge and the decision maker have the same information. Yet in five laboratory studies, we show that these factors have a systematic effect on how people judge the ethicality of the perpetrator of an unethical action. Our studies show that people judge behavior as more unethical when: (1) identifiable vs. unidentifiable victims are involved and (2) the behavior leads to a negative rather than a positive outcome. We also find that people’s willingness to punish wrongdoers is consistent with their judgments, and we offer preliminary evidence on how to reduce these biases.     

Decision makers calibrate behavioral persistence on the basis of time-interval experience

A central question in intertemporal decision making is why people reverse their own past choices. Someone who initially prefers a long-run outcome might fail to maintain that preference for long enough to see the outcome realized. Such behavior is usually understood as reflecting preference instability or self-control failure. However, if a decision maker is unsure exactly how long an awaited outcome will be delayed, a reversal can constitute the rational, utility-maximizing course of action. In the present behavioral experiments, we placed participants in timing environments where persistence toward delayed rewards was either productive or counterproductive. Our results show that human decision makers are responsive to statistical timing cues, modulating their level of persistence according to the distribution of delay durations they encounter. We conclude that temporal expectations act as a powerful and adaptive influence on people's tendency to sustain patient decisions.     

Comparing perceptual and preferential decision making

Perceptual and preferential decision making have been studied largely in isolation. Perceptual decisions are considered to be at a non–deliberative cognitive level and have an outside criterion that defines the quality of decisions. Preferential decisions are considered to be at a higher cognitive level and the quality of decisions depend on the decision maker’s subjective goals. Besides these crucial differences, both types of decisions also have in common that uncertain information about the choice situation has to be processed before a decision can be made. The present work aims to acknowledge the commonalities of both types of decision making to lay bare the crucial differences. For this aim we examine perceptual and preferential decisions with a novel choice paradigm that uses the identical stimulus material for both types of decisions. This paradigm allows us to model the decisions and response times of both types of decisions with the same sequential sampling model, the drift diffusion model. The results illustrate that the different incentive structure in both types of tasks changes people’s behavior so that they process information more efficiently and respond more cautiously in the perceptual as compared to the preferential task. These findings set out a perspective for further integration of perceptual and preferential decision making in a single ramework.     

I'm feeling lucky: the relationship between affect and risk-seeking in the framing effect

Engagement in risky behavior has traditionally been attributed to an underestimation of the associated risks, but recent perspectives suggest that affective reactions toward a risky option may better explain risk-seeking than risk perception. However, the precise relationship between emotion and risk-seeking remains unclear. The current set of studies elucidates the relationship between emotion and risk-seeking in risky choice framing, using a gambling task. In Study 1, reliance on emotion was related to risk-seeking, but goals to regulate emotion mitigated these effects. In Study 2, positive affect was associated with risk-seeking in loss frames, but unrelated to risk aversion in gain frames. Collectively, these findings indicate a general role for emotion reliance on risk-seeking and a specific role of positive affect on risk-seeking in the loss trials of the framing effect.     

眼睛注视线索对经济领域风险决策的影响：基于框架效应范式

采用基金投资框架任务,结合眼动技术考察眼睛注视线索与框架类型对风险决策的影响。结果发现：（1）消极眼睛注视线索促进了被试在损失框架下的风险寻求行为,控制组与积极、中性、消极眼睛组的行为结果无显著差异;（2）以均字注视次数为指标的眼动结果表明,积极眼睛组和中性眼睛组对确定损益的关注差异大于对风险损益的关注差异;消极眼睛组和控制组被试对损失的关注大于对收益的关注,对确定项的关注大于对风险项的关注,但两者不存在交互作用。消极眼睛注视线索可能改变了个体对风险性和确定性的感知,并因此影响了人们的风险决策行为,规避消极情绪线索可能有助于减少经济决策中的风险寻求行为。     

自我框架、风险认知和风险选择

对行为决策中“框架效应”(Framing Effect)的研究进行了拓展：探讨了自我框架对风险决策的影响及其机制。面对运用图示方法表示的管理,健康,及投资方面的风险决策问题,参与者自主地选择对方案的描述（自我框架）。研究有四个主要发现：1）自我框架对风险选择的效应部分显著,而且对风险选择的影响方向因情境的不同而不同;2）机会威胁认知是自我框架效应的一个中介变量;3）自我框架在情绪语气上的差异对风险决策有显著影响：决策者对一个备选方案（确定性或风险性方案）相对于另一个备选方案的自我描述的情绪语气越积极正面,这个方案被选择的可能性越大;4）决策者的机会-威胁认知是这一自我框架效应的部分中介变量。也就是说,对备选方案的自我描述语气作为一种对决策信息的编码影响了风险（机会和威胁）认知,进而影响决策者的风险偏好和选择     

The Effects of Risk-Promoting Media on Inclinations Toward Risk Taking

Three experiments examined whether exposure to risk-promoting media increases risk-related thoughts and behavioral inclinations. Participants were exposed to risk-promoting pictures (Study 1), movies (Study 2), and video games (Study 3) or a risk neutral control condition. Subsequently to exposure, accessibility of risk-taking cognitions and participants' inclinations to act in a risk-seeking manner was measured. In line with our expectations, all three studies revealed that risk-promoting media content increases the accessibility of risk-taking cognitions (Studies 1 and 3), risk taking in a computer-based driving simulator (Study 2), as well as risk taking in decision making scenarios (Study 3). Mediational analyses clarified the underlying psychological process: Risk-promoting media content increases the accessibility of risk-promoting cognitions, which in turn results in increased risk-taking inclinations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Risky business: Psychopathy,framing effects,and financial outcomes

Using a risky-choice framing paradigm, we investigated (a) the extent to which psychopathic features shape behavioral responses to potential losses vs. potential gains and (b) how these relations bear on real-world economic decision-making in a community sample (N =  475). Associations among psychopathic features, risk-seeking, sensitivity to framing, and financial practices were also examined. Disinhibition manifested positive relations with risk-seeking and maladaptive financial practices, whereas boldness manifested positive relations with risk-seeking and adaptive financial practices. Individuals high in disinhibition and/or meanness were significantly less likely to endorse risk seeking in negative frames. Results provisionally suggest boundary conditions for framing effects; in particular, certain psychopathic traits may render individuals modestly less susceptible to framing or bias them towards risk-taking in positive frames.     

An interactive procedure for learning about preferences: Case study of a portfolio manager

This paper presents a new interactive procedure for learning and interpreting the choices available to a decision maker confronted with a discrete decision problem. The procedure guides a decision maker through the evaluation process, has an ability ‘to learn’ from previous choices and generates a set of rules that describe a decision maker's posterior preferences. The validity of the procedure was tested by creating an investment portfolio. The emphasis of the application is on assisting the portfolio manager to determine the decision consistency of a given portfolio selection process.     

Choosing between adaptive agents: some unexpected implications of level of scrutiny

Even with ample time and opportunity to use extensive data, people often make do with small samples, which increases their risk of making the wrong decision. A theoretical analysis indicates, however, that when the decision involves continually selecting among competing, adaptive agents who are eager to be selected, an error-prone evaluation may be beneficial to the decision maker. In this case, the chance of an error can motivate competitors to exert greater effort, improving their level of performance--which is the prime concern of the decision maker. This theoretical argument was tested empirically by comparing the effects of two levels of scrutiny of performance. Results show that minimal scrutiny can indeed lead to better performance than full scrutiny, and that the effect is conditional on a bridgeable difference between the competitors. We conclude by pointing out that small-sample-based, error-prone decisions may also maintain competition and diversity in the environment.     

奖赏和损失情境下男性海洛因戒断者的风险决策缺陷

摘 要 采用修改版的多伦多赌博任务考察决策情境对海洛因戒断者风险决策的影响。研究结果主要发现,海洛因戒断者在损失情境下的风险寻求决策比率与吸毒年限显著正相关,这种相关提示了风险决策背景下海洛因成瘾者持续使用毒品与其较低的损失敏感性之间的复杂交互作用。其次,海洛因戒断者在做出风险决策后收到消极反馈时的风险规避倾向可以负向预测其风险寻求决策比率,这可能进一步反映了海洛因戒断者风险感知的钝化或其对消极反馈信息的整合加工存在异常。     

Differentiation and consolidation theory of human decision making: A frame of reference for the study of pre- and post-decision processes

Differentiation and Consolidation Theory of decision making models human decision making as an active process in which one alternative is gradually differentiated from other available alternatives. The theory is based on the assumption that it is not sufficient to choose the best alternative, but that a decision involves the selection and creation of a candidate that is sufficiently superior for a decision. This is achieved in differentiation processes which are wholistic, structural or process related. To exemplify, structural differentiation includes both facts and attractiveness restructuring. Following a decision, the theory predicts consolidation processes which work in favor of the chosen alternative. Both differentiation and consolidation are driven by the fact that through experience with the impredictability of the future, a decision maker has learned to prepare for threats against the chosen alternatives. The further this alternative has been differentiated and consolidated, the less the risk of post-decision ambiguity, regret or decision reversal. The study is concluded with references to othee decision theories some of which are viewed as subtheories of Differentiation and Consolidation Theory.