The effects of screening and task partitioning upon evaluations of decision options

Seven experiments examined how information used to screen options is used subsequently in evaluating the survivors before a choice of the best survivor is made and showed the following. (1) In general, information receiver early in the task had a smaller impact upon pre-choice evaluations of options than information received later, whether or not screening had taken place. (2) However, early information had virtually no impact upon pre-choice evaluations when various events partitioned the task into two distinct parts. This was called the ‘task-partitioning effect’. This effect was, however, labile and could be eliminated by repeating the early information at the time that the pre-choice evaluations were made. (3) In contrast, when the partitioning event consisted specifically of screening out unattractive options, early information had virtually no impact on evaluations and its repetition did not increase its use. This was called the ‘screening effect’. This effect was observed even when someone other than the subject carried out the screening.     

The impact of task complexity on information use in multi-attribute decision making

This study presents a process analysis of multi-attribute decision making. The decision problems concerned the selection of the most suitable candidate for a job opening. The problems varied in terms of complexity, i.e. the number of candidates and the number of attributes used to describe these alternatives. Results show that with an increasing number of alternatives, subjects (N = 48) used fewer attributes for the evaluation of alternatives, and made, on average, less references to the alternatives. The type of judgment most often used was absolute dimensional (comparison of an attribute to an absolute standard) and was used more often at the beginning than toward the end of the decision process. Overall, judgments were predominantly positive. The percentage of positive judgments decreased with increasing complexity, and toward the end of the decision process. Significantly more judgments, particularly positive ones, concerned the finally chosen alternative as compared to the rest of the alternatives. Finally, analysis of subjects' usage of decision rules revealed that increasing the number of alternatives resulted in an increasing use of elimination strategies. Implications of these findings for the design of decision aids will be discussed.     

An eye‐tracking study on information processing in risky decisions: Evidence for compensatory strategies based on automatic processes

Many everyday decisions have to be made under risk and can be interpreted as choices between gambles with different outcomes that are realized with specific probabilities. The underlying cognitive processes were investigated by testing six sets of hypotheses concerning choices, decision times, and information search derived from cumulative prospect theory, decision field theory, priority heuristic and parallel constraint satisfaction models. Our participants completed 40 decision tasks of two gambles with two non‐negative outcomes each. Information search was recorded using eye‐tracking technology. Results for choices, decision time, the amount of information searched for, fixation durations, the direction of the information search, and the distribution of fixations conflict with the prediction of the non‐compensatory priority heuristic and indicate that individuals use compensatory strategies. Choice proportions are well in line with the predictions of cumulative prospect theory. Process measures indicate that individuals thereby do not rely on deliberate calculations of weighted sums. Information integration processes seem to be better explained by models that partially rely on automatic processes such as decision field theory or parallel constraint satisfaction models. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of motivation and volition in economic decisions: Evidence from eye movements and pupillometry

Economic decisions usually involve high stakes, real consequences, and some degree of personal risk. This article explores the impact of motivational and volitional states on economic decision processes in an incentivized lottery choice task. We investigated the patterns of decision time, choice, information search, and pupil dilation dependent on an experimental manipulation of motivation and volition, that is, the deliberative and the implemental mindset. The results indicated that choice preferences in economic decisions were robust and remained unaffected by motivational and volitional states, but decision processes were notably impacted. Decision makers in a deliberative state of mind searched for information more extensively and made slower decisions than the baseline. The implemental mindset was associated with more attention paid to the probability attributes of the gambles relative to the deliberative mindset. Furthermore, we observed that gamble outcomes that entailed no win at all (i.e., zero outcomes) played an important role for information search. These outcomes were largely disregarded in terms of predecisional information search but elicited pupillary responses similar to very high outcome lotteries. These results inform the current debate about the zero effect in risky choice. We also discuss the potential of eye-tracking studies of risky choice to dissolve ambiguities concerning the contributions of effort and arousal to modulating pupillary response. Implications for theoretical advances in decision research are discussed.     

经验决策：概念、研究和展望

传统风险决策研究范式中, 决策信息是事先限定的, 即在决策之前呈现各个决策选项的概率和收益, 被试基于这些信息进行决策。已有研究表明, 在传统风险决策任务中人们会高估小概率事件(rare event)。然而最近出现的一种基于不完整信息的决策形式, 即经验决策却对这一发现提出了挑战。研究发现, 人们在进行经验决策时会表现出对小概率事件的低估, 经验决策和传统决策形式之间存在差异。本文主要介绍经验决策的概念及其研究, 并从学习和不确定程度等角度对两种决策形式进行再认识, 以进一步理解经验决策并提出展望。     

Evaluation of job candidates with missing information: Effects of attribute importance and interattribute correlation

How do people make evaluations when important items of information are missing? In the context of personnel evaluations or product evaluations, researchers have proposed that decision makers may predict the missing attribute based on its assumed relationship to attributes that are present. In addition, some researchers have suggested that there is a penalty for missing information. An experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of the importance of the missing attribute on the hypothesized inference effect. Hypothetical job candidates were evaluated based on one or two attributes. The correlation between the attributes was varied between groups of subjects as was the importance of one of the attributes. The pattern of ratings of candidates with missing information varied significantly with the correlation condition when the missing attribute was very important, but did not vary as much when the missing attribute was less important. The results were generally consistent with the predictions of the Inferred Information Model (Johnson and Levin, 1985). On average, candidates with missing information were rated lower than comparable candidates with complete information and the missing attribute at an average level.     

Termination of logic programs with imperfect information: applications and query procedure

A general logic programming framework allowing for the combination of several adjoint lattices of truth-values is presented. The language is sorted, enabling the combination of several reasoning forms in the same knowledge base. The contribution of the paper is two-fold: on the one hand, sufficient conditions guaranteeing termination of all queries for the fix-point semantics for a wide class of sorted multi-adjoint logic programs are presented and related to some well-known probability-based formalisms; in addition, we specify a general non-deterministic tabulation goal-oriented query procedure for sorted multi-adjoint logic programs over complete lattices. We prove its soundness and completeness as well as independence of the selection ordering. We apply the termination results to probabilistic and fuzzy logic programming languages, enabling the use of the tabulation proof procedure for query answering.     

Variance misperception explains illusions of confidence in simple perceptual decisions

Confidence in a perceptual decision is a judgment about the quality of the sensory evidence. The quality of the evidence depends not only on its strength (‘signal’) but critically on its reliability (‘noise’), but the separate contribution of these quantities to the formation of confidence judgments has not been investigated before in the context of perceptual decisions. We studied subjective confidence reports in a multi-element perceptual task where evidence strength and reliability could be manipulated independently. Our results reveal a confidence paradox: confidence is higher for stimuli of lower reliability that are associated with a lower accuracy. We show that the subjects’ overconfidence in trials with unreliable evidence is caused by a reduced sensitivity to stimulus variability. Our results bridge between the investigation of miss-attributions of confidence in behavioral economics and the domain of simple perceptual decisions amenable to neuroscience research.     

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful: Anti-attractiveness bias in organizational evaluation and decision making

Within organizational judgment and decision making contexts, biases based on an evaluated person's attractiveness are among the most salient and frequently investigated. An enormous amount of research indicates favoritism for attractive people compared to unattractive ones. The current research demonstrates that the nature of this bias depends on whether one is evaluating a member of the same sex or the opposite sex. Experiment 1 (n = 2639) investigated selection of scholarship applicants and demonstrated that a pro-attractiveness bias held only for selection of opposite-sex scholarship applicants; no such bias was observed for highly attractive same-sex applicants. Experiment 2 (n = 622) investigated evaluations of prospective job candidates and demonstrated again that pro-attractiveness bias was observed only for opposite-sex candidates; participants discriminated against highly attractive same-sex candidates. Moreover, this bias was not observed among highly attractive participants; it held only for moderately attractive participants, those for whom highly attractive same-sex individuals can pose especially potent social threats. Findings suggest that attractiveness biases in organizational decision making are rooted partly in the social threats and opportunities afforded by attractive people.     

Explanations determine the impact of information on financial investment judgments

Previous research has shown that some types of judgments are influenced by the results of an explanation‐seeking comprehension process. The present experiments investigated novice investors' stock price forecasts and investment decisions. Information presented in a narrative story order was hypothesized to promote the construction of a coherent mental representation that would affect how information was interpreted and subsequently used to predict stock price changes. The results showed that outcome information had a distinctively high impact, but only when the information was read in story order. These results imply that presentation order affects the mental representation of evidence relevant to the forecast, and the form of that mental representation moderates the impact of individual pieces of information on the ultimate judgment. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Asymmetric cost and benefit perceptions in willingness-to-donate decisions

Charitable giving entails the act of foregoing personal resources in order to improve the conditions of other people. In the present paper, we systematically examine two dimensions integral to donation decisions that have thus far received relatively little attention but can explain charitable behavior rather well: the perceptions of cost for the donor and benefit for the recipients. In line with current theories in judgment and decision making, we hypothesize that people weigh these dimensions subjectively and perceive them asymmetrically, consistent with prospect theory. Costs for the donor are typically perceived as losses, whereas benefits for recipients are perceived as gains. In four studies, we presented several scenarios to participants in which both donation amounts (costs) and number of lives helped (benefits) were manipulated while keeping the ratio of costs and benefits constant. Results from Studies 1 and 2 showed that willingness to help decreased as donation amounts and number of lives helped increased. Additionally, Studies 3 and 4 provide evidence for a solution to reduce the asymmetry and increase donation amounts as the number of lives at risk increases.     

Perceived control,nature of risk information and risk taking. An experimental test of a simple taxonomy of uncertainty

Uncertainty may be categorized along two dimensions: (1) the nature of probabilistic information (i.e. frequency information, about the outcomes of similar situations in the past, versus process information, about the way(s) in which a future loss might occur), and (2) the degree of personal control (i.e. the extent to which an activity's outcomes depend on internal factors (e.g. knowledge, skills) versus external (e.g. chance) factors). The effects of variations in both dimensions on people's risk-taking tendency were experimentally studied. In a computerized task, subjects had to stop a fast-moving symbol before it passed a target line. Success yielded a financial gain, failure led them into a ‘penalty task’ with the possibility of a considerable loss. On each trial subjects chose among 10 risk levels (varying symbol speeds): low levels resulted in small but almost sure gains, high levels yielded larger but less probable gains. Across subgroups of subjects, three penalty task characteristics were varied: (1) the actual loss probability, (2) the external versus internal determination of outcomes, and (3) the available risk information. Major findings were: (a) subjects did not set a lower risk level, but they did appear to be more attentive (i.e. they failed fewer trials) when the actual loss probability was lower; (b) internal outcome determination resulted in more failed trials (lesser caution); (c) subjects ignored frequency information, but were sensitive to process information. Results are discussed in terms of effort allocation for controlling risk during task performance.     

Stemming the tide: Predicting women engineers' intentions to leave

This investigation adapts and extends the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) by integrating it with central constructs from turnover theory. The extended model proposes that domain specific self-efficacy and outcome expectations predict job satisfaction and organizational commitment — the two key job attitudes that have been established as influential predictors of turnover cognitions and behaviors. Further, we proposed that one form of organizational supports, specifically developmental opportunities at work, are sources of self efficacy and outcome expectations, and that the relationship between organizational supports and job attitudes is mediated by self-efficacy and outcome expectations. The proposed model was tested on a national sample of 2,042 women engineers. Overall, the results provided support for our newly developed model. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.     

Numeracy in the jury box: Numerical ability,meaningful anchors,and damage award decision making

This project employs an experimental design to test theoretical predictions regarding how numeracy can assist jurors in determining damage awards to compensate a plaintiff for pain and suffering and how the use of meaningful numerical anchors may produce similar benefits. Mock jurors (N = 345) reviewed a legal case and were asked to give a dollar award to compensate the plaintiff for pain and suffering. The presence and nature of a numerical anchor and the duration of pain and suffering were manipulated. Participants' numeracy was measured. Results provided support for predictions. Jurors higher in numeracy gave awards that more appropriately reflected the duration of pain and suffering and showed less variability in awards. Similar benefits were obtained by exposing jurors to meaningful numerical anchors to help them contextualize dollar amounts. Thus, introducing meaningful anchors to jurors may provide similar benefits to numeracy, without the drawbacks associated with selecting only numerate jurors.     

Making the Intangible Tangible: Using Expressive Art During Termination to Co-Construct Meaning

In this article, a creative termination activity grounded in relational-cultural theory is presented. In addition to providing a means for summarizing the counseling experience, this activity promotes relational development in the midst of client termination. Following implementation of the activity, the client and counselor are provided tangible, co-constructed gifts that are symbolic of the therapeutic relationship and relational growth. The authors provide a rationale for how this intervention promotes self-awareness, outline directions for implementation, and provide a case illustration to demonstrate how counselors can help promote relational closure and solidify clients’ therapeutic gains.     

A compensatory approach to optimal selection with mastery scores

A Bayesian approach for simultaneous optimization of test-based decisions is presented using the example of a selection decision for a treatment followed by a mastery decision. A distinction is made between weak and strong rules where, as opposed to strong rules, weak rules use prior test scores as collateral data. Conditions for monotonicity of optimal weak and strong rules are presented. It is shown that under mild conditions on the test score distributions and utility functions, weak rules are always compensatory by nature. The authors are indebted to Wilbert Kallenberg for his valuable comments and to Jan Gulmans for providing the data for the empirical example. The names of the authors are alphabetical; they are equally responsible for the contents of this paper.     

The processing of deviant information in prediction and evaluation

Analyses of information integration and of retention were used to examine the processing of deviant information in prediction and evaluation tasks. Sets of test scores were presented serially for a group of hypothetical students, and subjects were asked to evaluate the performance of each student or predict each student’s performance on a comprehensive final exam. An averaging model with greater weight for the more recent scores than for the earlier scores was supported for both types of task, but the recency was more pronounced in the prediction task. Weighting of deviant scores differed in the prediction and evaluation tasks. Significant discounting (underweighting) of deviant scores was obtained only in the prediction task, The ability to recall deviant scores on uncued tests of retention was higher in the prediction task than in the evaluation task. Prediction of future performance based on inconsistent measures of past performance thus appears to be an active process involving the discovery and discounting of unrepresentative information.     

Pervasiveness of framing effects among physicians and medical students

Researchers have been documenting the influence of framing upon decision making for more than two decades; decisions appear to change in response to superficial changes in the presentation of possible outcomes. Several studies of medical decision making have revealed; for instance, that clinical decisions differ when options are presented as gains (survival rates) rather than losses (mortality rates). However, most studies of framing effects in the medical domain have utilized a very limited number of clinical problems that have not allowed an adequate test of the prevalence of the phenomena. To extend previous studies, we presented three groups of subjects (experienced internists, residents, and third-year medical students) with booklets containing twelve hypothetical medical cases. Half of the subjects received gain versions and half received loss versions of the same cases. Chi-square analyses revealed that framing did not influence any of the decisions of medical students and influenced the decisions of residents and experienced physicians on only two of the clinical problems (the same two problems). It appears that the prevalence of framing effects in the clinical domain may be limited.     

A calibration explanation of serial position effects in evaluative judgments

Judges often evaluate stimulus series on dimensions for which no physical scale exists; for example, when judging academic ability in oral examinations. We propose that judges deal with this problem by calibrating an internal judgment scale that maps stimulus input onto available judgment categories. This calibration process implies serial position effects: Judges should initially avoid extreme categories, because using extreme categories reduces judgmental degrees of freedom, thereby increasing the possibility of internal consistency violations. In four experiments, we show that judgments become indeed more extreme later in a series of judgments. Judges evaluated the same good (poor) performances more positive (negative) at the end of a sequence compared to the beginning. Judges’ expertise did not prevent the effect, but allowing end-of-sequence judgments reduced serial position effects. We discuss the implications and possible remedies of these calibration effects on judgment extremity.     

Biased information processing in the escalation paradigm: information search and information evaluation as potential mediators of escalating commitment

Escalation of commitment denotes decision makers' increased reinvestment of resources in a losing course of action. Despite the relevance of this topic, little is known about how information is processed in escalation situations, that is, whether decision makers who receive negative outcome feedback on their initial decision search for and/or process information biasedly and whether these biases contribute to escalating commitment. Contrary to a widely cited study by E. J. Conlon and J. M. Parks (1987), in 3 experiments, the authors found that biases do not occur on the level of information search. Neither in a direct replication and extension of the original study with largely increased test power (Experiment 1) nor under methodologically improved conditions (Experiments 2 and 3) did decision makers responsible for failure differ from nonresponsible decision makers with regards to information search, and no selective search for information supporting the initial decision or voting for further reinvestment was observed. However, Experiments 3 and 4 show that the evaluation of the previously sought information is biased among participants who were responsible for initiating the course of action. Mediation analyses show that this evaluation bias in favor of reinvestment partially mediated the responsibility effect on escalation of commitment.