When waiting to choose increases patience

We explore how waiting to choose influences patience. We propose that waiting to make an intertemporal choice increases the assumed value of the items for which people are waiting, leading them to become more patient. Five studies support this model. Study 1 finds that after waiting to choose, people exhibit greater patience than if they had not waited or before they had started to wait. Studies 2a and 2b find that increased valuation (rather than decreased cost of the wait) mediates the impact of waiting on patience. Study 3 further finds that whereas waiting to choose increases preference for a larger-later (over smaller-sooner) item, it also increases willingness to pay to expedite delivery of a single item. Finally, study 4 shows the waiting effect is stronger for hedonic than for utilitarian products. These studies modify existing theory by identifying the conditions under which waiting to choose can improve patience.     

The impact of self‐confidence on the compromise effect

This research reports an investigation into whether the personality aspect of self‐confidence affects the compromise effect. We hypothesize that highly self‐confident people have greater certainty in making decisions and are more attracted to risk‐taking, which makes them less likely to choose the safe or middle option in a large choice set. The three studies involved are conducted using between‐ and within‐subjects experimental designs. Various product categories are used to generalize the findings. Study 1 looks at purchasing decisions and utilizes three scales of self‐confidence, risk preference, and uncertainty; it demonstrates that consumers with high self‐confidence are less likely to choose a compromise option due to high certainty in their decision‐making. Study 2 discovers that people with low self‐confidence are more likely to choose the middle option in a risky condition than in a nonrisky condition. Study 3 decomposes self‐confidence into general and specific self‐confidence, and reveals that people with low general self‐confidence and low specific self‐confidence are more likely to choose the middle option.     

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.     

Information distortion in self-other decision making

In both organizational and social arenas, individuals make decisions for themselves and for other individuals. But research in decision making has provided little input into whether or how these decisions are psychologically different. In this paper, I propose that decisions—depending on whom they are for—vary according to the extent of information distortion, such that, individuals who choose for themselves demonstrate more postdecisional distortion, yet less predecisional distortion than individuals who choose on behalf of others. To test this hypothesis, participants in an experiment made a decision between two restaurants. Attributes about each restaurant were presented sequentially, and preferences were measured following each attribute. As expected, participants who chose for themselves experienced more postdecisional distortion. However, among participants who chose on behalf of others, greater distortion of predecisional attribute information was observed. These findings shed light on the differences in self-other decision making, as well as on research concerning information distortion.     

Should I save or should I not kill? How people solve moral dilemmas depends on which rule is most accessible

The literature on how people solve moral dilemmas often focuses on situations in which individuals have to make a decision where different moral rules are in conflict. In some of these situations, such as in footbridge dilemmas, people have to choose between sacrificing a few people in order to save many. The present research focuses on how people decide what to do in dilemmas involving conflicting moral rules. We propose that the rule that is cognitively most accessible during the decision making process (e.g., “Save lives” or “Do not kill”) will influence how people solve these moral dilemmas. Three studies are reported that indeed demonstrate that the most accessible rule influences willingness to intervene within footbridge dilemmas. This effect is found even when the accessibility of the rule is induced subliminally.     

Individual differences and reasoning: A study on personality traits

Personality can play a crucial role in how people reason and decide. Identifying individual differences related to how we actively gather information and use evidence could lead to a better comprehension and predictability of human reasoning. Recent findings have shown that some personality traits are related to similar decision‐making patterns showed by people with mental disorders. We performed research with the aim to investigate delusion‐proneness, obsessive‐like personality, anxiety (trait and state), and reasoning styles in individuals from the general population. We introduced personality trait and state anxiety scores in a regression model to explore specific associations with: (1) amount of data‐gathered prior to making a decision; and (2) the use of confirmatory and disconfirmatory evidence. Results showed that all our independent variables were positively or negatively associated with the amount of data collected in order to make simple probabilistic decisions. Anxiety and obsessiveness were the only predictors of the weight attributed to evidence in favour or against a hypothesis. Findings were discussed in relation to theoretical assumptions, predictions, and clinical implications. Personality traits can predict peculiar ways to reason and decide that, in turn, could be involved to some extent in the formation and/or maintenance of psychological disorders.     

The ability of children to delay gratification in an exchange task

The ability to wait for a reward is a necessary capacity for economic transactions. This study is an age-related investigation of children's ability to delay gratification in an exchange task requiring them to wait for a significant reward. We gave 252 children aged 2-4 a small piece of cookie, then offered them an opportunity to wait for a predetermined delay period before exchanging it for a larger one. In a first experiment, the children had to exchange the initial food item for rewards two, four or eight times larger. Results showed that children aged 3-4 years old sustained longer time lags for larger rewards than for smaller rewards. This effect was not found in 2-year-old subjects. In a second experiment, a reward 40 times larger than the initial piece was offered to determine the maximum waiting time that children could sustain. All age groups increased their performances. Older children were more successful at waiting, but some children as young as 2 years old were able to tolerate delays of up to 16 min. Older children who chose to give up waiting earlier than their known capacity demonstrated anticipation skills which had not been seen in younger children, showing that they had anticipated an increase in the time lag, and that they had considered both time and reward value when making their decision. Despite the age effect, we did not establish any limits for delaying gratification in children. This study may have educational implications for dealing with behavioral misconduct, which is known to be related to impulsivity control in young children.     

Individual Differences in Delay Discounting: Differences are Quantitative with Gains,but Qualitative with Losses

Research on delay discounting and inter‐temporal choice has yielded significant insights into decision making. Although research has focused on delayed gains, the discounting of losses is potentially important in precisely those areas where the discounting of gains has proved informative (e.g., substance use and abuse). Participants in the current study completed both a questionnaire consisting of choices between immediate and delayed gains and an analogous questionnaire consisting of choices between immediate and delayed losses. For almost all participants, the likelihood of choosing the delayed gain decreased with increases in the wait until it would be received. In contrast, when losses (i.e., payments) were involved, different participants showed quite different patterns of choices. More specifically, although the majority of the participants became increasingly likely to choose to pay later as the delay was increased, some participants appeared to be debt averse, in that they were more likely to choose the immediate payment option when the delay was long than when it was brief. These debt‐averse participants also were more likely to choose to wait for a larger delayed gain than other participants and scored lower on Impulsiveness than those who showed the typical pattern of discounting delayed losses. Taken together, these results suggest that in the case of delayed gains, people differ only quantitatively (i.e., in how steeply they discount), whereas in the case of delayed losses, people differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively, contrary to the common assumption that a single impulsivity trait underlies choices between immediate and delayed outcomes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Who are maximizers? Future oriented and highly numerate individuals

Two studies investigated cognitive mechanisms that may be associated with people's tendency to maximize. Maximizers are individuals who are spending a great amount of effort in order to find the very best option in a decision situation, rather than stopping the decision process when they encounter a satisfying option. These studies show that maximizers are more future oriented than other people, which may motivate them to invest the extra energy into optimal choices. Maximizers also have higher numerical skills, possibly facilitating the cognitive processes involved with decision trade‐offs.     

Self-Other Discrepancies in Waiting Time Decisions

Both anecdotal evidence and recently reported research suggest that people are risk-averse when faced with waiting time decisions. Four studies investigate whether there is a self-other discrepancy in how people make waiting time decisions themselves and how they predict others will make similar decisions. People are found to believe that others have valuations of time similar to their own. However, when faced with alternatives that involve risk in the duration of the wait, the results point to a self-other discrepancy, in that people report greater risk-aversion themselves than they think others would. Further, when faced with waiting time gains, people are themselves more risk-averse than they think others would be. Conversely, when faced with waiting time losses, people are themselves more risk-seeking than they think others would be. Overall, the results are consistent with the recently proposed risk-as-feelings hypothesis.     

Counselling — Why not? A qualitative study of people's accounts of not taking up counselling appointments

The aim of this research was to explore the reasons behind people's decision not to take up a counselling referral. A qualitative study was carried out, using semi‐structured interviews and written responses. The investigation was based in NHS primary care counselling services in a GP practice in the North of England. People who had been referred for counselling by their GP, but did not attend any counselling appointments, were interviewed or invited to submit written comments. Many people talked about the courage it took to ask for help. The referral itself was sometimes therapeutic as it legitimised their distress. The GP's response affected people's decisions. Waiting time and what happened during waiting was important. Some people had their own resources, which they used actively, seeking other sources of help; others were more passive, their lives changed around them. Other factors that contributed to non‐engagement were being referred in a crisis; lack of knowledge about counselling and mental distress; and concern about stigma and its impact on work. Perceived waiting time was the most significant factor for participants in this study, but most people had a combination of reasons for not engaging. Support from the GP, information about the service and being given a realistic expectation of waiting times, may help people feel better able to access counselling services.     

Self‐Directed Learning Favors Local,Rather Than Global,Uncertainty

Collecting (or “sampling”) information that one expects to be useful is a powerful way to facilitate learning. However, relatively little is known about how people decide which information is worth sampling over the course of learning. We describe several alternative models of how people might decide to collect a piece of information inspired by “active learning” research in machine learning. We additionally provide a theoretical analysis demonstrating the situations under which these models are empirically distinguishable, and we report a novel empirical study that exploits these insights. Our model‐based analysis of participants' information gathering decisions reveals that people prefer to select items which resolve uncertainty between two possibilities at a time rather than items that have high uncertainty across all relevant possibilities simultaneously. Rather than adhering to strictly normative or confirmatory conceptions of information search, people appear to prefer a “local” sampling strategy, which may reflect cognitive constraints on the process of information gathering.     

Employment as a Poverty Trap

Using an experiment conducted with 384 young Israelis, the authors find that if young people are actually working as unskilled workers, the status quo bias increases the premium that they require for giving up their jobs and seeking more education. This excess premium may make some individuals choose to remain employed as unskilled workers rather than pursue higher education. Such a decision may trap them in a life of poverty. The authors maintain that their results prompt a reexamination of the widely held belief that early employment is an advantage for young people.     

The psychological cost of waiting

The study of any problem involving waiting situations invariably assumes that people dislike having to wait. The analysis of queueing problems usually prescribes that some costs should be associated with the time people spend waiting to be served. These are usually considered to be of an economic nature, though the existence of other costs of a psychological nature is accepted. It is generally accepted that after having to wait for a certain amount of time, anxiety and stress start to build up in an individual, due both to the sense of waste and the uncertainty involved in a waiting situation. This work provides a theoretical basis for analysing this building up process as it occurs during the waiting period. It is proved that, under very general conditions, the resulting psychological stress accumulated during the process is a marginal increasing function of the waiting time, and some strategies to minimise it are developed. The results obtained give theoretical support to the usual assumptions underlying the development of systems to provide “real time” information to people in waiting situations. This is especially important in the operation of public transportation systems. The results also provide theoretical support to the “convex” treatment usually given to the waiting cost function in queueing problems.     

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) anticipation of food return: coping with waiting time in an exchange task

Despite controversial expectations that animals achieve reciprocal altruism, it is unclear if nonhuman species possess the necessary cognitive abilities. For reciprocal altruism, individuals must anticipate the loss of a commodity and accept a delay before some return. The authors investigated the abilities of 5 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) to cope with increasing waiting duration in exchange tasks. Subjects had to keep a small cookie before returning it to a human partner to obtain a larger piece. For a piece 2, 4, or 8 times the size of the small piece, 3 of the 5 subjects waited for up to 4 min. For a piece 40 times larger, 4 of the 5 subjects waited up to 8 min. At long time lag, renouncement to wait occurred earlier than predicted by subjects' general waiting capacity, suggesting that the decision to wait was based on a trade-off between reward quantity and expected costs of the waiting duration. Chimpanzees could anticipate a delayed reward at a time scale of several minutes. If this reflects a cognitive limit in chimpanzees' anticipation capacity, reciprocal altruism by keeping track of costs and benefits over extended periods may be unlikely in chimpanzees.     

Should you Sleep on it? The Effects of Overnight Sleep on Subjective Preference‐based Choice

Conventional wisdom and studies of unconscious processing suggest that sleeping on a choice may improve decision making. Although sleep has been shown to benefit several cognitive tasks, including problem solving, its impact on everyday choices remains unclear. Here we explore the effects of ‘sleeping on it’ on preference‐based decisions among multiple options. In two studies, individuals viewed several attributes describing a set of items and were asked to select their preferred item after a 12‐hour interval that either contained sleep or was spent fully awake. After an overnight period including sleep, individuals showed increases in positive perceptions of the choice set. This finding contrasts with previous research showing that sleep selectively enhances recall for negative information. In addition, this increase in positive recall did not translate into a greater desire to purchase their preferred item or into an overall benefit for choice satisfaction. Time‐of‐day controls were used to confirm that the observed effects could not be explained by circadian influences. Thus, we show that people may feel more positive about the choice options but not more confident about the choice after ‘sleeping on’ a subjective decision. We discuss how the valence of recalled choice set information may be important in understanding the effects of sleep on multi‐attribute decision making and suggest several avenues for future research. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How goal instrumentality shapes relationship evaluations

Findings from 6 experiments support the hypothesis that relationship evaluations and behavioral tendencies are goal dependent, reflecting the instrumentality of significant others for the self's progress toward currently active goals. Experiments 1 and 3 found that active goals can automatically bring to mind significant others who are instrumental for the activated goal, heightening their accessibility relative to noninstrumental others. Experiments 2-5 found that active goals cause individuals to evaluate instrumental others more positively, draw closer to them, and approach them more readily, compared with noninstrumental others. Experiment 6 found that people who engage in goal-dependent interpersonal evaluations are more successful, receiving higher grades. Implications for understanding the social nature of self-regulation and the impact of personal goals on interpersonal relationships are discussed.     

Deciding with the eye: How the visually manipulated accessibility of information in memory influences decision behavior

Decision situations are typically characterized by uncertainty: Individuals do not know the values of different options on a criterion dimension. For example, consumers do not know which is the healthiest of several products. To make a decision, individuals can use information about cues that are probabilistically related to the criterion dimension, such as sugar content or the concentration of natural vitamins. In two experiments, we investigated how the accessibility of cue information in memory affects which decision strategy individuals rely on. The accessibility of cue information was manipulated by means of a newly developed paradigm, the spatial-memory-cueing paradigm, which is based on a combination of the looking-at-nothing phenomenon and the spatial-cueing paradigm. The results indicated that people use different decision strategies, depending on the validity of easily accessible information. If the easily accessible information is valid, people stop information search and decide according to a simple take-the-best heuristic. If, however, information that comes to mind easily has a low predictive validity, people are more likely to integrate all available cue information in a compensatory manner.     

等待是一种折磨？等待时间知觉及其导致的非理性决策行为

等待时间知觉是指人们在等待过程中对等待时长的主观感受和心理体验, 它对人们的决策行为产生影响。影响等待时间知觉的客观因素包括等待过程的填充物、等待时间的确定性、接受服务的阶段和等待的物理环境等; 主观因素有负性情绪、自我控制和人格因素等。等待时间知觉导致的非理性决策行为包括时间沉没成本效应、“延迟-提前”框架效应、峰-终效应、偏好反转等。未来研究可从三个方面开展：(1) 时间启动和金钱启动下等待时间知觉的差异; (2) 基于时间心理账户视角研究等待时间知觉规律; (3) 借鉴时间知觉理论探讨等待(时间)影响决策行为的心理机制。