解释水平视角下的自己-他人决策差异

研究基于解释水平理论, 考察自己决策和为他人提供建议是否存在认知和偏好上的差异。实验一采用2(自己决策/为他人建议)×2(价值：高/低)×2(可行性：高/低)被试间设计, 165名被试代表自己或他人评价选项的吸引力。实验二采用3×2混合设计, 81名被试代表自己、相似或不相似他人, 为“高价值-低可行”和“低价值-高可行”两选项出价。结果支持了“自己-他人决策差异”：自己决策比为他人提建议在更大程度上受可行性高低的影响, 更为偏爱可行性高的选项; 人际相似性能在一定程度上缩小上述差异。     

Leader-focused search: The impact of an emerging preference on information search

This article examines the influence an emerging preference (i.e., a leader) has on predecisional information search. We explore two possibilities. First, decision makers may seek information they expect will support their leader (leader-supporting search). Second, decision makers may seek information about their leader, irrespective of the expected valence of the information (leader-focused search). Across various studies, product domains and experimental designs, we consistently find that decision makers engage in leader-focused search, not leader-supporting search. We also find that leader-focused search can steer decision makers towards information sources that are less important, less credible, and objectively suboptimal.     

Choosing what to choose from: Preference for inclusion over exclusion when constructing consideration sets from large choice sets

Decision making is a two‐stage process, consisting of, first, consideration set construction and then final choice. Decision makers can form a consideration set from a choice set using one of two strategies: including the options they wish to further consider or excluding those they do not wish to further consider. The authors propose that decision makers have a relative preference for an inclusion (vs. exclusion) strategy when choosing from large choice sets and that this preference is driven primarily by a lay belief that inclusion requires less effort than exclusion, particularly in large choice sets. Study 1 demonstrates that decision makers prefer using an inclusion (vs. exclusion) strategy when faced with large choice sets. Study 2 replicates the effect of choice set size on preference for consideration set construction strategy and demonstrates that the belief that exclusion is more effortful mediates the relative preference for inclusion in large choice sets. Studies 3 and 4 further support the importance of perceived effort, demonstrating a greater preference for inclusion in large choice sets when decision makers are primed to think about effort (vs. accuracy; Study 3) and when the choice set is perceived as requiring more effort because of more information being presented about each alternative (vs. more alternatives in the choice set; Study 4). Finally, Study 5 manipulates consideration set construction strategy, showing that using inclusion (vs. exclusion) in large choice sets leads to smaller consideration sets, greater confidence in the decision process, and a higher quality consideration set.     

The effect of accountability on susceptibility to decision errors

Recent research indicates that accountability can influence both what and how people think and might reduce decision makers' susceptibility to a variety of common judgment and choice errors. It is proposed that accountability can reduce decision errors if (1) decision makers are able to anticipate which response will be evaluated as more rational, and without concerns about accountability decision makers tend to select a different response, or (2) the normatively correct response can be identified by the more thorough and complex information processing associated with accountability. Consistent with the first proposition, four experiments demonstrated that accountability can reduce the sunk cost effect. The findings suggest that this debiasing effect reflects the subjects' expectation that they would be evaluated more favorably if they ignored sunk costs. Contrary to the second proposition, the prediction that accountable decision makers, due to their more thorough and multidimensional processing, would exhibit more consistent preferences across preference elicitation procedures was not supported in two studies. Finally, as hypothesized, accountability did not reduce a variety of decision errors for which the correct response was not known and was unlikely to be identified with more thorough information processing. These results are consistent with the notion that accountability effects in decision making are driven by the desire to be favorably evaluated and avoid criticism by others.     

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.     

An Approach to Multi‐Criteria Decision Problems Under Severe Uncertainty

Solving complex decision problems is a demanding task; it requires determining and evaluating the consequences of decision alternatives. To this end, uncertain factors that can only partly be influenced by the decision makers, and their interdependencies need to be considered. Scenarios focus on this part of the decision problem; they enable a systematic exploration of a multitude of possible future developments that are relevant for the decision including external events and decisions made. Scenarios are particularly useful when the problem is pervaded by severe uncertainties that cannot be quantified. For the evaluation of alternatives, multiple objectives and the potentially diverging preferences of the involved actors need to be respected. Multi‐criteria decision analysis aims at structuring the problem, evaluating the alternatives and supporting decision makers pursuing multiple goals. We propose an approach integrating scenarios and multi‐criteria decision analysis that focuses on the robustness of alternatives in complex, dynamic, uncertain and time‐bound situations. In this integrated framework, the scenarios provide the basis for evaluating a set of alternatives. Ideally, the set of scenarios considered captures all possible future developments. To appropriately explore this set, formal or analytical approaches to scenario construction generate a large number of scenarios. This challenges the decision makers' information‐processing capacity. To support them in managing the richness of information, a two‐fold approach that uses selection and aggregation is presented. By using a selection method, the scenarios that are deemed most relevant are identified, and their evaluations are presented in detail to decision makers. This approach is complemented by an aggregation of scenario evaluations on the basis of the decision makers' preferences. We present two approaches to facilitate the preference elicitation process. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Selective exposure and information quantity: how different information quantities moderate decision makers' preference for consistent and inconsistent information

Empirical evidence on selective exposure to information after decisions is contradictory: Whereas many studies have found a preference for information that is consistent with one's prior decision, some have found a preference for inconsistent information. The authors propose that different available information quantities moderate these contradictory findings. Four studies confirmed this expectation. When confronted with 10 pieces of information, decision makers systematically preferred decision-consistent information, whereas when confronted with only 2 pieces of information, they strongly preferred decision-inconsistent information (Study 1). This effect was not due to differences in processing complexity (Study 2) or dissonance processes (Study 3) but could be traced back to different salient selection criteria: When confronted with 2 pieces of information, the salient selection criterion was information direction (consistent vs. inconsistent), which caused a preference for inconsistent information. In contrast, when confronted with more than 2 pieces of information, the salient selection criterion was expected information quality, which caused a preference for consistent information (Study 4).     

No decision‐maker is an Island: integrating expert advice with information acquisition

The present research examined the social context of information acquisition. The main purpose was to examine how decision‐makers' information acquisition processes changed when they were provided access to expert advice. Results indicated that all decision‐makers opted to acquire advice; however, they typically did so only after completing over 75% of their own information search. Decision‐makers agreed more with the advice as task complexity increased, but, in general, searched information in two stages—i.e., a pre‐advice “hypothesis generation” stage and a post‐advice “hypothesis testing” stage. To behave in an adaptive manner, decision‐makers could have used expert advice either to increase their decision accuracy or to reduce their effort expenditure (or both); they chose the former. Implications and further extensions are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of statistical training on choice heuristics in choice under uncertainty

Kahneman and Tversky (1984) proposed that decision makers perceive choice uncertainty in two ways: (1) as a distribution of possible outcomes or (2) as a single uncertain outcome. Using statistical training as a factor that influences these perceptions, and thus the type of decision approach individuals use, we found that individuals with different levels of experience displayed differences in the decisions they made and in the choice heuristics used to make those decisions. Statistically naive individuals were more likely to prefer loss-minimizing alternatives, use a more non-compensatory heuristic, and spend more time on loss-related information than their statistically experienced counterparts. When a distributional cue, indicating the distributional nature of choice outcomes, was presented to both experience groups, the naive group was found to use a decision approach similar to the experienced group and to make similar decisions. The results are discussed in terms of the need to include factors that alter individuals' approaches to uncertainty in future behavioral models of uncertain choice.     

The effect of emotion on statistical reasoning: Findings from a base rates task

In this paper we explore the effect of emotion on statistical reasoning. We employed a base rates task to examine reliance on statistical information in the presence of congruent or incongruent anecdotal information. The impact of emotional content on statistical reasoning was investigated in controls and victims of sexual abuse. Two types of emotional contents were used, one generally emotional, and one related to sexual abuse. The latter category was included to investigate the effect of semantically identical stimuli that could potentially produce different levels of emotion in the victim and control groups. For control participants, emotional contents were associated with decreased use of statistical information and increased use of anecdotal information compared to neutral contents. Results from the victims group showed this effect to be increased for contents related to sexual abuse, suggesting that the effect is linked to the emotional connotation rather than semantic content. Victims perceived contents relating to their experience as more emotional and this was associated with specific reasoning impairments for these topics.     

Easier is not always better: The moderating role of processing type on preference fluency

Prior research has shown that preference fluency (i.e., the subjective feeling that forming a preference is easy or difficult) systematically influences consumer choices. When deciding on an option feels difficult, or requires effort, consumers are likely to select a different option or defer the decision. We find that under conditions of narrative processing, difficulty in processing can actually improve preferences because more effort leads to more transportation, or immersion, into the story, thus enhancing brand evaluations. Three experiments demonstrate that the effect of preference fluency reverses when consumers think about a brand as part of a story.     

认知闭合需要、框架效应与决策偏好

在带有模糊性的决策情境中,决策者个人的认知特征会对其判断决策产生重要影响。通过实验的方法,考察了认知闭合需要和特征框架效应对个体决策偏好的影响。93名工商管理硕士（MBA）参与了实验,研究的结果支持了本研究的3个假设,即认知闭合需要与特征框架效应不仅对被试的决策偏好存在显著的影响,而且二者还存在显著的交互作用。具体来说,研究发现,在模糊情境中：高认知闭合需要的被试偏好于立刻做出决策,而低认知闭合需要的被试偏好于暂缓做出决策;接收到正向框架信息的被试偏好于立刻做出决策,而接收到负向框架信息的被试偏好于暂缓做出决策;认知闭合需要与特征框架对被试的决策偏好还存在显著的交互作用。研究结论为根据个体认知闭合需要的水平来选拔决策者、利用框架效应来影响个体的信息加工方式进而提高决策质量提供了理论依据     

Determining the implementation order of a general plan by using a multicriteria method

We describe a real-life application of a new multicriteria method in the context of assisting the decision-making for a general plan in the municipality of Kirkkonummi in Uusimaa, Finland. At the time our group started working on the problem, a proposal for an overall plan had already been completed, but the order in which different regional parts of the plan should be implemented needed to be considered based on the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure. The EIA procedure generated a large amount of data about the different impacts of the alternatives. For this group decision making problem we developed the SMAA-3 decision support method which does not require any explicit preference information from the decision makers during the procedure. The uncertainty of the basic data is modelled using ELECTRE III-type pseudo-criteria with preference and indifference thresholds. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Copy if dissatisfied,innovate if not: contrasting egg-laying decision making in an insect

The use of conspecific cues as social information in decision making is widespread among animals; but, because this social information is indirect, it is error-prone. During resource acquisition, conspecific cues also indicate the presence of competitors; therefore, decision makers are expected to utilize direct information from resources and modify their responses to social information accordingly. Here, we show that, in a non-social insect, unattractive egg-laying resources alter the behavioural response to conspecific cues from avoidance to preference, leading to resource sharing. Females of the adzuki bean beetle Callosobruchus chinensis avoid laying eggs onto beans that already have conspecific eggs. However, when we provided females with bean-sized clean glass beads with and without conspecific eggs, the females preferred to add their eggs onto the beads with eggs. The glass beads, once coated with water extracts of adzuki beans, enabled the females to behave as if they were provided with the beans: the females preferred bean-odoured glass beads to clean glass beads and they avoided the substrates with eggs. When females are provided with unattractive egg-laying substrates only, joining behaviour (i.e. copying) might be advantageous, as it takes advantage of information about positive attributes of the substrate that the focal animal might have missed. Our results suggest that given only unsatisfactory options, the benefits of copying outweigh the costs of resource competition. Our study highlights the importance of integrating multiple information sources in animal decision making.     

The path or the goal? Decision vs. information focus in biased information seeking after preliminary decisions

Research on the phenomenon of selective exposure to information demonstrates that after preliminary or final decisions, people show a preference for supporting rather than conflicting information (confirmation bias). In this article, we examine conditions that increase or decrease distortions in the search for information. We report on four experiments indicating that the confirmation bias is influenced by whether people focus on their decision or on the presented pieces of information during the information search. Focusing on the decision, for example, because a reward for a correct decision is promised or simply because participants repeatedly think of it, increases the confirmation bias. On the other hand, if participants focus on the available pieces of information because they have to invest money in order to search for information or because they have to evaluate the individual pieces of information, the confirmation bias decreases. Implications for theoretical understanding and interventions for decision-making situations are discussed.     

A preliminary study of a traumatic injury prevention program

Abstract

This study examined the long-term impact of a five component spinal cord injury prevention program presented to adolescents. A sample of 445 teenagers who attended a junior high school in which an educational intervention was presented three years earlier and a control group of 379 students who had not been exposed to the intervention completed a questionnaire assessing their safety knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behaviors. Total scores on the questionnaire between treatment and control groups differed significantly. Students in the treatment group reported significantly more frequent seat belt use, stronger belief that seat belts were important to their safety, lower likelihood of riding with friends who had been drinking, higher rates of friends' use of seat belts, greater awareness of the age group most likely to be injured, and increased knowledge that they could prevent spinal cord injury.     

心理距离与后果严重性对人身安全决策的影响

已有研究发现决策者在为自己与不同他人决策时,其风险偏好存在差异。但是当对后果严重性不同的事件进行决策时,上述结果也并不总是如此。为了探究在人身安全情境中决策者面对后果严重程度不同的任务时,为自己和为他人决策时风险偏好的差异,实验一采用人际亲密度和决策所带来消极结果的严重程度分别操纵心理距离与后果严重性,结果发现决策者在后果严重任务中的决策比后果不严重任务更保守,为自己和为陌生人决策均比为最好朋友决策更冒险。这可能是由于决策者知觉到的决策责任不同所致。因此在实验一的基础上实验二引入决策责任这一变量,考察其在心理距离对风险决策影响中的作用,研究结果证明了我们的假设。     

Self‐framing of risky choice

Previous research on framing effects has largely focused on how choice information framed by external sources influences the response of a decision maker. This research examined how decision makers framed choice options and how the hedonic tone of self‐framing influenced their risk preference. By using pie charts and a complementary sentence‐completion task in Experiment 1, participants were able to interpret and frame the expected choice outcomes themselves before making a choice between a sure option and a gamble in either a life–death or a monetary problem. Each of these self‐frames (phrases) was then rated by a group of independent judges in terms of its hedonic tone. The hedonic tone of self‐frames was mostly positive and was more positive in the life–death than the monetary context, suggesting a motivational function of self‐framing. However, positive outcomes were still more likely to be framed positively than negative outcomes. In Experiment 2, choice outcomes were depicted with a whole‐pie chart instead of a pie slice in order to emphasize positive and negative outcomes equally. The results showed that the hedonic tone of self‐framing was still largely positive and more positive in the life domain than the monetary domain. However, compared to Experiment 1, the risk preference in the life–death domain was reversed, showing an outcome salience effect: when the pie‐slice chart emphasized only survival outcomes, participants were more risk taking under positive hedonic frames whereas when the whole‐pie chart depicted both survival and mortality outcomes, they became risk averse under positive frames. In sum, self‐framing reflected a positive bias in encoding risk information and affected the risk preference of the decision maker. Like the tone of voice used in communication, the hedonic tone of self‐framing, either positive or negative, can affect risk perception of a choice problem. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sequential sampling models of human text classification

Text classification involves deciding whether or not a document is about a given topic. It is an important problem in machine learning, because automated text classifiers have enormous potential for application in information retrieval systems. It is also an interesting problem for cognitive science, because it involves real world human decision making with complicated stimuli. This paper develops two models of human text document classification based on random walk and accumulator sequential sampling processes. The models are evaluated using data from an experiment where participants classify text documents presented one word at a time under task instructions that emphasize either speed or accuracy, and rate their confidence in their decisions. Fitting the random walk and accumulator models to these data shows that the accumulator provides a better account of the decisions made, and a “balance of evidence” measure provides the best account of confidence. Both models are also evaluated in the applied information retrieval context, by comparing their performance to established machine learning techniques on the standard Reuters‐21578 corpus. It is found that they are almost as accurate as the benchmarks, and make decisions much more quickly because they only need to examine a small proportion of the words in the document. In addition, the ability of the accumulator model to produce useful confidence measures is shown to have application in prioritizing the results of classification decisions.