Career decision making: The limits of rationality and the abundance of non-conscious processes

The terms of work have changed, with multiple transitions now characterizing the arc of a typical career. This article examines an ongoing shift in the area of vocational decision making, as it moves from a place where “it’s all about the match” to one closer to “it’s all about adapting to change”. We review literatures on judgment and decision making, 2-system models of decisional thought, the neuroanatomy of decision making, and the role of non-conscious processes in decision making. Acknowledging the limits of rationality, and the abundance of non-conscious processes in decision making, obliges us to act in ways that mitigate the inherent difficulties to which those processes make us vulnerable. We conclude that both rational and intuitive processes seem dialectically intertwined in effective decision making, and we offer a trilateral model of career decision making that includes rational and intuitive mechanisms, both of which are funded and kept in check by occupational engagement.     

Effects of attachment style and relationship context on selection among relational strategies

Numerous studies have examined attachment-style differences in social perception, emotion-regulation, and couple communication, but relatively little is known about how dispositional attachment style combines or interacts with relationship situations or contexts to influence the decisions people make about how to act in their relationships. In the present study, participants were presented twice with relationship scenarios and asked to indicate how they would respond to each one. They completed the task initially without a particular context in mind and then again with either a positive or a negative relationship context in mind. Results indicated that a deteriorating relationship context caused participants to choose less secure and more insecure behaviors, especially avoidant ones, but dispositional attachment style was still important as well. Both sets of factors produced main effects rather than interactions.     

Understanding Our Understanding of Strategic Scenarios: What Role Do Chunks Play?

There is a crucial debate concerning the nature of chess chunks: One current possibility states that chunks are built by encoding particular combinations of pieces-on-squares (POSs), and that chunks are formed mostly by "close" pieces (in a "Euclidean" sense). A complementary hypothesis is that chunks are encoded by abstract, semantic information. This article extends recent experiments and shows that chess players are able to perceive strong similarity between very different positions if the pieces retain the same abstract roles in both of them. This casts doubt on the idea that POS information is the key information encoded in chess chunks, and this article proposes, instead, that the key encoding involves the abstract roles that pieces (and sets of pieces) play-a theoretical standpoint in line with the research program in semantics that places analogy at the core of cognition.     

An intercept study of footbridge users and non-users in Malaysia

Road safety of vulnerable road users in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is a major concern. Footbridges or overpasses are pieces of infrastructure designed to allow pedestrians to cross safely. Although there is tension over whether footbridges are the most inclusive and sustainable way to support safe road crossing for vulnerable road users, footbridges are still a predominant piece of infrastructure in LMICs. Therefore, research aimed at optimising the use of footbridges could have an impact on the safety of vulnerable road users. The objective of the present study is to understand the motivational factors influencing pedestrian crossing decisions to use a footbridge in Malaysia. Additionally, the present study investigates the effectiveness of some proposed interventions to change the crossing behaviour of footbridge non-users. An intercept study was conducted in five major cities in Malaysia. Pedestrians answered questions regarding their perceptions about footbridges and previous walking experiences. The analysis was divided into two parts: Firstly, a decision tree analysis was conducted to study the relationship between the observed decision to use or not a footbridge and pedestrians’ perceptions about footbridges and experiences. Secondly, a decision tree analysis was used to identify the effectiveness of proposed countermeasures in increasing the footbridge usage among non-users. The findings showed that the footbridge height and the frequency of using it were associated with a decrease in the likelihood of utilising this structure. Being in a hurry was highly associated with crossing at the street level. In addition, footbridge non-users might change their behaviour if escalators or fences are provided as interventions. The results indicated that safety messages delivered through posters to alert footbridge non-users have the potential to sustain safe mobility. A user-centred approach is necessary to increase the usability of footbridges in LMICs.     

Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the End-of-Life Decision-Making and Staff Stress Questionnaire

Background/objectiveThe goal of this study is to establish a Chinese version of the End-of-Life Decision Making and Associated Staff Stress Questionnaire to assess its reliability and validity.MethodA sample of 119 Intensive Care Unit physicians and 485 nurses in China completed the questionnaire, along with questionnaires assessing motional exhaustion subscale, Stress Overload Scale, and other variables associated with end-of-life decision.ResultsSeven factors obtained via exploratory factor analysis could explain 70.61% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated an acceptable model fit with Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) being .078 and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) being .066. Validity evidence based on relationships with other variables was provided by positive or negative correlations between the questionnaire subscales and emotional exhaustion, stress overload, and other variables associated with end-of-life decision. The average content validity index was .96. The Cronbach’s α and test–retest reliability was outstanding.ConclusionsThe Chinese version of the End-of-Life Decision Making and Associated Staff Stress Questionnaire is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring the facilitators and hinders to facilitate the end-of-life decision-making, communication and the associated pressure perceived by relevant Intensive Care Unit medical staff among the Chinese population.     

Construct Validity of the Iowa Gambling Task

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) was created to assess real-world decision making in a laboratory setting and has been applied to various clinical populations (i.e., substance abuse, schizophrenia, pathological gamblers) outside those with orbitofrontal cortex damage, for whom it was originally developed. The current review provides a critical examination of lesion, functional neuroimaging, developmental, and clinical studies in order to examine the construct validity of the IGT. The preponderance of evidence provides support for the use of the IGT to detect decision making deficits in clinical populations, in the context of a more comprehensive evaluation. The review includes a discussion of three critical issues affecting the validity of the IGT, as it has recently become available as a clinical instrument: the lack of a concise definition as to what aspect of decision making the IGT measures, the lack of data regarding reliability of the IGT, and the influence of personality and state mood on IGT performance.     

The effects of endowment on the demand for probabilistic information

Research shows that individuals are ambiguity averse: they choose unambiguous over equivalent ambiguous prospects and price them higher (either as buyers or sellers). Moreover, it is often assumed that ambiguity averse individuals are willing to pay an ambiguity premium for information that reduces ambiguity [Camerer, C. F., & Weber, M. (1992). Recent developments in modeling preferences: Uncertainty and ambiguity. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5(4), 325–370]. However, when people are asked to exchange an ambiguous alternative in their possession for an equivalent unambiguous one, they prefer to retain the former [Roca, M., Hogarth, R. M., & Maule, A. J. (2006). Ambiguity seeking as a result of the status quo bias. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 32(3), 175–194]. We present three experiments investigating the economic effects of endowment on attitudes towards ambiguity and the ambiguity premium. The experiments, based on a [Becker, G., DeGroot, M., & Marschak, J. (1964). Measuring utility by a single-response sequential method. Science, 9, 3] procedure, show that the value attributed to ambiguity reducing information is substantially affected by the status quo of the individual.     

Is timely information always better? The effect of feedback frequency on decision making

Recent advances in information technology make it possible for decision makers to track information in real-time and obtain frequent feedback on their decisions. From a normative sense, an increase in the frequency of feedback and the ability to make changes should lead to enhanced performance as decision makers are able to respond more quickly to changes in the environment and see the consequences of their actions. At the same time, there is reason to believe that more frequent feedback can sometimes lead to declines in performance. Across four inventory management experiments, we find that in environments characterized by random noise more frequent feedback on previous decisions leads to declines in performance. Receiving more frequent feedback leads to excessive focus on and more systematic processing of more recent data as well as a failure to adequately compare information across multiple time periods. These results suggest that caution be used in the design and implementation of real-time information systems.     

A comparison of bounded diffusion models for choice in time controlled tasks

The Wiener diffusion model (WDM) for 2-alternative tasks assumes that sensory information is integrated over time. Recent neurophysiological studies have found neural correlates of this integration process in certain neuronal populations. This paper analyses the properties of the WDM with two different boundary conditions in decision making tasks in which the time of response is indicated by a cue. A dual reflecting boundary mechanism is proposed and its performance is compared with a well-established absorbing boundary in the cases of the WDM, the WDM with extensions, and the WDM with prior probability. The two types of boundary influence the dynamics of the model and introduce differential weighting of evidence. Comparisons with Ornstein-Uhlenbeck models are also done, and it is shown that the WDM with both types of boundary achieves similar performance and produces similar fits to existing behavioural data. Further studies are proposed to distinguish which boundary mechanism is more consistent with experimental data.     

Empirical comparison of Markov and quantum models of decision making

There are at least two general theories for building probabilistic-dynamical systems: one is Markov theory and another is quantum theory. These two mathematical frameworks share many fundamental ideas, but they also differ in some key properties. On the one hand, Markov theory obeys the law of total probability, but quantum theory does not; on the other hand, quantum theory obeys the doubly stochastic law, but Markov theory does not. Therefore, the decision about whether to use a Markov or a quantum system depends on which of these laws are empirically obeyed in an application. This article derives two general methods for testing these theories that are parameter free, and presents a new experimental test. The article concludes with a review of experimental findings from cognitive psychology that evaluate these two properties.