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.     

Thinking about decisions: An integrative approach of person and task factors

Decisions vary. They may vary in both content and complexity. People also vary. An important way that people vary is how much they think. Some prior research investigating thinking and decision making largely conflicts with most traditional decision theories. For example, if considering an array of products to choose from, thinking more about the alternative's attributes should lead to a better decision. However, some research indicates that thinking more may also lead to focusing on irrelevant aspects of the decision and a less optimal outcome. We propose that this conflict in the literature exists because of a failure to consider the interaction between the individual and the decision task. To test this, we used separate methodologies that enhance or attenuate a person's thinking. In Study 1, we selected people who were especially high or low in need for cognition and had them complete a robust decision-making inventory, which included both complex and simple tasks. In Study 2, we manipulated participant's level of glucose, which acts as the brain's fuel to enhance or attenuate thinking ability. Both studies provide insight for understanding our central tenant that more thought leads to better decisions in complex tasks but does not influence simple decisions. These findings show how the individual's thinking can interact with the constructive elements of the task to shape decision choice.     

Intertemporal Similarity: Discounting as a Last Resort

Standard models of intertemporal choice assume that individuals discount future payoffs by integrating reward amounts and time delays to generate a discounted value. Alternative models propose that, rather than integrate across them, individuals compare within attributes (amounts and delays) to determine if differences in one attribute outweigh differences in another attribute. For instance, the similarity model 1) compares the two reward amounts to determine whether they are similar, 2) compares the similarity of the two time delays, and then 3) makes a decision based on these similarity judgments. Here, I tested discounting models against attribute‐based models that use similarity judgments to make choices. I collected intertemporal choices and similarity judgments for the reward amounts and time delays from participants in three experiments. All experiments tested the ability of discounting and similarity models to predict intertemporal choices. Model generalization analyses showed that the best predicting models started with similarity judgments and then, if similarity failed to make a prediction, resorted to discounting models. Similarity judgments also matched intertemporal choice data demonstrating both the magnitude and sign effects, thereby accounting for behavioral data that contradict many discounting models. These results highlight the possibility that attribute‐based models such as the similarity models provide alternatives to discounting that may offer insights into the process of making intertemporal choices. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Signal detection models for the same–different task

Signal detection models for the same–different task are presented. In contrast to the standard approach that only considers the proportion correct, the models apply to the full four by two same–different table. The approach allows one to consider models that recognize bias and other effects. Two basic signal detection models, associated with different decision rules, are presented. A version of the covert decisions rule is introduced that directly allows for same–different bias, in contrast to earlier versions. It is shown how to fit the models with standard software for nonlinear mixed models. The models are applied to data from a recent same–different study.     

Focusing on Educational Outcomes

National education goals, content standards, and national tests are the hot topics of the day in educational reform. Special services personnel eventually will be faced with these issues, and can either be part of the discussion from the beginning, or wait and have to deal with someone else's decisions. In this article, we highlight some recent national and state educational reform activities and their probable implications for students with disabilities. We explain in brief the impetus behind the thrust toward an outcomesbased approach to education, and summarize the response of the National Center on Educational Outcomes for Students with Disabilities to this push. Possible ways in which special service providers can act to influence the focus on outcomes are described.     

‘Protective donation’: When refusing a request for a donation increases the sense of vulnerability

May refusing a request for a donation be conceived as ‘tempting fate’? Do people feel more vulnerable when they do not comply with such a request? In this paper we examine the link between subjective perceptions of vulnerability and people's willingness to help address a threatening cause. Results of five studies, examining a real life situation, hypothetical scenarios and a controlled lab game with actual monetary costs and rewards, show first, that deliberately helping is positively correlated with the perceived likelihood of becoming a victim of the same misfortune. Second, we show that refusing to donate to a threatening misfortune increases sense of vulnerability. Both phenomena occur especially for people with strong belief in a just world, who believe in a causal relationship between people's behavior and their fortune (rewards and punishments).     

More dead than dead: perceptions of persons in the persistent vegetative state

Patients in persistent vegetative state (PVS) may be biologically alive, but these experiments indicate that people see PVS as a state curiously more dead than dead. Experiment 1 found that PVS patients were perceived to have less mental capacity than the dead. Experiment 2 explained this effect as an outgrowth of afterlife beliefs, and the tendency to focus on the bodies of PVS patients at the expense of their minds. Experiment 3 found that PVS is also perceived as “worse” than death: people deem early death better than being in PVS. These studies suggest that people perceive the minds of PVS patients as less valuable than those of the dead – ironically, this effect is especially robust for those high in religiosity.     

The role of impulses in shaping decisions

This paper explores the extent to which decision behavior is shaped by short‐lived reactions to the outcome of the most recent decision. We inspected repeated decision‐making behavior in two versions of each of two decision‐making tasks, an individual task and a strategic one. By regressing behavior onto the outcomes of recent decisions, we found that the upcoming decision was well predicted by the most recent outcome alone, with the tendency to repeat a previous action being affected both by its actual outcome and by the outcomes of actions not taken. Because the goodness of predictions based on the most recent outcome did not diminish as participants gained experience with the task, we conclude that repeated decisions are continuously affected by impulsive reactions. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.