Navigating uncertainty in human social decision-making: Consequences and coping strategies

Uncertainty is a fundamental aspect of human social life. Based on fruitful findings, the current review aims to establish a schema that outlines the relationship between uncertainty and human social decision-making: the influences of uncertainty on social decision-making (mainly prosocial behaviors) and the strategies commonly employed to reduce social uncertainty. Human prosocial behaviors are modulated by both social and nonsocial uncertainty. Specifically, uncertainty decreases prosocial behaviors by providing moral wiggling room or promoting loss aversion but also helps maintain relationships by mitigating negative interactions. Moreover, impression formation, impression updating, and compliance with social norms are crucial strategies for coping with social uncertainty, but they are subject to various biases. Finally, we highlight some important issues that need to be addressed in future studies. In summary, the current review deepens our understanding of the role of uncertainty in social behaviors.     

Is hostile attributional bias associated with negative urgency and impulsive behaviors? A social-cognitive conceptualization of impulsivity

The aim of this study was to verify the relevance of social information-processing (SIP) models in the study of impulsivity. 170 undergraduates completed the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale relevant to negative urgency, the SIP–AEQ and control measures. The SIP–AEQ consists of eight vignettes featuring a social situation measuring hostile attributional bias (HAB), emotional responses and impulsive behaviors in response to an ambiguous social provocation. Regression analyses showed negative urgency’s unique contribution to indirect HAB after controlling for the effects of aggressiveness, negative emotions and lack of perseverance, another UPPS dimension of impulsivity. Analyses also revealed that indirect HAB mediates the relationship between negative urgency and impulsive behaviors, after controlling for the effects of aggressiveness and negative emotions. Results suggest that SIP models are relevant to study the active social cognitive processes in impulsive behaviors of high-urgency individuals.     

Effect of regulating anger and sadness on decision-making

The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination for regulating anger and sadness on decision-making. Participants (N = 165) were asked to recall two autobiographical events in which they felt intense anger and sadness, respectively. Participants were then instructed to reappraise, accept, ruminate, or not use any strategies to regulate their feelings of anger and sadness. Following this manipulation, risk aversion, and decision-making strategies were measured using a computer-based measure of risk-taking and a simulated real-life decision-making task. Participants who were instructed to reappraise their emotions showed the least anger and sadness, the most adaptive decision-making strategies, but the least risk aversion as compared to the participants in the other conditions. These findings suggest that emotion regulation strategies of negative affective states have an immediate effect on decision-making and risk-taking behaviors.     

When do people bet on their selves? The role of global self-concepts in decision making

Previous research suggests that behavior is generally predicted by specific self-concepts but not global self-concepts. A study was conducted to examine the conditions under which global conceptions of self are predictive of decision-making. Participants were given the opportunity to bet lottery tickets on their performance in the “Utah Challenge” competition. Both global and specific self-concepts independently predicted betting on specific known contests and betting on a contest that was unknown. Global but not specific self-concepts independently predicted betting on a multi-faceted contest. Mediation analyses suggest that self-concepts guide decisions by influencing the perceived likelihood of success. Participants’ were more overconfident about their chances of winning when a task was unknown rather than familiar.     

Preference modulates smelling behaviour in olfactory decision tasks

When people are shown a pair of images and asked to identify which one is more attractive, their gaze shifts to the image they will eventually choose, prior to making the decision. Many researchers have examined the relationship between this gaze bias and decision processes, but not the relationships between other sensory modalities and decision processes. This study examined behaviour in relation to olfactory decision tasks. In accordance with the concept of gaze bias, the likelihood of participants smelling the item they eventually chose immediately before the decision was greater when they were instructed to identify an item that was more, versus less, favoured. The likelihood of smelling the item that was eventually chosen last was also greater than chance when participants were instructed to identify the more masculine item. These results suggest that a bias to sample a chosen item last is a common phenomenon regardless of sensory modality.     

What good leaders actually do: micro-level leadership behaviour,leader evaluations,and team decision quality

We supplement broad definitions of leadership behaviour with the concept of micro-level leadership behaviour, leaders’ verbal and non-verbal visible conduct and interaction. For the context of team decision-making, we identify two potentially beneficial micro-level leadership behaviours, question asking and behavioural mimicry. Specifically, we propose that under conditions of informational complexity and unshared information, participative leadership is most appropriate for team decision-making, that its effects are mediated by inquiring and empathy, and that question asking and mimicry are the behavioural micro-level manifestations of inquiring and empathy. We thus hypothesize that the effect of participative leadership on team decision quality and leader evaluation is mediated by question asking and mimicry. We conduct a laboratory experiment with student teams working on a hidden profile decision-making task and measure question asking through behavioural coding and mimicry with motion sensors. Results show that the effect of participative leadership on decision quality is mediated by question asking, and that the effect of participative leadership on leader evaluation as transformational is mediated by leaders’ behavioural mimicry and question asking. Under control of these micro-level behaviours, team decision quality and leader evaluations were unrelated.     

Using the Networked Fire Chief for Ego-Depletion Research: Measuring Dynamic Decision-Making Effort and Performance

This study replicated ego-depletion predictions from the self-control literature in a computer simulation task that requires ongoing decision-making in relation to constantly changing environmental information: the Network Fire Chief (NFC). Ego-depletion led to decreased self-regulatory effort, but not performance, on the NFC task. These effects were also buffered by task enjoyment so that individuals who enjoyed the dynamic decision-making task did not experience ego-depletion effects. These findings confirm that past ego-depletion effects on decision-making are not limited to static or isolated decision-making tasks and can be extended to dynamic, naturalistic decision-making processes more common to naturalistic settings. Furthermore, the NFC simulation provides a methodological mechanism for independently measuring effort and performance when studying ego-depletion.     

Uncovering unknown unknowns: Towards a Baconian approach to management decision-making

Bayesian decision theory and inference have left a deep and indelible mark on the literature on management decision-making. There is however an important issue that the machinery of classical Bayesianism is ill equipped to deal with, that of “unknown unknowns” or, in the cases in which they are actualised, what are sometimes called “Black Swans”. This issue is closely related to the problems of constructing an appropriate state space under conditions of deficient foresight about what the future might hold, and our aim is to develop a theory and some of the practicalities of state space elaboration that addresses these problems. Building on ideas originally put forward by Bacon (1620), we show how our approach can be used to build and explore the state space, how it may reduce the extent to which organisations are blindsided by Black Swans, and how it ameliorates various well-known cognitive biases.