信息模糊：消费决策领域中的有限理性

信息模糊（obfuscation）是行为经济学研究的重要领域,主要解释了在商品买卖过程中,销售商通过把商品信息复杂化等手段,让人们的消费过程变得更加复杂和困难,从而使消费者在购买商品时面对信息模糊做出种种不明智的选择的现象问题。本文从以往的研究成果出发,就信息模糊、有限理性和销售者的决策行为的关系进行了探讨,以期为信息模糊的跨学科研究提供可借鉴的思路和方法。     

Cheating more for less: Upward social comparisons motivate the poorly compensated to cheat

Intuitively, people should cheat more when cheating is more lucrative, but we find that the effect of performance-based pay-rates on dishonesty depends on how readily people can compare their pay-rate to that of others. In Experiment 1, participants were paid 5 cents or 25 cents per self-reported point in a trivia task, and half were aware that they could have received the alternative pay-rate. Lower pay-rates increased cheating when the prospect of a higher pay-rate was salient. Experiment 2 illustrates that this effect is driven by the ease with which poorly compensated participants can compare their pay to that of others who earn a higher pay-rate. Our results suggest that low pay-rates are, in and of themselves, unlikely to promote dishonesty. Instead, it is the salience of upward social comparisons that encourages the poorly compensated to cheat.     

Teaching Ethical Decision Making: Helping Students Reconcile Personal and Professional Values

Because conflicts between personal and professional values can interfere with ethical decision making, a goal of counselor education must be helping students reconcile such conflicts. This article describes one counselor educator's experience teaching ethical decision making and the effects on student learning. Growth was observed in increased tolerance for ambiguity, awareness of how values influenced decision making, use of multiple factors in decision making, and emphasis on the welfare of clients. Implications for teaching and future research directions are discussed.     

Parallel processing of whole words and morphemes in visual word recognition

Models of morphological processing make different predictions about whether morphologically complex written words are initially decomposed and recognized on the basis of their morphemic subunits or whether they can directly be accessed as whole words and at what point semantics begin to influence morphological processing. In this study, we used unprimed and masked primed lexical decision to compare truly suffixed (darkest) and pseudosuffixed words (glossary) with within-boundary (d ra kest/g ol ssary) to across-boundary (dar ek st/glos as ry) letter transpositions. Significant transposed-letter similarity effects were found independently of the morphological position of the letter transposition, demonstrating that, in English, morphologically complex whole-word representations can be directly accessed at initial word processing stages. In a third masked primed lexical decision experiment, the same materials were used in the context of stem target priming, and it was found that truly suffixed primes facilitate the recognition of their stem-target (darkest–DARK) to the same extent as pseudosuffixed primes (glossary–GLOSS), which is consistent with theories of early morpho-orthographic decomposition. Taken together, our findings provide evidence for both whole-word access and morphological decomposition at initial stages of visual word recognition and are discussed in the context of a hybrid account.     

A Bayesian psychophysical model for angular variables

Bayesian theories of perception provide a link between observed response distributions and theoretical constructs from Bayesian decision theory. Using Bayesian psychophysics we derive response distributions for two cases, one based on a normal distribution and one on a von Mises distribution for angular variables. Interestingly, where the theoretical response distribution is always unimodal in the case of normal distributions, it can become bimodal in the angular setting in the case when prior and likelihood are about equally strong.     

Effects of Practice upon the Metabolic Cost of Mental Work

Two experiments with isopods, Armadillidium vulgare, were reported. In Experiment I, two groups of five Ss each learned to run a T maze to escape light and heat. Both original learning (OL), and relearning (RL) the next day, were to a criterion 9/10 correct. Between OL and RL one group was immobilized (I), and the other group was given the opportunity for activity (A). The I treatment resulted in greater savings on RL than did the A treatment, and it was thus concluded that A is a retroaction treatment. Experiment II was like I except that all Ss were extinguished immediately following OL, and then given either A or I until RL. In this experiment, the A treatment led to no savings, but the I treatment produced negative savings (more trials on RL relative to OL). It was concluded that the A treatment had retroactively interfered with extinction, and this result was discussed as analogous to differential spontaneous recovery in favor of the A group. It was concluded that Liberman's (4, 5) theory (that spontaneous recovery is due to the forgetting of extinction) is supported by the result of Experiment II.     

Vocational self-concept crystallization as a mediator of the relationship between career self-management and job decision effectiveness

This article examines the influence of career self-management and vocational self-concept crystallization on job decision effectiveness and how vocational self-concept crystallization mediates the relationship between career self-management and job decision effectiveness. Six hundred and eleven Chinese employees participated in the research. Using hierarchical regression and structural equation modeling, the results showed that: (1) career self-management has a positive direct effect on vocational self-concept crystallization; (2) career self-management has a positive direct effect on job decision effectiveness; (3) vocational self-concept crystallization has a positive direct effect on job decision effectiveness; and (4) vocational self-concept crystallization partly mediates the relationship between career self-management and job decision effectiveness.     

Decision making and testosterone: When the ends justify the means

Behavioral endocrinology research suggests that testosterone may play a role in moral decision making. Studies involving human and nonhuman animals indicate that high basal testosterone is associated with decreased aversion to risk and an increased threshold for conflict, fear, stress, and threat. We tested the role of testosterone in moral decision making. We predicted and found that individuals high in testosterone are more likely to make utilitarian decisions—specifically when doing so involves acts of aggression and social cost.     

Groupthink and the space shuttle challenger accident: Toward a quantitative case analysis

Research on historical cases of policy decisions thought to involve groupthink nearly always has been qualitative, rather than quantitative. We propose that observable antecedents and consequences can be used to code incidents in a group's decision process, thereby providing the basis for more rigorous, quantitative analyses. As a first step toward such a quantitative case analysis, we coded statements from the investigative report on the space shuttle Challenger accident as positive or negative instances of the observable antecedents and consequences of groupthink. Positive instances of groupthink were twice as frequent as negative instances. More importantly, during the 24 hours prior to launch the ratio of positive to negative instances increased, then remained high. These results are consistent with the notion that the decision to launch the Challenger involved groupthink and provide a first step toward more rigorous quantitative analysis of historical or current decision processes.