Coherence shifts in probabilistic inference tasks

The fast‐and‐frugal heuristics approach to probabilistic inference assumes that individuals often employ simple heuristics to integrate cue information that commonly function in a non‐reciprocal fashion. Specifically, the subjective validity of a certain cue remains stable during the application of a heuristic and is not changed by the presence or absence of another cue. The parallel constraint satisfaction (PCS) model, in contrast, predicts that information is processed in a reciprocal fashion. Specifically, it assumes that subjective cue validities interactively affect each other and are modified to coherently support the favored choice. Corresponding to the model's simulation, we predicted the direction and the size of such coherence shifts. Cue validities were measured before, after (Experiment 1), and during judgment (Experiments 2 and 3). Coherence shifts were found in environments involving real‐world cue knowledge (weather forecasts) and in a domain for which the application of fast‐and‐frugal heuristics has been demonstrated (city‐size tasks). The results indicate that subjective cue validities are not fixed parameters, but that they are interactively changed to form coherent representations of the task. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

癌症患者临床决策倾向性的研究

为了解癌症患者对医生、自己和家属意见的临床决策倾向性,采取问卷调查和半结构访谈相结合的方法,调查120例住院癌症患者的临床决策倾向性。结果显示,(1)生活习惯相关决策,实际和理想的患者自己倾向性构成比值最高,为40%和33%;求医行为方面家属最高,实际和理想均为50%;常规检查、总体治疗方案、手术、化疗和放疗相关决策方面均为医生最高,分别为100%、90%、100%、90%和100%;(2)癌症患者理想和实际的临床决策倾向性构成比值均无差异(P0.05),但访谈显示29.17%的患者认为目前决策状态不理想。提示:(1)癌症患者在不同方面的临床决策倾向性有所不同。(2)癌症患者对临床决策状态基本满意,但有患者希望医生参与沟通更多或自己参与更多。     

Profits and halos: The role of firm profitability information in consumer inference

Three experiments investigated the consequences of the presence of information that a manufacturing firm is profitable on consumers' judgments of the firm and the consequences for perceptions of advertising, products, and choice intention. When profitability is present in the advertising context, consumers form more favorable advertiser judgments, which drive perceptions of greater advertisement credibility, which lead to more favorable product inferences, and ultimately stronger purchase intentions. The third experiment additionally shows that profitability information interacts with a warranty to drive judgments and choice. The implication of our findings is that firms should consider highlighting their profitability to enhance advertising effectiveness.     

A mediating role for anticipated regret in predicting retirement savings intention between groups with (without) past behaviour

A recent global trend has been the shifting of responsibility for retirement income planning from the public purse to individuals, with an associated encouragement to contribute more to retirement savings. This research investigated the influence of anticipated regret on the intention to make extra voluntary retirement savings. Results revealed that anticipated regret plays a powerful affective role in the formation of behavioural intention by conveying the influence of attitude and subjective norm to intention. Implications of the results with respect to possible interventions relating to behaviour change are considered.     

Do the right thing: The assumption of optimality in lay decision theory and causal judgment

Human decision-making is often characterized as irrational and suboptimal. Here we ask whether people nonetheless assume optimal choices from other decision-makers: Are people intuitive classical economists? In seven experiments, we show that an agent’s perceived optimality in choice affects attributions of responsibility and causation for the outcomes of their actions. We use this paradigm to examine several issues in lay decision theory, including how responsibility judgments depend on the efficacy of the agent’s actual and counterfactual choices (Experiments 1–3), individual differences in responsibility assignment strategies (Experiment 4), and how people conceptualize decisions involving trade-offs among multiple goals (Experiments 5–6). We also find similar results using everyday decision problems (Experiment 7). Taken together, these experiments show that attributions of responsibility depend not only on what decision-makers do, but also on the quality of the options they choose not to take.     

Dispositional optimism,self‐framing and medical decision‐making

Self‐framing is an important but underinvestigated area in risk communication and behavioural decision‐making, especially in medical settings. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship among dispositional optimism, self‐frame and decision‐making. Participants (N = 500) responded to the Life Orientation Test‐Revised and self‐framing test of medical decision‐making problem. The participants whose scores were higher than the middle value were regarded as highly optimistic individuals. The rest were regarded as low optimistic individuals. The results showed that compared to the high dispositional optimism group, participants from the low dispositional optimism group showed a greater tendency to use negative vocabulary to construct their self‐frame, and tended to choose the radiation therapy with high treatment survival rate, but low 5‐year survival rate. Based on the current findings, it can be concluded that self‐framing effect still exists in medical situation and individual differences in dispositional optimism can influence the processing of information in a framed decision task, as well as risky decision‐making.     

Culture or anonymity? Differences in proposer behaviour in Korea and Germany

This study explores the proposer behaviour in an ultimatum game (UG) frame under anonymous and non‐anonymous conditions among a Korean and German subject pool (n = 590) in comparison. Whereas the anonymous condition is represented by the standard UG, the non‐anonymous condition integrates an aggregate of the Korean cultural context variables university affiliation, regional origin and seniority. The latter, a classic Confucian context variable, is measured by age differentials. The former two are impactful components of so‐called Yongo networks, a unique Korean informal institution identical to Chinese Guanxi ties. Yongo networks, yet underrepresented in research, are said to be a central context variable to explain Korean social ties and decision‐making behaviour. We observe significant differences between the offer behaviours of Korean and German subjects when exposing selected cultural variables. We argue that the behavioural differences observed are in fact due to culture not anonymity.     

What Can Political Psychology Learn from Implicit Measures? Empirical Evidence and New Directions

Implicit measures have become very popular in virtually all areas of basic and applied psychology. However, there are empirical and theoretical arguments that might raise doubts about their usefulness in research on political attitudes. Based on a review of relevant evidence, we argue that implicit measures can be useful to identify distal sources of political preferences in domains where self‐presentation may bias self‐reports (e.g., influence of racial attitudes on voting decisions). In addition, implicit measures of proximal political attitudes can contribute to the prediction of future political decisions by virtue of their capability to predict biases in the processing of decision‐relevant information (e.g., prediction of voting behavior of undecided voters). These conclusions are supported by research showing that implicit measures predict real‐world political behavior over and above explicit measures. The reviewed findings suggest that implicit measures may serve as a useful supplement to improve the prediction of election outcomes. Open questions and potential directions for future research are discussed.     

Variations in decision-making profiles by age and gender: A cluster-analytic approach

Using cluster-analysis, we investigated whether rational, intuitive, spontaneous, dependent, and avoidant styles of decision making (Scott & Bruce, 1995) combined to form distinct decision-making profiles that differed by age and gender. Self-report survey data were collected from 1075 members of RAND’s American Life Panel (56.2% female, 18–93 years, M_age = 53.49). Three decision-making profiles were identified: affective/experiential, independent/self-controlled, and an interpersonally-oriented dependent profile. Older people were less likely to be in the affective/experiential profile and more likely to be in the independent/self-controlled profile. Women were less likely to be in the affective/experiential profile and more likely to be in the interpersonally-oriented dependent profile. Interpersonally-oriented profiles are discussed as an overlooked but important dimension of how people make important decisions.