如何用行为经济学应对不确定性：拓展有效助推的范围

本文提出了决策中不确定性的五种类型及其行为学和心理学的应对机制：用简捷启发式替代加权求和应对信息不确定性, 用直觉应对认知不确定性, 用价值观预测选择偏好应对行为不确定性, 用决策参照点的权重替代概率应对结果不确定性, 用时间换时间以降低延迟折扣应对未来不确定性。新行为经济学应当通过“为什么”的功能性分析, 找到行为助推的心理杠杆。化解不确定性本身就是一种有效的行为助推; 化繁为简是行为助推的关键所在。     

Deceiving suspects about their alibi is equally harmful to the innocent and guilty

A common belief in police officers is that guilty suspects' statements are less consistent than innocent suspects'. This could leave guilty suspects more vulnerable to missing inconsistencies externally induced into their alibis. Source monitoring and cognitive load approaches suggest that untruthfulness rather than guilt should predict proneness to such deception. Manipulating both guilt and truthfulness, we tested these opposing hypotheses. One hundred twenty‐six participants were accused of stealing gift vouchers after wandering about a building. When interviewed several days later, participants rarely detected alterations in their alibi (23–29%). Unexpectedly, for one of three detection measures, untruthful participants detected more manipulations than did truthful participants. Guilt did not moderate detection rates. Manipulations were equally harmful for guilty and innocent suspects, and blindness to the alibi manipulations was not useful for discriminating innocent from guilty suspects. Because blindness effects are easy to elicit in the legal context, techniques that externally induce inconsistencies should be avoided.     

Option weights should be determined empirically and not by experts when assessing knowledge with multiple‐choice items

Multiple‐choice tests are frequently used in personnel selection contexts to measure knowledge and abilities. Option weighting is an alternative multiple‐choice scoring procedure that awards partial credit for incomplete knowledge reflected in applicants’ distractor choices. We investigated whether option weights should be based on expert judgment or on empirical data when trying to outperform conventional number‐right scoring in terms of reliability and validity. To obtain generalizable results, we used repeated random sub‐sampling validation and found that empirical option weighting, but not expert option weighting, increased the reliability of a knowledge test. Neither option weighting procedure improved test validity. We recommend to improve the reliability of existing ability and knowledge tests used for personnel selection by computing and publishing empirical option weights.     

Social intelligence and interview accuracy: Individual differences in the ability to construct interviews and rate accurately

This research examined differences in interviewers’ ability to identify effective interview questions and to accurately rate interviewees’ responses. Given the theoretical association between these interview activities and the construct of social intelligence (SI), a performance‐based measure of SI was developed utilizing situational judgment test methodology. The initial step was to examine evidence of the psychometric properties and construct validity of the new SI measure. The SI measure, a test of general mental ability (GMA), and a personality inventory were then used to examine aspects of rater performance. Participants chose a set of interview questions and viewed interviewee responses during a videotaped interview. Results showed that people higher in SI and GMA chose interview questions judged by experts to be superior and were more accurate in rating interviewee responses. The SI measure explained variance beyond GMA and outperformed a trait‐based SI measure. Implications for the selection and training of interviewers are discussed.     

The Essentialized Self: Implications for Motivation and Self‐Regulation

Persuasion attempts are more likely to stick and less likely to be counterargued if they fit the ways people naturally make sense of themselves and their world. One way to do that is to yoke persuasion to the social categories people experience as “true” and “natural.” Gelman and Echelbarger's (2019) integrative review of essentialism outlines the emergence of essentialism in children's reasoning. Connecting their discussion with identity‐based motivation theory (D. Oyserman, 2015) and a culture‐as‐situated cognition (D. Oyserman, 2017) perspective, this commentary addresses how an essentialized self can facilitate or impair motivation and self‐regulation and potentiate or undermine persuasive efforts.     

Perspectives of Homeschoolers Motivated by Religious and Moral Reasons

This study sought to highlight the association between motivation to homeschool and public school enrollment. Homeschooling parents (n?=?1052) across the United States responded to questions from a survey administered online. Logistic regression analysis and the chi-square test showed that homeschooling parents who chose the religious/moral answer option on the survey as the reason to homeschool, were less likely to choose to enroll into a public school program. Qualitatively, the narrative data of religious/moral homeschoolers and their reasons not to enroll in public education provided a number of themes, including quality of the environment (n?=?22) and reasons based on religion and faith (n?=?18). These findings may prove useful for public school officials who desire to know more about how some families make educational decisions.     

The influence of episodic memory decline on value-based choice

Recent studies suggest the involvement of episodic memory in value-based decisions as a source of information about subjective values of choice options. We therefore tested the link between age-related memory decline and inconsistencies in value-based decisions in 30 cognitively healthy older adults. Within the pre-registered experiment, the inconsistencies were measured in two ways: i) the consistency between stated preferences and revealed choices; ii) the amount of intransitivities in choice triplets, revealed in a forced paired choice task including all possible pairings of 20 food products. Although no significant association of memory functions to number of intransitive triplets was observed, participants with lower memory scores were more likely to choose the item for which they stated a lower preference. The results suggest a higher noise in the underlying preference signal in participants with lower memory. We discuss the results in the context of the unique needs of elderly consumers.     

素食的心理过程及影响因素

随着人们对健康、环境以及动物保护的关注, 素食主义日渐兴起。国内外对素食的心理学研究仍处于起步阶段。个体选择素食的心理过程涉及认知、情感、动机、认同感等方面, 素食行为受到个体差异、刻板印象、宏观因素的影响。未来研究有待深入探讨社会文化对素食行为的影响、中国文化情境下对素与素食的社会表征、素食的具身认知效应以及素食亚文化的动态形成过程, 以期引导对个体健康与环境有益的饮食模式。     

多巴胺对动物冲动性的影响

冲动性是注意缺陷障碍、物质成瘾以及病理性赌博等常见精神疾病的主要症状, 已经成为人们日益关注的焦点。研究发现, 前额叶–纹状体神经回路多巴胺参与了冲动性的调节, 但是研究结果并不一致, 多巴胺在冲动性中发挥的作用, 可能会受到三个不同因素的影响。首先, 冲动性具有多维度特征, 多巴胺对冲动的多种亚结构的作用存在差异; 其次, 多巴胺可以通过多个脑区以及与其他递质系统的交互作用影响冲动性; 最后, 多巴胺在调节冲动性的过程中可能还受到多种变量的影响, 如个体差异、环境线索等。     

基于三参照点理论的薪酬差距与离职决策的分析

离职是组织管理研究中一个重要的课题, 但鲜有研究将其纳入风险决策的框架中。本文运用行为决策的研究方法, 将离职作为一种风险选择, 运用三参照点理论探讨个体薪酬差距与离职决策之间的关系。我们的理论分析和初步的预研究发现：(1)个体薪酬现状与底线的差距负向预测离职决策, 薪酬目标与现状的差距正向预测离职决策; (2)进一步推导出薪酬差距与离职决策间存在双拐点的非线性函数关系; (3)同行现状收入作为横向参照系, 在薪酬差距与离职决策两者之间起锚定作用; (4)组织中薪酬分布的差距大小作为纵向参照系, 在薪酬差距与离职决策两者之间起调节作用。本研究将离职作为一种风险决策进行研究, 不仅对于离职理论与决策理论的发展有一定意义, 而且为人力资源管理实践提供了指导与启示。