心理学对经济学的涉入——从理性自利到社会偏好的决策框架

理性认知能力与社会偏好存在紧密的关联。文章简要回顾了经济决策理论从理性模型到有限理性模型和社会偏好模型的发展进程,论述了人们理性的局限性及其根源,并进一步探讨理性认知能力与社会偏好的关系。对人类以及灵长目动物的研究显示,有限理性可能是由根源于演化的适应性机制所导致。人类不公平厌恶的起源、个体公平能力的发展规律和表征公平的大脑结构上的证据表明,理性认知能力能让人更好地抑制自私性,实现更高层次的公平。     

The Selfish Side of Self‐Control

Self‐control is a powerful tool that promotes goal pursuit by helping individuals curb personal desires, follow norms, and adopt rational thinking. In interdependent social contexts, the socially acceptable (i.e. normative) and rational approach to secure long‐term goals is prosocial behaviour. Consistent with that, much research associates self‐control with prosociality. The present research demonstrates that when norm salience is reduced (i.e. social relations are no longer interdependent), high self‐control leads to more selfish behaviour when it is economically rational. In three studies, participants were asked to allocate an endowment between themselves and another person (one‐round, zero‐sum version of the dictator game), facing a conflict between a socially normative and an economically rational approach. Across the studies, norm salience was manipulated [through manipulation of social context (private/public; Studies 1 and 2), measurement of social desirability (Studies 1 and 3), and measurement (Study 2) and manipulation (Study 3) of social power] such that some participants experienced low normative pressure. Findings showed that among individuals in a low normative pressure context, self‐control led to economically rational, yet selfish, behaviour. The findings highlight the role of self‐control in regulating behaviour so as to maximize situational adaptation. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Observed Variability and Values Matter: Toward a Better Understanding of Information Search and Decisions from Experience

The search for different options before making a consequential choice is a central aspect of many important decisions, such as mate selection or purchasing a house. Despite its importance, surprisingly little is known about how search and choice are affected by the observed and objective properties of the decision problem. Here, we analyze the effects of two key properties in a binary choice task: the options' observed and objective values, and the variability of payoffs. First, in a large public data set of a binary choice task, we investigate how the observed value and variability relate to decision‐makers' efforts and preferences during search. Furthermore, we test how these properties influence the chance of correctly identifying the objectively maximizing option, and how they affect choice. Second, we designed a novel experiment to systematically analyze the role of the objective difference between the options. We find that a larger objective difference between options increases the chance for correctly identifying the maximizing option, but it does not affect behavior during search and choice. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

判断与决策研究纵观:基于模糊痕迹理论的视角(英文)

模糊痕迹理论是用于解释记忆、判断与决策的综合性理论,该理论的提出和发展主要基于对信息存储、表征、提取和加工过程的研究。本文首先介绍了模糊痕迹理论的基本原则,在此基础上重点讨论了其要义(gist)如何发挥核心作用,使得模糊痕迹理论有别于其他传统的决策模型。该理论将高级直觉与原始冲动性进行了区分,并且预测决策误差来源于判断与决策的各种不同成分,如背景知识、信息表征、提取和加工过程等。模糊痕迹理论不仅可以解释诸如框架效应、合取谬误等传统决策与判断文献中常讨论的误差现象,同时基于该理论的研究还得到了一些与传统决策理论相悖的新发现。此外,对脑与行为如何发育性变化的研究为我们了解成人的认知过程提供了至关重要的新视角,这些对脑与行为的发育性研究和对特殊人群的研究结果也都支持了模糊痕迹理论对要义加工依赖的预测。     

On the Moral Significance of Sacrifice

ABSTRACT

The paper offers a few reflections on moral implications of making sacrifices and on possible duties to make sacrifices. It does not provide an exhaustive or a systematic account of the subject. There are too many disparate questions, and too many different perspectives from which to examine them to allow for a systematic let alone an exhaustive account, and too many factual issues that I am not aware of. Needless to say, the observations that follow are in part stimulated by the popularity of some views that are mistaken. I will not however examine any specific view or account of these matters. The aim is to provide some pointers that will be helpful when considering specific issues regarding the moral significance of sacrifice.     

Threats to Democratic Rationality

This article examines trends that are impacting democratic rationality. It is found that the trends are almost uniformly negative. Viewed from within the legislative branch, trends are negatively impacting legislators’ time, complexifying problems, constraining options, and limiting the evaluation of options. Trends external to the legislative branch are reducing citizen participation and knowledge about public affairs, skewing the balance of power among the branches and states, and decreasing accountability of public officials. In combination, democratic rationality, the process of making good, efficient, and timely decisions to promote higher quality of life and the public good, is seriously threatened. Recommendations include public financing of campaigns, more structured legislative decision-making processes, simplification tests for all new legislation and regulations, and a major new initiative to foster public involvement in public decision making.     

Volatile Reasons

I argue for the existence of a category of practical reasons which I call ‘Deliberation-Volatile Reasons’ or ‘DVRs’. DVRs have the distinguishing feature that their status as reasons for action is diminished when they are weighed in deliberation by the agent. I argue that DVRs are evidence of ‘deliberative blind spots’. I submit that an agent manifests a peculiar kind of practical irrationality in so far as she endeavours to find a deliberative path to what she has reason to do, when the discovery of such a path renders the destination inaccessible.     

Love: gloriously amoral and arational

I argue that an evaluational conception of love collides with the way we value love. That way allows that love has causes, but not reasons, and it recognizes and celebrates a love that refuses to justify itself. Love has unjustified selectivity, due to its arbitrary causes. That imposes a non-tradability norm. A love for reasons, rational love or evaluational love would be propositional, and it therefore allows that the people we love are tradable commodities. A moralized conception of love is no less committed to treating those we love as tradable commodities; it is just that they are tradable moral commodities. An evaluative criterion of adequacy, I suggest, encourages the opposite view – a non-rational and non-evaluational concept of love. Such a love can set up partial obligations, which may even demand that one sacrifice one's life. Only a love that has causes but not reasons can have the kind of value that we think love has, and thus it would only be rational to pursue and foster such a love.