Does Drinking Promote Risky Sexual Behavior?

ABSTRACT— The present review argues that, popular lore notwithstanding, the well-documented association between usual patterns of alcohol use and risky sex reflects multiple underlying processes that are both causal and noncausal (spurious) in nature. It is further argued that even alcohol's acute causal effects on sexual behavior are more variable than they are commonly assumed to be. Drinking can promote, inhibit, or have no effect on behavior, depending on the interplay of factors governing behavior in a particular situation and the content of individually held beliefs about alcohol's effects.     

Bringing life history theory into relationship science

In this article, I review three longitudinal studies that have investigated how exposure to more versus less predictable environments shunt individuals down different developmental pathways. After describing key principles of life history theory and how stress can shape social development over time, I discuss an interrelated set of findings from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation. Collectively, these studies reveal the pathways through which exposure to more unpredictable, chaotic early‐life environments prospectively forecast engaging in riskier behaviors and shorter‐term, more opportunistic, and less investing orientations to mating and parenting in one or both genders. I conclude by discussing the broader goals underlying this program of research.     

“易得性启发式”与决策框架对风险决策倾向的影响

研究目的:探讨易得性启发式对风险决策认知过程的影响,以及易得性启发式与决策框架相互作用下的风险投资行为特点。方法:采用2×2×7混合实验设计和情境实验。结果:成功结果的易得性启发式导致对风险决策问题采用自上而下加工,失败结果为自下而上加工;成功结果时投资倾向为风险趋向,失败结果为风险规避;易得性启发式与决策框架共同影响风险投资倾向。结论:易得性启发式影响风险决策的认知加工过程,并与决策框架对风险投资倾向产生交互作用。     

爱荷华博弈任务(IGT)与决策的认知神经机制

爱荷华博弈任务(IGT)是一项检查情感性决策机制的常用实验范式。据此, Damasio等人提出了躯体标记假设(SMH)解释情绪影响决策的神经生理机制。近期, 大量研究在IGT究竟是模糊决策还是风险决策、与情绪和认知的关系、与工作记忆和陈述性记忆的关系以及IGT的神经网络与分子遗传机制等方面积累了丰富资料。结果显示, IGT加工的早期由模糊决策主导, 情绪性躯体信号对引导决策选项的偏好可能起关键作用, 后期则倾向是一种风险决策, 认知评价和预期对选项偏向逐渐占优势; IGT与工作记忆的加工成分有相互重叠, 也需陈述性记忆的参与; IGT的加工不仅依赖于杏仁核、腹内侧前额皮层、眶额皮层等组成的情绪脑网络的活动, 还与背外侧前额皮层、海马、腹侧纹状体、岛叶皮层、辅助运动前区、扣带回皮层等许多脑区的活动有关; COMT和5-HTT的基因多态性会调节IGT相关的决策加工。总之, IGT是一项需要多重神经系统协同活动的决策加工任务, 且模糊与风险决策可能具有不同的遗传基础。     

经验决策：概念、研究和展望

传统风险决策研究范式中, 决策信息是事先限定的, 即在决策之前呈现各个决策选项的概率和收益, 被试基于这些信息进行决策。已有研究表明, 在传统风险决策任务中人们会高估小概率事件(rare event)。然而最近出现的一种基于不完整信息的决策形式, 即经验决策却对这一发现提出了挑战。研究发现, 人们在进行经验决策时会表现出对小概率事件的低估, 经验决策和传统决策形式之间存在差异。本文主要介绍经验决策的概念及其研究, 并从学习和不确定程度等角度对两种决策形式进行再认识, 以进一步理解经验决策并提出展望。     

Similar Processes Despite Divergent Behavior in Two Commonly Used Measures of Risky Decision Making

Performance on complex decision-making tasks may depend on a multitude of processes. Two such tasks, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART), are of particular interest because they are associated with real world risky behavior, including illegal drug use. We used cognitive models to disentangle underlying processes in both tasks. Whereas behavioral measures from the IGT and BART were uncorrelated, cognitive models revealed two reliable cross-task associations. Results suggest that the tasks similarly measure loss aversion and decision-consistency processes, but not necessarily the same learning process. Additionally, substance-using individuals (and especially stimulant users) performed worse on the IGT than healthy controls did, and this pattern could be explained by reduced decision consistency.     

Integration and segregation of prior outcomes in risky decisions

Two experiments were conducted to test if a prior outcome influences the likelihood to accept a current gamble. Undergraduate students participating as subjects imagined that they on a fictitious betting day at a horse-race track did not gamble in the prior race, that they gambled and won, or that they gambled and lost. Subjects rated in one session the likelihood of gambling in the current race. In another session they rated how satisfied they would be with not gambling, with winning, and with losing, respectively. The results of Experiment 1 showed that as compared to no prior outcome the ratings of likelihood of gambling increased after a gain and decreased after a loss. This was explained by the assumption, supported by the ratings of satisfaction, that the prior outcome only affected the satisfaction with the expected loss of the current choice, making it less negative after a gain and more negative after a loss. These results were replicated in Experiment 2. In addition, if subjects did not know with certainty the outcome of a previous choice to gamble, the likelihood to accept the current gamble and the ratings of the satisfaction with its expected outcomes were largely unaffected.     

A bayesian procedure for mastery decisions based on multivariate normal test data

A Bayesian framework for making mastery/nonmastery decisions based on multivariate test data is described in this study. Overall, mastery is granted (or denied) if the posterior expected loss associated with such action is smaller than the one incurred by the denial (or grant) of mastery. An explicit form for the cutting contour which separates mastery and nonmastery states in the test score space is given for multivariate normal test scores and for a constant loss ratio. For multiple cutting scores in the true ability space, the test score cutting contour will resemble the boundary defined by multiple test cutting scores when the test reliabilities are reasonably close to unity. For tests with low reliabilities, decisions may very well be based simply on a suitably chosen composite score.This work was performed pursuant to Grant NIE-G-78-0087 with the National Institute of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Huynh Huynh, Principal Investigator. Points of view or opinions stated do not necessarily reflect NIE positions or policy and no official endorsement should be inferred. The assistance of Joseph C. Saunders is gratefully acknowledged. The author is indebted to an anonymous referee who pointed out several computational errors in the earlier versions of the paper.     

Perceived control,nature of risk information and risk taking. An experimental test of a simple taxonomy of uncertainty

Uncertainty may be categorized along two dimensions: (1) the nature of probabilistic information (i.e. frequency information, about the outcomes of similar situations in the past, versus process information, about the way(s) in which a future loss might occur), and (2) the degree of personal control (i.e. the extent to which an activity's outcomes depend on internal factors (e.g. knowledge, skills) versus external (e.g. chance) factors). The effects of variations in both dimensions on people's risk-taking tendency were experimentally studied. In a computerized task, subjects had to stop a fast-moving symbol before it passed a target line. Success yielded a financial gain, failure led them into a ‘penalty task’ with the possibility of a considerable loss. On each trial subjects chose among 10 risk levels (varying symbol speeds): low levels resulted in small but almost sure gains, high levels yielded larger but less probable gains. Across subgroups of subjects, three penalty task characteristics were varied: (1) the actual loss probability, (2) the external versus internal determination of outcomes, and (3) the available risk information. Major findings were: (a) subjects did not set a lower risk level, but they did appear to be more attentive (i.e. they failed fewer trials) when the actual loss probability was lower; (b) internal outcome determination resulted in more failed trials (lesser caution); (c) subjects ignored frequency information, but were sensitive to process information. Results are discussed in terms of effort allocation for controlling risk during task performance.     

Pervasiveness of framing effects among physicians and medical students

Researchers have been documenting the influence of framing upon decision making for more than two decades; decisions appear to change in response to superficial changes in the presentation of possible outcomes. Several studies of medical decision making have revealed; for instance, that clinical decisions differ when options are presented as gains (survival rates) rather than losses (mortality rates). However, most studies of framing effects in the medical domain have utilized a very limited number of clinical problems that have not allowed an adequate test of the prevalence of the phenomena. To extend previous studies, we presented three groups of subjects (experienced internists, residents, and third-year medical students) with booklets containing twelve hypothetical medical cases. Half of the subjects received gain versions and half received loss versions of the same cases. Chi-square analyses revealed that framing did not influence any of the decisions of medical students and influenced the decisions of residents and experienced physicians on only two of the clinical problems (the same two problems). It appears that the prevalence of framing effects in the clinical domain may be limited.