Who Uses the Cost-Benefit Rules of Choice? Implications for the Normative Status of Microeconomic Theory

We find three factors to be associated with use of cost-benefit rules in everyday decisions. These are effectiveness in achieving desirable life outcomes, intelligence, and training in economics. We argue that these empirical findings support the claim that cost-benefit reasoning is normative.     

Acting for the Greater Good: Identification with Group Determines Choices in Sequential Contribution Dilemmas

In mixed‐motive interactions, defection is the rational and common response to the defection of others. In some cases, however, group members not only cooperate in the face of defection but also compensate for the shortfalls caused by others' defection. In one field and two lab studies, we examined when group members were willing to compensate for versus match defection using sequential dilemmas. We found that the level of identification with the broader group increased willingness to compensate for intragroup defection, even when it was personally costly. Compensating for a defecting partner's actions, however, is not an act of unconditional cooperation: It is accompanied by a lack of trust in the errant group member and a desire to be perceived as more ethical. Cooperation by others, on the other hand, is matched independent of whether the cooperator was an in‐group or out‐group member. We find similar patterns of compensation and matching when the personal cost involved contributing money or effort. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Advice as a form of social influence: Informational motives and the consequences for accuracy

In this article, we ask how well people fulfill informational motives by using the judgments of others. We build on advice‐taking research from the judgment and decision making literature, which has developed a distinct paradigm to test how accurately people incorporate information from others. We use a literature review to show that people have mixed success in fulfilling informational motives—they increase their accuracy through the use of advice, but not as much as they could. We develop insights about how people perceive advisors and try to pursue advice—and where their perceptions may lead them astray. We conclude by proposing that future work further investigate the reasons people fail to use advice by building on the current advice taking paradigm used in judgment and decision making, but with a richer understanding of advice taking as a dynamic process that often entails complex decisions and normative motives.     

Protecting the self from the negative consequences of risky decisions.

Three experiments tested the idea that a motive to protect self-esteem (SE) from the threat of regret can influence decision making. Threat to SE was manipulated by varying whether people expected to know the outcome of their decisions. Study 1 showed that when Ss expected feedback about their decisions, only Ss low in SE made regret-minimizing choices. Study 2 showed that when Ss did not expect to know the outcome of their decisions, SE differences in choice strategies disappeared. Study 3 manipulated expectations about feedback on chosen and unchosen alternatives and showed that the more feedback that was expected, the more likely low but not high SE Ss were to make regret-minimizing choices. These studies suggest that people base decisions not only on objective attributes of choice alternatives, but also on the damage to SE that is perceived to result from a poor-decision outcome.     

Goals as reference points

We argue that goals serve as reference points and alter outcomes in a manner consistent with the value function of Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992). We present new evidence that goals inherit the properties of the value function-not only a reference point, but also loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity. We also use the value function to explain previous empirical results in the goal literature on affect, effort, persistence, and performance.     

Temper, temperature, and temptation: heat-related retaliation in baseball

In this study, we analyzed data from 57,293 Major League Baseball games to test whether high temperatures interact with provocation to increase the likelihood that batters will be hit by a pitch. Controlling for a number of other variables, we conducted analyses showing that the probability of a pitcher hitting a batter increases sharply at high temperatures when more of the pitcher's teammates have been hit by the opposing team earlier in the game. We suggest that high temperatures increase retaliation by increasing hostile attributions when teammates are hit by a pitch and by lowering inhibitions against retaliation.     

Social comparison and confidence: When thinking you’re better than average predicts overconfidence (and when it does not)

A common social comparison bias—the better-than-average-effect—is frequently described as psychologically equivalent to the individual-level judgment bias known as overconfidence. However, research has found “Hard–easy” effects for each bias that yield a seemingly paradoxical reversal: Hard tasks tend to produce overconfidence but worse-than-average perceptions, whereas easy tasks tend to produce underconfidence and better-than-average effects. We argue that the two biases are in fact positively related because they share a common psychological basis in subjective feelings of competence, but that the “hard–easy” reversal is both empirically possible and logically necessary under specifiable conditions. Two studies are presented to support these arguments. We find little support for personality differences in these biases, and conclude that domain-specific feelings of competence account best for their relationship to each other.     

Goal attainment as a resource: The cushion effect in risky choice above a goal

Goals are a ubiquitous part of life and have been shown to change behavior in many domains. This research studied the influence of goal attainment on risky choice behavior. Previous research has shown that goals tend to increase risk‐seeking behavior when potential outcomes fall below a goal. We examined a new problem: Choice behavior when all potential outcomes in a choice set achieve or exceed the goal. Two studies show a “cushion effect” of goal attainment on choice under risk. When all possible outcomes of all options are above a salient and specific goal, decision makers are more likely to choose a risky option over a certain outcome with equal expected value (EV). We hypothesized that the attainment of a goal serves as a cushion that softens the negative emotions associated with receiving a gamble's low outcome. This allows risk taking that would otherwise be unattractive. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

It's only a matter of time: death, legacies, and intergenerational decisions

Intergenerational decisions affect other people in the future. The combination of intertemporal and interpersonal distance between decision makers in the present and other people in the future may lead one to expect little intergenerational generosity. In the experiments reported here, however, we posited that the negative effect of intertemporal distance on intergenerational beneficence would be reversed when people were primed with thoughts of death. This reversal would occur because death priming leads individuals to be concerned with having a lasting impact on other people in the future. Our experiments show that when individuals are exposed to death priming, the expected tendency to allocate fewer resources to others in the future, as compared with others in the present, is reversed. Our findings suggest that legacy motivations triggered by death priming can trump intergenerational discounting tendencies and promote intergenerational beneficence.