Decision-makers use social information to update their preferences but choose for others as they do for themselves

People's risky decisions are susceptible to the social context in which they take place. Across three experiments using different paradigms, we investigated the influence of three social factors upon participants' decisions: the recipient of the decision-making outcome (self, other, or joint), the nature of the relationship with the other agent (friend, stranger, or teammate), and the type of information that participants received about others' preferences: none at all, general information about how previous participants had decided, or information about a specific partner's preference. We found that participants' decisions about risk did not differ according to whether the outcome at stake was their own, another agent's, or a joint outcome, nor according to the type of information available. Participants did, however, adjust their preferences for risky options in light of social information.     

Freedom as Non-domination and Democratic Inclusion

According to neo-republicans, democracy is morally justified because it is among the prerequisites for freedom as non-domination. The claim that democracy secures freedom as non-domination needs to explain why democratic procedures contribute to non-domination and for whom democracy secures non-domination. This requires an account of why domination is countered by democratic procedures and an account of to whom domination is countered by access to democratic procedures. Neo-republican theory of democracy is based on a detailed discussion of the former but a scant discussion of the latter. We address this lacuna by interpreting the two most influential principles of inclusion, the all-subjected principle and the all-affected principle, in light of neo-republican commitments. The preliminary conclusion is that both principles are able to capture relations of domination between the democratic state and the people controlled by it in the relevant sense. Yet, the state has virtually unlimited powers to control residents, but only limited powers to interfere in the lives of non-residents. Republican aspirations are therefore more in tune with the all-subjected principle according to which only residents in the territory of the state should be granted rights to political participation.     

Multiple cue use and integration in pigeons (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Columba livia</Emphasis>)

Encoding multiple cues can improve the accuracy and reliability of navigation and goal localization. Problems may arise, however, if one cue is displaced and provides information which conflicts with other cues. Here we investigated how pigeons cope with cue conflict by training them to locate a goal relative to two landmarks and then varying the amount of conflict between the landmarks. When the amount of conflict was small, pigeons tended to integrate both cues in their search patterns. When the amount of conflict was large, however, pigeons used information from both cues independently. This context-dependent strategy for resolving spatial cue conflict agrees with Bayes optimal calculations for using information from multiple sources.     

The effects of reinforcer magnitude on timing in rats

The relation between reinforcer magnitude and timing behavior was studied using a peak procedure. Four rats received multiple consecutive sessions with both low and high levels of brain stimulation reward (BSR). Rats paused longer and had later start times during sessions when their responses were reinforced with low-magnitude BSR. When estimated by a symmetric Gaussian function, peak times also were earlier; when estimated by a better-fitting asymmetric Gaussian function or by analyzing individual trials, however, these peak-time changes were determined to reflect a mixture of large effects of BSR on start times and no effect on stop times. These results pose a significant dilemma for three major theories of timing (SET, MTS, and BeT), which all predict no effects for chronic manipulations of reinforcer magnitude. We conclude that increased reinforcer magnitude influences timing in two ways: through larger immediate after-effects that delay responding and through anticipatory effects that elicit earlier responding.     

Democracy and the Right to Exclusion

A defining feature of democracy is the inclusion of members of the political association. However, the corresponding right to exclusion has attracted undeservedly scant attention in recent debates. In this paper, the nature of the right to exclusion is explored. On the assumption that inclusion requires the allocation of legal power-rights to the people entitled to participate in the making of collective decisions, two conceptions of the right to exclusion are identified: the liberty-right to exclude and the claim-right to exclude. The choice between them depends on the nature of the interests that justifies the power-rights of people included. The position is defended that if rights to democratic participation are power-rights, we must also accept that the people included have claim-rights to the exclusion of non-members.     

When good news leads to bad choices

Pigeons and other animals sometimes deviate from optimal choice behavior when given informative signals for delayed outcomes. For example, when pigeons are given a choice between an alternative that always leads to food after a delay and an alternative that leads to food only half of the time after a delay, preference changes dramatically depending on whether the stimuli during the delays are correlated with (signal) the outcomes or not. With signaled outcomes, pigeons show a much greater preference for the suboptimal alternative than with unsignaled outcomes. Key variables and research findings related to this phenomenon are reviewed, including the effects of durations of the choice and delay periods, probability of reinforcement, and gaps in the signal. We interpret the available evidence as reflecting a preference induced by signals for good news in a context of uncertainty. Other explanations are briefly summarized and compared.     

The effects of interval duration on temporal tracking and alternation learning

On cyclic-interval reinforcement schedules, animals typically show a postreinforcement pause that is a function of the immediately preceding time interval (temporal tracking). Animals, however, do not track single-alternation schedules-when two different intervals are presented in strict alternation on successive trials. In this experiment, pigeons were first trained with a cyclic schedule consisting of alternating blocks of 12 short intervals (5 s or 30 s) and 12 long intervals (180 s), followed by three different single-alternation interval schedules: (a) 30 s and 180 s, (b) 5 s and 180 s, and (c) 5 s and 30 s. Pigeons tracked both schedules with alternating blocks of 12 intervals. With the single-alternation schedules, when the short interval duration was 5 s, regardless of the duration of the longer interval, pigeons learned the alternation pattern, and their pause anticipated the upcoming interval. When the shorter interval was 30 s, even when the ratio of short to long intervals was kept at 6:1, pigeons did not initially show anticipatory pausing-a violation of the principle of timescale invariance.     

Remembering the best and worst of times: Memories for extreme outcomes bias risky decisions

When making decisions on the basis of past experiences, people must rely on their memories. Human memory has many well-known biases, including the tendency to better remember highly salient events. We propose an extreme-outcome rule, whereby this memory bias leads people to overweight the largest gains and largest losses, leading to more risk seeking for relative gains than for relative losses. To test this rule, in two experiments, people repeatedly chose between fixed and risky options, where the risky option led equiprobably to more or less than did the fixed option. As was predicted, people were more risk seeking for relative gains than for relative losses. In subsequent memory tests, people tended to recall the extreme outcome first and also judged the extreme outcome as having occurred more frequently. Across individuals, risk preferences in the risky-choice task correlated with these memory biases. This extreme-outcome rule presents a novel mechanism through which memory influences decision making.     

Bayesian combination of two-dimensional location estimates

We extend a Bayesian method for combining estimates of means and variances from independent cues in a spatial cue-combination paradigm. In a typical cue-combination experiment, subjects estimate a value on a single dimension—for example, depth—on the basis of two different cues, such as retinal disparity and motion. The mathematics for this one-dimensional case is well established. When the variable to be estimated has two dimensions, such as location (which has both x and y values), then the one-dimensional method may be inappropriate due to possible correlations between x and y and the fact that the dimensions may be inseparable. A cue-combination task for location involves people or animals estimating xy locations under two single-cue conditions and in a condition in which both cues are combined. We present the mathematics for the two-dimensional case in an analogous manner to the one-dimensional case and illustrate them using a numeric example. Our example involves locations on maps, but the method illustrated is relevant for any task for which the estimated variable has two or more dimensions.     

Is there a Moral Right to Vote?

The question raised in this paper is whether legal rights to vote are also moral rights to vote. The challenge to the justification of a moral right to vote is that it is not clear that the vote is instrumental to the preservation of some critical interest of the voter. Because a single vote has ‘no impact’ on electoral outcomes, the right to vote is unlikely to serve the interests of the individual. The account developed in this paper holds that moral voting rights can be justified once we acknowledge that voting by a sub-set of citizens is among the necessary preconditions for democratic institutions making a significant difference to their collective interests. The justification of a moral right to vote does not, then, apply to each individual citizen but only to a sub-set of them. In order to justify inclusive moral voting rights, the further consideration must be added that individuals have critical interests in public recognition of equal status. An inclusive moral right to vote accordingly depends on both collective interest in the outcomes of democratic institutions and on individual interest in equal recognition.