Differential predictability of preferences and choices

A combined multi-attribute utility and expectancy-value model has repeatedly been found to yield a worse fit to choices than to preference ratings. The present study investigated two possible explanations for this finding. First, people's belief-value structures may change in the choice task as they try to find the best alternative. Second, a difficult choice task may cause the decision maker to use simplifying heuristics. In the first of two experiments, subjective belief-value structures were measured on two occasions separated by about one week. Immediately before the second measurement, different groups of subjects performed a choice task, gave preference ratings, or performed a control task. The results did not support an interpretation of the greater difficulty of predicting choices in terms of changes in belief-value structures. However, the notion of simplifying heuristics received support by the finding that adopting simpler versions of the original model improved the predictions of the choices. In the second experiment, beliefs were measured immediately before or after each of a series of choices or preference ratings. The results indicated that although temporary changes in beliefs may occur, they can hardly provide a full account of the differential predictability of preferences and choices.     

Response selection strategies and realism of confidence judgments

Two studies were conducted to examine how response selection strategy is related to confidence ratings and to performance on general knowledge questions. In both studies subjects were asked to answer 80 general knowledge questions and to rate their confidence in the correctness of the answer selected. A pilot study, in which subjects thought aloud while answering general knowledge questions, was carried out to identify different response selection strategies. In the first study, 40 subjects were asked to indicate which of four strategies (immediate recognition, inference, intuition, or guessing) they used for selecting an answer. In Study 2, think aloud reports from 20 subjects were coded into the same four strategies. The distribution of strategies differed between the studies, but there were very similar relations among strategy, confidence, and correctness of answer in the two studies. Response selection strategy was related to correctness of answer when confidence was partialed out. More specifically, immediate recognition was associated with higher proportion correct than with the other strategies. It was also found that ratings of how difficult the knowledge questions were to fellow students of the subjects were on a much more realistic level than the confidence ratings were. It is concluded that people could improve their confidence judgments by taking into account (a) how difficult a question is to other people, and (b) the response selection strategy used for answering the question.     

Book reviews

Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit: God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty. Alma Giese and J. Christoph Bürgel, 1994. Bern, Peter Lang. 474 pp., hb. n.p., ISBN 3–906750–90–6.

The Concept of Islamic International Criminal Law. Farhad Malekian, 1994. London, Graham & Trotman. 213 pp., £55.00, $92, ISBN 1859660851.

Religion in Europe: contemporary perspectives. S. Gill, G. D'Costa, and U. King (Eds), 1994. Kampen, Kok Pharos. 213 pp., pb., Fl 49.90, ISBN 90–390–0508–7.

Religious Freedom and the Position of Islam in Western Europe. W. A. R. Shadid and P. S. van Koningsveld, 1995. Kampen, Kok Pharos. 229 pp., pb., Fl 64.90, ISBN 90–390–0065–4.

Christianity in the Arab World. HRH Crown Prince El Hassan Bin Talal, 1994. Amman, Arabesque. 120pp., hb.

Holymen of the Blue Nile: the making of an Arab‐Islamic community in the Nilotic Sudan 1500–1850. Neil MHugh. Evanston Illinois, Northwestern University Press. 280pp., hb., $54.95, ISBN 0–8101–1069–5.     

The judgment-choice discrepancy: Noncompatibility or restructuring?

The study examines the relative merits of a noncompatibility and a restructuring explanation of the recurrent empirical finding that a prominent attribute looms larger in choices than in judgments. Pairs of equally attractive options were presented to 72 undergraduates who were assigned to six conditions in which they performed (1) only preference judgments or choices, (2) preference judgments or choices preceded by judgments of attractiveness of attribute levels, or (3) preference judgments or choices accompanied by think-aloud reports. The results replicated the prominence effect for choices, but a prominence effect was also found for preference judgments. In accordance with the restructuring explanation, the think-aloud protocols indicated that options were more often restructured in choices than in preference judgments. However, restructuring could not explain the prominence effect observed for preference judgments. A modified compatibility hypothesis is offered as an alternative explanation.     

The role of action-initiation in young children's causal explanations of action

Four studies examined preschoolers' use of the cue of action initiation to infer another's desired goal. In two studies, children watched as one protagonist self-initiated movement to a target while a second person was propelled there by an external force. Older 3-year-olds (M = 3;10) and 5-year-olds consistently judged only the self-initiated actor's movement as desire based. In the second study, however, younger 3-year-olds (M = 3;3 also participated, and they were equally likely to say that either movement was goal directed, even when the passive mover appeared to resist movement toward the goal. A third study, featuring only one protagonist, yielded no improvement among younger 3-year-olds. A fourth study emphasizing the single protagonist's persistence in approaching a target via repeated self-initiated movements revealed some improvement among younger 3-year-olds; older 3-year-olds were near ceiling performance. Altogether, these results suggest that differences in action initiation play an increasingly important role in 3-year-olds' mentalistic explanations of action. This development may be related to other critical changes occurring in 3-year-olds' developing theory of mind.     

An investigation of the arousal model of interpersonal intimacy

In a study designed to test Patterson's arousal model of nonverbal intimacy, the heartrate, gaze, smiles, body orientation, and body lean of each of 40 female subjects who interacted with an accomplice were measured. Within a factorial design, subjects were induced to view more or less favorably the accomplice, who subsequently increased or maintained the same level of nonverbal immediacy as she did in an earlier session. It was hypothesized that (1) an increase in the accomplice's immediacy would effect an increase in subjects' arousal (heartrate) which, in turn, (2) would lead to either reciprocal or compensatory nonverbal adjustments by subjects, depending on whether they viewed the accomplice more or less favorably, respectively. The results supported the first but not the second hypothesis. However, interpretation of the results suggests, nevertheless, that they may be consistent with the arousal model.     

The general psychophysical differential equation: A comparison of three specifications

The general psychophysical differential equation, dy/dx = W₂(y)/W₁(x), with the solution y = f(x), where x and y are subjective variables and W₁ and W₂ their subjective Weber functions, is (a) compared with a corresponding functional equation, and (b) studied from a stochastic point of view by error calculus, Methods for evaluating and handling divergences are proposed and illustrated for a number of combinations of Weber functions. It is shown that either the differential: and the functional equations have the same solution or the difference between the solutions is negligible compared to empirical scatter. The error calculus gives the same result: either no error at all or a negligible one.