Time to Decide
Emily Klein et al.
Journal of Comparative Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Monty Hall Dilemma (MHD) is a well-known probability puzzle in which players try to guess which of three doors conceals a prize. After selecting a door, players are shown that there is no prize behind one of the remaining doors. Players then are given a choice to stay with their door or switch to the other unopened door. Most people stay, even though switching doubles the probability of winning. The MHD offers one of the clearest examples of irrational choice behavior in humans. The present experiment investigated how monkeys and humans would behave when presented with a computerized version of the MHD. Specifically, we were interested in whether monkeys were more likely to engage in a switching strategy than humans and whether both species could learn to switch with repeated trials. Initially, humans and monkeys showed indifference between the two options of either staying with their initial choice or switching. With experience, members of both species learned to use the switch strategy at above chance levels, but there were individual differences with only approximately half of the participants in each species learning to choose the more optimal response. Thus, humans and monkeys showed similar capacity to adjust their responding as a result of increased experience with this probabilistic task.
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Dana Carney & Mahzarin Banaji
PLoS ONE, June 2012
Abstract:
We experience the world serially rather than simultaneously. A century of research on human and nonhuman animals has suggested that the first experience in a series of two or more is cognitively privileged. We report three experiments designed to test the effect of first position on implicit preference and choice using targets that range from individual humans and social groups to consumer goods. Experiment 1 demonstrated an implicit preference to buy goods from the first salesperson encountered and to join teams encountered first, even when the difference in encounter is mere seconds. In Experiment 2 the first of two consumer items presented in quick succession was more likely to be chosen. In Experiment 3 an alternative hypothesis that first position merely accentuates the valence of options was ruled out by demonstrating that first position enhances preference for the first even when it is evaluatively negative in meaning (a criminal). Together, these experiments demonstrate a "first is best" effect and we offer possible interpretations based on evolutionary mechanisms of this "bound" on rational behavior and suggest that automaticity of judgment may be a helpful principle in clarifying previous inconsistencies in the empirical record on the effects of order on preference and choice.
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The illusion of predictability: How regression statistics mislead experts
Emre Soyer & Robin Hogarth
International Journal of Forecasting, July-September 2012, Pages 695-711
Abstract:
Does the manner in which results are presented in empirical studies affect perceptions of the predictability of the outcomes? Noting the predominant role of linear regression analysis in empirical economics, we asked 257 academic economists to make probabilistic inferences based on different presentations of the outputs of this statistical tool. The questions concerned the distribution of the dependent variable, conditional on known values of the independent variable. The answers based on the presentation mode that is standard in the literature demonstrated an illusion of predictability; the outcomes were perceived to be more predictable than could be justified by the model. In particular, many respondents failed to take the error term into account. Adding graphs did not improve the inference. Paradoxically, the respondents were more accurate when only graphs were provided (i.e., no regression statistics). The implications of our study suggest, inter alia, the need to reconsider the way in which empirical results are presented, and the possible provision of easy-to-use simulation tools that would enable readers of empirical papers to make accurate inferences.
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The Social Side of Abstraction: Psychological Distance Enhances Conformity to Group Norms
Alison Ledgerwood & Shannon Callahan
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Intuition suggests that a distanced or abstract thinker should be immune to social influence, and on its surface, the current literature could seem to support this view. The present research builds on recent theorizing to suggest a different possibility. Drawing on the notion that psychological distance regulates the extent to which evaluations incorporate context-specific or context-independent information, we suggest that psychological distance should actually increase susceptibility to sources of social influence that tend to be consistently encountered across contexts, such as group norms. Consistent with this hypothesis, two studies showed that psychological distance and abstraction increased conformity to group opinion and that this effect persisted in a novel voting-booth paradigm in which participants believed their voting behavior was both anonymous and consequential. We discuss implications of these findings for understanding the social side of abstraction as well as the conditions under which different types of social influence are likely to be most influential.
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Does the distance between us matter? Influences of physical proximity to others on consumer choice
Jing Xu, Hao Shen & Robert Wyer
Journal of Consumer Psychology, July 2012, Pages 418-423
Abstract:
Individuals' physical closeness to one another can either increase or decrease their preference for distinctive products. When individuals perceive their proximity to others to be voluntary, they are likely to interpret it as an indication of their affiliation motivation. Consequently, in a product choice task, they choose options that others consider desirable. When people perceive that their close proximity to others results from circumstances beyond their control, however, they feel that their personal space is violated and experience a need for to express their individuality. In this case, they are more likely to choose products that distinguish themselves from others.
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Jeffrey Walczyk et al.
Criminal Justice and Behavior, July 2012, Pages 887-909
Abstract:
Research on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony has expanded dramatically in recent years. Most of it concerns the issue of mistaken identification, not the problem of uncovering deceptive accounts of witnesses, which is the focus of this research. In the literature, a technique for lie detection has been proposed that induces cognitive load on liars by averting their rehearsal of deception: Time Restricted Integrity-Confirmation. The current authors tested it by instructing "witnesses" of actual crime videos to lie or tell the truth to related questions. Each of 145 adults was randomly assigned to a truth telling, an unrehearsed lying, or a rehearsed lying condition. The cognitive cues were response time, answer consistency, eye movements, and pupil dilation. Eye data were gathered with an infrared eye tracker. Truth tellers had the quickest response times and the fewest inconsistencies. Moreover, they generally had more eye movements, suggesting low cognitive loads. Discriminant analyses classified rehearsed liars, unrehearsed liars, and truth tellers up to 69% accurately, with few false positives. Further refinement is warranted.
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Game Attendance and Outcome Uncertainty in the National Hockey League
Dennis Coates & Brad Humphreys
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We analyze the relationship between attendance, outcome uncertainty, and team quality in the National Hockey League (NHL). Based on the results from a reduced form model of attendance at 6,054 regular season NHL games from 2005-2006 to 2009-2010, we find evidence that attendance increases when fans expect the home team to win, but holding this constant, attendance falls for games expected to be close. An asymmetric relationship exists between expected game outcomes and attendance, suggesting the need for an expanded definition of the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis that includes aspects of consumer decision making under uncertainty.
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Loss Aversion and Managerial Decisions: Evidence from Major League Baseball
Roberto Pedace & Janet Kiholm Smith
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research indicates that management changes are important events for organizations, partly because they lead to reversals of poor prior decisions. An unanswered question is why replacing the manager seems to be necessary for reversing poor decisions. One explanation is that managers have an irrational behavioral aversion to admitting mistakes (loss aversion). We test this hypothesis with a research design that mitigates many of the measurement problems associated with investment decisions in traditional corporate settings, and that allows us to distinguish agency cost from loss aversion as explanations. Using Major League Baseball data, we find that new managers, compared to continuing managers, are more likely to divest low-performing players. Moreover, when the manager is new and the previous manager was responsible for acquiring a player who is underperforming, the likelihood of player divestiture is significantly higher relative to low performers acquired by earlier managers. Experience of the acquiring manager does not affect the likelihood that the manager retains a low performer, suggesting that it is loss aversion, and not career concerns, that motivates acquiring managers to retain low performers. The findings suggest that loss aversion plays a significant role in managerial decisions and managerial turnover.
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The Unintended Effects of Risk-Refuting Information on Anxiety
Kazuya Nakayachi
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers in the field of risk perception have been asking why people are more worried about risk today than in years past. This article explores one possible answer to this question, associative anxiety. The affect heuristic and the mental network models suggest that anxiety triggered by information regarding a particular risk can spread to other risks of the same category. Research to date, however, has not examined how information refuting the particular risk can also be generalized across other risks. The article presents two experimental studies addressing this issue. Study 1 showed that when participants were presented with information based on a real train collision, they experienced increased anxiety not only about train collisions but also about public transportation in general. In contrast, those who were informed about the train collision case as well as the preventative measures implemented after the accident experienced decreased anxiety about train collisions but not about public transportation more generally. Study 2 measured the changes in participant anxiety about a genetically modified organism (GMO) and compared the influence of information about either the existence or nonexistence of its risk. Similar to Study 1, associative anxiety rippled through the risk category. The results also suggest that the follow-up information refuting the GMO risk reduced the anxiety toward the hazard drastically, but did not fully alleviate the anxiety toward other hazards in the category. The implications and the limitations of these studies are also discussed.
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Four days later in Cincinnati: Longitudinal tests of hyperbolic discounting
Daniel Read, Shane Frederick & Mara Airoldi
Acta Psychologica, June 2012, Pages 177-185
Abstract:
Hyperbolic discounting of delayed rewards has been proposed as an underlying cause of the failure to stick to plans to forego one's immediate desires, such as the plan to diet, wake up early, or quit taking heroin. We conducted two tests of inconsistent planning in which respondents made at least two choices between a smaller-sooner (SS) and larger-later (LL) amount of money, one several weeks before SS would be received, and one immediately before. Hyperbolic discounting predicts that there would be more choices of SS as it became more proximate - and, equivalently, that among those who change their mind, "impatient shifts" (LL-to-SS) will be more common than "patient shifts" (SS-to-LL). We find no evidence for this, however, and in our studies shifts in both directions were equally likely. We propose that some of the evidence cited on behalf of hyperbolic discounting can be attributed to qualitatively different psychological mechanisms.
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Stephanie Blom & Gün Semin
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine and find support for the hypothesis that time-referent hand-arm movements influence temporal judgments. In line with the concept of "left is associated with earlier times, and right is associated with later times," we show that performing left (right) hand-arm movements while thinking about a past event increases (decreases) the perceived temporal distance to the event. These findings show for the first time that hand-arm movements can influence the perceived temporal distance to events.
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Keith Coulter, Pilsik Choi & Kent Monroe
Journal of Consumer Psychology, July 2012, Pages 395-407
Abstract:
Numbers and prices can be processed and encoded in three different forms: 1) visual [based on their written form in Arabic numerals (e.g., 72)], 2) verbal [based on spoken word-sounds (e.g., "seventy" and "two"), and 3) analog (based on judgments of relative "size" or amount (e.g., more than 70 but less than 80)]. In this paper, we demonstrate that including commas (e.g., $1599 vs. $1599) and cents (e.g., $1599.85 vs. $1599) in a price's Arabic written form (i.e., how it is perceived visually) can change how the price is encoded and represented verbally in a consumer's memory. In turn, the verbal encoding of a written price can influence assessments of the numerical magnitude of the price. These effects occur because consumers non-consciously perceive that there is a positive relationship between syllabic length and numerical magnitude. Three experiments are presented demonstrating this important effect.
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Actors, Observers and the Estimation of Task Duration
Michael Roy, Nicholas Christenfeld & Meghan Jones
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People are often wrong in estimating both how long tasks have taken in the past and how long they will take in the future. Bias could be due to factors such as task involvement, an individual's engagement or motivation in completing the task, or aspects of the task such as its relative duration or memory storage size associated with it. We examined time estimation bias in actors (likely to experience high levels of task involvement) and observers (likely to experience low levels of task involvement) for both predictions of and memory of task duration. Results suggest that bias appears to be due to memory storage size rather than to involvement with the task.
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An Archer's Perceived Form Scales the "Hitableness" of Archery Targets
Yang Lee et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, forthcoming
Abstract:
For skills that involve hitting a target, subsequent judgments of target size correlate with prior success in hitting that target. We used an archery context to examine the judgment-success relationship with varied target sizes in the absence of explicit knowledge of results. Competitive archers shot at targets 50 m away that varied in size among five diameters. Immediately after the arrow's release, its flight and landing were occluded and archers chose which of 18 miniature targets looked most like the distal target. Greater apparent size correlated with higher accuracy. In a second experiment, nonarchers merely aimed the bow (without an arrow) at varied targets. Apparent size was larger when the bow arm was stabilized than when it was not. Archery is seemingly an instance of affordance-based control: For an archer, the affordance of the target is the "hitableness" of its central regions, a property inclusive of his or her momentary, and perceptible, archery form.
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A Distinct Role of the Temporal-Parietal Junction in Predicting Socially Guided Decisions
McKell Carter et al.
Science, 6 July 2012, Pages 109-111
Abstract:
To make adaptive decisions in a social context, humans must identify relevant agents in the environment, infer their underlying strategies and motivations, and predict their upcoming actions. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging, in conjunction with combinatorial multivariate pattern analysis, to predict human participants' subsequent decisions in an incentive-compatible poker game. We found that signals from the temporal-parietal junction provided unique information about the nature of the upcoming decision, and that information was specific to decisions against agents who were both social and relevant for future behavior.
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Young children can tell strategic lies after committing a transgression
Genyue Fu et al.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, September 2012, Pages 147-158
Abstract:
This study investigated whether young children make strategic decisions about whether to lie to conceal a transgression based on the lie recipient's knowledge. In Experiment 1, 168 3- to 5-year-olds were asked not to peek at the toy in the experimenter's absence, and the majority of children peeked. Children were questioned about their transgression in either the presence or absence of an eyewitness of their transgression. Whereas 4- and 5-year-olds were able to adjust their decisions of whether to lie based on the presence or absence of the eyewitness, 3-year-olds did not. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated whether the lie recipient appeared to have learned information about children's peeking from an eyewitness or was merely bluffing. Results revealed that when the lie recipient appeared to be genuinely knowledgeable about their transgression, even 3-year-olds were significantly less likely to lie compared with when the lie recipient appeared to be bluffing. Thus, preschool children are able to make strategic decisions about whether to lie or tell the truth based on whether the lie recipient is genuinely knowledgeable about the true state of affairs.
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Babatunde Buraimo, Rob Simmons & Marek Maciaszczyk
Contemporary Economic Policy, July 2012, Pages 329-343
Abstract:
In this paper, we test for, and find evidence of, referee bias in favor of home teams in European football using minute-by-minute analysis to control for within-game events. The context for the analysis is Spain's Primera Liga and the Union of European Football Association (UEFA) Champions League. We find that the award of sanctions by Spanish referees in the Champions League are not significantly different to those of the referees from other countries and as such are subject to the same sources of bias. In Primera Liga matches where the crowd is separated from the pitch by running tracks, we find that the probability of the award of a yellow card to the home team is higher and that of the away team is lower compared to matches played at stadia without running tracks. Similar results are found in the Champions League, where efforts are made to hire "neutral" referees. Referee behavior is also influenced by the size of the crowd in attendance.
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Continuous Evolution of Statistical Estimators for Optimal Decision-Making
Ian Saunders & Sethu Vijayakumar
PLoS ONE, June 2012
Abstract:
In many everyday situations, humans must make precise decisions in the presence of uncertain sensory information. For example, when asked to combine information from multiple sources we often assign greater weight to the more reliable information. It has been proposed that statistical-optimality often observed in human perception and decision-making requires that humans have access to the uncertainty of both their senses and their decisions. However, the mechanisms underlying the processes of uncertainty estimation remain largely unexplored. In this paper we introduce a novel visual tracking experiment that requires subjects to continuously report their evolving perception of the mean and uncertainty of noisy visual cues over time. We show that subjects accumulate sensory information over the course of a trial to form a continuous estimate of the mean, hindered only by natural kinematic constraints (sensorimotor latency etc.). Furthermore, subjects have access to a measure of their continuous objective uncertainty, rapidly acquired from sensory information available within a trial, but limited by natural kinematic constraints and a conservative margin for error. Our results provide the first direct evidence of the continuous mean and uncertainty estimation mechanisms in humans that may underlie optimal decision making.