Several decision-making models predict that it should be possible to affect real binary choices by manipulating the relative amount of visual attention that decision-makers pay to the two alternatives. We present the results of three behavioral experiments testing this prediction. Visual attention is controlled by manipulating the amount of time subjects fixate on the two items. The manipulation has a differential impact on appetitive and aversive items. Appetitive items are 6 to 11% more likely to be chosen in the long fixation condition. In contrast, aversive items are 7% less likely to be chosen in the long fixation condition. The effect is present for primary goods, such as foods, and for higher-order durable goods, such as posters.

We report a study of the effects the choice set on financial decision making related to retirement savings and risky investment. The participants were presented with either a full range of choice options or a limited subset of the feasible options. The choices of saving and risk are affected by the position of each option in the range of presented options. This result demonstrated that the range of the options offered as possible saving rates and levels of investment risk influences decisions about saving and risk. The study was conducted on a sample of working people, and we controlled whether the participants can financially afford in their real life the decisions taken in the test. In addition, various measures of risk aversion did not account for the risk taken in each condition. Surprisingly, only the simplest and most direct risk preference measure was a significant predictor of the responses within a particular choice set context, although the actual choices were still very much influenced by the range. Thus, the results reported here suggest that financial judgments and choices are relative, which corroborates, in an important practical domain, previous related work with abstract gambles and hypothetical risky investments.

Affective forecasting with respect to two environmental risks (ozone depletion, air pollution) was investigated by studying tourists who travelled to either Australia or Bangkok and were thus confronted with one of these risks. We measured anticipated outcome and anticipated emotions before the journey, actually experienced outcome and actually experienced emotions during the journey, and anticipated outcome and emotions concerning a future encounter with the same risk after the journey. Results indicate that tourists underestimate (air pollution) or correctly predict (ozone depletion) both the seriousness of the outcome and their emotional reactions. The relationship between actual outcome and actual emotions is stronger than that between anticipated outcome and anticipated emotions. Furthermore, tourists learn from their travel experience and adjust their anticipations concerning future encounters with the environmental risk. Findings suggest that the domain of environmental risks differs from personal outcomes with respect to the process of affective forecasting.

Inferences about target variables can be achieved by deliberate integration of probabilistic cues or by retrieving similar cue-patterns (exemplars) from memory. In tasks with cue information presented in on-screen displays, rule-based strategies tend to dominate unless the abstraction of cue-target relations is unfeasible. This dominance has also been demonstrated — surprisingly — in experiments that demanded the retrieval of cue values from memory (M. Persson & J. Rieskamp, 2009). In three modified replications involving a fictitious disease, binary cue values were represented either by alternative symptoms (e.g., fever vs. hypothermia) or by symptom presence vs. absence (e.g., fever vs. no fever). The former representation might hinder cue abstraction. The cues were predictive of the severity of the disease, and participants had to infer in each trial who of two patients was sicker. Both experiments replicated the rule-dominance with present-absent cues but yielded higher percentages of exemplar-based strategies with alternative cues. The experiments demonstrate that a change in cue representation may induce a dramatic shift from rule-based to exemplar-based reasoning in formally identical tasks.

A strategy activated in one task may be transferred to subsequent tasks and prevent activation of other strategies that would otherwise come to mind, a mechanism referred to as procedural priming. In a novel application of procedural priming we show that it can make or break cognitive illusions. Our test case is the 1/k illusion, which is based on the same unwarranted mathematical shortcut as the MPG illusion and the time-saving bias. The task is to estimate distances between values of fractions on the form 1/k. Most people given this task intuitively base their estimates on the distances between the denominators (i.e., the reciprocals of the fractions), which may yield very poor estimations of the true distances between the fractions. As expected, the tendency to fall for this illusion is related to cognitive style (Study 1). In order to apply procedural priming we constructed versions of the task in which the illusion is weak, in the sense that most people do not fall for it anymore. We then gave participants both “strong illusion” and “weak illusion” versions of the task (Studies 2 and 3). Participants who first did the task in the weak illusion version would often persist with the correct strategy even in the strong illusion version, thus breaking the otherwise strong illusion in the latter task. Conversely, participants who took the strong illusion version first would then often fall for the illusion even in the weak illusion version, thus strengthening the otherwise weak illusion in the latter task.

Auctions, normally considered as devices facilitating trade, also provide a way to probe mechanisms governing one’s valuation of some good or action. One of the most intriguing phenomena in auction behavior is the winner’s curse — the strong tendency of participants to bid more than rational agent theory prescribes, often at a significant loss. The prevailing explanation suggests that humans have limited cognitive abilities that make estimating the correct bid difficult, if not impossible. Using a series of auction structures, we found that bidding approaches rational agent predictions when participants compete against a computer. However, the winner’s curse appears when participants compete against other humans, even when cognitive demands for the correct bidding strategy are removed. These results suggest the humans assign significant future value to victories over human but not over computer opponents even though such victories may incur immediate losses, and that this valuation anomaly is the origin of apparently irrational behavior.

This paper presents two studies on narrow bracketing and myopic loss aversion. The first study shows that the tendency to segregate multiple gambles is eliminated if subjects face a certainty equivalent or a probability equivalent task instead of a binary choice. The second study argues that the behavioral differences previously attributed entirely to myopic loss aversion are partly because long-term return properties are simply easier to grasp if the return information is already provided in the form of long-term returns rather than one-year returns. Both results may be related to recent failures to replicate myopic loss aversion. When the choice situation is structured in such a way that it draws respondents’ attention to the final outcome distribution and/or if severe misestimations of long-term returns based on short-term return information are unlikely, behavioral differences consistent with myopic loss aversion are less likely to be observed.

The accuracy of human forecasters is often reduced because of incompleteinformation and cognitive biases that affect the judges. One approach to improvethe accuracy of the forecasts is to recalibrate them by means of non-lineartransformations that are sensitive to the direction and the magnitude of thebiases. Previous work on recalibration has focused on binary forecasts. Wepropose an extension of this approach by developing an algorithm that uses asingle free parameter to recalibrate complete subjective probabilitydistributions. We illustrate the approach with data from the quarterly Survey ofProfessional Forecasters (SPF) conducted by the European Central Bank (ECB),document the potential benefits of this approach, and show how it can be used inpractical applications.

In this paper, we examined two pairs of datasets from selected Nigerian lottery games to determine players’ number preferences. Data explorations were conducted in the first pair of datasets to identify patterns in players’ choices of lottery numbers. The question whether players preferred number combinations that are well-spread out regardless of their true theoretical probabilities was examined in the second pair. In the first pair of datasets, we find that most players have a preference for small numbers especially 1 and 9. They also prefer numbers with repeated digits and tend to avoid multiples of 7 and numbers containing 7 (except 7 and 77). The most popular numbers are 90 and 1. In the second pair of the datasets, more than 50% of the players preferred selecting well-spread out number combinations than expected by chance.

A substantial body of evidence suggests that favoring reason over intuition (employing an analytic cognitive style) is associated with reduced belief in God. In the current work, we address outstanding issues in this literature with two studies examining the relationship between analytic cognitive style (as measured by performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test) and belief in God. First, prior research focused on Judeo-Christian cultures, and it is uncertain whether the results generalize to other religious systems or beliefs. Study 1 helps to address this question by documenting a negative correlation between CRT performance and belief in God, r = −.18, in a sample of 513 participants from India, a majority Hindu country. Second, among 150 participants from the United Kingdom, Gervais et al. (2018) reported the first and (to date) only evidence for a positive relationship between CRT and belief in God. In Study 2, we assess the robustness of this result by recruiting 547 participants from the United Kingdom. Unlike Gervais et al., using the same items, we find a negative correlation between CRT and belief in God (r = −.19). Our results add further support to the argument that analytic thinking undermines belief in God.

Humans and other animals are idiosyncratically sensitive to risk, either preferring or avoiding options having the same value but differing in uncertainty. Many explanations for risk sensitivity rely on the non-linear shape of a hypothesized utility curve. Because such models do not place any importance on uncertainty per se, utility curve-based accounts predict indifference between risky and riskless options that offer the same distribution of rewards. Here we show that monkeys strongly prefer uncertain gambles to alternating rewards with the same payoffs, demonstrating that uncertainty itself contributes to the appeal of risky options. Based on prior observations, we hypothesized that the appeal of the risky option is enhanced by the salience of the potential jackpot. To test this, we subtly manipulated payoffs in a second gambling task. We found that monkeys are more sensitive to small changes in the size of the large reward than to equivalent changes in the size of the small reward, indicating that they attend preferentially to the jackpots. Together, these results challenge utility curve-based accounts of risk sensitivity, and suggest that psychological factors, such as outcome salience and uncertainty itself, contribute to risky decision-making.

Research has shown that people perceive themselves as less biased than others, and as better than average in many favorable characteristics. We suggest that these types of biased perceptions regarding intentions and behavior of others may directly affect people’s decisions. In the current research we focus on possible influences in the context of helping behavior. In four experiments we found that, people believe that others, compared to themselves, are less inclined to help and cooperate, are less aware of the number of bystanders and more influenced by the “proportion dominance” bias and by the “identifiable victim effect.” We demonstrate that these perceptions are naïve and unrealistic by showing that decisions from both self and others’ perspectives are equally biased. Finally, we show how the perspective from which a decision is made (self vs. others) may affect private as well as public decisions in ways that might not be in the best interest of the decision maker and the public.

In motor lotteries the probability of success is inherent in a person’s ability to make a speeded pointing movement. By contrast, in traditional economic lotteries, the probability of success is explicitly stated. Decision making with economic lotteries has revealed many violations of rational decision making models. However, with motor lotteries people’s performance is often near optimal, and is well described by statistical decision theory. We report the results of an experiment testing whether motor planning decisions exhibit the attraction effect, a well-known axiomatic violation of some rational decision models. The effect occurs when changing the composition of a choice set alters preferences between its members. We provide the first demonstration that people do exhibit the attraction effect when choosing between motor lotteries. We also found that people exhibited a similar sized attraction effect in motor and traditional economic paradigms. People’s near-optimal performance with motor lotteries is characterized by the efficiency of their decisions. In attraction effect experiments performance is instead characterized by the violation of an axiom. We discuss the extent that axiomatic and efficiency measures can provide insight in assessing the rationality of decision making.

In a controlled laboratory experiment we investigate whether time pressure influences voting decisions, and in particular the degree of strategic (insincere) voting. We find that participants under time constraints are more sincere when using the widely-employed Plurality Voting method. That is, time pressure might reduce strategic voting and hence misrepresentation of preferences. However, there are no effects for Approval Voting, in line with arguments that this method provides no incentives for strategic voting.

Many natural decisions contain an element of skill. Modern conceptions of the skill component include control (Goodie, 2003) and competence (Heath & Tversky, 1991). The control hypothesis states that a task's skill component (the sensitivity of the task to skill) affects decision making; the competence hypothesis states decision making is affected only if the participant possesses the skill. Three experiments compared risk taking patterns between two groups. One group faced bets on random events, and another group faced bets on their answers to general knowledge questions, which is a task characterized by control. In Experiment 1, control increased risk taking markedly with all statistical properties held constant. In Experiment 2, decisions made in domains of varying difficulty, and by individuals of varying ability, yielded further qualified support for the role of competence. In Experiment 3, the role of control was replicated, and participants’ perceptions of the differences in group treatments aligned more with the implications of the control hypothesis than with the competence hypothesis. Results offered support for the control hypothesis across a range of competence.

In applied sciences large-scale surveys are a popular means to acquire insights in the choices that people make in different contexts. In transportation research, for example, tens of thousands stated their choices between alternatives characterized by cost and time attributes. In this study I explore the extent to which the data acquired in such studies may exhibit the co-occurrence of different choice algorithms within such survey populations. For that purpose I propose a novel version of the outcome-oriented approach. It is applied to the outcomes of two Dutch value-of-time surveys. If the recorded choice patterns are viewed apart, most could be the result of several different algorithms, in line with the main criticism of the outcome-oriented approach. The novel version considers the causal relationships between an individual’s personal circumstances, his use of a particular algorithm and the resulting choice pattern. It employs inferential statistics for analyses of the frequencies of the expected and actually recorded choice patterns within groups of respondents. Applied to the Dutch survey results this allowed disentangling, at the aggregate level, the overlap in explaining compensatory and non-compensatory algorithms to a large extent. It revealed that weighted additive (WADD) algorithms incorporating different degrees of loss aversion could explain most recorded choice behaviour while none of the many non-compensatory algorithms that were considered yielded a more than marginal explanation. Replications of this study, preferably by re-analysing other large-scale surveys with more complicated choice sets, is recommended to find out whether or not these findings are incidental.

People live in a world in which they are surrounded by potential disgust elicitors such as “used” chairs, air, silverware, and money as well as excretory activities. People function in this world by ignoring most of these, by active avoidance, reframing, or adaptation. The issue is particularly striking for professions, such as morticians, surgeons, or sanitation workers, in which there is frequent contact with major disgust elicitors. In this study, we study the “adaptation” process to dead bodies as disgust elicitors, by measuring specific types of disgust sensitivity in medical students before and after they have spent a few months dissecting a cadaver. Using the Disgust Scale, we find a significant reduction in disgust responses to death and body envelope violation elicitors, but no significant change in any other specific type of disgust. There is a clear reduction in discomfort at touching a cold dead body, but not in touching a human body which is still warm after death.

Unstructured interviews are a ubiquitous tool for making screening decisions despite a vast literature suggesting that they have little validity. We sought to establish reasons why people might persist in the illusion that unstructured interviews are valid and what features about them actually lead to poor predictive accuracy. In three studies, we investigated the propensity for “sensemaking” - the ability for interviewers to make sense of virtually anything the interviewee says—and “dilution”—the tendency for available but non-diagnostic information to weaken the predictive value of quality information. In Study 1, participants predicted two fellow students’ semester GPAs from valid background information like prior GPA and, for one of them, an unstructured interview. In one condition, the interview was essentially nonsense in that the interviewee was actually answering questions using a random response system. Consistent with sensemaking, participants formed interview impressions just as confidently after getting random responses as they did after real responses. Consistent with dilution, interviews actually led participants to make worse predictions. Study 2 showed that watching a random interview, rather than personally conducting it, did little to mitigate sensemaking. Study 3 showed that participants believe unstructured interviews will help accuracy, so much so that they would rather have random interviews than no interview. People form confident impressions even interviews are defined to be invalid, like our random interview, and these impressions can interfere with the use of valid information. Our simple recommendation for those making screening decisions is not to use them.

Previous research has established that higher levels of trait Honesty-Humility (HH) are associated with less dishonest behavior in cheating paradigms. However, only imprecise effect size estimates of this HH-cheating link are available. Moreover, evidence is inconclusive on whether other basic personality traits from the HEXACO or Big Five models are associated with unethical decision making and whether such effects have incremental validity beyond HH. We address these issues in a highly powered reanalysis of 16 studies assessing dishonest behavior in an incentivized, one-shot cheating paradigm (N = 5,002). For this purpose, we rely on a newly developed logistic regression approach for the analysis of nested data in cheating paradigms. We also test theoretically derived interactions of HH with other basic personality traits (i.e., Emotionality and Conscientiousness) and situational factors (i.e., the baseline probability of observing a favorable outcome) as well as the incremental validity of HH over demographic characteristics. The results show a medium to large effect of HH (odds ratio = 0.53), which was independent of other personality, situational, or demographic variables. Only one other trait (Big Five Agreeableness) was associated with unethical decision making, although it failed to show any incremental validity beyond HH.

Loss aversion, the argument that losses are given more weight than gains, has been recently shown to be absent in small losses. However, a series of studies by Mrkva et al. (2020) appear to demonstrate the existence of loss aversion even for smaller losses. We re-ran Mrkva et al.’s decision tasks after removing features of the task that differentiated losses from the gains, particularly asymmetries in sizes of gains and losses, an increasing order of losses, and status quo effects. The results show that we replicate Mrkva et al.’s (2020) findings in their original paradigm with online participants, yet in five studies where gains and losses were symmetrically presented in random order (n = 2,001), we find no loss aversion for small amounts, with loss aversion surfacing very weakly only for average losses of $40 (mean λ = 1.16). We do find loss aversion for higher amounts such as $100 (mean λ = 1.54) though it is not as extreme as previously reported. Furthermore, we find weak correlation between the endowment effect and loss aversion, with the former effect existing simultaneously with no loss aversion. Thus, when items are presented symmetrically, significant loss aversion emerges only for large losses, suggesting that it cannot be argued that (all) “losses loom larger than gains.”