Surprisingly little research has investigated the particular motives that underlie choice behavior in social dilemma situations. The main aim of the present research was to ask whether behavior in take-some games (such as the multiple-person Commons Dilemma Game and the two-person Bandit Game) and give-some games (such as the multiple-person Public Goods Dilemma Game and the two-person Dictator Game) is differently affected by proself and prosocial motives. Two experimental studies were conducted. Our first experiment used a trait-based assessment of the motives, whereas in our second experiment the motives were measured as state variables. The results of both experiments revealed that proself and prosocial motives did not explain much difference between taking and giving when comparing the Commons Dilemma Game and the Public Goods Dilemma Game. Yet, our second experiment revealed that these motives did differentiate choices in the Bandit Game and the Dictator Game. More specifically, prosocial motives are more strongly related to giving behavior in the Dictator Game than to taking behavior in the Bandit Game. As such, it can be concluded that in dyadic games (but not in multiple-person games) prosocial motives (but not proself motives) predict choice behavior in a game-specific way.

Previous studies have demonstrated that fluency affects judgment and decision-making. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the effect of perceptual fluency in a causal learning task that usually induces an illusion of causality in non-contingent conditions. We predicted that a reduction of fluency could improve accuracy in the detection of non-contingency and, therefore, could be used to debias illusory perceptions of causality. Participants were randomly assigned to either an easy-to-read or a hard-to-read condition. Our results showed a strong bias (i.e., overestimation) of causality in those participants who performed the non-contingent task in the easy-to-read font, which replicated the standard causality bias effect. This effect was reduced when the same task was presented in a hard-to-read font. Overall, our results provide evidence for a reduction of the causality bias when presenting the problem in a hard-to-read font. This suggests that perceptual fluency affects causal judgments.

In the sacrificial moral dilemma task, participants have to morally judge an action that saves several lives at the cost of killing one person. According to the dual process corrective model of moral judgment suggested by Greene and collaborators (2001; 2004; 2008), cognitive control is necessary to override the intuitive, deontological force of the norm against killing and endorse the utilitarian perspective. However, a conflict model has been proposed more recently to account for part of the evidence in favor of dual process models in moral and social decision making. In this model, conflict, moral responses and reaction times arise from the interplay between individually variable motivational factors and objective parameters intrinsic to the choices offered. To further explore this model in the moral dilemma task, we confronted three different samples with a set of dilemmas representing an objective gradient of utilitarian pull, and collected data on moral judgment and on conflict in a 4-point scale. Collapsing all cases along the gradient, participants in each sample felt less conflicted on average when they gave extreme responses (1 or 4 in the UR scale). They felt less conflicted on average when responding to either the low- or the high-pull cases. The correlation between utilitarian responses and conflict was positive in the low-pull and negative in the high-pull cases. This pattern of data suggests that moral responses to sacrificial dilemmas are driven by decision conflict, which in turn depends on the interplay between an objective gradient of utilitarian pull and the moral motivations which regulate individual responsiveness to this gradient.

For connoisseurs of antiques and antiquities, cleaning old objects can reduce their value. In five experiments (total N = 1,019), we show that lay people also often judge that old objects are worth less when cleaned, and we test two explanations for why cleaning can reduce object value. In Experiment 1, participants judged that cleaning an old object would reduce its value, but judged that cleaning would not reduce the value of an object made from a rare material. In Experiments 2 and 3 we described the nature, age and origin of the traces that cleaning would remove. Now participants judged that cleaning old historical traces would reduce the object’s value, but cleaning recently acquired traces would not. In Experiment 4, participants judged that the current value of an old object is reduced even when it was cleaned in ancient times. However, participants in Experiment 5 valued objects cleaned in ancient times as much as uncleaned ones, while judging that objects cleaned recently are worth less. Together, our findings suggest that cleaning objects may reduce value by removing valued historical traces, and by changing objects from their historic state. We also outline potential implications for previous studies showing that cleaning reduces the value of objects used by admired celebrities.

When people learn of the outcome of an option they did not choose (the alternative outcome) before they know their own outcome, they see an illusory negative correlation between the two outcomes, the Alternative Omen Effect (ALOE). Why does this happen? Here, we tested several alternative explanations and conclude that the ALOE may derive from a pervasive belief that good luck is a limited resource. In Experiment 1, we show that the ALOE is due to people seeing a good alternative outcome as a bad sign regarding their outcome, relative to seeing a neutral alternative, but find no evidence for seeing a bad alternative outcome as a good sign. Experiment 2 confirms that the ALOE replicates across tasks, and that the ALOE cannot be explained by preconceptions regarding outcome distribution, including: 1) the Limited Good Hypothesis (zero-sum bias), according to which people see the world as a zero-sum game, and assume that resources there means fewer resources here, and/or 2) a more specific assumption that laboratory tasks are programmed as zero-sum games. To neutralize these potential beliefs, participants had to draw actual colored beads from two real, distinct bags. The results of Experiment 3 were consistent with a prediction of the Limited Luck Hypothesis: by eliminating the value of the outcomes we eliminated the ALOE. Taken together, our results show that either the limited good belief is so robust that it defies strong situational evidence, or that individuals perceive good luck itself as a limited resource. Such a limited-luck belief might have important consequences in decision making and negotiations.

Assessing how managers discount and evaluate risks is crucial in designing effective managerial policies. In this work, we examine whether risk preferences (RP; both in the domains of gain and loss) and time preferences (TP) are related to managers’ cognitive reflection (CR). To achieve this, the current study focuses on the responses of 601 corporate decision-makers, such as CEO and CFO, of 200 non-financial firms listed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Using the three-item of Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005) as a measure of CR, we observe that males perform better on this test than females. Correlation analysis reveals that individuals’ RP in the gain domain are positively associated with their TP, implying that risk-taking individuals are more patient. Our evidence further shows that higher CR is associated with a higher likelihood of increased patience and a lower likelihood of willingness to take risks in the domain of loss. Greater CR is also linked to a higher likelihood of risk-taking in the domain of gain. These findings have important implications regarding the ability of managers to make financial decisions that involve uncertainty and delayed rewards but maximize firm value.

Frederick, Levis, Malliaris & Meyer (2018) report a package of laboratory studies where participants underestimate the value of “hedges”: Risky bets which cancel out the risk of another presently-held bet. However, it might be questioned to what extent laboratory findings predict field behavior. People might better understand hedges when more money is at stake, or when they have more time to reflect. We discuss three gamblers who, instead of hedging, used a costly “cash-out” option to eliminate the risk of their bets on Leicester FC’s improbable victory in the 2015/2016 English Premier League soccer season. The decision to cash-out rather than to hedge led to individual losses of up to £8,000, and did not seem plausibly explained by rational economic factors. High-stakes hedges are misunderstood too.

Birnbaum and Quispe-Torreblanca (2018) presented a frequentist analysis of a family of six True and Error (TE) models for the analysis of two choice problems presented twice to each participant. Lee (2018) performed a Bayesian analysis of the same models, and found very similar parameter estimates and conclusions for the same data. He also discussed some potential differences between Bayesian and frequentist analyses and interpretations for model comparisons. This paper responds to certain points of possible controversy regarding model selection that attempt to take into account the concept of flexibility or complexity of a model. Reasons to question the use of Bayes factors to decide among models differing in fit and complexity are presented. The partially nested inter-relations among the six TE models are represented in a Venn diagram. Another view of model complexity is presented in terms of possible sets of data that could fit a model rather than in terms of possible sets of parameters that do or do not fit a given set of data. It is argued that less complex theories are not necessarily more likely to be true, and when the space of all possible theories is not well-defined, one should be cautious in interpreting calculated posterior probabilities that appear to prove a theory to be true.

Stastny and Lehner (2018) compared the accuracy of forecasts in an intelligence community prediction market to comparable forecasts in analysis reports prepared by groups of professional intelligence analysts. To obtain quantitative probabilities from the analysis reports experienced analysts were asked to read the reports and state what probability they thought the reports implied for each forecast question. These were called imputed probabilities. Stastny and Lehner found that the prediction market was more accurate than the imputed probabilities and concluded that this was evidence that the prediction market was more accurate than the analysis reports. In a commentary, Mandel (2019) took exception to this interpretation. In a re-analysis of the data, Mandel found a very strong correlation between readers’ personal and imputed probabilities. From this Mandel builds a case that the imputed probabilities are little more than a reflection of the readers’ personal views; that they do not fairly reflect the contents of the analysis reports; and therefore, any accuracy results are spurious. This paper argues two points. First, the high correlation between imputed and personal probabilities was not evidence of substantial imputation bias. Rather it was the natural by-product of the fact that the imputed and personal probabilities were both forecasts of the same events. An additional analysis shows a much lower level of imputation bias that is consistent with the original results and interpretation. Second, the focus of Stastny and Lehner (2018) was on the reports as understood by readers. In this context, even if there was substantial imputation bias it would not invalidate accuracy results; it would instead provide a possible causal explanation of those results.

Bar-Hillel, Noah and Frederick (2018) studied a class of riddles they called stumpers, which have simple, but curiously elusive, solutions. A canonical example is: “Andy is Bobbie’s brother, but Bobbie is not Andy’s brother. How come?” Though not discussed there, we found that the ability to solve stumpers correlates significantly with performance on items resembling the CRT (Cognitive Reflection Test) but not with performance on items from the CRAT (Compound Remote Associates Test). We report those results here.