This paper investigates how the numerosity bias influences individuals’ allocation of resources between themselves and others, using the backdrop of the traditional dictator game. Across four studies including both hypothetical and real exchanges of money, we show that the form of the numerical value representing the quantity of the resource (e.g., $20 vs 2000 cents) systematically biases the decision-maker to perceive the quantity s/he is thinking of allocating as being “less than adequate” or “more than adequate”. Essentially, such a biased perception of adequacy with respect to the quantity of the resource consequently influences the decision-maker’s final allocation decision. We attribute this systematic bias to the “numerosity” of the resource. We find that bigger numerical values representing quantity (e.g., 2000 cents) bias decision-makers to over-infer the quantity, thus inducing them to allocate less to the entities they are focusing on.

According to the recognition heuristic (RH), for decision domains where recognition is a valid predictor of a choice criterion, recognition alone is used to make inferences whenever one object is recognized and the other is not, irrespective of further knowledge. Erdfelder, Küpper-Tetzel, and Mattern (2011) questioned whether the recognition judgment itself affects decisions or rather the memory strength underlying it. Specifically, they proposed to extend the RH to the memory state heuristic (MSH), which assumes a third memory state of uncertainty in addition to recognition certainty and rejection certainty. While the MSH already gathered significant support, one of its basic and more counterintuitive predictions has not been tested so far: In guessing pairs (none of the objects recognized), the object more slowly judged as unrecognized should be preferred, since it is more likely to be in a higher memory state. In this paper, we test this prediction along with other recognition latency predictions of the MSH, thereby adding to the body of research supporting the MSH.

When decisions involve opting in or out of competition many decision makers will opt-in even when doing so leads to losses on average. In the current paper, we examine the generality of this effect in risky choices not involving competition. We found that re-framing a sure (certain) zero option as an option to observe the results of the other options without choosing would lead to increased consequential choice (i.e., increased selection of risky options rather than the zero option). Specifically, in two studies we compared the rate of consequential choice in a novel paradigm where decision makers decide to observe or to choose with consequence from a set of risky options (decisions-to-engage) to a full-feedback decisions-from-feedback paradigm where the choice set included a labeled sure zero option. Compared to decisions-from-feedback, participants were more likely to choose from mixed (risky) gambles with consequence (over a zero outcome) in decisions-to-engage. This occurred irrespective of whether doing so was advantageous (i.e., when choice led to monetary gains on average) or disadvantageous (i.e., when choice led to monetary losses on average), and when descriptions of the options outcomes and probabilities were provided (Study 2). These findings provide an important boundary condition for the positive effects of experience on the quality of choice, and suggest that decision makers’ preference for agency can sometimes induce poorer choices.

Current theories of dishonest behavior suggest that both individual profits and the availability of justifications drive cheating. Although some evidence hints that cheating behavior is most prevalent when both self-profit and social justifications are present, the relative impact of each of these factors is insufficiently understood. This study provides a fine-grained analysis of the trade-off between self-profit versus social justifiability. In a non-student online sample, we assessed dishonest behavior in a coin-tossing task, involving six conditions which systematically varied both self-profit and social justifiability (in terms of social welfare), such that a decrease in the former was associated with the exact same increase in the latter. Results showed that self-profit outweighed social justifiability, but that there was also an effect of social justifications.

Naturalness is important and valued by most lay Western individuals. Yet, little is known about the lay meaning of “natural”. We examine the phenomenon of additivity dominance: adding something to a natural product (additive) reduces naturalness more than removing an equivalent entity (“subtractive”). We demonstrate additivity dominance for the first time using equivalent adding and subtracting procedures. We find that adding something reduces naturalness more than removing the same thing (e.g., adding pulp to orange juice reduces naturalness more than removing pulp from orange juice; Study 1); an organism with a gene added is less natural than one with a gene removed (Study 2); and framing a product as an additive (versus as a subtractive) reduces naturalness (Study 3). We begin to examine accounts of additivity dominance. We find that it is not due to the connotations of the word “additive” (Study 4). However, data are consistent with an extra processing account — where additives involve more processing (extracting and adding) than subtractives (only removing) — and with a contagion account — where adding is more contaminating than removing (Study 5).

Recent research suggests that people discount or neglect expectations of reciprocity in trust dilemmas. We examine the underlying processes and boundary conditions of this effect, finding that expectations have stronger effects on trust when they are made accessible and when they are provided as objective probabilities (Study 1). Objective expectations have stronger effects when they are based on precise, rather than ambiguous, probabilities (Study 2). We also find that trust decisions differ from individual risk-taking decisions: people are more willing to trust, and expectations have stronger effects on trusting behavior (Study 2). These results show that the availability and ambiguity of expectations shape trust decisions, and that people differentially weight expectations in dilemmas of trust and individual risk-taking.

We propose a novel method of using eye-tracking to study strategic decisions. The conventional approach is to hypothesize what eye-patterns should be observed if a given model of decision-making was accurate, and then proceed to verify if this occurs. When such hypothesis specification is difficult a priori, we propose instead to expose subjects to a variant of the original strategic task that should induce processing it in a way consistent with the postulated model. It is then possible to use machine learning pattern recognition techniques to check if the associated eye-patterns are similar to those recorded during the original task. We illustrate the method using simple examples of 2x2 matching-pennies and coordination games with or without feedback about the counterparts’ past moves. We discuss the strengths and limitations of the method in this context.

Accountability pressures are a ubiquitous feature of social systems: virtually everyone must answer to someone for something. Behavioral research has, however, warned that accountability, specifically a focus on being responsible for outcomes, tends to produce suboptimal judgments. We qualify this view by demonstrating the long-term adaptive benefits of outcome accountability in uncertain, dynamic environments. More than a thousand randomly assigned forecasters participated in a ten-month forecasting tournament in conditions of control, process, outcome or hybrid accountability. Accountable forecasters outperformed non-accountable ones. Holding forecasters accountable to outcomes (“getting it right”) boosted forecasting accuracy beyond holding them accountable for process (“thinking the right way”). The performance gap grew over time. Process accountability promoted more effective knowledge sharing, improving accuracy among observers. Hybrid (process plus outcome) accountability boosted accuracy relative to process, and improved knowledge sharing relative to outcome accountability. Overall, outcome and process accountability appear to make complementary contributions to performance when forecasters confront moderately noisy, dynamic environments where signal extraction requires both knowledge pooling and individual judgments.

Decision quality is often evaluated based on whether decision makers can adequately explain the decision process. Accountability often improves judgment quality because decision makers weigh and integrate information more thoroughly, but it could also hurt judgment processes by disrupting retrieval of previously encountered cases. We investigated to what degree process accountability motivates decision makers to shift from retrieval of past exemplars to rule-based integration processes. This shift may hinder accurate judgments in retrieval-based configural judgment tasks (Experiment 1) but may improve accuracy in elemental judgment tasks requiring weighing and integrating information (Experiment 2). In randomly selected trials, participants had to justify their judgments. Process accountability neither changed how accurately people made a judgment, nor the judgment strategies. Justifying the judgment process only decreased confidence in trials involving a justification. Overall, these results imply that process accountability may affect judgment quality less than expected.