Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Mainstream theorists in risky decision-making have developed various expectation-maximization-based theories with the ambitious goal of capturing everyone’s choices. However, ample evidence has revealed that these theories could not capture every individual’s (“every one’s”) actual risky choice as descriptive theories. Substantial research has demonstrated that people do not follow the logical process suggested by expectation-maximization-based theories when making risky choices but rather rely on simplifying heuristics. From our perspective, the possible reason why mainstream decision theorists did not abandon the framework of expectation is that these theorists never doubted the validity of the expectation rule as a descriptive rule in describing decision-making under risk. We believe that expectation-maximization-based theories may capture risky choices when individuals make decisions for everyone. However, whether these theories could capture risky choices when individuals make decisions for themselves cannot be taken for granted. We thus used an eye-tracking technique to explore whether a theory for everyone would work well for every one. A total of 52 college students participated in the experiment. Three risky choice tasks were conducted in the present study: a D-everyone task, a D-multiple task, and a D-single task. In the D-everyone task, participants were asked to choose the more optimal option out of two options under the assumption that their selection would be the final decision for everyone who was facing the same choice—that is, everyone would be subject to the same choice but could receive different outcomes. In the D-multiple task, participants were asked to choose between the two options under the assumption that their selection would be applied a total of 100 times. In the D-single task, participants were asked to choose between the two options under the assumption that their selection would be applied only once to themselves. The participants’ eye movements were recorded while they performed the tasks. Behavioral results revealed that, compared with the D-single task, participants selected more choices correctly predicted by EV and EU theories, and took a longer time to make a decision in the D-everyone and D-multiple tasks. Furthermore, eye movement measurements revealed the following. (1) The scanpath patterns of the D-everyone task and D-multiple task were similar but different from those of the D-single task. (2) The depth of information acquisition and the level of complexity of information processing in the D-everyone task and D-multiple task was higher than that in the D-single task. (3) The direction of information search in the D-everyone task and D-multiple task was more alternative-based than that in the D-single task. (4) The eye-tracking measures mediated the relationship between the task and the EV-consistent choice. In summary, behavioral and eye movement results supported our hypotheses that participants were likely to follow an expectation strategy in the D-everyone and D-multiple tasks, whereas they were likely to follow a heuristic/non- expectation strategy in the D-single task. We found that expectation-maximization-based theories could capture the choice of an individual when making decisions for everyone and for self in a multiple-play condition but could not capture the choice of an individual when making decisions for self in a single-play condition. The evidence for the discrepancy between everyone and every one, which was first reported in our study, implied that the possible reason why expectation-maximization-based theories do not work is that a default compatibility between the full set (everyone) and the subset (every one) does not exist. Our findings contribute to an improved understanding of the boundaries of expectation-maximization-based theories and those of heuristic/non-expectation models. Our findings may also shed light on the general issue of the classification of risky decision-making theories.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2022-07-29
Abstract： Mainstream theorists in risky decision-making have developed various expectation theories with the ambitious goal of capturing everyone’s choices. However, ample evidence has revealed that these expectation theories could not capture every individual’s (“every one’s”) actual risky choice as descriptive theories. With doubts about the default compatibility between everyone (full set) and every one (subset), we used an eye-tracking technique to explore whether a theory for everyone would work well for every one. We found that expectation theories could capture the choice of an individual when making decisions for everyone and for self in a multiple-play condition, but could not capture the choice of an individual when making decisions for self in a single-play condition. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the boundaries of expectation theories and those of heuristic/non-expectation models, and may shed light on the general issue of the classification of risky decision-making theories.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2022-07-25
Abstract：
Mainstream theorists in risky decision-making have developed various expectation-maximization-based theories with the ambitious goal of capturing everyone’s choices. However, ample evidence has revealed that these theories could not capture every individual’s (“every one’s”) actual risky choice as descriptive theories. Substantial research has demonstrated that people do not follow the logical process suggested by expectation-maximization-based theories when making risky choices but rather rely on simplifying heuristics. From our perspective, the possible reason why mainstream decision theorists did not abandon the framework of expectation is that these theorists never doubted the validity of the expectation rule as a descriptive rule in describing decision-making under risk. We believe that expectation-maximization-based theories may capture risky choices when individuals make decisions for everyone. However, whether these theories could capture risky choices when individuals make decisions for themselves cannot be taken for granted. We thus used an eye-tracking technique to explore whether a theory for everyone would work well for every one.
A total of 52 college students participated in the experiment. Three risky choice tasks were conducted in the present study: a D-everyone task, a D-multiple task, and a D-single task. In the D-everyone task, participants were asked to choose the more optimal option out of two options under the assumption that their selection would be the final decision for everyone who was facing the same choice—that is, everyone would be subject to the same choice but could receive different outcomes. In the D-multiple task, participants were asked to choose between the two options under the assumption that their selection would be applied a total of 100 times. In the D-single task, participants were asked to choose between the two options under the assumption that their selection would be applied only once to themselves. The participants’ eye movements were recorded while they performed the tasks.
Behavioral results revealed that, compared with the D-single task, participants selected more choices correctly predicted by EV and EU theories, and took a longer time to make a decision in the D-everyone and D-multiple tasks. Furthermore, eye movement measurements revealed the following. (1) The scanpath patterns of the D-everyone task and D-multiple task were similar but different from those of the D-single task. (2) The depth of information acquisition and the level of complexity of information processing in the D-everyone task and D-multiple task was higher than that in the D-single task. (3) The direction of information search in the D-everyone task and D-multiple task was more alternative-based than that in the D-single task. (4) The eye-tracking measures mediated the relationship between the task and the EV-consistent choice. In summary, behavioral and eye movement results supported our hypotheses that participants were likely to follow an expectation strategy in the D-everyone and D-multiple tasks, whereas they were likely to follow a heuristic/non-expectation strategy in the D-single task.We found that expectation-maximization-based theories could capture the choice of an individual when making decisions for everyone and for self in a multiple-play condition but could not capture the choice of an individual when making decisions for self in a single-play condition. The evidence for the discrepancy between everyone and every one, which was first reported in our study, implied that the possible reason why expectation-maximization-based theories do not work is that a default compatibility between the full set (everyone) and the subset (every one) does not exist. Our findings contribute to an improved understanding of the boundaries of expectation-maximization-based theories and those of heuristic/non-expectation models. Our findings may also shed light on the general issue of the classification of risky decision-making theories.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-06-23
Abstract： According to the positive temporal discounting theory and our relevant observations, when faced with future losses, people should, and do, prefer delayed negative events (e.g., deferring paying taxes, debts, or tickets), which can lead to substantial individual and societal costs. However, a counterexample has been identified and it appears to depart from the prediction of positive temporal discounting when faced with negative events. This study proposed and investigated the novel free from care account for the reverse preference. Results of five laboratory and field studies showed that students preferred an immediate negative event (i.e., an English oral exam) when “something tying one up”was imposed, in which coping with a distraction induced by such a situation could play a mediating role. In particular, the addition of“something tying one up” was found to be an effective behavioral nudge in terms of reliability and reproducibility and should be simple for potential users to follow. Specifically, the association between being tied up and undergoing a negative event immediately in the present studies mirrored the association between outgroup threat and intergroup cooperation in the Robbers Cave experiment.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2019-03-25
Abstract： Choices between options represented in a multidimensional space, in which each dimension signifies a distinct attribute describing the objects, are presumably guided by the principle of value maximization (Luce, 1959). However, the current study assumes that in real-world setting, those who are able to imagine things that do not actually exist could modify the multidimensional space by self-generating an unoffered but fictional dimension. We define the utility (Uv) assigned by the decision makers to the options on the offered/given dimension as value (v[x]) and the utility (Uw) on the self-generated/ fictional dimension as worth (w[xc]). Our series of experiments demonstrated that an option with a greater value established strictly on that given set of dimensions might not necessarily be chosen (which contradicted the principle of value maximization). Such choosing option with less value (i.e., giving away the bigger pear) behavior can be described and explained by the “worth-based choice” approach as people behave to select the option with the highest worth rather than that with the highest value. We are optimistic that the resulting findings will facilitate our understanding of the beauty of such “one step further” choice and assist us in understanding the following: the ability to further generate a fictional dimension, to assign a delayed utility (worth) to the options on the fictional dimension, and to make a worth-based choice, could eventually be taken as the operational definition to measure the degree of “fiction-generating ability” as proposed by Harari (2014). "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2018-03-29
Abstract：在生活中，我们时常会选取或接受一个导致明显损失的选项（如，无酬加班）。主流决策理论不会将此选择预测或解释为我们主动做出的行为选择，反倒是中国古语“吃亏是福”这一信条不仅对此进行了阐释，而且还大力推崇这类行为。为了探索“吃亏是福”信条起作用的机制，我们自创了一个基于成功人士吃亏轶事的量表，用于测量“吃亏似然性”。考虑到“福”可分为“主观”与“客观”之福；“报”可分为“现报”与“后报”，我们发现（1）当下吃亏似然性分数越高的人，当下拥有的社会经济地位指数（SEI）越高、主观幸福感（SWB）越强；（2）真金白银的当前社会经济地位指数（SEI）既可以被当下的吃亏似然性所预测，也可以被想象的多年前吃亏似然性所预测（即以前吃的亏能预测现在受的福），且想象以前吃亏的年代越久远，预测的效果越佳。我们的发现提示“吃亏是福”不是传说而是现实。
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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