Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Information overload occurs when the current information processing requirements exceed information processing capacities. Information overload can impair the quality of decisions, prolong decision-making time, reduce decision satisfaction, and cause chronic stress. The attentional resources theory and limited working memory capacity can be used to explain why information overload damages decisions. Attention resources for filtering and managing information are consumed quickly under information overload and the allocation and utilization of attention resources can be disrupted by irrelevant information, which causes the efficiency of information processing to be reduced. Moreover, the available working memory for information processing can't process massive amounts of information in a limited time. As a result, decision performance is damaged by information overload. Future research should further explore the information processing model under information overload, the eye movement empowerment method allows us to examine attention resource usage under information overload. A dynamic coupling model of conscious and unconscious thought is required to provide a method to guide individuals to alleviate information overload. Additionally, intelligent agents and interactive memory systems should be investigated to find their potential roles in alleviating information overload within larger organizations.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Research in the fields of financial investing, health, and organizational work has revealed that individuals are more likely to take risks when faced with stress. Prior studies have explained the underlying processes between stress and risk-taking from the perspectives of value appraisal, risk perception, and decision strategy. However, these studies were more akin to explore how people react more than why people react in risk-seeking ways under stress. Therefore, in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the association between stress and risk-seeking, this study aimed to reveal the direct and root reasons that explain an individual’s risk-taking behavior under stress and to clarify the internal mechanisms of this association. Several theories have suggested the reasons by which stress affects risk-seeking. For example, expected utility theory proposes that individuals tend to attach greater subjective value to the risk options in stressful situations. Prospect theory further suggests that stress affects both of the subjective value and subjective probability of risk options. These two theories consider cognitive changes as the possible reason that explains the “stress-risk-seeking” association. The dual-process theory further proposes that the said changes in the cognitive process are due to the depletion of cognitive resources under stress. Therefore, individuals tend to prefer labor-saving heuristic processing to adapt to the environment. The sensitive theory provides an explanation of the cognitive changes from an evolutionary perspective, suggesting that stress can unbalance individuals' psychological needs, crave higher rewards, and therefore, show more risk-seeking behaviors. The current study proposes that stress affects individuals’ value appraisal, risk perception and decision strategy through changes in cognitive resources and psychological needs. Specifically, on the one hand, stress occupies cognitive resources and weakens executive function, which is manifested in difficulties in suppressing dominant responses, slower task switching speed, and impaired working memory. On the other hand, stress unbalances individuals’ psychological needs and increases chances of reward-seeking, which is manifested in being more sensitive to high-reward options and positive reinforcement. Then, changes in executive function and psychological needs cause individuals to overestimate the positive outcomes of risky options and to reduce the perceived probability of negative outcomes and therefore, adopt heuristic strategies that consume less cognitive resources. Then, the heuristic strategies affect individuals’ risky behaviors through distorting their evaluations of risks, such as neglecting the possibility of negative outcomes and merely pursuing high-return options. In addition, our model accounts for boundary conditions in which the effects of stress on reward-seeking may differ by gender, materialism, and levels of stress coping; and the effects of stress on executive control may be moderated by factors such as age, stressors, social support, and domain specificity. Finally, we encourage future research to explore the association between stress and risk-seeking from three aspects. First, how would the dynamic changes of executive function under stress affect risk-seeking; Second, how does the interaction between cognition and emotion under stress affect risk-seeking; and Third, carry out intervention to regulate stress and reduce risk-taking behaviors.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： On the one hand, a large amount of information is helpful to the construction of the future and it can help individuals make far-sighted decisions. On the other hand, as the amount of information increases, the ambiguity and uncertainty of the future also increases, which may make individuals prefer smaller but sooner reward. So, how does a huge amount of information affect intertemporal decision making? It is an important scientific question that has not been well addressed.Although there may be multiple cognitive abilities that play different roles in the process of massive information influencing intertemporal decisions, we believe that attention is the most important one. Mainly based on the following considerations: (1) The cost of processing information is attentional resources. (2) Selectivity of Attention determines what information is used for decision making. (3) The weight of attention given to different information may determine the decision outcome. Studies have shown that individuals' differences in intertemporal decision-making are mainly due to variance in attention. (4) There is important practical value in understanding how variance of attention affect intertemporal decision-making. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the question that how massive information influence intertemporal decision-making through attentional resources.Firstly, we will explore how massive information can reduce prospection about the future. Because too much information makes information that are negative, concrete, and salient are more likely to capture a person's attention. This results in too little attentional resources left for future relevant events. Secondly, we will explore how the reduction of prospection lead to a preference for the short-term option in intertemporal decision-making. Specifically, when individuals' attention is drawn to immediate information, they simulate future events unclearly, and predict a lower likelihood of receiving long-term rewards. Therefore, people's intention to achieve long-term goals will be reduced and they are reluctant to plan for long-term goals. Changes in the four prospection patterns will lead to a reduced weighting of future options and therefore a preference for near-term options in intertemporal choice. Thirdly, long-term orientation moderates the effect of massive information on intertemporal decision-making. Individuals with long-term orientation pay more attention to the value related to long-term goals and reduce the attention bias to short-term related information. Thus, long-term orientation buffers the adverse effect of massive information on intertemporal decision-making. And last but not least, we attempt to facilitate individuals' far-sighted intertemporal decision-making in a massive information environment by setting salience and defaults that could directing subjects' attention to focus on long-term values.Based on the theoretical perspective of attentional resources, this study proposes a theoretical framework that massive information affects intertemporal decision making by reducing prospection about the future. This is the first time to establish the relationship between massive information and intertemporal decision making directly. It reveals the cognitive process that massive information affects intertemporal decision making and helps us to deeply understand how people make intertemporal choice in the massive information environment. Consequently, our conclusions have important practical significance for both organizations and individuals to nudge farsighted decision by setting the environment to guide attention.
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2020-08-07
Abstract： Ego depletion leads to preference for immediate interests and goals, which is likely to induce irrational decision making. Based on systematic literature reviews, ego depletion impedes rational decision making through two mechanisms. In regard to the attention mechanism, depleted individuals are more likely to be attracted by immediate rewards but ignore the importance of long-term benefit (i.e., failure of “focusing on the future”). In terms of the execution mechanism, depletion impairs individuals’ abilities of planning and executing (i.e., failure of “sticking to the future”). Moreover, two critical boundaries affect such processes: (1) individual characteristics, including susceptibility to resource depletion and internal moral restraint; (2) situational characteristics, including external provocation, social norms and decision costs. Future research should adopt eye tracking technology to extend the research in attention mechanism and explore other boundary conditions, which helps to nudge rational decision making.
Hits
Hits
Downloads
Comment