Task 5 – Decision Making

Introduction to Decision – Making

Judgement = involves deciding on likelihood of various events using incomplete info
 Evaluated in terms of accuracy
 Forms important initial part of DM process (deciding which car to buy > make judgements about
how much various cars would cost)
Decision- = Individuals choose amongst various options.
Making  Evaluated in terms of the importance of the decision
 Involves problem-solving – individuals try to make best possible choice from options
 Assessing decision quality in terms of consequences
 Differs from problem solving
1) PS involves generating own solutions, DM involves choosing from presented options
2) 2) DM concerned with preferences, PS concerned with solutions

Judgement
 We often change our opinion of the likelihood of sth based on new info
 often increases/decreases strength of our beliefs
 Bayesian inference: form of statistical inference in which initial beliefs (prior probabilities) are modified by
evidence/experience to produce posterior probabilities
 Bayes’ theorem: focused on situations in which there are two possible beliefs or hypotheses (e.g., X is lying vs. X is not
lying), and showed how new data or information change the probabilities of each hypothesis being correct
 need to assess the relative probabilities of the two hypotheses before the data are obtained (prior odds). We also need
to calculate the relative probabilities of obtaining the observed data under each hypothesis (likelihood ratio).
 Bayesian methods evaluate the probability of observing the data, D, if hypothesis A is correct, written p (D/H A), and if
hypothesis B is correct, written p (D/HB)

 Left side: relative probabilities of hypotheses A & B in the light of the new data (probabilities
we want to work out)
 Right side: prior odds of each hypothesis being correct before the data were collected
multiplied by the likelihood ratio based on the probability of the data given each hypothesis

 Taxi-cab problem (Kahneman & Tversky): taxicab is involved in a hit-and-run accident one night; 85% taxicabs
belong to green company & 15% to blue company; due to prevalence of cabs from separate companies, the probability
taxi was blue is 41% and probability it was green is 59% (when combined with probability derived from ability of eye-
witness to identify cabs under appropriate visibility conditions)
Neglecting base rates
 Base-rate information: relative frequency of an event within a given population
 such info is often ignored
 Taxicab example: base-rate info about relative numbers of Green & Blue cabs was ignored, focused mainly on
evidence of witness: 80% of the time she was right in identifying cab color, so they said probability cab is blue is
80%
 we fail to use base-rate info bcs we use heuristics (cognitively un-demanding)
 Tversky & Kahneman: Most ppl given judgement tasks make use of rules of thumb / heuristics (reduce effort, quick
decisions)
 Intelligence & cognitive ability: unrelated to performance on most judgement tasks
 Fast-and-frugal heuristics: involve rapid processing of relatively little information
 When ppl do use base-rate info:
 when they understand the underlying causal factors
 when motivated to do so (ex: health problem; myside bias)
 base-rate info sometimes relevant & generally used
 we possess valuable causal knowledge that allows us to make accurate judgements using base-rate
information in everyday life → but in lab: judgement problems often fail to provide such knowledge
 breast cancer experiment: if another cause was mentioned, participants were far more likely to take full
account of the base-rate info → corresponds to real life

Representativeness = deciding an object/person belongs to a given category bcs it appears typical/representative of

heuristic that category

 Assumption that representative or typical members of a category are encountered most

 frequently
 Conjunction fallacy: mistaken belief that combination of 2 events (A & B) is more likely
than one of the events on its own (A or B)
 why ppl fail: bcs of the high perceived probability of the additional info
 still found even when everything possible is done to ensure participants interpret
problem correctly

Availability heuristic = assumption that frequencies of events can be estimated based on how easy/hard it is to retrieve
relevant info from LTM (ex: flight crash more probable than car crash)

 Used based on own direct experience, media coverage or affect heuristic

 Sometimes overridden by deliberate thought
 availability heuristic when under cognitive load
 Affect-heuristic: using one’s own emotional responses to influence rapid
judgements/decisions
 Info about potential harm = more neg. affect & judged benefits of test as less
 How to override them: guided reflection, considering alternative explanations
 Availability-by-recall mechanism – based specifically on number of people an individual
recalls having died from given risk
 Fluency mechanism – involves judging number of deaths from given risk by deciding how
easy it would be to bring relevant instances to mind but without retrieving them
 Support theory – any given event will appear more or less likely depending on how it is
described (more explicit description of event has greater subjective probability than same
event described in less explicit terms); influences even expert’s judgements

Anchoring-and- = when someone makes an initial estimate (the anchor) & then adjusts it to produce a final
adjustment heuristic estimate, the adjustment is generally insufficient

 Kahneman and Tversky showed several general heuristics

 evidence that most ppl prefer to minimize cognitive demands on them by using heuristics
 Limitations of heuristics-and-biases approach:
 heuristics vaguely defined
 conditions that elicit heuristics too unspecified
 inaccurate judgements are not necessarily due to biased processing (but due to small & biased sample of info)
 emotional & motivational factors influence our judgements (ex: judged risk higher in sad mood)
 research artificial: emotional & motivational factors not assessed

Natural frequency hypothesis

 Natural sampling: process of encountering instances in a population sequentially
 Claim: our evolutionary history makes it easy for us to work out the frequencies of different kinds of events
 But: we are ill-equipped to deal with factions & percentages  this is why we perform poorly at base rates
 Performance improves when problems use frequencies
 when problem presented in probabilities, only 16% of participants produced correct answer
 46% of participants were correct when frequencies used
 Strengths:
 we often use info based on natural sampling when making judgements in everyday life
 judgements often more accurate when based on natural frequency rather than probability info
 Limitations:
 we encounter only a sample of events in real world, & the frequencies of such events may differ from “natural”
samples
→ ex: frequencies of highly intelligent & less intelligent ppl met by university students differ from those in general
population
 we must distinguish btw natural frequencies and word problems actually used in research
 enhanced performance with frequency versions may be due to its “computational simplicity” rather than bcs
evolution has equipped us to process frequency info efficiently
 research has rarely precisely identified the strategies actually used on judgement tasks
 sampling behavior biased due to inaccurate hypotheses or bcs readily accessible info is biased
 ppl sometimes find it harder to think in frequencies than in probabilities
→ keeping track of frequency information in the real world can impose considerable demands on memory
Judgement theories
Support theory
 Based partly on availability heuristic
 Key assumption: an event appears more or less likely depending on how it is described
 must distinguish btw events & description of those
 Ex: You will almost certainly assume the probability you will die on your next summer holiday is extremely low.
However, it might seem more likely if you were asked “What is the probability you will die on your next summer holiday
from a disease, a car accident, a plane crash, contaminated food, or any other cause?”
 More explicit event descriptions have greater subjective probability for 2 main reasons:
1) An explicit description often draws attention to aspects of the event less obvious in the non-explicit description
2) Memory limitations may prevent ppl remembering all the relevant information if it is not supplied
 Sub-additivity effect: judging the probability of the whole set of outcomes as less than the combined probabilities of its
parts
 Explicit description can reduce subjective probability if it leads us to focus on low-probability causes
 Limitations:
 does not explain why providing an explicit description generally increases an event’s subjective probability
 theory oversimplified: assumes the perceived support for a given hypothesis provided by relevant evidence is
independent of the rival hypothesis → but, ppl often compare hypotheses & so this independence assumption is
incorrect
 cannot explain that superadditivity (opposite of subadditivity) is found when explicit descriptions focus on low-
probability cause

Fast-and-frugal heuristics
 Rapid processing of limited info
 Take-the-best heuristic: key fast-and-frugal heuristic
 take the best, ignore the rest
 ex: deciding whether Cologne or Herne has larger population: assuming most valid cue is whose city names you
recognize; if both are recognized, you use another cue such as whether city has cathedral
 Take-the-best strategy has 3 components:
1) Search rule – search cues (name recognition, cathedral) in decreasing order of validity
2) Stopping rule – stop after finding a discriminatory cue (cue applies to only one of possible answers)
3) Decision rule – choose outcome
 Recognition heuristic: selecting the recognized object rather than the unrecognized one
 How do ppl decide which heuristic to use on judgement/decision-making tasks?
 two-step process
1. nature of task & individual’s memory limit the number of available heuristics
2. ppl select one heuristic based on the likely outcome of using it & its processing demands
 Effective in spite of simplicity

Limitations:
 Suggestion that we are always better off following intuitions and ‘gut feelings’ is not correct
 Additional info being ignored is often wrong
 Take-the-best strategy is used less often than suggested
→ use requires us to organize the various cues hierarchically based on their validity, but often we lack knowledge of cue
validities
→ cues used by individuals depend on their accessibility in memory
 De-emphasizes the importance of the decision
→ decision making may stop after finding a single discriminatory cue, but most ppl consider all evidence

Findings
 Selecting the recognized object does not necessarily mean the recognition heuristic was used – it could have been chosen
for other reasons
 People are much more likely to use the recognition heuristic when it is valid than when it is not
 Simple heuristics can be moderately effective
 outperform judgements based on much more complex calculations
 Parallel constraint satisfaction theory: more info available, the faster the decision times
 Recognition heuristic account: decision times slower when influenced by additional info
 Recognition heuristic often not used when info was inconsistent (airport city experiment)
 Take-the-best strategy used less often than predicted theoretically
 Less likely when cost of info are low and cue validities unknown
 more detailed processes then
 More intelligent participants more likely to use the take-the-best strategy when it was the best one
Dual-process theory: Kahneman (2003)
 Individuals sometimes use complex cognitive processes instead of rule of thumb
 Probability judgements depend on processing within 2 systems:
 System 1: fast, automatic, effortless, associative, implicit, implicit, often
emotionally charged, difficult to control or modify (most heuristics are produced by
this system)
 System 2: analytical, controlled, rule-governed, slower, serial, effortful,
consciously-monitored, deliberately controlled, flexible
 How are these systems related?
 system 1 rapidly generates intuitive answers to judgement problems
 those are then monitored & evaluated by System 2, which may correct them.
 Thus, judgement involves serial processing: starting with system 1 & sometimes
followed by system 2
 Modification: System 1 & System 2 processes can also operate in parallel
 system 1 processes cause some info to become strongly activated
 this info is then often overweighed & leads to biased judgements
 errors of system 1 may be corrected by system 2

Findings
 People who produced correct answers (and so presumably used system 2) took almost 40% longer than those apparently
using only System
 consistent with the assumption that it takes longer to use System 2
 Participants performed worse on problems when accompanied by secondary task (9.5% correct vs. 17%, respectively)
 predicted given that System 2 involves use of cognitively demanding processes
 Conflict btw base-rate info (suggesting Paul is a nurse) & personality description (suggesting he is a doctor)
 use of System 1 processing might lead participants to focus on personality description using the representativeness
heuristic and decide Paul was probably a doctor
 According to dual-process theory, cognitive load should reduce System 2 processing and use of base-rate information
 In fact, cognitive load led to increased use of easily processed info regardless of whether it referred to base rate or
personality

Support:
 Reasonable support for the existence of 2 different processing systems  System 2 processing more effortful
 People’s judgments are typically determined by System 1 rather than System 2

Limitations of model:
 Alignment problem: assumed System 1 processes are unintentional, uncontrollable, unconscious & efficient (i.e., they
use minimal processing capacity) whereas System 2 processes are intentional, controllable, conscious & inefficient
 these assumptions have rarely been tested.
 evidence indicates that these attributes are much less highly correlated than assumed: hence, not possible to define
System 1 processes with precision
 Oversimplified: rapid responses often reflect System 2 processing & slow responses often reflect System 1 thinking than
vice versa
 Little support for original assumption that System 1 & System 2 processes occur serially
 theory fails to provide an explicit account of the monitoring determining whether we decide to use System 2
processes as well as System 1 processes
 Good/bad fallacy: assumptions that System 1 processing is often “bad” and error-prone whereas System 2 processing is
“good” and leads to rational judgements → oversimplification!
 Processing on judgement tasks is much more flexible than implied
 Different processes often operate in parallel rather than serially

De Neys’ Logical Intuition Model

 Argued that there is rapid, intuitive processing (System 1) of heuristic info & intuitive logical processing (e.g. of base-rate
info) in parallel
 this initial processing is sometimes followed by deliberate or System 2 processing if they generate a different
responses
 Advantages over Kahneman’s theory:
 heuristic & base-rate info can both be rapidly accessed through intuitive processing
 the finding that easily processed base-rate info is used more often under high cognitive load is more consistent
with De Neys’ model
 easier to understand how conflicts btw heuristic & base-rate info are rapidly detected & trigger System 2
processes
Decision-making under risk
 Normative theories – focuses on how ppl should make decisions rather than their actual decisions
 Expected utility theory – we try to maximize utility (subjective value we attach to an outcome)
 when we need to decide btw options, we assess the expected utility (expected value of each option)
 Expected utility = (probability of given outcome) x (utility of outcome)
 Decisions vary in difficulty – choice of cereal vs. career choice
 Subjective expected utility theory – using information from people’s preferences to combine subjective utilities and
subjective probabilities; people’s decisions are decided by factors other than simple utility
 Dominance principle – better of two similar options will be preferred; if option A is at least as good as B in all
respects and better than B in at least one aspect then A should be preferred

Prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky)

= People attach more value to losses than to gains.

 Developed to explain paradoxical findings

 Assumptions of theory:
1. Individuals identify a reference point generally representing their current state
2. Loss aversion: individuals are much more sensitive to potential loses than potential gains;
explains why most ppl are unwilling to accept 50-50 bet unless the amount they’d win is 2x
amount they’d lose
 Positive value associated with gains increases slowly as gains increase: winning 2000$ instead of
1000$ does not double subjective value of money
 Negative value associated with losses increases rapidly as losses increase
 Ppl unwilling to accept bets involving potential losses even when the potential gains outweigh the
potential losses
 Risk aversion: ppl prefer a sure gain to a risky (but potentially greater) gain
 Cumulative prospect theory: ppl overweigh low-probability events
 rare events receive more weight than they should based on their actual probability of occurrence (ex: Lottery)

Findings: framing effect

 Framing effect: decisions can be influenced by irrelevant situational aspects (ex: wording of problem)
 According to prospect theory, it occurs bcs ppl focus on potential gains in the gain-frame condition whereas they are
motivated by loss aversion in the loss-frame condition
 Asian disease problem: outbreak of an Asian disease in U.S. is likely to kill 600 ppl, two programs of action are
proposed; program A: allows 200 ppl to be saved; program B: 1/3 probability that 600 ppl would be saved and 2/3
probability that none of 600 would be saved; 72% participants picked A, even though the programs would on
average save 200
 Social and moral factors not considered by prospect theory can influence performance on Asian disease problem
 Framing effect can be eliminated when individuals think carefully about the available options

Findings: sunk-cost effect

 Sunk-cost effect: tendency to continue a behavior once an investment (time, effort, money) was made
 Stronger when participants thought they would be held accountable for decisions
 Ex: long-term relationships – the more money & effort individuals have invested in an unhappy relationship, the
more likely they are to stay
 Explanation for it:
 many ppl would find it embarrassing if others knew they had wasted money or other resources on an
abandoned project
 satisfied the need to feel competent

Findings: loss aversion

 According to prospect theory: ppl are loss averse & so should choose the option that reduces potential losses
 But the typical finding is loss neutrality: individuals do not favor one option over the other unless the stakes are high
 contrary to prospect theory
 Attentional processes influence loss aversion: individuals who attend more to losses (relative to gains) should exhibit
greater loss aversion than those attending more to gains
 small potential losses do not attract much attention

Findings: description-experience gap

 When decisions based on descriptions, ppl overweigh probability of rare events
 When decisions based on experience, ppl underweigh probability of rare events
 ppl in experience condition fail to encounter rare event
 certainty of outcome cannot be achieved in experience
 Description-experience gaps are important bcs:
1. most research has involved description-based decisions whereas experience-based decisions are common in
everyday life
2. prospect theory cannot provide a coherent account of the different description-experience gaps
 3. descriptions have been used to test most aspects of prospect theory. We need to assess experience-based decisions
much more often to test the generality of findings obtained based solely on descriptions.

Findings: individual differences

 Individual differences in loss aversion: individuals especially motivated to avoid regret are consistently risk averse
whereas those attaching less concern to possible regret are more likely to be consistently risk seeking.

Evaluation
Strengths:
 Prospect theory represents a substantial advance over previous approaches (e.g., subjective expected utility theory)
 Value function (notion that losses loom larger than gains) accounts for many phenomena (loss aversion; sunk-cost effect;
framing effect)
 Wide applicability: professional golfers, experienced poker players & financiers all show loss aversion
 Was crucial in development of behavioral economics
Limitations:
 Lacks principle that might explain why such preferences [ex: loss aversion] exist
 Lack of clarity about participants’ reference points makes it hard to test theoretical predictions
 No explanation about cognitive processes underlying the various decision-making biases
 Much research artificial: sometimes less support for prospect theory with more naturalistic conditions
 Loss aversion occurs less often than predicted (ex: when little amount of money involved)
 De-emphasizes individual differences in willingness to make risky decisions
 Does not emphasize effects of social and emotional factors on decision-making

Decision-making: emotional and social factors

= Emotional factors are important in decision-making because winning and losing both have emotional consequences

Emotional Factors
 When participants lost, they experienced regret if they had made the decision, but disappointment if the computer had
 Regret was followed by riskier choices than disappointment
 Wins were experienced as rejoicing (personal choices) or elation (computer choices), with elation being followed by
riskier choices
 According to Kahneman: “Humans described by prospect theory are guided by the immediate emotional impact of gains
and losses.”
1. Theory assumes there is diminishing sensitivity to changes in value as gains & losses increase
→ prediction: same for feelings associated with gains & losses
2. Theory assumes the subjective value of a given loss is greater than the impact of an equivalent gain and this
produces loss aversion
→ prediction: feelings would be influenced more by a given loss than an equivalent gain
 Impact bias: ppl overestimate the intensity and duration of their negative/positive emotional reactions to loss/gain

Omission bias & status quo bias

 Omission bias: biased preference for risking harm through inaction compared to risking harm through action
 level of regret is greater when unwanted outcome has been caused by individual’s own actions
 even experts exhibit omission bias
 Status quo bias: a preference for maintaining the status quo (present state) rather than acting to change one’s decision
 mistaken rejection of status quo accompanied by stronger feelings of regrets than mistaken acceptance of the status
quo
 mistaken rejection of the status quo was associated with greater activation in brain regions (medial PFC, insula)
associated with regret
 Rational-emotional model: decision-making is determined by rational factors based on inferences and outcome info, &
experienced & anticipated emotion
 based on regret & fear – people make choices that reduce negative emotions
 Limitations:
 cannot explain why individuals often experience more regret for inaction than errors of action when asked a
long time afterwards
 fails to explain why status quo bias is more common when decision-makers have numerous options rather
than just a few
 status quo bias is found even with trivial decision such as whether or not to switch television channels
→ hard to believe regret or fear lies behind such decisions
Brain Mechanisms
 Patients with damage to emotion regions (amygdala, ventromedial PFC & insula) gambled more often than other brain-
damaged patients & healthy controls → thus gained most money
 Findings do not mean emotional involvement necessarily impairs decision-making
 Interoception: “gut feeling” important for successful risk taking
 Activation in amygdala, orbital PFC & medial PFC associated with anxiety, greater frame effects & greater loss aversion
→ anxiety increases loss aversion
  Damage to ventromedial PFC: elevated risk-seeking behavior (especially when the probability of success was low)
 Damage to amygdala: elevated risk-seeking behavior with potential gains but not potential losses
 Amygdala may act as a “cautionary brake”
 Emotion regulated led to reduced loss aversion (emotion regulation led to decreased amygdala responses to losses)

Social Factors
Social functionalist approach (Tetlock)
 Considers social context of decision making: we feel the need to justify out decisions to other ppl as well as to ourselves
 tendency towards sunk-cost effect is strongest with high accountability & lowest with low-accountability
 more evidence of status quo bias (maintaining present state but not accepting drug) when ppl felt accountable for
their decision
 Politicians more prone to various decision-making biases (sunk-cost effect; status quo effect) than other ppl
 explains some of the poor decisions made by politicians & suggest that accountability can distort the decision-
making process
 Those living in individualistic cultures are more sensitive to losses and so exhibit more loss aversion than those in
collectivistic culture
 cushion hypothesis: social support provided by others in collectivistic cultures provides a “cushion” for potential
financial losses

 Advantages: emphasizes important social factors that are de-emphasized within prospect theory
 Limitations:
 Individual differences in extent to which ppl feel the need to justify themselves to other ppl are ignored
 Most relevant research involves tab tasks that don’t make real demands on social responsibility

Complex decision-making
Decision-making in everyday life is much more complex than under lab conditions
(1) more serious consequences in real world (medical experts making life/death decisions)
(2) in real life we often make several decisions over time instead of a single decision as in lab

 In an ideal world, our decision-making would involve strategies maximizing utility (= the subjective desirability of an
outcome)
 Multi-attribute utility theory: approximation to an ideal strategy involving the following stages:
1) Identify attributes relevant to decision
2) Decide how to weight those attributes
3) List all options under consideration
4) Rate each option on each attribute
5) Obtain a total utility (i.e. subjective desirability for each option by summing its weighted attribute values)
6) Select option with highest weighted total
 Ex: deciding to rent a flat – 1. pay attention to attributes like number of rooms, location, rent per week; 2. utility of
these attributes is calculated; 3. various flats are compared in terms of their total utility; 4. renter chooses apartment
with highest total utility
 People rarely use this procedure in real life – 1) can be very complex; 2) set of relevant dimensions cannot always
be worked out; 3) dimensions may not be clearly separate (independent) from each other
 We often engage in satisficing: decision-making that prioritizes some sources of information while ignoring others
 not guaranteed to produce best decision but is useful when various options become available at different points in
time
 satisficers vs. maximizers: satisficers are content with making reasonably good decisions while maximizers are
perfectionists; satisficers are happier, more satisfied, optimistic, & experience less regret & self-blame

Elimination by aspects theory - Tversky

= decision makers eliminate options by considering one relevant attribute or aspect after another; option selected varies
depending on order in which attributes are considered

 Advantage: relatively undemanding cognitively

 Problem: the option selected varies as a function of the order in which the attributes are considered  selected option may
not be the best one
 Two-stage theory:
 1st stage resembles elimination in that only options fulfilling certain criteria are retained, which reduces the options
being considered to a manageable number
 2nd stage involves detailed comparisons of the patterns of attributes of the retained options and is only feasible when
the number of options is relatively small
 Most people consistently limit amount of information (options and attributes) they consider – disproves theory
 Kaplan modified it and in the two-stage theory, there is an initial stage resembling elimination by aspects, in which only
options meeting certain criteria are retained
 This stage reduces the options being considered to a manageable number
 In the second stage, there are detailed comparisons of the patterns of attributes of the retained options
 It is often only feasible to engage in such detailed comparisons of a relatively small number of options
 Support found
 When only a few left: switched to a more complex strategy
 Evaluation:
 Good when only a few options available
 individual often adopt a more complex approach resembling that of multi-attribute utility theory when there are
relatively few options
 elimination by aspects is a useful filter at an early stage of decision making but is less valuable at later stage
 does not take account of our preference for options sharing many attributes with other options  adding this
preference to the elimination-by-aspects approach enhances its predictive power

Complicating factors: changing preferences and selective exposure

 Most theories assume a given individual's assessment of the utility or preference (desirability x importance) of any given
attribute remains constant
 Simon tested it (2004)
 Preferences can change if new info is available
 Preference changing is more common when time pressure decreases, suggesting preference changing is based on
deliberate or analytic thinking
 Decisions can even cause ppl to misremember factual info used during decision making
Selective exposure
 Selective exposure: tendency to prefer info consistent with one’s beliefs
 Fischer and Greitemeyer proposed a model according to which increased selective
exposure is predicted when ppl have high defense motivation
(ex: need to defend personal view)
 Increased selective exposure should also be found when decision makers have
high accuracy motivation but restricted access to info
 Reduced selective exposure occurs when there is high accuracy motivation
produced by instructing decision makers to make the best choice

Naturalistic decision making (Galotti)

 Approach designed to identify the processes involved in real-life decision making
 Theory of naturalistic decision making involves 5 phases: setting goals, gathering
info, structuring the decision (i.e. listing options & the criteria for deciding among them), making a final choice &
evaluating the decision
 Flexibility in phase order with many decision makers returning to previous phases if struggling to decide
 Key phase: decision structuring
 Findings:
1. Decision makers constrained the amount of info they considered, focusing on 2-5 options
(mean=4) at any given time
2. The number of options considered decreased over time
3. The number of attributes considered at any given time was 3-9 (mean=6)
4. The number of attributes did not decrease over time; sometimes it actually increased
5. Individuals of higher ability and/or more education considered more attributes
6. Most of the decisions makers' real-life decisions were assessed as good
 Most striking finding: ppl consistently limited the amount of info considered
 inconsistent with Simon’s notion of bounded rationality (=notion that ppl are as rational as
the environment & their limited processing capacity permit)
 Number of options considered decreased over a period of months → predicted by Tversky’s
elimination-by-aspect theory

Expert decision making

 Recognition-primed decision model: relevant when decisions must be made rapidly
 When the situation is perceived as familiar or typical, experts match the situation to learned patterns of info stored in LTM
using pattern recognition
 This rapid process typically leads to retrieval of a single option
 It is followed by mental simulation (ex: imagining what would happen if
the expert acted on the retrieved option)
 If the imagined outcome is satisfactory that option rapidly determines
his/her actions
 If the situation is more complex and not perceived as familiar or the expert’s
expectancies are violated
 Experts diagnoses the situation further
 Can include story building and considering more data prior to deciding
 Recognition-primed decision model emphasizes the accuracy of human judgement and decision making
 In contrast, Kahneman's heuristics-and-biases approach focuses more on human error. This difference occurs
because the recognition-primed decision model applies to experts while the heuristics-and-biases does not
 Experts make superior decisions
 Limitations:
 Explicitly designed to explain the behavior of experts confronted by crisis situations with severe time constraints
 helps to explain why it did not predict the decision-making behavior of some of the prominent decision
makers
  Model provides a general outline of what is involved but provides few specific details
 the precise from of info processing involved will differ substantially depending on the nature of the
crisis and the personality and relevant knowledge of the expert

Unconscious thought theory

= conscious thought is constrained by limited capacity of consciousness, while unconsciousness has greater capacity

 Claimed conscious thinking is constrained by the limited capacity of consciousness

 As a result, unconscious thinking is better than conscious thinking at integrating large amounts of info
→ but, only conscious thought can follow strict rule and so is well suited to rule-based problems
 Only conscious thought can follow strict rules & provide precise answers to complex math problems
 Unconscious thought has large capacity and can rapidly weigh the relative importance of different pieces of task-relevant
information
 Unconscious thought can lead to superior decisions when decision making is complex
 complex decision making should be best if it involved conscious and unconscious thought
 Reasons for doubt:
 conscious thought condition spent several minutes thinking about their decision while relying on their fragmentary
memory for the previously presented information  this probably underestimates the value of conscious thought
 devoting a long time lo conscious thought has detrimental effects on decision making
 with complex cases it was best after conscious thought, which is contrary to unconscious thought theory
 conscious thought sometimes produces much better decision making than unconscious thought
 Limitations:
 Findings are weak & inconsistent
 Assumed unconscious-thought participant rely heavily on intuitive processes in decision making
→ but, they claim to rely mostly on conscious memory

Article: For Whom is Parting with Possessions More Painful? Cultural

Differences in the Endowment Effect (Maddux)
 Endowment effect – humans tend to prefer objects they already possess over those they do not as they give it higher
value
 Explanations for this:
1) Loss aversion
 People feel more pain when losing something than they feel pleasure from acquiring it
 Values of prospective sellers are higher than those of prospective buyers
2) Owning an object can activate an automatic association between the object and the self
 As it enhances the self, it automatically boosts the object’s perceived value
 People with an independent self- construal = people define themselves in terms of internal attributes such as traits,
abilities, values, and preferences
 People with an interdependent self-construal = define themselves in terms of their relationships with others
  Hypothesis:
 Independent self-construals that are predominant in the West and associated with self-enhancement should
lead to a larger endowment effect
 Interdependent self-construals that are predominant in the East and associated with self-criticism should lead
to a smaller endowment effect
Study 1a
 Method: Participants were given a mug and were assigned to the role of either buyer or seller
 Seller were told that they now owned a mug and could either keep it or sell it
 Sellers asked to indicate for what price they would sell the mug
 Buyers were told that they had the chance to buy a mug and had to indicate for what price
 Both were told that the experimenter would randomly chose one of the prices and their choice for that price
would be picked
 Results: significant endowment effect in the overall sample.
 Owners’ average selling price was significantly higher than buyers’ average purchase price
 Larger in the Western sample

Study 1b
 Replicated Study 1a but with chocolate and a different sample of people
 Results: same as 1a  European Americans having a larger effect

Study 2
 Primed independent or interdependent self-construals while trying to replicate the findings from study 1
 Method: Participants randomly assigned to one priming condition: independent or interdependent
 Participants in the control condition were not primed
 The rest was the same as in Study 1
 Results: Endowment effect was moderated by the priming condition
 Significant in the control and independent self-construal condition
 Not significant in the interdependent self-construal condition
Study 3
 Method: Japanese and Canadian participants were primed to associate or not associate themselves with a coffee mug,
expecting cultural differences in the endowment effect to emerge more strongly in the former condition
 Results
 When the self-object association were made noticeable, European Canadians showed a significant endowment
effect
 Whereas Japanese showed a nonsignificant but distinct tendency toward a reverse effect
 In the no-object association condition the result was the opposite
General discussion
 Cultural differences in the endowment effect
 Interdependent self-construals are less associated with positive regard for the self than independent self-construals are
 Mere ownership of an object may elicit enhancement of its perceived value in Western cultures more than in Eastern
cultures

Article: How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons
(Scheiber)
 Nudging
 Combat shortages by advising drivers to move to areas where they exist or might arise
 Encouragement toward concrete goals (money)
1) Income targeting – workers decide how long to with a goal in mind (highly inefficient as they end up working
long on slow days and short on long days)
 To keep drivers on the road, the company has exploited some people’s tendency to set earnings goals — alerting them that
they are ever so close to hitting a precious target when they try to log off
 this means sending drivers their next fare opportunity before their current ride is even over
 Uber adopted a female persona for texting drivers, having found that the uptake was higher when they did
 Experimented with simple encouragement: You’re almost halfway there, congratulations!
 Loss aversion: holds that people “dislike losing more than they like gaining”
 When drivers tried to log out, the app would frequently tell them they were only a certain amount away from making a
seemingly arbitrary sum for the day, or from matching their earnings from that point one week earlier
 Ludic loop: a feeling of progress toward a goal that is always just beyond the subject’s grasp
 Increase hours drivers schedule during busy periods by making use of loss aversion
1) Show how much drivers will lose when they keep driving during less busy periods rather than tell them how
much they earn when the drive during busy periods
 Forward dispatch – dispatch new ride to driver before current one ends
1) Drivers stay on the road longer as it takes more effort to stop than it does to keep going
2) Don’t let drivers see where next ride is going, making it hard to judge how profitable it is
 Gamification strategy

Article: Nudges that fail

 Nudges – Approaches that steer people in particular directions, but that also allows them to go their own way (e.g. a text
message informing that a bill is due)
1) Alter “choice architecture” – the background against which choices are made
2) Help them make food decision without coercing them
 Such choice-preserving approaches stem from the belief (or hope) that they can be highly effective in achieving important
social goals
 However, some nudges are ineffective or counterproductive (e.g. if people are told about the number of calories in candy
bars, they might not learn anything they do not already now and might be unaffected)
 When deciding whether depart form default rules or to reject nudges of any kind, choosers consider two factors:
1) The cost of Decisions
2) The Cost of Errors
 When it is not especially costly to reject a nudge, a nudge will be ineffective
 Default rules/ options – the option a decision maker will obtain if he/she does nothing (e.g. when you marry the default
rule is for both partners to keep their surname, however most women depart from that rule (for several reasons) and
undergo action to change their name while men usually stick to the rule)
1) Establish status quo: determines the reference point for counting changes as losses or instead as gains
2) Whether one sticks to or departs from them depends on the costs of the decision & the cost of error
3) Default rules are often thought to be the most effective nudge (fail when strong antecedent preferences or
opposed with counternudges)
 Nudges are ineffective when…
1) They’re based on inaccurate understanding of behaviour so they don’t have an impact (important to test
behavioural hypotheses!)
2) Info is too confusing/ complex so people are unaffected by it
3) People show reactance – reject an official effort to steer just because it’s an official effort to steer
4) They only have a short-term effect
5) Might influence the desired conduct but also produce compensating behaviour (rebound effect)  nullifies
overall effect
 3 potential responses to failed nudges
1) Do nothing – failure might show that there is no problem at all
2) Nudge better/ different when convinced that people’s choice is not promoting their welfare
3) Fortify effects of the nudge with a more aggressive approach (e.g. counter-counternudges or bans)

 If nudges do not work, what could one do instead?
 Welcome the failure. Choosers ignore or reject nudges because they know best. That is, they act in accordance with
their (accurate) senses
 Trying different kind of nudges that are in the interest of choosers
 Taking a more aggressive approach, going beyond a nudge using economic incentives (e.g. a tax) or coercion
 Preferences:
1) Strong  they define the reference point from which losses are measured, not the rule/nudge
2) Weak  information signal contained in default rule carries weight
3) No preference  choosers will accept default rule or decline to focus on it
 One example are Default Rules, that have significant effects on outcomes. But why is that? Why do Default Rules stick?
1. To alter the default, people must make an active choice to reject that rule. Attention is a scarce resource and it is
effortful to engage in it. A default rule might stick because that effort does not seem to be worth undertaking
2. If choice architects have explicitly chosen that rule, many people will belief that they have been given an implicit
recommendation. Going one’s own way is risky and people might not want to do it
3. Default rules establish the status quo and determine the reference point for counting changes as losses or gains.
People dislike losses far more than they like corresponding gains, and they therefore stick with the rules
 On the other hand, sometimes Default Rules can be ineffective
1. Strong Antecedent Preferences – Strong preferences are likely to be sufficient to ensure that the default rule will
not stick
1) Loss aversion will be far less relevant, because the clear preference and accompanying social norms define the
reference point for losses and gains
2) Example: The strategy of some supermarkets to make a certain food (e.g. whole-grain bread) more visible has
no effect on the buyer. People know what they like best and they will choose it, regardless of where it is
presented in the supermarket.
3) When a preference does not exist at all, the informational signal contained in the default rule justifiably carries
weight
4) But when choosers have a strong contrary preference, the cost of making the relevant decision is lower (because
people already know what they think) and the cost of sticking with the defaults is higher (because they know
that it points them in the wrong direction)
2. Counternudges (Prompting People to opt Out): Persuade people to choose in a way that confounds the efforts of
choice architects.
 5) Example: Banks were always able to charge overdraft fees. Since 2010, under a new regulation, banks cannot
charge a fees unless the account holder has opted out of the policy default and into the bank’s overdraft
coverage program.
6) Many people do not opt into the program. And those who do opt-in, are those who actually go over their
checking limits
7) When default rules are ineffective, it is often because self-interested actors (e.g. cigarette companies) have the
incentive and the opportunity to impose some kind of counternudge, leading people to choose in their way
 Strategies to make Default Rules more effective:
1) Framing Rules – Establish the kinds of “frames” that people can use when they try to convince people to opt in
or opt out (e.g. Saying that a product is 90% fat free is more likely to draw people to it than saying it’s 10% fat)
2) Altering Rules – Establish how people can change the default (e.g. people are more likely to opt-in when they
only have to make a phone call rather than filling out some form)
 Some other reasons why nudges may fail are
1) A nudge is based on a plausible but inaccurate understanding of behaviour
2) If information is confusing or complex, people might be unaffected by it
3) People might show reactance to some nudges, rejecting an official effort to steer because it is an official effort
to steer
4) Nudges might only have a short-term effect
5) Some nudges might have an influence on the desired conduct, but also produce compensating behaviour,
nullifying the overall effect
Conclusion:
 Default rules are often thought to be the most effective nudge, but for two reasons, they might not have the expected
impact
 The first involves strong antecedent preferences
 The second involves the use counternudges by those with an economic or other interest in convincing choosers to opt out
 These two reasons help account for the potential ineffectiveness of nudges in many other contexts
Information, warnings, and reminders will not work if people are determined to engage in the underlying behaviour
(smoking, drinking, texting while driving, eating unhealthy foods)

Article: Culture and Judgment and Decision Making: The Constructivist Turn
(Weber)
 Research on JDM (judgment and decision making) has traditionally focused on the contextual factors that influence on-
line constructive processes
 Individual differences and, by extension, cultural differences conceptualized as value- or trait-based differences in
judgment and choice have gotten short(er) shrift
 The movement of reconceptualising cultural differences from differences in modal personalities to differences in
constructive processes, cued and maintained by differences in the structure of a culture’s social environment, should result
in a much closer alignment of the explanatory frameworks of JDM and culture research, with the hope for more fruitful
interactions
 The field of judgment and decision making (JDM) encompasses the study of economic and policy choices that involve
assessing risks and benefits and of interpersonal and social choices that involve attributions and expectancies
 Cultural differences in JDM have been found to vary with task conditions
 Cultural styles of JDM reflect not fixed worldviews but evoked frames of mind  situated meaning construction
processes reflecting internal cultural representations from memory as well as external structures in the cultural
environment  constructivist view
 Cultural representations guide judgments and decisions to the extent that they become activated in framing a problem so
as to constrain attention, evidential search, and inference  Decisions depend on features of the decision and task context
 Cultural tendencies in judgment can be primed in 2 distinct ways:
1) Direct semantic priming of individualism–collectivism, independence– interdependence, and individuation–
contextualization  primes individuating and contextualizing processing
2) Indirect or associative priming: in every culture there are representative emblems and symbols that evoke or
make accessible other representations of the culture  without positing fixed worldviews, it still may be the
case that these schemas shape frames of judgment much of the time
 Examples of cultural differences and decision making
 Conflict Decisions: Such decisions within social interactions involve conflict between collective interests and
self interest
 in-group interactions, East Asians have a stronger tendency towards collective-interest strategies than do
Westerners
 Confidence Judgments: Judging the accuracy of one's beliefs
 Overconfidence is present in Western cultures, but it is much stronger in East Asian societies
differences in educational practices encouraging critical thinking
 Risk Perception: not just objective reflections of information but judgements that differ across individuals and
cultures
 Some cultural differences in risk perception for e.g. technological hazards have been found, but people
across countries or cultures seem to share the same factor structure
 Risky Choice: risk in financial choices depends on the context of the social network
 Economic support networks tend to be larger in collectivist settings than they are in individualist settings
 like family ties in Eastern networks evoke larger risk taking
  Cushion hypothesis – argues that large networks of these economic support ties insure individuals against
financial worst-case outcomes
 Size of the network mediated cross-cultural differences in risk preferences
 Differences in risk-taking come to some extent from norms encoded in traditional teachings
Conclusion:
 2 distinguishing features of the constructivist view
1) Cultural representations are dynamic schemas rather than ever-present personality traits
2) External features of social environments play numerous roles in perpetuating cultural patterns of judgments and
decisions

Article: Navigating cognition biases in the search of sustainability

Article: Using Fuzzy-Trace Theory to Understand and Improve Health

Judgements, Decisions, and Behaviours (Blalock)
Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT)
 comprehensive, dual-process model of memory, reasoning, judgment, and decision making that has been used to study
how individuals across the life span make decisions that involve risk
 explains and predicts variation in (a) recognition and recall of past experiences; (b) judgments and decisions, especially
those that involve risk; and (c) behaviors that people perform in specific situations by explicating the cognitive
mechanisms that translate thought into action
 posits that, when an individual is exposed to any meaningful stimulus, two types of representations of the stimulus are
encoded in memory, a verbatim representation and one or more gist representations
 Verbatim representations – capture the exact words, numbers, or images included in the stimulus
 Gist representations – capture the essential, bottom-line meaning of the stimulus to the person, including its
emotional meaning
 these representations are initially encoded, roughly in parallel, into working memory ultimately transferred to
long-term memory, although verbatim representations generally become rapidly inaccessible
 people generally encode multiple representations of a single stimulus varying in level of specificity
 people encode both categorical and (more precise) ordinal gist representations of quantities
 although different gist representations may be consistent with the information provided in a given situation (e.g., some
people may consider the 2% risk described above as high rather than low), individuals can also fail to understand the
information—leading to the formation of inaccurate gist representations
 patients who misremember the risk as 5% rather than 2%, although inaccurate from a verbatim perspective, still
understand the essential gist that the surgery has some risk
 In decision-making situations, simple values or gist principles (e.g., it is good to avoid risk if possible) are applied to gist
representations of the options to reach a judgment/decision
 FTT views gist-based reasoning as intuitive and as occurring primarily at an unconscious level
 Intuition involves knowing or understanding something without the need to analyze details about how or why
we know it
 FTT makes an important distinction between the actions that people take that are guided by this type of intuitive, gist-
based reasoning and those that are mindless or result from a failure of impulse control
 people sometimes do things they know are wrong due to a failure of self-control mechanisms to inhibit impulsive
behavior  intuition and impulsivity are distinct concepts in FTT
 People often engage in both verbatim and gist reasoning about the same information—and these two types of reasoning
compete when they favor different options
 However, given that gist representations capture the essential meaning of information, FTT predicts that the
tendency to rely on gist rather than verbatim representations should increase with development from childhood
to adulthood and from novice to expert, which has been observed
 In nonhealth contexts, research has also confirmed that adults and individuals with specialized expertise tend to rely on
the least precise memory representations needed when making judgments or decisions which is referred to as a fuzzy
processing preference
 Due to this fuzzy processing preference, gist reasoning often involves thinking about risk and risk reduction in
categorical terms
 FTT predicts that this type of gist-based reasoning will lead to the adoption of behaviors that reduce risk (e.g.,
vaccination) and the avoidance of behaviors that increase risk
 verbatim-based reasoning involves thinking about risk and risk reduction in more precise (e.g., numerical) terms
 FTT predicts that verbatim-based reasoning often promotes risk taking—a high likelihood of benefit
compensates for a low likelihood of harm
 FTT predicts that verbatim-based reasoning often reduces the uptake of precautionary behaviors (e.g., adult
vaccinations for conditions such as influenza, pneumonia, and shingles) because the certainty of incurring costs
(e.g., time, money) can offset a low likelihood of benefit (i.e., most people do not get sick even if they are not
vaccinated)
Predictions derived from Fuzzy-Trace Theory
1) People form distinct verbatim and gist mental representations when exposed to health-relevant information; two
examples of this hypothesis are:
a. The specificity of retrieval or eliciting cues in questions affects the types of representations retrieved from
memory (less specific, but meaningful, cues elicit gist; more specific cues elicit verbatim representations),
influencing people’s estimation of health risks and altering the relationship between risk perceptions and
health behavior
b. Gist representations are retained in memory longer than verbatim representations
2) The preference for gist-based reasoning over verbatim based reasoning increases with development and the
acquisition of expertise
3) Compared to verbatim-based reasoning, gist-based reasoning is associated with: (a) improved judgment and decision
making (as evaluated using an external criterion such as medical expertise), (b) increased adoption of behaviors
recommended to reduce health risks, and (c) improved health outcomes
4) Four sources of bias contribute to errors in gist-reasoning: knowledge deficits, conceptually incomplete or inaccurate
gist representations, failure to retrieve relevant knowledge and values from memory when making judgments and
decisions, and processing interference caused by overlapping classes (e.g., the probability of having breast cancer, the
probability of having a positive mammogram)
5) Compared to traditional (e.g., facts education or expectancy value) approaches, interventions designed to facilitate
gist based reasoning will result in: (a) improved judgment and decision making (again, as evaluated using an external
criterion such as medical expertise), (b) increased adoption of behaviors recommended to reduce health risks, and (c)
improved health outcomes.
Study
 Objective:
 Fuzzy-trace theory is a dual-process model of memory, reasoning, judgment, and decision making that contrasts
with traditional expectancy-value approaches
 applying fuzzy-trace theory to health with 3 aims: evaluating whether the theory’s basic distinctions have been
validated empirically in the domain of health
 determining whether these distinctions are useful in assessing, explaining, and predicting health-related
psychological processes; and determining whether the theory can be used to improve health judgments,
decisions, or behaviors, especially compared to other approaches
 Method:
 literature review using PubMed, PsycInfo, and Web of Science to identify empirical peer-reviewed papers that
applied fuzzy-trace theory, or central constructs of the theory, to investigate health judgments, decisions, or
behaviors
 Results:
 Seventy nine studies (updated total is 94 studies; see Supplemental materials) were identified, over half
published since 2012, spanning a wide variety of conditions and populations
 findings supported the prediction that verbatim and gist representations are distinct constructs that can be
retrieved independently using different cues
 Although gist-based reasoning was usually associated with improved judgment and decision making, 4 sources
of bias that can impair gist reasoning were identified
 promising findings were reported from intervention studies that used fuzzy-trace theory to improve decision
making and decrease unhealthy risk taking
 Discussion:
 literature review supports the emergence of FTT as a generative theory in health behavior research in the sense
that it has generated research about new and surprising ideas
 The theory is also generative in the sense that it is predictive, having been spelled out in specific processing
models that have begun to be tested in health contexts
 considerable support for all of the predictions
 gaps, ambiguities, and some conflicting findings in this growing literature
  people appear to form distinct verbatim and gist mental representations when exposed to health-relevant
information; for example, gist representations were retained in memory longer than verbatim
representations
 types of representations retrieved from memory could be manipulated by varying cues in questions and
stimulus materials
 preference for gist-based reasoning over verbatim-based reasoning increased with development and the
acquisition of expertise
 findings from most of the studies also supported the prediction that, compared to verbatim-based
reasoning, gist-based reasoning is associated with improved judgment and decision making, and increased
adoption of behaviors recommended to reduce health risks
 predicted sources of bias in gist reasoning (i.e., inadequate knowledge; incomplete gist representations;
failure to retrieve relevant knowledge, representations, and values when making decisions; and processing
interference caused by overlapping classes) were also observed  gist reasoning is not without perils
 considerable support for the prediction that, compared to traditional intervention approaches, interventions
designed to facilitate gist-based reasoning result in improved judgment and decision making, increased
adoption of behaviors recommended to reduce health risks, and improved health outcomes
 As the specificity of the measure and precision of the response scale increases, respondents are more likely to
retrieve relevant verbatim memories when providing a response  When answering more general (but
meaningful) questions, however, respondents are more likely to retrieve gist representations; these verbatim/gist
cuing effects are consistent with FTT’s recognition models
 differences in question format can alter the relationship between measures of risk perception and behavior
 Effective gist reasoning requires being able to distill complex information to identify the essential bottom-line
meaning
 effective gist reasoning in other areas requires that individuals have adequate knowledge to support health
judgments and decisions  knowledge is not enough
 teaching adolescents intuitive recognition of high-risk situations and strategies to avoid risk is likely to
reduce risky behavior
 Effective gist reasoning also requires that individuals: have fully developed gist representations (i.e.,
understand the bottom-line gist associated with major options); retrieve relevant values and reasoning
principles from memory at the time decisions are being made; are able to process available information
intuitively, with minimal interference from unnecessary, detailed verbatim information; and can inhibit
impulsive choices
 important implications for the design of interventions to promote the adoption of behaviors to reduce health
risks and improve individual and population health outcomes
 health interventions should emphasize the bottom-line gist of the information being conveyed
 Gistifying a health message means that some facts are cut entirely
 different message and graphical formats have differential effects on verbatim knowledge versus gist
understanding, those that favor gist understanding are likely to have the greatest impact on improving
decision making
 interventions should include retrieval cues and other strategies that promote automatic (i.e., without
conscious deliberation) responding in high-risk situations  role playing
 important to understand misconceptions that exist n the target population
 Conclusions:
 Despite large gaps in the literature, most studies supported all 3 aims
 By focusing on basic psychological processes that underlie judgment and decision making, fuzzy-trace theory
provides insights into how individuals make decisions involving health risks and suggests innovative
intervention approaches to improve health outcomes.

Article: Framing Messages for Vaccination Supporters (Altay)

Abstract
 provaccination messages through informal discussions  only these messages are (a) found plausible, (b) remembered,
and (c) shared
 conducted 7 experiments on 2,761 provaccination online participants (United States and United Kingdom), testing
whether the valence of a statement (positive or negative) and its rhetorical orientation (pro- or antivaccine) affected these
3 steps
 Participants deemed more plausible, were more willing to transmit, but did not remember positively framed statements
better
 Provaccination rhetorical orientation had little or no effect
 framing effects observed were dramatic: one framing made participants very eager to transmit a statement, while another
made them reluctant to transmit it at all
 The framing effects also influenced vaccination attitudes, with participants exposed to positively framed statements
reporting more positive attitudes toward vaccination
 Since messages have to be framed one way or the other, the framing effects demonstrated here should be considered when
designing public health messages

Introduction
 significant part of the population remains vaccine hesitant
 Most efforts dedicated to increasing vaccine acceptance have aimed at vaccine-hesitant individuals, examining whether
provaccination messages attenuate their misgivings
 information about vaccination also spreads through other means, with significant portions of the public relying, in part, on
informal sources such as friends, colleagues, and family
 provaccination members of the public are only willing or able to offer relatively weak arguments to defend their opinions,
relying on personal anecdotes rather than proper evidence
 also less likely to engage in online communication leading to an overrrepreseentation of antivaccination
comments online
 improving the argumentative arsenal of provaccination individuals could indirectly help convince vaccine hesitant
individuals—and it might further assuage the remaining concerns of provaccine individuals
 seemingly minor changes in the presentation of a piece of information can influence its likelihood of being accepted,
remembered, and further transmitted
 Framing is the best studied of these superficial changes: logically equivalent descriptions can lead to very
different decisions when they are framed differently
 One of the most robust framing effects is valence framing, where negatively framed information is judged as
truer is better memorized and is transmitted more often than positively framed information (a glass half empty is
a negative frame while a glass half full would be a positive frame)
 However, there are relevant exceptions to this dominance of negative frame  medical treatment etc.
 attribute framing – considered “the most straightforward test of the influence of positive and negative framing”
 people who want to be perceived as either pro- or antivaccine may show a preference for either one of the
frames, by being more eager to transmit messages that appear to reflect their position
 Rhetorical orientation could even affect the perceived plausibility of the messages
 goal of the study was to test whether framing influences the steps necessary for a statement to be used by a provaccine
individual in informal discussions: (a) evaluation of message plausibility (Experiments 2 and 5), (b) memorization of the
message (Experiment 3), (c) willingness to transmit the message further (Experiments 4 and 6), and finally (d) the
propensity to use the statements to convince someone who refuses to vaccinate (Experiment 7)
 Experiment 1 aimed at establishing that our predictions about the direction of rhetorical orientation of the experimental
statements (in favor or against vaccination) were accurate
 Experiments 5 and 6 were replications of Experiments 2 and 4 using a different sample
 In each experiment, we compared statements that varied in valence (positively vs. negatively framed) and in rhetorical
orientation
 added a third variant, that was negatively framed but whose rhetorical orientation was likely to be perceived as provaccine
because it began with the word only
Hypotheses
1) Positively framed statements with a rhetorical orientation in favor of vaccination will be more strongly associated with
provaccination individuals than statements with a negative valence and a rhetorical orientation against vaccination
2) Negatively framed statements with a rhetorical orientation in favor of vaccination (i.e., the statements with only) will be
more strongly associated with provaccination individuals than statements with a negative valence and a rhetorical
orientation against vaccination
3) Negatively framed statements will be judged truer than positively framed statements
4) Negatively framed statements will be better memorized than positively framed statements
5) Negatively framed statements will be more transmitted than positively framed statements
6) Positively framed statements will be judged truer than negatively framed statements
7) Exposition to positively framed statements will create more positive attitudes toward vaccination than exposition to
negatively framed statements
8) Statements with a rhetorical orientation in favor of vaccination will be judged truer than statements with a rhetorical
orientation against vaccination
9) Statements with a rhetorical orientation in favor of vaccination will be more shared than statements with a rhetorical
orientation against vaccination
Discussion
 statements’ valence could be positive or negative, and the statements could be perceived as strongly provaccination or as
being ambiguous between being pro- and antivaccination
 negatively framed statements, compared to positively framed statements, were not better memorized (Experiment 3), were
deemed less plausible (Experiments 2 and 5), and were less appealing to transmit (Experiments 4 and 6)
 These effects in favor of positively framed statements ranged from small to large
 The size of these effects and the conflicting direction of our results with the literature justified our decision to
replicate Experiments 2 and 4
 effects of rhetorical orientation were broadly as expected
 Rhetorical orientation had no effect on memory, but participants deemed more plausible (Experiment 2), and were
more willing to transmit (Experiment 4), statements whose rhetorical orientation better fitted their own views,
compared to statements that didn’t
 While these effects ranged from small to medium for participants residing in the United States, there was no
significant effect of rhetorical orientation on plausibility or willingness of transmission with the sample from the
United Kingdom
 unclear what drove this potential difference between the United States and United Kingdom
populations
 Visual inspection of the results on plausibility and willingness to transmit in Figures 1 and 2 reveal the striking effects of
framing
 Comparing the most favorable frame (positive with provaccination rhetorical orientation) to the most negative frame
(negative with ambiguous rhetorical orientation), we move from statements deemed very plausible to statements
deemed barely plausible, and from statements participants are keen to transmit to statements participants would
rather not transmit
 strong framing effects have at least two significant practical consequences
1) positively valenced statements prompted participants to adopt a more positive attitude toward vaccination
2) in the case of statements about the scientific consensus, positively valenced statements were more likely to be
used by participants to argue against someone who opposes vaccination
3) Moreover, framing effects were also clearly perceptible in the way participants framed the arguments they chose
to use, with nearly all arguments being framed with a provaccination rhetorical orientation
 results confirm that the choice of frame induces information leakage as frames informed readers about the attitudes of the
speakers toward vaccination
 study reveals that messages aimed at reinforcing the argumentative tools of provaccination individuals must consider the
way the messages are framed
 highlights the importance of conducting experiments on the specific messages we wish to provide to the population, rather
than extrapolating purely from past results, since the major framing effects we observed went in the opposite direction
from what was expected from some of the existing literature

Article: Philosophers’ biased judgments persist despite training, expertise and

reflection (Schwitzgebel)
 examined the effects of framing and order of presentation on professional philosophers’ judgments about a moral puzzle
case (the ‘‘trolley problem’’) and a version of the Tversky & Kahneman ‘‘Asian disease’’ scenario
 Professional philosophers exhibited substantial framing effects and order effects, and were no less subject to such effects
than was a comparison group of non-philosopher academic participants
 Framing and order effects were not reduced by a forced delay during which participants were encouraged to consider
‘‘different variants of the scenario or different ways of describing the case’’
 Nor were framing and order effects lower among participants reporting familiarity with the trolley problem or with loss-
aversion framing effects, nor among those reporting having had a stable opinion on the issues before participating the
experiment, nor among those reporting expertise on the very issues in question
 Thus, for these scenario types, neither framing effects nor order effects appear to be reduced even by high levels of
academic expertise