exam 4 NEED TO KNOW

Forgas & Locke (2005): The Affect Infusion Mode

"Positive moods often lead to less systematic attention to stimulus information, and greater reliance on top-down inferences and generic knowledge structures when making judgments. - more likely to use system 1 when in a good mood In contrast, negative moods frequently lead to more careful and systematic processing of stimulus details" (p. 1074). - moods have an impact on other processes - more likely to use system 2 when in a bad mood Mood effects are more pronounced for more complex judgments and decisions (i.e., circumstances in which System 2 might/should play a role). - simple judgments = system 1 and 2 work about the same; complex judgments - system 2 needs to be used

Alternative-based vs. attribute-based

"Strategies tend to guide information search." - depending on the type of strategy we use, we will consider different information Alternative-based: Consider one alternative at a time and encode a summary response. - NO high-level processing - just considering one at a time Attribute-based: Compare all the options that include the same attribute. - I'm in the mood for chicken. Which chicken dish looks best?

Read & van Leeuwen (1998): Predictions about future snack choices

"We'll be coming back in a week to give you a free snack, what snack do you think you'll want?" Choices: 5 pieces of fruit, 5 chocolate bars, and 3 salty snacks. - participants were either hungry or satiated when they made their choices. - participants were imagining themselves to be either hungry or satiated when they made their choices. - when actually asked, people will prefer to eat unhealthy food rather than when asked to make a choice right away - we are bad at estimating how we will feel in the future - those who were hungry both times both expected and asked for more unhealthy snacks; - those who were satiated both times underestimated how much they wanted unhealthy snacks - we need to realize that we have issues with control and need to have a strategy with how to deal with it

The impact of more specific emotions—as a function of appraisal tendencies

- specific emotions make us want to do specific things - sad mood = we want to do specific things that change how we feel (for ex. eating a candy bar) ↳ however, disgust will make us want to do different things (we won't want to eat candy) ↳ both our negative emotions but have different effects on behavior

prospect theory

A prospect is a course of action defined by one or more outcomes. program A vs. B - 2 prospects You select the prospect with the highest overall value (V). V = Σ (πi vi) πi = decision weight (which is a function of the objective probabilities) for outcome i vi = the value of consequence i

Comprehension: context

Almost all questions permit variability in their interpretation. Context changes the interpretation of a question. - What would you say, how often have you been angry in the past week? - Now thinking about the entire past year, including the past week: How often have you been angry in the past year? ↳ we will have different answers based on the order of qs depending on context

Forgas (1999): The impact of mood on requests

An acquaintance borrowed twenty dollars from you some time ago, and you think that they may have forgotten. What would you say to ask for your money back? - we would either be polite or rude - this depends on our mood study 1: memory for social events - Remember a specific social event that has occurred in your life that made you very happy - purpose is to put people in a happy mood - mood induction - people who were asked to think of a happy memory were actually happy compared to people who asked to think of a sad memory. study 2: interpersonal behavior - Participants were asked "to write down the actual words [they] would use to make this request." The responses were rated by judges for a variety of features including politeness (polite-impolite) and elaboration (elaborate-simple). - people in a sad mood are more polite and elaborate more on their requests - people in a sad mood were more polite and elaborate with difficult situations than easy situations (think more analytically, using system 2) - in a happy mood = more likely to say something that will make someone else unhappy (sad people slow down and think carefully about what to say)

Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, & Wheatley (1998)

Assistant professors forecasted the happiness they would experience in the five years after a positive or negative tenure decision. Former assistant professors reported how much happiness they had experienced after positive or negative tenure decisions. not as huge of a gap between those who got tenure and those who didn't in for positive and negative experiences comparison to those who forecasted how they would feel - were not as happy/sad as they thought they would be

Schindler & Pfattheicher (2017): Loss-framing increases dishonest behavior

Because people are loss averse, they are more likely to cheat to avoid losses. - we often consider cheating to avoid loss gain-frame condition won 10 cents every time they rolled a 4. loss-frame condition lost 10 cents every time they rolled any number except 4. (outcome same in both cases but just framed differently) No one was monitoring the participants' rolls. - giving people the opportunity to cheat - temptation to cheat to avoid losing money/be able to gain more money - hypothesized that temptation would be stronger for those in the loss-frame condition because they would try to avoid loss people in loss-frame were more likely to report 4s, even though average should be similar - more likely to lie and cheat to avoid losses thinking in a loss-frame kind of way (glass is half empty) is not good for our mental health - it makes us dishonest; probably more healthy to think in a gain-frame way

Keren (2007): Choice and trust

Choose one option: I will buy the ground beef advertised as 25% fat (Butcher A). 18% I will buy the ground beef advertised as 75% lean (Butcher B). 82% - much more likely to buy butcher B's meat because we consider the 75% lean a higher gain than the 25% fat (even though it's the same thing) - reference point changes - for A starting at 0% fat, for B starting 0% lean - people trust Butcher A more even though they were more likely to buy from Butcher B

Pachur & Hertwig (2006): Infectious Diseases

Ecological correlation = .18 not hearing more about a disease that is more deadly will NOT affect judgments - more deadly does not mean more recognizable recognition heuristic only works when we get the right data Participants judged the relative frequency of pairs of infections (e.g., cholera vs. shigellosis): Which is more frequent? - by the recognition heuristic, we would think cholera, but the real answer is shigellosis

emotions

Emotions are "reactions to motivationally significant stimuli and situations, usually including three components: a cognitive appraisal (interpreting an experience in a way that allows you to understand it), a 'signature' physiological response, and phenomenal experiences" Emotions are usually responses to changes in current conditions. - typically short lived

Exhaustive vs. subset-based

Exhaustive: Use all available information - Read the menu, start to finish Subset-based: Sample a subset - Select first on price, and only consider options below your threshold

Gilbert, Morewedge, Risen & Wilson (2004): Let's test this!

Experiencers: They had missed a train by either 1 minute (narrow margin) or 5 minutes (wide margin). Forecasters: They were asked to imagine how they would feel if they had missed a train by either 1 or 5 minutes. - way bigger emotional gap for forecaster than experiencer - we believe we will be more upset than we actually would be (experience less regret and blame themselves less than forecasted)

Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert, & Axsom (2000)

Focalism: People focus too much on the "focal event" and don't consider the affective consequences of other likely events. - Half the participants made predictions imagining that UVA had won; half imagined that UVA had lost. - Half the participants for each of win and lose completed a diary about their prospective daily activities (for a different study). ↳ purpose of diary was to remember all the other things going on in their lives - focus less on the focal event. - participants thought they would be a lot more unhappy/happy than they actually were - emotions moved towards the baseline for all eventually, but slowly ↳ thinking about the diary and all the other things going on in their lives made them realize how unlikely it was for them to stay happy/unhappy for a long time - actual emotions close to baseline Making predictions about the future artificially separates one thing from the other things going on that impact our life - difficult to make decisions about the future without context

Finucane et al. have demonstrated the impact of the affect heuristic in judgments of risks.

How do people weigh the relative benefits and risks of various activities? - Driving to work...? benefits: faster, more control over time risks: trying to find parking, gas ** In the environment, there's a positive correlation between risk and benefit (with respect to activities in which people engage). - lots of benefits = lots of costs

amount of cognitive effort

How much deliberate effort does the choice strategy require? - Close your eyes and point to something on the menu - Weight all the attributes of the various dishes with respect to their importance to your current goals... ↳ rate all condition

Goldstein & Gigerenzer (2002): Recognition Heuristic

If one of two objects is recognized and the other is not, then infer that the recognized object has the higher value with respect to the criterion. - judgment based on not having information from memory - compared to the availability heuristic - Missing information influences judgments. Judgments reflect what doesn't emerge from memory rather than what does (cf. availability). Which city has a larger population: San Diego or San Antonio? US Citizens: 67% are correct (San Diego); Germans: 100% correct. - Germans have heard of San Diego but not San Antonio → think San Diego is more important and thus has a larger population → chose San Diego and just happened to be correct - The US Citizens are thrown off by other types of information. more knowledgeable of both cities → will not use the recognition heuristic In circumstances in which the recognition heuristic was relevant, participants overwhelmingly used it (mean = 90%). chose the city name they recognized regardless of what they were asked because they know the city

using the affect heuristic to make judgments or risks and benefits

If people use the affect heuristic, there's no separate consideration of positive and negative information. - people DON'T consider positive and negative information separately when using the affect heuristic, so they don't interpret the correlation. use of the affect heuristic should lead to negative correlations between judgments of risks and benefits. - high risks, low benefits b/c we lose the separate considerations of this information and combine it all into one outcome

The impact of emotions and moods:

Looking toward the past (to predict the future) - getting information about emotions in the past to make current judgments In the present, as an aspect of an on-going experience Looking to the future (for novel situations) - deciding how we will feel in the future - we think about whether situations are worth spending time at (i.e. going to a concert) depending on how we feel - will we have a good time? - we prefer to think about outcomes that makes us happy

Kumar & Epley (2018): Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation

MBA students were asked "to write a letter expressing gratitude to someone who had touched their life in a meaningful way." "Expressers may assume that recipients are already aware of their gratitude - Believing one's gratitude is more obvious than it actually is would lead expressers to underestimate surprise in a gratitude recipient." "Expressers may worry inordinately about how they are expressing gratitude—their ability to articulate the words "just right"—whereas recipients are focused more on the prosocial meaning of the expression—its warmth and positive intent. - Expressers may underestimate a recipient's positive mood [after receiving the expression of gratitude] and overestimate how awkward expressing gratitude will make a recipient feel." Participants' mood was measured before and after the wrote their letters. - They were in better moods after writing the letters. - predictions about surprise were smaller than actual results - less awkward than predicted - underestimated mood of the recipient - Underestimating the value of prosocial actions, such as expressing gratitude, may keep people from engaging in behavior that would maximize their own—and others'—well-being."

Affect Heuristic

Memories have explicit "affect tags" that serve as the basis for unconscious judgments. - emotions are stored directly with the memory (do not need to simulate the experience to know how we felt about it) ↳ we automatically know how we feel about our memories of experiences - we use these emotions to make judgments about future events

Forgas (1999b): Real interactions

Mood manipulation: 10-min videotapes - a popular comedy series (positive) - a program on architecture (neutral) important to note that neutral moods are always slightly sad - a film dealing with death from cancer (negative) asking ppt to ask a person for the stimulus file - interaction is secretly part of the experiment - recorded what the participant said (usually do not think about what they are saying) - those who are happy are least polite and elaborate - hedging: giving people an out (using language that makes them hesitant and uncertain) - sad people use more hedging language - good mood = perceived as rude

Kahneman & Tversky (1982)

Mr. Crane and Mr. Tees were scheduled to leave the airport on different flights at the same time. They traveled from town in the same limousine, were caught in a traffic jam, and arrived at the airport 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time of their flights. Mr. Crane is told that his flight left on time. 4% more upset Mr. Tees is told that his flight was delayed, and just left five minutes ago. 96% more upset

Slovic, Fischhoff, and Lichtenstein (1982)

Option A: A sure loss of $50. Option B: A 25% chance to lose $200. - loss-frame - more willing to go for gamble Would you pay $50 insurance against a 25% chance of losing $200? 65% - exactly the same as option A, but the option sounds more attractive when framed as "insurance" - insurance/lottery switches people to pick the sure loss option.

People often measure attitudes because they want to predict behavior.

Participants had the opportunity to sign petitions asserting that the campus should have more political speakers (a behavior). They also filled out a questionnaire that allowed them to express their interest in various future political activities (behavioral intentions). Exemplars/attitudes approximately 1 month apart. - same exemplar, positive correlation between attitude and behaviors - different exemplar, negative correlation between attitude and behaviors - our judgment stays the same over a period of time when we think of the same thing every time the category comes to time ↳ intentions will match behavior ↳ judgment as a function of memory

Wilson & Schooler (1991): Thinking too much!

Participants made comparisons among five types of strawberry jam Reasons: Participants were asked to "'analyze why you feel the way you do about each' jam, 'in order to prepare yourself for the evaluations.'" - thinking too much = making bad choices compared to thinking too little (in some circumstances, it is better to just go with your gut) Control: No such analysis. - just going with gut feeling Participants' ratings were correlated with Consumer Reports experts' ratings of each jam (external norm) - those who thought more about their choices experienced a lower correlation with the expert ratings - gut feeling worked better this time

De Martino et al.: The brain bases of framing effects.

Participants underwent fMRI while making decisions between options. - participants took more gambles with the "loss" frames. - Amygdala activation was greater when participants decided to choose the sure option in the Gain frame and the gamble option in the Loss frame. - emotional processing - amygdala acts very differently when people choose the expected choice (sure in gain and gamble in loss) vs. when they choose the unexpected choice (gamble in gain and sure in loss) ↳ positive change when participants do as expected; negative when unexpected - framing effect is driven by an affect heuristic underwritten by an emotional system." ↳ responding to gains/losses activates the emotional system when they made decisions that ran counter to the general tendency (i.e., when they chose the gamble option in the Gain frame and the sure option in the Loss frame) they showed enhanced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). - making an unexpected decision = dilemma = ACC activated as it notices that you didn't listen to the emotional system - ACC activation consistent with the detection of conflict sizable individual differences with respect to the impact of the frame. - everyone showed amygdala increase, but to different effects - ppts with more activity in the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex (specifically in the right orbitofrontal and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) were more rational in their choices—they were less susceptible to framing effects. - there are differences in individual brains which determines how susceptible we are to framing effects

Epley, Mak, & Idson (2006): Bonus or Rebate?

Participants were given $50 with framing manipulation: - rebate (treated as a refund) - back to where you started - bonus- ahead of where you were ↳ participants would be more likely to spend this money (free money) than if they received a 'refund' people saved less when they thought of the money as a bonus vs. the people who thought of the money as a refund

Objects and events in memory are tagged with affect.

People "consult...an 'affective pool' (containing all the positive and negative tags associated with the representations consciously or unconsciously) in the process of making judgments" - mixture of positive and negative information when we think about something → we process this information to give us one representative value, which we use to make our decisions

Durability bias

People "overestimate the duration of their emotional reaction to future events - overestimating how long an outcome will affect us

Diversification bias

People believe that they will want more diversity than they actually do want. - we think we want to try something new in the future, but we actually don't

Gneezy et al. (2014): Conscience Accounting: Emotion Dynamics and Social Behavior

People donate to account for their conscience after making a morally bad choice. - lying for profit makes us feel bad about ourselves → we try to balance the account by donating - effect is driven by emotional responses. Because guilt declines over time, donations should also lessen as the transgression fades in time. Participants could either lie or tell the truth. They got incentives (i.e., extra money) for lying. Next: They could either donate to a cause or not. They made the choice immediately (Incentive condition) or after 10 minutes of solving anagrams (Incentive Delay condition). - people who told the truth donated the same amount regardless of condition - those who lied donated way more than those who told the truth - those who lied donated less when in the delay condition in comparison to those who paid immediately condition in which people learned about the donation opportunity before they played the initial task - Participants in that condition lied more than those without a prior warning, and also donated more often. ↳ used the opportunity to make up for their bad behavior - The results support the hypothesis that we have mental accounts related to our prosocial and antisocial behavior. ↳ we also use accounts to keep track of how we act morally

Nonregressive prediction

People overestimate how good they will feel about positive things and how bad they will feel about negative things - we think happy things will make us happier than they actually do; we think sad things will us sadder than they actually do

Bounded self-control

People overestimate the extent to which they will be able to control their own behavior.

mental accounting

People use different categories to keep track of where they stand. - instead of having one big mush of how much money we have, we instead keep track of how we use our money for different resources ↳ we place different values on the same amount of money depending on which category we are spending on - not necessarily just money Strict economic view: Money is money (e.g., -$10 is -$10). - doesn't matter what we spend on Psychological view: Framing matters (e.g., how do you categorize that -$10?). - what we spend on matters

Sia, Lord, Blessum, Ratcliff, & Lepper (1997): Category exemplars and attitudes

Politicians: Name the first member of this category that comes to mind. - based on the availability heuristic - What is your general attitude toward this category? One month later: Same pair of questions - attitude towards the category will change depending on who we think of first (obama = politics good, trump = politics bad) - those who named the same person, their attitudes toward the category stayed the same - those who name different people showcased different attitudes

Damasio: Somatic markers

Representations in memory have associated with them positive and negative bodily—somatic—states. - Gut feelings really are gut feelings. - we not only know about how we felt about our experiences but also the actual 'bodily' reactions we had when we look back at our experiences (stomach-dropping, sweating) - not reconstructing how we felt, but the bodily feeling is part of the memory that we look back on - gut feelings = processing actually occurs in the brain, but we feel it in our gut.

Finucane et al. asked participants to judge the risks and benefits of 23 hazards and activities

Roughly half (28 participants) made the judgments under time pressure; The rest (26 participants) had no time pressure. - ppts will use system 1 → affect heuristic ↳ larger neg correlations than positive correlations (usually seen in the real world). According to the affect heuristic, people may judge the risks and benefits of hazards by accessing a pool of positive and negative feelings they associate with the hazards. The affect heuristic is more efficient than analytic processing. - negative correlation is larger for those under time pressure ↳ MUCH LARGER negative correlation when considering individual participant compared to across all participant

Lerner, Small, & Loewenstein (2004)

Sadness arises from "loss and helplessness." It "evokes the implicit goal of changing one's circumstances." Disgust "revolves around the appraisal theme of being too close to an indigestible object or idea." It "evokes an explicit action tendency to expel current objects and avoid taking in anything new." Participants were randomly assigned to conditions in which they could either buy or sell a highlighter set. - Selling; participants had to indicate whether they would keep the highlighters or sell them for that price. - Buying (i.e., Choice) For each price level, participants chose between getting the highlighter set or that amount of cash (so: how much would you give up to get the highlighter set). we want to sell high and buy low. - people in the neutral case would sell the highlighters for more than they would actually pay for them - in the disgust case: people want to get rid of the item and will take as little money as possible to sell them and also not spend as much money - sad case: want a change; sell low and buy high it's not that they were disgusted by the highlighters, but because they were disgusted, this affected how they made their decisions.

Compensatory vs. noncompensatory

Some strategies allow trade-offs among attributes. - I won't pay more than $9.99 for my dinner. - I'll pay more than $9.99 for my dinner if it includes garlic mashed potatoes. ↳ (Thus, one attribute [the inclusion of the potatoes] compensates for another [the price].) ↳ compensatory - willing to replace one attribute for another Consider: How you choose an apartment—rent vs. location.

Gigerenzer & Goldstein (1996): Take the Best (TTB)

Step 1: Use the recognition heuristic, if you can. Step 2: Use the "best" piece of information available - using the cue that matters the most within the domain - "Best" is defined by the validity of a cue within a domain. Search rule: Search the domain in order of the validity of cues. - Stopping rule: When you find a cue that discriminates among alternatives, stop your search. - Decision rule: Base your decision on the first cue you find that discriminates. - using different cues until you reach a single choice

Simonson (1990) asked students to make choices among six snacks.

Students who made all their choices at the beginning of the semester made relatively diverse choices compared to those who selected class-by-class. - those who decided at the beginning for the rest of the semester chose the more diverse choices - those who decided day by day chose less diverse options

Boothby et al. (2018): The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?

Successful conversations require that people know how much others like them and enjoy their company. The dynamics of conversation prevent people from knowing this. - it is considered bad conversation to ask people whether they like you - People estimate how much others like them by assuming that others' thoughts about them are the same as their own thoughts about themselves. This is problematic because people's own thoughts tend to be overly critical. - people underestimate how much others like them." Participants who were previously unacquainted had conversations. They discussed whatever they wished for some amount of time between 2 and 45 minutes. - same effect seen no matter how long the conversation was - people predicted that others would like them less than in reality "Conversations are a great source of happiness in our lives, but even more than we realize, it seems, as others like us more than we know."

Redden, Haws, & Chen (2017): How does people's ability to make choices influence their feelings of satiation (i.e., their feelings that they've had enough of something)?

The act of choosing requires people to focus on the ongoing overall consumption experience itself to decide what would be most enjoyable at that moment." - if one has already made decisions, being asked to choose again will result in them making their decision in an particular emotional context - the activity of choosing creates the context in which we make further choices "This reflection on consumption can have negative consequences for enjoyment if choosing highlights that an experience, such as listening to a set of songs or viewing artwork, is growing more repetitive and less pleasant." - going through the exercise of choosing favorite songs over and over again (choose a good song, choose another, choose another, etc.) starts getting unpleasant over time because it gets repetitive - making your own choices over and over again can become unpleasant, even if it's something that they like such as music Half the participants got to choose the songs to which they would listen. Half got random selections (from among their top choices). - one may assume that those who got to choose their songs would be more happy - however, going through the repetitive exercise of choosing songs were less happy than those who got a random selection - There may be circumstances in which you want to sacrifice your "freedom to choose."

Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Lee (1999): The amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex

The amygdala allows people to experience the emotional attributes of a situation. Impairment of the amygdala disallows people from generating somatic markers. - combines somatic sense (the way our body feels) with how we're feeling to encode memories with emotions The ventromedial prefrontal (VMF) cortex allows people to integrate somatic information. Impairment of the VMF cortex disallows people from making use of somatic markers. If you have amygdala damage, you'll never generate somatic markers. If you have VMF cortex damage, you'll generate somatic markers but be unable to put them to good use.

How do you choose which courses to take?

The descriptions included a good deal of information. - The name of the professor and course evaluations - The format of the course - Workload (textbook, required papers, etc.) Rate all: Participants looked at each piece of information and indicated on a nine-point scale the impact it had on their decision. - analyzing information to make decision Control: No such analysis. Judgments by students who had already taken the classes - control: huge difference between those who wanted to take highly-rated vs poorly rated classes - half of the difference seen in the rate all condition what course did they actually take? - control group MORE likely to take the highly-rated course than the rate all course

Context effects

The desirability of an alternative will change depending on the choice set.

When the expected utilities are the same for the single (sure thing) and compound (gamble) prospects:

The shapes of the curves guarantee that the average value will always lie below the value of the single event for gains and above the value of the single event for losses. The shape of the curve captures people's patterns of risk aversion (for gains) and risk seeking (for losses). - the curve captures our responses to positive and negative events

Researchers define each strategy with mathematical precision.

They create a domain of multi-attribute objects. - options with different characteristics (i.e. a menu) They conduct simulation experiments, to determine how the various strategies perform. The simulation experiments allow researchers to assess the trade-off between how effortful a choice strategy is, and how it does. - give the right decision, and the computer performs a simulation to mimic a human being and see how the strategy does in terms of choosing the right decision

What strategy should people use? Which strategy do they, in fact, mostly use?

This question presupposes that there is a right answer, given the decision maker's current goals. - the strategy depends on what our goal is

Dissonance reduction

To reduce cognitive dissonance, people need to reframe the situation (e.g., change beliefs or reduce the importance of beliefs). - when people go through a romantic breakup, they are likely to remember their former partner more negatively. - we are likely to be less upset about a breakup than we might predict we will be.

psychological immune system

We have psychological mechanisms in place that help us to recover quickly from negative events. - keeps us in equilibrium; we also get back to our neutral state pretty quickly after being happy - NOT CONSCIOUS PROCESS; knowing about this will NOT stop us from still behaving this way

Lench et al. (2019): When and Why People Misestimate Future Feelings: Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses in Affective Forecasting

We may forecast three types of emotional experiences: 1. The intensity of our response: How good/bad will we feel? - how bad will you feel about losing the lottery? - tend to be accurate because attention is focused on target event at forecast and experience 2. The frequency of our responses: How often will we think about our emotional response? - how often will you think about losing the lottery throughout the day? - overestimated because changes in thought content produce a mismatch in the salience of the event at forecast vs. experience 3. What mood will we experience (vs. a distinct emotion)? - will losing the lottery put you in a bad mood for a long time? - overestimated as people gradually cope with the event, with overestimation increasing over time people were better at making predictions about intensity rather than frequency or mood. frequency - we don't know about the other things we will have to think about; thus, overestimated - we also overestimate mood because we don't realize how quickly we go back to equilibrium people were pretty accurate about how intense they would feel, and overestimated frequency predicted that their mood would worsen as time went on - overestimation frequency and mood are overestimated because we fail to think about the bigger context (everything else going on in our lives) - people's ability to anticipate the intensity of emotion future events will evoke suggests that they are not doomed to make poor decisions, though they are vulnerable to several biases

money accounting and prospect theory

We must factor in the idea of mental accounting to understand what counts as the reference point and what counts as gains or losses. - using $125/$15 instead of $140 as a reference point

Brusovanky et al. (2018): Fast and effective: Intuitive processes in complex decisions

Weighted Additive Utility (WADD): People deploy a strategy that represents a noisy estimation of the weighted average. - choosing the feature that matters the most and weighing it the most, second most important feature will be second most weight, and so on - finding an estimated average weight of all features rather than just focusing on the best feature Instead of calculating a true weighted average, people appear to carry out an approximate (noisy), but holistic estimation of that average. - doing this allows us to make better decisions compared to "take the best" Participants completed an experiment in which they chose between job candidates under time pressure (to ensure that judgments were based on heuristic processing). - Participants were given feedback based on accuracy. after each judgment; right/wrong answer was defined by the real weighted average (calculated). - using TTB, we would higher candidate B because they score higher on work ethic (without looking at easy to work with or creativity) - averages: A=5.2, B=4.3 ↳ based on WADD, the better candidate is A (higher weighted average) - more people consistently use WADD, even under time pressure - unknown as to why people chose the strategies they did - 5 attributes are harder than 3 → people performed better with 3 attributes vs. 5 - people did better than the potential success of TTB and are thus able to use WADD to come up with an accurate decision even under time pressure On the whole, WADD users had higher accuracy than TTB users. The results suggest that (some) people are able to compute approximations of weighted averages through heuristic processes. - more attributes → difficult to still use WADD, but the difficulty of TTB stays the same - possible that people are more likely to use TTB when too many attributes are to be considered

negative and positive markers

When a *negative* somatic marker is linked to an image of a future outcome, it sounds an alarm." "When a *positive* marker is associated with the outcome image, it becomes a beacon of incentive." - when we need to make decisions quickly, we can use our gut response by determining how our body feels about it. - feeling anxious? probably shouldn't do it

Immune neglect

When people make forecasts about the future, they underestimate the impact of the psychological immune system.

When will the recognition heuristic lead to correct judgments

When recognition accurately reflects the underlying criterion. - large correlation between recognition of cities and newspapers - recognition affects judgments - large cities yield more newspaper coverage ↳ if this is true, then we will recognize large cities but not smaller cities, and the recognition heuristic will work people are engaging additional processes to make their judgments. Those judgments should be slower. - The recognition heuristic is the ultimate System 1 heuristic: When it applies, the decision is all-or-none. - When it doesn't apply (or when people scrutinize its output), judgments should take more time.

Bastardi & Shafir (1998): Waiting for Information

While the course is reputed to be taught by an excellent professor, you have just discovered that he will be on leave, and that a less popular professor will be teaching the course. Do you a. Decide to register for the course? 82% b. Decide not to register for the course? 18% you have just discovered that he may be on leave. It will not be known until tomorrow if the regular professor will teach the course or if a less popular professor will. Do you a. Decide to register for the course? 42% b. Decide not to register for the course? 2% c. Wait until tomorrow (after finding out if the regular professor will be teaching) to decide about registering for the course? 56% - deferring commitment until a decision needs to be made - having waited a day SHOULD NOT affect whether we decide to enroll or not People who wait to get the bad news are less likely to register for the course than people who got it up front. - "Waiting increases weighting": The information becomes more salient when you acquire it separately. - Thus, when you defer decisions you might end up attending to information of dubious value.

Bown, Read, & Summers (1993): The Lure of Choice

You need to hop in a taxi, to go to one of three clubs. Two of the clubs are north; one club is south. - more likely to go north because more choices (1) Club Cherish. This club is cheap ($8) but does not play very good music. (2) Club Diesel. This club is moderately expensive ($24) but plays great music. (3) Club Atom. This club is expensive ($30) but plays great music. [Decoy] club atom (decoy) was either in the north or south - when cherish was competing with the decoy, more people chose cherish than if it was offered by itself - same thing with diesel - more likely to choose when paired with atom People like to defer commitment as long as possible. - putting off having to make a choice they may regret later Similarly, they like to "stay in the game" longer. They might make a quick heuristic choice—keep the bigger set. - more choices in the north - lure of choice

choice strategies

a. The amount of cognitive effort b. Compensatory vs. noncompensatory c. Alternative-based vs. attribute-based d. Exhaustive vs. subset-based

Skin conductance responses (SCRs) provide an index of somatic states—to what extent do people show a physiological response to wins and losses?

amygdala lesions don't appear to be generating SCRs in response to wins and losses. VMF cortex lesions appear to generate SCRs—but they're unable to use that information. - people with amygdala damage show no SCR response - VMF people generate a response but do not use the somatic information - interactions between the amygdala and VMF affect our performance on the Iowa gambling task

Moods

background states with longer durations.

Damasio: The activation of somatic states influences decision making. Iowa Gambling Task

choosing which decks to draw cards from People without neurological impairments typically learn that they should avoid Decks A and B (in favor of Decks C and D). The impact of neurological impairments on performance provides an understanding of the roles of different brain structures.

loss aversion (prospect theory)

curve is steeper for losses than for gains—implying loss aversion. - we want to avoid loss as much as possible - when we experience a loss, we interpret it as worse (lower value) than if we experience a gain of the same amount - losing $100 feels way worse in proportion to the happiness of gaining $100 small increments in gain changes; very large increments in loss changes - claim about how humans behave when they deal with loss and gain - gain curve quickly flattens out; loss curve starts off very steep (a lot of negative impact very quickly) - we will choose the gamble vs. the sure loss - we will choose the sure gain vs. the gamble

You have just received $400. Which of the following options would you prefer? Option 1: You must give back $100. Option 2: A fair coin is tossed. If it lands heads, you must give back $200; if it lands tails, you may keep all of the money.

curve predicts that we will choose option 1 because there is a higher chance that we will be able to keep all our money (risk-seeking when choosing between losses) important to note that in both situations, option 1 leads to same amount of money and option 2 leads to same amount of money, but the way we think about them changes The reference point is different for the two statements of the problem. - the value of $100 for sure is higher than the value of the average of $200 and 0 (which is also $100 but has a lower prospect) ↳ gains - we will prefer sure gain over gamble - value of giving back $100 is much lower than the value of giving back between $200 and 0 ↳ loss - we will prefer gamble over sure loss

Huber & Puto (1983): Irrelevant alternatives change people's decisions

decoys - either too cheap or too expensive; we don't want consumers to get these - targets are close in price decoy on the right shows change in quality - 20 cents leads to 20 point increase in improvement (compared right decoy to lower target) - right decoy makes lower target a good deal because it is higher quality for a little increase in price - left decoy makes higher target a good deal because it is not much better quality and costs a lot more (10 points increase in quality when you pay 40 cents extra) decoys change the focus of attention. - helps us focus on what to care about when making a decision

People (potentially) retrieve different information from memory at different times.

leads to different judgments at different times

framing - with respect to gains and losses - matters enormously

major swing in decision making based on how the situation is worded Scenario 1: If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die. If Program D is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that no one will die and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die. Scenario 2: If Program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved and a 2/3 probability that no people will be saved. If Program D is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that no one will die and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die. same outcome but framing it causes people to swing towards scenario 2

Imas et al. (2021): Mental Money Laundering: A Motivated Violation of Fungibility

middle phase in which some participants got to enter a lottery. Participants ended the first stage of the study with cash in hand (as a consequence of behaving badly). In the second stage, some participants were entered into a lottery: - laundered lottery condition - returning the same amount, but as physically different bills. It exchanged potentially 'dirty' money for 'clean' money. ↳ the 'dirty money' that they lied to get has been replaced with 'clean' money that hasn't been tainted because of their bad behavior - unlaundered lottery condition - keeping the same physical bills that were staked." keeping the 'dirty money' Participants in the laundered lottery condition donated, on average, a significant 73¢ less than did participants in the unlaundered lottery condition. - The laundering (somewhat) removed the money from the "unethical" mental account.

Tan & Forgas (2010): When happiness makes us selfish, but sadness makes us fair: Affective influences on interpersonal strategies in the dictator game

mood induction to create positive dictator game: In this game, they are asked to allocate ten raffle tickets between themselves and another person. (The other person has no say in the matter.) To make the allocation task seem real, participants saw the faces and names of people with whom they were playing. - conflict between the internal impulse to be selfish, as against paying attention to the external social norms requiring fairness that should temper selfish impulses. - selfishness = system 1 → immediate impulse to be selfish and keep money to self ↳ positive mood → system 1 → more likely to be selfish - we have to make an effort to make ourselves be fair → system 2 ↳ negative mood → system 2 → more effort in being fair - these results are consistent across trials - happy mood: you are more likely to make decisions based on System 1. ↳ thinking about decisions does not necessarily mean we will make good decisions, but moods can affect how we decide to interact with others.

Coombs & Avrunin: "Good things satiate and bad things escalate."

most good experiences are really good but stop getting better quickly - flattens really quickly sad experiences get worse and worse as time goes on - protects us by making these more salient to us; if something bad continues to happen, our brain urges us to notice and stop doing what makes us feel sad mixture of good and bad: we hit a peak in our experience (things won't keep getting better) and then start going down (they instead start getting worse) - bad parts of a good experience seem more apparent - we should recognize the peak and prevent the experience from getting worse

weighting function curve

over-weigh very low probabilities - once something becomes possible, even if it has a very low probability, we tend to overweigh it - low side of solid line is above dotted line middle of the curve, people are insensitive to substantial changes in objective probabilities. - our response to probability goes up much more slowly in the middle range - ex. we should be much more worried about a 60% chance of rain compared to 30%, but we're not high end, "the curve becomes steep again as a high probability changes to certainty." - getting close to 80-90% - seems a lot more likely to happen

Sussman & Alter (2012): The Exception Is the Rule: Underestimating and Overspending on Exceptional Expenses

people make a distinction between ordinary and exceptional expenditures. - for ex. going on vacation is an exceptional expenditure - we won't draw on this account for ordinary expenses like going out to dinner Because they put exceptional expenditures into narrow categories, people are more likely to overspend on them. - exceptional expenses are thought of as a 'one-time' expense - more likely to spend more because of how rare of an experience it is experiment 1: ppts asked to estimate + recall how much they would spend in ordinary and exceptional expenses - People expect to have fewer "one-time" expenses. - we are good at predicting how much we will spend on ordinary expenses, but often underestimate how much we will spend on exceptional events ↳ this is because exceptional events occur more often than we expect, leading us to spend more money each time because we think they are so rarely occurring experiment 2: ppts asked how much they would pay for exceptional events: - simultaneous condition saw all four items at once - sequential condition were required to state their willingness to pay for each item, presented one to a page, prior to viewing the next item. people typically categorize exceptional expenditures as unique. Judging them sequentially reinforces the items' uniqueness. However, judging them simultaneously provides a reminder that they are not unique. - shown sequentially - we put these events in separate mental accounts because they are considered rarely occurring; simultaneous condition proves that these events are not as uncommon as we may think and forces us to adjust our mental account - simultaneous account makes us think more carefully about how much we will spend on these events - when seeing all of the exceptional events at once, they don't seem as exceptional anymore → we do not want to pay as much than if shown sequentially

Otto, Clarkson, & Kardes (2016): Individual differences with respect to Need for Cognitive Closure

ppts answered questions about how much they dislike spontaneity/unpredictable situations - need for cognitive closure (need to know what's going to happen before a situation occurs) "Decision sidestepping is the tendency to rely on decision strategies that allow an individual to bypass (i.e., streamline) the decision-making process." The motivation to attain cognitive closure heightens the bothersome or aversive nature of decision making and, in an effort to reduce this aversion, these individuals engage in decision sidestepping to attain resolution by relying on a justifiable option." - making a decision is more aversive because the situation is unpredictable and the need for cognitive closure is unfulfilled = these people will engage decision sidestepping to avoid having to make a decision on their own - BUT ONLY if there is a justifiable option (making you think you made a good decision) 2 versions of menu - uncategorized and categorized - more difficult to deal with the information in the uncategorized menu because it's not organized compared to categorized - have to do more work with uncategorized - bottom of both shows the 'standard favorite' serves as the justifiable option - for categorized menu, there is not much of a difference between those who have a high need for closure or a low need - more aversive decision (uncategorized) - those with a high need for closure are more likely to rely on the status quo and choose the standard favorite (the justifiable option) - the data support the hypothesis that people high in need for cognitive closure prefer to sidestep bothersome decisions

hedonic predictions

predictions about future pleasure

Kahneman & Tversky (1984): jacket or calculator

scenario 1: Imagine that you are about to purchase a jacket for $125 and a calculator for $15. The calculator salesman informs you that the calculator you wish to buy is on sale for $10 at the other branch or the store, located 20 minutes drive away; more people say yes scenario 2: Imagine that you are about to purchase a jacket for $125 and a calculator for $15. The jacket salesman informs you that the jacket you wish to buy is on sale for $120 at the other branch or the store, located 20 minutes drive away; less people say yes In a psychology-free world: The savings is $5 in each case against a cost of $140 (jacket = $125 + calculator = $15)—so behavior should be identical. People don't lump the expenditure together into $140. - They maintain separate mental accounts for the jacket and the calculator. - money accounting has a major impact on how we think about money

Kahneman & Tversky (1984): $10 ticket

scenario 1: Imagine that you have decided to see a play where admission is $10 per ticket. As you enter the theater, you discover that you have lost the ticket. scenario 2: Imagine that you have decided to see a play where admission is $10 per ticket. As you enter the theater, you discover that you have lost a $10 bill; more people say yes to buying another ticket In your "mental account" for ticket buying, losing $10 doesn't move you away from the zero (reference) point. - already had a ticket = depleting account again - seems more like losing money ↳ we don't want to pay for the same thing twice - lost $10 - this money doesn't come out of the ticket-buying account - doesn't feel like replacing money/withdrawing from the same account a second time ↳ still at $0 in terms of the ticket-buying account

psychophysics

the relationship between the stimulus that impinges on our sensory apparatus and how we experience that

Pachur et al. (2012): How Do People Judge Risks: Availability Heuristic, Affect Heuristic, or Both?

using both the content of the memories (availability) + the way we felt (affect) - Availability: Can you think of people who have died of this particular type of cancer? - Affect: How much dread does this cancer inspire? Participants judged which of two causes of death represented a higher risk. - both heuristics influence our judgments and decisions. equally accurate in judging risk

Information encoded in memory

using information from our memory that is specifically about emotional content. - Conscious: Use effort to retrieve memory traces - Unconscious ↳Heuristics (Availability, representativeness) ↳Operant and classical conditioning

Bechara et al. recruited 13 unimpaired control participants and 5 participants each with amygdala or VMF cortex lesions to carry out the Iowa Gambling Task.

very rare to have this kind of damage so not many participants The participants with brain lesions don't learn from experience on the task. - over the course of the experiment, control participants choose A or B because they look better and quickly realize that it was better and take more cards - participants with amygdala and VMF damage do not realize that decks A and B are better, do not take more cards ↳ no somatic markers encoded/used about how they feel about making this information

value of consequence i and reference point

vi = value of consequence i - hypothetical value function reference point, most often, is where you are now. A millionaire cares less about acquiring $100 than does a Professor of Psychology. - need to consider reference point in order to determine value of gains/losses - we will consider the value of $100 differently depending on the reference point that we're at ↳ $100 in pocket - started from $0 = gain ↳ $100 in pocket - started from $1000 = loss sometimes it's an *aspiration level.* For example, year-end bonuses are about to be announced and you think you're going to get $2000 (actually get $1000) - getting less than expected feels like a loss - for aspiration level, reference point is what we are expecting to get

Tessari et al. (2011): Coins versus paper money

we encode coins as being less valuable than paper money - we DO NOT consider coins to be as valuable - not 'real' money - and are thus willing to pay more with it vs. paper money

weighting function w/ prospect theory

we infer that we are perfectly calibrated in that we weigh probability exactly proportional to how likely things are - prospect theory suggests that we weigh probability according to the function above (NOT linear)

we make predictions about other people's emotional responses

we use them to plan our behavior. ex. getting someone a gift

Comprehension: People try to determine what a particular speaker means by asking a particular question.

we will make up what we think the person wants to hear (ex. a professor), and we will only tell certain things ppts filled out questionnaires that were printed on letterhead that read: Institute of Personality Research [or] Institute of Social Research Coders categorized participants' "reasons" into - dispositional attributions (something about the person) - likely to give more reasons based on this if they think they're in a personality research lab - situational attributions (external factors) - likely to give more reasons based on this if they think they're in a social research lab the information we receive from others will affect the information we will reveal and how we will develop expectations from others

Simonson & Tversky (1992)

when only X-370 ($170) and 3000i ($240) are shown, people were indifferent to context effects → some people chose X-370 because it was cheaper, others chose 3000i because it has more features - The addition of the more expensive model made the middle-priced model seem like the right compromise. ↳ people decide that they are getting more bang for their buck with the middle option ($70 difference between 1st and 2nd option with so many more features vs. $230 difference between 2nd and 3rd features with not so many more features) NOT choosing the middle option because it costs less than the most expensive option, but because it provides more features for its price (more expensive one doesn't had as many additional features when compared to middle one vs middle one has so many more compared to cheapest one)

weber's law

ΔI/I = k I = Intensity; ΔI = change in I that will produce a JND (Just Noticeable Difference) k = a constant - 20 units of pain; if we want to double the intensity of pain one feels, we don't need to go all the way to 40 - our body will make us feel like we're in more than double the amount of pain in 40 compared to 20 in order to protect us - dotted line represents how we think pain works - solid line represents our actual interpretation of the sensation compared to the actual change - there is a stable relationship between how much of a change in intensity we need to make in order for other people to notice and the actual intensity - The same physical change (+ 1) does not have the same perceptual impact (may feel like more/less than 1)