We claim that understanding human decisions requires that both automatic and deliberate processes be considered. First, we sketch the qualitative differences between two hypothetical processing systems, an automatic and a deliberate system. Second, we show the potential that connectionism offers for modeling processes of decision making and discuss some empirical evidence. Specifically, we posit that the integration of information and the application of a selection rule are governed by the automatic system. The deliberate system is assumed to be responsible for information search, inferences and the modification of the network that the automatic processes act on. Third, we critically evaluate the multiple-strategy approach to decision making. We introduce the basic assumption of an integrative approach stating that individuals apply an all-purpose rule for decisions but use different strategies for information search. Fourth, we develop a connectionist framework that explains the interaction between automatic and deliberate processes and is able to account for choices both at the option and at the strategy level.

Although many models for risky choices between gambles assume that information is somehow integrated, the recently proposed priority heuristic (PH) claims that choices are based on one piece of information only. That is, although the current reason for a choice according to the PH can vary, all other reasons are claimed to be ignored. However, the choices predicted by the PH and other pieces of information are often confounded, thus rendering critical tests of whether decisions are actually based on one reason only, impossible. The current study aims to remedy this problem by manipulating the number of reasons additionally in line with the choice implied by the PH. The results show that participants’ choices and decision times depend heavily on the number of reasons in line with the PH — thus contradicting the notion of non-compensatory, one-reason decision making.

Researchers know very little about how people choose mates. To remedy this, the present study examined the influence of number of potential mates and mate-standard strength on single women’s choice satisfaction and strategy use. Single women chose one potential partner from a set of 4, 24, or 64 options presented on a real dating website. Participants adjusted to an increasing number of options by changing their decision-making strategies, such that they relied on noncompensatory, attribute-based strategies as the number of options increased. Across conditions they reported similar levels of satisfaction with the choice process and the person selected. Mate-standard strength qualified some of the results, however, as women with higher mate standards preferred extensive choice, and they tended to prefer compensatory choice strategies and were more satisfied with the option selected when he was selected from among many.

Humans and other animals are idiosyncratically sensitive to risk, either preferring or avoiding options having the same value but differing in uncertainty. Many explanations for risk sensitivity rely on the non-linear shape of a hypothesized utility curve. Because such models do not place any importance on uncertainty per se, utility curve-based accounts predict indifference between risky and riskless options that offer the same distribution of rewards. Here we show that monkeys strongly prefer uncertain gambles to alternating rewards with the same payoffs, demonstrating that uncertainty itself contributes to the appeal of risky options. Based on prior observations, we hypothesized that the appeal of the risky option is enhanced by the salience of the potential jackpot. To test this, we subtly manipulated payoffs in a second gambling task. We found that monkeys are more sensitive to small changes in the size of the large reward than to equivalent changes in the size of the small reward, indicating that they attend preferentially to the jackpots. Together, these results challenge utility curve-based accounts of risk sensitivity, and suggest that psychological factors, such as outcome salience and uncertainty itself, contribute to risky decision-making.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of perceived time pressure on a learning-based task called the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). One hundred and sixty-three participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The experimental group was informed that the time allotted was typically insufficient to learn and successfully complete the task. The control group was informed that the time allotted was typically sufficient to learn and successfully complete the task. Both groups completed the IGT and performance was recorded. The major finding was that participants who were advised that the amount of time allotted was typically insufficient to complete the task performed significantly worse than those who were advised that time was typically sufficient to complete the task.

This is a first study on attachment to national and sacred land and land as a protected value. A measure of attachment to the land of Israel is developed and administered to two groups, Jewish college students in Israel and the United States. Levels of land attachment are high and not significantly different in the two groups, with a great deal of variation. Land may become more important through being inhabited by a group over centuries. This is a positive contagion effect, and is opposed in some cases by negative contagion produced when the “enemies” live on the land for some period of time. We demonstrate a significant correlation of positive contagion sensitivity with attachment to the land of Israel. Unlike many other cases of the interaction of positive and negative contagion, negative contagion does not overwhelm positive contagion in the domain of land attachment. We also present evidence for linkages between political positions, religiosity, importance of Israel, Arab aversion, and vulnerability of Israel with attachment to land, but these do not fully account for the contagion effects. A number of significant differences between Israelis and Americans are described.

The present study investigates the effect of framing and legal role on the propensity to accept a settlement offer by litigants in a simulated legal dispute. Participants were given four different scenarios that factorially combined legal role (plaintiff vs. defendant) and frame (positive vs. negative). The results indicated that positively framed litigants were more willing to settle than negatively framed litigants independently of legal role. These results were replicated in a second experiment that also asked participants to state their subjective probability of winning. This revealed that the propensity to settle was a joint function of frame and the perceived chance of winning. In contrast to previous research, no systematic effect of legal role was found. It is concluded that the rate of negotiated settlements of legal disputes may be increased by manipulating both of these factors.

Judgments and decisions under uncertainty are frequently linked to a prior sequential search for relevant information. In such cases, the subject has to decide when to stop the search for information. Evidence accumulation models from social and cognitive psychology assume an active and sequential information search until enough evidence has been accumulated to pass a decision threshold. In line with such theories, we conceptualize the evidence threshold as the “desired level of confidence” (DLC) of a person. This model is tested against a fixed stopping rule (one-reason decision making) and against the class of multi-attribute information integrating models. A series of experiments using an information board for horse race betting demonstrates an advantage of the proposed model by measuring the individual DLC of each subject and confirming its correctness in two separate stages. In addition to a better understanding of the stopping rule (within the narrow framework of simple heuristics), the results indicate that individual aspiration levels might be a relevant factor when modelling decision making by task analysis of statistical environments.

Several decision-making models predict that it should be possible to affect real binary choices by manipulating the relative amount of visual attention that decision-makers pay to the two alternatives. We present the results of three behavioral experiments testing this prediction. Visual attention is controlled by manipulating the amount of time subjects fixate on the two items. The manipulation has a differential impact on appetitive and aversive items. Appetitive items are 6 to 11% more likely to be chosen in the long fixation condition. In contrast, aversive items are 7% less likely to be chosen in the long fixation condition. The effect is present for primary goods, such as foods, and for higher-order durable goods, such as posters.

Vlaev and Chater (2006) demonstrated that the cooperativeness of previously seen prisoner’s dilemma games biases choices and predictions in the current game. These effects were: a) assimilation to the mean cooperativeness of the played games caused by action reinforcement, and b) perceptual contrast with the preceding games depending on the range and the rank order of their cooperativeness. We demonstrate that, when playing against choice strategies that are not biased by such factors, perceptual biases disappear and only assimilation bias caused by reinforcement persists. This suggests that reinforcement learning is a powerful source of inconsistency in strategic interaction, which may not be eliminated even if the other players are unbiased and the markets are efficient.

Decision making research often dichotomises between more deliberative, cognitive processes and more heuristic, intuitive and emotional processes. We argue that within this two-systems framework (e.g., Kahneman, 2002) there is ambiguity over how to map the System 1/System 2 axis, and the notion of intuitive processing, onto the distinction between conscious and non-conscious processes. However the convergent concepts of experience-based metacognitive judgements (Koriat, 2007) and of fringe consciousness (Mangan, 1993) can clarify intuitive processing as an informative conscious feeling without conscious access to the antecedents of the feeling. We stress that these intuitive feelings can be used to guide behaviour in a controlled and contextually sensitive manner that would not be permitted by purely non-conscious influences on behaviour. An outline is provided for how to empirically recognise these intuitive feelings. This is illustrated with an example from research on implicit learning where intuitive feelings may play an important role in peoples’ decisions and judgements. Finally we suggest that our approach to understanding intuitive feelings softens rather than reinforces the two-systems dichotomy.

This study employs a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) in the health-care sector to test the loss aversion theory that is derived from reference-dependent preferences: The absolute subjective value of a deviation from a reference point is generally greater when the deviation represents a loss than when the same-sized change is perceived as a gain. As far as is known, this paper is the first to use a DCE to test the loss aversion theory. A DCE is a highly suitable tool for such testing because it estimates the marginal valuations of attributes, based on deviations from a reference point (a constant scenario). Moreover, loss aversion can be examined for each attribute separately. Another advantage of a DCE is that is can be applied to non-traded goods with non-tangible attributes. A health-care event is used for empirical illustration: The loss aversion theory is tested within the context of preference structures for maternity-ward attributes, estimated using data gathered from 3850 observations made by a sample of 542 women who had recently given birth. Seven hypotheses are presented and tested. Overall, significant support for behavioral loss aversion theories was found.

In two studies on mobile phone purchase decisions, we investigated consumers’ decision strategies with a newly developed process tracing tool called InterActive Process Tracing (IAPT). This tool is a combination of several process tracing techniques (Active Information Search, Mouselab, and retrospective verbal protocol). After repeatedly choosing one of four mobile phones, participants formalized their strategy so that it could be used to make choices for them. The choices made by the identified strategies correctly predicted the observed choices in 73% (Experiment 1) and 67% (Experiment 2) of the cases. Moreover, in Experiment 2 we directly compared Mouselab and eye tracking with respect to their impact on information search and strategy description. We found only minor differences between these two methods. We conclude that IAPT is a useful research tool to identify choice strategies, and that using eye tracking technology did not increase its validity beyond that gained with Mouselab.

In preventative health decisions, such as the decision to undergo an invasive screening test or treatment, people may be deterred from selecting the test because its perceived disutility relative to not testing is greater than the utility associated with prevention of possible disease. The prospect theory editing operation, by which a decision maker’s reference point is determined, can have important effects on the disutility of the test. On the basis of the prospect theory value function, this paper develops two approaches to reducing disutility by directing the decision maker’s attention to either (actual) past or (expected) future losses that result in shifted reference points. After providing a graphical description of the approaches and a mathematical proof of the direction of their effect on judgment, we briefly illustrate the potential value of these approaches with examples from qualitative research on prostate cancer treatment decisions.

Recent research reported evidence that contradicts cumulative prospect theory and the priority heuristic. The same body of research also violates two editing principles of original prospect theory: cancellation (the principle that people delete any attribute that is the same in both alternatives before deciding between them) and combination (the principle that people combine branches leading to the same consequence by adding their probabilities). This study was designed to replicate previous results and to test whether the violations of cumulative prospect theory might be eliminated or reduced by using formats for presentation of risky gambles in which cancellation and combination could be facilitated visually. Contrary to the idea that decision behavior contradicting cumulative prospect theory and the priority heuristic would be altered by use of these formats, however, data with two new graphical formats as well as fresh replication data continued to show the patterns of evidence that violate cumulative prospect theory, the priority heuristic, and the editing principles of combination and cancellation. Systematic violations of restricted branch independence also contradicted predictions of “stripped” prospect theory (subjectively weighted additive utility without the editing rules).

Several studies propose that exemplar retrieval contributes to multi-attribute decisions. The authors have proposed a process theory enabling a priori predictions of what cognitive representations people use as input to their judgment process (Sigma, for “summation”; P. Juslin, L. Karlsson, & H. Olsson, 2008). According to Sigma, exemplar retrieval is a back-up system when the task does not allow for additive and linear abstraction and integration of cue-criterion knowledge (e.g., when the task is non-additive). An important question is to what extent such shifts occur spontaneously as part of automatic procedures, such as error-minimization with the Delta rule, or if they are controlled strategy shifts contingent on the ability to identify a sufficiently successful judgment strategy. In this article data are reviewed that demonstrate a shift between exemplar memory and cue abstraction, as well as data where the expected shift does not occur. In contrast to a common assumption of previous models, these results suggest a controlled and contingent strategy shift.

The duration of ownership has been shown to increase the valuation of items that people currently own as well as items they have owned in the past, a phenomenon termed the “length-of-ownership effect.” We hypothesize that the duration of exposure to an item will foster increased pre-ownership attachment to an item and increased valuations in a manner similar to duration of actual ownership. We examine this effect in two experiments, both variations of the classic mug experiment. To induce different levels of exposure, we varied the amount of time that participants examined the auctioned item (i.e., coffee mugs) prior to participating in real dollar auctions. In the first study, participants bid in online English open bid auctions. In the second study, participants bid in first-price sealed bid auctions. In both cases of duration of physical contact positively influenced valuations (i.e., bid levels).

People prefer their own initials to other letters, influencing preferences in many domains. The “name letter effect” (Nuttin, 1987) may not apply to negatively valenced targets if people are motivated to downplay or distance themselves from negative targets associated with the self, as previous research has shown (e.g., Finch & Cialdini, 1989). In the current research we examine the relationship between same initial preferences and negatively valenced stimuli. Specifically, we examined donations to disaster relief after seven major hurricanes to test the influence of the name letter effect with negatively valenced targets. Individuals who shared an initial with the hurricane name were overrepresented among hurricane relief donors relative to the baseline distribution of initials in the donor population. This finding suggests that people may seek to ameliorate the negative effects of a disaster when there are shared characteristics between the disaster and the self.

Three studies presented scenarios to lay people to investigate their willingness to restrict imports. Greater restriction was preferred when similar goods were made at home, when the owners of the foreign businesses made very good profits, and, less consistently, when the goods came from a low wage country. Particular reluctance to import from a low-wage country did not vary with whether a home firm was likely to lose business or the level of understanding of comparative advantage, but was related to the profits made by foreign business owners. The results show that lay people views are based on concern for people in other countries as well as in their own.

The present research aimed to test the role of mood in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara et al., 1994). In the IGT, participants can win or lose money by picking cards from four different decks. They have to learn by experience that two decks are overall advantageous and two decks are overall disadvantageous. Previous studies have shown that at an early stage in this card-game, players begin to display a tendency towards the advantageous decks. Subsequent research suggested that at this stage, people base their decisions on conscious gut feelings (Wagar & Dixon, 2006). Based on empirical evidence for the relation between mood and cognitive processing-styles, we expected and consistently found that, compared to a negative mood state, reported and induced positive mood states increased this early tendency towards advantageous decks. Our results provide support for the idea that a positive mood causes stronger reliance on affective signals in decision-making than a negative mood.