Environmental uncertainty is at the core of much of human activity, ranging fromdaily decisions by individuals to long-term policy planning by governments. Yet,there is little quantitative evidence on the ability of non-expert individualsor populations to forecast climate-related events. Here we report on data from a90-year old prediction game on a climate related event in Alaska: the Nenana IceClassic (NIC). Participants in this contest guess to the nearest minute when theice covering the Tanana River will break, signaling the start of spring.Previous research indicates a strong correlation between the ice breakup datesand regional weather conditions. We study betting decisions between 1955 and2009. We find the betting distribution closely predicts the outcome of thecontest. We also find a significant correlation between regional temperatures aswell as past ice breakups and betting behavior, suggesting that participantsincorporate both climate and historical information into theirdecision-making.

Errors in estimating and forecasting often result from the failure to collect and consider enough relevant information. We examine whether attributes associated with persistence in information acquisition can predict performance in an estimation task. We focus on actively open-minded thinking (AOT), need for cognition, grit, and the tendency to maximize or satisfice when making decisions. In three studies, participants made estimates and predictions of uncertain quantities, with varying levels of control over the amount of information they could collect before estimating. Only AOT predicted performance. This relationship was mediated by information acquisition: AOT predicted the tendency to collect information, and information acquisition predicted performance. To the extent that available information is predictive of future outcomes, actively open-minded thinkers are more likely than others to make accurate forecasts.

Compassion shown towards victims often decreases as the number of individuals in need of aid increases, identifiability of the victims decreases, and the proportion of victims helped shrinks. Such “compassion fade” may hamper individual-level and collective responses to pressing large-scale crises. To date, research on compassion fade has focused on humanitarian challenges; thus, it remains unknown whether and to what extent compassion fade emerges when victims are non-human others. Here we show that compassion fade occurs in the environmental domain, but only among non-environmentalists. These findings suggest that compassion fade may challenge our collective ability and willingness to confront the major environmental problems we face, including climate change. The observed moderation effect of environmental identity further indicates that compassion fade may present a significant psychological barrier to building broad public support for addressing these problems. Our results highlight the importance of bringing findings from the field of judgment and decision making to bear on pressing societal issues.

Recent research has shown that religious individuals are much more resistant to utilitarian modes of thinking than their less religious counterparts, but the reason for this is not clear. We propose that a meta-ethical belief that morality is rooted in inviolable divine commands (i.e., endorsement of Divine Command Theory) may help explain this finding. We present a novel 20-item scale measuring a belief that morality is founded on divine authority. The scale shows good internal reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. Study 1 found that this scale fully mediated the relationship that various religiosity measures had with a deontological thinking style in our sample of American adults. It also accounted for the link between religiosity and social conservative values. Furthermore, the relationship between the scale and these outcome variables held after statistically controlling for variables related to actively open-minded thinking and the Big Five. Study 2 replicated the results using naturalistic moral dilemmas that placed deontological and utilitarian concerns in conflict, and showed that the results of Study 1 cannot be explained by differences in moral foundations (e.g., concern for authority more generally) or differences in the perceived function of rules. Quite the contrary, endorsement of the divine origins of morality fully mediated the relationship religiosity had with the so-called “binding” foundations (i.e., Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity). Our findings highlight the importance of meta-ethical beliefs for understanding individual differences in moral judgment.

Recent investigations of adolescents’ beliefs about risk have led tosurprisingly optimistic conclusions: Teens’ self estimates of theirlikelihood of experiencing various life events not only correlate sensibly withrelevant risk factors (Fischhoff et al., 2000), but they also significantlypredict later experiencing the events (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007). Using thesame dataset examined in previous investigations, the present study extendedthese analyses by comparing the predictive value of self estimates of risk tothat of traditional risk factors for each outcome. The analyses focused on theprediction of pregnancy, criminal arrest, and school enrollment. Three findingsemerged. First, traditional risk factor information tended to out-predict selfassessments of risk, even when the risk factors included crude, potentiallyunreliable measures (e.g., a simple tally of self-reported criminal history) andwhen the risk factors were aggregated in a nonoptimal way (i.e., unitweighting). Second, despite the previously reported correlations between selfestimates and outcomes, perceived invulnerability was a problem among the youth:Over half of the teens who became pregnant, half of those who were not enrolledin school, and nearly a third of those who were arrested had, one year earlier,indicated a 0% chance of experiencing these outcomes. Finally, adding selfestimates of risk to the other risk factor information produced only small gainsin predictive accuracy. These analyses point to the need for greater educationabout the situations and behaviors that lead to negative outcomes.

Unstructured interviews are a ubiquitous tool for making screening decisions despite a vast literature suggesting that they have little validity. We sought to establish reasons why people might persist in the illusion that unstructured interviews are valid and what features about them actually lead to poor predictive accuracy. In three studies, we investigated the propensity for “sensemaking” - the ability for interviewers to make sense of virtually anything the interviewee says—and “dilution”—the tendency for available but non-diagnostic information to weaken the predictive value of quality information. In Study 1, participants predicted two fellow students’ semester GPAs from valid background information like prior GPA and, for one of them, an unstructured interview. In one condition, the interview was essentially nonsense in that the interviewee was actually answering questions using a random response system. Consistent with sensemaking, participants formed interview impressions just as confidently after getting random responses as they did after real responses. Consistent with dilution, interviews actually led participants to make worse predictions. Study 2 showed that watching a random interview, rather than personally conducting it, did little to mitigate sensemaking. Study 3 showed that participants believe unstructured interviews will help accuracy, so much so that they would rather have random interviews than no interview. People form confident impressions even interviews are defined to be invalid, like our random interview, and these impressions can interfere with the use of valid information. Our simple recommendation for those making screening decisions is not to use them.

Decision scientists have identified various plausible sources of ideological polarization over climate change, gun violence, national security, and like issues that turn on empirical evidence. This paper describes a study of three of them: the predominance of heuristic-driven information processing by members of the public; ideologically motivated reasoning; and the cognitive-style correlates of political conservativism. The study generated both observational and experimental data inconsistent with the hypothesis that political conservatism is distinctively associated with either unreflective thinking or motivated reasoning. Conservatives did no better or worse than liberals on the Cognitive Reflection Test (Frederick, 2005), an objective measure of information-processing dispositions associated with cognitive biases. In addition, the study found that ideologically motivated reasoning is not a consequence of over-reliance on heuristic or intuitive forms of reasoning generally. On the contrary, subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were the most likely to display ideologically motivated cognition. These findings corroborated an alternative hypothesis, which identifies ideologically motivated cognition as a form of information processing that promotes individuals’ interests in forming and maintaining beliefs that signify their loyalty to important affinity groups. The paper discusses the practical significance of these findings, including the need to develop science communication strategies that shield policy-relevant facts from the influences that turn them into divisive symbols of political identity.

The emergence of a leading alternative during the course of a decision is known to bias the evaluation of new information in a manner that favors that alternative. We report 3 studies that address the sensitivity of predecisional information distortion and its effects in hypothetical risky decisions with regard to 4 potential influences: choice domain, repeated choice, memory requirements, and intermediate progress questions. In Experiment 1 (N = 515), the magnitude of information distortion was similar in 5 choice domains (varied between participants) involving monetary gambles, song downloads, frequent-flyer miles, political decisions, or medical decisions. Information distortion mediated the relationship between our manipulation of initial preferences and participants’ final choices, with the magnitude of the indirect effect being roughly similar across domains. These results replicate and extend previous findings. Additionally, distortion decreased significantly over 4 similar decision problems (within participants), but remained significant in the fourth problem. In Experiment 2 (N = 214), information distortion increased significantly when previously viewed information remained available, apparently because reiterating that information strengthened emerging preferences. In Experiment 3 (N = 223), the removal of intermediate progress questions that measure information distortion and emerging preferences did not significantly affect final choices, again replicating previous results. We conclude that predecisional information distortion is a relatively stable and robust phenomenon that deserves a prominent role in descriptive theories of choice.

The “problem of points”, introduced by Paccioli in 1494 and solved by Pascal and Fermat 160 years later, inspired the modern concept of probability. Incidentally, the problem also shows that rational decision-making requires the consideration of future events. We show that naïve responses to the problem of points are more future oriented and thus more rational in this sense when the problem itself is presented in a future frame instead of the canonical past frame. A simple nudge is sufficient to make decisions more rational. We consider the implications of this finding for hypothesis testing and predictions of replicability.

Subjects donate individually (control group) or in pairs (treatment group). Thosein pairs reveal their donation decision to each other. Average donations in thetreatment group are significantly higher than in the control group. Pairedsubjects have the opportunity to revise their donation decision afterdiscussion. Pair members shift toward each others’ initial decisions.Subjects are happier with their decision when their donations are larger, butthose in pairs are less happy, controlling for amount donated. These findingssuggest reluctant altruism due to peer pressure in charitable giving.

The time-saving bias describes people’s tendency to misestimate the timethey can save by increasing the speed in which they perform an activity such asdriving or completing a task. People typically underestimate time saved whenincreasing from a low speed and overestimate time saved when increasing from analready high speed. We suggest that this bias is the result of people’sfailure to recognize the curvilinear relationship between increasing speed andreducing activity time: As initial speed rises, the same speed increases willyield smaller reductions in time. We explore a new technique to de-bias thesefaulty estimations: converting measurements of speed to a pace measure (e.g.,minutes per fixed distance). Utilizing common driving scenarios, we show thatparticipants who received pace data made more accurate estimations of journeyduration at various speeds, time-savings at various speed increases and therequired speed to complete a journey.

Ubiquitous cognitive biases hinder optimal decision making. Recent calls to assist decision makers in mitigating these biases—via interventions commonly called “nudges”—have been criticized as infringing upon individual autonomy. We tested the hypothesis that such “decisional enhancement” programs that target overt decision making—i.e., conscious, higher-order cognitive processes—would be more acceptable than similar programs that affect covert decision making—i.e., subconscious, lower-order processes. We presented respondents with vignettes in which they chose between an option that included a decisional enhancement program and a neutral option. In order to assess preferences for overt or covert decisional enhancement, we used the contrastive vignette technique in which different groups of respondents were presented with one of a pair of vignettes that targeted either conscious or subconscious processes. Other than the nature of the decisional enhancement, the vignettes were identical, allowing us to isolate the influence of the type of decisional enhancement on preferences. Overall, we found support for the hypothesis that people prefer conscious decisional enhancement. Further, respondents who perceived the influence of the program as more conscious than subconscious reported that their decisions under the program would be more “authentic”. However, this relative favorability was somewhat contingent upon context. We discuss our results with respect to the implementation and ethics of decisional enhancement.

Because of the large amount of information and the difficulty in selecting an appropriate recipient in the context of charitable giving, people tend to make extensive use of heuristics, which sometimes leads them to wrong decisions. In the present work, we focused on exploring how individuals are influenced by anchoring heuristics and how group membership interacts with this heuristic. In Experiment 1, two different groups of participants were informed about low versus high average donations of other people, and a third control group did not receive any information about the others’ donations. The results showed that participants were willing to donate significantly more in the high-anchor condition compared to the low-anchor condition, as well as about the same amount of money in the low-anchor condition and no-anchor condition. Experiment 2 and 3 showed that high anchors are more effective when the information about others’ donations reflects members of the ingroup rather than the outgroup. Other variables related to these results are further discussed.

In the domain of moral decision making, models in which emotion and deliberation constitute competing dual-systems have become increasingly popular. Currently, the favored explanation of this interaction is what Evans (2008) termed a “default-interventionist” (DI) process where moral decisions are the result of a prepotent emotional response, which can be overridden with substantial deliberative effort. Although this “emotion-then-deliberation” sequence is often assumed, existing methods have lacked the requisite process resolution to clearly depict the nature of this interaction. The present work utilized continuous mouse tracking, or response dynamics, to develop and test predictions of these DI models of moral decision making. Study 1 utilized previously published moral dilemmas to validate the method for use with such complex stimuli. Although the data replicated typical choice and RT patterns, the process metrics provided by the response trajectories did not demonstrate the online preference reversals predicted by DI models. Study 2 utilized more rigorously constructed stimuli and an alternative presentation format to provide the strongest possible test of DI predictions, but again failed to show the predicted reversals. In summary, neither experiment provided data in accordance with the predictions of popular DI dual-systems models, which suggests that researchers should consider models allowing for concurrent activation of deliberative and emotional systems, or reconceptualize moral decisions within the typical multiattribute decision framework.

Everyone faces uncertainty on a daily basis. Two kinds of probability expressions, verbal and numerical, have been used to characterize the uncertainty that we face. Because our cognitive concept of living things differs from that of non-living things, and distinguishing cognitive concepts might have linguistic markers, we designed four studies to test whether people use different probability expressions when faced with animate or inanimate uncertainty. We found that verbal probability is the preferred way to express animate uncertainty, whereas numerical probability is the preferred way to express inanimate uncertainty. The “verbal-animate” and “numerical-inanimate” associations were robust enough to persist when tested with forced-choice response patterns regardless of the information (e.g., equally likely outcomes, frequencies, or personal beliefs) used to construct probabilities of events. When the response pattern was changed to free-responses, the associations were evident unless the subjects were asked to write their own probability predictions for vague uncertainty. Given that the world around us consists of both animate (i.e., living) and inanimate (i.e., non-living) things, “verbal-animate” and “numerical-inanimate” associations may play a major role in risk communication and may otherwise be useful for practitioners and consultants.

The paper surveys over twenty models of delay discounting (alsoknown as temporal discounting, time preference, timediscounting), that psychologists and economists have put forward toexplain the way people actually trade off time and money. Using little more thanthe basic algebra of powers and logarithms, I show how the models are derived,what assumptions they are based upon, and how different models relate to eachother. Rather than concentrate only on discount functionsthemselves, I show how discount functions may be manipulated to isolaterate parameters for each model. This approach, consistentlyapplied, helps focus attention on the three main components in any discountingmodel: subjectively perceived money; subjectively perceived time; and how theseelements are combined. We group models by the number of parameters that have tobe estimated, which means our exposition follows a trajectory of increasingcomplexity to the models. However, as the story unfolds it becomes clear thatmost models fall into a smaller number of families. We also show how new modelsmay be constructed by combining elements of different models.

The surveyed models are: Exponential; Hyperbolic; Arithmetic; Hyperboloid (Green& Myerson, Rachlin); Loewenstein and Prelec Generalized Hyperboloid;quasi-Hyperbolic (also known as β-δ discounting);Benhabib et al’s fixed cost; Benhabib et al’s Exponential /Hyperbolic / quasi-Hyperbolic; Read’s discounting fractions;Roelofsma’s exponential time; Scholten and Read’sdiscounting-by-intervals (DBI); Ebert and Prelec’s constant sensitivity(CS); Bleichrodt et al.’s constant absolute decreasing impatience (CADI);Bleichrodt et al.’s constant relative decreasing impatience (CRDI);Green, Myerson, and Macaux’s hyperboloid over intervals models;Killeen’s additive utility; size-sensitive additive utility; Yi, Landes,and Bickel’s memory trace models; McClure et al.’s twoexponentials; and Scholten and Read’s trade-off model.

For a convenient overview, a single “cheat sheet” table capturesthe notation and essential mathematics behind all but one of the models.

Decision makers often save money for a specific goal by forgoing discretionaryconsumption and instead putting the money toward the savings goal. Wehypothesized that reference points can be exploited to enhance this type ofsaving. In two hypothetical scenario studies, subjects made judgments of theirlikelihood to forgo a small expenditure in order to put the money toward thesavings goal. In Experiment 1, judgments were higher if the savings goal waspresented as composed of weekly subgoals (e.g., save $60 per week to buya $180 iPod). Experiment 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated thatthe subgoal manipulation increased judgments of likelihood to save money onlywhen the money saved from the foregone consumption would allow the decisionmaker to meet the weekly subgoal exactly (not under or overshoot it). Theseresults suggest a reference point mechanism and point to ways that behavioraldecision research can be harnessed to improve economic behaviors.

Previous studies of loss aversion in decisions under risk have led to mixed results. Losses appear to loom larger than gains in some settings, but not in others. The current paper clarifies these results by highlighting six experimental manipulations that tend to increase the likelihood of the behavior predicted by loss aversion. These manipulations include: (1) framing of the safe alternative as the status quo; (2) ensuring that the choice pattern predicted by loss aversion maximizes the probability of positive (rather than zero or negative) outcomes; (3) the use of high nominal (numerical) payoffs; (4) the use of high stakes; (5) the inclusion of highly attractive risky prospects that creates a contrast effect; and (6) the use of long experiments in which no feedback is provided and in which the computation of the expected values is difficult. In addition, the results suggest the possibility of learning in the absence of feedback: The tendency to select simple strategies, like “maximize the worst outcome” which implies “loss aversion”, increases when this behavior is not costly. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

In two studies, time preferences for financial gains and losses at delays of up to 50 years were elicited using three different methods: matching, fixed-sequence choice titration, and a dynamic “staircase” choice method. Matching was found to create fewer demand characteristics and to produce better fits with the hyperbolic model of discounting. The choice-based measures better predicted real-world outcomes such as smoking and payment of credit card debt. No consistent advantages were found for the dynamic staircase method over fixed-sequence titration.

We report a mathematical result that casts doubt on the possibility ofrecalibration of probabilities using calibration curves. We then discuss how tointerpret this result in the light of behavioral research.