This research explores the preference for playing order in games in which each ofseveral players draws a random event (e.g., a ball from an urn), with andwithout replacement after each draw. Three studies show that people tend toprefer to draw early regardless of whether the game is with or withoutreplacement, although the expected probability of winning is the sameirrespective of the draw order. The reasons for preferring earlier draws differdepending on the game type. For games without replacement, the biased preferencefor earlier draws is related to multiple motivational factors such as aversionto uncertainty, ambiguity, and uncontrollability. Game valence also affects draworder preference through the misestimation of winning probabilities: people tendto prefer earlier draws in a gain-dominant game (i.e., a higher probability ofwinning) but prefer later draws in a loss-dominant game (i.e., a higherprobability of losing). For games with replacement, preference for earlier drawsis mainly explained by uncertainty aversion, with little bias in probabilityestimations.

Previous research in economics, social psychology, and sociology has producedcompelling evidence that social norms influence behavior. In this paper we applythe Krupka and Weber (2013) norm elicitation procedure and present U.S. andnon-U.S. born subjects with two scenarios for which tipping and punctualitynorms are known to vary across countries. We elicit shared beliefs by havingsubjects match appropriateness ratings of different actions (such as arrivinglate or on time) to another randomly selected participant from the sameuniversity or to a participant who is born in the same country. We also elicitpersonal beliefs without the matching task. We test whether the responses fromthe coordination task can be interpreted as social norms by comparing responsesfrom the coordination game with actual social norms (as identified usingindependent materials such as tipping guides for travelers). We compareresponses elicited with the matching tasks to those elicited without thematching task to test whether the coordination device itself is essential foridentifying social norms. We find that appropriateness ratings for differentactions vary with the reference group in the matching task. Further, the ratingsobtained from the matching task vary in a manner consistent with the actualsocial norms of that reference group. Thus, we find that shared beliefscorrespond more closely to externally validated social norms compared topersonal beliefs. Second, we highlight the importance that reference groups (forthe coordination task) can play.

Games of pure mutual interest require players to coordinate their choices withoutbeing able to communicate. One way to achieve this is through team-reasoning,asking ‘what should we choose’, rather than just assessingone’s own options from an individual perspective. It has been suggestedthat team-reasoning is more likely when individuals are encouraged to think ofthose they are attempting to coordinate with as members of an in-group. In twostudies, we examined the effects of group identity, measured by the‘Inclusion of Other in Self’ (IOS) scale, on performance innondescript coordination games, where there are several equilibria but nodescriptions that a player can use to distinguish any one strategy from theothers apart from the payoff from coordinating on it. In an online experiment,our manipulation of group identity did not have the expected effect, but wefound a correlation of .18 between IOS and team-reasoning-consistent choosing.Similarly, in self-reported strategies, those who reported trying to pick anoption that stood out (making it easier to coordinate on) also reported higherIOS scores than did those who said they tended to choose the option with thelargest potential payoff. In a follow-up study in the lab, participants playedeither with friends or with strangers. Experiment 2 replicated the relationshipbetween IOS and team-reasoning in strangers but not in friends. Instead,friends’ behavior was related to their expectations of what theirpartners would do. A hierarchical cluster analysis showed that 46.4% ofstrangers played a team reasoning strategy, compared to 20.6% of friends. Wesuggest that the strangers who group identify may have been team reasoning butfriends may have tried to use their superior knowledge of their partners to tryto predict their strategy.

When evaluating a charity by itself, people tend to overweight overhead costs inrelation to cost-effectiveness. However, when evaluating charities side by side,they base their donations on cost-effectiveness. I conducted a replication andextension of Caviola et al. (2014; Study 1) using a 3 (HighOverhead/Effectiveness, Low Overhead/Effectiveness, Both) x 2 (Humans, Animals)between-subjects design. I found that the overhead ratio is an easier attributeto evaluate than cost-effectiveness in separate evaluation, and, in jointevaluation, people allocate donations based on cost-effectiveness. This effectwas observed for human charities, and to a lesser extent, for animalcharities.

Fallacies are a particular type of informal argument that are psychologicallycompelling and often used for rhetorical purposes. Fallacies are unreasonablebecause the reasons they provide for their claims are irrelevant orinsufficient. Ability to recognize the weakness of fallacies is part of what wecall argument literacy and imporatant in rational thinking. Here we examineclassic fallacies of types found in textbooks. In an experiment, participantsevaluated the quality of fallacies and reasonable arguments. We instructedparticipants to think either intuitively, using their first impressions, oranalytically, using rational deliberation. We analyzed responses, responsetimes, and cursor trajectories (captured using mouse tracking). The resultsindicate that instructions to think analytically made people spend more time onthe task but did not make them change their minds more often. When participantsmade errors, they were drawn towards the correct response, while respondingcorrectly was more straightforward. The results are compatible with“smart intuition” accounts of dual-process theories of reasoning,rather than with corrective default-interventionist accounts. The findings arediscussed in relation to whether theories developed to account for formalreasoning can help to explain the processing of everyday arguments.

Believers of karma believe in ethical causation where good and bad outcomes canbe traced to past moral and immoral acts. Karmic belief may have importantinterpersonal consequences. We investigated whether American Christians expectmore trustworthiness from (and are more likely to trust) interaction partnerswho believe in karma. We conducted an incentivized study of the trust game whereinteraction partners had different beliefs in karma and God. Participantsexpected more trustworthiness from (and were more likely to trust) karmabelievers. Expectations did not match actual behavior: karmic belief was notassociated with actual trustworthiness. These findings suggest that people mayuse others’ karmic belief as a cue to predict their trustworthiness butwould err when doing so.

In two experiments, participants decided on each of several trials whether or notto take a risk. If they chose to take the risk, they had a relatively highprobability (from 75% to 95%) of winning a small number of points and arelatively low probability (5% to 25%) of losing a large number of points. Theloss amounts varied so that the expected value of taking the risk was positiveon some trials, zero on others, and negative on the rest. The main independentvariable was whether the probability of losing was communicated using numericalpercentages or icon arrays. Both experiments included random icon arrays, inwhich the icons representing losses were randomly distributed throughout thearray. Experiment 2 also included grouped icon arrays, in which the iconsrepresenting losses were grouped at the bottom of the array. Neither type oficon array led to better performance in the task. However, the random iconarrays led to less risk taking than the numerical percentages or the groupedicon arrays, especially at the higher loss probabilities. In a third experiment,participants made direct judgments of the percentages and probabilitiesrepresented by the icon arrays from Experiment 2. The results supported the ideathat random arrays lead to less risk taking because they are perceived torepresent greater loss probabilities. These results have several implicationsfor the study of icon arrays and their use in risk communication.

Humans are evidently able to learn contingencies from the co-occurrence of cuesand outcomes. But how do humans judge contingencies when observations of cue andoutcome are learned on different occasions? The pseudocontingency frameworkproposes that humans rely on base-rate correlations across contexts, that is,whether outcome base rates increase or decrease with cue base rates. Here, weelaborate on an alternative mechanism for pseudocontingencies that exploits baserate information within contexts. In two experiments, cue and outcome base ratesvaried across four contexts, but the correlation by base rates was kept constantat zero. In some contexts, cue and outcome base rates were aligned (e.g., cueand outcome base rates were both high). In other contexts, cue and outcome baserates were misaligned (e.g., cue base rate was high, but outcome base rate waslow). Judged contingencies were more positive for contexts in which cue andoutcome base rates were aligned than in contexts in which cue and outcome baserates were misaligned. Our findings indicate that people use the alignment ofbase rates to infer contingencies conditional on the context. As such, they lendsupport to the pseudocontingency framework, which predicts that decision makersrely on base rates to approximate contingencies. However, they challengeprevious conceptions of pseudocontingencies as a uniform inference fromcorrelated base rates. Instead, they suggest that people possess a repertoire ofmultiple contingency inferences that differ with regard to informationalrequirements and areas of applicability.

According to normative decision-making theories, the composition of a choice setshould not affect people’s preferences regarding the different options.This assumption contrasts with decades of research that have identified multiplesituations in which this principle is violated, leading to context effects.Recently, research on context effects has been extended to the domain ofexperience-based choices, where it has been shown that forgone outcomes fromirrelevant alternatives affect preferences — an accentuation effect. Morespecifically, it has been shown that an option presented in a situation in whichits outcomes are salient across several trials is evaluated more positively thanin a context in which its outcomes are less salient. In the present study, weinvestigated whether irrelevant information affects preferences as much asrelevant information. In two experiments, individuals completed a learning taskwith partial feedback. We found that past outcomes from non-chosen options,which contain no relevant information at all, led to the same accentuationeffect as did counterfactual outcomes that provided new and relevantinformation. However, if the information is entirely irrelevant (from optionsthat could not have been chosen), individuals ignored it, thus ruling out apurely perceptual account of the accentuation effect. These results providefurther support for the influence of salience on learning and highlight thenecessity of mechanistic accounts in decision-making research.

Above-and-below-average effects are well-known phenomena that arise whencomparing oneself to others. Kruger (1999) found that people rate themselves asabove average for easy abilities and below average for difficult abilities. Weconducted a successful pre-registered replication of Kruger’s (1999)Study 1, the first demonstration of the core phenomenon (N =756, US MTurk workers). Extending the replication to also include abetween-subject design, we added two conditions manipulating easy and difficultinterpretations of the original ability domains, and with an additionaldependent variable measuring perceived difficulty. We observed anabove-average-effect in the easy extension and below-average-effect in thedifficult extension, compared to the neutral replication condition. Bothextension conditions were perceived as less ambiguous than the original neutralcondition. Overall, we conclude strong empirical support for Kruger’sabove-and-below-average effects, with boundary conditions laid out in theextensions expanding both generalizability and robustness of the phenomenon.