The Effect of Forecast Inconsistency and Explicit Uncertainty Estimates on Trust and Decision-Making

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2022The goal of this dissertation was to evaluate whether inconsistency is a substantial threat to trust in sequential predictions from a single advisor, and to test whether providing explicit uncertainty estimates can preserve trust in the context of inconsistency. Four experiments were conducted in which participants decided, according to a sequence of snow accumulation forecasts, whether or not they should close schools due to an impending snowstorm. Since prioritizing consistency in weather forecasts can be at a tradeoff to forecast accuracy, Experiments 1-3 used highly controlled forecast stimuli to directly compare the relative effects of inaccuracy and inconsistency on trust. In Experiment 4, findings from the highly controlled experiments were retested and extended with realistic forecast stimuli varying naturally in terms of inaccuracy and inconsistency. In addition, half of participants were randomly assigned to receive reliable uncertainty estimates for a threshold level of snow with the deterministic forecast. Across all four experiments inconsistency was less detrimental to trust than inaccuracy and appeared to confer decision-making benefits. Access to reliable uncertainty estimates amplified these benefits

Diametric Changes in Ventral Striatal Dopamine Release Regulate Drug-Taking and Drug-Seeking Behavior

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2017-03The overall goal of this dissertation work was to determine how drug-cue elicited phasic dopamine neurotransmission changes over prolonged drug use, in both drug-taking and drug-seeking contexts. My initial work, done in collaboration with Dr. Ingo Willuhn, illustrated differences in dopamine dynamics between striatal subregions during active drug taking periods, and demonstrated a causal role for ventral striatal cue-elicited dopamine signals in regulating drug intake. Through these studies, we found that decreases in ventral striatal phasic dopamine release evoked by drug cues drive the escalation of drug intake observed in rats given protracted drug access (Chapter 2). These results are consistent with one of the preeminent theories of drug abuse, which implicates ventral striatal dopamine in producing drug satiety and regulating drug taking behavior. Though altered dopamine transmission is implicated in most contemporary theories of drug abuse, the timing, context, and directionality of these changes remain a matter of debate. In contrast to the satiety theory, another large body of work suggests that ventral striatal dopamine mediates craving and promotes cue driven drug-seeking. Do these theoretical changes in dopamine actually co-exist? This is the question that has driven the bulk of my dissertation work. Drug cues serve different purposes in different situations. During drug taking, cues confirm the success of drug seeking actions and indicate imminent drug delivery, signaling that drug seeking can be terminated. In contrast, during reinstatement paradigms, the same cues, presented unexpectedly during abstinence, signal possible drug availability nearby and promote initiation of drug seeking. The objective of my work was to understand how the dynamics of ventral striatal phasic dopamine signals, evoked by drug cues that are presented unexpectedly during abstinence, differ from those observed during drug taking. To study this, I used fast-scan cyclic voltammetry, an electrochemical detection method that allows for real time monitoring of dopamine release in situ, in awake behaving animals, to measure cue-elicited phasic dopamine signals throughout cocaine self-administration and following long periods of abstinence. The main findings are summarized below: Unexpected drug cues elicit larger dopamine responses over drug taking history. I found that over the course of drug history, the directionality of changes in cue elicited signals obtained in drug-taking and drug-seeking contexts oppose one another. Specifically, cue elicited signals during drug-taking decrease over time, whereas, at the same time point unexpected presentation of the same cues in a drug seeking context produces larger dopamine signals over time (Chapter 3). Dopamine responses elicited by unexpected drug cues increase during abstinence. Studies by Grimm et al. (2001), and others, have demonstrated a positive correlation between the duration of abstinence, and resistance to extinguish responding for drug cues, a phenomenon that has been termed the “incubation of craving”. We hypothesized that this resistance to extinction after prolonged abstinence was mediated by an increase in cue elicited dopamine release. I measured unexpected cue elicited phasic dopamine release after one day or one month of abstinence and observed striking increases in dopamine release evoked by cues after longer periods of abstinence (Chapter 4). These increases in dopamine paralleled the incubation of craving, and increases in cue elicited drug seeking as assessed by conditioned approach behavior. These data are consistent with ventral striatal dopamine mediating craving and promoting drug seeking, an idea with empirical support from many previous studies. Collectively, these studies suggest that the dynamics of cue elicited phasic dopamine transmission depend upon the context in which cues are presented, and explain how dopamine in the ventral striatum might contribute to different, but equally important, core symptoms of substance use disorders

The Impact of Forecast Inconsistency On User Trust

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2019For high impact weather events, forecasts often start days in advance. Meteorologists believe that consistency among subsequent forecasts is important to user trust and can therefore be reluctant to make changes when newer, potentially more accurate information becomes available. However, to date, there is little empirical evidence for an effect of inconsistency on user trust although the reduction in trust due to inaccuracy is well documented (Gupta, Bisantz, & Singh, 2001; Kahn & Luce, 2003; Joslyn & LeClerc, 2012). The experimental studies reported here compared the effects of forecast inconsistency and inaccuracy on user trust. Participants made several school closure decisions based on snow accumulation forecasts for one and two days prior to the target event. Consistency and accuracy were varied systematically. Although inconsistency reduced user trust, the effect of the reduction due to inaccuracy was greater suggesting that it is inadvisable for forecasters to sacrifice accuracy in favor of consistency

Cognitive reflection predicts the acceptance of unfair ultimatum game offers

In the ultimatum game, one player proposes a split of money between him- or herself and another player, who can accept the offer (and both players keep the allocated money) or reject the offer (and both players get nothing). The present study examined predictors of accepting unfair ultimatum offers. In Study 1, 184 participants responded to an unfair ultimatum offer, completed a measure of cognitive reflection, and completed a self-report measure of rational and experiential thinking. Slightly more than half of the participants (54.3%) accepted the unfair offer, and cognitive reflection was positively correlated with accepting unfair offers. The rational and experiential thinking scales were not significantly correlated with ultimatum decisions. In Study 2, 306 participants responded to 20 ultimatum offers that varied in fairness and completed an expanded measure of cognitive reflection. Performance on the cognitive reflection measure predicted the number of ultimatum offers accepted. These results suggest that rejecting ultimatum offers is related to intuitive, heuristic-based thinking, whereas accepting offers is related to deliberate, analytic-based thinking