A normative theory of luck

Psychologists have identified heuristics and biases that can cause people to make assumptions about factors that contribute to the success of individuals and firms, whose outcomes may have actually resulted primarily from randomness. Yet the interpretation of these biases becomes ambiguous when they represent reasonable cognitive shortcuts that offer certain advantages. This paper addresses this ambiguity by presenting four versions (weak, semi-weak, semi-strong, strong) of a normative theory of luck that integrates insights from psychology with the chance model approach to predict the circumstances under which performance non-monotonicity occurs: higher performance may not only indicate greater luck, but also lower expected merit or quality. The semi-strong version is illustrated by examining the decoupling of citations of academic publications and their impact, illuminating when higher citations indicate lower quality. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of a normative theory of luck, emphasizing strategies to address situations where people mistake luck for skill

A Decision-Making Perspective to Negotiation: A Review of the Past and a Look to the Future

Over the past quarter century, the decision-analytic approach to negotiation has seen the development of a better dialogue between the descriptive and the prescriptive and has also attracted the interest of both academics and practitioners. Researchers have built upon the work in behavioral decision theory, examining the ways in which negotiators may deviate from rationality. The 1990s brought a renewed interest in social factors, as work on social relationships, egocentrism, attribution and construal processes, and motivated illusions was incorporated into our understanding of negotiations. Several promising areas of research have emerged in recent years, drawing from other disciplines and informing the field of negotiations, including work on the influence of ethics, emotions, intuition, and training

Creating Reciprocal Value Through Operational Transparency

We investigate whether organizations can create value by introducing visual transparency between consumers and producers. Although operational transparency has been shown to improve consumer perceptions of service value, existing theory posits that increased contact between consumers and producers may diminish work performance. Two field and three laboratory experiments in food service settings suggest that transparency that 1) allows customers to observe operational processes and 2) allows employees to observe customers not only improves customer perceptions, but also increases service quality and efficiency. In our fully specified models, the introduction of reciprocal operational transparency contributed to a 22.2% increase in customer- reported quality and reduced throughput times by 19.2%. Laboratory studies revealed that customers who observed employees engaging in labor perceived greater effort, better appreciated that effort, and valued the service more. Employees who observed customers felt that their work was more appreciated and more impactful, and thus were more satisfied with their work and more willing to exert effort. We find that transparency, by visually revealing operating processes to consumers and beneficiaries to producers, generates a positive feedback loop through which value is created for both parties

How Momentary Affect Impacts Retrospective Evaluations of Musical Experiences

Music is a temporal experience that can elicit fluctuating moment-to-moment intensities of affect, yet the relationship between moment-to-moment affect during a musical experience and subsequent retrospective evaluations (REs) of the experience is unclear. Three aspects of this relationship were investigated: overweighting of specific moments (peak and end), segmentation of an experience (cohesive [individual pieces] vs. segmented [collection of pieces]), and trend of experience (increasing vs. decreasing trends of affect intensity). Across two studies, participants (N = 123) listened to a recital (set) of six pieces and provided moment-to-moment evaluations of emotional intensity, as well as global REs of the pieces and the entire set. Trend was manipulated (between-subjects) by ordering pieces by increasing (Low-High) or decreasing (High- Low) emotional intensity. The peak-end did not contribute substantially to REs for individual pieces. REs of the recital relied on averages of global ratings of individual pieces rather than momentary affect, suggesting that segmented and cohesive experiences are evaluated differently. The Low-High group produced higher REs of emotional intensity than the High-Low group, demonstrating a trend effect. The average is proposed as the most appropriate predictor for REs in affective—including musical—experiences, with overweighting of certain moments based on memorability (rather than the peak-end). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved

Policy Bundling to Overcome Loss Aversion: A Method for Improving Legislative Outcomes

Policies that would create net benefits for society that contain salient costs frequently lack enough support for enactment because losses loom larger than gains. To address this consequence of loss aversion, we propose a policy-bundling technique in which related bills involving both losses and gains are combined to offset separate bills’ costs while preserving their net benefits. We argue this method can transform unpopular individual pieces of legislation, which would lack the support for implementation, into more popular policies. Study 1 confirms that bundling increases support for bills with costs and benefits and that bundled legislation is valued more than the sum of its parts. Study 2 shows this finding stems from a diminished focus on losses and heightened focus on gains. Study 3 extends our findings to policies involving costs and benefits of the same type (e.g., lives) generated by different sources (e.g., food vs. fire safety)

Knockdown of zebrafish Nav1.6 sodium channel impairs embryonic locomotor activities

[[abstract]]Although multiple subtypes of sodium channels are expressed in most neurons, the specific contributions of the individual sodium channels remain to be studied. The role of zebrafish Nav1.6 sodium channels in the embryonic locomotor movements has been investigated by the antisense morpholino (MO) knockdown. MO1 and MO2 are targeted at the regions surrounding the translation start site of zebrafish Nav1.6 mRNA. MO3 is targeted at the RNA splicing donor site of exon 2. The correctly spliced Nav1.6 mRNA of MO3 morphants is 6% relative to that of the wild-type embryos. Nav1.6-targeted MO1, MO2 and MO3 attenuate the spontaneous contraction, tactile sensitivity, and swimming in comparison with a scrambled morpholino and mutated MO3 morpholino. No significant defect is observed in the development of slow muscles, the axonal projection of primary motoneurons, and neuromuscular junctions. The movement impairments caused by MO1, MO2, and MO3 suggest that the function of Nav1.6 sodium channels is essential on the normal early embryonic locomotor activities.[[notice]]補正完畢[[journaltype]]國

The Impact of Visual Cues on Judgment and Perceptions of Performance

No matter what domain, the judgment of performance occupies a key area of investment. Experts are trained and societal institutions are constructed to judge performance, and to identify, develop, and reward the highest levels of achievement. This research demonstrates that experts are just as vulnerable as novices to being confounded by the vision heuristic--the dominance of visual information over more relevant evaluation metrics. Using a multi-method approach spanning laboratory experiments, surveys, interviews, and field data, this research explores the impact of visual information on judgment and decision making in performance contexts. The first paper indicates that professional musicians use primarily visual information to judge music performance, even when they report that sound is most important to their evaluations. The second paper highlights the underlying mechanisms that account for the dominance of visual information. Additional work elaborates on the generalizability of the vision heuristic to management domains. The third paper suggests that visible cues about leadership and team dynamics matter more to expert judges than the group performances themselves. In another set of studies, venture capitalists and investors are found to neglect the content of entrepreneur pitches, instead overweighting dynamic visual cues. Finally, the latest study demonstrates that the visual performance cues displayed by firm managers can lead financial analysts to make less accurate forecasts of firm performance. In sum, this research shows that both laymen and experts rely heavily on visual information in their judgments; this dominance extends to organizational contexts, where it can strongly bias performance assessments. These findings have implications for the optimal design of processes for professional selection and advancement, and communication in organizations

Naturals and Strivers: Preferences and Beliefs about Sources of Achievement

To understand how talent and achievement are perceived, three experiments compared the assessments of “naturals” and “strivers." Professional musicians learned about two pianists, equal in achievement but who varied in the source of achievement: the “natural” with early evidence of high innate ability, versus the “striver” with early evidence of high motivation and perseverance (Experiment 1). Although musicians reported the strong belief that strivers will achieve over naturals, their preferences and beliefs showed the reverse pattern: they judged the natural performer to be more talented, more likely to succeed, and more hirable than the striver. In Experiment 2, this “naturalness bias” was observed again in experts but not in non-experts, and replicated in a between-subjects design in Experiment 3. Together, these experiments show a bias favoring naturals over strivers even when the achievement is equal, and a dissociation between stated beliefs about achievement and actual choices in expert decision-makers.Psycholog

Naïveté and Cynicism in Negotiations and Other Competitive Contexts

A wealth of literature documents how the common failure to think about the self-interests of others contributes to suboptimal outcomes. Yet sometimes, an excess of cynicism appears to lead us to over-think the actions of others and make negative attributions about their motivations without sufficient cause. In the process, we may miss opportunities that greater trust might capture. We review the research on when people expect too little or too much self-interest in the intentions of others, as contrasted with rational behavior. We also discuss the antecedents and consequences of these naïve and cynical errors, as well as some potential strategies to buffer against their effects and achieve better outcomes in competitive contexts