Cruel to be kind but not cruel for cash : harm aversion in the dictator game

People regularly take prosocial actions, making individual sacrifices for the greater good. Similarly, people generally avoid causing harm to others. These twin desires to do good and avoid harm often align, but sometimes they can diverge, creating situations of moral conflict. Here, we examined this moral conflict using a modified dictator game. Participants chose how much money to allocate away from a recipient who was designated as an orphan, creating a sense of harm. This money was then reallocated to either the participant or a charity. People were strongly prosocial: they allocated more money away from the orphan for charity than for themselves. Furthermore, people left more money with the orphan when the harm was framed as a means (taking) than as a side effect (splitting). As is predicted by dual-process theories of moral decision making, response times were longer with the take action and were positively correlated with the amount taken from the orphan. We concluded that just as people take positive actions for the greater good, they are similarly more willing to cause harm when it benefits others rather than themselves

Value is context dependent : on comparison processes and rank order in choice and judgment.

In psychology as well as behavioral economics, it is well established that our choices and judgments are not just a function of the available options, but also of the context surrounding them. Several models have been brought forward to explain these context effects. We use the decision by sampling model (DbS; Stewart, Chater, & Brown, 2006) and investigate possible mechanisms that might lead to the relativity of judgment and choice. Stewart, Reimers and Harris (2015) demonstrated that shapes of utility and probability weighting functions could be manipulated by adjusting the distributions of outcomes and probabilities on offer. Chapter 2 reports a multi-level replication where we find that these effects are robust, but that DbS is unlikely to be the (sole) explanation for its origins. We conclude that problems with revealing utility functions from expected utility fits may be responsible for biasing the shapes of utility functions. Chapter 3 shows that reduced working memory capacity, as manipulated by cognitive load, does not reduce the effects found in Chapter 2. This further points away from a DbS explanation of the above findings. In Chapter 3, we also find that cognitive load has no impact on risk aversion, but find that choice consistency is reduced when working memory capacity is reduced, which also challenges the prominent dual process theories. Still, the question where the differences in preferential functions come from, remains unexplained. Chapter 4 reviews over 20 behavioral as well as neurophysiological studies showing that even if the rank effects are an artefact of the estimation procedure, this does not question the many findings that support a model encompassing a rank-dependent evaluation of alternatives. In Chapter 5, we test this hypothesis in a new design, where a monetary outcome is evaluated in the light of another foregone outcome with a history of other foregone outcomes. In contrast to our hypothesis, we find no evidence for a rank-dependent evaluation here. In Chapter 6, we investigate how comparison processes can lead to the mutable-zero effect. In the mutable-zero effect, participants prefer an outcome entailing a “pay zero” or “lose zero” attribute over an outcome entailing a “receive zero” or “win zero” attribute. We find that the only comparisons that are made with “pay zero” are other payments and that the only comparisons that are made with “receive zero” are other receipts. This process leads to “pay zero” comparing favorably and “receive zero” comparing unfavorably, which in turn leads to “pay zero” options being preferred over “receive zero” options. Given the findings in Chapter 2 and 3 are robust, they point to a general problem with estimating preferential functions using models like expected utility theory or prospect theory. Chapter 3 and 5 were a first attempt at testing a DbS-predicted mechanism: In contrast to our predictions, cognitive load did not decrease context sensitivity. Instead, we observed a slight increase in random choices. Finally, in exploring the mutable zero effect, we added to evidence that comparisons spontaneously happen only within gains, or within losses, but not across gains and losses

Serial-position effects in preference construction : a sensitivity analysis of the pairwise-competition model

People have a stronger preference for options encountered earlier or later in a sequence than for options in the middle of the sequence. To account for these primacy and recency effects, Mantonakis et al. (2009) sketched a sequential updating mechanism, the pairwise-competition model. We propose a formal instantiation of the model and, using computer simulations, examine how the sizes of the predicted primacy and recency effects are affected by (a) variability in the quality of the options; (b) the number of options presented (sequence length); (c) the level of choice inertia (i.e., the tendency to stick with the current favorite); and (d) whether choice inertia dynamically increases over the sequence. We find that recency effects are reduced and primacy effects are increased with variability in quality as compared to without, and that this holds regardless of sequence length. A sizeable primacy effect occurs only with relatively short sequences or rather high levels of choice inertia. Dynamic inertia increases primacy effects and reduces recency effects, and the impact increases with higher inertia levels. We relate these results to empirical findings and derive novel predictions from the model