Cognitive processes, models and metaphors in decision research

Decision research in psychology has traditionally been influenced by the homo oeconomicus metaphor with its emphasis on normative models and deviations from the predictions of those models. In contrast, the principal metaphor of cognitive psychology conceptualizes humans as ‘information processors’, employing processes of perception, memory, categorization, problem solving and so on. Many of the processes described in cognitive theories are similar to those involved in decision making, and thus increasing cross-fertilization between the two areas is an important endeavour. A wide range of models and metaphors has been proposed to explain and describe ‘information processing ’ and many models have been applied to decision making in ingenious ways. This special issue encourages cross-fertilization between cognitive psychology and decision research by providing an overview of current perspectives in one area that continues to highlight the benefits of the synergistic approach: cognitive modeling of multi-attribute decision making. In this introduction we discuss aspects of the cognitive system that need to be considered when modeling multi-attribute decision making (e.g., automatic versus controlled processing, learning and memory constraints, metacognition) and illustrate how such aspects are incorporated into the approaches proposed by contributors to the special issue. We end by discussing the challenges posed by the contrasting and sometimes incompatible assumptions of the models and metaphors

Take the best or look at the rest? Factors influencing "one-reason" decision making.

Aspects of an experimental environment were manipulated in 3 experiments to examine the parameters under which the "take-the-best" (TTB) heuristic (e.g., G. Gigerenzer & D. G. Goldstein, 1996) operates. Results indicated TTB use to be more prevalent when the cost of information was high, when validities of the cues were known, and when a deterministic environment was used. However, large individual variability in strategy use was observed as well as a significant proportion of behavior inconsistent with TTB, expecially its stopping rule. The results demarcate some of the heuristic's boundary conditions and also question the validity of TTB as a psychologically plausible and pervasive model of behavior

Too hard, too easy, or just right? The effects of context on effort and boredom aversion

Despite people’s general desire to avoid cognitive effort, there is a limit to our parsimony: boredom, a state defined by a lack of successful mental engagement, is found to be similarly aversive. The work presented here investigates how context – the alternative tasks present and the environmental context – impacts people’s aversion to exerting cognitive effort and avoiding boredom via a demand-selection task. In a population of undergraduate students, we assessed how people’s willingness to exert mental effort (in a working memory task) is affected by the presence of an easier alternative (less cognitively demanding) or a boring alternative (doing nothing at all). To manipulate environmental context, we conducted the experiment online, where participants completed the task remotely, and in a controlled laboratory setting. We find people willingly seek out effortful tasks to avoid boredom, despite avoiding high demands when both tasks on offer required some effort. We also find large effects of the participants’ environmental context, with preferences for the most demanding task increasing by over 150% in the lab compared to online. These results bear relevance to theories that argue the costs of effort are determined relative to the alternatives available (e.g., opportunity cost theories). Moreover, the results demonstrate that researchers who deliberately (or inadvertently) manipulate effort and boredom must consider the effects context (both choice and environmental) may have on people’s behaviour.</p

Too hard, too easy, or just right? The effects of context on effort and boredom aversion

Despite people’s general desire to avoid cognitive effort, there is a limit to our parsimony: boredom, a state defined by a lack of successful mental engagement, is found to be similarly aversive. The work presented here investigates how context – the alternative tasks present and the environmental context – impacts people’s aversion to exerting cognitive effort and avoiding boredom via a demand-selection task. In a population of undergraduate students, we assessed how people’s willingness to exert mental effort (in a working memory task) is affected by the presence of an easier alternative (less cognitively demanding) or a boring alternative (doing nothing at all). To manipulate environmental context, we conducted the experiment online, where participants completed the task remotely, and in a controlled laboratory setting. We find people willingly seek out effortful tasks to avoid boredom, despite avoiding high demands when both tasks on offer required some effort. We also find large effects of the participants’ environmental context, with preferences for the most demanding task increasing by over 150% in the lab compared to online. These results bear relevance to theories that argue the costs of effort are determined relative to the alternatives available (e.g., opportunity cost theories). Moreover, the results demonstrate that researchers who deliberately (or inadvertently) manipulate effort and boredom must consider the effects context (both choice and environmental) may have on people’s behaviour.</p

Non-categorical approaches to property induction with uncertain categories

Three studies examined how people make feature inferences about exemplars whose category membership is uncertain. Participants studied categorized exemplars, were given a feature of a novel item and asked to make predictions about other features. Stimuli were constructed so that different inference strategies led to divergent feature predictions. Experiments 1 and 3 found that most participants used a feature association strategy where predictions werebased on comparisons with exemplars similar to the test item. Experiment 2 showed that the dominance of feature association over categorical approaches to reasoning was not an artifact of stimulus complexity

Do you want to know a secret? The role of valence and delay in early informationpreference

People tend to place value on information even when it doesnot affect the outcome of a decision. Two competingaccounts offer explanations for such non-instrumentalinformation seeking. One account foregrounds the role ofanticipation and the other focusses on uncertainty aversion.Both accounts make similar predictions for short cue-outcome delays and when outcomes are positively valenced,but they differ in their explanation of information preferenceat long delays with negative outcomes. We present a seriesof experiments involving both primary and secondaryreinforcers that pit these accounts against each other. Theresults indicate a consistent preference for non-instrumentalinformation even at long cue-outcome delays and noevidence for information avoidance with negative outcomes.This pattern appears to provide more support for theuncertainty-aversion account than one based on anticipation

The effect of noninstrumental information on reward learning

Investigations of information-seeking often highlight people’s tendency to forgo financial reward in return for advance information about future outcomes. Most of these experiments use tasks in which reward contingencies are described to participants. The use of such descriptions leaves open the question of whether the opportunity to obtain such noninstrumental information influences people’s ability to learn and represent the underlying reward structure of an experimental environment. In two experiments, participants completed a two-armed bandit task with monetary incentives where reward contingencies were learned via trial-by-trial experience. We find, akin to description-based tasks, that participants are willing to forgo financial reward to receive information about a delayed, unchangeable outcome. Crucially, however, there is little evidence this willingness to pay for information is driven by an inaccurate representation of the reward structure: participants’ representations approximated the underlying reward structure regardless of the presence of advance noninstrumental information. The results extend previous conclusions regarding the intrinsic value of information to an experience-based domain and highlight challenges of probing participants’ memories for experienced rewards

An evaluation and comparison of models of risky inter-temporal choice

Risky inter-temporal choices involve choosing between options that can differ in outcomes, their probability of receipt, and the delay until receipt. To date, there has been no attempt to systematically test, compare and evaluate theoretical models of such choices. We contribute to theory development by generating predictions from seven models for three common manipulations- magnitude, certainty and immediacy- across six different types of risky intertemporal choices. Qualitative and quantitative comparisons of model predictions to data from an experiment involving almost 4000 individual choices revealed that an attribute comparisonmodel, newly modified to incorporate risky inter-temporal choices, (the Risky Inter-Temporal Choice Heuristic or RITCH) provided the best account of the data. Results are consistent with growing evidence in support of attribute comparison models in the risky and inter-temporal choice literatures, and suggest that the relatively poorer fits of translation-based models reflect their inability to predict the differential impact of certainty and immediacy manipulations. Future theories of risky inter-temporal choice may benefit from treating risk and time as independent dimensions, and focusing on attribute-comparison rather than value-comparison processes