Decision making with information search constraints: A process-tracing study

The present study examined the influence of information search constraints both on the information search pattern and on the perceived inner states during the decision making process. We arranged the following three information search constraints con-ditions: (1) An upper-limited-search (UL) condition in which a decision maker could not examine the same piece of information for the decision task more than once, (2) A lower-limited-search (LL) condition in which a decision maker had to examine every piece of information for the decision task more than once, and (3) A non-limited-search (NL) condition in which a decision maker could examine any number of information. Participants consisted of 76 female and male university students, which were randomly assigned into one out of three conditions. In line with the simplifying and the mobilizing hypotheses, the participants in the UL condition more often used non-compensatory simplifying decision strategies and more slowly checked for information than partici-pants in the LL and NL conditions

Perspectives on information acquisition: Rethinking its role in the construction of reason-based preferences

In an experiment, it was found that information acquisition format of the presented information affected both the nature of the preferences as well as the duration of depth of search and response latency. It was also found that participants attended more to negative than to positive information independent of whether their task was to select or reject alternatives. Finally, it was revealed that accountability lead participants to attend more to the information than if they were not accountable

How do decision heuristic performance and social value orientation matter in the building of preferences?

In the present study it was shown that both decision heuristics and social value orientation play important roles in the building of preferences. This was revealed in decision tasks in which participants were deciding about candidates for a job position. An eye-tracking equipment was applied in order to register participants' information acquisition. It was revealed that participants performing well on a series of heuristics tasks (availability, representativeness, anchoríng & adjustment, and attribution) including a confidence judgment also behaved more accurately than low performers in the fulfillment of the preference tasks. It was also established that the high performers were not as influenced by whether uncertainty was presented in terms of probabilities or in terms of frequencies as was the low performers. With regard to social value orientation the results revealed that decision processing differences were more systematic between cooperators and competitors than between cooperators and individualists. Also, the cooperators did not seem to attend more to proenvironmental goals than to profit goals in the evaluation of the candidates. Finally, it was shown that accountable cooperators invested more time in their decisions than those that were not accountable, and that no such difference was observed between accountable and not accountable competitors or individualists

Effects of reward on self-regulation, intrinsic motivation and creativity

This article evaluates the effects of two types of rewards (performance-contingent versus engagement-contingent) on self-regulation, intrinsic motivation and creativity. Forty-two undergraduate students were randomly assigned to three conditions; i.e. a performance-contingent reward group, an engagement-contingent reward group and a control group. Results provide little support for the negative effects of performance rewards on motivational components. However, they do indicate that participants in the engagement-contingent reward group and the control group achieved higher rated creativity than participants in the performance-contingent reward group. Alternative explanations for this finding are discussed

A Study of Relationship between Helping Motives and Non-helping Motives for Prosocial Behavior

この研究の目的は，援助動機と非援助動機の関係を解明することである。191名の大学生は，25個の援助動機が援助の原因になると思う程度と，26個の非援助動機が非援助の原因になると思う程度を評定した。この評定得点を基に，動機間の相関値が算出された。そして，その相関行列に因子分析法，正準相関分析法，およびグループ主軸法などの多変量解析法が適用された。その結果，次のような知見を得ることができた。(1) 2種類の動機の領城は，まったく逆の関係にではなく，一次独立の関係にある。(2) 字義的に対応すると予想された援助動機と非援助動機は，実際の関係構造において，必ずしも対応しておらず，かなり複雑な関係となっている。これらは，援助行動の研究に際して，両動機の検討の必要性を示唆している。The purpose of the present study was to make clear the relationship between helping motives facilitating prosocial behavior and non-helping motives restraining prosocial behavior. Subjects (191 university students) rated the likelihood for each of 25 helping motives as a cause of helping and for each of 26 non-helping motives as a cause of non-helping. The correlations between motives were calculated by using the rating scores. Then, the matrix of the correlations was subjected to factor analysis, canonical correlation analysis, and group axis method. The main results were as follows. (1) Two domains of helping and non-helping motives were somewhat related. However, the relationship was not a reverse one. At least, they were not linearly dependent. (2) The relationship structure between the two domains of helping and non-helping motives was quite complicated. That is, the literally similar motives did not always correspond in the actual relationship between helping and non-helping motives. These results suggest that the researcher must examine the prosocial behavior from both points of helping and non-helping motives

Measuring the Response to Housing Energy Labels in Japan by Using an Eye-Tracking Experiment.

金沢大学人間社会研究域経済学経営学系This study focuses on energy labels, which are set to be displayed mandatorily in Japanese real estateadvertisements soon. In this study, we conducted eye-tracking experiments to identify effective designelements for energy labels. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that we not only collected data onreaction times and areas of interest (AOIs) using eye tracking, but also conducted a panel analysiscontrolling for individual effects by adding data from a questionnaire survey conducted after theexperiment. Our findings verified that the display of energy labels in real estate advertisements is likelyto lead to improved consumer understanding of energy conservation standards as learning effects. Thissuggests rehearsal effects that invited availability heuristics by appearing repeatedly. Moreover, theresults of the panel analysis suggest that design of energy labels are important on reaction time andnumber of round trips between the AOIs. We compared the two label designs in the experiment, theinformation in the European Union energy label was difficult to read and judge intuitively, and canconclude the rating scale label was more suitable for advertising and readers in Japan. As energy labelshelp with increased consumer awareness regarding energy standards of dwellings and energy saving,an early start to labeling is recommended

Influence of Biomedical Factors on the Five Viscera Score (FVS) on Middle-Aged and Elderly Individuals: Application of Structural Equation Modeling

The five viscera score (FVS) is a diagnostic scale for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The purposes of current study are to elucidate the characteristics of FVS obtained from middle-aged to elderly individuals and to investigate the validity of FVS using biological medical data of middle-aged and elderly individuals. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to conduct assessments between FVS and medical data. Eighty men and 99 women participated in this study, whose mean ages (SD) were 58 ± 7 years in both genders showing no significant difference. FVS of women was significantly higher than that of men in the spleen of the 50s (P=0.019) and liver of the 60s age group (P=0.030). By SEM, the following biomedical factors were found to influence viscera: gender, diastolic blood pressure, and HDL-C for the liver; GLU, GOT, and γ-GTP for the spleen; age, BMI, and HCRP for the lungs; and HbA1c and creatinine clearance for the kidneys. These results provide objective evidence that FVS can be used for TCM diagnosis in middle-aged and elderly individuals