The social circle heuristic : Fast and frugal decisions based on small samples

Whereas reliance on information from one’s proximal social environment for generalizing about the population has often been associated with erroneous judgments, this information is often valuable and can be exploited for making accurate inferences. The social circle heuristic is a judgment mechanism in which the content and structure of people’s social networks are used for making inferences about frequencies in the population in a paired comparison task. Because the heuristic has a stopping rule, judgments generated by it will often be based on small samples sizes. In this paper we present experimental evidence that shows both that the social circle heuristic can compete with a more thorough strategy, and that people actually apply it

Reverse Engineering tools: development and experimentation of innovative methods for physical and geometrical data integration and post-processing

In recent years, the use of Reverse Engineering systems has got a considerable interest for a wide number of applications. Therefore, many research activities are focused on accuracy and precision of the acquired data and post processing phase improvements. In this context, this PhD Thesis deals with the definition of two novel methods for data post processing and data fusion between physical and geometrical information. In particular a technique has been defined for error definition in 3D points’ coordinates acquired by an optical triangulation laser scanner, with the aim to identify adequate correction arrays to apply under different acquisition parameters and operative conditions. Systematic error in data acquired is thus compensated, in order to increase accuracy value. Moreover, the definition of a 3D thermogram is examined. Object geometrical information and its thermal properties, coming from a thermographic inspection, are combined in order to have a temperature value for each recognizable point. Data acquired by an optical triangulation laser scanner are also used to normalize temperature values and make thermal data independent from thermal-camera point of view.L’impiego di tecniche di Ingegneria Inversa si è ampiamente diffuso e consolidato negli ultimi anni, tanto che questi sistemi sono comunemente impiegati in numerose applicazioni. Pertanto, numerose attività di ricerca sono volte all’analisi del dato acquisito in termini di accuratezza e precisione ed alla definizione di tecniche innovative per il post processing. In questo panorama, l’attività di ricerca presentata in questa tesi di dottorato è rivolta alla definizione di due metodologie, l’una finalizzata a facilitare le operazioni di elaborazione del dato e l’altra a permettere un agevole data fusion tra informazioni fisiche e geometriche di uno stesso oggetto. In particolare, il primo approccio prevede l’individuazione della componente di errore nelle coordinate di punti acquisiti mediate un sistema di scansione a triangolazione ottica. Un’opportuna matrice di correzione della componente sistematica è stata individuata, a seconda delle condizioni operative e dei parametri di acquisizione del sistema. Pertanto, si è raggiunto un miglioramento delle performance del sistema in termini di incremento dell’accuratezza del dato acquisito. Il secondo tema di ricerca affrontato in questa tesi consiste nell’integrazione tra il dato geometrico proveniente da una scansione 3D e le informazioni sulla temperatura rilevata mediante un’indagine termografica. Si è così ottenuto un termogramma in 3D registrando opportunamente su ogni punto acquisito il relativo valore di temperatura. L’informazione geometrica, proveniente dalla scansione laser, è stata inoltre utilizzata per normalizzare il termogramma, rendendolo indipendente dal punto di vista della presa termografica

Physics of systems with motivation as an interdisciplinary branch of science

The paper discusses the fundamental characteristics distinguishing the natural and social systems from each other. It considers in detail the basic approaches, prospects, and possibilities of constructing mathematical description for social systems as well as develops the appropriate notions required to do this. The main attention is focused on systems with motion treated as a characteristic example of social systems where the development of mathematical description should demonstrate the crucial ideas of fusing natural and social sciences

Absolute and relative stability of loss aversion across contexts

Individuals’ decisions under risk tend to be in line with the notion that “losses loom larger than gains”. This loss aversion in decision making is commonly understood as a stable in- dividual preference that is manifested across different contexts. The presumed stability and generality, which underlies the prominence of loss aversion in the literature at large, has been recently questioned by studies reporting how loss aversion can disappear, and even reverse, as a function of the choice context. The present study investigated whether loss aversion reflects a trait-like attitude of avoiding losses or rather individuals’ adaptability to different contexts. We report three experiments investigating the within-subject context sensitivity of loss aversion in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Our results show that the choice context can shift people’s loss aversion, though somewhat inconsistently. Moreover, individual estimates of loss aversion are shown to have a considerable degree of stability. Altogether, these results indicate that even though the absolute value of loss aversion can be affected by external factors such as the choice context, estimates of people’s loss aversion still capture the relative dispositions towards gains and losses across individuals

Rationality in context: An analogical perspective

At times, human behavior seems erratic and irrational. Therefore, when modeling human decision-making, it seems reasonable to take the remarkable abilities of humans into account with respect to rational behavior, but also their apparent deviations from the normative standards of rationality shining up in certain rationality tasks. Based on well-known challenges for human rationality, together with results from psychological studies on decision-making and from previous work in the field of computational modeling of analogy-making, I argue that the analysis and modeling of rational belief and behavior should also consider context-related cognitive mechanisms like analogy-making and coherence maximization of the background theory. Subsequently, I conceptually outline a high-level algorithmic approach for a Heuristic Driven Theory Projection-based system for simulating context-dependent human-style rational behavior. Finally, I show and elaborate on the close connections, but also on the significant differences, of this approach to notions of "ecological rationality"

Vague heuristics

Even when they are defined with precision, one can often read and hear judgments about the vagueness of heuristics in debates about heuristic reasoning. This opinion is not just frequent but also quite reasonable. In fact, during the 1990s, there was a certain controversy concerning this topic that confronted two of the leading groups in the field of heuristic reasoning research, each of whom held very different perspectives. In the present text, we will focus on two of the papers published in Psychological Review, wherein the arguments of each of these groups were presented: