A query theory account of the attraction effect

This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordData availability: The data sets are available on OSF and this is noted in the manuscript.We provide novel support for Query Theory, a reason-based decision framework, extending it to multialternative choices and applying it to the classic phenomenon known as the attraction effect. In Experiment 1 (N = 261), we generalised the two key metrics used in Query Theory from binary to multialternative choices and found that reasons supporting the target option were generated earlier and in greater quantity than those supporting the competitor, as predicted by the theory. In Experiment 2 (N = 703), we investigated the causal relationships between reasoning and choices by exogenously manipulating the order in which participants generated their reasons. As predicted, the size of the attraction effect was a function of this query order manipulation. We also introduced a bidirectional reason coding protocol to measure the valence of reasons, which confirmed support for Query Theory. We suggest the Query Theory framework can be useful for studying the high-level deliberation processes behind multialternative choices.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

Reexamining how utility and weighting functions get their shapes: A quasi-adversarial collaboration providing a new interpretation

In a paper published in Management Science in 2015, Stewart, Reimers, and Harris (SRH) demonstrated that shapes of utility and probability weighting functions could be manipulated by adjusting the distributions of outcomes and probabilities on offer as predicted by the theory of decision by sampling. So marked were these effects that, at face value, they profoundly challenge standard interpretations of preference theoretic models in which such functions are supposed to reflect stable properties of individual risk preferences. Motivated by this challenge, we report an extensive replication exercise based on a series of experiments conducted as a quasi-adversarial collaboration across different labs and involving researchers from both economics and psychology. We replicate the SRH effect across multiple experiments involving changes in many design features; importantly, however, we find that the effect is also present in designs modified so that decision by sampling predicts no effect. Although those results depend on model-based inferences, an alternative analysis using a model-free comparison approach finds no evidence of patterns akin to the SRH effect. On the basis of simulation exercises, we demonstrate that the SRH effect may be a consequence of misspecification biases arising in parameter recovery exercises that fit imperfectly specified choice models to experimental data. Overall, our analysis casts the SRH effect in an entirely new light. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, judgment and decision making </jats:p

Political attitudes and disease threat: regional pathogen stress is associated with conservative ideology only for older individuals

What environmental factors are associated with individual differences in political ideology, and do such associations change over time? We examine whether reductions in pathogen prevalence in US states over the past 60 years are associated with reduced associations between parasite stress and conservatism. We report a positive association between infection levels and conservative ideology in the USA during the 1960s and 1970s. However, this correlation reduces from the 1980s onwards. These results suggest that the ecological influence of infectious diseases may be larger for older people who grew up (or whose parents grew up) during earlier time periods. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the political affiliation of 45,000 Facebook users, and find a positive association between self-reported political affiliation and regional pathogen stress for older (> 40 years) but not younger individuals. It is concluded that the influence of environmental pathogen stress on ideology may have reduced over time.This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant numbers RES-062-23-2462, ES/K002201/1], the Leverhulme Trust [grant number RP2012-V-022], and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 788826