SJDM Annual Conference 2010
November 20-22, 2010
Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM) Annual Conference
St. Louis, Missouri
CRED researchers presenting at this year’s SJDM Conference:
David Hardisty, Shane Frederick, Elke U. Weber
“I can’t stand waiting!” Dread looms larger than pleasurable anticipation (Presentation)
Jennifer M. Logg, Poonam Arora
Through the green looking glass: Attention and attitude influence environmental behaviors (Poster)
Juliana Smith
The Impact Of Guilt On Risky Choice (Poster)
Katherine J. Thompson, David J. Hardisty, David H. Krantz, Elke U. Weber
How to Measure Discount Rates? An experimental comparison of three methods (Poster)
Kirstin Appelt & E. Tory Higgins
The choice is yours, but should it be? Assigning emphasis overcomes gain/loss asymmetries (Poster)
Maria Konnikova, Bernd Figner, Walter Mischel, Elke U. Weber
When self-control hurts: Financial risk-taking, stress, and illusory control (Presentation)
Abstracts:
When making choices about future events, we consider not only the pain or pleasure of the event itself, but also the psychological pain or pleasure of anticipating the event. In two studies with national samples it was found that dread is roughly twice as strong as pleasurable anticipation (aka, savoring), across multiple domains.
Interestingly, the anticipation of gains is sometimes pleasurable and sometimes painful (due to impatience), while the anticipation of losses is always painful. Furthermore, as anticipation value was found to predict time preference this pattern may explain why losses are discounted less than gains (the “sign effect”).
Being perceived as environmentally friendly has become socially desirable in many circles. However, it is unclear if the desire to be seen as “green” actually influences behavior. We examined this connection in a survey that asked 241 undergraduates to report their attitudes and behaviors vis-à-vis the environment. Importance of being perceived as environmentally friendly correlated with attention paid to energy consumption and predicted self-reported environmental behaviors, such as water and computer usage. The relation of being perceived as green to water and computer usage was partially mediated by attention to resource use.
Juliana Smith
The Impact Of Guilt On Risky Choice
Abstract: People often make consequential decisions when experiencing guilt. In light of the recent financial crisis, environmental stressors, and moral dilemmas that often ensue, we looked specifically at how the emotion of guilt influences risky decision making behavior. Using affect-inducing stories, participants were placed into one of two conditions: guilt vs. neutral. We found that guilt causes an increase in risk-seeking behavior. The level of experienced guilt at the moment of decision making mediates this finding: the guiltier the participant feels, the riskier the choice. Additionally, men experienced greater levels of guilt and were more risk seeking than women.
The present research compared three methods of determining intertemporal indifference points: matching (aka “fill-in-the-blank”), choice titration, and a new multiple-staircase adaptive choice measure. A diverse, national sample of 316 participants completed these measures, indicating their preferences for monetary and air-quality gains and losses delayed up to 50 years. Overall, choice-based methods performed better — especially for longer delays and air-quality outcomes — yielding lower variance, fewer errors, and better prediction of consequential decisions in another task. The differences among the methods studied here are striking, and suggest that care be taken in design and interpretation of discounting studies that use differing elicitation methods.
When negotiators are allowed to choose whether to emphasize their gain or loss issue, negotiators who choose their loss issue are more demanding on, and reach better negotiated outcomes on, their loss issue. Emphasizing the gain issue has no effect. When negotiators are assigned to an issue emphasis, the Role x Emphasis interaction is replaced by a main effect of emphasis. Negotiators are more demanding on, and reach better negotiated outcomes on, the issue they were asked to emphasize, whether gain or loss. Negotiators assigned an issue to emphasize overcome the gain/loss asymmetry resulting from choosing an issue to emphasize.
Individuals high in self-control have more success in many domains. Surprisingly we find they may also be more prone to costly financial mistakes. In two risky decision-making tasks, high self-controllers consistently underperformed low self-controllers, by failing to adjust their risk-taking and thus earning less money. We show that high self-controllers have higher confidence and perceived control even in situations that do not warrant them. Consequently, they fail to adjust their choices when actual control is limited. This may help explain why, when risk and stress unexpectedly increase (as in the 2008 stock market crash), high self- controllers may behave more irrationally.