Decision Research

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/22169

Founded in 1976, Decision Research is dedicated to helping individuals and organizations understand and cope with the complex and often risky decisions of modern life. Decision Research is composed of twelve research scientists, in four different countries.

Our research is based on the premise that decisions should be guided by an understanding of how people think and how they value the potential outcomes—good and bad—of their decisions.

We receive funding from US government agencies (including the Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and from private companies and philanthropic organizations.

Consult the website for more information about Decision Research.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 187

Open Access
Accident probabilities and seat belt usage: A psychological perspective
(Accident Analysis and Prevention, 1978) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Motorists' reluctance to wear seat belts is examined in light of research showing (a) that protective behavior is influenced more by the probability of a hazard than by the magnitude of its consequences and (b) that people are not inclined to protect themselves voluntarily against very low probability threats. It is argued that the probability of death or injury on any single auto trip may be too low to incite a motorist's concern. Maintenance of a "single trip" perspective makes it unlikely that seat belts will be used. Change of perspective, towards consideration of the risks faced during a lifetime of driving, may increase the perceived probabilities of injury and death and, therefore, induce more people to wear seat belts.
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The Affect Heuristic In Early Judgments of Product Innovations
(Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 2014) King, Jesse; Slovic, Paul
According to the affect heuristic, people often rely upon their overall affective impression of a target to form judgments of risk. However, innovation research has largely characterized risk perception as a function of what the consumer knows rather than how they feel. In three studies, this research investigates the use of the affect heuristic in consumer judgments of product innovations. The findings indicate that judgments of risks and benefits associated with product innovations are inversely related and affectively congruent with evaluations of those innovations. Additionally, more affectively extreme evaluations are associated with increasingly disparate judgments of risk and benefit. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of both consumers’ evaluations of innovations and the affect heuristic. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.
Open Access
Affect, risk perception and future optimism after the tsunami disaster
(Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 2008-01) Vastfjall, Daniel; Peters, Ellen; Slovic, Paul
Environmental events such as natural disasters may influence the public’s affective reactions and decisions. Shortly after the 2004 Tsunami disaster we assessed how affect elicited by thinking about this disaster influenced risk perceptions and future time perspective in Swedish undergraduates not directly affected by the disaster. An experimental manipulation was used to increase the salience of affect associated with the disaster. In Study 1 we found that participants reminded about the tsunami had a sense that their life was more finite and included fewer opportunities than participants in the control condition (not reminded about the tsunami). In Study 2 we found similar effects for risk perceptions. In addition, we showed that manipulations of ease-of-thought influenced the extent to which affect influenced these risk perceptions, with greater ease of thoughts being associated with greater perceived risks.
Open Access
Affect, Risk, and Decision Making
(2005) Slovic, Paul; Peters, Ellen; Finucane, Melissa; MacGregor, Donald G.
Risk is perceived and acted on in 2 fundamental ways. Risk as feelings refers to individuals' fast, instinctive, and intuitive reactions to danger. Risk as analysis brings logic, reason, and scientific deliberation to bear on risk management. Reliance on risk as feelings is described with "the affect heuristic." The authors trace the development of this heuristic across a variety of research paths. The authors also discuss some of the important practical implications resulting from ways that this heuristic impacts how people perceive and evaluate risk, and, more generally, how it influences all human decision making. Finally, some important implications of the affect heuristic for communication and decision making pertaining to cancer prevention and treatment are briefly discussed.
Open Access
Affect, Values, and Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions: An Experimental Investigation
(Yale Law School, 2007-03) Kahan, Dan; Slovic, Paul; Braman, Donald; Gastil, John; Cohen, Geoffrey
Despite knowing little about nanotechnology (so to speak), members of the public readily form opinions on whether its potential risks outweigh its potential benefits. On what basis are they forming their judgments? How are their views likely to evolve as they become exposed to more information about this novel science? We conducted a survey experiment (N = 1,850) to answer these questions. We found that public perceptions of nanotechnology risks, like public perceptions of societal risks generally, are largely affect driven: individuals’ visceral reactions to nanotechnology (ones likely based on attitudes toward environmental risks generally) explain more of the variance in individuals’ perceptions of nanotechnology’s risks and benefits than does any other influence. These views are not static: even a small amount of information can generate changes in perceptions. But how those perceptions change depends heavily on individuals’ values. Using a between-subjects design, we found that individuals exposed to balanced information polarize along cultural and political lines relative to individuals not exposed to information. We discuss what these findings imply for understanding of risk perceptions generally and for the future of nanotechnology as a subject of political conflict and regulation.
Open Access
Affective reactions and context-dependent processing of negations
(Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 2008-12) Rubaltelli, Enrico; Slovic, Paul
Three experiments demonstrate how the processing of negations is contingent on the evaluation context in which the negative information is presented. In addition, the strategy used to process the negations induced different affective reactions toward the stimuli, leading to inconsistency of preference. Participants were presented with stimuli described by either stating the presence of positive features (explicitly positive alternative) or negating the presence of negative features (non-negative alternative). Alternatives were presented for either joint (JE) or separate evaluation (SE). Experiment 1 showed that the non-negative stimuli were judged less attractive than the positive ones in JE but not in SE. Experiment 2 revealed that the non-negative stimuli induced a less clear and less positive feeling when they were paired with explicitly positive stimuli rather than evaluated separately. Non-negative options were also found less easy to judge than the positive ones in JE but not in SE. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that people process negations using two different models depending on the evaluation mode. Through a memory task, we found that in JE people process the non-negative attributes as negations of negative features, whereas in SE they directly process the non-negative attributes as positive features.
Open Access
Age-related differences in adaptive decision making: Sensitivity to expected value in risky choice
(Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 2007-08) Levin, Irwin; Weller, Joshua; Pederson, Ashley; Harshman, Lyndsay
While previous research has found that children make more risky decisions than their parents, little is known about the developmental trajectory for the ability to make advantageous decisions. In a sample of children, 5–11 years old, we administered a new risky decision making task in which the relative expected value (EV) of the risky and riskless choice options was varied over trials. Younger children (age 5–7) showed significantly less responsiveness to EV differences than their parents on both trials involving risky gains and trials involving risky losses. For older children (age 8–11) this deficit was smaller overall but was greater on loss trials than on gain trials. Children of both ages made more risky choices than adults when risky choices were disadvantageous. We further analyzed these results in terms of children’s ability to utilize probability and outcome information, and discussed them in terms of developing brain structures vital for decision making under uncertainty.
Open Access
Alaskan Opinions on Global Warming
(Decision Research, 2006) Leiserowitz, Anthony; Craciun, Jean
Open Access
Analyzing the expert judge: A descriptive study of a stockbroker's decision processes
(Journal of Applied Psychology, 1969) Slovic, Paul
This study illustrates an analysis-of-variance technique for describing the use of information by persons making complex judgments. Ss were two stockbrokers who rated the growth potential of stocks on the basis of 11 factors taken from Standard & Poor reports. The technique proved capable of providing a precise quantitative description of configural and nonconfigural information utilization. Each broker exhibited a substantial amount of configural processing. The technique appears to have promise for providing experts with insight into their own processes and for teaching and evaluating "student" judges.
Open Access
Analyzing the use of information in investment decision making: A methodological proposal
(1972) Slovic, Paul; Bauman, W. Scott; Fleissner, Dan
Open Access
The Arithmetic of Emotion: Integration of Incidental and Integral Affect in Judgments and Decisions
(Frontiers Media, 2016-03-08) Vastfjall, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; Burns, William J.; Erlandsson, Arvid; Koppel, Lina; Asutay, Erkin; Tinghog, Gustav
Research has demonstrated that two types of affect have an influence on judgment and decision making: incidental affect (affect unrelated to a judgment or decision such as a mood) and integral affect (affect that is part of the perceiver’s internal representation of the option or target under consideration). So far, these two lines of research have seldom crossed so that knowledge concerning their combined effects is largely missing. To fill this gap, the present review highlights differences and similarities between integral and incidental affect. Further, common and unique mechanisms that enable these two types of affect to influence judgment and choices are identified. Finally, some basic principles for affect integration when the two sources co-occur are outlined. These mechanisms are discussed in relation to existing work that has focused on incidental or integral affect but not both.
Open Access
Attentional mechanisms in the generation of sympathy
(Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 2009-06) Dickert, Stephan; Slovic, Paul
Empathic responses, such as sympathy towards others,are a key ingredient in the decision to provide help to those in need. The determinants of empathic responses are usually thought to be the vividness, similarity, and proximity of the victim. However, recent research highlights the role that attention plays in the generation of feelings. We expanded on this idea by investigating whether sympathy depends on cognitive mechanisms such as attention. In two studies we found that sympathy responses were lower and reaction times were longer when targets were presented with distractors. In addition, online sympathy judgments that allow attentional focusing on a target lead to greater affective responses than judgements made from memory. We conclude that attention is an ingredient in the generation of sympathy, and discuss implications for research on prosocial behavior and the interaction between attention and emotions.
Open Access
Attitudes and Perceptions Associated with Osteoporosis and Its Treatments
(Decision Research, 1997-08) Satterfield, Terre; Johnson, Stephen; Neil, Nancy; Slovic, Paul
Open Access
Behavioral decision theory
(1977) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah; Fischhoff, Baruch
Open Access
Behavioral decision theory perspectives on protective behavior
(Cambridge University, 1987) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Open Access
Beyond Information: Exploring Patients’ Preferences
(American Medical Association, 2009) Epstein, Ronald; Peters, Ellen
The Institute of Medicine considers patient-centered care (“care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs and values” 1(p6)) to be a foundation of high-quality health care, along with effectiveness, safety, efficiency, timeliness, and equity. Patient-centered care is empirically based and promotes respect and patient autonomy; it is considered an end in itself, not merely a means to achieve other health outcomes.2 Two parallel efforts have furthered patient-centered care. Shared decision making promotes defining problems, presenting options, and providing high-quality information so patients can participate more actively in care.3 Patient-centered communication promotes healing relationships that elicit and consider patients’ perspectives and understand patients as persons. 2 Both approaches assume that patients can articulate preferences based on stable guiding principles or values. While this may be true in straightforward situations, in novel, unanticipated, and emotionally charged situations, preferences may not be elicited as much as they are constructed—shaped by how information is presented and by the opinions of family, friends, and the media. This Commentary explores how physicians might reconcile the imperative to provide patient-centered care with the complex ways in which clinicians and patients construct preferences.
Open Access
Can word associations and affect be used as indicators of differentiation and consolidation in decision making?
(Decision Research, 2002-02) Svenson, Ola; Slovic, Paul
Two studies investigated how free associations to decision alternatives could be used to describe decision processes. Choices between San Francisco and San Diego as a vacation city were investigated in the first study with US participants. The participants were asked to list any association that occurred to them while thinking about each of the cities in turn. After this, the attractiveness values of these associations were elicited from each individual. Half of the subjects gave the associations before the decision and half after having made their decisions. In congruence with Differentiation and Consolidation theory (Svenson, 1996), the attractiveness values of the associations were more supportive of the chosen alternative after the decision than before primarily on more important attributes. The results also showed that a significant number of associations were neutral and had no affective positive or negative value. The participants in the second very similar study were also asked to rate their immediate holistic/overall emotional reactions to each of the vacation cities (in this case Paris and Rome with Swedish subjects) before the start of the experiment and the associations. After having given their associations, rated them and made their decisions, the participants were asked to go back to their earlier attractiveness ratings and judge the strengths of the emotional/affect and cognitive/rational value components of each of the earlier associations. The results replicated the results from the first study in that the average rated attractiveness of the associations to a chosen alternative was stronger after a decision than before. However, the change was smaller than in Study 1, which was interpreted as a possible result of the initial holistic associations given in Study 2. It was concluded that the technique of free associations is a valuable tool in process studies of decision making, here based on the Diff Con theoretical framework.
Open Access
Categorical Confidence
(Decision Research, 1983-04) Fischhoff, Baruch; MacGregor, Donald G.; Lichtenstein, Sarah
People tend to be inadequately sensitive to the extent of their own knowledge. This insensitivity typically emerges as overconfidence. That is, people's assessments of the probability of having answered questions correctly are typically too high compared to the portion of questions they get right. Few debiasing procedures have proven effective against this problem. Those that have worked seem to be directive in character. Rather than improving subjects' feeling for how much they know, such procedures may have suggested to subjects how their probability assessments should be changed. These successful manipulations include giving feedback and requiring subjects to provide reasons contradicting their chosen answers. The present study attempted to improve the appropriateness of confidence with a nondirective method. Subjects were asked to sort items into a specified number of piles according to their confidence in the correctness of their answers. Subsequently, they assigned a number to each pile expressing the probability that each item in the pile was correct. It emphasizes confidence assessment over fact assessment; it forces the comparison of knowledge levels for different questions, it deemphasizes the need to produce numbers; it gives different hints as to the fineness of the discrimination that assessors can make. This procedure differed from its predecessors in many respects; nonetheless, performance here was indistinguishable from that observed elsewhere. Although some small pockets of improvement were noted, confidence was largely resistant to this manipulation. Such robustness is discouraging for the developer of elicitation procedures, encouraging for the student of judgmental processes.
Open Access
The causes of preference reversal
(American Economic Association, 1990) Tversky, Amos; Slovic, Paul; Kahneman, Daniel
Observed preference reversal (PR) cannot be adequately explained by violations of independence, the reduction axiom, or transitivity. The primary cause of PR is the failure of procedure invariance, especially the overpricing of low-probability high-payoff bets. This result violates regret theory and generalized (nonindependent) utility models. PR and a new reversal involving time preferences are explained by scale compatibility, which implies that payoffs are weighted more heavily in pricing than in choice. (JEL 215)
Open Access
Characterizing perception of ecological risk
(1995) McDaniels, Timothy; Axelrod, Lawrence J.; Slovic, Paul
Relatively little attention has been paid to the role of human perception and judgment in ecological risk management. This paper attempts to characterize perceived ecological risk, using the psychometric paradigm developed in the domain of human health risk perception. The research began by eliciting a set of scale characteristics and risk items (e.g., technologies, actions, events, beliefs) from focus group participants. Participants in the main study were 68 university students who completed a survey instrument that elicited ratings for each of 65 items on 30 characteristic scales and one scale regarding general risk to natural environments. The results are presented in terms of mean responses over individuals for each scale and item combination. Factor analyses show that five factors characterize the judgment data. These have been termed: impact on species, human benefits, impact on humans, avoidability, and knowledge of impacts. The factor results correspond with initial expectations and provide a plausible characterization of judgments regarding ecological risk. Some comparisons of mean responses for selected individual items are also presented.

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