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Implicit Decision making Dr Magda Osman Room 2.25 Office hours Mondays
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Are our choices the product of unconscious processes that we are unaware of, and have no control over? A. Yes B. No C. Unsure
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Learning objectives Understand the underlying differences between analytical and intuitive decision-making/differences between risk/uncertainty Have a good knowledge of the tasks used to examine dissociation between explicit and implicit forms of judgment and decision-making (e.g., framing tasks, base- rate neglect) Understand what the different theoretical approaches to explaining judgment/decision-making behaviour
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High order processes Reasoning: A process by which we transform/combine information in order to draw a conclusions/formulate laws/make general statements about the world Decision making: A process by which we select an action from a number of choice- alternatives in order to generate a particular outcome. Judgement: A process by which we make an assessment/evaluation/prediction regarding an outcome
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Conditions under which we make decisions: Risk Under Risk people are engaged in planning actions against knowledge of the probabilities of the outcomes following their actions. (Osman, 2011; Trepel et al, 2005) E.g. betting on the roll of a dice, or placing money on a roulette wheel.
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Conditions under which we make decisions: Uncertainty Under Uncertainty People plan their actions from limited/unavailable knowledge of the possible outcomes, and in which the probabilities of the outcomes following actions is not known, or cannot be known (Osman, 2011; Trepel et al, 2005) E.g., deciding on what to do after one’s degree, which house to rent/buy, how much to save for the future
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Rational Decision-making is based on: The problem itself is unambiguous There is a single well-defined goal All alternatives and consequences are known Our preferences can be clearly stated Our preferences are constant and stable There are no time/cost constraints We will make choices that will maximize our payoff
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Intuitive decision-making is thought to: Relies on non-conscious, non-rational, or non- linear thought processes Based on experience Integrates isolated information into an coherent whole Relies on biases (self-serving preferences) and heuristics (short-cuts)
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What these distinctions imply Processing distinctions: Dissociation between Explicit (analytical/rational) and implicit (intuitive) forms of decision making: i.e. an analytic form/normative form of decision making - Conscious i.e. an heuristic/intuitive form of decision making Non-conscious
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Varieties of Decision-Making Tasks Framing problems Conjunction Fallacy Non-deliberate thinking task Base-rates
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Principle of invariance: Preferences should be the same across contexts (Savage, 1954) Tversky & Kahneman (1981) Framing task I: Asian disease Problem 1: Imagine that the US is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the programs are as follows: Program A = 200 will be saved Program B = two-thirds probability that no one will be saved, one-third probability that 600 will be saved ?
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Tversky & Kahneman (1981) Framing task I: Asian disease Problem 1: Imagine that the US is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the programs are as follows: Program C = 400 will die Program D = one-third probability that no one will dies, two-thirds probability that 600 will die ?
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What type of task is this: A. Reasoning task B. Decision-making task C. Judgment task
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General findings… Program A over B (72% vs 28%) Program D over C (78% vs. 22%) But, A and C are equivalent, and B and D are equivalent, so why the shift? Frame 1 = gains (in terms of those saved) Frame 2 = losses (in terms of those died) In the first case people were risk averse In the second case people were risk seeking
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Conjunction fallacy Tversky & Kahneman (1983) Example: Linda is 31, single, outspoken, & bright. She studied philosophy at university, and was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and participated in anti-war demonstrations Judge the likelihood of each of the following statements: 1. Linda is a teacher in a primary school 2. Linda works in a bookstore and takes Yoga classes 3. Linda is active in the feminist movement 4. Linda is a member of the league of women voter 5. Linda is a cashier in a bank 6. Linda is a cashier in a bank and is active in the feminist movement LINDA conjunction
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People violate the extension law of probability: A conjunction cannot be more probable than its constituents People assume that Linda is likely to be a feminist bank cashier, than a cashier. But, Statement Cashier & Feminist could not possibly be more probable than the Statement Cashier because it presupposes that she is a Cashier. People typically show the representativeness bias Conjunction fallacy LINDA Cashier Feminist
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What type of task is this: A. Reasoning task B. Decision-making task C. Judgment task
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General findings Understanding probability theory doesn’t help improve performance (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983) Individual differences show that people scoring higher on SATs don’t commit the error, whereas those scoring lower tend to make the error (Stanovich & West, 1998) When solving the task– the ACC (Anterior Cingulate Cortex) is activated – which suggests that there is a conflict intuition and rational judgments (DeNeys, Vartanian, & Goel, 2008)
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But… …there are problems with the way the instructions are presented By changing the statement from “Linda is a bank cashier” to “Linda is a bank cashier whether or not she is active in the feminist movement” – reduces the rate of the fallacy from 85% to 57% Also, it might be that people are behaving perfectly rationally, because it shows that people are using social cues to make pragmatic inferences LINDA
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Non-deliberate thinking task People were presented with a choice between four cars (simple case – only think about 4 attributes, complex case thinking about 12 attributes: Car 1 (75% positive attributes) Car 2 (50% positive attributes) Car 3 (50% positive attributes) Car 4 (25% positive attributes) People either spent 4 minutes thinking about which car they would choose, or spent 4 minutes solving anagrams not thinking about cars at all. At the end of the 4 minutes both groups were asked to decide which car they would have. In the complex case more people solving the anagrams made the correct choice.
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Base-rate task Kahneman & Tversky (1973) Choose from the following options: less than 10%, 10-30%, 30-50%, 50-70%, 70-90%, over 90% A cab was involved in a hit and run accident at night. Two cab companies, the GREEN and the BLUE, operate in that in which the accident occurred. 85% of the cabs in the city are GREEN, 15% are BLUE. A witness identified a BLUE cab. The reliability of the witness was tested and shown to be 80% reliable. What is the probability that the cab involved in the accident was Blue?
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What type of task is this: A. Reasoning task B. Decision-making task C. Judgment task
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Base-rate task Kahneman & Tversky (1973) Most respond 80% - The task demonstrates that people neglect base-rate information (i.e. the actual number of blue cabs in the city) It demonstrates peoples’ reliance on erroneous intuitions (the representativeness” heuristic)
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Baserate-updated A psychologist wrote thumbnail descriptions of a sample of 1000 participants consisting of 995 females and 5 males. The description below was chosen at random from the 1000 available descriptions. Jo is 23 years old and is finishing a degree in engineering. On Friday nights, Jo likes to go out cruising with friends while listening to loud music and drinking beer. Which one of the following two statements is most likely? a. Jo is a man b. Jo is a woman (DeNeys et al, 2010)
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Summary of general findings People typically make errors in decision making tasks They usually find it difficult to show insight into the reasons behind their answers Even when they gain insight, they tend to default back to their erroneous thinking People show highly biased contextualised experiential thinking People show difficulty adopting or implementing normative standards (logic, probability theory) to solve problems correctly
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Theories of decision making Evolutionary theory Prospect theory Dual Process theory
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Evolutionary Theories Argument – (Brase, Cosmides & Tooby, 1998, 2013; Gigerenzer, 1996; Pinker, 1997) 1. People have problems thinking in terms of probabilities/logic – because the reasoning and decision making system isn’t adapted to handle this information 2. When decision making tasks are changed to refer to frequencies -usually people do very well 1. This reflects a natural tendency that people have, like animals – represent the world in terms of frequencies not probabilities. 3. People use heuristics - evolutionarily old, and reflect processing biases in the way we are adapted to process social information.
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Argument – (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Kahneman, 2012) People assign a value to each outcome, and a probability estimate (i.e. how likely it is to happen) They translate the probabilities associated with those outcome into decision weight They combine the values & weights into prospective values – i.e. what they hope to get. Decision - The prospect values are then applied to make the appropriate decision Prospect Theory
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Dual process theories Unconscious Thought Theory Dijksterhuis, Bos, Nordgren & van Baaren (2006) Dual process Theory Kahneman & Frederick (2002) Evans (2008) Stanovich & West (1998); Evans and Stanovich (2013) Conscious thinking is best suited to making decisions between choices that do easily be discriminated between based on few attributes. Unconscious thinking is best suited to making decisions between complex choices, in which there is a lot of information to consider. Reliant on heuristics, revealing biases (availability heuristic; Representativeness heuristic) in our processing.
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To what extent are you convinced that our choices are influenced by unconscious processes? A. Entirely convinced B. Somewhat convinced C. Unsure D. Somewhat unconvinced E. Entirely unconvinced
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Problems with dissociation accounts (Keren & Schul, 2009; Oaksford & Chater, 2006; Osman, 2004, 2008, 2013, 2014) 1. It is difficult to demonstrate double dissociations. 2. Using continuous data to find discrete differences. 3. Conflicts between intuitive and analytic reasoning are hard to account for in a 2-process model. 4. People rarely ever use one form of reasoning, they tend to show a blend of both
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Essay Discuss and evaluate the different theoretical and empirical approaches to demonstrating unconscious decision making
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