Dirk U. Wulff

How short- and long-run aspirations impact search and choice in decisions from experience

To what extent do people adapt their information search policies and subsequent decisions to the long- and short-run consequences of choice environments? To address this question, we investigated exploration and exploitation policies in choice environments that involved single or multiple plays. We further compared behavior in these environments with behavior in the standard sampling paradigm. Frequently used in research on decision from experience, this paradigm does not explicitly implement the choice in terms of the short or long run. Results showed that people searched more in the multi-play environment than in the single-play environment. Moreover, the substantial search effort in the multi-play environment was conducive to choices consistent with expected value maximization, whereas the lesser search effort in the single-play environment was compatible with the goal of maximizing the chance of winning something. Furthermore, choice and search behaviors in the sampling paradigm predominantly echoed those observed in the single-play environment. This suggests that, when not instructed otherwise, participants in the sampling paradigm appear to favor search and choice strategies that embody short-run aspirations. Finally, the present findings challenge the revealed preference approach in decisions from experience, while also suggesting that information search may be an important and potentially even better signal of preference or aspirations than choice.

Modeling Choices in Delay Discounting

In a recent article, Ericson and his colleagues (Ericson, White, Laibson, & Cohen, 2015) compared traditional utility-discounting models with a set of heuristic models of intertemporal choice. Traditional utility-discounting models assume that the greater the delay in receiving an option, the more its value is discounted, whereas heuristic models of intertemporal choice assume that decisions are based on simple rules involving attribute-based comparisons. Ericson et al. concluded from their cross-validation approach that heuristic models (specifically, the novel intertemporal choice heuristic, or ITCH, model) explain intertemporal choices better than discounting models do, a conclusion that is consistent with earlier reports (Dai & Busemeyer, 2014). More surprisingly, their results showed that all discounting models performed nearly at chance level and did not outperform even the baseline model (Fig. 1a). If these findings were valid, they would have major implications for hundreds of studies using discounting models. However, we demonstrate here that these conclusions are premature. Models of both classes are in fact rather good at predicting choice, and the jury is still out on which model—or which type of model—is best.

Risikoentscheidungen : Die Kluft zwischen Erfahrung und Beschreibung

Stichwörter Entscheidungen unter Risiko und Unsicherheit Erfahrungsund beschreibungsbasierte Entscheidungen Exploration Psychologie seltener Ereignisse Risikokommunikation Dieser Artikel gibt eine Einführung in das „Description-Experience Gap“ – der Beobachtung eines systematischen Unterschieds in Risikoentscheidungen aufgrund symbolischer Beschreibungen bzw. sequentieller Erfahrungen. Die „Kluft“ wird besonders deutlich bei seltenen Ereignissen, die zu viel Gewicht (Beschreibung) bzw. zu wenig Gewicht (Erfahrung) erhalten können. Ursachen und Implikationen werden diskutiert.