Alexander John Maule

University of Leeds · Centre for Decision Research (CDR)

Understanding our cognitive and behavioral reactions to large-scale collective problems involving health and resource scarcity threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, helps us be better prepared for future collective threats. However, existing studies on these threats tend to be restricted to correlational data, partly due to a lack of reliable exp...

Humans frequently cooperate for collective benefit, even in one-shot social dilemmas. This provides a challenge for theories of cooperation. Two views focus on intuitions but offer conflicting explanations. The Social Heuristics Hypothesis argues that people with selfish preferences rely on cooperative intuitions and predicts that deliberation redu...

Religions promote cooperation, but they can also be divisive. Is religious cooperation intuitively parochial against atheists? Evidence supporting the social heuristics hypothesis (SHH) suggests that cooperation is intuitive, independent of religious group identity. We tested this prediction in a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma game, where 1,280 practi...

Understanding human cooperation is a major scientific challenge. While cooperation is typically explained with reference to individual preferences, a recent cognitive process view hypothesized that cooperation is regulated by socially acquired heuristics. Evidence for the social heuristics hypothesis rests on experiments showing that time-pressure...

Two prescriptive approaches have evolved to aid human decision making: just in time interventions that provide support as a decision is being made; and just in case interventions that educate people about future events that they may encounter so that they are better prepared to make an informed decision when these events occur. We review research o...

It is hypothesized on the basis of previous work that older people may be under greater stimulus control in a multisource monitoring situation with a signal frequency imabalance across sources than are younger Ss. The results obtained refute this hypothesis and show that older people are less selective. Explanations in terms of probability learning...

Decision making under uncertainty is fraught with pitfalls for human thinking: biases prevail. The combination of a scenario-based approach with multi-criteria decision analysis assists in making value judgements, trade-offs and uncertainties explicit. Scenarios, which are constructed in a distributed manner involving multiple experts from differen...

Much has been written in the past twenty years on the issues relating to the communication of food risks and safety issues to the public. Most of this research has been based upon post-hoc studies of what went wrong – or, occasionally, right. Here we survey those findings briefly and draw these into a general framework for risk management and commu...

When important information arrives intermittently at spatially separate sources people must divide attention if they wish to assimilate it. Previous research has demonstrated that, under appropriate circumstances, more attention will be allocated to those sources where the information is more likely to occur. Some recent studies have suggested that...

We consider food chain risks and specifically address stakeholder participation in the risk analysis process. We combine social and natural science perspectives to explore the participation process in relation to food risks and, in particular, to consider how some specific participation processes might be scientifically evaluated and how stakeholde...

The article considers the development of computer-assisted decision support in the context of contemporary research on the forms of thinking used by decision makers. It outlines the potential that computers have for overcoming known limitations in human thinking related to processing capacity and memory and the problems that occur when these applic...

The first edition of this book reported the authors' work in the Department of Health on developing a series of research-led training seminars for senior health services personnel to improve their processes of risk communication. This chapter reflects on what was learnt from these events, including how to design workshops and develop scenarios. The...

Research shows that individuals are ambiguity averse: they choose unambiguous over equivalent ambiguous prospects and price them higher (either as buyers or sellers). Moreover, it is often assumed that ambiguity averse individuals are willing to pay an ambiguity premium for information that reduces ambiguity [Camerer, C. F., & Weber, M. (1992). Rec...

The use of metaphor as a tool to uncover people's ideas, attitudes, and values through analysis of discourse is demonstrated and illustrated with data collected in a social science research project. A “discourse dynamics” approach to metaphor situated within a complexity/dynamic systems perspective is developed. This approach is turned into a metho...

Behavioural studies have shown that while humans may be the best decision makers on the planet, we are not quite as good as we think we are. We are regularly subject to biases, inconsistencies and irrationalities in our decision making. Decision Behaviour, Analysis and Support explores perspectives from many different disciplines to show how we can...

This study examined whether interfaces in computer-based decision aids can be designed to reduce the mental effort required by people to make difficult decisions about their healthcare and allow them to make decisions that correspond with their personal values. Participants (N=180) considered a treatment scenario for a heart condition and were aske...

There is a potential tension between the theoretical desirability of highly differentiated tariff structures and the ability of consumers to respond effectively to them. Evidence from studies of road pricing schemes and tolls, from other transport modes, and from other industries (notably telecommunications), is reviewed and its transferability ass...

To establish the role and value of written information available to patients about individual medicines from the perspective of patients, carers and professionals. To determine how effective this information is in improving patients' knowledge and understanding of treatment and health outcomes. Electronic databases searched to late 2004, experts in...

Objectives: To establish the role and value of written information available to patients about individual medicines from the perspective of patients, carers and professionals. To determine how effective this information is in improving patients' knowledge and understanding of treatment and health outcomes. Data sources: Electronic databases searche...

Decision framing concerns how individuals build internal representations of problems and how these determine the choices that they make. Research in this area has been dominated by studies of the framing effect, showing reversals in preference associated with the form in which a decision problem is presented. While there are studies that fail to re...

We explore ways for expressing and communicating uncertainties about food risks and the options for including views from different stakeholders, including members of the public, in risk assessment and risk management. Uncertainty is not only a major consideration of technical risk assessments but also needs to be understood within the two-way inter...

Several factors affect attitudes toward ambiguity. What happens, however, when people are asked to exchange an ambiguous alternative in their possession for an unambiguous one? We present three experiments in which individuals preferred to retain the former. This status quo bias emerged both within- and between-subjects, with and without incentives...

Our aim in this paper is to explore the use of soft modelling in an integrated risk communication and management process for managing uncertainties and ‘scares’ in the public domain, particularly in the area of food risk and safety. Much has been written in the past 20 years on the issues relating to the management and communication of food risks a...

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...

Two computer based studies examined the correspondence between decision outcomes from two different types of decision support and the decision derived from a ‘reasoned choice’ model. In Study 1 (N = 72), the impact of presentation (alternative-tree or linear) on participants’ decision, satisfaction with decision and their expectancy-vale (EV) ratin...

A review of theory and research on risk perception and communication, discussed in the context of the 'social amplification of risk framework', is used to identify factors that can inhibit effective risk knowledge translation. Individual and social factors, as well as those associated with trust, are considered in terms of their potential for atten...

The present study evaluates two alternative causal cognitive mapping procedures that exemplify key differences among a number of direct elicitation techniques currently in use in the organizational strategy field: pairwise evaluation of causal relationships and a freeh and approach. The pairwise technique yielded relatively elaborate maps, but part...

This project considers the extent to which the public could cope with complex price or tariff structures such as those that might be considered in the context of a national congestion pricing scheme. The key elements of the brief were: • to review existing studies of road pricing schemes to assess what information and evidence already exists on the...

Findings reported by Mezias and Starbuck (2003), indicating that managers have inaccurate perceptions of their organization and its environment, are appraised in the context of work from the field of behavioural decision-making (BDM) on heuristics and biases. Drawing on theory, research and criticisms concerning calibration of human judgement, cont...

IntroductionTheoretical Rationale and Research QuestionsThe StudyAcknowledgementsReferences

Wright and Goodwin (2002) maintain that, in terms of experimental design and ecological validity, Hodgkinson et al. (1999) failed to demonstrate either that the framing bias is likely to be of salience in strategic decision making, or that causal cognitive mapping provides an effective means of limiting the damage accruing from this bias. In reply,...

Three general issues emerge from the preceding papers: a confusion between judgement and related activities such as decision making, problem solving, and attitudes; differences in the underlying assumptions about the nature of judgement; and different approaches for testing the adequacy of theories human judgement. The implications of these issues...

How does negative mood affect risk taking? A brief questionnaire was used to measure state anxiety, depression, and fatigue, and a daily mood diary allowed state and trait (average level) mood to be separated. Studies 1 and 2 used natural moods and Study 3 a mood induction procedure. Risk was assessed using hypothetical everyday choice scenarios. S...

This paper reports the findings of two experimental investigations into the efficacy of a causal cognitive mapping procedure as a means for overcoming cognitive biases arising from the framing of strategic decision problems. In Study 1, final year management studies undergraduate students were presented with an elaborated strategic decision scenari...

Background: Everyone makes decisions about their health, and many healthcare interventions aim to encourage this. An informed decision is one where a reasoned choice is made by a reasonable individual using relevant information about the advantages and disadvantages of all the possible courses of action, in accord with the individual's beliefs. Obj...

This exploratory study uses qualitative approaches to investigate the process of sponsorship choice by drawing on concepts from the buyer-behaviour and decision-making literatures. Particular attention is placed on the types of organisational purchases, buying-centre composition and decision-making models. These issues are addressed individually an...

Older workers are often placed in an unenviable position in the face of stereotypes which define them as increasingly marginal in the work force, and view retirement in terms of status loss and disengagement. Yet voluntary early retirement schemes have been a recent feature of work organisations of all types in Britain, Western Europe and North Ame...

Following a brief review of research on special early retirement, provides a summary of a recent extensive study by Maule, Cliff and Taylor (in press) and re-interprets the findings of this study in the context of the development of effective early retirement schemes. Discusses effectiveness in terms of the factors which are important in the decisi...

Preliminary observations during a human factors analysis of a recently automated process plant revealed that operators sometimes assumed control over the production schedule, overriding the process computer. Interviews with senior managers suggested that such behaviour was rare, and only occurred under close supervision. This paper presents an anal...

Research investigating the effects of time pressure on judgment and decision making has tended to conceptualize the effects of time constraints in one of two ways. One approach has considered the imposition of a deadline as a stressor, emphasizing the mediating role of changes in affective state in influencing cognition (Maule & Mackie, 1990; Svens...

This chapter provides a general background to the studies of decision making addressed by the other contributors to the book. These contributions draw on a number of approaches, differentiated in terms of the aspects of the decision-making process that are the focus of attention and the theoretical and methodological approaches taken when conceptua...

Some years ago we, the editors of this volume, found out about each other's deeply rooted interest in the concept of time, the usage of time, and the effects of shortage of time on human thought and behavior. Since then we have fostered the idea of bringing together different perspectives in this area. We are now, there­ fore, very content that our...

Theories of visual sampling have been founded on the assumption that human monitors use an internal representation of the environment, which changes over time in accordance with the person's expectations. Experimental evidence supporting this view is equivocal since it is based on sampling performance averaged over long periods of a test session. T...

Decision making is such a fundamental part of human activity that a satisfactory explanation of how people choose between various courses of action would seem to be a central problem for psychology. Though there has been much research addressing this problem, until recently it has remained comparatively in-dependent of other areas of psychology wit...

Two experiments are reported in which elderly subjects showed less attentional selectivity than young subjects. The observing response (OR) task used was an analogue of an industrial monitoring situation in which faults occurred with different probabilities on three machines. When subjects were allowed to observe at their own rates, the mean fault...

This briefing paper was published by the International Security Programme at Chatham House, in conjunction with the New Security Challenges Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council. Copyright © The Royal Institute of International Affairs. It is available from http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/9803_bp1007islamuk.pdf In 2002 the UK’s...