Todd Mcelroy

Florida Gulf Coast University | FGCU · Psychology

We propose this variability in personal and social forces motivates differences in thinking propensity. Acknowledging the differences in level of thought, we provide an overview for how a person’s level of thought may interact with the difficulty of the decision task. We summarize by providing an overall model to assist in organizing and interpreti...

Decisions vary. They may vary in both content and complexity. People also vary. An important way that people vary is how much they think. Some prior research investigating thinking and decision making largely conflicts with most traditional decision theories. For example, if considering an array of products to choose from, thinking more about the a...

In this study, we systematically manipulate a person's state of sleep; Sleep-deprived and Well-rested along with Matching or Mismatching the decision time-of-day to their circadian preferred time-of-day. We assessed how these conditions influenced performance on an incentivized complex decision task. In the overall analysis of these variables no di...

Our study examines how chronic sleep restriction and suboptimal times-of-day affect decisions in a classic set of social tasks. We experimentally manipulate and objectively measured sleep in 184 young-adult subjects, who were also randomly assigned an early morning or late evening experiment session during which decision tasks were administered. Sl...

Chronic sleep restriction (SR) increases sleepiness, negatively impacts mood, and impairs a variety of cognitive performance measures. The vast majority of work establishing these effects are tightly controlled in-lab experimental studies. Examining commonly-experienced levels of SR in naturalistic settings is more difficult and generally involves...

Prescreen and test session survey instruments. (DOCX)

Raw data on all subjects. (XLSX)

Sample: This paper compared Israeli and U.S. samples with respect to the interactive effect of utility and construal level on unethical behavioral intentions. We found that construal level did not affect unethical behavioral intentions in neither the U.S. samples for low-utility level nor the Israeli for low- and high-utility levels. In contrast,...

Physical activity level is an important contributor to overall human health and obesity. Research has shown that humans possess a number of traits that influence their physical activity level including social cognition. We examined whether the trait of "need for cognition" was associated with daily physical activity levels. We recruited individuals...

We examine the impact of glucose in a choice task that can distinguish Bayesian from lower-level reinforcement heuristic choice. Drawing from a dual systems framework, we hypothesize that glucose administration will increase response times and improve Bayesian accuracy because it should shift decision making toward the more deliberate system 2 and...

• In this chapter, we illustrate how framing effects can be used to examine the complementary contributions of behavioral and neuroscience research in understanding neuroeconomic decision processes, particularly those involving risk. Framing effects are ubiquitous in everyday life, yet they can be studied under controlled conditions with simple man...

There has been very little research investigating the schema that Americans possess of the Irish. The purpose of this paper is twofold: Firstly, we wanted to establish a set of attributes that Americans relate to the Irish, and secondly, we wanted to explore how the Irish stereotype impacts judgments about those of Irish descent. In Studies 1a and...

In this paper we report the outcomes of two attempts to correlate the Zenhausern Preference Questionnaire (PT) with the Polarity Questionnaire (PQ). Across two laboratories we consistently found no correlation between these two scales. Our findings are consistent with a previous attempt to validate the PQ (Genovese, 2005). We conclude that research...

In this paper we set out to explore how the processing differences associated with the respective hemispheres would influence susceptibility to anchoring effects. To do so we provided participants with both a positive and negatively valenced anchoring task. Based on prior research, we predicted stronger anchoring effects under conditions of right h...

The ability to strategically reason is important in many competitive environments. In this paper, we examine how relatively mild temporal variations in cognition affect reasoning in the Beauty Contest. The source of temporal cognition variation that we explore is the time-of-day that decisions are made. Our first result is that circadian mismatched...

Considerable research has pointed towards processing differences as a viable means for understanding the strength and likelihood of a framing effect. In the current study we explored how differences in processing may emerge through diurnal patters in circadian rhythm, which varies across individuals. We predicted that during circadian off-times, pa...

Attribute framing effects involve the activation of associations that promote information encoding in a way that is consistent with the descriptive valence of the frame. For example, positive frames invoke positive associations and negative frames invoke negative ones—these associations are then mapped onto evaluations. To predict the strength of a...

We administer an online Guessing Game collecting responses across all 24Â h of the day. While time-of-day itself does not affect guesses, when including trait-level sleepiness and previous night sleep, adverse sleep states lead to responses significantly farther from equilibrium.

The current study looks at the role working memory plays in risky-choice framing. Eighty-six participants took the Automatic OSPAN, a measurement of working memory; this was followed by a risky-choice framing task. Participants with high working memory capacities demonstrated well pronounced framing effects, while those with low working memory capa...

The current study looks at the role working memory plays in risky-choice framing. Eighty-six participants took the Automatic OSPAN, a measurement of working memory; this was followed by a risky-choice framing task. Participants with high working memory capacities demonstrated well pronounced framing effects, while those with low working memory capa...

The study of risk preference has become a widely investigated area of research. The current study is designed to investigate the relationship between handedness, hemispheric predominance and valence imposition in a risky-choice decision task. Research into the valence hypothesis (e.g., Ahern & Schwartz, 1985; Davidson, 1984) has shown that the left...

In the present investigation we conducted three studies to examine how unconscious valence processing influences participants' quality judgments in an attribute-framing task. In Studies 1 and 2 we observed how individuals who had depleted cognitive resources, through distraction (Study 2) and time constraint (Study 3), differed in their responses t...

Research has shown that framing messages in terms of benefits or detriments can have a substantial influence on intended behavior. For prevention behaviors, positively framed messages have been found to elicit stronger behavioral intentions than negatively framed messages. Research also seems to indicate that certain contextual features contribute...

Research has shown that framing messages in terms of benefits or detriments can have a substantial influence on intended behavior. For prevention behaviors, positively framed messages have been found to elicit stronger behavioral intentions than negatively framed messages. Research also seems to indicate that certain contextual features contribute...

We explore the behavioral consequences of sleep loss and time-of-day (circadian) effects on a particular type of decision making. Subject sleep is monitored for the week prior to a decision experiment, which is then conducted at 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. A validated circadian preference instrument allows us to randomly assign subjects to a more or less pref...

People differ in their diurnal (time-of-day) preferences—some are morning-types and others are evening-types. These differences are explored in a unique experiment design in which subjects are randomly assigned to produce paper airplanes at either 8:00 a.m. or 10:00 p.m. Our results show that evening-types at their more optimal time-of-day (10:00 p...

Four studies examined the role of a decision's consistency with the orientation of the decision-maker in determining regret. In accordance with our consistency-fit model of regret, the consistency of a decision in relation to decision-makers' goals (Experiments 1), mood states (Experiment 3), and personality orientations (Experiments 2 and 4) predi...

In this article we examine how temporal proximity of an event influences decision task processing and, in turn, the likelihood of framing effects. We hypothesized that events occurring in the relatively near future should be more likely to induce the analytic processing style and result in attenuated framing effects. Events occurring in the more di...

We examined how the goal of a decision task influences the perceived positive, negative valence of the alternatives and thereby the likelihood and direction of framing effects. In Study 1 we manipulated the goal to increase, decrease or maintain the commodity in question and found that when the goal of the task was to increase the commodity, a fram...

Historically, research examining the influence of individual personality factors on decision processing has been sparse. In this paper we investigate how one important individual aspect, self-esteem, influences imposition and subsequent processing of ambiguously, negatively or positively framed decision tasks. We hypothesized that low self-esteem i...

Previous research on anchoring has shown this heuristic to be a very robust psychological phenomenon ubiquitous across many domains of human judgment and decision-making. Despite the prevalence of anchoring effects, researchers have only recently begun to investigate the underlying factors responsible for how and in what ways a person is susceptibl...

We examined how the goal of a decision task influences the perceived positive, negative valence of the alternatives and thereby the likelihood and direction of framing effects. In Study 1 we manipulated the goal to increase, decrease or maintain the commodity in question and found that when the goal of the task was to increase the commodity, a fram...

Previous research has demonstrated that consistency between people's behavior and their dispositions has predictive validity for judgments of regret. Research has also shown that differences in the personality variable of action orientation can influence ability to regulate negative affect. The present set of studies was designed to investigate how...

Previous research on anchoring has shown this heuristic to be a very robust psychological phenomenon ubiquitous across many domains of human judgment and decision-making. Despite the prevalence of anchoring effects, researchers have only recently begun to investigate the underlying factors responsible for how and in what ways a person is susceptibl...

Studies that have addressed questions concerning when framing effects are likely to occur have produced mixed results. In this article we examine how differences in personality factors influence a group–based framing task. Specifically, when high collective importance individuals evaluated a framing task involving their group no framing effects wer...

Two experiments were designed to investigate perceivers' self-evaluations when they received objectively positive above-average performance feedback but were told about another coactor who performed either moderately or much better than the participant. Results indicated that participants responded negatively to this comparison information even tho...

In recent decades the investigation of framing effects has become the foremost studied phenomenon of rational/irrational decision making. Two experiments were conducted to determine whether the functional specializations of the left and the right hemispheres would produce different responses to a traditional framing task. In Experiment 1, a behavio...

In recent decades the investigation of framing effects has become the foremost studied phenomenon of rational/irrational decision making. Two experiments were conducted to determine whether the functional specializations of the left and the right hemispheres would produce different responses to a traditional framing task. In Experiment 1, a behavio...

Under what conditions, why, and for whom are framing effects most likely? In this paper, we build on the existing literature (e.g., Chaiken, 1987; Epstein, Lipson, Holstein, & Huh, 1992; Evans & Over, 1996; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1988; Simon, 1956; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich & West, 2000), in providing answers to these quest...

Six experiments were conducted to test assumptions of a schema-maintenance through compensation analysis. The results of these experiments indicated that perceivers can compensate for the inconsistent action of one individual (the target) by altering their attribution concerning the action of a fellow group member. When the target performed an inco...

Experiments 1 through 4 investigated how different orientations to stimulus events influenced whether the addition of a mildly negative stressor to a highly negative one did or did not decrease stress. In Experiment 1, reductions in stress levels were obtained when perceivers concentrated on the negative implications of each stressor but not when t...

In 4 studies, the authors demonstrated that when errors associated with action were inconsistent with decision makers' orientation, they were undesirable and produced more regret than did errors associated with inaction. Conversely, when errors associated with action were consistent with decision makers' orientation, they were desirable and produce...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-69). Microfilm.