ArticleLiterature Review

How Actions Create – Not Just Reveal – Preferences

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Abstract

The neo-classical economics view that behavior is driven by - and reflective of - hedonic utility is challenged by psychologists' demonstrations of cases in which actions do not merely reveal preferences but rather create them. In this view, preferences are frequently constructed in the moment and are susceptible to fleeting situational factors; problematically, individuals are insensitive to the impact of such factors on their behavior, misattributing utility caused by these irrelevant factors to stable underlying preferences. Consequently, subsequent behavior might reflect not hedonic utility but rather this erroneously imputed utility that lingers in memory. Here we review the roles of these streams of utility in shaping preferences, and discuss how neuroimaging offers unique possibilities for disentangling their independent contributions to behavior.

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... 15 Furthermore, there exists another type of herding behavior known as "self-herding," which involves individuals replicating their past decisions. 16 This study develops a research model encompassing the multiple dimensions of these three types of herding behaviors (rational, irrational, and self-herding) and their impact on mobile payment use and continuance intention. The model is validated by analyzing responses from 507 mobile payment users across India. ...
... Self-herding is a herding concept related to an individual's tendency to follow their earlier decisions made in the past that previously led to satisfaction. 16 The fundamental assumption of herding continues, with individuals discounting currently available information in decision-making, driven by their past decisions, with the fundamental irrationality of herding playing in. 63 In terms of technology usage literature, habit is the closest construct, and we draw from habit to develop the influence of self-herding on the usage of mobile payments. ...
... Self-herding also signifies the ease of decisionmaking as users stick with one they have used before or their habit rather than spending time and effort collecting information on other new options. 16 While self-herding has been introduced by this study to technology usage literature, it is quite close to the concept of "habit" which has been used earlier in the literature on both technology use and mobile payments (e. g., 69,96 ). Habitual use of mobile payment technology, without conscious decisionmaking regarding the payment options available to an individual or without weighing costs and benefits 97 is driven by prior learning and essentially defines selfherding. ...
... This study reveals the difficulty participants face in detecting manipulations of their initial choices by an experimenter who replaced the picture participants had chosen with one they had not. Some authors have suggested that this effect could be the result of insufficient introspection [10][11][12] or an underestimation of the influence of environmental and situational factors [13][14][15][16][17]. ...
... CB could be the result of insufficient introspection [10][11][12] and of the under-estimation of the influence of environmental and situational factors (environmental factors include the participant's physical surroundings. Situational factors would instead consist of the general context of the situation they are currently in, such as the fact that they are participating in an online experiment) [13][14][15][16][17]. Yet, an attitude of openness allows meditators to obtain better introspective access [5,6] as well as an improved capacity to focus on environmental details [7,8]. ...
... Another primary explanation for CB is the under-estimation of the influence of environmental and situational factors in decision-making [13], likely linked to information processing [14,15,17,51]. Thus, thanks to the use of an analytical attitude, mindfulness meditators would be able to consider the importance of the influence of environmental factors during decision-making. ...
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The mindfulness trait is an intrinsic characteristic of one’s disposition that facilitates awareness of the present moment. Meditation has proven to enhance situational awareness. In this study, we compared the performance of participants that were split into two groups depending on their experience in mindfulness meditation (a control group naive to mindfulness meditation and a group of experienced mindfulness meditators). Choice-blindness happens when people fail to notice mismatches between their intentions and the consequences of decisions. Our task consisted of decisions where participants chose one preferred female facial image from a pair of images for a total of 15 decisions. By reversing the decisions, unbeknownst to the participants, three discrepancies were introduced in an online experimental design. Our results indicate that the likelihood of detecting one or more manipulations was higher in the mindful group compared to the control group. The higher FMI scores of the mindful group did not contribute to this observation; only the practice of mindfulness meditation itself did. Thus, this could be explained by better introspective access and control of reasoning processes acquired during practice and not by the latent characteristics that are attributed to the mindfulness trait.
... Due to non-commutativity of measurement with certain eigenbases, a quantum model naturally accounts for order effect, where one judgement can affect later judgements [18]. Also, the assumption in economics that choices reveal preferences and beliefs is challenged by several studies, suggesting that the process of decision contributes to the construction of preferences [19,20]. In this respect, the active role of measurement in quantum models offers a natural resemblance to choices that shapes the preferences. ...
... However, extensive evidence (e.g. [19]) points to a constructive role of choice, i.e. people seem to select an optimization criterion that depends on the faced task. The constructionist view of choice bears a striking resemblance to the "scissors" analogy of Simon's paper [37]. ...
... where the term f(π n ) plays the role of classical probability, and the term q(π n ) is the interference term. The detailed derivation of Eq (19) and the relevant explanation are provided in "S1 Appendix". As their classical counterparts, static quantum theories of decision-making are fundamentally unable to answer important questions, such as the effect of time pressure on choice and the distribution of response times [8,9]. ...
Article
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We present a short review of discrete-time quantum walks (DTQW) as a potentially useful and rich formalism to model human decision-making. We present a pedagogical introduction of the underlying formalism and main structural properties. We suggest that DTQW are particularly suitable for combining the two strands of literature on evidence accumulator models and on the quantum formalism of cognition. Due to the additional spin degree of freedom, models based on DTQW allow for a natural modeling of model choice and confidence rating in separate bases. Levels of introspection and self-assessment during choice deliberations can be modeled by the introduction of a probability for measurement of either position and/or spin of the DTQW, where each measurement act leads to a partial decoherence (corresponding to a step towards rationalization) of the deliberation process. We show how quantum walks predict observed probabilistic misperception like S-shaped subjective probability and conjunction fallacy. Our framework emphasizes the close relationship between response times and type of preferences and of responses. In particular, decision theories based on DTQW do not need to invoke two systems (“fast” and “slow”) as in dual process theories. Within our DTQW framework, the two fast and slow systems are replaced by a single system, but with two types of self-assessment or introspection. The “thinking fast” regime is obtained with no or little self-assessment, while the “thinking slow” regime corresponds to a strong rate of self-assessment. We predict a trade-off between speed and accuracy, as empirically reported.
... Although a few studies have empirically investigated temporal spillover effects in the context of nudging, there are several established theories in psychology that do point to this possibility, such as self-perception theory (Bem, 1972) and self-herding (Ariely and Norton, 2008). That is, in both self-perception theory and the literature on self-herding, the central premise is that new attitudes and preferences are not just determinants of our behaviour, but can sometimes also be the product of behaviour as they can be formed by observing our own behaviour. ...
... On the 2nd day, the nudge in the experimental condition was removed. Building on the theories that predict that behaviour can also be seen as the input to affect internal states (e.g., attitudes and identities), which, in turn, affect subsequent behaviour (Bem, 1972;Ariely and Norton, 2008;Bénabou and Tirole, 2011;Gneezy et al., 2012), we expected to find (1) an effect of the nudge on questionnaire choice on the 1st day and (2) an effect of the initial nudge on questionnaire choice on the 2nd day even when the nudge was no longer present. ...
... As discussed in the introduction, several theories predict that an attitude (Bem, 1972;Ariely and Norton, 2008) or even identity (Bénabou and Tirole, 2011;Gneezy et al., 2012) change could explain the temporal spillover effect. Therefore, in Experiment 2, we examined the options of a mediated pathway of changed attitudes and changed identity between two similar behaviours of which the first was initially elicited by the nudge. ...
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Nudges, such as defaults, are generally found to be effective in guiding immediate behavioural decisions. However, little is known about whether the effect of a nudge can be lasting, meaning that it spills over to subsequent similar choices without the presence of a nudge. In three experiments, we explored the temporal spillover effects of a default nudge. The results of Experiments 1 (N = 1,077) and 2 (N = 1,036) suggest that nudging participants into completing a longer questionnaire affected their decision for the same behaviour a day later without the presence of a nudge. However, nudging participants into a healthier food choice in Experiment 3 (N = 969) did not result in such a temporal spillover effect. The results indicated that participants' change in attitude towards the nudged behaviour may partly explain the temporal spillover effects. These findings suggest that for some, but not all behaviours, default nudges may have the potential to yield temporal spillover effects and warrant a further investigation of boundary conditions and facilitators of the spillover effects of nudges.
... This article argues that any attempt to adapt a robot's behavior to human preference needs to acknowledge that the robot can change human preference. This is due to the fact that although preference does influence behavior, behavior can predate and lead to the formation of new preference [3]. Certain forms of HRI thus run the risk of being manipulative if the Robot has some preference over human behaviour. ...
... It is also important to note that although preference does influence behavior, behavior can predate and lead to the formation of new preference [3]. Adapting a social robot's behavior to a user preference is not only a matter of preference learning; because the adapted robot behavior changes a user's behavior, it also can and will change a user's preferences. ...
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Human-robot interaction exerts influence towards the human, which often changes behavior. This article explores an externality of this changed behavior - preference change. It expands on previous work on preference change in AI systems. Specifically, this article will explore how a robot's adaptive behavior, personalized to the user, can exert influence through social interactions, that in turn change a user's preference. It argues that the risk of this is high given a robot's unique ability to influence behavior compared to other pervasive technologies. Persuasive Robotics thus runs the risk of being manipulative.
... Type 2 nudges are capable of activating both automatic response systems and reflective thinking that subsequently shapes behavior [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. It can create persistent behavioral change using psychological mechanisms such as memory of past utility, self-perception, and repetition. ...
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Background: A nudge intervention against Herpes Zoster, created and implemented in Italy, is presented in order to administer the Shingrix vaccine on a sample of frail patients, as required by the National Prevention Plan. Individual and contextual factors associated with vaccine adherence were investigated. Method: 300 frail adult subjects underwent a full vaccine cycle with recombinant-Shingrix vaccine (RZV vaccine). Hospital Presidia of the Salerno University Hospital Authority, a Hospital Presidium of the Salerno Local Health Authority, and the Public Health Laboratory of the University of Salerno (Campania) participated in the intervention. An ad hoc questionnaire was administered with the following scales: EQ-5D, PSS-10, MSPSS, and representations of HZ and its consequences. Results: Some variables, such as peer support, doctor–patient relationship, level of education, and perception of health, are important in vaccine adherence and information processing. The following factors emerged from the factor analysis: Trust in collective knowledge and collective responsibility (F1); beliefs about virus risk and vaccine function (F2); information about virus and symptomatology (F3); and vaccine distrust (F4). Factor 4 correlates negatively with social support indices (R = −0.363; p < 0.001). There is a significant relationship between factor 3 and satisfaction with national information campaigns (F = 3.376; gdl = 5; p-value = 0.006). Conclusions: Future vaccination campaigns should be built with the aim of personalizing information and developing contextualized strategies, starting from understanding the stakeholders involved, cultural contexts, and organizational settings.
... Much of daily life is characterized by at least some degree of autonomy: we regularly make decisions about the people, situations, objects, etc. that we choose to learn more about (or not). In this way, attitudes are not developed merely via passive exposure to information about various attitude objects, but rather, are often shaped by people's active sampling decisions (Ariely & Norton, 2008;Denrell, 2005). Thus, a true understanding of how evaluative learning processes unfold in real life requires also understanding how the ways in which people receive that information (e.g., via the autonomous decision to sample it) shapes the process. ...
Article
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People often have some degree of choice over the stimuli they sample and learn more about. These sampling decisions can play an important role in evaluative learning, with recent work showing that sampling a stimulus more frequently predicts a positive shift in its evaluation (Hütter et al., 2022). The current work suggests sampling does not merely have a direct effect of positivity on evaluations, but instead is malleable to people’s interpretations of their sampling behavior’s meaning. Across five experiments, participants sampled faces to interact with across a series of trials. On each trial, the sampled face was paired with a positive or negative image, and we manipulated participants’ sampling goals. Participants given a goal to sample for positivity showed a positive evaluative shift toward the faces they sampled more frequently, regardless of whether it was consistently paired with positive or negative images. Participants given a goal to sample in a balanced way tended to show a similar but weaker effect on evaluative shift. Finally, this effect was eliminated (or reversed) among participants given a goal to sample for negativity. Complementary shifts in evaluation were also observed for faces participants chose not to sample. Thus, these results highlight the role of people’s interpretations of what their sampling behavior denotes: in contexts in which sampling should not necessarily predict liking (i.e., when one’s goal is to sample for negativity), sampling a stimulus more (vs. less) often does not create positive evaluative shifts.
... Functional MRI studies have found that choice-making activates the reward system of the brain (e.g., the striatum) (Ariely & Norton, 2008;Fujiwara et al., 2013;Leotti et al., 2010), just as would other rewards such as money (Miendlarzewska et al., 2016;Murty & Adcock, 2017). The reward system is believed to interact with the hippocampus memory system to produce choice-induced memory enhancement (Murty et al., 2015. ...
Article
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People value the opportunity to exercise control over the environment or make their own choices. Recent studies have revealed that simply having the opportunity to make choices can facilitate memory performance, suggesting an interaction between reward (due to choice making) and memory systems. However, little is known about the electrophysiological basis of choice-related memory. In the current study, we used scalp electroencephalography combined with a choice encoding task to examine the role of theta oscillations (which have been widely connected to reward and memory processing) in choice-related memory formation. The encoding task had two conditions. In the choice condition, participants were asked to choose between two occluded memoranda by themselves, whereas in the fixed condition, the decision was made by the computer. Behavioral results showed the choice effect, with better performance in the choice condition than the fixed condition on the recognition test given after a 24-h delay. Increases in theta power during an early latency of encoding period predicted successful memory formation in the choice condition, but not in the fixed condition. Furthermore, decreases in theta power during a late latency predicted successful memory formation in both the fixed and the choice conditions. Finally, we observed increased theta power in the choice condition compared to the fixed condition during an early latency of encoding period and decreased theta power in the choice condition compared to the fixed condition during a late latency. Our results suggest that theta oscillations play a significant role in choice-related memory formation.
... There is a great deal of support for the constructive effects of choice, the phenomenon whereby the process of choosing actually influences the subsequent decision (e.g. [1][2][3][4][5][6]). For example, in Brehm's [7] original experiment, female shoppers were asked to evaluate the desirability of eight appliances. ...
Article
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The idea that choices can have a constructive effect has received a great deal of empirical support. The act of choosing appears to influence subsequent preferences for the options available. Recent research has proposed a cognitive model based on quantum probability (QP), which suggests that whether or not a participant provides an affective evaluation for a positively or negatively valenced stimulus can also be constructive and so, for example, influence the affective evaluation of a second oppositely valenced stimulus. However, there are some outstanding methodological questions in relation to this previous research. This paper reports the results of three experiments designed to resolve these questions. Experiment 1, using a binary response format, provides partial support for the interaction predicted by the QP model; and Experiment 2, which controls for the length of time participants have to respond, fully supports the QP model. Finally, Experiment 3 sought to determine whether the key effect can generalize beyond affective judgements about visual stimuli. Using judgements about the trustworthiness of well-known people, the predictions of the QP model were confirmed. Together, these three experiments provide further support for the QP model of the constructive effect of simple evaluations.
... Finally, even when participants are asked the same question, such as how attractive a face is, the instructions are sometimes different, with some implying personal attraction and potential mating desire for the person depicted (Kocsor et al., 2013) and others ignoring it (Chatterjee et al., 2009). While it is the case that different types of measures are strongly related, such as interval ratings being predictive of choice (Lopez-Persem et al., 2020), it is possible that one can influence the other (see Ariely & Norton, 2008;Izuma et al., 2010), and even when different questions lead to highly correlated ratings, such as pleasure and beauty , the relationship is rarely perfect. All in all, given that only a few studies have investigated such differences, it is important to take these considerations in mind when interpreting results from different studies. ...
Chapter
As one of the earliest domains of aesthetic experience to be studied systematically, there now exists a sizeable body of work on the behavioral basis and neural correlates of visual aesthetic appeal. Synthesizing work across approaches that seek to explain aesthetic preferences based on objectively measurable stimulus features or that emphasize individual differences and the importance of subjective factors, we adopt the view that aesthetic appeal arises from the interaction of a specific stimulus with the characteristics of a specific observer. Neuroscience research across a number of visual aesthetic domains, including faces, landscapes, architecture, artwork and dance reveals that several large-scale brain systems contribute to visual aesthetic appreciation. In the visual system, judgments of visual appeal are determined more by higher-level visual processing than low-level processing. Subcortically, both ventral and dorsal striatum, as well as the amygdala have been implicated in judgments of aesthetic appeal. A large number of studies using a variety of methods have found correlates of aesthetic appeal in prefrontal cortex, most prominently in medial prefrontal and orbital cortex. Other regions, including inferior frontal gyrus and the insula may also play a role for at least some domains, and there is evidence that the default-mode network, a brain system thought to support aspects of internally directed mentation, is engaged for highly moving artworks. While the question of ‘why’ particular individuals like particular images remains largely unanswered, we argue for a perspective that deemphasizes the role of specific visual features and focuses instead on the potential for aesthetic appeal to signal the presence of learnable information, linking visual aesthetic appeal to the intrinsic motivation to make sense of our visual world.
... Extensive evidence from behavioral and brain-imaging studies indicates that choosing an option increases its subjective value (Ariely & Norton, 2008;Brehm, 1956;Izuma et al., 2010;Sharot et al., 2009Sharot et al., , 2010. Nevertheless, it is less clear whether choosing which information to sample also increases the subjective value of information, boosting curiosity. ...
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In our connected era, we spend significant time and effort satisfying our curiosity. Often, we choose which information we seek, but sometimes the selection is made for us. We hypothesized that humans exhibit enhanced curiosity in the context of choice. We designed a task in which healthy participants saw two lotteries on each trial. On some trials, participants chose which lottery to play. On other trials, the lottery was selected for them. Participants then indicated their curiosity about the outcome of the to-be-played lottery via self-report ratings (Experiment 1, N = 34) or willingness-to-wait decisions (Experiment 2, N = 34). We found that participants exhibited higher curiosity ratings and greater willingness to wait for the outcome of lotteries they had chosen than for lotteries that had been selected for them (controlling for initial preference). This demonstrates that choice boosts curiosity, which may have implications for boosting learning, memory, and motivation.
... In agreement with the retrospective decision-making model, Ariely and Norton (2008) summarize in a review that actions can shape preferences for a course of action rather than individuals deciding based on pre-existing preferences. The perception and handling of risk will also affect decision-making (Slovic et al., 2005;Kang-Camerer, 2018). ...
... If an iterative machine learning algorithm is used, it becomes difficult to know whether the recommender system has learned about its users, whether the users have changed, or whether the system has taught users to behave in ways that maximizes the objective function . This becomes more difficult because of the bidirectional causal relationship between behaviour and preferences Ariely and Norton [2008]. A recommender system trained to maximise user 'engagement' has an incentive to change users' preferences [Everitt et al. 2021]. ...
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Iterative machine learning algorithms used to power recommender systems often change people's preferences by trying to learn them. Further a recommender can better predict what a user will do by making its users more predictable. Some preference changes on the part of the user are self-induced and desired whether the recommender caused them or not. This paper proposes that solutions to preference manipulation in recommender systems must take into account certain meta-preferences (preferences over another preference) in order to respect the autonomy of the user and not be manipulative.
... If choice perseverance accounts for the pursuit of hard-toget targets, are scientists and stalkers coasting on unattractive targets? Many studies have reported that choice per se increases the preference for a chosen target (Brehm, 1956;Ariely and Norton, 2008;Sharot et al., 2009;Izuma and Murayama, 2013;Cockburn et al., 2014;Schonberg et al., 2014;Koster et al., 2015;Nakao et al., 2016;Hornsby and Love, 2020). Through this choice-induced reevaluation, the chosen target becomes more preferred, which often leads an individual to choose the same option again. ...
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People sometimes persistently pursue hard-to-get targets. Why people pursue such targets is unclear. Here, we hypothesized that choice perseverance, which is the tendency to repeat the same choice independent of the obtained outcomes, leads individuals to repeatedly choose a hard-to-get target, which consequently increases their preference for the target. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted an online experiment involving an avatar choice task in which the participants repeatedly selected one avatar, and the selected avatar expressed their valence reactions through facial expressions and voice. We defined “hard-to-get” and “easy-to-get” avatars by manipulating the outcome probability such that the hard-to-get avatars rarely provided a positive reaction when selected, while the easy-to-get avatars frequently did. We found that some participants repeatedly selected hard-to-get avatars (Pursuit group). Based on a simulation, we found that higher choice perseverance accounted for the pursuit of hard-to-get avatars and that the Pursuit group had significantly higher choice perseverance than the No-pursuit group. Model fitting to the choice data also supported that choice perseverance can account for the pursuit of hard-to-get avatars in the Pursuit group. Moreover, we found that although baseline attractiveness was comparable among all avatars used in the choice task, the attractiveness of the hard-to-get avatars was significantly increased only in the Pursuit group. Taken together, we conclude that people with high choice perseverance pursue hard-to-get targets, rendering such targets more attractive. The tolerance for negative outcomes might be an important factor for succeeding in our lives but sometimes triggers problematic behavior, such as stalking. The present findings may contribute to understanding the psychological mechanisms of passion and perseverance for one’s long-term goals, which are more general than the romantic context imitated in avatar choice.
... In traditional economic theory, consumer behavior implies a rational decision aimed at maximizing personal gain and utility (Samuelson, 1938). It is a well-accepted idea that utility is a driving force for some human behavior, especially consumer behavior (Ariely & Norton, 2008). This means that the decision to purchase a product would be determined from the estimated advantages that the purchased item provides to the consumer. ...
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Many studies suggest that specific movements or postures with shared social meaning can influence mainly verbal stimuli evaluation. On the other hand, several visuospatial biases can interact with this influence. Thus, we tested whether both head and stimuli movements can influence individual attitude towards food pictures. In two experiments, we used images of common foods with a weak positive valence in association with two kinds of movements. In Experiment 1, head movement was induced by presenting food pictures with a vertical or horizontal continuous movement on a computer screen. Conversely, Experiment 2 was conducted to test the effects of participants' own head movements with respect to the same food pictures presented in a fixed position. In neither case did head movements influence product evaluation. However, Experiment 1 revealed that the continuous movement left-right-left in the horizontal condition improved the desire to buy and eat, as well as the willingness to pay for the product shown. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated, respectively, that this effect disappears if the stimulus does not make the return direction, and that it does not depend on the starting or final placement of the images on the screen. These findings are discussed in the context of embodied cognition and visuospatial bias theories.
... The psychological study also explored how people determine their self-identity from observing their behaviour [16,26]. A classic experimental study by Bem and McConnell [27] showed that individuals developed new attitudes based on inferencing about recent behaviour. ...
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Research has shown that the extent to which previous environmental actions are linked to people’s environmental self-identity influences subsequent environmentally-friendly behaviour. The study empirically examined the influences of recycling efforts on subsequent pro-environmental behaviour by PLS (partial least squares) structural equation modelling based on the survey data of 426 respondents in China. The results indicate that recycling efforts have a positive effect on pro-environmental behaviour through the mechanism of feelings of pride and environmental self-identity. We hypothesise that past pro-environmental behaviour is more likely to promote an individual’s environmental self-identity when the behaviour is incurred with a higher costliness. However, the results show that only when individuals autonomously perform costly recycling behaviour, the signalling strength of previous recycling efforts is higher to promote environmental self-identity. On the contrary, the high costliness weakens the signalling strength of previous recycling efforts through producing negative emotions. Our results show that when reminding people of their past pro-environmental behaviour in order to promote future pro-environmental behaviour, it is useful to emphasize the autonomously taken costliness of behaviour as it can strongly signal that one is a pro-environmental person, thus as to strengthen environmental self-identity.
... Next to its prominent role in health and well-being, autonomy is also important from a psychological perspective because it bears implications for subsequent choices. That is, research has shown that autonomous choice generally influences whether the decision maker will make a similar decision in the future [26,27]. Considering that nudges are frequently used for guiding repeated decisions, which in and of themselves as isolated choices have little impact (e.g., decisions related to recycling, healthy eating, exercising), negative influences of nudged decisions on subsequent related decisions should be avoided [28]. ...
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Nudges have repeatedly been found to be effective, however they are claimed to harm autonomy, and it has been found that laypeople expect this too. To test whether these expectations translate to actual harm to experienced autonomy, three online studies were conducted. The paradigm used in all studies was that participants were asked to voluntarily participate in a longer version of the questionnaire. This was either done in a hypothetical setting, where participants imagined they were asked this question, but did not answer it, and reported their expectations for autonomy; Or in an actual choice setting where participants answered the question and then reported their actual autonomy. The first study utilized the hypothetical setting and tried to replicate that laypeople expect nudges to harm autonomy with the current paradigm. A total of 451 participants were randomly assigned to either a control, a default nudge, or a social norm nudge condition. In the default nudge condition, the affirmative answer was pre-selected, and in the social norm nudge condition it was stated that most people answered affirmative. The results showed a trend for lower expected autonomy in nudge conditions, but did not find significant evidence. In Study 2, with a sample size of 454, the same design was used in an actual choice setting. Only the default nudge was found to be effective, and no difference in autonomy was found. In Study 3, Studies 1 and 2 were replicated. Explanation of the nudge was added as an independent variable and the social norm nudge condition was dropped, resulting in six conditions and 1322 participants. The results showed that participants indeed expected default nudges to harm their autonomy, but only if the nudge was explained. When actually nudged, no effect on autonomy was found, independent of the presence of an explanation.
... Accuracy in VDM trials was defined based on the individual subjective ratings provided during the Rate I and Rate II task phases. It was not uncommon for individuals to change their valuation of some images after being forced to make a choice between them [the "choice-induced preferences effect" (57)]. However, large changes in the ratings of an image within a short period of time may indicate careless responses. ...
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Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often have difficulty making decisions. Valuation and value-based judgements are particularly difficult. The mechanisms underlying these impairments are still poorly understood. Previous work has suggested that individuals with OCD require more information prior to making a choice during perceptual discrimination tasks. Little previous work has examined value-guided choice in OCD. Here we examined perceptual and value-based decision making in adults with OCD, using a novel task in which the two types of decision are tested in parallel using the same individually calibrated sets of visual stimuli (Perceptual and Value-based decision-making task, PVDM). Twenty-seven unmedicated participants with OCD (16 female) and thirty-one healthy controls (15 female) were tested. Data were analyzed using hierarchical drift-diffusion modeling (HDDM). Decision formation was altered in OCD, but differentially between genders: males with OCD, but not females, accumulated more information (i.e., were more cautious) and were less effective in evidence accumulation than age- and IQ-matched healthy males. Furthermore, males with OCD, but not females, were less likely than controls to adjust the process of evidence accumulation across decision contexts. These unexpectedly gender-dimorphic effects suggest that more attention should be paid to gender differences in studies of OCD, and of pathophysiology more broadly.
Chapter
This chapter presents the argument that moving from disembodied rationality to embodied reason to study economic life requires connecting perception, cognition, and action; coupling organism and environment; and overcoming the opposition between rationality and emotion. This links the theoretical and empirical literature on embodiment to economists such as Smith and Keynes. The role of metaphor, conceptual blending, language, artifacts, and habitus in the making of the self and economic life is highlighted. In doing so, the “Hayek paradox” is resolved by showing that abstraction is not opposed to embodiment but enabled by it, and, in contrast to behavioral and experimental economics, embodiment is not portrayed as a source of disturbances to (market-based) rationality posited by a disembodied normative standard. The chapter proposes the dialectic of inward and outward embodiment as a fundamental principle of embodied reason, and traces it back to Hegelian philosophy to ground the theory of economic agency and institutional action.
Conference Paper
As the technologically advanced unified payment interface (UPI), enabling cross-bank mobile payment transactions, was launched in India, mobile payment’s popularity in the country grew multi-fold. However, contrary to what mobile payment usage literature suggests about technology features driving usage, we posit that common users often lack the understanding of the detailed technical features and are predominantly driven by what everyone else does – i.e., the herding behavior. Motivated by this, we examine the types of herding – rational and irrational. We develop a research model comprising multi-dimensional scales to capture herding behaviors that impact mobile payment continuance usage. We validated the herding-focused research model using the survey responses from 507 users. The study contributes to the field significantly by adding elements from herding behavior theory to the literature on mobile payment usage, which is of significant value owing to the networked nature of the technology. The results show that there is a balancing influence of rational and irrational herding on continuance usage, which has implications for practice for controlling for certain herding factors to promote technology’s popularity.
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It is widely held that studying economics makes you more selfish and politically conservative. We use a difference‐in‐differences strategy to disentangle the causal impact of economics education from selection effects. We estimate the effect of four different intermediate microeconomics courses on students' experimentally elicited social preferences and beliefs about others, and policy opinions. We find no discernible effect of studying economics (whatever the course content) on self‐interest or beliefs about others' self‐interest. Results on policy preferences also point to little effect, except that economics may make students somewhat less opposed to highly restrictive immigration policies.
Chapter
In this chapter, we address a context-dependent cross-construct discourse. We take into consideration six fundamental constructs, for which we provide compatible definitions: intelligence, creativity, personality, emotion, wisdom, and human navigation, a meta-level construct similar to meta-intelligence encompassing the control and coordination between constructs. All these constructs are dependent on context, which we propose to model through the metaphor of the Space-Time Continuum (STC). The STC is characterized by two dimensions: conceptual space S and available time span T, which in turn are described through the attributes of tightness and looseness. By crossing these two dimensions, four STC quadrants are obtained, corresponding to qualitatively distinct contexts: tight space-tight time (TS-TT), loose space-loose time (LS-LT), loose space-tight time (LS-TT), and tight space-loose time (TS-LT). Intelligence, creativity, personality, emotion, and wisdom are discussed in the four quadrants, as well as navigation for meta-control within and between quadrants. Real life eminent examples are described by mapping episodes from the lives of Leonardo da Vinci and Guglielmo Marconi on the four STC quadrants.KeywordsIntelligenceCreativityPersonalityEmotionWisdomNavigationContextSpace-Time ContinuumLeonardo Da VinciGuglielmo Marconi
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The chapter presents the two very different basic processes that link attitudes and behavior, along with variants that amount to a mixture of the essentials of each process. Conditions that promote one process or the other also are discussed in the chapter. This discussion of mixed models illustrates the complexity of the role of spontaneous and deliberative processing to understand the manner in which attitudes influence behavior. The basic difference between the two types of models of the attitude-behavior process centers on the extent to which deciding on a particular course of action involves conscious deliberation about a spontaneous reaction to one's perception of the immediate situation. An individual may analyze the costs and benefits of a particular behavior and, in so doing, deliberately reflect on the attitudes relevant to the behavioral decision. These attitudes may serve as one of possibly many dimensions that are considered in arriving at a behavior plan, which may then be enacted.
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A distinction is made between decision utility, experienced utility, and predicted utility and an experiment is reported addressing people's ability to forecast experienced utility. Subjects in two experiments made predictions of their future liking for stimuli to which they were then exposed daily for one week. The stimuli were ice cream in a pilot study, plain yogurt in the main study, and short musical pieces in both studies. Decreased liking was the modal prediction, even when the true outcome was increased liking, or reduced dislike. There was substantial stability of tastes, but there were also substantial individual differences in the size and even the sign of changes in liking with repeated exposure. There was little or no correlation between the predictions of hedonic change that individuals made and the changes they actually experienced.
Article
Voluntary acts are preceded by electrophysiological “readiness potentials” (RPs). With spontaneous acts involving no preplanning, the main negative RP shift begins at about—550 ms. Such RPs were used to indicate the minimum onset times for the cerebral activity that precedes a fully endogenous voluntary act. The time of conscious intention to act was obtained from the subject's recall of the spatial clock position of a revolving spot at the time of his initial awareness of intending or wanting to move (W). W occurred at about—200 ms. Control experiments, in which a skin stimulus was timed (S), helped evaluate each subject's error in reporting the clock times for awareness of any perceived event. For spontaneous voluntary acts, RP onset preceded the uncorrected Ws by about 350 ms and the Ws corrected for S by about 400 ms. The direction of this difference was consistent and significant throughout, regardless of which of several measures of RP onset or W were used. It was concluded that cerebral initiation of a spontaneous voluntary act begins unconsciously. However, it was found that the final decision to act could still be consciously controlled during the 150 ms or so remaining after the specific conscious intention appears. Subjects can in fact “veto” motor performance during a 100–200-ms period before a prearranged time to act. The role of conscious will would be not to initiate a specific voluntary act but rather to select and control volitional outcome. It is proposed that conscious will can function in a permissive fashion, either to permit or to prevent the motor implementation of the intention to act that arises unconsciously. Alternatively, there may be the need for a conscious activation or triggering, without which the final motor output would not follow the unconscious cerebral initiating and preparatory processes.
Article
This paper considers the role of reasons and arguments in the making of decisions. It is proposed that, when faced with the need to choose, decision makers often seek and construct reasons in order to resolve the conflict and justify their choice, to themselves and to others. Experiments that explore and manipulate the role of reasons are reviewed, and other decision studies are interpreted from this perspective. The role of reasons in decision making is considered as it relates to uncertainty, conflict, context effects, and normative decision rules.
Article
Despite substantial advances, the question of how we make decisions and judgments continues to pose important challenges for scientific research. Historically, different disciplines have approached this problem using different techniques and assumptions, with few unifying efforts made. However, the field of neuroeconomics has recently emerged as an inter-disciplinary effort to bridge this gap. Research in neuroscience and psychology has begun to investigate neural bases of decision predictability and value, central parameters in the economic theory of expected utility. Economics, in turn, is being increasingly influenced by a multiple-systems approach to decision-making, a perspective strongly rooted in psychology and neuroscience. The integration of these disparate theoretical approaches and methodologies offers exciting potential for the construction of more accurate models of decision-making.
Article
Two core meanings of “utility” are distinguished. “Decision utility” is the weight of an outcome in a decision. “Experienced utility” is hedonic quality, as in Bentham's usage. Experienced utility can be reported in real time (instant utility), or in retrospective evaluations of past episodes (remembered utility). Psychological research has documented systematic errors in retrospective evaluations, which can induce a preference for dominated options. We propose a formal normative theory of the total experienced utility of temporally extended outcomes. Measuring the experienced utility of outcomes permits tests of utility maximization and opens other Unes of empirical research.
Article
Neural responses accompanying anticipation and experience of monetary gains and losses were monitored by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Trials comprised an initial "prospect" (expectancy) phase, when a set of three monetary amounts was displayed, and a subsequent "outcome" phase, when one of these amounts was awarded. Hemodynamic responses in the sublenticular extended amygdala (SLEA) and orbital gyrus tracked the expected values of the prospects, and responses to the highest value set of outcomes increased monotonically with monetary value in the nucleus accumbens, SLEA, and hypothalamus. Responses to prospects and outcomes were generally, but not always, seen in the same regions. The overlap of the observed activations with those seen previously in response to tactile stimuli, gustatory stimuli, and euphoria-inducing drugs is consistent with a contribution of common circuitry to the processing of diverse rewards.
Article
The brain circuitry processing rewarding and aversive stimuli is hypothesized to be at the core of motivated behavior. In this study, discrete categories of beautiful faces are shown to have differing reward values and to differentially activate reward circuitry in human subjects. In particular, young heterosexual males rate pictures of beautiful males and females as attractive, but exert effort via a keypress procedure only to view pictures of attractive females. Functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T shows that passive viewing of beautiful female faces activates reward circuitry, in particular the nucleus accumbens. An extended set of subcortical and paralimbic reward regions also appear to follow aspects of the keypress rather than the rating procedures, suggesting that reward circuitry function does not include aesthetic assessment.
Article
Reward processing involves both appetitive and consummatory phases. We sought to examine whether reward anticipation vs outcomes would recruit different regions of ventral forebrain circuitry using event-related fMRI. Nine healthy volunteers participated in a monetary incentive delays task in which they either responded to a cued target for monetary reward, responded to a cued target for no reward, or did not respond to a cued target during scanning. Multiple regression analyses indicated that while anticipation of reward vs non-reward activated foci in the ventral striatum, reward vs non-reward outcomes activated foci in the ventromedial frontal cortex. These findings suggest that reward anticipation and outcomes may differentially recruit distinct regions that lie along the trajectory of ascending dopamine projections.
Article
Using event-related fMRI we investigated the rewarding properties of cultural objects (cars) signaling wealth and social dominance. It has been shown recently that reward mechanisms are involved in the regulation of social relations like dominance and social rank. Based on evolutionary considerations we hypothesized that sports cars in contrast to other categories of cars, e.g. limousines and small cars, are strong social reinforcers and would modulate the dopaminergic reward circuitry. Twelve healthy male subjects were studied with fMRI while viewing photographs of different car classes followed by an attractivity rating. Behaviorally sports cars were rated significantly more attractive than limousines and small cars. Our fMRI results revealed significantly more activation in ventral striatum, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate and occipital regions for sports cars in contrast to other categories of cars. We could thus demonstrate that artificial cultural objects associated with wealth and social dominance elicit activation in reward-related brain areas.
Article
Advances in neurobiology permit neuroscientists to manipulate specific brain molecules, neurons and systems. This has lead to major advances in the neuroscience of reward. Here, it is argued that further advances will require equal sophistication in parsing reward into its specific psychological components: (1) learning (including explicit and implicit knowledge produced by associative conditioning and cognitive processes); (2) affect or emotion (implicit 'liking' and conscious pleasure) and (3) motivation (implicit incentive salience 'wanting' and cognitive incentive goals). The challenge is to identify how different brain circuits mediate different psychological components of reward, and how these components interact.
Article
Coca-Cola (Coke) and Pepsi are nearly identical in chemical composition, yet humans routinely display strong subjective preferences for one or the other. This simple observation raises the important question of how cultural messages combine with content to shape our perceptions; even to the point of modifying behavioral preferences for a primary reward like a sugared drink. We delivered Coke and Pepsi to human subjects in behavioral taste tests and also in passive experiments carried out during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Two conditions were examined: (1) anonymous delivery of Coke and Pepsi and (2) brand-cued delivery of Coke and Pepsi. For the anonymous task, we report a consistent neural response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that correlated with subjects' behavioral preferences for these beverages. In the brand-cued experiment, brand knowledge for one of the drinks had a dramatic influence on expressed behavioral preferences and on the measured brain responses.
Article
This review outlines recent findings from human neuroimaging concerning the role of a highly interconnected network of brain areas including orbital and medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, striatum and dopaminergic mid-brain in reward processing. Distinct reward-related functions can be attributed to different components of this network. Orbitofrontal cortex is involved in coding stimulus reward value and in concert with the amygdala and ventral striatum is implicated in representing predicted future reward. Such representations can be used to guide action selection for reward, a process that depends, at least in part, on orbital and medial prefrontal cortex as well as dorsal striatum.
Article
Hedonic experience is arguably at the heart of what makes us human. In recent neuroimaging studies of the cortical networks that mediate hedonic experience in the human brain, the orbitofrontal cortex has emerged as the strongest candidate for linking food and other types of reward to hedonic experience. The orbitofrontal cortex is among the least understood regions of the human brain, but has been proposed to be involved in sensory integration, in representing the affective value of reinforcers, and in decision making and expectation. Here, the functional neuroanatomy of the human orbitofrontal cortex is described and a new integrated model of its functions proposed, including a possible role in the mediation of hedonic experience.
Article
Economic choice is the behaviour observed when individuals select one among many available options. There is no intrinsically 'correct' answer: economic choice depends on subjective preferences. This behaviour is traditionally the object of economic analysis and is also of primary interest in psychology. However, the underlying mental processes and neuronal mechanisms are not well understood. Theories of human and animal choice have a cornerstone in the concept of 'value'. Consider, for example, a monkey offered one raisin versus one piece of apple: behavioural evidence suggests that the animal chooses by assigning values to the two options. But where and how values are represented in the brain is unclear. Here we show that, during economic choice, neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) encode the value of offered and chosen goods. Notably, OFC neurons encode value independently of visuospatial factors and motor responses. If a monkey chooses between A and B, neurons in the OFC encode the value of the two goods independently of whether A is presented on the right and B on the left, or vice versa. This trait distinguishes the OFC from other brain areas in which value modulates activity related to sensory or motor processes. Our results have broad implications for possible psychological models, suggesting that economic choice is essentially choice between goods rather than choice between actions. In this framework, neurons in the OFC seem to be a good candidate network for value assignment underlying economic choice.
Article
To make a decision, a system must assign value to each of its available choices. In the human brain, one approach to studying valuation has used rewarding stimuli to map out brain responses by varying the dimension or importance of the rewards. However, theoretical models have taught us that value computations are complex, and so reward probes alone can give only partial information about neural responses related to valuation. In recent years, computationally principled models of value learning have been used in conjunction with noninvasive neuroimaging to tease out neural valuation responses related to reward-learning and decision-making. We restrict our review to the role of these models in a new generation of experiments that seeks to build on a now-large body of diverse reward-related brain responses. We show that the models and the measurements based on them point the way forward in two important directions: the valuation of time and the valuation of fictive experience.
Article
Prospect theory, loss aversion, mental accounts, hyperbolic discounting, cues, and the endowment effect can all be seen as examples of situationalism -- the view that people isolate decisions and overweight immediate aspects of the situation relative to longer term concerns. But outside of the laboratory, emotionally-powerful situational factors -- frames, social influence, mental accounts -- are almost always endogenous and often the result of self-interested entrepreneurs. As such, laboratory work and, indeed, psychology more generally, gives us little guidance as to market outcomes. Economics provides a stronger basis for understanding the supply of emotionally-relevant situational variables. Paradoxically situationalism actually increases the relative importance of economics.
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