Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Entscheidungspsychologie


Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Blog

Archive for August, 2015

Decision making under stress

Szymon Wichary, Jörg Rieskamp, and I have a new publication out on how stress affects decision making. Our results suggest that decision makers under stress limit their information search (and possibly information integration). One important question that remains to be addressed is to what extent such effects are adaptive, in other words, in which circumstances these reductions in information search and integration can lead to good decisions. Here’s the abstract of our paper:

Probabilistic Inferences Under Emotional Stress: How Arousal Affects Decision Processes

Many models of decision making neglect emotional states that could affect individuals’ cognitive processes. The present work explores the effect of emotional stress on people’s cognitive processes when making probabilistic inferences. Two contrasting hypotheses are tested against one another: the uncertainty-reduction and attention-narrowing hypotheses of how emotional stress affects decision making. In the experimental study, emotional stress was induced through the use of highly aversive pictures immediately before each decision. Emotional state was assessed by both subjective (state anxiety, arousal, and pleasantness ratings) and objective (skin conductance) measures. The results show that emotional stress impacts decision making; in particular, emotionally aroused participants seem to have focused on the most important information and selected simpler decision strategies relative to participants in a control condition. The results are in line with the attention-narrowing hypothesis and suggest that emotional stress can impact decision making through limited predecisional information search and the selection of simpler decision strategies.

Wichary, S., Mata, R., and Rieskamp, J. (2015) Probabilistic inferences under emotional stress: How arousal affects decision processes. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. doi: 10.1002/bdm.1896.

‘Neurocomputational approaches to decision making: From perception to social cognition’ – 2015 summer school at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour

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The 2015 summer school at the Donders Institute at Radboud University in Nijmegen (Netherlands), running from 10th to 14th August, was the first summer school I had been to, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The signature red Radboud University hoodie we received on the first day was an added bonus!

What prompted me to attend this particular summer school? My work at the Center for Cognitive and Decision Sciences focuses primarily on trying to understand risk taking, specifically how the brain deals with tasks that require people to decide whether to take a risk or not, and also whether there are structural differences between individuals which are associated with more or less risk taking. When we are looking at the relationship between brain function or structure and risk taking, rather than simply looking at the relationship with performance-based scores, it might be more informative to try to relate individual differences in cognitive processes evoked by a task with neural variation. Why? Since the brain carries out many different computations before an action (decision) is motivated, if we can understand the latent processes elicited by a task we might be one step closer to understanding ‚how the brain does it’.

The main aim of the summer school was to give students and early career researchers the necessary knowledge, awareness and tools to do exactly that: formulate ideas about how individuals process a given task or stimulus, specify a model that captures the hypothesised computations through model parameters, and finally check how well the model accounts for observed outcomes (e.g. decisions). The model parameters in turn can be fed into analyses of neuroimaging data, for example identifying structural and/or function correlates of these very same parameters.

In the mornings, lectures and seminars by high profile researchers (e.g. Klaas Enno Stephan, Alan Sanfey, Jeffrey Schall, Hanneke den Ouden, Daeyeol Lee, Bahador Bahrami, to name but a few … ) provided the necessary background, awareness and scope for application, which we could then put into practice during afternoon workshops in the computer lab. The entire week was very well organised and will hopefully lead to some interesting research directions in the future. I heard some highly inspiring talks, met other PhD students from around the world, got to present our work in poster form and discussed our work with other researchers working on similar questions.

If you are interested in these issues, I would highly recommend that you immerse yourself in the world of social, cognitive, affective and perceptual neuroscience and attend a summer school, such as the one at the Donders Institute.

The reproducibility of psychological science

The issue of reproducibility in science in general, and psychological science in particular, has been getting a lot of attention. Rightly so. After all, the extent to which once can stand on the shoulders of giants depends on the giants having a solid (empirical) base. A new paper out in Science by the Open Science Collaboration has conducted replications of 100 psychological studies and found that only about 1/3 actually replicated the original findings. This result is obviously making a splash: I’ve already seen it commented in the Economist, NYT, Spiegel, and NZZ this morning. There may be a bad news/good news interpretation of these efforts though: On the one hand, it’s troubling that so few studies fail to replicate, on the other, psychologists are taking the reproducibility issue seriously by engaging in collaborative work and adopting open science practices…

Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science

Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available. Replication effects (Mr = .197, SD = .257) were half the magnitude of original effects (Mr = .403, SD = .188), representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had significant results (p < .05). Thirty-six percent of replications had significant results; 47% of original effect sizes were in the 95% confidence interval of the replication effect size; 39% of effects were subjectively rated to have replicated the original result; and, if no bias in original results is assumed, combining original and replication results left 68% with significant effects. Correlational tests suggest that replication success was better predicted by the strength of original evidence than by characteristics of the original and replication teams.

Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349, 943. doi: 10.1126/science.aac4716

International Summer School 2015 on “Theories and Methods in Judgment and Decision Making Research”

JDM Summer School 2015

Vom 09.08.2015 bis 15.08.2015 fand die “International Summer School 2015 on ‘Theories and Methods in Judgment and Decision Making Research'” der DFG Forschungsgruppe “Contextualized Decision Making” im Tagungszentrum Rummelsberg statt.

Die 44 TeilnehmerInnen und 13 WissenschaftlerInnen von vier Kontinenten machten dem Namen “International Summer School” alle Ehre. Über 5 Tage wurde ein vielfältiges inhaltliches Programm geboten.

Die Vorträge der WissenschaftlerInnen, die sich hauptsächlich mit sog. Sequential Sampling Modellen befassten, spiegelten den aktuellen Forschungsstand und -trend im Bereich der Entscheidungsforschung wider. In den Workshops lernten die TeilnehmerInnen interaktiv Werkzeuge zur kognitiven Modellierung kennen, und bei den Postersitzungen bot sich die Möglichkeit, die eigene Forschung einem breiten Publikum von etablierten und NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen aus aller Welt zu präsentieren.

Neben dem inhaltlichen Programm gab es reichlich Möglichkeiten sich mit den WissenschaftlerInnen im kleineren Rahmen auszutauschen und bei den sozialen und abendlichen Aktivitäten Kontakt zu den anderen TeilnehmerInnen zu knüpfen.

Insgesamt war es eine sehr intensive Woche, in der viel Wissen und viele Fertigkeiten vermittelt wurden, von denen die TeilnehmerInnen im Laufe ihrer Forscherkarrieren sicherlich profitieren werden. In dem Sinne hoffen wir, dass die Summer School keine einmalige Veranstaltung bleibt sondern noch vielen NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen die Möglichkeit bieten wird, diese Erfahrung zu machen!

Vielen Dank an die Organisatoren Arndt Bröder, Edgar Erdfelder, Florence Ettlin, Florian Kutzner, und Rüdiger Pohl.
Weitere Informationen zur Summer School

SPUDM 25 Budapest: Jared Hotaling gewinnt den renommierten De Finetti Preis

Vom 16. bis 20. August 2015 fand die 25. SPUDM (Subject Probability, Utility, and Decision Making) Konferenz in Budapest statt. Forscher aus der ganzen Welt, insbesondere Psychologen und Ökonomen, haben während diesen Tagen ihre aktuellsten Forschungsresultate präsentiert und diskutiert. Zudem konnte man inspirierenden Keynotes lauschen, wie z.B. von Nick Chater (zu sozialer Interaktion / Entscheiden) oder Barbara Mellers (zu “Forecasting”, ein entsprechendes Seminar wird im nächsten Frühjahrsemester angeboten). Auch Basel war gut vertreten mit einer grösseren Gruppe von Pre- und Post-Docs. Ein Highlight war dabei Jared Hotaling‘s Gewinn des renommierten De Finetti Preises. Herzliche Gratulation!

SWE Doctoral Program Workshops

The new semester is about to start and the Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Doctoral Program has 5 very interesting workshops lined up for the next months. Please contact Mirella Walker if you would like to get more information about any of them.

 

Understanding one’ Self and Social Worlds: The Role of Emotion, Intuition, and Reason 25.09.2015

Clayton Critcher, University of California, Berkeley

 

Reinforcement Learning in Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology 15.10.2015

Elliot Ludvig, University of Warwick

 

Sequential Sampling Models in Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology 22.-23.10.2015

Timothy Pleskac, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

 

Structural Equation Modeling in R in Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology 12.-13.11.2015

Paolo Ghisletta, University of Geneva

 

A cognitive approach to lie detection 19.-20.11.2015

Aldert Vrij, University of Portsmouth

 

Can decision science make you healthy?

Leading a healthy life is on everyone’s agenda. But is there a role for the decision sciences in achieving this goal? One interesting approach concerns the use of choice architecture principles or nudging to guide individual choices. The main idea is to design choice situations such that individuals are more likely to make personally or socially desirable choices without limiting their freedom of choice.

There are many societal problems that could profit from the choice architecture approach and the concept seems to get traction in Switzerland. For example, a recent NZZ piece gives a few examples of studies that have redesigned cafeterias to improve children’s food choices and suggests that these strategies could be applied here. A recent report on health in Switzerland from the Swiss Health Observatory suggests that such measures may be sorely needed. The prevalence of non-communicable diseases (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, obesity), also sometimes called lifestyle diseases, is on the rise: The proportion of overweight 16- to 24-year-olds has doubled in the last 20 years, from 11% to 24% in males (8% to 14% in females).

Bettina von Helversen here in Basel is contributing to make the use of choice architecture a reality by offering a seminar  that could be interesting for those interested in applying such methods to real-world problems. Here’s a link and description of the seminar:

Nudges: Verhalten beeinflussen ohne die Wahlfreiheit einzuschränken

Policymaker für Firmen oder die Regierung versuchen die Entscheidungen von Menschen zu beinflussen. Eine Möglichkeit sind sogenannte Nudges: Veränderungen der Umwelt oder der Aufgabenstruktur, die das Verhalten verändern, ohne dass es explizite Instruktionen oder Verbote gibt und ohne dass die Walhfreiheit eingeschränkt wird. Zum Beispiel zeigt eine Studie, dass Pfeile, die den Weg zu der nächsten Mülltonne markieren, reduzieren wie viele Abfall auf die Strasse geworfen wird. Das Ziel des Seminars ist zu untersuchen wie Nudging funktioniert und welche Mechanismen den verschiedenen Nudges zugrunde liegen.

JDM Workshop for Early Career Researchers 2015

JDM-Workshop 2015

Vom 29.07.2015 bis 31.07.2015 fand der diesjährige, nunmehr achte “Judgment and Decision Making Workshop for Early Career Researchers” an dem Georg-Elias-Müller Institut für Psychologie in Göttingen statt.
Der Workshop wurde diesmal von Dorothee Mischkowski, Angela Dorrough, und Rima-Maria Rahal für andere NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen organisiert und bietet eine Plattform um die eigene Forschung vorzustellen, Ideen auszutauschen, und sich zu vernetzen.
Neben den Vorträgen der TeilnehmerInnen hat das Organisationsteam WissenschaftlerInnen gewinnen können, die nicht nur in den jeweiligen Workshops aktuelle Themen und Techniken behandelt haben, sondern auch für dedizierte Austauschsitzungen zur Verfügung standen.
Alles in Allem war das ein sehr gelungener Workshop und wir freuen uns, den neunten JDM Workshop im Sommer 2016 in Basel veranstalten zu dürfen!

Weitere Informationen zum diesjährigen Workshop