Magnitude Effects in Delay and Probability Discounting When Monetary and Medical Treatment Outcomes Are Discounted

A Proposed Functional Analysis of Transmission Prevention Behaviors for a Respiratory Virus (SARS-CoV-2)

The coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has had a global impact on lives everywhere and has led to the disruption of, and interference with, virtually every aspect of life. In response, leading experts, political leaders, doctors, and scientists have released guidelines that attempt to prevent and mitigate the exponential rate of infection. The response to these safety recommendations has produced tremendous behavior variability as a society. Although a plethora of factors are likely relevant, a more complete analysis of human behavior during this time might help explain this disparity. The principles of applied behavior analysis allow for a functional analysis of an individual's use of transmission prevention behaviors (TPBs) during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Thus, the purpose of this discussion is to provide a conceptual analysis for some possible explanations for why individuals might or might not engage in virus TPBs, as well as some recommendations to help combat the current pandemic, as well as those in the future.

Attraction comes from many sources: Attentional and comparative processes in decoy effects

The attraction effect emerges when adding a seemingly irrelevant option (decoy) to a binary choice shifts preference towards a target option. This suggests that choice behaviour is dynamic, i.e., choice values are developed during deliberation, rather than manifesting some pre-existing preference set. Whereas several models of multialternative and multiattribute decision making consider dynamic choice processes as crucial to explain the attraction effect, empirically investigating the exact nature of such processes requires complementing choice output with other data. In this study, we focused on asymmetrically dominated decoys (i.e., decoys that are clearly dominated only by the target option) to examine the attentional and comparative processes responsible for the attraction effect. Through an eye-tracker paradigm, we showed that the decoy option can affect subjects’ preferences in two different and not mutually exclusive ways: by focusing the attention on the salient option and the dominance attribute, and by increasing comparisons with the choice dominant pattern. Although conceptually and procedurally distinct, both pathways for decoy effects produce an increase in preferences for the target option, in line with attentional and dynamic models of decision making. Eye-tracking data provide further details to the verification of such models, by highlighting the context-dependent nature of attention and the development of similarity-driven competitive decisional processes.

Decoy effects in intertemporal and probabilistic choices the role of time pressure, immediacy, and certainty

A decoy is an irrelevant option that, when added to a binary choice, is not selected but nonetheless alters the subjects' preferences, systematically biasing towards its target. The decoy effect, also known as attraction effect, is considered an anomaly of rational decision-making, albeit its applicability to real-life choices outside of laboratory settings has been challenged. In particular, when decoys have been studied in choices between outcomes occurring at different points in time, i.e. intertemporal choices, or with different probabilities of realizing their utility, i.e. probabilistic choices, results were mixed: sometimes decoys are impactful, sometimes they are not, and they seem to be more effective in biasing towards, respectively, larger-and-later and larger-and-riskier outcomes, rather than towards sooner-and-smaller or sooner-and-safer rewards. We suggest that this puzzling set of results can be clarified by focusing on two important influencing factors: time pressure and immediacy/certainty. Moreover, we argue that decoy effects constitute an excellent testbed to assess similarities and differences between intertemporal choice and risky decision-making, which constitutes another open issue in the study of human choice. Two studies are presented to support these claims. In Study 1 (N = 92), we demonstrate that asymmetrically dominated decoys influence both intertemporal choice and risky decision-making only in the absence of time pressure, since otherwise the comparative process required for the decoy to have an impact cannot occur, consistently with predictions made by connectionist models of decision. In Study 2 (N = 53), we show that, when the smaller option is no longer presented as immediate/certain (but rather as sooner/safer), the impact of decoys becomes symmetrical - that is, they can prompt subjects to become either more future-oriented/risk-prone or more present-oriented/risk-averse. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for our understanding of the multifaceted role of time and chance in decision making.

You Cannot be Partially Pregnant: A Comparison of Divisible and Nondivisible Outcomes in Delay and Probability Discounting Studies

Research by The Psychological Record, 64(3), 433-440. doi:10.1007/s40732-014-0052-9, (2014) demonstrated the novel finding that the magnitude effect for medical outcomes does not reverse across delay and probability discounting as it does for monetary outcomes. We suggest that a possible reason for the lack of a reverse magnitude effect in nonmonetary outcomes is incomparable divisibility of discounted alternatives. To test whether the lack of a reverse magnitude effect in probability discounting of medical outcomes is due to incomparable divisibility of treatment effects, 4 studies were conducted. In the replication study, the effect observed by The Psychological Record, 64(3), 433-440. doi:10.1007/s40732-014-0052-9, (2014) was marginally not significant, although it was directionally consistent with their prediction of steeper discounting of small medical outcomes (as compared to large, defined as brain cancer) both in time and probability discounting. Our manipulation by substituting a divisible outcome (body paralysis) for an indivisible one (brain cancer) did not, however, bring expected results. We discuss the explanations and possible implications of introduced division for divisible and nondivisible medical outcomes.

On several factors that control rates of discounting

Discounting occurs when the subjective value of an outcome decreases because its delivery is either delayed or uncertain. Discounting has been widely studied because of its ubiquitous nature. Research from our laboratory has demonstrated that rates of discounting are systematically altered by several different factors. This paper outlines how the type of data-collection method (i.e., multiple choice vs. fill in the blank), how one frames the outcome being discounted (i.e., won vs. owed), and the type of outcome (i.e., money vs. medical treatment) by magnitude of the outcome (i.e., small vs. large) by type of discounting (i.e., delay vs. probability) interaction can potentially control observed rates of discounting. Such findings should not only be of interest to individuals who study the quantitative analyses of discounting, but also to researchers and theoreticians trying to understand and generalize findings from studies on discounting.