Cognitive science contributions to decision science

The Converging Triangle of Cultural Content, Cognitive Science, and Behavioral Economics

How online cultural content is chosen based on conscious or subconscious criteria is an central question across a broad spectrum of sciences and for the entertainment industry, including content providers and distributors. To this end, a number of tailored analytics forming the backbone of recommendation engines specialized for retrieving cultural content are proposed. Their strength derives directly from well-established principles of cognitive science and behavioral economics, both scientific fields exploring aspects of human decision making. Another novel contribution of this conference paper is that these analytics are implemented in Neo4j expressed as Cypher queries. Various aspects of the cultural content and digital consumers can be naturally represented by appropriately configured vertices, whereas edges represent various connections indicating content delivery preferences. Early experiments conducted over a synthetic dataset mimicking the distributions of preferences and ratings of well-known movie datasets are encouraging as the proposed analytics outperformed the baseline of a multilayer feedforward neural network of various configurations. The synthetic dataset contains enriched preferences of mobile digital consumers of cultural content regarding literature of the Greek region of Ionian Islands.

Process mining with real world financial loan applications: Improving inference on incomplete event logs

In this work, we analyse and model a real life financial loan application belonging to a sample bank in the Netherlands. The event log is robust in terms of data, containing a total of 262 200 event logs, belonging to 13 087 different credit applications. The goal is to work out a decision model, which represents the underlying tasks that make up the loan application service. To this end we study the impact of incomplete event logs (for instance workers forget to register their tasks). The absence of data is translated into a drastic decrease of precision and compromises the decision models, leading to biased and unrepresentative results. We use non-classical probability to show we can better reduce the error percentage of inferences as opposed to classical probability.

Understanding health decision making: An exploration of homophily

The phenomenon of homophily first was described in Lazarsfeld and Merton's classic 1954 friendship analysis as a tendency for friendships to form between those who are alike in some respect. Although theories of decision making address a host of factors that affect the process, the influence of individuals with homophilic ties remains unaccounted for and unexplained. The purpose of this paper is to review theories relevant to decision making and describe what is known about the relationship between homophily and health care decision making. Further, we provide new evidence suggesting the influence of homophily on decision making in results from a randomized, multi-center clinical trial of American men with localized prostate cancer. A diverse sample of 293 men with a new diagnosis of localized prostate cancer reported relevant personal factors influencing the care management decision before randomization to a decision aid or usual care, between 2013 and 2015. Among these personal factors were the level of influence or importance ascribed to various individuals at the time of the treatment decision. One month later, participants reported how prepared they were for decision making. 123 men (42%) reported friends and/or coworkers as information sources, of which 65 (53%) indicated that friends and/or coworkers influenced the care decision. Men who reported friends/coworkers as information sources had significantly higher one-month preparation scores. Our review of decision making theories and practical applicability suggests the influence of homophilic relationships manifests in health care decision making. Faced with a list of options to manage health conditions, decision makers turn to known individuals in their environments, particularly those individuals with whom the decision maker can identify. Clinicians may solicit information from patients about influential others and explain how that support fits into the health decision at hand without dishonoring the importance of the homophilic relationship.

Graphs versus numbers: How information format affects risk aversion in gambling

In lottery gambling, the common phenomenon of risk aversion shows up as preference of the option with the higher win probability, even if a riskier alternative offers a greater expected value. Because riskier choices would optimize profitability in such cases, the present study investigates the visual format, with which lotteries are conveyed, as potential instrument to modulate risk attitudes. Previous research has shown that enhanced attention to graphical compared to numerical probabilities can increase risk aversion, but evidence for the reverse effect — reduced risk aversion through a graphical display of outcomes — is sparse. We conducted three experiments, in which participants repeatedly selected one of two lotteries. Probabilities and outcomes were either presented numerically or in a graphical format that consisted of pie charts (Experiment 1) or icon arrays (Experiment 2 and 3). Further, expected values were either higher in the safer or in the riskier lottery, or they did not differ between the options. Despite a marked risk aversion in all experiments, our results show that presenting outcomes as graphs can reduce — albeit not eliminate — risk aversion (Experiment 3). Yet, not all formats prove suitable, and non-intuitive outcome graphs can even enhance risk aversion (Experiment 1). Joint analyses of choice proportions and response times (RTs) further uncovered that risk aversion leads to safe choices particularly in fast decisions. This pattern is expressed under graphical probabilities, whereas graphical outcomes can weaken the rapid dominance of risk aversion and the variability over RTs (Experiment 1 and 2). Together, our findings demonstrate the relevance of information format for risky decisions.

Departures from optimality when pursuing multiple approach or avoidance goals

This article examines how people depart from optimality during multiple-goal pursuit. The authors operationalized optimality using dynamic programming, which is a mathematical model used to calculate expected value in multistage decisions. Drawing on prospect theory, they predicted that people are risk-averse when pursuing approach goals and are therefore more likely to prioritize the goal in the best position than the dynamic programming model suggests is optimal. The authors predicted that people are risk-seeking when pursuing avoidance goals and are therefore more likely to prioritize the goal in the worst position than is optimal. These predictions were supported by results from an experimental paradigm in which participants made a series of prioritization decisions while pursuing either 2 approach or 2 avoidance goals. This research demonstrates the usefulness of using decision-making theories and normative models to understand multiple-goal pursuit. (PsycINFO Database Record

Streams as Entanglement of Nature and Culture: European Upper Paleolithic River Systems and Their Role as Features of Spatial Organization

Large river valleys have long been seen as important factors to shape the mobility, communication, and exchange of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. However, rivers have been debated as either natural entities people adapt and react to or as cultural and meaningful entities people experience and interpret in different ways. Here, we attempt to integrate both perspectives. Building on theoretical work from various disciplines, we discuss the relationship between biophysical river properties and sociocultural river semantics and suggest that understanding a river's persona is central to evaluating its role in spatial organization. By reviewing the literature and analyzing European Upper Paleolithic site distribution and raw material transfer patterns in relation to river catchments, we show that the role of prominent rivers varies considerably over time. Both ecological and cultural factors are crucial to explaining these patterns. Whereas the Earlier Upper Paleolithic record displays a general tendency toward conceiving rivers as mobility guidelines, the spatial consolidation process after the colonization of the European mainland is paralleled by a trend of conceptualizing river regimes as frontiers, separating archaeological entities, regional groups, or local networks. The Late Upper Paleolithic Magdalenian, however, is characterized again by a role of rivers as mobility and communication vectors. Tracing changing patterns in the role of certain river regimes through time thus contributes to our growing knowledge of human spatial behavior and helps to improve our understanding of dynamic and mutually informed human-environment interactions in the Paleolithic.