Adaptive flexibility and maladaptive routines in selecting fast and frugal decision strategies

Deterministic and probabilistic regularities underlying risky choices are acquired in a changing decision context

Predictions supporting risky decisions could become unreliable when outcome probabilities temporarily change, making adaptation more challenging. Therefore, this study investigated whether sensitivity to the temporal structure in outcome probabilities can develop and remain persistent in a changing decision environment. In a variant of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task with 90 balloons, outcomes (rewards or balloon bursts) were predictable in the task's first and final 30 balloons and unpredictable in the middle 30 balloons. The temporal regularity underlying the predictable outcomes differed across three experimental conditions. In the deterministic condition, a repeating three-element sequence dictated the maximum number of pumps before a balloon burst. In the probabilistic condition, a single probabilistic regularity ensured that burst probability increased as a function of pumps. In the hybrid condition, a repeating sequence of three different probabilistic regularities increased burst probabilities. In every condition, the regularity was absent in the middle 30 balloons. Participants were not informed about the presence or absence of the regularity. Sensitivity to both the deterministic and hybrid regularities emerged and influenced risk taking. Unpredictable outcomes of the middle phase did not deteriorate this sensitivity. In conclusion, humans can adapt their risky choices in a changing decision environment by exploiting the statistical structure that controls how the environment changes.

Adaptation to recent outcomes attenuates the lasting effect of initial experience on risky decisions

Both primarily and recently encountered information have been shown to influence experience-based risky decision making. The primacy effect predicts that initial experience will influence later choices even if outcome probabilities change and reward is ultimately more or less sparse than primarily experienced. However, it has not been investigated whether extended initial experience would induce a more profound primacy effect upon risky choices than brief experience. Therefore, the present study tested in two experiments whether young adults adjusted their risk-taking behavior in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task after an unsignaled and unexpected change point. The change point separated early "good luck" or "bad luck" trials from subsequent ones. While mostly positive (more reward) or mostly negative (no reward) events characterized the early trials, subsequent trials were unbiased. In Experiment 1, the change point occurred after one-sixth or one-third of the trials (brief vs. extended experience) without intermittence, whereas in Experiment 2, it occurred between separate task phases. In Experiment 1, if negative events characterized the early trials, after the change point, risk-taking behavior increased as compared with the early trials. Conversely, if positive events characterized the early trials, risk-taking behavior decreased after the change point. Although the adjustment of risk-taking behavior occurred due to integrating recent experiences, the impact of initial experience was simultaneously observed. The length of initial experience did not reliably influence the adjustment of behavior. In Experiment 2, participants became more prone to take risks as the task progressed, indicating that the impact of initial experience could be overcome. Altogether, we suggest that initial beliefs about outcome probabilities can be updated by recent experiences to adapt to the continuously changing decision environment.

Why Heuristics Work

The adaptive toolbox is a Darwinian-inspired theory that conceives of the mind as a modular system that is composed of heuristics, their building blocks, and evolved capacities. The study of the adaptive toolbox is descriptive and analyzes the selection and structure of heuristics in social and physical environments. The study of ecological rationality is prescriptive and identifies the structure of environments in which specific heuristics either succeed or fail. Results have been used for designing heuristics and environments to improve professional decision making in the real world.

Deciding with the eye: how the visually manipulated accessibility of information in memory influences decision behavior

Decision situations are typically characterized by uncertainty: Individuals do not know the values of different options on a criterion dimension. For example, consumers do not know which is the healthiest of several products. To make a decision, individuals can use information about cues that are probabilistically related to the criterion dimension, such as sugar content or the concentration of natural vitamins. In two experiments, we investigated how the accessibility of cue information in memory affects which decision strategy individuals rely on. The accessibility of cue information was manipulated by means of a newly developed paradigm, the spatial-memory-cueing paradigm, which is based on a combination of the looking-at-nothing phenomenon and the spatial-cueing paradigm. The results indicated that people use different decision strategies, depending on the validity of easily accessible information. If the easily accessible information is valid, people stop information search and decide according to a simple take-the-best heuristic. If, however, information that comes to mind easily has a low predictive validity, people are more likely to integrate all available cue information in a compensatory manner.

Single-process versus multiple-strategy models of decision making: evidence from an information intrusion paradigm

When decision makers are confronted with different problems and situations, do they use a uniform mechanism as assumed by single-process models (SPMs) or do they choose adaptively from a set of available decision strategies as multiple-strategy models (MSMs) imply? Both frameworks of decision making have gathered a lot of support, but only rarely have they been contrasted with each other. Employing an information intrusion paradigm for multi-attribute decisions from givens, SPM and MSM predictions on information search, decision outcomes, attention, and confidence judgments were derived and tested against each other in two experiments. The results consistently support the SPM view: Participants seemingly using a "take-the-best" (TTB) strategy do not ignore TTB-irrelevant information as MSMs would predict, but adapt the amount of information searched, choose alternative choice options, and show varying confidence judgments contingent on the quality of the "irrelevant" information. The uniformity of these findings underlines the adequacy of the novel information intrusion paradigm and comprehensively promotes the notion of a uniform decision making mechanism as assumed by single-process models.

Entwicklung und Validierung eines Fragebogens zur Erfassung von „Adaptive Performance“

Gegenstand ist die Entwicklung und Validierung eines Fragebogens zur Erfassung von Adaptive Performance (AP). AP wird definiert als ein Verhalten, mit dem auf eine veränderte Arbeitssituation reagiert wird und das funktional für die Erreichung der Unternehmensziele ist. Hypothesenkonform zeigt sich sowohl bei Vorgesetztenbeurteilungen als auch bei Selbsteinschätzungen eine zweidimensionale Struktur des neu entwickelten Instruments, bei der zwischen einer aufgabenbezogenen und einer sozialen Form von Adaptivität unterschieden wird. In zwei Studien wird gezeigt, dass sich AP empirisch von der Aufgabenleistung (in-role performance) abgrenzen lässt und dass AP eine spezifische Rolle bei der globalen Bewertung der Leistung von Mitarbeitern durch Vorgesetzte spielt. Im Rahmen weiterer Validierungen zeigen sich ferner positive Zusammenhänge mit den Traits Flexibilität und Kontaktfähigkeit, wobei erwartungsgemäß Flexibilität höher mit der aufgabenbezogenen und Kontaktfähigkeit höher mit der sozialen AP korreliert.

Ecological rationality: a framework for understanding and aiding the aging decision maker

The notion of ecological rationality sees human rationality as the result of the adaptive fit between the human mind and the environment. Ecological rationality focuses the study of decision making on two key questions: First, what are the environmental regularities to which people’s decision strategies are matched, and how frequently do these regularities occur in natural environments? Second, how well can people adapt their use of specific strategies to particular environmental regularities? Research on aging suggests a number of changes in cognitive function, for instance, deficits in learning and memory that may impact decision-making skills. However, it has been shown that simple strategies can work well in many natural environments, which suggests that age-related deficits in strategy use may not necessarily translate into reduced decision quality. Consequently, we argue that predictions about the impact of aging on decision performance depend not only on how aging affects decision-relevant capacities but also on the decision environment in which decisions are made. In sum, we propose that the concept of the ecological rationality is crucial to understanding and aiding the aging decision maker.

Does Imitation Benefit Cue Order Learning?

Inferences are often based on uncertain cues, and the accuracy of such inferences depends on the order in which the cues are searched. Previous research has shown that people and computers progress only slowly in individual learning of cue orderings through feedback. A clue to how people (as opposed to computers) solve this problem is social learning: By exchanging information with others, people can learn which cues are relevant and the order in which they should be considered. By means of simulation, we demonstrate that imitate-the-best and imitate-the-majority speed up individual learning, whereas a third social rule, the Borda rule, does not. Imitate-the-best also leads to a steep increase in learning after a single social exchange, to cue orders that are more accurate than ecological validity, and to faster learning than when individuals gain the learning experience of all other group members but learn without social exchange. In two experiments, we find that people speed up cue learning in a similar way when provided with social information, both when they obtain the information from the experimenter or in free discussions with others.