People can recognize, learn, and apply default effects in social influence

Rational Choice in Context

Human decisions are context dependent in ways that violate classical norms of rational choice. However, these norms implicitly depend on idealized descriptive assumptions that are often unrealistic. We focus on one such assumption: that information is constant across contexts. Choice contexts often supply subtle cues—which may be embedded in frames, procedures, or menus—to which human decision makers can be highly sensitive. We review recent evidence that some important context effects reflect dynamically coherent belief and preference updating, in response to ecologically valid cues. This evidence paints a more nuanced picture of human rationality in natural choice environments and opens up prospects for nonpaternalistic forms of choice architecture.

Default sensitivity in attempts at social influence

While past research has demonstrated the power of defaults to nudge decision makers toward desired outcomes, few studies have examined whether people understand how to strategically set defaults to influence others' choices. A recent paper (Zlatev et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 13643-13648, 2017) found that participants exhibited "default neglect," or the failure to set optimal defaults at better than chance levels. However, we show that this poor performance is specific to the complex and potentially confusing paradigms they used, and does not reflect a general lack of understanding regarding defaults. Using simple scenarios, Experiments 1A and 1B provide clear evidence that people can optimally set defaults given their goals. In Experiment 2, we conducted a direct and conceptual replication of one of Zlatev et al.'s original studies, which found that participants selected the optimal default significantly less than chance. While our direct replication found results similar to those in the original study, our conceptual replication, which simplified the task, instead found the opposite. Experiment 3 manipulated the framing of the option attributes, which were confounded with the default in the original study, and found that the original framing led to below-chance performance while the alternate framing led to above-chance performance. Together, our results cast doubt on the prevalence and generalizability of default neglect, and instead suggest that people are capable of setting optimal defaults in attempts at social influence.

Exploiting asymmetric signals from choices through default selection

Setting defaults is an effective nudge, but few studies have examined situations where individuals can select their own default settings. Past research suggests that even when the final outcome is identical, observers perceive stronger signals from choices that switch from, rather than stay with, the default. In five experiments using hypothetical scenarios and an incentivized economic game, we test whether decision-makers driven by image concerns could strategically exploit that asymmetric signal. We found that in the presence of observers, participants were more likely to self-select into defaults that require them to switch to enhance a positive signal and into defaults that require them to stay to attenuate a negative signal. Our results support the framework of choice architecture as an implicit social interaction, and have potential implications for behavioral interventions in real-world settings.