Behavioral Decision Making at 50: Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges

2007 ◽  
pp. 35-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin M. Hogarth
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Behavioral Decision Making ◽  
Behavioral Decision

The effects of optimism on self-framing and risky decision making

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ran Zhang ◽  
Luming Zhao ◽  
Lin Wu ◽  
Hongxu Chen ◽  
Gaoxing Zhou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Framing Effect ◽  
Risky Decision Making ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
Life Orientation Test ◽  
Life Orientation ◽  
Risk Seeking ◽  
Behavioral Decision Making ◽  
Behavioral Decision ◽  
Orientation Test

The framing effect is a key topic that has been insufficiently studied in research on behavioral decision making. In our study we explored the effects of optimism on self-framing and risky decision making. Participants were 416 undergraduates who responded to the Life Orientation Test and a self-framing test based on the Asian disease problem. The results demonstrate that, compared with people low in optimism, highly optimistic individuals tended to use more positive words to describe problems, generate more positive frames, and choose more risky options. There was also a significant self-framing effect: Participants with a negative frame tended to be risk-seeking, whereas those with a positive frame tended to avoid risks. Additionally, selfframing suppressed the effect of optimism on risky decision making. We can conclude that optimism has significant effects on self-framing and risky decision making.

scholarly journals Experimental practices in economics: A methodological challenge for psychologists?

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Hertwig ◽  
Andreas Ortmann
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Performance Criteria ◽  
Methodological Challenge ◽  
Fixed Amount ◽  
Behavioral Decision Making ◽  
Behavioral Decision ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
Target Article ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Experimental Trials

This target article is concerned with the implications of the surprisingly different experimental practices in economics and in areas of psychology relevant to both economists and psychologists, such as behavioral decision making. We consider four features of experimentation in economics, namely, script enactment, repeated trials, performance-based monetary payments, and the proscription against deception, and compare them to experimental practices in psychology, primarily in the area of behavioral decision making. Whereas economists bring a precisely defined “script” to experiments for participants to enact, psychologists often do not provide such a script, leaving participants to infer what choices the situation affords. By often using repeated experimental trials, economists allow participants to learn about the task and the environment; psychologists typically do not. Economists generally pay participants on the basis of clearly defined performance criteria; psychologists usually pay a flat fee or grant a fixed amount of course credit. Economists virtually never deceive participants; psychologists, especially in some areas of inquiry, often do. We argue that experimental standards in economics are regulatory in that they allow for little variation between the experimental practices of individual researchers. The experimental standards in psychology, by contrast, are comparatively laissez-faire. We believe that the wider range of experimental practices in psychology reflects a lack of procedural regularity that may contribute to the variability of empirical findings in the research fields under consideration. We conclude with a call for more research on the consequences of methodological preferences, such as the use on monetary payments, and propose a “do-it-both-ways” rule regarding the enactment of scripts, repetition of trials, and performance-based monetary payments. We also argue, on pragmatic grounds, that the default practice should be not to deceive participants.

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