People versus Policies: Decision-makers have divergent preferences for decisions about individuals and equivalent policies that affect individuals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mauricio Munguia Gomez ◽  
Emma Levine
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
College Admissions ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Preference Reversal ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Admissions Officers ◽  
New Type ◽  
Selection Policies

Across nine main studies (N = 7,024) and nine supplemental studies (N = 3,279), we find that people make systematically different choices when choosing between individuals and choosing between equivalent policies that affect individuals. In college admissions and workplace hiring contexts, we randomly assigned participants to select one of two individuals or choose one of two selection policies. People were significantly more likely to choose a policy that would favor a disadvantaged candidate over a candidate with objectively higher achievements than they were to favor a specific disadvantaged candidate over a specific candidate with objectively higher achievements. We document these divergent choices among admissions officers, working professionals, and lay people, using both within-subject and between-subject designs, and across a range of stimuli and decision contexts. We find evidence that these choices diverge because thinking about policies causes people to rely more on their values and less on the objective attributes of the options presented, which overall, leads more people to favor disadvantaged candidates in selection contexts. This research documents a new type of preference reversal in important, real-world decision contexts, and has practical and theoretical implications for understanding why our choices so frequently violate our espoused policies.

scholarly journals Elite Decision-making and International Law: Promises and Perils of the Behavioral Revolution

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 242-247
Author(s):  
Emilie M. Hafner-Burton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
International Law ◽  
Real World ◽  
General Public ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Direct Study ◽  
The People ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Actual Decision

A growing body of research applies behavioral approaches to the study of international law, mainly by studying convenience samples of students or other segments of the general public. Alongside the promises of this agenda are concerns about applying findings from non-elite populations to the people, and groups of people, charged with most real-world decision-making in the domain of law and governance. This concern is compounded by the fact that it is extremely difficult to recruit these actual decision-makers in a way that allows for direct study.

scholarly journals Neural Representation and Learning of Hierarchical 2-additive Choquet Integrals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Bresson ◽  
Johanne Cohen ◽  
Eyke Hüllermeier ◽  
Christophe Labreuche ◽  
Michèle Sebag
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Choquet Integral ◽  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
Automatic Identification ◽  
Neural Architecture ◽  
Real World Applications ◽  
Choquet Integrals ◽  
The Cost

Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) aims at modelling expert preferences and assisting decision makers in identifying options best accommodating expert criteria. An instance of MCDM model, the Choquet integral is widely used in real-world applications, due to its ability to capture interactions between criteria while retaining interpretability. Aimed at a better scalability and modularity, hierarchical Choquet integrals involve intermediate aggregations of the interacting criteria, at the cost of a more complex elicitation. The paper presents a machine learning-based approach for the automatic identification of hierarchical MCDM models, composed of 2-additive Choquet integral aggregators and of marginal utility functions on the raw features from data reflecting expert preferences. The proposed NEUR-HCI framework relies on a specific neural architecture, enforcing by design the Choquet model constraints and supporting its end-to-end training. The empirical validation of NEUR-HCI on real-world and artificial benchmarks demonstrates the merits of the approach compared to state-of-art baselines.

The Informational Value of Affirmative Action in College Admissions

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric K Furstenberg
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
College Admissions ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Admissions Policies ◽  
Racial Preferences ◽  
Admissions Officers ◽  
The University ◽  
Admissions Process ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract This article develops a theoretical model of college admissions to investigate the effects of banning affirmative action admissions policies on the efficiency of the admissions process. Previous work in this area has shown that prohibiting affirmative action causes inefficiency when college quality is an increasing function of diversity. This article identifies an additional reason why colleges and universities use racial preferences in admissions, setting aside explicit demands for diversity. In the theoretical model, the racial identity of the applicants is relevant information for making inferences about an applicant's true academic ability. Preventing admissions officers from using this information results in inefficient selection of applicants, even if diversity does not explicitly enter the objective of the university. Thus, affirmative action is justified solely on informational grounds.

scholarly journals Exploring the Nexus Between Participation and Empowerment

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-53
Author(s):  
Palash Kamruzzaman
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Real World ◽  
Cost Efficiency ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
External Approach ◽  
The Poor

Theoretically, the idea of participation might appear to be replete with grand-sounding promises of empowerment for the poor and marginalised. But, in practice, participation may often take the form of enlisting people in various social and community development projects to secure the compliance of local people. In this paper, I offer a critical review of theoretical promises of participation and contrast this with a number of real-world examples. I argue that participation can be used for validating external approach and incorporated in social as well as community development projects to make it more cost-effective. In theory, giving voices to the poor is important but tokenistic inclusion can often be found in practice for cost-effectiveness. However, giving voices and/or cost efficiency arguments are not coherent with the ideas of empowerment while practices of participation often fail to address the issues of power among various actors, such as decision-makers, participation-seekers and participants. When participation is used as a prerequisite to secure fund or make the project cost-effective, empowerment of poor people does not seem to be a genuine priority. Therefore, empowerment through participation may remain lip-service.

Contributing for Myself, but Free riding for My Group?

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshio Iida ◽  
Christiane Schwieren
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Real World ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Public Good Game ◽  
Individual Decision ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
General Difference

Abstract Many real-world decisions are made by individuals as representatives of groups. Most research, however, studies either individuals or groups as decision-makers. This paper explores whether there is a general difference between a decision made as an individual and as a representative of a group in the context of a public good game. We conducted a series of experiments to test this question and to understand mechanisms contributing to potential differences. We found that representatives contributed less than individuals when they could not communicate with their constituency. However, when they could discuss their strategy before playing, they contributed at least as much as individual decision-makers. Furthermore, when they could justify their decision after playing, they contributed even more than individual decision-makers. We discuss potential reasons for this and directions for future research.

scholarly journals 438 PB 215 RISK OF GENE MUTATION IN MAJOR CROPS

HortScience ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 494a-494
Author(s):  
Bruce M. Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Cytoplasmic Male Sterility ◽  
Real World ◽  
Risk Evaluation ◽  
Fold Increase ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Insufficient Data ◽  
The Us ◽  
Pleiotropic Gene ◽  
Corn Leaf Blight

The book, Agricultural Biotechnology: Issues and Choices Information for decision Makers, from USDA and Land Grant Colleges discusses risk evaluation for the use of legislators concerned with public policy. However, that discussion is entirely theoretical. The 1970 epidemic of Southern Corn Leaf Blight caused by the pleiotropic gene for Cytoplasmic Male Sterility provides material to use in real-world risk evaluation for biotechnology. Approximately 1×1012 corn seeds are planted annually in the US. Assuming a mutation rate of 1×10-6, then 1×106 mutations can be expected annually. The poster will evaluate the importance of this number using assumptions based on fold-increase during seed production. Unfortunately, it is not possible to evaluate the risk of incorporating another pleiotropic gene into commercial crops because insufficient data are available on the frequency of pleiotropy.

scholarly journals The numerator bias exists in millions of real-world comparisons

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago Alonso Diaz ◽  
Gabriel Ignacio Penagos-Londoño
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Real World ◽  
Prior Probability ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Daily Activities ◽  
Pairwise Comparisons ◽  
Informative Priors ◽  
P Fractions ◽  
Relevant Case ◽  
Puzzling Aspect

Fractions are crucial, from math and science education to daily activities, but they are hard. A puzzling aspect of fractions is that people over-rely on the numerator when comparing a pair of fractions. Previous work has considered this numerator bias mostly as a reasoning mishap. Still, in a vast amount of pairwise comparisons, across many real-world domains, not just education textbooks, we report a high prior probability that the larger fraction has the larger numerator, and, for a relevant case, we provide formal arguments why. The existence of such a regularity suggests that the numerator bias may reflect a rational adaptation that detects and exploits likely events. In a pair of visual-proportion tasks (discrete and continuous fractions), we confirm that the numerator bias in participants adapts to experimented regularities. Even though weak education and math abilities play a role, adaptation to informative priors outside the classroom poses a challenge to educators, learners, and decision-makers.

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