scholarly journals Worth the wait: Children trade off delay and reward in self- and other-benefiting decisions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari Liu ◽  
Gorana Gonzalez ◽  
Felix Warneken

Human prosocial behaviors are supported by early-emerging psychological processes that detect and fulfill the needs of others. However, little is known about the mechanisms that enable children to deliver benefits to others at costs to the self, which requires weighing other-regarding and self-serving preferences. We used an intertemporal choice paradigm to systematically study and compare these behaviors in 5-year-old children. Our results show that other-benefiting and self-benefiting behavior share a common decision-making process that integrates delay and reward. Specifically, we found that children sought to minimize delay and maximize reward, and traded off delays against rewards, regardless of whether these rewards were for children themselves or another child. However, we found that children were more willing to invest their time to benefit themselves than someone else. Together, these findings show that from childhood, other- and self-serving decisions are supported by a general mechanism that flexibly integrates information about the magnitude of rewards, and the opportunity costs of pursuing them.

2011 ◽  
pp. 524-539
Author(s):  
R. Farmani ◽  
D.A. Savic ◽  
H.J. Henriksen ◽  
J.L. Molina ◽  
R. Giordano ◽  
...  

A participatory integrated (social, economic, environmental) approach based on causal loop diagram, Bayesian belief networks and evolutionary multiobjective optimisation is proposed for efficient water resources management. The proposed methodology incorporates all the conflicting objectives in the decision making process. Causal loop diagram allows a range of different factors to be considered simultaneously and provides a framework within which the contributions of stakeholders can be taken into account. Bayesian belief networks takes into account uncertainty by assigning probability to those variables whose states are not certain. The integration of Bayesian belief network with evolutionary multiobjective optimisation algorithm allows analysis of trade-off between different objectives and incorporation and acknowledgement of a broader set of decision goals into the search and decision making process. The proposed methodology is used to model decision making process for complex environmental problems, considering uncertainties, addressing temporal dynamics, uncovering discrepancies in decision analysis process (e.g. completeness or redundancy of the model based on utility function) and generating policy options that trade-off between conflicting objectives. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is examined in several water resources management problems. The case studies include optimum water demand management, UK; management of groundwater contamination of Copenhagen source capture zone areas, Denmark and simultaneous optimum management of four overexploited aquifers in Spain. It is shown that the proposed methodology generates large number of management options that trade-off between different objectives. The remaining task is to choose, depending on the preference of decision makers, a group of solutions for more detailed analysis.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donelson R. Forsyth

AbstractDoes joining groups trigger a cascade of psychological processes that can result in a loss of individuality and lead to such outcomes as social loafing and poor decision-making? Rather than privileging the self comprising primarily individual qualities as the “true self,” a multilevel, multicomponent approach suggests that, in most cases, personal and collective identities are integrated and mutually sustaining.


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Marie Victoravich

ABSTRACT: Management accountants have recently migrated toward a business partner role, and as a result they often assist management with the decision-making process. Thus, it is imperative that they excel at identification of relevant information such as opportunity costs. This study experimentally tests the prediction that management accounting experience mitigates the tendency to ignore opportunity costs with respect to two factors: opportunity cost vagueness and project completion stage. This study also investigates whether attending to opportunity costs has an impact on project continuance decisions. Results indicate that management accounting experience mitigates the effect of vague opportunity costs and project completion stage. It was also found that attention to opportunity costs acts as mediator and this in turn reduces the tendency to continue an existing project. This suggests that attending to opportunity costs influences decision-making and that it is likely to have an economic consequence.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Bulley ◽  
Karolina Maria Lempert ◽  
Colin Conwell ◽  
Muireann Irish

Intertemporal decision-making has long been assumed to measure self-control, with prominent theories treating choices of smaller, sooner rewards as failed attempts to override immediate temptation. If this view is correct, people should be more confident in their intertemporal decisions when they “successfully” delay gratification than when they do not. In two pre- registered experiments with built-in replication, adult participants (n=117) made monetary intertemporal choices and rated their confidence in having made the right decisions. Contrary to assumptions of the self-control account, confidence was not higher when participants chose delayed rewards. Rather, participants were more confident in their decisions when possible rewards were further apart in time-discounted subjective value, closer to the present, and larger in magnitude. Demonstrating metacognitive insight, participants were more confident in decisions that better aligned with their independent valuation of possible rewards. Decisions made with less confidence were more prone to changes-of-mind and more susceptible to a patience-enhancing manipulation. Together, our results establish that confidence in intertemporal choice tracks uncertainty in estimating and comparing the value of possible rewards – just as it does in decisions unrelated to self-control. Our findings challenge self- control views and instead cast intertemporal choice as a form of value-based decision-making about future possibilities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
C.S. Teh ◽  
C.P. Lim

Kansei Engineering (KE), a technology founded in Japan initially for product design, translates human feelings into design parameters. Although various intelligent approaches to objectively model human functions and the relationships with the product design decisions have been introduced in KE systems, many of the approaches are not able to incorporate human subjective feelings and preferences into the decision-making process. This paper proposes a new hybrid KE system that attempts to make the machine-based decision-making process closely resembles the real-world practice. The proposed approach assimilates human perceptive and associative abilities into the decision-making process of the computer. A number of techniques based on the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) neural network are employed in the backward KE system to reveal the underlying data structures that are involved in the decision-making process. A case study on interior design is presented to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed approach. The results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in developing an intelligent KE system which is able to combine human feelings and preferences into its decision making process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Szulc-Wałecka ◽  

In recent decades, the role of representative bodies has been transformed in many countries. It was influenced by reforms inspired by the concept of governance, but one of its strands, i.e., participatory governance, which promotes empowering of citizens, strengthening their involvement, and deepening their participation in the decision-making process, has gained significance. This tendency is also visible in Poland, especially in the self-governments of large cities. The aim of the article is to define the roles of representative bodies in the changing governance process and the relationship between the idea of representation and the concept of participatory governance. The article is based on the research carried out in cities with county status located in the Lubelskie Voivodeship. Correspondingly, the research results show that the role of the council in the process of governance is weakening, while the importance of the executive body is increasing. At the same time, participatory governance influenced the creation of new roles that representative bodies currently play.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 755-774
Author(s):  
Piotr Konieczny

This article considers the extent to which non-legal factors (nationality, activity/experience, conflict avoidance, and time constraints) affect decision making within collegiate courts, through the study of the Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee. That body is a self-evolved collegiate court of the Internet’s fifth most popular website, whose judges (known as arbitrators) are volunteers. This study shows that the decision-making process of this body seems mostly unaffected by the demographic factors studied and the acclimatization bias. Some evidence of conflict avoidance is found. Despite the professed equality of members of the Committee, there is clear evidence that some are much more active (and thus, influential) than others. Compared to most traditional court settings, in the volunteer collegiate court studied here, time constraints play a much more significant role than previously suggested in the literature.


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