scholarly journals Complex Contagions in Charitable Donations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Gao ◽  
Golnaz Ghasemi ◽  
Jason J. Jones ◽  
Grant Schoenebeck
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Charitable Donations ◽  
Influence Curves ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Influence Curve ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Human Participants

Cascades over social networks can spread information, beliefs, diseases, technologies, and behaviors. Simple cascades spread from mere contact and produce submodular influence curves. Complex cascades assume agents with thresholding behavior and may produce non-submodular influence curves. In this study, we run three experiments that request charitable donations from human participants and experimentally manipulate whether and where their peers donate. We find evidence that we can (1) direct donations to an otherwise unpopular charity and (2) elicit complex contagion as evidenced by a non-submodular influence curve. The findings represent the most straightforward evidence to date of treatment-induced complex contagion - explicitly and formally defined - in human decision-making.

scholarly journals A map of decoy influence in human multi-alternative choice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsvetomira Dumbalska ◽  
Vickie Li ◽  
Konstantinos Tsetsos ◽  
Christopher Summerfield
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Simple Model ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Incentive Compatible ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Alternative Choice ◽  
Decoy Effects ◽  
Attribute Space

Human decisions can be biased by irrelevant information. For example, choices between two preferred alternatives can be swayed by a third option that is inferior or unavailable. Previous work has identified three classic biases, known as the attraction, similarity and compromise effects, which arise during choices between economic alternatives defined by two attributes. However, the reliability, interrelationship, and computational origin of these three biases has been controversial. Here, a large cohort of human participants made incentive-compatible choices among assets that varied in price and quality. Instead of focusing on the three classic effects, we sampled decoy stimuli exhaustively across bidimensional multi-attribute space and constructed a full map of decoy influence on choices between two otherwise preferred target items. Our analysis revealed that the decoy influence map was highly structured even beyond the three classic biases. We identified a very simple model that can fully reproduce the decoy influence map and capture its variability in individual participants. This model reveals that the three decoy effects are not distinct phenomena but are all special cases of a more general principle, by which attribute values are repulsed away from the context provided by rival options. The model helps understand why the biases are typically correlated across participants and allows us to validate a new prediction about their interrelationship. This work helps to clarify the origin of three of the most widely-studied biases in human decision-making.

scholarly journals A map of decoy influence in human multialternative choice

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (40) ◽  
pp. 25169-25178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsvetomira Dumbalska ◽  
Vickie Li ◽  
Konstantinos Tsetsos ◽  
Christopher Summerfield
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Simple Model ◽  
General Principle ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Incentive Compatible ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Multialternative Choice ◽  
Decoy Effects

Human decisions can be biased by irrelevant information. For example, choices between two preferred alternatives can be swayed by a third option that is inferior or unavailable. Previous work has identified three classic biases, known as the attraction, similarity, and compromise effects, which arise during choices between economic alternatives defined by two attributes. However, the reliability, interrelationship, and computational origin of these three biases have been controversial. Here, a large cohort of human participants made incentive-compatible choices among assets that varied in price and quality. Instead of focusing on the three classic effects, we sampled decoy stimuli exhaustively across bidimensional multiattribute space and constructed a full map of decoy influence on choices between two otherwise preferred target items. Our analysis reveals that the decoy influence map is highly structured even beyond the three classic biases. We identify a very simple model that can fully reproduce the decoy influence map and capture its variability in individual participants. This model reveals that the three decoy effects are not distinct phenomena but are all special cases of a more general principle, by which attribute values are repulsed away from the context provided by rival options. The model helps us understand why the biases are typically correlated across participants and allows us to validate a prediction about their interrelationship. This work helps to clarify the origin of three of the most widely studied biases in human decision-making.

scholarly journals Abstract neuronal choice signals during embodied decisions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Sandhaeger ◽  
Nina Omejc ◽  
Anna-Antonia Pape ◽  
Markus Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
Independent Manner ◽  
General Role ◽  
Response Mapping ◽  
Response Information ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Motor Actions

AbstractHumans can make abstract choices independent of motor actions. However, little is known about the functional role and neural representation of abstract choices. Here, we show that in the human brain choices are represented in an abstract, motor-independent manner, even when they are directly linked to an action. To disentangle sensory, choice, and motor aspects of decision-making, we measured MEG signals while human participants made choices with known and unknown motor response mapping. Using multivariate decoding, we found stimulus, choice and response information with distinct cortical distributions. Choice representations were invariant to whether or not the response mapping was known during stimulus presentation. Furthermore, neuronal choice representations predicted decision confidence and occupied distinct representational spaces from both stimulus and motor signals. Our results uncover abstract neuronal choice signals that generalize to embodied decisions. This suggests a general role of an abstract stage in human decision-making.

Modeling Bias Reduction Strategies in a Biased Agent

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaelle Scheuerman ◽  
Dina Acklin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Bias Reduction ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Similar Task

Costly mistakes can occur when decision makers rely on intuition or learned biases to make decisions. To better understand the cognitive processes that lead to bias and develop strategies to combat it, we developed an intelligent agent using the cognitive architecture, ACT-R 7.0. The agent simulates a human participating in a decision making task designed to assess the effectiveness of bias reduction strategies. The agent's performance is compared to that of human participants completing a similar task. Similar results support the underlying cognitive theories and reveal limitations of reducing bias in human decision making. This should provide insights for designing intelligent agents that can reason about bias while supporting decision makers.

Evaluating Human Decision-Making Theories With Monkey Data

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott D. Brown ◽  
Pete Cassey ◽  
Andrew Heathcote ◽  
Roger Ratcliff
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Human Decision

History among the Junipers: Hosea 14:2–10 as Metahistoriography

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-116
Author(s):  
Mark W. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Formation ◽  
Divine Agency ◽  
Human Decision

Abstract The dual endings of Hosea promoted reflection on Israel’s history as the movement from destruction to restoration based on Yhwh’s gracious decision for Israel. It thus clarifies the endings of the prior sections of the book (chs. 3 and 11) by locating Israel’s future in the realm of Yhwh’s activities. The final ending (14:10) balances the theme of divine agency in 14:2–9 with the recognition of human decision-making and moral formation as aspects of history as well. The endings of Hosea thus offer a good example of metahistoriography, a text that uses non-historiographic techniques to speak of the movements of history.

Network Theory of Human Decision Making

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Grigolini ◽  
Bruce J. West
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Human Decision
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