The Role of Cause Involvement and Assortment Size on Decision Difficulty via Communal Relationships

Social enterprises aim to achieve both social and economic goals by reaching broader consumer segments through extensive assortments, but research into how this product proliferation strategy affects consumer response is scarce. In the current research we examine how consumers judge social enterprises providing large product assortments. Three experiments show that choice overload (i.e., having a decision difficulty when faced with many options) can be reversed among target consumers of social enterprises—specifically those whose involvement in a social cause is high. Because more-involved consumers view large assortments of cause-related products as an indicator of the company’s commitment to addressing social issues, they identify with the company and thereby form communal relationships. Thus, the consumers’ focus shifts from comparing options to helping the company, leading to reduced decision difficulty. The findings contribute to existing research on assortment size and the understanding of the information consumers use to evaluate the company’s commitment to social causes.

Thou Shalt not Kill, Unless it is not a Human: Target Dehumanization May Influence Decision Difficulty and Response Patterns for Moral Dilemmas

Past research on moral dilemmas has thoroughly investigated the roles of personality and situational variables, but the role of targets in moral dilemmas has been relatively neglected. This article presents findings from four experiments that manipulated the perceived dehumanization of targets in moral dilemmas. Findings from Studies 1, 2, and 4 suggest that dehumanized targets may render the decision easier, and with less emotion. Findings from Studies 1 and 3, though not Studies 2 and 4, showed that dehumanization of targets in dilemmas may lead participants to make less deontological judgments. Findings from Study 3, but not Study 4, suggest that the effects of dehumanization manipulation on decision choices are potentially due to reduced deontological, but not utilitarian judgments. Though the patterns are somewhat inconsistent across the studies, overall, results suggest that targets' dehumanization can play a role in how people make their decisions in moral dilemmas.

Can longer gaze duration determine risky investment decisions? An interactive perspective

Can longer gaze duration determine risky investment decisions? Recent studies have tested how gaze influences people’s decisions and the boundary of the gaze effect. The current experiment used adaptive gaze-contingent manipulation by adding a self-determined option to test whether longer gaze duration can determine risky investment decisions. The results showed that both the expected value of each option and the gaze duration influenced people’s decisions. This result was consistent with the attentional diffusion model (aDDM) proposed by Krajbich et al. (2010), which suggests that gaze can influence the choice process by amplify the value of the choice. Therefore, the gaze duration would influence the decision when people do not have clear preference.The result also showed that the similarity between options and the computational difficulty would also influence the gaze effect. This result was inconsistent with prior research that used option similarities to represent difficulty, suggesting that both similarity between options and computational difficulty induce different underlying mechanisms of decision difficulty.

Exposure to Brands Makes Preferential Decisions Easier

The most consequential consideration of brands arises during preferential decision making. This article proposes that as a consequence of the repeated pairing of brands and preferential decisions, exposure to brands initiates a cognitive state of readiness for preferential decisions (which we term decision readiness) that subsequently makes preferential decisions easier. Using both real and fictitious brands across a variety of choice contexts, seven experiments demonstrate that consumers find preferential decision making easier when it occurs in the presence (vs. absence) of brands. Consistent with the details of our framework, this effect: (i) is explained by the activation of decision readiness, (ii) leads to outcomes such as increased outcome satisfaction and decreased decision delegation, and (iii) is attenuated when exposure is to only one brand. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the importance of exposure to brands for decision making which, in turn, offers novel insight into existing literatures on brand exposure, decision difficulty, and brand roles.

Trading mental effort for confidence in the metacognitive control of value-based decision-making

Why do we sometimes opt for actions or items that we do not value the most? Under current neurocomputational theories, such preference reversals are typically interpreted in terms of errors that arise from the unreliable signaling of value to brain decision systems. But, an alternative explanation is that people may change their mind because they are reassessing the value of alternative options while pondering the decision. So, why do we carefully ponder some decisions, but not others? In this work, we derive a computational model of the metacognitive control of decisions or MCD. In brief, we assume that fast and automatic processes first provide initial (and largely uncertain) representations of options' values, yielding prior estimates of decision difficulty. These uncertain value representations are then refined by deploying cognitive (e.g., attentional, mnesic) resources, the allocation of which is controlled by an effort-confidence tradeoff. Importantly, the anticipated benefit of allocating resources varies in a decision-by-decision manner according to the prior estimate of decision difficulty. The ensuing MCD model predicts response time, subjective feeling of effort, choice confidence, changes of mind, and choice-induced preference change and certainty gain. We test these predictions in a systematic manner, using a dedicated behavioral paradigm. Our results provide a quantitative link between mental effort, choice confidence, and preference reversals, which could inform interpretations of related neuroimaging findings.

Neurocomputational mechanisms of confidence in self and others

Computing confidence in one's own and others' decisions is crucial for success in many social situations. There has been substantial progress in our understanding of confidence in oneself, but little is known about how we form confidence in others. Here, we address this question by asking subjects undergoing fMRI to place bets on perceptual decisions made by themselves or one of three other players of varying ability. We show that subjects' compute confidence in another player's decisions by combining distinct estimates of player ability and decision difficulty - allowing them to predict that a good player may get a difficult decision wrong and that a bad player may get an easy decision right. We find that this computation is supported by an interaction between brain systems traditionally implicated in decision-making (LIP) and theory of mind (TPJ, dmPFC). These results reveal a neurocomputational interplay between self- and other-related processes during social cognition.

Thou Shalt Not Kill, Unless It Is Not a Human: Target Dehumanization May Influence Decision Difficulty and Response Patterns for Moral Dilemmas

Past research on moral dilemmas has thoroughly investigated the roles of personality and situational variables, but the role of targets in moral dilemmas has been relatively neglected. This paper presents findings from four experiments that manipulate the perceived dehumanization of targets in moral dilemmas. Studies 1, 2 and 4 suggest that dehumanized targets may render the decision easier, and with less emotion. Findings from Studies 1 and 3, though not Studies 2 and 4, show that dehumanization of targets in dilemmas may lead participants to make less deontological judgments. Study 3, but not Study 4, suggests that it is potentially because dehumanization has an effect on reducing deontological, but not utilitarian judgments. Though the patterns are somewhat inconsistent across studies, overall, results suggest that targets’ dehumanization can play a role in how people make their decisions in moral dilemmas.

Electroencephalogram-based Identification of Evidence Accumulation Stages in Decision-Making

Dating back to the 19th century, the discovery of processing stages has been of great interest to researchers in cognitive science. The goal of this article is to demonstrate the validity of a recently developed method, hidden semi-Markov model multivariate pattern analysis (HsMM-MVPA), for discovering stages directly from electroencephalographic data, in contrast to classical reaction-time-based methods. To test the validity of stages discovered with the HsMM-MVPA method, we applied it to two relatively simple tasks where the interpretation of processing stages is straightforward. In these visual discrimination electroencephalographic data experiments, perceptual processing and decision difficulty were manipulated. The HsMM-MVPA revealed that participants progressed through five cognitive processing stages while performing these tasks. The brain activation of one of those stages was dependent on perceptual processing, whereas the brain activation and the duration of two other stages were dependent on decision difficulty. In addition, evidence accumulation models (EAMs) were used to assess to what extent the results of HsMM-MVPA are comparable to standard reaction-time-based methods. Consistent with the HsMM-MVPA results, EAMs showed that nondecision time varied with perceptual difficulty and drift rate varied with decision difficulty. Moreover, nondecision and decision time of the EAMs correlated highly with the first two and last three stages of the HsMM-MVPA, respectively, indicating that the HsMM-MVPA gives a more detailed description of stages discovered with this more classical method. The results demonstrate that cognitive stages can be robustly inferred with the HsMM-MVPA.

Temporal experience modifies future thoughts: Manipulation of Libet’s W influences difficulty assessment during a decision-making task

Past studies have employed the subjective experience of decision time (Libet’s W) as an index of consciousness, marking the moment at which the agent first becomes aware of a decision. In the current study, we examined whether the temporal experience of W affects subsequent experience related to the action. Specifically, we tested whether W influenced the perception of difficulty in a decision-making task, hypothesizing that temporal awareness of W might influence the sense of difficulty. Consistent with our predictions, when W was perceived as early or late, participants subsequently rated the decision difficulty to be easy or difficult, respectively (Exp.1). Further investigation showed that perceived difficulty, however, did not influence W (Exp.2). Together, our findings suggest a unidirectional relationship such that W plays a role in the metacognition of difficulty evaluation. The results imply that subjective temporal experience of decision time modifies the consequential sense of difficulty.

Where Do You Want to Go for Dinner? A Preference Expression Asymmetry in Joint Consumption

This research introduces a framework wherein consumers take on “requestor” or “responder” roles in making joint consumption decisions. The authors document a robust preference expression asymmetry wherein “requestors” soliciting others’ consumption preferences (e.g., “Where do you want to go for dinner?”) desire preference expressions (e.g., “Let’s go to this restaurant”), whereas “responders” instead do not express preferences (e.g., “Anywhere is fine with me”). This asymmetry generalizes under a broad set of situations and occurs because the requestor and responder roles differ in their foci. Compared to responders, requestors are more focused on mitigating the difficulty of arriving at a decision, whereas compared to requestors, responders are more focused on conveying likability by appearing easygoing. Responders thus behave suboptimally, incurring a “preference cost” (when masking preferences) and a “social friction cost” (requestors favor responders who express preferences). Requestors can elicit preference expression by conveying their own dislike of decision making, which increases responders’ focus on mitigating decision difficulty. The authors conclude by discussing the framework’s contributions to looking “under the hood” of joint consumption decisions.