Participation Improves Collective Decisions (When It Involves Deliberation): Experimental Evidence From Kenya

Citizen participation in decision making has been widely lauded as a method for improving societal outcomes. Deliberative discussion, in particular, is believed to be more transformative than a mere aggregation of individual preferences, leading to more socially optimal decision making and behavior. I report the results from a laboratory experiment with 570 subjects in Nairobi, directly testing the effect of participation in deliberative group decision making on collective outcomes. Participants engage in a group task to earn compensation toward a shared group fund. Randomly assigned treatments vary according to whether decision making over the task to be completed involves: (1) external assignment; (2) non-deliberative majority voting; or (3) consensus through deliberative discussion. I find that deliberation improves collective decision making. Deliberation is also associated with changes in preferences, greater agreement with decision outcomes, and greater perceived fairness. Evidence for behavior change is weaker, but there is some support for further research into the relationship between preference change and behavior change.

Medical crisis during pandemic: Career preferences change in medical student

<span>The COVID-19 pandemic is a major threat to global education. Incidental emotions of fear and anxiety during pandemic have unconsciously influenced preference and outcome about their future career. This study aimed to assess the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic towards career preference change in medical students. A total of 1,027 responses from all over the medical students in Indonesia were collected from an online questionnaire which was broadcasted through social media from 14th July 2020–21st July 2020. This study was using Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) and Depression Anxiety Stress-Scale-21 (DASS-21) to assess fear of COVID-19, stress, anxiety, and depression. Out of 1,027 respondents, 44.6% had stressed, 47.8% had anxiety, and 18.5% had depression with an average FCV-19S score was 17.1. The result showed that the fear and anxiety of COVID-19 during the pandemic had associated significantly with the career decisions in medical students (p=&lt;0.05). Indonesian policymakers had to keep in mind that the fear of the COVID-19 pandemic in medical students is due to the high mortality COVID-19 cases of health workers in Indonesia. Health workers need adequate working conditions and specific protection, this requires prompt attention from stakeholders.</span>

What matters for keeping or losing support in televised debates

What leads citizens to change their candidate preferences during televised debates? The present paper addresses this question with real-time response and panel survey data from respondents recruited in the run-up to the 2017 German national election. Probing the importance of party identity and performance perceptions formed during the debate, the analysis more closely examines several core determinants than has previously been done with real-time response data. The findings suggest, first, that only a strong or very strong party identity is an effective barrier to candidate preference change. Second, beyond party identity, ratings of candidates’ issue-specific statements on policy issues show a very strong effect, albeit regardless of personal issue importance. Third, this influence of candidate ratings does not seem to be mediated through changes in valence perceptions. Rather, viewers seem to form a general impression of the candidates which cannot be reduced to performance perceptions regarding policy issues.

A Self-Learning Based Preference Model for Portfolio Optimization

An investment in a portfolio can not only guarantee returns but can also effectively control risk factors. Portfolio optimization is a multi-objective optimization problem. In order to better assist a decision maker to obtain his/her preferred investment solution, an interactive multi-criterion decision making system (MV-IMCDM) is designed for the Mean-Variance (MV) model of the portfolio optimization problem. Considering the flexibility requirement of a preference model that provides a guiding role in MV-IMCDM, a self-learning based preference model DT-PM (decision tree-preference model) is constructed. Compared with the present function based preference model, the DT-PM fully considers a decision maker’s bounded rationality. It does not require an assumption that the decision maker’s preference structure and preference change are known a priori and can be automatically generated and completely updated by learning from the decision maker’s preference feedback. Experimental results of a comparison show that, in the case that the decision maker’s preference structure and preference change are unknown a priori, the performances of guidance and fitness of the DT-PM are remarkably superior to function based preference models; in the case that the decision maker’s preference structure is known a priori, the performances of guidance and fitness of the DT-PM is approximated to the predefined function based model. It can be concluded that the DT-PM can agree with the preference ambiguity and the variability of a decision maker with bounded rationality and be applied more widely in a real decision system.

Authoritarian Rallying as Reputational Cascade? Evidence from Putin’s Popularity Surge after Crimea

When international conflict causes an authoritarian leader’s popularity to soar, extant theories lead us to treat such “rallying” as sincere preference change, the product of surging patriotism or cowed media. This study advances a theory of less-than-fully sincere rallying more appropriate for nondemocratic settings, characterizing it as at least partly reflecting cascading dissembling driven by social desirability concerns. The identification strategy combines a rare nationally representative rally-spanning panel survey with a list experiment and econometric analysis. This establishes that three quarters of those who rallied to Putin after Russia annexed Crimea were engaging in at least some form of dissembling and that this rallying developed as a rapid cascade, with social media joining television in fueling perceptions this was socially desirable.

Memory for individual items is related to nonreinforced preference change

It is commonly assumed that memories contribute to value-based decisions. Nevertheless, most theories of value-based decision-making do not account for memory influences on choice. Recently, new interest has emerged in the interactions between these two fundamental processes, mainly using reinforcement-based paradigms. Here, we aimed to study the role memory processes play in preference change following the nonreinforced cue-approach training (CAT) paradigm. In CAT, the mere association of cued items with a speeded motor response influences choices. Previous studies with this paradigm showed that a single training session induces a long-lasting effect of enhanced preferences for high-value trained stimuli, that is maintained for several months. We hypothesized that CAT increases memory of trained items, leading to enhanced accessibility of their positive associative memories and in turn to preference changes. In two preregistered experiments, we found evidence that memory is enhanced for trained items and that better memory is correlated with enhanced preferences at the individual item level, both immediately and 1 mo following CAT. Our findings suggest that memory plays a central role in value-based decision-making following CAT, even in the absence of external reinforcements. These findings contribute to new theories relating memory and value-based decision-making and set the groundwork for the implementation of novel nonreinforced behavioral interventions that lead to long-lasting behavioral change.

Preference Change and Behavioral Ethics: Can States Create Ethical People?

Law and economics scholarship suggests that, in appropriate cases, the law can improve people’s behavior by changing their preferences. For example, the law can curb discriminatory hiring practices by providing employers with information that might change their discriminatory preference. Supposedly, if employers no longer prefer one class of employees to another, they will simply stop discriminating, with no need for further legal intervention. The current Article aims to add some depth to this familiar analysis by introducing the insights of behavioral ethics into the law and economics literature on preference change. Behavioral ethics research shows that wrongdoing often originates from semi-deliberative or non-deliberative cognitive processes. These findings suggest that the process of preference change through the use of the law is markedly more complicated and nuanced than previously appreciated. For instance, even if an employer’s explicit discriminatory stance is changed, and the employer no longer consciously prefers one class of employees over another, discriminatory behavior might persist if it originates from semi-conscious, habitual, or non-deliberative decision-making mechanisms. Therefore, actual change in behavior might necessitate a close engagement with people’s level of moral awareness. We discuss the institutional and normative implications of these insights and evaluate their significance for the attempt to improve preferences through the different functions of the legal system.

Changing People’s Preferences by the State and the Law

In standard economic models, two basic assumptions are made: the first, that actors are rational, and the second, that actors’ preferences are a given and exogenously determined. Behavioral economics — followed by behavioral law and economics — has questioned the first assumption. This Article challenges the second one, arguing that in many instances, social welfare should be enhanced not by maximizing satisfaction of existing preferences but by changing the preferences themselves. The Article identifies seven categories of cases where the traditional objections to intentional preference change by the state and the law lose force and argues that in these cases, such a change warrants serious consideration. It then proposes four different modes of intervention in people’s preferences, varying in intensity, on the one hand, and in the identity of their addressees, on the other, and explains the relative advantages and disadvantages of each form of intervention.

The Data Privacy Law of Brexit: Theories of Preference Change

Upon Brexit, the United Kingdom chose to follow the path of EU data protection and remain tied to the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It even enacted the GDPR into its domestic law. This Article evaluates five models relating to preference change, demonstrating how they identify different dimensions of Brexit while providing a rich explanation of why a legal system may or may not reject an established transnational legal order. While market forces and a “Brussels Effect” played the most significant role in the decision of the UK government to accept the GDPR, important nonmarket factors were also present in this choice. This Article’s models of preference change are also useful in thinking about the likely extent of the UK’s future divergence from EU data protection.