Studying the prominence effect amid the COVID-19 crisis: implications for public health policy decision-making.

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought with it crucial policy- and decision-making situations, especially when making judgments between financial and health concerns. One particularly relevant decision-making phenomenon is the prominence effect, where decision-makers base their decisions on the most prominent attribute of the object at hand (e.g., health concerns) rather than weigh all the attributes together. This bias diminishes when the decision-making mode inhibits heuristic processes. In this study, we tested the prominence of health vs. financial concerns across two decision-making modes - choice (prone to heuristics) and matching (mitigates heuristics) - during the peak of the COVID-19 in the UK using Tversky et al.’s classic experimental paradigm. We added to the classic experimental design a priming condition. Participants were presented with two casualty-minimization programs, differing in lives saved and costs: program X would save 100 lives at the cost of 55-million-pound sterling, whereas program Y would save 30 lives at the cost of 12-million-pound sterling. Half of the participants were required to choose between the programs (choice condition). The other half were not given the cost of program X and were asked to determine what the cost should be to make it as equally attractive as the program Y. Participants in both groups were primed for either: a) financial concerns; b) health concerns; or c) control (no priming). Results showed that in the choice condition, unless primed for financial concerns, health concerns are more prominent. In the matching condition, on the other hand, the prominence of health concerns did not affect decision-makers, as they all “preferred” the cheaper option. These results add further support to the practical relevance of using the proper decision-making modes in times of consequential crises where multiple concerns, interests, and parties are involved.

Role Models or Partisan Models? The Effect of Prominent Women Officeholders

Women remain underrepresented in electoral politics compared to their share of the population. Using an original dataset spanning 1975–2019, we examine whether the presence of women in prominent political office leads to an increase in the number of women serving in state legislatures. We define prominence in two ways: the total number of women elected to statewide office and the length of a state’s history of electing women. We find that the prominence effect diverges by party. The election of prominent Democratic women leads to an increase in the proportion of Democratic women state legislators, while the election of Republican women leads to a decrease in the proportion of Republican women state legislators. Rather than serving as role models for women of both parties to enter the political pipeline, electing more women to prominent office is contributing to a greater representational gap between the parties in state legislatures.

What Are the Obstacles to Compassion?

In this chapter, the author examines the obstacles that impede the flow of compassion in three directions: for others, from others, and from self. Obstacles to compassion for others include insecure attachment style, personal identity, self-interests, social dominance orientation, moral judgment, confusing compassion with submissiveness or weakness, empathy fatigue, time pressure, and scale of suffering (including psychophysical numbing, pseudo-inefficacy, and prominence effect). Obstacles to receiving compassion from others include activation of grief responses, perceived weakness, and vulnerability. The author also looks at what inner compassion is and how self-criticism hinders it. Finally, the author also discusses the barriers to compassion that are unique to the healthcare environment, including self-recrimination and self-neglect, empathic distress and empathy fatigue, moral suffering, bullying, burnout, medical culture, and cognitive scarcity.

Studying the prominence effect amid the COVID-19 crisis: implications for public health policy decision-making.

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought with it crucial policy- and decision-making situations, especially when making judgments between economic and health concerns. One particularly relevant decision-making phenomenon is the prominence effect, where decision-makers base their decisions on the most prominent attribute of the object at hand (e.g., health concerns) rather than weigh all the attributes together. This bias diminishes when the decision-making mode inhibits heuristic processes. In this study, we tested the prominence of health vs. economic concerns across two decision-making modes - choice (prone to heuristics) and matching (mitigates heuristics) - during the peak of the COVID-19 in the UK using Tversky et al.’s classic experimental paradigm. We added to the classic experimental design a priming condition. Participants were presented with two casualty-minimization programs, differing in lives saved and costs: program X would save 100 lives at the cost of 55-million-pound sterling, whereas program Y would save 30 lives at the cost of 12-million-pound sterling. Half of the participants were required to choose between the programs (choice condition). The other half were not given the cost of program X and were asked to determine what the cost should be to make it as equally attractive as the program Y. Participants in both groups were primed for either: a) economic concerns; b) health concerns; or c) control (no priming). Results showed that in the choice condition, unless primed for economic concerns, health concerns are more prominent. In the matching condition, on the other hand, the prominence of health concerns did not affect decision-makers, as they all “preferred” the cheaper option. These results add further support to the practical relevance of using the proper decision-making modes in times of consequential crises where multiple concerns, interests, and parties are involved.