Method of Inducing Attention using Coefficient of Variation in Decision Making Task

Abstract

Many findings of behavioral decision research suggested that attention had a crucial role in decision-making. We proposed a method to induce attention toward particular attribute such as money using control by coefficient of variation in multi-attribute decision task. The experiment consisted of two steps: 1) arousing attention using the proposed method and 2) testing the effect of the method. We hypothesized that the participants would pay more attention to high, relative to low, CV attributes. The results for the first step of the experiment showed that the participants paid more attention to high, relative to low CV probability and low, relative to high, CV outcome. Results for the second step of the experiment were similar to those observed in the first step. This finding indicates that the proposed method was effective in arousing attention during the decision-making process.