Abstract
In everyday life, people sometimes find themselves making decisions on behalf of others, taking risks on another’s behalf, accepting the responsibility for these choices and possibly suffering regret for what they could have done differently. Previous research has extensively studied how people deal with risk when making decisions for others or when being observed by others. Here, we asked whether making decisions for present others is affected by regret avoidance. We studied value-based decision making under uncertainty, manipulating both whether decisions benefited the participant or a partner (beneficiary effect) and whether the partner watched the participant’s choices (audience effect) and their factual and counterfactual outcomes. Computational behavioural analysis revealed that participants were less mindful of regret (and more strongly driven by bigger risks) when choosing for others vs for themselves. Conversely, they chose more conservatively (regarding both regret and risk) when being watched vs alone. The effects of beneficiary and audience on anticipated regret counteracted each other, suggesting that participants’ financial and reputational interests impacted the feeling of regret independently.
Highlights
In everyday life, people sometimes find themselves making decisions on behalf of others, taking risks on another’s behalf, accepting the responsibility for these choices and possibly suffering regret for what they could have done differently
Hsee and Weber[6] argued that risk attitudes differ for self and other because decision makers may assume that others have a different risk attitude
In addition to the analyses described above, statistical tests were carried out using the Wald test for logistic regression coefficients, repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) in R statistical computing software[37]
Summary
People sometimes find themselves making decisions on behalf of others, taking risks on another’s behalf, accepting the responsibility for these choices and possibly suffering regret for what they could have done differently. Numerous studies have looked at changes in risk attitude when participants are making decisions for others versus for themselves. Hsee and Weber[6] argued that risk attitudes differ for self and other because decision makers may assume that others have a different risk attitude They found that people made less risky choices for themselves than what they predicted abstract others would make for them. The results suggested that abstract others are assumed to be more risk taking Another reason which could explain the different risk attitudes for self and other is that people may try to achieve different goals when making decisions for themselves versus for others. A proxy decision maker is motivated, Polman argued, by a promotion focus and aims to minimise errors of omission (good outcomes failing to occur)
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