Field Of Judgment Research Articles

It’s about time: How to study intertemporal choice in systems design

Decision making pervades software and systems engineering. Intertemporal decisions involve trade-offs among outcomes at different points in time. They play a central role in systems design, as recognised since the inception of the software engineering (SE) field. They are also crucial for the sustainability of design decisions. However, temporal decision making is not adequately understood in SE. The field of Judgement and Decision Making (JDM) offers important empirical findings and research methods that could be utilised. This article establishes a baseline for studying how software professionals handle intertemporal choices. It examines how temporal distance affects choices in an example scenario, explores in what areas of software development such decisions can be found, and examines how systems design decisions can be characterised and studied as intertemporal. We developed a method to study intertemporal choice in SE, based on an initial set of psychological theory grounded in JDM. We instantiated the method in a study to elicit responses to an intertemporal choice task followed by a Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) interview. We found that study participants overall tended to discount future outcomes, but individual participants varied wildly in how they valued present vs. future outcomes. They indicated several locations in which intertemporal choices occur in everyday software development. Based on these findings, and by reconciling our initial theory with existing JDM theory and results, we further developed and refined our theory and study method into a framework for studying intertemporal decision making in SE. To obtain a basis for more sustainable software systems design decisions, SE research should adopt a more comprehensive, detailed, and empirically consistent way of understanding and studying intertemporal choices. We provide suggestions for how future research could achieve practical methods that address essential characteristics of real-life systems design decisions.

From performative to professional accountability: re-imagining ‘the field of judgment’ through teacher professional development

ABSTRACT The rise of performative culture in education and intensifying forms of test-based accountability have subjected teachers to a ubiquitous ‘field of judgment’ through which they are held to account. Within this context, professional development is consistently deployed as a key solution to stagnant or declining student outcomes. In this paper, we examine how accountability might be reimagined through one approach to professional development known as Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR). We draw on Foucault’s notion of panopticism and Ball’s influential writings on performativity to analyse interviews with 21 educators from 14 schools in New South Wales, Australia, conducted during a 2014–2015 randomised controlled trial. Participants highlighted the pervasiveness of testing and test results in shaping their experience of teaching in a system of perpetual surveillance where numbers bite deep into practice. By contrast, participation in QTR afforded teachers rare spaces of freedom within the structure of performativity to collaboratively focus on pedagogy. We argue meaningful professional development can alter the field of judgment and enable teachers to reclaim accountability on their own terms, while maintaining a clear focus on student outcomes.

Polanyi and Kahneman and on Judging and Deciding

Similarities between what Michael Polanyi and Daniel Kahneman wrote about the acts of judging and deciding are partly the result of taking seriously the findings of Gestalt psychology. Both men treat acts of judging and deciding as analogous to acts of perceiving. This similarity is the reason that the differences between Kahneman and Polanyi are mostly complementary, rather than contradictory. Among the things Polanyians can contribute to the interdisciplinary field of judgment and decision making are commitment, the from-to structure, and the image of leaping across a logical gap. Among the things Polanyians can learn from Kahneman is a pragmatic distinction between judging and deciding, a distinction between fast and slow thinking, and a heightened awareness of the many ways tacit heuristics and biases lead to mistaken judgments and bad decisions.

从“理性人”到“行为人”：公共政策研究的行为科学转向

<p id=C2>With the criticism by behavioral economics on the rational man assumption and the accumulation of empirical evidences in the field of judgement and decision making, public policy researchers increasingly paying closer attention to the exploration of psychological and behavioral mechanism of human being in real life. These studies tend to use psychological measures, such as satisfaction and trust indicators that embody public interests and subjective feelings, to assess the performance of public policy. Besides, relevant psychological effects and technologies are employed to improve quality and efficiency of public administration and foster social fairness and justice. It is recommended that studies of public policy in China should learn the experience of two matured organizations, which are Behavioral Insights Team in UK and Social and Behavioral Sciences Team in US, clarify the connotations of this discipline, establish think tanks, and conduct researches based on China’s actual conditions.

Local Choices: Rationality and the Contextuality of Decision-Making.

Rational explanation is ubiquitous in psychology and social sciences, ranging from rational analysis, expectancy-value theories, ideal observer models, mental logic to probabilistic frameworks, rational choice theory, and informal “folk psychological” explanation. However, rational explanation appears to be challenged by apparently systematic irrationality observed in psychological experiments, especially in the field of judgement and decision-making (JDM). Here, it is proposed that the experimental results require not that rational explanation should be rejected, but that rational explanation is local, i.e., within a context. Thus, rational models need to be supplemented with a theory of contextual shifts. We review evidence in JDM that patterns of choices are often consistent within contexts, but unstable between contexts. We also demonstrate that for a limited, though reasonably broad, class of decision-making domains, recent theoretical models can be viewed as providing theories of contextual shifts. It is argued that one particular significant source of global inconsistency arises from a cognitive inability to represent absolute magnitudes, whether for perceptual variables, utilities, payoffs, or probabilities. This overall argument provides a fresh perspective on the scope and limits of human rationality.

The effect of depression on the decision to join a clinical trial.

Clinical trials are necessary for evaluation of novel treatments. However, concerns have been raised about the vulnerability of depressed individuals when joining clinical trials, that is, about their abilities to make good decisions about clinical trial participation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether depression compromises decisions to join clinical trials, by comparing the decisions of 3 groups: depressed individuals, individuals suffering from chronic pain, and individuals with comorbid depression and chronic pain. Participants (depressed: n = 61; chronic pain: n = 60; comorbid: n = 58) completed, via a clinical interview, common decision-making tasks from the field of judgment and decision making (time trade-off and standard gamble). The rationality of decisions was defined as the concordance between the evaluations of their health and the amount of risk participants would accept to improve health. Depressed individuals made less rational decisions than individuals with chronic pain (partial η2 = 0.075, 90% confidence interval [CI] [0.009, 0.180]); however, the discrepancy was in the direction of risk aversion, suggesting that depressed individuals were overly cautious about clinical trial participation. Furthermore, this risk aversion was not limited to clinical trials for depression, but also extended to clinical trials for chronic pain (partial η2 = 0.041, 90% CI [0.002, 0.117]), suggesting that depressed individuals may be overly cautious in their health choices more broadly. Our findings suggest that concerns about depressed individuals making overly risky "desperate" decisions is likely unfounded, and it is more likely that depressed individuals may forgo valuable care options in an attempt to avoid risk. (PsycINFO Database Record

One test, five scoring procedures: different ways of approaching the cognitive reflection test

ABSTRACTAlthough the cognitive reflection test (CRT) represents a frequently used instrument within the field of judgement and decision-making, its scope and detailed characteristics are still not well understood. Therefore, the present article discusses 5 different ways of scoring the CRT that include the regular CRT scoring procedure (CRT-Regular), adding up the intuitive answers (CRT-Intuitive), calculating the proportion of intuitive in total incorrect answers (CRT-Proportion Intuitive), scoring only non-intuitive answers irrespective of their correctness (CRT-Reflection) and calculating the proportion of correct in total non-intuitive answers (CRT-Calculation). We conducted 2 studies aimed at investigating the associations among these scoring techniques and their relationships with thinking dispositions, specifically the need for cognition, faith in intuition, superstitious thinking, maximising and post-choice regret. The results indicate that thinking dispositions play a modest role in explaining the performance on the CRT. The specific associations among the investigated dispositions and different CRT scoring techniques are discussed.

The Heart and the Head: On Choosing Experiences Intuitively and Possessions Deliberatively

AbstractAn enduring question in the field of judgment and decision making is when people are likely to choose on the basis of intuition and when they are likely to pursue a more deliberative decision strategy. Here, we attempt to shed light on that question by examining whether people tend to weight intuition more heavily when making experiential purchases, and to weight deliberation more heavily when making material purchases. Results from seven studies indicate that they do. In Study 1 (and a replication), participants expressed an explicit preference for choosing experiential purchases intuitively and material purchases analytically. In Study 2 (and a replication), participants anticipated experiencing more regret after going against reason for material purchases and going against intuition for experiential purchases. Participants in Study 3 who were asked to think about an experiential purchase wanted to see the relevant information presented by alternative, which facilitates intuitive/holistic processing, more than did those who were asked to consider a material purchase. In two additional studies, participants who were induced to think intuitively chose experiential purchases more often (Study 4) and reported a higher willingness to pay for them (Study 5) compared with participants induced to think analytically. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

The social and emotional dimensions of schooling: A case study in challenging the ‘barriers to learning’

The educational landscape in England and Wales is shaped by demands made on head teachers, teachers and pupils to perform within a ‘field of judgement’ dominated by clearly defined outcomes of academic success. This puts schools from socio‐economically excluded areas where there are potentially ‘barriers to learning’ at a considerable disadvantage. This article draws on case‐study data from an English secondary school in an area of considerable deprivation. The empirical focus revolves around school‐participants’ perceptions and understandings of the social and emotional dimensions of schooling. The emphasis on the relational and emotional work undertaken by teaching staff underpins the case‐study school's approach to challenging the barriers to learning. A number of themes and concerns are reported in this article including relational work in school that extends into the community, the school as a sprawling network of communication and the heighted role of the emotions at a number of levels in school. In drawing on interview data from teachers, school managers, pupils and parents we are developing a model of schooling that approximates to Fielding's conception of a people‐oriented learning community.

Law, Politics, the Age of Responsibility, and the Problem of Child Soldiers

This article considers debates about criminal responsibility for child soldiers as a lens through which we can view intersections between legal and political theory, legal and political practice, and interdisciplinary study of law. The case of Dominic Ongwen, victim and perpetrator of the same crimes, currently before the International Criminal Court, elucidates some challenges to the contemporary model of legal response to complex protracted conflict. The argument discusses how legal standards, political realities, theories of responsibility, and widespread assumptions about time and aging interact in this field of judgment, and aims to point the reader toward broader possibilities for retribution and recovery.

The Cognition of Civil Servants and Citizens Concerning Policy Resource Allocation in Kaohsiung City in Taiwan

Kaohsiung City is a special municipality in Southern Taiwan. The difference between northern and southern cities in terms of public investments, industrial structures, and social perspectives has been a problem in Taiwan because talented people keep moving from the south to the north. The difference in cognition of government’s allocation of policy resources between professional civil servants and the general public demonstrates the conflict between “public opinion” and “professionalism”. This study adopted the social judgment theory (SJT) to examine the cognition of individuals affected by policy resource allocation regarding the allocation of policy resources made by the Government of Kaohsiung City. The SJT is applicable to real-world circumstances in the field of judgment and analysis. The research result indicated that the affected individuals were concerned that the government lost its focus when allocating policy resources. Obscure schemes and plans for policymaking and election-oriented decision making significantly impact government allocation of policy resources. The essential problem of policy resource allocation in Kaohsiung City is that although the supply of resources is higher than the demand, the types of resources do not meet the requirements of the demand.

Comparison of Analysis Performed by Classical Approach and Bayesian Approach in Auditors’ Decision Making Process

Auditor is in a decision maker position in many phases of an audit process. The increase of auditor's effectiveness and productivity also increases all of the success of the process. Therefore, the analysis of the phases, which auditor is being a decision maker (judgment field) is very important. These analyses can be performed by some statistical methods that are based on the classical approach or the Bayesian approach.In this study, the same model and data which is used in doctorate dissertation named “The Bayesian Approach in Objectifying of Auditor's Judgment and an Application”. The variables that can be effective in decisions in the pre-engagement investigation and client acceptance phase are analyzed both by classical approach and Bayesian approach (By using logistic regression model). In conclusion, analyzing the complex structures about decision making that are presented in the judgment fields can be possible by Bayesian approach due to the fact that Bayesian approach can analyze both objective and subjective components. Consequently, auditor's subjective judgment is included into the audit process by being objective and therefore the process is strengthened.

Possibility of Application of the Simulation Based Reliability Assessment Method in Modeling of Structures

The article deals with possibility of application of the simulation based reliability assessment SBRA Method in modeling of structures in the field of judgement of their serviceability. A steel simply supported beam of hollow circular cross sectional area was taken into account. Using rules of modeling it was modeled by the beam of the same shape, when its material was the composite material. Deflection of it was determined experimentally and using modeling rules the corresponding deflection of the steel beam was determined. Deflections of steel component and its composite model were determined using SBRA Method, realized when following random variable quantities as dimensions of bodies and corresponding geometric quantities, Young ́s modulus of elasticity E and loading force were taken into account.

Compassion fade and the challenge of environmental conservation

AbstractCompassion shown towards victims often decreases as the number of individuals in need of aid increases, identifiability of the victims decreases, and the proportion of victims helped shrinks. Such “compassion fade” may hamper individual-level and collective responses to pressing large-scale crises. To date, research on compassion fade has focused on humanitarian challenges; thus, it remains unknown whether and to what extent compassion fade emerges when victims are non-human others. Here we show that compassion fade occurs in the environmental domain, but only among non-environmentalists. These findings suggest that compassion fade may challenge our collective ability and willingness to confront the major environmental problems we face, including climate change. The observed moderation effect of environmental identity further indicates that compassion fade may present a significant psychological barrier to building broad public support for addressing these problems. Our results highlight the importance of bringing findings from the field of judgment and decision making to bear on pressing societal issues.

Designing Better Pension Benefits Statements: Current Status, Best Practices and Insights from the Field of Judgment and Decisionmaking

Decisionmaking on saving for retirement requires individuals to have knowledge on fundamental issues, such as the functioning of pension systems, portfolio allocation, future expected benefits, contribution histories and risks. Currently, the information provided in pension benefits statements vary widely by plan provider as well as by the nature of benefits offered. The inconsistency could occur partly because recommended best practices for, and empirical studies that test, the design and content of statements vary widely in the literature. Furthermore, little is known on how people think about saving for retirement. Insights from the fields of behavioral economics, and judgment and decisionmaking can fill some of these literature gaps by applying psychological theories to help better inform consumers about their financial decisions and retirement status using benefits statements. In this paper, the authors provide a normative and positive review of pension benefit statement design. They begin by reviewing best practices and recommendations provided from the trade literature. Next, they describe the content and design of a cross section of statements that are currently being used by plan providers. Finally, they review the academic literature on individuals’ understanding of, and information needs related to, pension benefits statements. The latter includes a description of the few studies explicitly researching pension statement design related questions, general behavioral and decisionmaking literature that can be applied to the content and presentation of information, and general literature on whether and to what extent uncertainty should be presented.

The point of normative models in judgment and decision making

OPINION article Front. Psychol., 24 December 2012Sec. Cognitive Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00577

Experience-Based Decisions and Brain Activity: Three New Gaps and Partial Answers

Experience-based decisions can be defined as decisions emanating from direct or vicarious reinforcements that were received in the past. Typically, in experience-based decision tasks an agent repeatedly makes choices and receives outcomes from the available alternatives, so that choices are based on past experiences, with no explicit description of the payoff distributions from which the outcomes are drawn. The study of experience-based decisions has long roots in the works of mathematical psychologists during the 1950s and 1960s of the last century (e.g., Estes and Burke, 1953; Bush and Mosteller, 1955; Katz, 1964). This type of task has been viewed as a natural continuation of the behaviorist tradition involving animals as subjects, and multiple trials in which feedback is obtained on each trial. During the 1970s and 1980s seminal studies focusing on choices among descriptive gambles began to dominate the field of Judgment and Decision Making, paving the wave for the successful and influential works of Tversky and Kahneman (e.g., Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). Indeed, a review of the decision making literature from 1970 to 1998 conducted by Weber et al. (2004) shows prominent use of description-based tasks over experience-based tasks. Yet the study of experience-based decisions has continued to evolve. Some of the workers in this subfield were neuropsychologists who used experience-based tasks as a natural way to evaluate individual differences owing to these tasks having many choice trials (e.g., Bechara et al., 1994). Others were interested in the complex relations between learning and decision making (Erev and Roth, 1998). An interesting finding that has finally defined the importance of contrasting the two types of tasks – experience-based decisions and description-based decisions, was obtained by Ido Erev and his colleagues. Kahneman and Tversky (1979) showed that individuals overweight small probability events in their decisions from description. For instance, in selecting between an alternative producing $3 for sure or a gamble producing 10% chance to receive $32 (and otherwise zero), most people pick the riskier alternative, behaving as if they give greater weight to the relatively rare event (see Hau et al., 2009). Erev and colleagues have demonstrated a reverse phenomenon in decisions from experience (Barron and Erev, 2003; Hertwig et al., 2004; Yechiam et al., 2005). People tend to experientially select alternatives as if what happens most of the time has more weight than the rare event. Thus, people overweight small probability events in decisions from description while underweighting them in decisions from experience. This has been referred to as the description–experience (D–E) gap (Hertwig et al., 2004). The studies exploring the D–E gap were followed by further investigations examining the divergent and convergent processes in these task types (e.g., Rakow et al., 2008; Barron and Yechiam, 2009; Wu et al., 2011). In parallel to the recent advancements in experience-based decisions within the field of Judgment and Decision Making, there have been numerous studies of this type of decisions in Neuroscience. For example, the feedback-based error-related negativity (fERN; see below; e.g., Gehring and Willoughby, 2002) and the role of non-declarative knowledge in selecting advantageously (Bechara et al., 1997) were found in experience-based decisions. Several studies have explicitly showed that that experience-based tasks result in higher correlation between studied brain variables and over behavior. For example, in Aharon et al.’s (2001) fMRI study, participant evaluated the attractiveness of face images either descriptively or by making choices and receiving feedback. Brain activation levels in the reward circuitry (particularly, the nucleus accumbens) matched the evaluation patterns only in the experiential condition. Similarly, severe damage to the orbitofrontal cortex was found to lead to decision impairments in experience-based tasks, but not in description-based tasks (Leland and Grafman, 2005). Still, many of the investigations of these neuroscientific aspects have borrowed their theoretical underpinning from the study of decisions from description, and have not been guided by relevant theories of experience-based decisions. At the same time, many of the decision making studies of experience-based tasks have taken place without awareness of the relevant brain studies using this paradigm. In an attempt to highlight the necessity of integrating the two bodies of research (JDM and neuroscience studies), we present three dissociations (or “gaps”) between brain activation patterns and behavioral choices in these tasks. The majority of this paper is devoted to describing the three gaps in order to encourage further research. Additionally, we also suggest some directions for exploring and explaining these inconsistencies.

Taking Workplace Decisions Seriously: This Conversation Has Been Fruitful!

We are gratified by the large number of commentaries to our focal article (Dalal, Bonaccio, et al., 2010) that advocated greater integration of industrial–organizational psychology and organizational behavior (IOOB) with the field of judgment and decision making (JDM). The commentaries were uniformly constructive and civil. Our disagreements with the commentaries are mild and are limited primarily to the roles of external validity, internal validity, and laboratory experiments in IOOB. For the majority of our response, we attempt to build on the views expressed in the commentaries and to articulate some thoughts regarding the future. We structure our response according to the following themes: barriers to cross-fertilization between IOOB and JDM, areas of existing and potential JDM-to-IOOB cross-fertilization, areas of potential IOOB-to-JDM cross-fertilization, and ways to increase (and ideally institutionalize) cross-fertilization. We hope our focal article and our response to the commentaries will help to ignite exciting basic research and important practical applications associated with decision making in the workplace.

Accounting for critical evidence while being precise and avoiding the strategy selection problem in a parallel constraint satisfaction approach: A reply to Marewski (2010)

AbstractIn Glöckner, Betsch and Schindler (2010) we observed predecisional information distortions (coherence shifts) in probabilistic inferences that indicate bidirectional reasoning. In response to Marewski's (2010) critique, we explain why coherence shifts cannot be explained by currently specified fast and frugal heuristics (FFH). In contrast, parallel constraint satisfaction (PCS) models can easily account for such effects. We show that the PCS model used in the target paper is sufficiently well specified with respect to predicting the observed effects and demonstrate that it circumvents the problem of strategy selection by using a single‐strategy approach. Taking a broader perspective, we argue that empirical and theoretical challenges to the FFH approach have become so substantial that a mere extension of the suggested toolbox might not sufficiently solve the problem. We suggest that further theoretical work in the field of judgment and decision making should be more responsive to well‐established findings and insights from other fields of cognition such as memory and perception. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

A Perspective on Eating Behaviors from the Field of Judgment and Decision Making

In this commentary, I review a key theme-the construction of preferences-that underlies the psychology of judgment and decision making and may influence eating behaviors. Its central idea is that, in many situations, we do not know what we prefer and, as a result, we construct our preferences "on the spot" based on internal and external cues available at the moment. To understand the extent of construction processes, one has to know both the decision maker (and how he or she draws meaning from information) and the environment she or he faces. I consider possible roles for affect and deliberation in the construction of eating preferences and also examine some existing evidence for two potentially important individual differences--numeracy (number ability) and aging. Research implications concerning ways to improve eating behaviors are considered.