Can taking the perspective of an expert debias human decisions? The case of risky and delayed gains

Side Effects in Time Discounting Procedures: Fixed Alternatives Become the Reference Point

Typical research on intertemporal choice utilizes a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) paradigm requiring participants to choose between a smaller sooner and larger later payoff. In the adjusting-amount procedure (AAP) one of the alternatives is fixed and the other is adjusted according to particular choices made by the participant. Such a method makes the alternatives unequal in status and is speculated to make the fixed alternative a reference point for choices, thereby affecting the decision made. The current study shows that fixing different alternatives in the AAP influences discount rates in intertemporal choices. Specifically, individuals’ (N = 283) choices were affected to just the same extent by merely fixing an alternative as when choices were preceded by scenarios explicitly imposing reference points.

Standing in Your Peer's Shoes Hurts Your Feats: The Self-Others Discrepancy in Risk Attitude and Impulsivity

It is often a good strategy to “stand in the other person’s shoes” to see a situation from a different perspective. People frequently attempt to infer what someone else would recommend when no advisor is available to help with a decision. Such situations commonly concern intertemporal or risky choices, and the usual assumption is that lay people make such decisions differently than experts do. The aim of our study was to determine what intertemporal and risky decisions people make when they take their own perspective, the perspective of a peer, and the perspectives of an expert or an entrepreneur. In a series of three experiments using a between-subject design, we found that taking the peer’s perspective made participants behave more impulsively and more risk aversely in relation to the participants’ own perspectives and in relation to their perceptions of experts and entrepreneurs perspectives. Taking an expert’s or an entrepreneur’s perspective did not change participants’ own intertemporal and risky decisions. We explain the findings using the risk as value and the lesser mind theories. Imagining the opponent’s perspective in a negotiation as one is advised to do might inadvertently lead to problems because we always see her as more impulsive and more risk averse than she really is. This means that taking a perspective of an expert – not a peer – would be a good way to predict what decisions our opponents make.

Introducing conjoint analysis method into delayed lotteries studies: its validity and time stability are higher than in adjusting

The delayed lotteries are much more common in everyday life than are pure lotteries. Usually, we need to wait to find out the outcome of the risky decision (e.g., investing in a stock market, engaging in a relationship). However, most research has studied the time discounting and probability discounting in isolation using the methodologies designed specifically to track changes in one parameter. Most commonly used method is adjusting, but its reported validity and time stability in research on discounting are suboptimal. The goal of this study was to introduce the novel method for analyzing delayed lotteries-conjoint analysis-which hypothetically is more suitable for analyzing individual preferences in this area. A set of two studies compared the conjoint analysis with adjusting. The results suggest that individual parameters of discounting strength estimated with conjoint have higher predictive value (Study 1 and 2), and they are more stable over time (Study 2) compared to adjusting. We discuss these findings, despite the exploratory character of reported studies, by suggesting that future research on delayed lotteries should be cross-validated using both methods.