Comparisons, mental models, and the action effect in judgments of regret
Comparisons, mental models, and the action effect in judgments of regret
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DOI：
10.3758/bf03195907
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发表时间：
2006-10-01
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
Handley, Simon J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Feeney, Aidan;Handley, Simon J.
比起决定不采取行动并经历消极结果的角色，人们更倾向于将遗憾归因于决定采取行动并经历消极结果的角色。然而，对于某些决策，这一发现并没有在参与者之间的设计中观察到，因此似乎依赖于人们对行动和不行动的表征之间的比较。在这篇文章中，我们概述了一种心理模型，它解释了使用参与者内部和参与者之间设计的研究结果，我们建议，对于具有不确定反事实结果的决策，有关行动决策后果的信息会使人们充实他们对不作为的反事实状态的表征。在三个实验中，我们证实了我们关于参与者对表征的充实的预测，表明只有当参与者在评价非参与者时可以获得关于行动后果的信息，以及当这些关于行动的信息与不作为的判断有关时，行动效应才会发生。重要的是要注意，当决策场景指定某些反事实结果时，行动效应总是发生。这些结果表明，人们有时会将后悔的归因建立在不同思维模式之间的比较上。
People tend to attribute more regret to a character who has decided to take action and experienced a negative outcome than to one who has decided not to act and experienced a negative outcome. For some decisions, however, this finding is not observed in a between-participants design and thus appears to rely on comparisons between people's representations of action and their representations of inaction. In this article, we outline a mental models account that explains findings from studies that have used within- and between-participants designs, and we suggest that, for decisions with uncertain counterfactual outcomes, information about the consequences of a decision to act causes people to flesh out their representation of the counterfactual states of affairs for inaction. In three experiments, we confirm our predictions about participants' fleshing out of representations, demonstrating that an action effect occurs only when information about the consequences of action is available to participants as they rate the nonactor and when this information about action is informative with respect to judgments about inaction. It is important to note that the action effect always occurs when the decision scenario specifies certain counterfactual outcomes. These results suggest that people sometimes base their attributions of regret on comparisons among different sets of mental models.