Contextualized Decision Making

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The present proposal is a joint undertaking by social and cognitive psychologists to investigate human decision making. It aims at bridging the frequently observed gap between research in decision making and research in social and cognitive psychology. Starting from the general notion that decision making is a constructive process and therefore heavily context-dependent, the present proposal has two core themes: First, the proposed research is based on a process-oriented perspective; thus, we will link social cognition and cognitive psychology’s explicit process-oriented perspective with the core concepts, theories, methods, and research questions of decision making research. There is a particular focus (a) on the processes that mediate between the input of a decision situation and the resulting decision, (b) on variables that moderate this processes, and (c) on experimental tests of the hypothesized causal process chains. Such an approach is beneficial for both sides. On the one hand, research in individual decision making could strongly benefit from social and cognitive psychology’s process-orientation, as these approaches may offer explanations why decisions depend so heavily on the context in which they are made. Equally, behavioral decision-making research could stimulate theoretical and empirical progress in social and cognitive psychology. Second, the present proposal aims at a comprehensive coverage of the contextual aspects of decision making. We conceptualize the decision context not only as various kinds of information, the decision alternatives, or the social context, but also as the internal affective, motivational, and cognitive state of the decision maker. Thus, with different foci, the projects will investigate the role of (a) affective, (b) motivational, and (c) cognitive mechanisms involved in human decision making. Moreover, the projects will also cover the interplay of internal processes with (d) the social and (e) the informational environment (distribution of information). Going beyond singular coverage of these determinants in the individual projects, the joint initiative of a Research Unit (Forschergruppe) will strongly foster and support an investigation of how these determinants interact with each other, with the goal of achieving an integrated picture that includes the various elements.