SGER: Validating a Method for Assessing the Activiation Level of Multiple Decision Process Goals

要更好地理解决策者为什么选择他们所做的替代方案，并帮助他们改进决策，一种方法是了解产生这些选择的决策过程。 长期以来，人们一直认为目标是决策行为的重要组成部分，但迄今为止，关于目标与其他认知过程在决策中的作用的经验证据相对较少。 缺乏目标数据的一个主要原因是，用于评估目标存在的方法有限，更不用说评估目标激活的强度了。这项研究将测试一种新的，创新的方法来测量多个目标的激活水平在多个点在一个决策过程中。该方法，回顾性评估的目标（RAG），依赖于一个并行的口头协议的决策过程后，立即重播的选择宣布。到目前为止，RAG方法已经通过使用理论来预测特定目标，然后在口头协议中寻找该目标的存在来验证。理想情况下，测试应该反过来进行，使用RAG方法来测试理论。在这一系列的研究中，我们所需要的是一个独立于另一种有效方法的目标激活标准。在一组六项研究中，我们将使用阈下目标启动无意识地启动一个目标，并测试RAG方法是否正确地验证了启动。阈下启动本身将通过一个单词命名任务进行独立验证。

One way to better understand why decision makers choose the alternatives they do, and to help them improve their decisions, is to understand the decision processes that yield those choices. It has long been thought that goals are an important part of decision behaviors, but there is so far relatively little empirical evidence about the role of goals versus other cognitive processes in decision making. A main reason for the paucity of data on goals is the limited set of methods available for assessing the presence of a goal, much less the intensity of its activation. This research will test a new, innovative method for measuring the activation levels of multiple goals at multiple points during a decision process.The method, Retrospective Assessment of Goals (RAG), relies on a concurrent verbal protocol of the decision process replayed immediately after the choice is announced. Up to now, the RAG method has been validated by using theory to predict a particular goal then looking for the presence of that goal in verbal protocols. Ideally, tests should proceed the other way around, with the RAG method used to test the theory. What is needed, and is developed in this series of studies, is an independent criterion of goal activation from another, validated method. In a set of six studies, we will use subliminal goal priming to nonconsciously prime a goal and test whether the RAG method correctly verifies that priming. The subliminal priming itself will beindependently verified by a word naming task.