From Mindless to Mindful Choice: How Introspection Improves Decision Making

从无意识到有意识的选择：内省如何改善决策

• 批准号: 1124486
• 负责人: Leaf Van Boven
• 金额: $ 41.04万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-10-01 至 2017-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1124486&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Mindless; Mindful; Choice; How; Introspection

In this project, the Principal Investigators will examine how introspecting about one's personal normative beliefs about how to make good decisions can improve the quality of decisions. The proposal is grounded in three ideas: (1) that people's decisions are often "mindless" in that people make decisions unaware of their normative beliefs; (2) that becoming mindful of their normative beliefs brings people's decision processes into closer correspondence with those beliefs; and (3) that introspection can increase mindfulness and that introspection therefore increases the correspondence between normative beliefs and decision processes. Four sets of studies will be conducted, using laboratory and field experiments with student and non-student samples. The first set of studies will test whether introspection about the normative influence on decisions of emotional factors and objective scope (such as magnitude and probability) before making decisions causes people to weight emotion and scope in closer correspondence with their normative beliefs, typically decreasing the weight of emotional factors and increasing the weight of scope. The second set of studies will test whether asking people to introspect about the normative influence of personal preferences and social influence (such as political partisanship and peers' preferences) before making decisions causes people to weight personal preferences and social influence in closer correspondence with their normative beliefs, typically decreasing the weight of social influence and increasing the weight of personal preference. The third set of studies will examine moderators of these introspection effects, including differences in need for cognition, differences in normative beliefs, and the relative complexity of a decision. The final set of studies will examine implications of introspection for social decision making, including evaluations of others' personal decisions, evaluation of policy makers' decisions, and behavior in strategic social situations. In terms of broader impacts, this research will provide scientific evidence for a simple introspection procedure that will advance understanding of whether and when people make decisions according to their personal beliefs. In so doing, the research will demonstrate a simple way to improve the quality of people's decisions in many domains, including charitable donations to alleviate humanitarian suffering, evaluation of environmental policy, perceptions of terrorist risks, personal financial decision making, consumer choices, and cooperative behavior in social contexts. This research will thus provide knowledge about a useful tool both for those interested in improving others' decisions (such as managers, marketers, and policy makers) and for those interested improving their personal decisions (such as employees, consumers, and citizens). This research will also clarify and extend a relatively new construct in Judgment and Decision Making that distinguishes between mindless versus mindful choice, providing an operationalization of those two states, and examining the mechanisms, boundary conditions, and beneficial consequences of moving from mindless to mindful choice. These studies will offer a simple, effective means of improving the quality of decisions without reliance on "heavy handed" external interventions that nudge people in a particular direction, going beyond interventions that rely on other people's ideas about the best and proper way to make decisions. There are also broader impacts inherent in the process of conducting this research, including the training and support of a group of undergraduate and PhD students that is diverse in sex and ethnicity, and the proposed research will foster international collaboration and training among, faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students in the United States and Germany.

在这个项目中，主要研究者将研究如何内省一个人的规范性信念如何做出好的决定可以提高决策的质量。 该建议基于三个想法：（1）人们的决定通常是“无意识的”，因为人们在做决定时没有意识到他们的规范信念;（2）注意他们的规范信念会使人们的决策过程与这些信念更加一致;以及（3）内省可以增加正念，内省因此增加了规范信念和决策过程之间的对应。 将进行四组研究，使用学生和非学生样本的实验室和现场实验。 第一组研究将测试在做出决策之前，对情感因素和客观范围（如幅度和概率）对决策的规范性影响的内省是否会导致人们根据他们的规范性信念来衡量情感和范围，通常会降低情感因素的权重并增加范围的权重。 第二组研究将测试要求人们在做决定之前反思个人偏好和社会影响（如政治党派和同龄人的偏好）的规范性影响是否会导致人们根据他们的规范性信念来衡量个人偏好和社会影响，通常会降低社会影响的权重并增加个人偏好的权重。 第三组研究将考察这些内省效应的调节因素，包括认知需求的差异、规范信念的差异以及决策的相对复杂性。 最后一组研究将探讨内省对社会决策的影响，包括对他人个人决策的评估，对政策制定者决策的评估以及战略性社会情境中的行为。就更广泛的影响而言，这项研究将为一个简单的内省程序提供科学证据，该程序将促进对人们是否以及何时根据个人信仰做出决定的理解。 在这样做的过程中，研究将展示一种简单的方法来提高人们在许多领域的决策质量，包括慈善捐款，以减轻人道主义痛苦，环境政策的评估，对恐怖主义风险的看法，个人财务决策，消费者选择和社会背景下的合作行为。 因此，这项研究将为那些有兴趣改善他人决策的人（如管理人员，营销人员和政策制定者）和那些有兴趣改善个人决策的人（如员工，消费者和公民）提供有关有用工具的知识。 这项研究还将澄清和扩展一个相对较新的结构，在判断和决策，区分无意识与正念选择，提供这两个国家的可操作性，并检查机制，边界条件和有益的后果从无意识的选择。 这些研究将提供一种简单、有效的方法来提高决策质量，而不依赖于“高压”的外部干预，将人们推向一个特定的方向，超越依赖于其他人关于最佳和正确决策方式的想法的干预。 在进行这项研究的过程中，也有更广泛的影响，包括培训和支持一组本科生和博士生，这是不同的性别和种族，拟议的研究将促进国际合作和培训，教师，研究生和本科生在美国和德国。