A new perspective on human judgement and decision making as optimal: A framework for behaviour change

关于人类最佳判断和决策的新视角：行为改变框架

• 批准号: ES/L00321X/1
• 负责人: Paul Warren
• 金额: $ 25.6万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FL00321X%2F1
• 关键词: new; perspective; human; judgement; decision

Psychology and Economics typically characterise human judgement & decision-making (JDM) as flawed. JDM is commonly described as irrational, biased or sub-optimal and there are many observations that appear to support this viewpoint. For example, when asked to make a judgment about the likely outcome of a coin toss after a long sequence of previous tosses coming up heads, many people expect a tail on the next toss, when in reality previous tosses do not change the 50:50 head:tail chance. This misperception is known as the Gamblers Fallacy (GF). If, however, we accept that humans have a narrow focus of attention and a limited memory capacity for say, only the last 5 tosses, this will limit what can be learnt from the long sequence. This limited experiential window means that, mathematically, not all sequences of a given length have the same chance of occurring in a longer (but finite) sequence and as a result the gamblers' expectation of a tail after a run of heads can be shown to be entirely reasonable.In this project we aim to show that if we take into account the limits on human cognitive capacity or the limits imposed by the environment, human JDM is not flawed and is in fact optimal given those constraints. We will demonstrate this for two examples, the GF above and 'Preference Reversals' (PR) another class of phenomena in which JDM is commonly described as biased. Further, we will show that if we change cognitive or environmental constraints, humans will adapt and remain optimal given the new constraints. This will allow us to test the consequences of manipulating the causal determinants of human JDM performance and therefore will allow for better policy development. To do so we will conduct behavioural experiments as well as formulate and evaluate computational models of our experimental tasks.The project comprises two themes running mostly in parallel over the 18 months project. Theme 1 will investigate human Perception of Randomness and the associated GF phenomenon. The ability of humans to perceive structure in the environment and differentiate it from its counterpart, randomness, is at the heart of our ability to make causal links between events. For this reason, studying perception of randomness is vital for our understanding of how humans understand the world. Using the GF and our theoretical analysis, we will run a series of behavioural experiments to explain GF as optimal under constraints - namely the short-term memory limitation as a proxy for an individual's window of experience. We will use computational models to test if the observed behaviour is optimal under such constraints. Further experiments will simulate interventions that modify the key constraints, for instance, temporarily reducing the size of the window of experience by varying cognitive load. We hypothesise that behaviour will change in line with model predictions, and remain optimal. This would be a significant finding and a strong test of the proposed framework. Theme 2 will investigate context effects and Preference Reversal (PR). PR occurs when the addition of further choices changes a person's preference, even when the new choices are worse. Although PR is used as evidence of human irrationality, our pilot work shows that introducing new choices provides additional information about priors, such that PR becomes an optimal behaviour. We will manipulate the distribution of choice problems and measure adaptation to the different task distributions by measuring changes in the reliance on context.

心理学和经济学通常认为人类的判断和决策（JDM）是有缺陷的。JDM通常被描述为非理性的，有偏见的或次优的，有许多观察似乎支持这一观点。例如，当被要求在一长串前抛硬币出现正面之后对抛硬币的可能结果做出判断时，许多人期望下一次抛硬币时会出现反面，而实际上前抛硬币并没有改变50：50的正面：反面的机会。这种误解被称为赌徒谬误（GF）。然而，如果我们承认人类的注意力集中范围很窄，记忆能力有限，比如说只记得最后5次投掷，那么从长时间的投掷中我们能学到的东西就会受到限制。这种有限的经验窗口意味着，从数学上讲，并非给定长度的所有序列在较长的时间内发生的机会都相同。（但有限）序列，因此赌徒在一轮正面之后对反面的期望可以被证明是完全合理的。在这个项目中，我们的目标是表明，如果我们考虑到人类认知能力的限制或环境的限制，人类JDM没有缺陷，实际上在这些约束条件下是最优的。我们将用两个例子来证明这一点，上面的GF和“偏好反转”（PR）另一类现象，其中JDM通常被描述为有偏见的。此外，我们将表明，如果我们改变认知或环境约束，人类将适应并保持最佳的新约束。这将使我们能够测试操纵人类JDM绩效的因果决定因素的后果，因此将允许更好的政策制定。为此，我们将进行行为实验，并制定和评估我们的实验任务的计算模型。该项目包括两个主题，主要是在18个月的项目并行运行。主题1将研究人类对随机性的感知以及相关的GF现象。人类感知环境中的结构并将其与随机性区分开来的能力，是我们在事件之间建立因果联系的能力的核心。出于这个原因，研究随机性的感知对于我们理解人类如何理解世界至关重要。使用GF和我们的理论分析，我们将运行一系列行为实验来解释GF在约束条件下的最优性-即短期记忆限制作为个人经验窗口的代理。我们将使用计算模型来测试所观察到的行为在这样的约束下是否是最优的。进一步的实验将模拟修改关键约束的干预措施，例如，通过改变认知负荷暂时减少经验窗口的大小。我们假设行为将根据模型预测发生变化，并保持最佳状态。这将是一项重要的调查结果，也是对拟议框架的有力检验。主题2将探讨语境效应和偏好抑制（PR）。当更多的选择改变了一个人的偏好时，即使新的选择更糟糕，也会发生PR。虽然PR被用作人类非理性的证据，但我们的试点工作表明，引入新的选择提供了有关先验的额外信息，因此PR成为一种最佳行为。我们将操纵选择问题的分布，并通过测量对上下文依赖的变化来测量对不同任务分布的适应性。

项目成果

The Effect of Expected Value on Attraction Effect Preference Reversals.

• DOI: 10.1002/bdm.2001
• 发表时间: 2017-10
• 期刊: Journal of behavioral decision making
• 影响因子: 2
• 作者: Farmer GD;Warren PA;El-Deredy W;Howes A
• 通讯作者: Howes A

Why contextual preference reversals maximize expected value.

• DOI: 10.1037/a0039996
• 发表时间: 2016-07
• 期刊: Psychological review
• 影响因子: 5.4
• 作者: Howes A;Warren PA;Farmer G;El-Deredy W;Lewis RL
• 通讯作者: Lewis RL

Assessing the "bias" in human randomness perception

评估人类随机性感知的“偏差”

• 发表时间: 2014
• 作者: Warren P. A.

Who "believes" in the Gambler's Fallacy and why?

• DOI: 10.1037/xge0000245
• 发表时间: 2017-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL
• 影响因子: 4.1
• 作者: Farmer, George D.;Warren, Paul A.;Hahn, Ulrike
• 通讯作者: Hahn, Ulrike

The attraction effect is adaptive for gains but not losses

吸引力效应只适应收益而不适应损失

• 期刊: Decision
• 影响因子: 1.5
• 作者: Farmer, G