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

要想更好地理解决策者为什么会做出这样的选择，并帮助他们改进决策，一种方法就是理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。关于目标的数据缺乏的一个主要原因是可用于评估目标是否存在的一套方法有限，更不用说评估其激活的强度了。这项研究将测试一种新的、创新的方法，用于测量决策过程中多个点的多个目标的激活水平。这种方法，目标回顾评估（RAG），依赖于在宣布选择后立即重播决策过程的并发口头协议。到目前为止，RAG方法已经通过理论预测一个特定的目标，然后在口头协议中寻找该目标的存在来验证。理想情况下，测试应该以相反的方式进行，使用RAG方法来测试理论。我们需要的，也是在这一系列研究中发展起来的，是从另一种经过验证的方法中获得目标激活的独立标准。在一组六项研究中，我们将使用阈下目标启动来无意识地启动一个目标，并测试RAG方法是否正确地验证了该启动。阈下启动本身将通过单词命名任务独立验证。

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.