Title: Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking
Abstract The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion suggests that people prefer options that offer precisely rather than imprecisely known chances of success. However, past work on people's responses to ambiguity in health treatment contexts found ambiguity seeking rather than aversion. The present work addressed whether such findings reflected a broad tendency for ambiguity seeking in health treatment contexts or whether specific attributions for ambiguity play a substantial role. In three studies, people choose between two treatment options that involved similar underlying probabilities, except that the probabilities for one option involved ambiguity. The attributions offered for the ambiguity played an important role in the results. For example, when the range of probabilities associated with an ambiguous treatment was attributed to the fact that different studies yield different results, participants tended to show ambiguity aversion or indifference. However, when the range was attributed to something that participants could control (e.g., regular application of a cream) or something about which they were overoptimistic (e.g., their immune system function), participants tended to show ambiguity seeking. Health professionals should be mindful of how people will interpret and use information about ambiguity when choosing among treatments. more »« less
We introduce a model of random ambiguity aversion. Choice is stochastic due to unobserved shocks to both information and ambiguity aversion. This is modeled as a random set of beliefs in the maxmin expected utility model of Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989). We characterize the model and show that the distribution of ambiguity aversion can be uniquely identified using binary choices. A novel stochastic order on random sets is introduced that characterizes greater uncertainty aversion under stochastic choice. If the set of priors is the Aumann expectation of the random set, then choices satisfy dynamic consistency. This corresponds to an agent who knows the distribution of signals but is uncertain about how to interpret signal realizations. More broadly, the analysis of stochastic properties of random ambiguity attitudes provides a theoretical foundation for the study of models of random non-linear utility.
Reyna, Valerie F.; Edelson, Sarah; Hayes, Bridget; Garavito, David
(, Medical Decision Making)
Theory—understanding mental processes that drive decisions—is important to help patients and providers make decisions that reflect medical advances and personal values. Building on a 2008 review, we summarize current tenets of fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) in light of new evidence that provides insight regarding mental representations of options and how such representations connect to values and evoke emotions. We discuss implications for communicating risks, preventing risky behaviors, discouraging misinformation, and choosing appropriate treatments. Findings suggest that simple, fuzzy but meaningful gist representations of information often determine decisions. Within minutes of conversing with their doctor, reading a health-related web post, or processing other health information, patients rely on gist memories of that information rather than verbatim details. This fuzzy-processing preference explains puzzles and paradoxes in how patients (and sometimes providers) think about probabilities (e.g., “50-50” chance), outcomes of treatment (e.g., with antibiotics), experiences of pain, end-of-life decisions, memories for medication instructions, symptoms of concussion, and transmission of viruses (e.g., in AIDS and COVID-19). As examples, participation in clinical trials or seeking treatments with low probabilities of success (e.g., with antibiotics or at the end of life) may indicate a defensibly different categorical gist perspective on risk as opposed to simply misunderstanding probabilities or failing to make prescribed tradeoffs. Thus, FTT explains why people avoid precise tradeoffs despite computing them. Facilitating gist representations of information offers an alternative approach that goes beyond providing uninterpreted “neutral” facts versus persuading or shifting the balance between fast versus slow thinking (or emotion vs. cognition). In contrast to either taking mental shortcuts or deliberating about details, gist processing facilitates application of advanced knowledge and deeply held values to choices. Highlights Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) supports practical approaches to improving health and medicine. FTT differs in important respects from other theories of decision making, which has implications for how to help patients, providers, and health communicators. Gist mental representations emphasize categorical distinctions, reflect understanding in context, and help cue values relevant to health and patient care. Understanding the science behind theory is crucial for evidence-based medicine.
Short, Amelia; Su, Norman Makoto; Hu, Ruipu; Choe, Eun Kyoung; Kacorri, Hernisa; Danilovich, Margaret; Conroy, David E; Jette, Shannon; Barnett, Beth; Lazar, Amanda
(, ACM)
Much research on older people with memory concerns is focused on tracking and informed by the priorities of others. In this paper, we seek to understand the potential that people with memory concerns see in tracking. We conducted interviews with 29 participants with concerns about their memory and engaged in an affective writing approach. We find a range of potentials that can be traced to how participants are already self-tracking. Emotions associated with these potentials vary: from acceptance to resistance, and positive anticipation to aversion. Participants are emotionally motivated to foreclose possibilities in some instances and keep them open in others. While individual and unique, potential is structured by forces that include individual routines, relationships with others, and macro-level institutions and cultural contexts. We reflect on these findings in the context of research on self-tracking with older adults, designing with ambiguity, and forces that structure the experience of living with memory concerns.
We propose a class of multiple‐prior representations of preferences under ambiguity, where the belief the decision‐maker (DM) uses to evaluate an uncertain prospect is the outcome of a game played by two conflicting forces, Pessimism and Optimism. The model does not restrict the sign of the DM's ambiguity attitude, and we show that it provides a unified framework through which to characterize different degrees of ambiguity aversion, and to represent the co‐existence of negative and positive ambiguity attitudes within individuals as documented in experiments. We prove that our baseline representation, dual‐self expected utility (DSEU) , yields a novel representation of the class of invariant biseparable preferences (Ghirardato, Maccheroni, and Marinacci (2004)), which drops uncertainty aversion from maxmin expected utility (Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989)), while extensions of DSEU allow for more general departures from independence. We also provide foundations for a generalization of prior‐by‐prior belief updating to our model.
Stillman, Paul E.; Krajbich, Ian; Ferguson, Melissa J.
(, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
Navigating conflict is integral to decision-making, serving a central role both in the subjective experience of choice as well as contemporary theories of how we choose. However, the lack of a sensitive, accessible, and interpretable metric of conflict has led researchers to focus on choice itself rather than how individuals arrive at that choice. Using mouse-tracking—continuously sampling computer mouse location as participants decide—we demonstrate the theoretical and practical uses of dynamic assessments of choice from decision onset through conclusion. Specifically, we use mouse tracking to index conflict, quantified by the relative directness to the chosen option, in a domain for which conflict is integral: decisions involving risk. In deciding whether to accept risk, decision makers must integrate gains, losses, status quos, and outcome probabilities, a process that inevitably involves conflict. Across three preregistered studies, we tracked participants’ motor movements while they decided whether to accept or reject gambles. Our results show that 1) mouse-tracking metrics of conflict sensitively detect differences in the subjective value of risky versus certain options; 2) these metrics of conflict strongly predict participants’ risk preferences (loss aversion and decreasing marginal utility), even on a single-trial level; 3) these mouse-tracking metrics outperform participants’ reaction times in predicting risk preferences; and 4) manipulating risk preferences via a broad versus narrow bracketing manipulation influences conflict as indexed by mouse tracking. Together, these results highlight the importance of measuring conflict during risky choice and demonstrate the usefulness of mouse tracking as a tool to do so.
Stuart, Jillian O'Rourke, Windschitl, Paul D., Miller, Jane E., Smith, Andrew R., Zikmund‐Fisher, Brian J., and Scherer, Laura D. Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 35.1 Web. doi:10.1002/bdm.2249.
Stuart, Jillian O'Rourke, Windschitl, Paul D., Miller, Jane E., Smith, Andrew R., Zikmund‐Fisher, Brian J., & Scherer, Laura D. Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 35 (1). https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2249
Stuart, Jillian O'Rourke, Windschitl, Paul D., Miller, Jane E., Smith, Andrew R., Zikmund‐Fisher, Brian J., and Scherer, Laura D.
"Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking". Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 35 (1). Country unknown/Code not available: Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons). https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2249.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10361148.
@article{osti_10361148,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10361148},
DOI = {10.1002/bdm.2249},
abstractNote = {Abstract The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion suggests that people prefer options that offer precisely rather than imprecisely known chances of success. However, past work on people's responses to ambiguity in health treatment contexts found ambiguity seeking rather than aversion. The present work addressed whether such findings reflected a broad tendency for ambiguity seeking in health treatment contexts or whether specific attributions for ambiguity play a substantial role. In three studies, people choose between two treatment options that involved similar underlying probabilities, except that the probabilities for one option involved ambiguity. The attributions offered for the ambiguity played an important role in the results. For example, when the range of probabilities associated with an ambiguous treatment was attributed to the fact that different studies yield different results, participants tended to show ambiguity aversion or indifference. However, when the range was attributed to something that participants could control (e.g., regular application of a cream) or something about which they were overoptimistic (e.g., their immune system function), participants tended to show ambiguity seeking. Health professionals should be mindful of how people will interpret and use information about ambiguity when choosing among treatments.},
journal = {Journal of Behavioral Decision Making},
volume = {35},
number = {1},
publisher = {Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)},
author = {Stuart, Jillian O'Rourke and Windschitl, Paul D. and Miller, Jane E. and Smith, Andrew R. and Zikmund‐Fisher, Brian J. and Scherer, Laura D.},
}
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