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Abstract Retrospective judgments require decision-makers to gather information over time and integrate that information into a summary statistic like the average. Many retrospective judgments require putting equal weight on early and late information, in contrast to prospective judgments that involve predicting the future and so rely more on late information. We investigate how people weight information over time when continuously reporting the average stimulus strength in a sequence of displays. We investigate the consistency of these temporal profiles across perceptual and value-based tasks using both behavior and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. We found that people display remarkably consistent temporal weighting functions across choice domains, with a generally strong recency bias and modest primacy bias. The fMRI data revealed evidence-tracking activity in the cuneus in both tasks and in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the value-based task. Finally, a network of cognitive control regions is more active for people who exhibit a stronger primacy vs. recency bias. Together, our behavioral findings indicate that people consistently overweight recency when evaluating past information, and the neural data suggest that overcoming this tendency may require cognitive control. 

Abstract Intertemporal choices – decisions that play out over time – pervade our life. Thus, how people make intertemporal choices is a fundamental question. Here, we investigate the role of attribute latency (the time between when people start to process different attributes) in shaping intertemporal preferences using five experiments with choices between smaller-sooner and larger-later rewards. In the first experiment, we identify attribute latencies using mouse-trajectories and find that they predict individual differences in choices, response times, and changes across time constraints. In the other four experiments we test the causal link from attribute latencies to choice, staggering the display of the attributes. This changes attribute latencies and intertemporal preferences. Displaying the amount information first makes people more patient, while displaying time information first does the opposite. These findings highlight the importance of intra-choice dynamics in shaping intertemporal choices and suggest that manipulating attribute latency may be a useful technique for nudging. 

Abstract When people make choices, the items they consider are often embedded in a context (of other items). How this context affects the valuation of the specific item is an important question. High-value context might make items appear less attractive because of contrast—the tendency to normalize perception of an object relative to its background—or more attractive because of assimilation—the tendency to group objects together. Alternatively, a high-value context might increase prior expectations about the item's value. Here, we investigated these possibilities. We examined how unavailable context items affect choices between two target items, as well as the willingness-to-pay for single targets. Participants viewed sets of three items for several seconds before the target(s) were highlighted. In both tasks, we found a significant assimilation-like effect where participants were more likely to choose or place a higher value on a target when it was surrounded by higher-value context. However, these context effects were only significant for participants’ fastest choices. Using variants of a drift-diffusion model, we established that the unavailable context shifted participants’ prior expectations towards the average values of the sets but had an inconclusive effect on their evaluations of the targets during the decision (i.e. drift rates). In summary, we find that people use context to inform their initial valuations. This can improve efficiency by allowing people to get a head start on their decision. However, it also means that the valuation of an item can change depending on the context. 

A standard assumption in game theory is that decision-makers have preplanned strategies telling them what actions to take for every contingency. In contrast, nonstrategic decisions often involve an on-the-spot comparison process, with longer response times (RT) for choices between more similarly appealing options. If strategic decisions also exhibit these patterns, then RT might betray private information and alter game theory predictions. Here, we examined bargaining behavior to determine whether RT reveals private information in strategic settings. Using preexisting and experimental data from eBay, we show that both buyers and sellers take hours longer to accept bad offers and to reject good offers. We find nearly identical patterns in the two datasets, indicating a causal effect of offer size on RT. However, this relationship is half as strong for rejections as for acceptances, reducing the amount of useful private information revealed by the sellers. Counter to our predictions, buyers are discouraged by slow rejections—they are less likely to counteroffer to slow sellers. We also show that a drift-diffusion model (DDM), traditionally limited to decisions on the order of seconds, can account for decisions on the order of hours, sometimes days. The DDM reveals that more experienced sellers are less cautious and more inclined to accept offers. In summary, strategic decisions are inconsistent with preplanned strategies. This underscores the need for game theory to incorporate RT as a strategic variable and broadens the applicability of the DDM to slow decisions. 

When considering whether to purchase consumer products, people consider both the items' attractiveness and their brand labels. Brands may affect the decision process through various mechanisms. For example, brand labels may provide direct support for their paired products, or they may indirectly affect choice outcomes by changing the way that people evaluate and compare their options. To examine these possibilities, we combined computational modeling with an eye-tracking experiment in which subjects made clothing choices with brand labels either present or absent. Subjects' choices were consistent with both the attractiveness of the clothing items and, to a smaller extent, the appeal of the brands. In line with the direct support mechanism, subjects who spent more time looking at the brands were more likely to choose the options with the preferred brands. When a clothing item was more attractive, subjects were more likely to look longer at the associated brand label, but not vice versa. In line with indirect mechanisms, in the presence of brand labels subjects exerted more caution and showed marginally less attentional bias in their choices. This research sheds light on the interplay between gaze and choice in decisions involving brand information, indicating that brands have both direct and indirect influences on choice.