Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Edmund Fantino.
Research and theory in human decision-making has increasingly stressed the importance of the context in which the problem is embedded. This emphasis is consistent with that supported by research of behavior analysts on natural concept formation and in problem solving, as well as in the study of choice. We present data on reasoning problems that further support the role of context in decision-making.
Hutchinson & Gigerenzer's functional approach to decision making has much in common with behavioral approaches. One of their central points is that "rules-of-thumb" often provide efficient decision strategies, use of which is both rational and generally optimal. We agree, but also caution that the misapplication of rules sometimes leads to non-optimal decisions.
The sunk cost effect is the increased tendency to persist in an endeavor once an investment of money, effort, or time has been made. To date, humans are the only animal in which this effect has been observed unambiguously. We developed a behavior-analytic model of the sunk cost effect to explore the potential for this behavior in pigeons as well as in humans. Each trial started out with a short expected ratio, but on some trials assumed a longer expected ratio part way through the trial. Subjects had the (usually preferable) option of "escaping" the trial if the longer expected ratio had come into effect in order to bring on a new trial that again had a short expected ratio. In Experiments 1 through 3, we manipulated two independent variables that we hypothesized would affect the pigeons' ability to discriminate the increase in the expected ratio within a trial: (a) the presence or absence of stimuli that signal an increase in the expected ratio, and (b) the severity of the increase in the expected ratio. We found that the pigeons were most likely to persist nonoptimally through the longer expected ratios when stimulus changes were absent and when the increase in the expected ratio was less severe. Experiment 4 employed a similar procedure with human subjects that manipulated only the severity of the increase in the expected ratio and found a result similar to that of the pigeon experiment. In Experiment 5, we tested the hypothesis that a particular history of reinforcement would induce pigeons to persist through the longer expected ratios; the results suggested instead that the history of reinforcement caused the pigeons to persist less compared to pigeons that did not have that history.
Behavior analysis has much to offer the study of phenomena in the area of judgement and decision making. We review several research areas that should continue to profit from a behavior-analytic approach, including the relative merit of contingency-based and rule-governed instruction of solving algebra and analogy problems, and the role of conditioned reinforcement and the inter-trial interval in a type of Prisoner's Dilemma Game. We focus on two additional areas: (1) the study of base-rate neglect, a notorious reasoning fallacy and (2) the study of the sunk-cost effect, which characterizes ill-conceived investment decisions. In each of these two cases we review studies with humans and pigeons as subjects.
Five studies investigated the conjunction effect (or conjunction fallacy), in which participants report that the conjunction of two events is more rather than less likely than one of the events alone. There was no evidence that feedback or monetary reinforcement for correct answers affected students' performance on conjunction problems. Under some circumstances the context in which the conjunction problem was presented (after questions emphasizing logic or questions emphasizing opinions) affected occurrence of the effect. Location of the conjunction among the statements being rated had a significant effect. The effect occurred with or without a framing description and whether the conjunction consisted of two or three simple statements. However, statements representing the conjunction of three simple statements were (appropriately) judged less likely than those representing the conjunction of two simple statements. The substantial incidence of the effect, even without the descriptive frame and even when incentive and feedback were provided for correct answers, argues for its robustness.
College students were trained on problems similar to the water jar problems developed by Luchins (1942). Some students were instructed that a particular rule would solve all the problems, others had the same problems but were not instructed about the rule, and a third set of students had a series of novel problems in which no single rule operated throughout. In two experiments students in the instructed rule group not only performed best in training but also performed best when transferred to a condition in which a single novel rule was appropriate. Although results from the set of conditions most similar to those of Luchins suggested that students sometimes inappropriately persisted in rule usage, the overall results suggest that rigidity is not a necessary outcome of instructed problem solving. Indeed, many of the results were consistent with the notion that instructed problem solving is flexible problem solving.
Two hundred undergraduate students participated in a repeated-trials binary choice procedure in which choice of one outcome was correct on 75% of trials. Subjects received 192 trials and were divided into five conditions: (1) control; (2) subjects were given the actual probabilities; (3) subjects were told if they did well they could leave early; (4) competition condition; (5) midway through the task subjects were asked to recommend a strategy for another subject. Half of the subjects in each group were told that the best they could do was to be correct on 75% of the trials. This manipulation permitted assessment of the hypothesis that subjects in probability-matching tasks are seeking a strategy that will be correct on 100% of the trials. The results partially confirmed this hypothesis. In addition, two of the variables improved performance significantly (giving probabilities and asking subjects to recommend a strategy). However, while subjects in all groups improved significantly over trials, optimal choice did not occur in this task.
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