Explaining the description-experience gap in risky decision-making: learning and memory retention during experience as causal mechanisms.
When making decisions based on probabilistic outcomes, people guide their behavior using knowledge gathered through both indirect descriptions and direct experience. Paradoxically, how people obtain information significantly impacts apparent preferences. A ubiquitous example is the description-exper...
| Published in: | Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience Vol. 23; no. 3; pp. 557 - 578 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Springer Nature
Jun2023
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=169327322&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 169327322 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 15307026 NA4 jtl: Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience issn: 15307026 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2023 vid: 23 iid: 3 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature place: New York, New York artinfo: ui: 169327322 164167265 10.3758/s13415-023-01099-z 169327322 ppf: 557 ppct: 21 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P tig: atl: Explaining the description-experience gap in risky decision-making: learning and memory retention during experience as causal mechanisms. aug: au: Haines, Nathaniel Kvam, Peter D. Turner, Brandon M. affil: The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA sug: ab: When making decisions based on probabilistic outcomes, people guide their behavior using knowledge gathered through both indirect descriptions and direct experience. Paradoxically, how people obtain information significantly impacts apparent preferences. A ubiquitous example is the description-experience gap: individuals seemingly overweight low probability events when probabilities are described yet underweight them when probabilities must be experienced firsthand. A leading explanation for this fundamental gap in decision-making is that probabilities are weighted differently when learned through description relative to experience, yet a formal theoretical account of the mechanism responsible for such weighting differences remains elusive. We demonstrate how various learning and memory retention models incorporating neuroscientifically motivated learning mechanisms can explain why probability weighting and valuation parameters often are found to vary across description and experience. In a simulation study, we show how learning through experience can lead to systematically biased estimates of probability weighting when using a traditional cumulative prospect theory model. We then use hierarchical Bayesian modeling and Bayesian model comparison to show how various learning and memory retention models capture participants' behavior over and above changes in outcome valuation and probability weighting, accounting for description and experience-based decisions in a within-subject experiment. We conclude with a discussion of how substantive models of psychological processes can lead to insights that heuristic statistical models fail to capture. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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