Reference-Point Theory: An Account of Individual Differences in Risk Preferences.

We propose an account of individual differences in risk preferences called "reference-point theory" for choices between sure things and gambles. Like most descriptive theories of risky choice, preferences depend on two drivers-hedonic sensitivities to change and beliefs about risk. But unlike most theories, these drivers are estimated from judged feelings about choice options and gamble outcomes.

Human and Algorithmic Predictions in Geopolitical Forecasting: Quantifying Uncertainty in Hard-to-Quantify Domains.

Research on clinical versus statistical prediction has demonstrated that algorithms make more accurate predictions than humans in many domains. Geopolitical forecasting is an algorithm-unfriendly domain, with hard-to-quantify data and elusive reference classes that make predictive model-building difficult. Furthermore, the stakes can be high, with missed forecasts leading to mass-casualty consequences.

Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved.

Do larger incomes make people happier? Two authors of the present paper have published contradictory answers. Using dichotomous questions about the preceding day, [Kahneman and Deaton, Proc. Natl.

Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science.

Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens' decisions and outcomes. Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time intervals. The lack of comparability of such individual investigations limits their potential to inform policy.

Conflicting Goals Influence Physicians' Expressed Beliefs to Patients and Colleagues.

Background: Physicians who communicate their prognostic beliefs to patients must balance candor against other competing goals, such as preserving hope, acknowledging the uncertainty of medicine, or motivating patients to follow their treatment regimes.

Objective: To explore possible differences between the beliefs physicians report as their own and those they express to patients and colleagues.

Design: An online panel of 398 specialists in internal medicine who completed their medical degrees and practiced in the United States provided their estimated diagnostic accuracy and prognostic assessments for a randomly assigned case.

How perceptions of autonomy relate to beliefs about inequality and fairness.

Although inequality in the US has increased since the 1960s, several studies show that Americans underestimate it. Reasons include overreliance on one's local perspective and ideologically-motivated cognition. We propose a novel mechanism to account for the misperceptions of income inequality.

From discipline-centered rivalries to solution-centered science: Producing better probability estimates for policy makers.

From 2011 to 2015, the U.S. intelligence community sponsored a series of forecasting tournaments that challenged university-based researchers to invent measurably better methods of forecasting political events.

Affective responses to uncertain real-world outcomes: Sentiment change on Twitter.

We use data from Twitter.com to study the interplay between affect and expectations about uncertain outcomes. In two studies, we obtained tweets about candidates in the 2014 US Senate elections and tweets about National Football League (NFL) teams in the 2014/2015 NFL season.

Forecasting tournaments, epistemic humility and attitude depolarization.

People often express political opinions in starkly dichotomous terms, such as "Trump will either trigger a ruinous trade war or save U.S. factory workers from disaster.

Bringing probability judgments into policy debates via forecasting tournaments.

Political debates often suffer from vague-verbiage predictions that make it difficult to assess accuracy and improve policy. A tournament sponsored by the U.S.

Anticipated regret in shared decision-making: a randomized experimental study.

Background: Explicit consideration of anticipated regret is not part of the standard shared decision-making protocols. This pilot study aimed to compare decisions about a hypothetical surgery for breast cancer and examined whether regret is a consideration in treatment decisions.

Methods: In this randomized experimental study, 184 healthy female volunteers were randomized to receive a standard decision aid (control) or one with information on post-surgical regret (experimental).

Balancing Fairness and Efficiency: The Impact of Identity-Blind and Identity-Conscious Accountability on Applicant Screening.

This study compared two forms of accountability that can be used to promote diversity and fairness in personnel selections: identity-conscious accountability (holding decision makers accountable for which groups are selected) versus identity-blind accountability (holding decision makers accountable for making fair selections). In a simulated application screening process, undergraduate participants (majority female) sorted applicants under conditions of identity-conscious accountability, identity-blind accountability, or no accountability for an applicant pool in which white males either did or did not have a human capital advantage. Under identity-conscious accountability, participants exhibited pro-female and pro-minority bias, particularly in the white-male-advantage applicant pool.

Improving Intelligence Analysis With Decision Science.

Intelligence analysis plays a vital role in policy decision making. Key functions of intelligence analysis include accurately forecasting significant events, appropriately characterizing the uncertainties inherent in such forecasts, and effectively communicating those probabilistic forecasts to stakeholders. We review decision research on probabilistic forecasting and uncertainty communication, drawing attention to findings that could be used to reform intelligence processes and contribute to more effective intelligence oversight.

Identifying and cultivating superforecasters as a method of improving probabilistic predictions.

Across a wide range of tasks, research has shown that people make poor probabilistic predictions of future events. Recently, the U.S.

The psychology of intelligence analysis: drivers of prediction accuracy in world politics.

This article extends psychological methods and concepts into a domain that is as profoundly consequential as it is poorly understood: intelligence analysis. We report findings from a geopolitical forecasting tournament that assessed the accuracy of more than 150,000 forecasts of 743 participants on 199 events occurring over 2 years. Participants were above average in intelligence and political knowledge relative to the general population.

Psychological strategies for winning a geopolitical forecasting tournament.

Five university-based research groups competed to recruit forecasters, elicit their predictions, and aggregate those predictions to assign the most accurate probabilities to events in a 2-year geopolitical forecasting tournament. Our group tested and found support for three psychological drivers of accuracy: training, teaming, and tracking. Probability training corrected cognitive biases, encouraged forecasters to use reference classes, and provided forecasters with heuristics, such as averaging when multiple estimates were available.

What might have been? The role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and lateral orbitofrontal cortex in counterfactual emotions and choice.

Counterfactual feelings of regret occur when people make comparisons between an actual outcome and a better outcome that would have occurred under a different choice. We investigated the choices of individuals with damage to the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the lateral orbital frontal cortex (LOFC) to see whether their emotional responses were sensitive to regret. Participants made choices between gambles, each with monetary outcomes.

Surprise: a belief or an emotion?

Surprise is a fundamental link between cognition and emotion. It is shaped by cognitive assessments of likelihood, intuition, and superstition, and it in turn shapes hedonic experiences. We examine this connection between cognition and emotion and offer an explanation called decision affect theory.

Intelligent management of intelligence agencies: beyond accountability ping-pong.

The intelligence community (IC) is asked to predict outcomes that may often be inherently unpredictable-and is blamed for the inevitable forecasting failures, be they false positives or false negatives. To move beyond blame games of accountability ping-pong that incentivize bureaucratic symbolism over substantive reform, it is necessary to reach bipartisan agreements on performance indicators that are transparent enough to reassure clashing elites (to whom the IC must answer) that estimates have not been politicized. Establishing such transideological credibility requires (a) developing accuracy metrics for decoupling probability and value judgments; (b) using the resulting metrics as criterion variables in validity tests of the IC's selection, training, and incentive systems; and (c) institutionalizing adversarial collaborations that conduct level-playing-field tests of clashing perspectives.

Predicting behavior in economic games by looking through the eyes of the players.

Social scientists often rely on economic experiments such as ultimatum and dictator games to understand human cooperation. Systematic deviations from economic predictions have inspired broader conceptions of self-interest that incorporate concerns for fairness. Yet no framework can describe all of the major results.

Strong claims and weak evidence: reassessing the predictive validity of the IAT.

The authors reanalyzed data from 2 influential studies-A. R. McConnell and J.

Emotions and cooperation in economic games.

In this paper, we examine decisions to cooperate in economic games. We investigate which payoffs give players the greatest pleasure and whether the pleasure they feel about payoffs predicts their decisions to cooperate. To do this, we modify the ultimatum and dictator games by asking players to consider a fixed set of offers and report their preferences over all offers.

The agony of victory and thrill of defeat: Mixed emotional reactions to disappointing wins and relieving losses.

Because of counterfactual comparisons, good outcomes that could have been better (i.e., disappointing wins) and bad outcomes that could have been worse (i.