Beyond the Surface: A New Perspective on Dual-System Theories in Decision-Making.

The current paper provides a critical evaluation of the dual-system approach in cognitive psychology. This evaluation challenges traditional classifications that associate intuitive processes solely with noncompensatory models and deliberate processes with compensatory ones. Instead, it suggests a more nuanced framework where intuitive and deliberate characteristics coexist within both compensatory and noncompensatory processes.

Time Is Money: The Effect of Mode-of-Thought on Financial Decision-Making.

The dual-system approach holds that deliberative decisions and in-depth evaluation processes lead people to better financial decisions. However, research identifies situations where optimal economic decisions may stem from a more intuitive decision process. In the current work, we present three experimental studies that examined how these two modes-of-thought affect financial decisions.

And sympathy is what we need my friend-Polite requests improve negotiation results.

The wording negotiators use shapes the emotions of their counterparts. These emotions, in turn, influence their counterparts' economic decisions. Building on this rationale, we examined how the language used during negotiation affects discount rate and willingness to engage in future deals.

Are we attracted by losses? Boundary conditions for the approach and avoidance effects of losses.

The majority of the literature on the psychology of gains and losses suggests that losses lead to an avoidance response. Several studies, however, have shown that losses can also lead to an approach response, whereby an option is selected more often when it produces losses. In five studies we examine the boundary conditions for these contradictory approach and avoidance effects.

Past Actions as Self-Signals: How Acting in a Self-Interested Way Influences Environmental Decision Making.

In the last few decades, awareness of environmental issues has increased significantly. Little has changed, however, in human activities contributing to environmental damage. Why is it so difficult for us to change our behavior in a domain that is clearly so important to the future of humanity? Here we propose and test the possibility that self-signaling, the way we view ourselves based on our past behaviors, is one of the factors contributing to the difficulty of taking environmental action.

Determinants of judgment and decision making quality: the interplay between information processing style and situational factors.

A framework is presented to better characterize the role of individual differences in information processing style and their interplay with contextual factors in determining decision making quality. In Experiment 1, we show that individual differences in information processing style are flexible and can be modified by situational factors. Specifically, a situational manipulation that induced an analytical mode of thought improved decision quality.

Fairness requires deliberation: the primacy of economic over social considerations.

While both economic and social considerations of fairness and equity play an important role in financial decision-making, it is not clear which of these two motives is more primal and immediate and which one is secondary and slow. Here we used variants of the ultimatum game to examine this question. Experiment 1 shows that acceptance rate of unfair offers increases when participants are asked to base their choice on their gut-feelings, as compared to when they thoroughly consider the available information.

Losses as ecological guides: minor losses lead to maximization and not to avoidance.

Losses are commonly thought to result in a neuropsychological avoidance response. We suggest that losses also provide ecological guidance by increasing focus on the task at hand, and that this effect may override the avoidance response. This prediction was tested in a series of studies.

Loss attention in a dual-task setting.

The positive effect of losses on performance has been explained as stemming from the increased weighting of losses relative to gains. We examine an alternative possibility whereby this effect is mediated by attentional processes. Using the dual-task paradigm, we expected that positive effects of losses on performance would emerge under attentional scarcity and diffuse to a concurrently presented task.

The partial-reinforcement extinction effect and the contingent-sampling hypothesis.

The partial-reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) implies that learning under partial reinforcements is more robust than learning under full reinforcements. While the advantages of partial reinforcements have been well-documented in laboratory studies, field research has failed to support this prediction. In the present study, we aimed to clarify this pattern.

Loss-aversion or loss-attention: the impact of losses on cognitive performance.

Losses were found to improve cognitive performance, and this has been commonly explained by increased weighting of losses compared to gains (i.e., loss aversion).

Losses as modulators of attention: review and analysis of the unique effects of losses over gains.

It has been shown that in certain situations losses exert a stronger effect on behavior than respective gains, and this has been commonly explained by the argument that losses are given more weight in people's decisions than respective gains. However, although much is understood about the effect of losses on cognitive processes and behavior, 2 major inconsistencies remain. First, recent empirical evidence fails to demonstrate that people avoid incentive structures that carry equivalent gains and losses.

Processing Differences between Descriptions and Experience: A Comparative Analysis Using Eye-Tracking and Physiological Measures.

Do decisions from description and from experience trigger different cognitive processes? We investigated this general question using cognitive modeling, eye-tracking, and physiological arousal measures. Three novel findings indeed suggest qualitatively different processes between the two types of decisions. First, comparative modeling indicates that evidence-accumulation models assuming averaging of all fixation-sampled outcomes predict choices best in decisions from experience, whereas Cumulative Prospect Theory predicts choices best in decisions from descriptions.

The interplay of experience-based affective and probabilistic cues in decision making: arousal increases when experience and additional cues conflict.

In a study using behavioral and physiological measures we induced experience-based affective cues (i.e., differential anticipatory arousal) toward a risky and a safe option by letting participants repeatedly select between two decks of cards with feedback.

Recency gets larger as lesions move from anterior to posterior locations within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

In the past two decades neuroimaging research has substantiated the important role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in decision-making. In the current study, we use the complementary lesion based approach to deepen our knowledge concerning the specific cognitive mechanisms modulated by prefrontal activity. Specifically, we assessed the brain substrates implicated in two decision making dimensions in a sample of prefrontal cortex patients: (a) the tendency to differently weigh recent compared to past experience; and (b) the tendency to differently weigh gains compared to losses.