To what extent are people able to make predictions about other people’s preferences and values? We report two experiments that present a novel method assessing some of the basic processes in surrogate decision-making, namely surrogate-utility estimation. In each experiment participants formed dyads who were asked to assign utilities to health related items and commodity items, and to predict their partner’s utility judgments for the same items. In experiment one we showed that older adults in long-term relationships were able to accurately (...) predict their partner’s wishes. In experiment two we showed that younger adults who were relatively unfamiliar with one another were also able to predict other people’s wishes. Crucially we demonstrated that these judgments were accurate even after partialling out each participant’s own preferences indicating that in order to make surrogate utility estimations people engage in perspective-taking rather than simple anchoring and adjustment, suggesting that utility estimation is not the cause of inaccuracy in surrogate decision-making. The data and implications are discussed with respect to theories of surrogate decision-making. (shrink)

Individuals often fail to accurately predict others’ decisions in a risky environment. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics and causes of this prediction discrepancy. Participants completed a risky decision-making task mixed with different domains (gain vs. loss) and probabilities (small vs. large), with some participants making decisions for themselves (the actor) and the others predicting the actors’ decisions (the predictor). The results demonstrated a prediction discrepancy: predictions were more risk-averse than the actual decisions over small-probability gains and more risk-seeking (...) over large-probability gains, while these patterns were reversed in the loss domain. Reported and predicted levels of emotional stimulation revealed a pattern that is consistent with the notion of risk-as-feelings and empathy gaps. Mediation analysis provided strong evidence that such prediction discrepancy is driven mainly by the predictor’s underestimate of the intensity (not the impact) of the actor’s emotional state. (shrink)

In the event that a patient has lost their decision-making capacity due to illness or injury, a surrogate is often appointed to do so on their behalf. Research has shown that people take less risk when making treatment decisions for other people than they do for themselves. This has been discussed as surrogates employing greater caution for others given the accountability they are faced with. We tested the prediction that making accountability salient reduces risk- taking for others relative to the (...) self by manipulating the information shown to participants while they made treatment choices. One group was asked to focus on the consequences for the recipient’s family, another on the legal implications of their decisions, and another was not given additional information. Participants reduced their risk-taking for others compared to themselves, irrespective of the condition they were in. Although participants in each condition reported thinking about these factors to different extents, there were no clear differences in risk-taking between groups. However, we did find that, across all participants, thinking about legal consequences reduces risk-taking. We suggest that future research investigates how the effect of thinking about accountability on surrogate choices is mediated by feelings of accountability, in order to further examine the explanations suggested in the literature. (shrink)

The ways in which the decisions we make for others differ from the ones we make for ourselves has received much attention in the literature, although less is known about their relationship to our p...