This article evaluates the effects of two types of rewards (performance-contingent versus engagement-contingent) on self-regulation, intrinsic motivation and creativity. Forty-two undergraduate students were randomly assigned to three conditions; i.e. a performance-contingent reward group, an engagement-contingent reward group and a control group. Results provide little support for the negative effects of performance rewards on motivational components. However, they do indicate that participants in the engagement-contingent reward group and the control group achieved higher rated creativity than participants in the performance-contingent reward group. (...) Alternative explanations for this finding are discussed. (shrink)

In the present study it was shown that decision heuristics and confidence judgements play important roles in the building of preferences. Based on a dual-process account of thinking, the study compared people who did well versus poorly on a series of decision heuristics and overconfidence judgement tasks. The two groups were found to differ with regard to their information search behaviour in introduced multiattribute choice tasks. High performers on the judgemental tasks were less influenced in their decision processes by numerical (...) information format (probabilities vs. frequencies) compared to low performers. They also looked at more attributes and spent more time on the multiattribute choice tasks. The results reveal that performance on decision heuristics and overconfidence tasks has a bearing both on heuristic and analytic processes in multiattribute decision making. (shrink)

In the present study it was shown that both decision heuristics and social value orientation play important roles in the building of preferences. This was revealed in decision tasks in which participants were deciding about candidates for a job position. An eye-tracking equipment was applied in order to register participants´ information acquisition. It was revealed that participants performing well on a series of heuristics tasks (availability, representativeness, anchoríng & adjustment,and attribution) including a confidence judgment also behaved more accurately than low (...) performers in the fulfillment of the preference tasks. It was also established that the high performers were not as influenced by whether uncertainty was presented in terms of probabilities or in terms of frequencies as was the low performers. With regard to social value orientation the results revealed that decision processing differences were more systematic between cooperators and competitors than between cooperators and individualists. Also, the cooperators did not seem to attend more to proenvironmental goals than to profit goals in the evaluation of the candidates. Finally, it was shown that accountable cooperators invested more time in their decisions than those that were not accountable, and that no such difference was observed between accountable and not accountable competitors or individualists. (shrink)

This paper generalizes the simple regret model by Bell in Operations Research 30(5), 961-981 and Loomes and Sugden in The Economic Journal 92(368), 805-824 to cope with the situation in which decision outcomes are multi-attributed. We propose a model that combines the simple regret model for ex ante preferences and the additive difference representation for ex post preferences. We first present a necessary and sufficient axiomatization of our model in Savage’s framework. The proposed model is composed of three types of (...) functions. One is a value function for each attribute. The others are attribute-dependent and holistic regret-rejoicing functions that capture trade-offs among value-differences of chosen and forgone outcomes for each attribute and among all attributes, respectively. We then provide constructive procedures for those functions and methods for consistency checks of the procedures. We, finally, conduct an experiment to estimate those functions in the two attributes case by means of the constructive procedure and give an application of the model and our findings. (shrink)

This book provides an overview of behavioral decision theory and related research findings. In brief, behavioral decision theory is a general term for descriptive theories to explain the psychological knowledge related to decision-making behavior. It is called a theory, but actually it is a combination of various psychological theories, for which no axiomatic systems, such as the utility theory widely used in economics, have been established; it is often limited to qualitative knowledge. However, as suggested in the studies of H. (...) A. Simon, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1978, and D. Kahneman, who won the prize in 2002, the psychological methodology and knowledge of behavioral decision theory have been applied widely in such fields as economics, business administration, and engineering, and are expected to become more useful in the future. This book explains various behavioral decision theories related to decision-making processes. Numerous models have been proposed to explain the psychological processes related to such a selection of decision strategies, and this book also introduces some new models that are useful to explain decision-making processes. The book concludes with speculation about the future of modern behavioral decision theories while referring to their relation to fields associated with neuroscience, such as neuroeconomics, that have been developed in recent years. In addition, each chapter includes a bibliography that can be referred to when studying more details related to behavioral decision theory. Reading this book requires no advanced expertise; nonetheless, an introductory knowledge of psychology, business administration, and economics, and approximately a high school graduate’s level of mathematics should facilitate the reader’s comprehension of the content. (shrink)