Digital Commons Network^™

Goats Favour Personal Over Social Information In An Experimental Foraging Task, Luigi Baciadonna, Alan G. Mcelligott, Elodie F. Briefer

Elodie Briefer, PhD

Animals can use their environments more efficiently by selecting particular sources of information (personal or social), according to specific situations. Group-living animals may benefit from gaining information based on the behaviour of other individuals. Indeed, social information is assumed to be faster and less costly to use than personal information, thus increasing foraging efficiency. However, when food sources change seasonally or are randomly distributed, individual information may become more reliable than social information. The aim of this study was to test the use of conflicting personal versus social information in goats (Capra hircus), in a foraging task.We found that goats …

Anxiety Sensitivity And Decision Making: Positive And Negative Risk Taking In Laboratory And Naturalistic Settings, Amanda Kutz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As a group, anxiety disorders represent the most prevalent mental health condition. A hallmark feature of anxiety disorders is avoidant behavior. Along with this, anxious individuals have been shown to exhibit a risk aversion in decision making. However, anxiety disorders are simultaneously highly co-morbid with substance use disorders (e.g., Grant, Stinson, Dawson, & Chou, 2004), suggesting that certain individuals with anxiety disorders engage in particular forms of risk taking. However, much of the current literature on anxiety and risk taking has focused on risk aversion in anxiety, presupposing an inhibited model of anxious responding. In addition, there is little literature …

Decision Making In Older Adults: A Comparison Of Delay And Probability Discounting Across, Ariana Vanderveldt

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The value of an outcome is affected both by the delay until its receipt (delay discounting) and by the likelihood of its receipt (probability discounting). The discounting framework has greatly aided in modeling and understanding decision-making, particularly in the areas of impulsivity, but these findings have overwhelmingly been based on research with young adults. In three experiments, the current study extended the discounting framework by examining choice by older adults. Experiments 1 and 2 found that both young and older adults discounted delayed outcomes and probabilistic outcomes and that their choices were well-described by the same hyperboloid model. Both young …

The Influence Of Discrete Emotional States On Preferential Choice, Andrea M. Cataldo

Masters Theses

Past research has shown that emotion affects preferential choice outcomes. The goal of the present study was to further research on emotion and preferential choice by using mathematical modeling to investigate the effects of specific dimensions of emotion on the underlying mechanisms of preferential choice. Specifically, we aimed to determine whether the concurrent effects of positive-negative valence and situational certainty on attention and information accumulation threshold, respectively, would influence the magnitude of the similarity effect, a robust phenomenon in preferential choice. Participants first underwent either an Anger (negative and certain), Fear (negative and uncertain), or no (Control) emotion manipulation. All …

Understanding The Determinants Of Parental Decision-Making And Harsh Parenting Behavior, Ralitsa Stoyneva Maduro

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The high prevalence and negative consequences of hash parenting among US parents is well-documented. However, intervention and prevention efforts aimed at reducing the rates of harsh parenting have had limited success. A goal of this paper was to provide a novel method of studying parenting behavior; moving beyond correlational findings. Specifically, I argued that preventing harsh parenting has been a challenge, in part because of lack of understanding of the decision-making processes underlying the behavior. In an effort to incorporate tradition decision making methodology, I designed a between subjects, single-blind, randomized experiment. The experimental manipulations were design to induced emotional …

Creating A More Ecologically Valid Decision Task, Kevin L. Kenney

Master's Theses

There has been a standing debate in the field regarding the effectiveness of frequencies and probabilities to accurately convey information. This study utilized a naturalistic sampling procedure to determine risk preferences on binary choice decision using time, sex, and goal deficit variables as predictors. Participants consisted of 110 undergraduate students enrolled in core psychology courses at Fort Hays State University. A web application was created to conduct this specific study that will be made available to other researchers. Significant effects existed for time and goal deficit variables that predicted risk preferences.

Sidestepping The Rock And The Hard Place: The Private Avoidance Of Prosocial Requests, Stephanie C. Lin, Rebecca L. Schaumberg, Taly Reich

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

For some, facing a prosocial request feels like being trapped between a rock and a hard place, requiring either a resource (e.g., money) or psychological (e.g., self-reproach) cost. Because both outcomes are dissatisfying, we propose that these people are motivated to avoid prosocial requests, even when they face these requests in private, anonymous contexts. In two experiments, in which participants' anonymity and privacy was assured, participants avoided facing prosocial requests and were willing to do so at a personal cost. This was true both for people who would have otherwise complied with the request and those who would have otherwise …

Should I Stand By Or Stand Up? Differences In Bullying Bystander Decision Making, Lyndsay Masters

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Over 80% of students have been a bystander to bullying at school. Bystanders who witness bullying may choose to “stand up” against the bully and support the victim personally, encourage intervention from peers or adults, join in with the bullying or “stand by” passively without involvement. These decisions may be influenced by a variety of personal, social and environmental factors. This study proposes that bullying bystanders differ across specific factors according to their decision to intervene or not intervene. Archived data from a culturally-representative sample of 482 middle-school students were used and analyzed from a person-oriented approach. Data represented the …

Creativity In Organizations: Antecedents And Outcomes Of Individual Creativity, Goran Calic

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation I set out to expand our collective understanding of creativity in organizations. I accomplish this through three related studies, each organized into independent chapters of this dissertation.

The first study explores how demands of organizations, particularly strategic contradictions faced by decision makers, affect creative processes and products. In this chapter I develop the theory of paradoxical creativity, which posits that creative discovery is a function of how strategic contradictions are perceived by decision-makers. The key insight of the theory of paradoxical creativity is that strategic contradictions have independent effects on the two stages of creative discovery (generation …

Acute Stress Exposure And Expression Of Instrumentally Conditioned Financial Preferences: An Fmri Study, William Travis Mccuddy

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Recent research suggests acute stress exposure is associated with increased habit-based over goal-oriented decision making (e.g., Schwabe & Wolf, 2011). The current study examined whether acute stress promotes the expression of simple financial preferences “overtrained” to the point of habit in the face of a changing environment where said preferences were later rendered non-optimal. Over three days participants (N = 28) learned to discriminate between visual stimuli probabilistically associated with monetary gains or losses and made decisions between stimuli with real financial outcomes. On the fourth day after exposure to either an acute stressor or control procedure participants performed the …

On The Meaning And Measurement Of Maximization, Nathan Norem Cheek , '15, Barry Schwartz

Psychology Faculty Works

Building on Herbert Simon’s critique of rational choice theory, Schwartz et al. (2002) proposed that when making choices, some individuals — maximizers — search extensively through many alternatives with the goal of making the best choice, whereas others — satisficers — search only until they identify an option that meets their standards, which they then choose. They developed the Maximization Scale (MS) to measure individual differences in maximization, and a substantial amount of research has now examined maximization using the MS, painting a picture of maximizers that is generally negative. Recently, however, several researchers have criticized the MS, and almost …

The Technology Effect: How Perceptions Of Technology Drive Excessive Optimism, Brent B. Clark, Christopher Robert, Stephen A. Hampton

Marketing and Management Faculty Publications

Purpose: We propose that constant exposure to advances in technology has resulted in an implicit association between technology and success that has conditioned decision makers to be overly optimistic about the potential for technology to drive successful outcomes. Three studies examine this phenomenon and explore the boundaries of this “technology effect.”

Design/Methodology/Approach: In Study 1, participants (N = 147) made simulated investment decisions where the information about technology was systematically varied. In Study 2 (N = 143), participants made decisions in a resource dilemma where technology was implicated in determining the amount of a resource available for harvest. Study 3 …

Enhancing Travel Experience With The Combination Of Information Visualization, Situation Awareness, And Distributed Cognition, Weiran Lei

Open Access Theses

With the new forms of travel introduced by new technologies of transportation and communication, a satisfied travel experience could be affected by various factors before and during a trip. Especially for road trips, traveling by car provides freedom on time control while leading to more possibilities of rescheduling initial plans made under time constraints. When overwhelmed with the need for changed travel context to avoid unexpected events that will require a serious change of initial plans, travelers need to find and access helpful contextual information quickly. This is a context-related decision making process that requires amplifying human situation awareness and …

Nashbots: How Political Scientists Have Underestimated Human Rationality, And How To Fix It, Daniel Enemark, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner

Faculty Scholarship

Political scientists use experiments to test the predictions of game-theoretic models. In a typical experiment, each subject makes choices that determine her own earnings and the earnings of other subjects, with payments corresponding to the utility payoffs of a theoretical game. But social preferences distort the correspondence between a subject’s cash earnings and her subjective utility, and since social preferences vary, anonymously matched subjects cannot know their opponents’ preferences between outcomes, turning many laboratory tasks into games of incomplete information. We reduce the distortion of social preferences by pitting subjects against algorithmic agents (“Nashbots”). Across 11 experimental tasks, subjects facing …

Decision-Making Processes, Driving Performance, And Acute Responses To Alcohol In Dui Offenders, Walter Roberts

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Alcohol-impaired driving is a major cause of motor vehicle accident and death in the United States. People who are arrested for DUI (Driving under the Influence) are at high risk to reoffend; approximately one in three of these individuals will commit another DUI offense in the three years following their first conviction (Nochajski & Stasiewicz, 2006). This high risk for recidivism in these individuals suggests that cognitive characteristics may contribute to a pattern of pathological decision making leading to impaired driving. Indeed, individuals with a history of DUI report higher rates of impulsiveness and behavioral dysregulation compared to their nonoffending …

Cognitive Phenotypes And The Evolution Of Animal Decisions, Tamra C. Mendelson, Courtney L. Fitzpatrick, Mark E. Hauber, Charles H. Pence, Rafael L. Rodriguez, Rebecca J. Safran, Caitlin A. Stern, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Despite the clear fitness consequences of animal decisions, the science of animal decision making in evolutionary biology is underdeveloped compared with decision science in human psychology. Specifically, the field lacks a conceptual framework that defines and describes the relevant components of a decision, leading to imprecise language and concepts. The ‘judgment and decision-making’ (JDM) framework in human psychology is a powerful tool for framing and understanding human decisions, and we apply it here to components of animal decisions, which we refer to as ‘cognitive phenotypes’. We distinguish multiple cognitive phenotypes in the context of a JDM framework and highlight empirical …

Does Ego-Depletion Impair The Ability To Identify A Self-Control Conflict?, Jeffrey M. Osgood

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Research from the past fifteen years suggests that strong exertions of self-control in one instance cause self-control failure in subsequent instances. This phenomenon is called the “ego-depletion effect”. More recently, new theoretical and empirical advances in self-control research suggest a Two-Stage Model of self-control. During Stage One, individuals must identify the need to use self-control by recognizing a conflict between their current behavior and long-term goals, values, or social standards. In Stage Two, individuals must implement self-control strategies or willpower to bring current behavior in line with long-term goals, values, or social standards. To date, ego-depletion research has focused mostly …