Abstracts aktueller Vorträge

Prof. Jacob Orquin, Aarhus University

Abstract:Consumer attention is limited, while available product information is abundant. Consequently, most information remains unattended, but which information and why? Here, we present a novel model of goal-based inattention in multi-attribute, multi-option consumer choice environments. The model explains three key patterns of consumer inattention: inattention to goal-irrelevant attributes, inattention to goal-relevant attributes that are difficult to locate, and inattention for the sake of avoiding goal-relevant attributes. By integrating insights from marketing, social psychology, and economics, we assume consumers choose based on their goals by weighing product attributes in a utility function according to their goal relevance. We also assume that attention to attributes creates goal competition, which modulates the weights so that attended attributes become more equal while unattended attributes receive zero weight. Consumers select the level of attention or inattention to each attribute a priori but choose a posteriori according to the modulated weights. In other words, consumers anticipate imminent goal competition and select the attention levels that best align their future choices with their current goals. The model makes novel predictions about how changes to consumer environments or consumer beliefs about attribute correlations may help reduce information avoidance of relevant attributes, such as health and sustainability information.

Prof. Sonja Perkovic, Aarhus University.

Abstract: Cognitive biases are systematic deviations from rational thinking that often lead individuals to make suboptimal decisions. In the literature, they are commonly seen as barriers to sound judgment, with risk perception being one domain where their effects are frequently observed. For instance, the availability bias, where individuals overestimate risks based on easily recalled events (e.g., plane crashes), can lead to overestimating rare risks while underestimating more probable yet less memorable risks (e.g., car accidents). However, it remains unclear whether cognitive biases can be strategically used to increase or decrease risk perceptions. Our preliminary findings suggest that biases can be harnessed to influence risk perceptions across diverse contexts. This opens new possibilities for utilizing cognitive biases to align risk perceptions with expert opinions. Policymakers could leverage these insights to improve decision-making and enhance public well-being by shaping how risks are perceived and acted upon​.

Prof. Geoffrey Fisher, Cornell University

Abstract: A large literature has investigated how individuals make decisions over outcomes with different delays or under uncertainty, largely through fitting a variety of choice models or studying the contextual factors that influence decisions. This paper proposes that simultaneously combining multiple process tracing tools can provide insights about intertemporal and risky decision-making, and address this by utilizing eye movements, reaching movements (via mouse cursor trajectories), and choices in two laboratory experiment. Although metrics derived from eye fixation patterns and reaching movements were correlated, they provided independent information that improved choice prediction. Moreover, reaching movements detailed the asymmetric impact of how fixating to different choice set features impacted the evidence needed to make a decision. Finally, we introduced exogenous variation in the spatial arrangement of the choice options and found that both eye movements and reaching movements independently contributed to choice.

Prof. Romy Frömer, Birmingham University

Abstract: Many factors can influence how well we do in our daily lives, internal factors such as our own knowledge of the right actions to take, or our motivation and resultant effort investment, as well as external factors, such as the stability and controllability of the environment we make decisions in. Understanding the causes of our outcomes is essential for adapting beliefs, actions, and resource allocation to optimize long term fitness. A challenge to adapting successfully are the sparseness and ambiguity of feedback that characterize most real-live situations: we may learn whether we failed or succeeded, perhaps how well or poorly we did, but not why. Instead, the extent to which external and internal factors determine our outcomes need to be inferred to then guide decision-making about actions or effort. I have proposed that metacognition acts as a mechanism to adaptively reduce uncertainty and aid flexible learning and decision-making. Here I review foundational experimental, computational and neuroscience work investigating this hypothesis, and offer a preview of preliminary work extending these findings to changing environments and effort decisions.

Prof. Bamini Gopinath

Abstract: Hearing and/or vision loss is debilitating. Interfering with primary modes of communication, these impairments inhibit one’s independence and ability to participate in society.  We are currently working to change this through our program of research by applying a public health lens to sensory loss in adults. This includes projects that are improving the capture and use of robust contemporary data.
Several examples will be provided including landmark studies initiated in 2022 such as the very first Australian Eye and Ear Health Survey.
There will also be a focus on initiatives that aim to develop and implement evidence-based strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of sensory loss. The coordination and partnership among a range of key stakeholders underlies all these initiatives and this will be highlighted, as this is critical to ensuring the inclusion of sensory loss as part of a broader public health strategy.

Prof. Christian Ruff, University of Zürich

Abstract: Risk attitude – the willingness to accept uncertainty for the possibility to gain larger rewards – is often seen as a stable personality trait akin to a ‘taste for risk’. However, this widespread notion is contradicted by findings that risk attitudes can change, and sometimes completely reverse, over different contexts and even repetitions of the identical choice problems. The neurocognitive processes giving rise to these fluctuations in risk attitude have remained elusive. In this talk, I will present a recent line of work from my lab that sheds light on these processes. In a series of experiments combining psychophysical modelling and population-receptive field modelling of fMRI data, we find that apparent risk attitudes do not reflect (dis)tastes for risk encoded in motivational brain systems but rather Bayesian perceptual inference on noisy magnitude representations in parietal cortex. The specifics of these neuro-cognitive perceptual processes can account for a variety of empirical effects, including individual differences, preference reversals, context effects, and changes of risk attitudes with acute stress. Taken together, our work suggests that risk attitude may not reflect subjective valuation of uncertainty but rather perceptual mis-estimation, with profound implications for psychological, economic, and neuroscience theories of risk-taking and the corresponding clinical applications.

Prof. Cendri Hutcherson

Abstract: Most decisions, from the daily and mundane to the rare and consequential, require integrating information from multiple sources and making trade-offs among competing considerations and values. How the brain accomplishes this process of valuation remains incompletely understood. In this talk I will describe results from several lines of work, including behavioral, eye tracking, and EEG studies, that shed light on the dynamic processes underlying information identification, evaluation, and integration. Our findings suggest that the process of valuation may be more serialized, and more distinct from perceptual and affective processes, than typically recognized, at both the computational and neural levels. In turn, the serial and sequential nature of valuation has important ramifications for (and raises novel questions about) how to help people make better decisions for both themselves and others.

Prof. Fabian Grabenhorst, Oxford

Abstract: Primates make decisions visually by shifting their view from one object to the next, comparing values between objects, and choosing the best reward, even before acting. Here we show that when monkeys make value-guided choices, amygdala neurons encode their decisions in an abstract, purely internal representation defined by the monkey’s current view but not by specific object or reward properties. Across amygdala subdivisions, recorded activity patterns evolved gradually from an object-specific value code to a transient, object-independent code in which currently viewed and last-viewed objects competed to form a view-based choice. Using neural-network modelling, we identified a sequence of computations by which amygdala neurons implemented view-based decision-making and eventually recovered the chosen object’s identity when the monkeys acted on their choice. These findings reveal a neural mechanism in the amygdala that derives object choices from abstract, view-based computations, suggesting an efficient solution for decision problems with many objects.

Kianté Fernandez University of California

Abstract: The literature on value-based decision-making has long focused on single-item selections in binary choice. However, many real-world decisions, like grocery shopping or selecting a restaurant, involve selecting multiple items from many alternatives. In my talk, I will discuss two research programs that extend the study of value-based decision-making to these more complex settings. First, I will explore the role of similarity in contexts where people select between sets of options, such as menus. Using a computational approach that leverages network science to measure similarity, we find that while people prefer sets containing items similar to many other items, they do not prefer sets that are more internally similar. In the second part of the talk, I will introduce an extension to the popular sequential sampling modeling framework to characterize scenarios where multiple rapid decisions are made from a set. To measure these "multi-response" decisions, participants were asked to choose one, two, or three food items from a set of four. Our findings show that participants generally selected their highest-ranked items based on independent ratings. Additionally, the response times for their first selected item were comparable to those for single-item choices, while subsequent selections were made more quickly. Both set selection and multi-response paradigms offer new perspectives and benchmarks for studying the dynamics of n-alternative decision-making.

Prof. Dianna Amasino, Tilburg University

Abstract: I will present two projects exploring the role of attention in decisions with impacts on others. In the first, we use attention to better understand differences in attitudes toward fairness and redistribution along socio-economic lines. We conduct an experiment on attention to merit and luck and the effect of attention on fairness decisions. We find that randomly advantaged subjects pay less attention to information about true merit and retain more of the joint earnings. Attention also has a causal role: encouraging subjects to look at merit reduces the effect of an advantaged position on allocations. In the second project, we examine one potential mechanism for why consumers often underutilize ethical information in their purchases compared to their surveyed intentions. Across two studies, we investigate whether consumers use ethical information when confronted with it but fail to seek out this information when it is avoidable. We find mixed evidence for diminished use of ethical information when it is possible to ignore across both studies. In the second study, we further investigate how positive and negative framing of ethical information influences choice, as negative information may be particularly prone to ignorance or avoidance. We find that both positive and negative frames increase the impact of ethical information in choice relative to neutral frames with negative framing having the strongest impact. Further, this occurs regardless of whether information is avoidable, suggesting no backfiring effect of negative framing.