Madan Christopher R, Ludvig Elliot A, Spetch Marcia L
a Department of Psychology , University of Alberta , Edmonton , AB , Canada.
b Department of Psychology , Boston College , Chestnut Hill , MA , USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2017 Oct;70(10):2048-2059. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2016.1220608. Epub 2016 Sep 7.
People's risk preferences differ for choices based on described probabilities versus those based on information learned through experience. For decisions from description, people are typically more risk averse for gains than for losses. In contrast, for decisions from experience, people are sometimes more risk seeking for gains than losses, especially for choices with the possibility of extreme outcomes (big wins or big losses), which are systematically overweighed in memory. Using a within-subject design, this study evaluated whether this memory bias plays a role in the differences in risky choice between description and experience. As in previous studies, people were more risk seeking for losses than for gains in description but showed the opposite pattern in experience. People also more readily remembered the extreme outcomes and judged them as having occurred more frequently. These memory biases correlated with risk preferences in decisions from experience but not in decisions from description. These results suggest that systematic memory biases may be responsible for some of the differences in risk preference across description and experience.
人们对于基于描述概率的选择和基于经验习得信息的选择,其风险偏好有所不同。对于基于描述的决策,人们通常在收益方面比在损失方面更厌恶风险。相比之下,对于基于经验的决策,人们有时在收益方面比在损失方面更偏好风险,尤其是对于有可能出现极端结果(大赢或大输)的选择,这些结果在记忆中被系统性地高估了。本研究采用被试内设计,评估这种记忆偏差是否在基于描述和基于经验的风险选择差异中起作用。与之前的研究一样,在基于描述的情况下,人们在损失方面比在收益方面更偏好风险,但在基于经验的情况下则呈现相反的模式。人们也更容易记住极端结果,并判断它们发生的频率更高。这些记忆偏差与基于经验的决策中的风险偏好相关,但与基于描述的决策中的风险偏好无关。这些结果表明,系统性记忆偏差可能是造成基于描述和基于经验的风险偏好差异的部分原因。