Weller Joshua A, Vineyard Jared, Klein William M P
Centre for Decision Research, University of Leeds, United Kingdom.
Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID.
J Appl Soc Psychol. 2022 May;52(5):277-286. doi: 10.1111/jasp.12856. Epub 2022 Mar 5.
Decisions about one's health are often accompanied by uncertain outcomes, which may be either positively or negatively valenced. The presence of this uncertainty, which can range along a continuum from risk to ambiguity (i.e., decisions in which the outcome probabilities are known or unknown), can be perceived as threatening, and individuals tend to be averse to uncertain outcomes, and will attempt to avoid uncertainty when possible. We proposed that one way to reduce uncertainty aversion could be to provide opportunities to affirm one's core values, or "self-affirmation." Prior research has suggested that self-affirmation promotes health behaviour by providing a buffer against potential threats to the self. However, the degree to which self-affirmation affects decision-making is still unclear. Across two studies, we tested the effects of a self-affirmation manipulation on risk (Study 1) and ambiguity (Study 2) preferences for both potential gains and losses. In both studies, we found that, compared to the non-affirmed group, affirmed individuals were more accepting of uncertainty when the decision involved potential gains, but not for potential losses. Further, for risky decisions, the increased acceptance of uncertainty came at the expense of making choices consistent with expected value, such that self-affirmed individuals made more disadvantageous choices than non-affirmed individuals. Our results suggest both benefits and costs of self-affirmation in the context of risky choice, an important finding given the many applications of self-affirmation in behavioral decision making contexts.
关于个人健康的决策往往伴随着不确定的结果，这些结果可能具有积极或消极的价值。这种不确定性的存在，其范围可以从风险到模糊性（即结果概率已知或未知的决策），可能被视为具有威胁性，而且个体往往厌恶不确定的结果，并会尽可能地试图避免不确定性。我们提出，减少不确定性厌恶的一种方法可能是提供机会来肯定个人的核心价值观，即“自我肯定”。先前的研究表明，自我肯定通过为自我免受潜在威胁提供缓冲来促进健康行为。然而，自我肯定对决策的影响程度仍不清楚。在两项研究中，我们测试了自我肯定操作对潜在收益和损失的风险（研究1）和模糊性（研究2）偏好的影响。在两项研究中，我们发现，与未被肯定的组相比，被肯定的个体在决策涉及潜在收益时对不确定性的接受程度更高，但在涉及潜在损失时并非如此。此外，对于风险决策，对不确定性接受程度的提高是以做出与预期价值一致的选择为代价的，以至于自我肯定的个体比未被肯定的个体做出更不利的选择。我们的结果表明，在风险选择的背景下，自我肯定既有好处也有代价，鉴于自我肯定在行为决策背景中的众多应用，这是一个重要的发现。
