Incomplete preferences and rational framing effects.

The normative principle of description invariance presupposes that rational preferences must be complete. The completeness axiom is normatively dubious, however, and its rejection opens the door to rational framing effects. In this commentary, we suggest that Bermúdez's insightful challenge to the standard normative view of framing can be clarified and extended by situating it within a broader critique of completeness.

Default sensitivity in attempts at social influence.

While past research has demonstrated the power of defaults to nudge decision makers toward desired outcomes, few studies have examined whether people understand how to strategically set defaults to influence others' choices. A recent paper (Zlatev et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 13643-13648, 2017) found that participants exhibited "default neglect," or the failure to set optimal defaults at better than chance levels. However, we show that this poor performance is specific to the complex and potentially confusing paradigms they used, and does not reflect a general lack of understanding regarding defaults. Using simple scenarios, Experiments 1A and 1B provide clear evidence that people can optimally set defaults given their goals. In Experiment 2, we conducted a direct and conceptual replication of one of Zlatev et al.'s original studies, which found that participants selected the optimal default significantly less than chance. While our direct replication found results similar to those in the original study, our conceptual replication, which simplified the task, instead found the opposite. Experiment 3 manipulated the framing of the option attributes, which were confounded with the default in the original study, and found that the original framing led to below-chance performance while the alternate framing led to above-chance performance. Together, our results cast doubt on the prevalence and generalizability of default neglect, and instead suggest that people are capable of setting optimal defaults in attempts at social influence.

Gamble evaluation and evoked reference sets: Why adding a small loss to a gamble increases its attractiveness.

When presented with a gamble involving a chance of winning $9, participants rate it as only moderately attractive. However, when other participants are presented with a gamble that adds a chance of losing 5 cents - resulting in gamble that is strictly worse - they rate it as much more attractive. This surprising effect has previously been explained in terms of the small loss increasing the affective evaluability of $9. This paper argues for an alternative model, in which the baseline and small-loss gambles evoke different reference sets for comparison. In inferring a relevant reference set, people are sensitive to both the objective content and the framing of a gamble. The model distinguishes between two effects of evoked reference sets on behavior - an obligatory (and rational) effect on scale interpretation, and an optional (but not rational) effect on the internal representation of value. Five experiments provide strong evidence for the evoked reference set model. Data from attractiveness ratings suggest large and consistent reference set effects on scale interpretation, while data from willingness-to-pay and choice tasks suggest that effects on the internal representation of value are less robust.

Towards a comparative science of emotion: Affect and consciousness in humans and animals.

The componential view of human emotion recognises that affective states comprise conscious, behavioural, physiological, neural and cognitive elements. Although many animals display bodily and behavioural changes consistent with the occurrence of affective states similar to those seen in humans, the question of whether and in which species these are accompanied by conscious experiences remains controversial. Finding scientifically valid methods for investigating markers for the subjective component of affect in both humans and animals is central to developing a comparative understanding of the processes and mechanisms of affect and its evolution and distribution across taxonomic groups, to our understanding of animal welfare, and to the development of animal models of affective disorders. Here, contemporary evidence indicating potential markers of conscious processing in animals is reviewed, with a view to extending this search to include markers of conscious affective processing. We do this by combining animal-focused approaches with investigations of the components of conscious and non-conscious emotional processing in humans, and neuropsychological research into the structure and functions of conscious emotions.

Illusory inconsistencies in judgment: Stimulus-evoked reference sets and between-subjects designs.

Asked to judge the subjective size of numbers in a between-subjects design, participants rated 9 as larger than 221 (Birnbaum, 1999). The 9 > 221 effect seems to indicate that different stimuli evoke different contexts for comparison, and sounds a warning for the interpretation of between-subjects comparisons. We show that, contrary to appearances, the effect is not a result of stimulus-evoked reference sets. Instead, it is an artifact of the original 1-10 response scale and task instructions, which encourage a conflation of the response scale and the reference set. When ratings are expressed on a 1-1000 scale, or on a non-numerical slider scale, the effect reverses. However, we also show that stimuli can evoke their own comparative contexts, generating illusions of inconsistency in between-subjects designs. We report two novel findings - a 9 > 009 effect and a -2 > 2 effect - which are best explained by stimulus-evoked reference sets. Thus, while revealing that the 9 > 221 effect is an artifact of the original response scale, our study ultimately affirms Birnbaum's warning about the comparison of between-subjects ratings.

When payoffs look like probabilities: Separating form and content in risky choice.

Paralleling research in perception, behavioral models of risky choice posit "psychophysical" transformations of material outcomes and probabilities. Prospect theory assumes a value function that is concave for gains and convex for losses, and an inverse S-shaped probability weighting function. But in typical experiments, form and content are confounded: Probabilities are represented on a bounded numerical scale, whereas representations of monetary gains (losses) are unbounded above (below). To unconfound form and content, we conducted experiments using a probability-like representation of outcomes and an outcome-like representation of probability. We show that interchanging numerical representations can interchange the resulting psychophysical functions: A proportional (rather than absolute) representation of outcomes leads to an inverse S-shaped value function for gains. This alternative value function generates novel framing effects, a common ratio effect for bounded gains, and a "framing interaction," where gain-loss framing matters less for proportional outcomes. In addition, we show that an absolute (rather than proportional) representation of probability reduces sensitivity to large probabilities. These findings highlight the deeply constructive nature of the psychophysics of risky choice, and suggest that traditional models may reflect subjective reactions to numerical form rather than substantive content. (PsycINFO Database Record

What we (don't) know about what we know.

The hypothesis of unconscious influences on complex behavior is observationally equivalent to the dissociability of cognition and metacognition (reportability). The target article convincingly argues that evidence for unconscious influence is limited by the quality of the metacognitive measure used. However, it understates the empirical evidence for unconscious influences and overlooks considerations of cognitive architecture that make cognitive/metacognitive dissociations likely.

Options as information: rational reversals of evaluation and preference.

This article develops a rational analysis of an important class of apparent preference reversals-joint-separate reversals traditionally explained by the evaluability hypothesis. The "options-as-information" model considers a hypothetical rational actor with limited knowledge about the market distribution of a stimulus attribute. The actor's evaluations are formed via a 2-stage process-an inferential stage in which beliefs are updated on the basis of the sample of options received, followed by an assessment stage in which options are evaluated in light of these updated beliefs. This process generates joint-separate reversals in standard experimental designs. The normative model explains why the evaluability hypothesis works when it does, identifies boundary conditions for the hypothesis, and clarifies some common misconceptions about these effects. In particular, it implies that joint-separate reversals are not irrational; in fact, they are not preference reversals. However, in expanded designs where more than 2 options are jointly evaluated, the model predicts that genuine (and rational) preference reversals will sometimes emerge. Results of 3 experiments suggest an excellent fit between the rational actor model and the judgments of human actors in joint-separate experiments.

Information leakage from logically equivalent frames.

Framing effects are said to occur when equivalent frames lead to different choices. However, the equivalence in question has been incompletely conceptualized. In a new normative analysis of framing effects, we complete the conceptualization by introducing the notion of information equivalence. Information equivalence obtains when no choice-relevant inferences can be drawn from the speaker's choice of frame. We show that, to support the normative implications traditionally attributed to framing effects, frames must be equivalent in this sense. We also present new evidence for McKenzie and Nelson's (2003) reference point hypothesis, which posits a tendency to cast descriptions in terms of what has increased relative to the reference point. This leakage of information about relative state violates information equivalence, and gives rise to a normative account of the most robust finding in the attribute framing literature - the valence-consistency of preference shifts. We argue that, more generally, valenced descriptions leak information about perceived valence. Such "implicit recommendations" may generalize the reference point explanation of the valence-consistent shift. Normative and psychological implications of the information leakage framework are discussed.