Title |
Remembering the best and worst of times: Memories for extreme outcomes bias risky decisions
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Published in |
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, November 2013
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DOI | 10.3758/s13423-013-0542-9 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Christopher R. Madan, Elliot A. Ludvig, Marcia L. Spetch |
Abstract |
When making decisions on the basis of past experiences, people must rely on their memories. Human memory has many well-known biases, including the tendency to better remember highly salient events. We propose an extreme-outcome rule, whereby this memory bias leads people to overweight the largest gains and largest losses, leading to more risk seeking for relative gains than for relative losses. To test this rule, in two experiments, people repeatedly chose between fixed and risky options, where the risky option led equiprobably to more or less than did the fixed option. As was predicted, people were more risk seeking for relative gains than for relative losses. In subsequent memory tests, people tended to recall the extreme outcome first and also judged the extreme outcome as having occurred more frequently. Across individuals, risk preferences in the risky-choice task correlated with these memory biases. This extreme-outcome rule presents a novel mechanism through which memory influences decision making. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 1 | 33% |
United Kingdom | 1 | 33% |
Unknown | 1 | 33% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 2 | 67% |
Scientists | 1 | 33% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Canada | 3 | 2% |
United States | 3 | 2% |
United Kingdom | 2 | 1% |
Switzerland | 2 | 1% |
Spain | 1 | <1% |
Germany | 1 | <1% |
Unknown | 122 | 91% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 38 | 28% |
Researcher | 20 | 15% |
Student > Master | 20 | 15% |
Student > Bachelor | 12 | 9% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 8 | 6% |
Other | 21 | 16% |
Unknown | 15 | 11% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Psychology | 66 | 49% |
Neuroscience | 15 | 11% |
Economics, Econometrics and Finance | 9 | 7% |
Social Sciences | 4 | 3% |
Business, Management and Accounting | 3 | 2% |
Other | 15 | 11% |
Unknown | 22 | 16% |