The construction of social preferences often requires one to reconcile various social motives, su... more The construction of social preferences often requires one to reconcile various social motives, such as concern with unfavorable inequality and maximization of social welfare. We propose a novel theory whereby people’s level of agency influences the relative intensities of their social motives, and thus their social preferences. Agency in this context refers to decision makers’ active involvement in the processes that produce social outcomes. Nonagentic decision makers are not involved in creating the outcomes. Therefore, the comparison between self and others is highly informative for them and they shun settings in which their outcome appears to be inferior. Conversely, agentic decision makers, who take action to influence social outcomes, care more about others’ outcomes and are more inclined to promote social welfare. We report five studies testing the agency hypothesis. Participants were presented with realistic scenarios involving outcomes for themselves and another person. In e...
Conflicted advisors need to resolve the tension between two competing motives, the need to provid... more Conflicted advisors need to resolve the tension between two competing motives, the need to provide sincere advice that fulfills the recipient's goals and the temptation to give advice that caters to their self-interest. We theorized that the choice context should affect selfish advice-giving. Our basic experimental condition presented the advisor with two alternative recommendations, one optimal for the recipient, and one preferable for the advisor. We hypothesized that introducing a third (inferior) alternative (in the context condition) should increase the advisor's tendency to give selfish advice. In Study 1, advisors who were instructed to transmit a recommendation to an anonymous recipient, were more selfish in the context than in the basic condition. Study 2 further found that the effect was obtained when the third alternative was strictly dominated by the selfish recommendation. Studies 3-4 tested the idea that forewarning advisors about the need to explain their choices should moderate the effect. Study 5 tested the advisors' awareness of the context effect. Studies 6-7 investigated the reactions of advice recipients and social observers to selfish advice-giving and found them also biased by context. Our theoretical account posits a reference-based evaluation process. This mechanism explains the advisors' tendency to give selfish advice as well as the social actors' reactions to the transmission of such advice. We discuss the context effect in relation to the asymmetric dominance effect, social preferences, and ethical decision making. Decision-makers often seek the advice of others-friends, colleagues and even professionals-who could help them make better decisions. Studies indeed show that the recipients of advice stand to gain from the utilization of sincere advice (Yaniv, 2004; Yaniv & Choshen-Hillel, 2012). The recipients can benefit, in particular, from the advice of laypeople or experts who keep their recipients' best interests in mind and deliver truthful information. Advice however may not always be sincere. Advisors do not always adhere to the cooperative norm of social interaction (Grice, 1975). In shopping, getting a car fixed, banking, buying real estate, or seeking medical help, the advice received from experts could be tainted by personal interests of the advisors, interests that are not aligned with those of the advice seekers. For example, in the interest of generating revenue, a banker might recommend a loan that is not optimal for the client, or a physician might recommend a test that is unnecessary for the patient. Friends and relatives as well could give advice that is tainted by personal agendas. In general, a conflict of interest arises when an advisor faces two alternative courses of action, one of which is favorable for the recipient, while the other is preferable for the advisor. An important task for psychological research is to investigate the factors that enhance (or diminish) an advisor's tendency to give selfish advice, which is also suboptimal for the recipient. A number of factors have been found to affect an advisor's tendency to give self-serving advice, including identifiability (
Reaping a benefit at the expense of multiple others: How are the losses of others counted?
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2021
Abstract We investigate individual decisions that produce gains for oneself, while imposing losse... more Abstract We investigate individual decisions that produce gains for oneself, while imposing losses on a group of others. We theorize, based on the notion of empathy, that decision-makers consider the magnitude of the pain or loss they inflict on an individual in the group, but are largely insensitive to the number of individuals in the group who suffer losses. Studies involving personal choices or judgments of others’ choices largely confirmed these predictions. They also revealed a dispersion effect, whereby participants made more selfish choices, and judged others’ selfish choices more lightly, when the social losses were dispersed more thinly across a group. It appears that decision-makers’ empathy for others who suffer losses is not readily adjusted to the number of people affected or to the aggregated losses. It also appears that empathy mediates judgments of selfish behavior. The findings are related to theories of empathy, and decisions under conflicts of interest.
Objective: ADHD has been linked to higher engagement in risky behaviors in circumscribed domains ... more Objective: ADHD has been linked to higher engagement in risky behaviors in circumscribed domains such as dangerous driving, substance abuse, and gambling. This study tests whether ADHD is associated with a pervasive tendency to engage in risky behavior across a spectrum of activities and domains, and whether this tendency is driven by comorbid disorders. Method: A sample of 97 adults with ADHD and 103 typically developing controls completed a self-report questionnaire measuring the likelihood and frequency of engaging in a broad range of risky behaviors. ADHD, comorbid psychiatric disorders, and demographic variables were extensively assessed using standardized instruments. Results: Participants with ADHD reported a pervasive tendency to engage in risky behaviors across multiple activities. This tendency was associated with ADHD over and above the contribution of comorbid psychiatric disorders. Conclusion: These results suggest that ADHD is uniquely linked to a pervasive pattern of ...
Much research shows that judgmental estimation could be improved by combining estimates from inde... more Much research shows that judgmental estimation could be improved by combining estimates from independent judges as well as within judges. These results have been obtained mostly with judgments about matters of fact, that is, for which there are objective truth criteria. In the present research, we extend these findings to performance evaluations. In a controlled field study, expert judges provided evaluations of a large number of essays written by college applicants taking college entrance tests. The judges were asked to evaluate each essay twice—on two occasions, a week apart. This design allowed us to assess the benefits of two methods of combining evaluations: within rater and across raters. Accuracy gains were obtained with both methods. Although the within‐rater combinations yielded fewer gains than the across‐rater ones, they were still appreciable in comparison with the across rater ones. Our findings extend the class of judgments to which the “wisdom of many” could be applie...
Decision makers can often improve the accuracy of their judgments on factual matters by consultin... more Decision makers can often improve the accuracy of their judgments on factual matters by consulting “crowds” of others for their respective opinions. In this article, we investigate whether decision makers could similarly draw on crowds to improve the accuracy of their judgments about their own tastes and hedonic experiences. We present a theoretical model that states that accuracy gains from consulting a crowd’s judgments of taste depend on the interplay among taste discrimination, crowd diversity, and the similarity between the crowd’s preferences and those of the decision maker. The model also delineates the boundary conditions for such “crowd wisdom.” Evidence supporting our hypotheses was found in two laboratory studies in which decision makers made judgments about their own enjoyment of musical pieces and short films. Our findings suggest that although different people may have different preferences and inclinations, their judgments of taste can benefit from the wisdom of crowd...
Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is often assumed to be associated with increa... more Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is often assumed to be associated with increased engagement in risk-taking behaviors. The current study sought to understand the mental processes underlying this association using a theory-driven behavioral economics perspective. Psychological risk-return models suggest that risk and benefit are inherently subjective, and risk taking is best understood as the interplay between cognitions and motivations regarding the benefits and risks of alternatives. A sample of 244 adults was assessed for ADHD symptoms. The likelihood of engagement in a range of risky behaviors (e.g., driving without wearing a seat belt), the magnitude of perceived benefit and risk ascribed to these behaviors, and benefit and risk attitudes of each participant were extracted from the Domain Specific Risk Taking (DOSPERT) scales. ADHD symptoms were correlated with more risky behaviors and perception of greater benefits from engaging in these behaviors, but were n...
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2011
This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright
The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scient... more The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scientists conducting research in the area of neurobiology. The primary goal of the society was to promote and disseminate the knowledge and understanding acquired by its members, and to strengthen interactions between them. Since then, the society holds its annual meeting every year in Eilat usually during December. At this annual meetings, the senior Israeli neurobiologists, their teams, and their graduate students, as well as foreign scientists and students, present their recent research findings in platform and poster presentations, and the program of the meeting is mainly based on the 338 received abstracts which are published in this volume. The meeting also offers the opportunity for the researchers to exchange information with each other, often leading to the initiation of collaborative studies. Both the number of members of the society and those participating in the annual meeting is ...
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2000
The present research contrasts two seemingly complementary decision strategies: acceptance and el... more The present research contrasts two seemingly complementary decision strategies: acceptance and elimination. In acceptance, a choice set is created by including suitable alternatives from an initial set of alternatives, whereas in elimination it is created by removing inappropriate alternatives from that same initial set. The research used realistic career decision-making scenarios and presented to respondents sets of alternatives that varied in their preexperimental strength values. Whereas complementarity of acceptance and elimination is implied by three standard (normative) assumptions of decision theory, we find a systematic discrepancy between the outcomes of these procedures: choice sets were larger in elimination than in acceptance. This acceptanceelimination discrepancy is directly tied to subcomplementarity. The central tenet of the theoretical framework developed here is that acceptance and elimination procedures imply different types of status quo for the alternatives, thereby invoking a different selection criterion for each procedure. A central prediction of the dual-criterion framework is that middling alternatives should be most susceptible to the type of procedure used. The present studies focus on this prediction which is substantiated by the results showing that middling alternatives yield the greatest discrepancy between acceptance and elimination. The implications of this model and findings for various research domains are discussed.
Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on World wide web, 2014
We performed controlled experiments of human participants in a continuous sequence of ad auctions... more We performed controlled experiments of human participants in a continuous sequence of ad auctions, similar to those used by Internet companies. The goal of the research was to understand users' strategies in making bids. We studied the behavior under two auction types: (1) the Generalized Second-Price (GSP) auction and (2) the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) payment rule, and manipulated also the participants' knowledge conditions: (1) explicitly given valuations and (2) payoff information from which valuations could be deduced. We found several interesting behaviors, among them are: • No convergence to equilibrium was detected; moreover the frequency with which participants modified their bids increased with time. • We can detect explicit "better-response" behavior rather than just mixed bidding. • While bidders in GSP auctions do strategically shade their bids, they tend to bid higher than theoretically predicted by the standard VCG-like equilibrium of GSP. • Bidders who are not explicitly given their valuations but can only deduce them from their gains behave a little less "precisely" than those with such explicit knowledge, but mostly during an initial learning phase. • VCG and GSP yield approximately the same (high) social welfare, but GSP tends to give higher revenue.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2007
How might people revise their opinions on the basis of multiple pieces of advice? What sort of ga... more How might people revise their opinions on the basis of multiple pieces of advice? What sort of gains could be obtained from rules for using advice? In the present studies judges first provided their initial estimates for a series of questions; next they were presented with several (2, 4, or 8) opinions from an ecological pool of advisory estimates (Experiment 1), or with artificial advice (Experiment 2); finally they provided their revised estimates. Descriptive analyses of their revision process revealed that they egocentrically trimmed the opinion sets such that opinions distant from their own were greatly discounted. Normative analyses suggested that they gained substantially from the use of advice, though not optimally, due to their self-centered utilization of the advice. The results are discussed in connection with to theories of belief revision and attitude change, with an emphasis on decision makers' strategies for coping with conflicting opinions and the appropriateness of discounting distant or dissenting opinions. Prescriptive implications for the utilization of advice are also considered.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2008
People's 90% subjective confidence intervals typically contain the true value about 50% of the ti... more People's 90% subjective confidence intervals typically contain the true value about 50% of the time, indicating extreme overconfidence. Previous results have been mixed regarding whether experts are as overconfident as novices. Experiment 1 examined interval estimates from information technology (IT) professionals and UC San Diego (UCSD) students about both the IT industry and UCSD. This within-subjects experiment showed that experts and novices were about equally overconfident. Experts reported intervals that had midpoints closer to the true value-which increased hit rate-and that were narrower (i.e., more informative)-which decreased hit rate. The net effect was no change in hit rate and overconfidence. Experiment 2 showed that both experts and novices mistakenly expected experts to be much less overconfident than novices, but they correctly predicted that experts would provide narrower intervals with midpoints closer to the truth. Decisions about whether to consult experts should be based on which aspects of performance are desired.
Decision Framing and Support for Concessions in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Journal of Peace Research, 2007
The purpose of the study is to explore, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the i... more The purpose of the study is to explore, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the influence of framing a decision task as inclusion or exclusion on Israeli Jewish respondents’ support for the concession of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Respondents received a list of 40 Jewish settlements. Details such as the number of residents and geographical location were provided for each settlement. The respondents were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the inclusion condition, 55 respondents were asked to mark the settlements for which they recommended that Israeli sovereignty be conceded. In the exclusion condition, 53 respondents were asked to mark the settlements for which they recommended that Israeli sovereignty not be conceded. The findings confirm the predictions tested and indicate that: (1) Framing the task in terms of inclusion or exclusion affects respondents’ support for territorial compromise, so that respondents in the exclusion conditio...
Using a response-priming procedure, five experiments examined the effects of vowel similarity on ... more Using a response-priming procedure, five experiments examined the effects of vowel similarity on the motor programming of spoken syllables. In this procedure, subjects prepared to produce a pair of spoken syllables as rapidly as possible, but sometimes had to produce the syllables in reverse order instead. The spoken responses consisted of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables whose medial vowels were /i/, /I/, /A/, and /a/. Performance was measured as a function of the phonetic relationship between the vowels in a syllable pair. Longer response latencies occurred for syllable pairs that contained similar vowels (e.g., /i/ and /I!) than for syllable pairs that contained dissimilar vowels (e.g., /i/ and /A/). This inhibitory vowel-similarity effect occurred regardless of whether the initial consonants of the syllables in a pair were the same or different. However, it decreased substantially when the final consonants of the paired syllables were different. These results suggest that a lateral-inhibition mechanism may modulate the motor programming of vowels during speech production. They also provide evidence for the integrity of vowel-consonant (VC) subunits in syllables. 8 1990 Academic press, lnc Several models of speech production, speech perception, and visual wordrecognition have represented linguistic
The 1999 Israeli multi-party parliamentary election was used for studying the effects of inclusiv... more The 1999 Israeli multi-party parliamentary election was used for studying the effects of inclusive and exclusive modes of thinking. In three experiments, we tested a theoretical framework whose major elements are the justification process, a distinction between middling and clearcut options, and the use of inclusion and exclusion threshold criteria. In Studies 1-2, respondents were asked to predict either of which parties would win seats in the parliament (inclusion) or which parties would fail to win seats in the parliament (exclusion). In Study 2, respondents were also asked to use inclusive or exclusive modes to indicate their preferences and in Study 3, they were asked to make either inclusive or exclusive judgments about the platforms of two extreme political parties. We found consistent discrepancies between the outcomes of inclusion and exclusion processes, such that choice sets generated in exclusion were larger than those generated in inclusion. A second major finding was the option effect, namely, the discrepancies between the two modes of thinking were larger for middling than for clearcut options. The third main finding was an expertise effect: the less knowledgeable respondents exhibited greater discrepancies than did the more knowledgeable ones. Our theoretical framework accounts for the inclusion-exclusion discrepancy, the option effect, and the expertise effect. We discuss the implications of these findings for judgment and choice in social settings and also for the understanding of question-form effects in opinion surveys-in particular, the allow-forbid effect. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. Consider the task of reducing a large set to a smaller subset of viable options. One could proceed by eliminating the unfavorable options from the list thereby retaining the favorable ones in the list. Alternatively, one could select the favorable ones from the list. In screening the program for a large conference, a participant might ask either ''which talks should I go to'' or ''which talks could I skip.'' Similarly, editorial decisions can also be framed in two ways. An acceptance strategy implies that papers are accepted only if they are good enough. An elimination strategy implies that manuscripts are rejected only if they are not good enough, otherwise they are accepted. As it turns out, the two judgment modes or frames-inclusion and exclusion-do not necessarily lead to the same outcome. Previous work has shown that a given option has a substantially greater chance of being retained in the final set if exclusion rather than inclusion is used (Levin, Jasper, & Forbes, 1998; Yaniv & Schul, 1997, 2000). We refer to this finding as the inclusion-exclusion discrepancy. 1 The effect implies, as the following discussion suggests, that more talks would be attended to at a conference if participants screened the conference program with an exclusion frame of mind. Similarly, a given paper has a greater chance of being published if the editor's decision mode is exclusion rather than inclusion. Procedural effects, such as the inclusion-exclusion discrepancy, have been central in most of the research that has investigated how the elicitation procedure affects the way alternatives are judged (Hsee, 1996),
The construction of social preferences often requires one to reconcile various social motives, su... more The construction of social preferences often requires one to reconcile various social motives, such as concern with unfavorable inequality and maximization of social welfare. We propose a novel theory whereby people’s level of agency influences the relative intensities of their social motives, and thus their social preferences. Agency in this context refers to decision makers’ active involvement in the processes that produce social outcomes. Nonagentic decision makers are not involved in creating the outcomes. Therefore, the comparison between self and others is highly informative for them and they shun settings in which their outcome appears to be inferior. Conversely, agentic decision makers, who take action to influence social outcomes, care more about others’ outcomes and are more inclined to promote social welfare. We report five studies testing the agency hypothesis. Participants were presented with realistic scenarios involving outcomes for themselves and another person. In e...
Conflicted advisors need to resolve the tension between two competing motives, the need to provid... more Conflicted advisors need to resolve the tension between two competing motives, the need to provide sincere advice that fulfills the recipient's goals and the temptation to give advice that caters to their self-interest. We theorized that the choice context should affect selfish advice-giving. Our basic experimental condition presented the advisor with two alternative recommendations, one optimal for the recipient, and one preferable for the advisor. We hypothesized that introducing a third (inferior) alternative (in the context condition) should increase the advisor's tendency to give selfish advice. In Study 1, advisors who were instructed to transmit a recommendation to an anonymous recipient, were more selfish in the context than in the basic condition. Study 2 further found that the effect was obtained when the third alternative was strictly dominated by the selfish recommendation. Studies 3-4 tested the idea that forewarning advisors about the need to explain their choices should moderate the effect. Study 5 tested the advisors' awareness of the context effect. Studies 6-7 investigated the reactions of advice recipients and social observers to selfish advice-giving and found them also biased by context. Our theoretical account posits a reference-based evaluation process. This mechanism explains the advisors' tendency to give selfish advice as well as the social actors' reactions to the transmission of such advice. We discuss the context effect in relation to the asymmetric dominance effect, social preferences, and ethical decision making. Decision-makers often seek the advice of others-friends, colleagues and even professionals-who could help them make better decisions. Studies indeed show that the recipients of advice stand to gain from the utilization of sincere advice (Yaniv, 2004; Yaniv & Choshen-Hillel, 2012). The recipients can benefit, in particular, from the advice of laypeople or experts who keep their recipients' best interests in mind and deliver truthful information. Advice however may not always be sincere. Advisors do not always adhere to the cooperative norm of social interaction (Grice, 1975). In shopping, getting a car fixed, banking, buying real estate, or seeking medical help, the advice received from experts could be tainted by personal interests of the advisors, interests that are not aligned with those of the advice seekers. For example, in the interest of generating revenue, a banker might recommend a loan that is not optimal for the client, or a physician might recommend a test that is unnecessary for the patient. Friends and relatives as well could give advice that is tainted by personal agendas. In general, a conflict of interest arises when an advisor faces two alternative courses of action, one of which is favorable for the recipient, while the other is preferable for the advisor. An important task for psychological research is to investigate the factors that enhance (or diminish) an advisor's tendency to give selfish advice, which is also suboptimal for the recipient. A number of factors have been found to affect an advisor's tendency to give self-serving advice, including identifiability (
Reaping a benefit at the expense of multiple others: How are the losses of others counted?
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2021
Abstract We investigate individual decisions that produce gains for oneself, while imposing losse... more Abstract We investigate individual decisions that produce gains for oneself, while imposing losses on a group of others. We theorize, based on the notion of empathy, that decision-makers consider the magnitude of the pain or loss they inflict on an individual in the group, but are largely insensitive to the number of individuals in the group who suffer losses. Studies involving personal choices or judgments of others’ choices largely confirmed these predictions. They also revealed a dispersion effect, whereby participants made more selfish choices, and judged others’ selfish choices more lightly, when the social losses were dispersed more thinly across a group. It appears that decision-makers’ empathy for others who suffer losses is not readily adjusted to the number of people affected or to the aggregated losses. It also appears that empathy mediates judgments of selfish behavior. The findings are related to theories of empathy, and decisions under conflicts of interest.
Objective: ADHD has been linked to higher engagement in risky behaviors in circumscribed domains ... more Objective: ADHD has been linked to higher engagement in risky behaviors in circumscribed domains such as dangerous driving, substance abuse, and gambling. This study tests whether ADHD is associated with a pervasive tendency to engage in risky behavior across a spectrum of activities and domains, and whether this tendency is driven by comorbid disorders. Method: A sample of 97 adults with ADHD and 103 typically developing controls completed a self-report questionnaire measuring the likelihood and frequency of engaging in a broad range of risky behaviors. ADHD, comorbid psychiatric disorders, and demographic variables were extensively assessed using standardized instruments. Results: Participants with ADHD reported a pervasive tendency to engage in risky behaviors across multiple activities. This tendency was associated with ADHD over and above the contribution of comorbid psychiatric disorders. Conclusion: These results suggest that ADHD is uniquely linked to a pervasive pattern of ...
Much research shows that judgmental estimation could be improved by combining estimates from inde... more Much research shows that judgmental estimation could be improved by combining estimates from independent judges as well as within judges. These results have been obtained mostly with judgments about matters of fact, that is, for which there are objective truth criteria. In the present research, we extend these findings to performance evaluations. In a controlled field study, expert judges provided evaluations of a large number of essays written by college applicants taking college entrance tests. The judges were asked to evaluate each essay twice—on two occasions, a week apart. This design allowed us to assess the benefits of two methods of combining evaluations: within rater and across raters. Accuracy gains were obtained with both methods. Although the within‐rater combinations yielded fewer gains than the across‐rater ones, they were still appreciable in comparison with the across rater ones. Our findings extend the class of judgments to which the “wisdom of many” could be applie...
Decision makers can often improve the accuracy of their judgments on factual matters by consultin... more Decision makers can often improve the accuracy of their judgments on factual matters by consulting “crowds” of others for their respective opinions. In this article, we investigate whether decision makers could similarly draw on crowds to improve the accuracy of their judgments about their own tastes and hedonic experiences. We present a theoretical model that states that accuracy gains from consulting a crowd’s judgments of taste depend on the interplay among taste discrimination, crowd diversity, and the similarity between the crowd’s preferences and those of the decision maker. The model also delineates the boundary conditions for such “crowd wisdom.” Evidence supporting our hypotheses was found in two laboratory studies in which decision makers made judgments about their own enjoyment of musical pieces and short films. Our findings suggest that although different people may have different preferences and inclinations, their judgments of taste can benefit from the wisdom of crowd...
Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is often assumed to be associated with increa... more Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is often assumed to be associated with increased engagement in risk-taking behaviors. The current study sought to understand the mental processes underlying this association using a theory-driven behavioral economics perspective. Psychological risk-return models suggest that risk and benefit are inherently subjective, and risk taking is best understood as the interplay between cognitions and motivations regarding the benefits and risks of alternatives. A sample of 244 adults was assessed for ADHD symptoms. The likelihood of engagement in a range of risky behaviors (e.g., driving without wearing a seat belt), the magnitude of perceived benefit and risk ascribed to these behaviors, and benefit and risk attitudes of each participant were extracted from the Domain Specific Risk Taking (DOSPERT) scales. ADHD symptoms were correlated with more risky behaviors and perception of greater benefits from engaging in these behaviors, but were n...
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2011
This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright
The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scient... more The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scientists conducting research in the area of neurobiology. The primary goal of the society was to promote and disseminate the knowledge and understanding acquired by its members, and to strengthen interactions between them. Since then, the society holds its annual meeting every year in Eilat usually during December. At this annual meetings, the senior Israeli neurobiologists, their teams, and their graduate students, as well as foreign scientists and students, present their recent research findings in platform and poster presentations, and the program of the meeting is mainly based on the 338 received abstracts which are published in this volume. The meeting also offers the opportunity for the researchers to exchange information with each other, often leading to the initiation of collaborative studies. Both the number of members of the society and those participating in the annual meeting is ...
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2000
The present research contrasts two seemingly complementary decision strategies: acceptance and el... more The present research contrasts two seemingly complementary decision strategies: acceptance and elimination. In acceptance, a choice set is created by including suitable alternatives from an initial set of alternatives, whereas in elimination it is created by removing inappropriate alternatives from that same initial set. The research used realistic career decision-making scenarios and presented to respondents sets of alternatives that varied in their preexperimental strength values. Whereas complementarity of acceptance and elimination is implied by three standard (normative) assumptions of decision theory, we find a systematic discrepancy between the outcomes of these procedures: choice sets were larger in elimination than in acceptance. This acceptanceelimination discrepancy is directly tied to subcomplementarity. The central tenet of the theoretical framework developed here is that acceptance and elimination procedures imply different types of status quo for the alternatives, thereby invoking a different selection criterion for each procedure. A central prediction of the dual-criterion framework is that middling alternatives should be most susceptible to the type of procedure used. The present studies focus on this prediction which is substantiated by the results showing that middling alternatives yield the greatest discrepancy between acceptance and elimination. The implications of this model and findings for various research domains are discussed.
Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on World wide web, 2014
We performed controlled experiments of human participants in a continuous sequence of ad auctions... more We performed controlled experiments of human participants in a continuous sequence of ad auctions, similar to those used by Internet companies. The goal of the research was to understand users' strategies in making bids. We studied the behavior under two auction types: (1) the Generalized Second-Price (GSP) auction and (2) the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) payment rule, and manipulated also the participants' knowledge conditions: (1) explicitly given valuations and (2) payoff information from which valuations could be deduced. We found several interesting behaviors, among them are: • No convergence to equilibrium was detected; moreover the frequency with which participants modified their bids increased with time. • We can detect explicit "better-response" behavior rather than just mixed bidding. • While bidders in GSP auctions do strategically shade their bids, they tend to bid higher than theoretically predicted by the standard VCG-like equilibrium of GSP. • Bidders who are not explicitly given their valuations but can only deduce them from their gains behave a little less "precisely" than those with such explicit knowledge, but mostly during an initial learning phase. • VCG and GSP yield approximately the same (high) social welfare, but GSP tends to give higher revenue.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2007
How might people revise their opinions on the basis of multiple pieces of advice? What sort of ga... more How might people revise their opinions on the basis of multiple pieces of advice? What sort of gains could be obtained from rules for using advice? In the present studies judges first provided their initial estimates for a series of questions; next they were presented with several (2, 4, or 8) opinions from an ecological pool of advisory estimates (Experiment 1), or with artificial advice (Experiment 2); finally they provided their revised estimates. Descriptive analyses of their revision process revealed that they egocentrically trimmed the opinion sets such that opinions distant from their own were greatly discounted. Normative analyses suggested that they gained substantially from the use of advice, though not optimally, due to their self-centered utilization of the advice. The results are discussed in connection with to theories of belief revision and attitude change, with an emphasis on decision makers' strategies for coping with conflicting opinions and the appropriateness of discounting distant or dissenting opinions. Prescriptive implications for the utilization of advice are also considered.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2008
People's 90% subjective confidence intervals typically contain the true value about 50% of the ti... more People's 90% subjective confidence intervals typically contain the true value about 50% of the time, indicating extreme overconfidence. Previous results have been mixed regarding whether experts are as overconfident as novices. Experiment 1 examined interval estimates from information technology (IT) professionals and UC San Diego (UCSD) students about both the IT industry and UCSD. This within-subjects experiment showed that experts and novices were about equally overconfident. Experts reported intervals that had midpoints closer to the true value-which increased hit rate-and that were narrower (i.e., more informative)-which decreased hit rate. The net effect was no change in hit rate and overconfidence. Experiment 2 showed that both experts and novices mistakenly expected experts to be much less overconfident than novices, but they correctly predicted that experts would provide narrower intervals with midpoints closer to the truth. Decisions about whether to consult experts should be based on which aspects of performance are desired.
Decision Framing and Support for Concessions in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Journal of Peace Research, 2007
The purpose of the study is to explore, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the i... more The purpose of the study is to explore, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the influence of framing a decision task as inclusion or exclusion on Israeli Jewish respondents’ support for the concession of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Respondents received a list of 40 Jewish settlements. Details such as the number of residents and geographical location were provided for each settlement. The respondents were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the inclusion condition, 55 respondents were asked to mark the settlements for which they recommended that Israeli sovereignty be conceded. In the exclusion condition, 53 respondents were asked to mark the settlements for which they recommended that Israeli sovereignty not be conceded. The findings confirm the predictions tested and indicate that: (1) Framing the task in terms of inclusion or exclusion affects respondents’ support for territorial compromise, so that respondents in the exclusion conditio...
Using a response-priming procedure, five experiments examined the effects of vowel similarity on ... more Using a response-priming procedure, five experiments examined the effects of vowel similarity on the motor programming of spoken syllables. In this procedure, subjects prepared to produce a pair of spoken syllables as rapidly as possible, but sometimes had to produce the syllables in reverse order instead. The spoken responses consisted of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables whose medial vowels were /i/, /I/, /A/, and /a/. Performance was measured as a function of the phonetic relationship between the vowels in a syllable pair. Longer response latencies occurred for syllable pairs that contained similar vowels (e.g., /i/ and /I!) than for syllable pairs that contained dissimilar vowels (e.g., /i/ and /A/). This inhibitory vowel-similarity effect occurred regardless of whether the initial consonants of the syllables in a pair were the same or different. However, it decreased substantially when the final consonants of the paired syllables were different. These results suggest that a lateral-inhibition mechanism may modulate the motor programming of vowels during speech production. They also provide evidence for the integrity of vowel-consonant (VC) subunits in syllables. 8 1990 Academic press, lnc Several models of speech production, speech perception, and visual wordrecognition have represented linguistic
The 1999 Israeli multi-party parliamentary election was used for studying the effects of inclusiv... more The 1999 Israeli multi-party parliamentary election was used for studying the effects of inclusive and exclusive modes of thinking. In three experiments, we tested a theoretical framework whose major elements are the justification process, a distinction between middling and clearcut options, and the use of inclusion and exclusion threshold criteria. In Studies 1-2, respondents were asked to predict either of which parties would win seats in the parliament (inclusion) or which parties would fail to win seats in the parliament (exclusion). In Study 2, respondents were also asked to use inclusive or exclusive modes to indicate their preferences and in Study 3, they were asked to make either inclusive or exclusive judgments about the platforms of two extreme political parties. We found consistent discrepancies between the outcomes of inclusion and exclusion processes, such that choice sets generated in exclusion were larger than those generated in inclusion. A second major finding was the option effect, namely, the discrepancies between the two modes of thinking were larger for middling than for clearcut options. The third main finding was an expertise effect: the less knowledgeable respondents exhibited greater discrepancies than did the more knowledgeable ones. Our theoretical framework accounts for the inclusion-exclusion discrepancy, the option effect, and the expertise effect. We discuss the implications of these findings for judgment and choice in social settings and also for the understanding of question-form effects in opinion surveys-in particular, the allow-forbid effect. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. Consider the task of reducing a large set to a smaller subset of viable options. One could proceed by eliminating the unfavorable options from the list thereby retaining the favorable ones in the list. Alternatively, one could select the favorable ones from the list. In screening the program for a large conference, a participant might ask either ''which talks should I go to'' or ''which talks could I skip.'' Similarly, editorial decisions can also be framed in two ways. An acceptance strategy implies that papers are accepted only if they are good enough. An elimination strategy implies that manuscripts are rejected only if they are not good enough, otherwise they are accepted. As it turns out, the two judgment modes or frames-inclusion and exclusion-do not necessarily lead to the same outcome. Previous work has shown that a given option has a substantially greater chance of being retained in the final set if exclusion rather than inclusion is used (Levin, Jasper, & Forbes, 1998; Yaniv & Schul, 1997, 2000). We refer to this finding as the inclusion-exclusion discrepancy. 1 The effect implies, as the following discussion suggests, that more talks would be attended to at a conference if participants screened the conference program with an exclusion frame of mind. Similarly, a given paper has a greater chance of being published if the editor's decision mode is exclusion rather than inclusion. Procedural effects, such as the inclusion-exclusion discrepancy, have been central in most of the research that has investigated how the elicitation procedure affects the way alternatives are judged (Hsee, 1996),
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Papers by Ilan Yaniv