Gender stereotyping and decision processes: extending and reversing the gender bias in fame judgements

M. R. Banaji and A. G. Greenwald (1995) demonstrated a gender bias in fame judgments—that is, an increase in judged fame due to prior processing that was larger for male than for female names. They suggested that participants shift criteria between judging men and women, using the more liberal criterion for judging men. This "criterion-shift" account appeared problematic for a number of reasons. In this article, 3 experiments are reported that were designed to evaluate the criterion-shift account of the gender bias in the false-fame effect against a distribution-shift account. The results were consistent with the criterion-shift account, and they helped to define more precisely the situations in which people may be ready to shift their response criterion on an item-by-item basis. In addition, the results were incompatible with an interpretation of the criterion shift as an artifact of the experimental situation in the experiments reported by M. R. Banaji and A. G. Greenwald. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

Managing the duality of IHRM: unravelling the strategy and perceptions of key actors in South Korean MNCs

This research aims to extend our understanding of the duality between global integration and local responsiveness in multinational corporations (MNCs) by exploring the perceptions of corporate HR actors regarding the intra-organisational factors that alter the balance between these pressures. It examines the perceptions and actions of key actors in the context of two Korean MNCs. The study shows the importance attributed to a range of socio-procedural factors by corporate actors and which, therefore, inform the practical management of the dual forces, notably: HR expertise, social ties, trustworthy relationships and co-involvement in decision processes.

An Experiment on Prisoner's Dilemma with confirmed Proposals

We apply an alternating proposals protocol with a confirmation stage as a way of solving a Prisoner’s Dilemma game. We interpret players’ proposals and (no) confirmation of outcomes of the game as a tacit communication device. The protocol leads to unprecedented high levels of cooperation in the laboratory. Assigning the power of confirmation to one of the two players alone, rather than alternating the role of a leader significantly increases the probability of signing a cooperative agreement in the first bargaining period. We interpret pre-agreement strategies as tacit messages on players’ willingness to cooperate and on their beliefs about the others’ type.

An experiment on Prisoner’s Dilemma with confirmed proposals

We suggest an alternating proposals protocol with a confirmation stage as a way of solving a Prisoner's Dilemma game. We interpret players' proposals and (no) confirmation of outcomes of the game as a tacit communication device. The protocol leads to unprecedented high levels of cooperation in the laboratory. Assigning the power of confirmation to one of the two players alone, rather than alternating the role of a leader significantly increases the probability of cooperation in the first bargaining period. We interpret pre-agreement strategies as tacit messages on players' willingness to cooperate and as signals pursuing individualistic objectives like publicizing one's bargaining abilities or eliciting those of the opponent.

Accountability and ideology: when left looks right and right looks left

Abstract Managers face hard choices between process and outcome systems of accountability in evaluating employees, but little is known about how managers resolve them. Building on the premise that political ideologies serve as uncertainty-reducing heuristics, two studies of working managers show that: (1) conservatives prefer outcome accountability and liberals prefer process accountability in an unspecified policy domain; (2) this split becomes more pronounced in a controversial domain (public schools) in which the foreground value is educational efficiency but reverses direction in a controversial domain (affirmative action) in which the foreground value is demographic equality; (3) managers who discover employees have subverted their preferred system favor tinkering over switching to an alternative system; (4) but bipartisan consensus arises when managers have clear evidence about employee trustworthiness and the tightness of the causal links between employee effort and success. These findings shed light on ideological and contextual factors that shape preferences for accountability systems.

Mathematical modelling of decision making processes in construction projects

Many different individuals, who have their own expertise and criteria for decision making, are involved in making decisions on construction projects. Decision-making processes are thus significantly affected by communication, in which a dynamic performance of human intentions leads to unpredictable outcomes. In order to theorise the decision making processes including communication, it is argued here that the decision making processes resemble evolutionary dynamics in terms of both selection and mutation, which can be expressed by the replicator-mutator equation. To support this argument, a mathematical model of decision making has been made from an analogy with evolutionary dynamics, in which there are three variables: initial support rate, business hierarchy, and power of persuasion. On the other hand, a survey of patterns in decision making in construction projects has also been performed through self-administered mail questionnaire to construction practitioners. Consequently, comparison between the numerical analysis of mathematical model and the statistical analysis of empirical data has shown a significant potential of the replicator-mutator equation as a tool to study dynamic properties of intentions in communication.

Saccadic eye movements as an index of perceptual decision-making

One of the most common decisions we make is the one about where to move our eyes next. Here we examine the impact that processing the evidence supporting competing options has on saccade programming. Participants were asked to saccade to one of two possible visual targets indicated by a cloud of moving dots. We varied the evidence which supported saccade target choice by manipulating the proportion of dots moving towards one target or the other. The task was found to become easier as the evidence supporting target choice increased. This was reflected in an increase in percent correct and a decrease in saccade latency. The trajectory and landing position of saccades were found to deviate away from the non-selected target reflecting the choice of the target and the inhibition of the non-target. The extent of the deviation was found to increase with amount of sensory evidence supporting target choice. This shows that decision-making processes involved in saccade target choice have an impact on the spatial control of a saccade. This would seem to extend the notion of the processes involved in the control of saccade metrics beyond a competition between visual stimuli to one also reflecting a competition between options.

Developing consensus on hospital prescribing indicators of potential harms amenable to decision support

Aim: To develop a list of prescribing indicators specific for the hospital setting that would facilitate the prospective collection of high severity and/or high frequency prescribing errors, which are also amenable to electronic clinical decision support (CDS). Method: A three-stage consensus technique (electronic Delphi) was carried out with 20 expert pharmacists and physicians across England. Participants were asked to score prescribing errors using a 5-point Likert scale for their likelihood of occurrence and the severity of the most likely outcome. These were combined to produce risk scores, from which median scores were calculated for each indicator across the participants in the study. The degree of consensus between the participants was defined as the proportion that gave a risk score in the same category as the median. Indicators were included if a consensus of 80% or more was achieved. Results: A total of 80 prescribing errors were identified by consensus as being high or extreme risk. The most common drug classes named within the indicators were antibiotics (n=13), antidepressants (n=8), nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (n=6), and opioid analgesics (n=6).The most frequent error type identified as high or extreme risk were those classified as clinical contraindications (n=29/80). Conclusion: 80 high risk prescribing errors in the hospital setting have been identified by an expert panel. These indicators can serve as the basis for a standardised, validated tool for the collection of data in both paperbased and electronic prescribing processes, as well as to assess the impact of electronic decision support implementation or development.

Neural and psychological maturation of decision-making in adolescence and young adulthood

We examined the maturation of decision-making from early adolescence to mid-adulthood using fMRI of a variant of the Iowa gambling task. We have previously shown that performance in this task relies on sensitivity to accumulating negative outcomes in ventromedial PFC and dorsolateral PFC. Here, we further formalize outcome evaluation (as driven by prediction errors [PE], using a reinforcement learning model) and examine its development. Task performance improved significantly during adolescence, stabilizing in adulthood. Performance relied on greater impact of negative compared with positive PEs, the relative impact of which matured from adolescence into adulthood. Adolescents also showed increased exploratory behavior, expressed as a propensity to shift responding between options independently of outcome quality, whereas adults showed no systematic shifting patterns. The correlation between PE representation and improved performance strengthened with age for activation in ventral and dorsal PFC, ventral striatum, and temporal and parietal cortices. There was a medial-lateral distinction in the prefrontal substrates of effective PE utilization between adults and adolescents: Increased utilization of negative PEs, a hallmark of successful performance in the task, was associated with increased activation in ventromedial PFC in adults, but decreased activation in ventrolateral PFC and striatum in adolescents. These results suggest that adults and adolescents engage qualitatively distinct neural and psychological processes during decision-making, the development of which is not exclusively dependent on reward-processing maturation.

Expected value, reward outcome, and temporal difference error representations in a probabilistic decision task

In probabilistic decision tasks, an expected value (EV) of a choice is calculated, and after the choice has been made, this can be updated based on a temporal difference (TD) prediction error between the EV and the reward magnitude (RM) obtained. The EV is measured as the probability of obtaining a reward x RM. To understand the contribution of different brain areas to these decision-making processes, functional magnetic resonance imaging activations related to EV versus RM (or outcome) were measured in a probabilistic decision task. Activations in the medial orbitofrontal cortex were correlated with both RM and with EV and confirmed in a conjunction analysis to extend toward the pregenual cingulate cortex. From these representations, TD reward prediction errors could be produced. Activations in areas that receive from the orbitofrontal cortex including the ventral striatum, midbrain, and inferior frontal gyrus were correlated with the TD error. Activations in the anterior insula were correlated negatively with EV, occurring when low reward outcomes were expected, and also with the uncertainty of the reward, implicating this region in basic and crucial decision-making parameters, low expected outcomes, and uncertainty.

Present simple and continuous: emergence of self-regulation and contextual sophistication in adolescent decision-making

Sophisticated, intentional decision-making is a hallmark of mature, self-aware behaviour. Although neural, psychological, interpersonal, and socioeconomic elements that contribute to such adaptive, foresighted behaviour mature and/or change throughout the life-span, here we concentrate on relevant maturational processes that take place during adolescence, a period of disproportionate developmental opportunity and risk. A brief, eclectic overview is presented of recent evidence, new challenges, and current thinking on the fundamental mechanisms that mature throughout adolescence to support adaptive, self-controlled decision-making. This is followed by a proposal for the putative contribution of frontostriatal mechanisms to the moment-to-moment assembly of evaluative heuristics that mediate increased decision-making sophistication, promoting the maturation of self-regulated behaviour through adolescence and young adulthood.

Willingness-to-pay for a probabilistic flood forecast: a risk-based decision-making game

Probabilistic hydro-meteorological forecasts have over the last decades been used more frequently to communicate forecastuncertainty. This uncertainty is twofold, as it constitutes both an added value and a challenge for the forecaster and the user of the forecasts. Many authors have demonstrated the added (economic) value of probabilistic over deterministic forecasts across the water sector (e.g. flood protection, hydroelectric power management and navigation). However, the richness of the information is also a source of challenges for operational uses, due partially to the difficulty to transform the probability of occurrence of an event into a binary decision. This paper presents the results of a risk-based decision-making game on the topic of flood protection mitigation, called “How much are you prepared to pay for a forecast?”. The game was played at several workshops in 2015, which were attended by operational forecasters and academics working in the field of hydrometeorology. The aim of this game was to better understand the role of probabilistic forecasts in decision-making processes and their perceived value by decision-makers. Based on the participants’ willingness-to-pay for a forecast, the results of the game show that the value (or the usefulness) of a forecast depends on several factors, including the way users perceive the quality of their forecasts and link it to the perception of their own performances as decision-makers.