There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

This paper discusses the discounted utility (DU) model: its historical development, underlying assumptions, and "anomalies" - the empirical regularities that are inconsistent with its theoretical predictions. We then summarize the alternate theoretical formulations that have been advanced to address these anomalies. We also review three decades of empirical research on intertemporal choice, and discuss reasons for the spectacular variation in implicit discount rates across studies. Throughout the paper, we stress the importance of distinguishing time preference, per se, from many other considerations that also influence intertemporal choices.

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Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review

Early studies of intuitive judgment and decision making conducted with the late Amos Tversky are reviewed in the context of two related concepts: an analysis of accessibility, the ease with which thoughts come to mind; a distinction between effortless intuition and deliberate reasoning. Intuitive thoughts, like percepts, are highly accessible. Determinants and consequences of accessibility help explain the central results of prospect theory, framing effects, the heuristic process of attribute substitution, and the characteristic biases that result from the substitution of nonextensional for extensional attributes. Variations in the accessibility of rules explain the occasional corrections of intuitive judgments. The study of biases is compatible with a view of intuitive thinking and decision making as generally skilled and successful.

https://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/JudgementAndChoice.MappingBoundedRationality.DKahneman2003.pdf

A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality.

Daniel Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in economics sciences in 2002, December 8, Stockholm, Sweden. This article is the edited version of his Nobel Prize lecture. The author comes back to the problems he has studied with the late Amos Tversky and to debates conducting for several decades already. The statement is based on worked out together with Shane Federik the quirkiness of human judgment. Language: ru

Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics

A review is presented of the book “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment,” edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman.

Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

Background: Risk perceptions are central to many health behavior theories. However, the relationship between risk perceptions and behavior, muddied by instances of inappropriate assessment and analysis, often looks weak. Method: A meta-analysis of eligible studies assessing the bivariate association between adult vaccination and perceived likelihood, susceptibility, or severity was conducted. Results: Thirty-four studies met inclusion criteria (N 15,988). Risk likelihood (pooled r .26), susceptibility (pooled r .24), and severity (pooled r .16) significantly predicted vaccination behavior. The risk perception behavior relationship was larger for studies that were prospective, had higher quality risk measures, or had unskewed risk or behavior measures. Conclusions: The consistent relationships between risk perceptions and behavior, larger than suggested by prior meta-analyses, suggest that risk perceptions are rightly placed as core concepts in theories of health behavior.

/pdf/meta-analysis-of-the-relationship-between-risk-perception-1k1gbbm7ru.pdf

Meta-analysis of the relationship between risk perception and health behavior: the example of vaccination.

Vaccination is one of the great achievements of the 20th century, yet persistent public-health problems include inadequate, delayed, and unstable vaccination uptake. Psychology offers three general propositions for understanding and intervening to increase uptake where vaccines are available and affordable. The first proposition is that thoughts and feelings can motivate getting vaccinated. Hundreds of studies have shown that risk beliefs and anticipated regret about infectious disease correlate reliably with getting vaccinated; low confidence in vaccine effectiveness and concern about safety correlate reliably with not getting vaccinated. We were surprised to find that few randomized trials have successfully changed what people think and feel about vaccines, and those few that succeeded were minimally effective in increasing uptake. The second proposition is that social processes can motivate getting vaccinated. Substantial research has shown that social norms are associated with vaccination, but few int...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1529100618760521

Increasing Vaccination: Putting Psychological Science Into Action:

Anchoring, Activation, and the Construction of Values

In 3 experiments, choices for hypothetical amounts of future health and money showed that, contrary to normative discounted utility theory, the temporal discount rate, or annual percentage increase in value needed to offset a delay, differed for the 2 domains. Domain independence, defined as the low correlation between health and money discount rates relative to the consistency within each domain, was not due to different utility functions for health and money. Consistent with other research, these results suggest that decision domain affects the cognitive processes used. Despite this domain difference, there were some similarities between the 2 domains. Both health and money decisions revealed that discount rates were larger for short delays, small magnitudes, and gains as compared with losses.

Temporal discounting and utility for health and money

Imagine walking down a supermarket aisle and passing an end-of-aisle display of canned tomato soup. A sign on the display says, “Limit 12 per customer.” Would such a sign influence the number of cans you would buy? Would you buy more cans than if the sign said “No limit per customer”? Our intuitions say no, but empirical evidence indicates that purchase behaviors are influenced by such a sign (Wansink, Kent, & Hoch, 1998). Consider another example: A wheel of fortune is spun and stops at the number 65. You are then asked if the percentage of African countries in the United Nations is above or below that number. Could this exercise influence your estimate of the relevant percentage? Although it may seem unlikely, the evidence is that such anchors have an effect: Groups who received larger numbers determined by a wheel of fortune gave higher estimates than groups who received lower numbers, demonstrating that irrelevant anchors influenced these estimates (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). “Anchoring and adjustment” is one of three well-known heuristics described by Tversky and Kahneman (1974) in a classic paper that also describes the representativeness and availability heuristics. Like the other heuristics, anchoring and adjustment can be a useful way of making judgments. Imagine that you are trying to set a value on an antique chair that you have inherited from a distant aunt. You might recall seeing a very similar chair in slightly better condition at a local antique dealer.

/pdf/incorporating-the-irrelevant-anchors-in-judgments-of-belief-1adtichffw.pdf

Gretchen B. Chapman

Papers

Meta-analysis of the relationship between risk perception and health behavior: the example of vaccination.

Increasing Vaccination: Putting Psychological Science Into Action:

Anchoring, Activation, and the Construction of Values

Temporal discounting and utility for health and money

Incorporating the Irrelevant: Anchors in Judgments of Belief and Value