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Greater decision-making competence is associated with greater expected-value sensitivity, but not overall risk taking: an examination of concurrent validity.

ABSTRACT: Decision-making competence reflects individual differences in the susceptibility to committing decision-making errors, measured using tasks common from behavioral decision research (e.g., framing effects, under/overconfidence, following decision rules). Prior research demonstrates that those with higher decision-making competence report lower incidence of health-risking and antisocial behaviors, but there has been less focus on intermediate processes that may impact real-world decisions, and, in particular, those implicated by normative models. Here we test the associations between measures of youth decision-making competence (Y-DMC) and one such process, the degree to which individuals make choices consistent with maximizing expected value (EV). Using a task involving hypothetical gambles, we find that greater EV sensitivity is associated with greater Y-DMC. Higher Y-DMC scores are associated with (a) choosing risky options when EV favors those options and (b) avoiding risky options when EV favors a certain option. This relationship is stronger for gambles that involved potential losses. The results suggest that Y-DMC captures decision processes consistent with standard normative evaluations of risky decisions.

SUBMITTER: Parker AM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4446538 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Greater decision-making competence is associated with greater expected-value sensitivity, but not overall risk taking: an examination of concurrent validity.

Parker Andrew M AM Weller Joshua A JA

Frontiers in psychology 20150528

Decision-making competence reflects individual differences in the susceptibility to committing decision-making errors, measured using tasks common from behavioral decision research (e.g., framing effects, under/overconfidence, following decision rules). Prior research demonstrates that those with higher decision-making competence report lower incidence of health-risking and antisocial behaviors, but there has been less focus on intermediate processes that may impact real-world decisions, and, in ...[more]

PMID: 26074857

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Project description:ObjectiveThe propensity of people vulnerable to suicide to make poor life decisions is increasingly well documented. Do they display an extreme degree of decision biases? The present study used a behavioral-decision approach to examine the susceptibility of low-lethality and high-lethality suicide attempters to common decision biases that may ultimately obscure alternative solutions and deterrents to suicide in a crisis.MethodWe assessed older and middle-aged (42-97 years) individuals who made high-lethality (medically serious) (n = 31) and low-lethality suicide attempts (n = 29). Comparison groups included suicide ideators (n = 30), nonsuicidal depressed participants (n = 53), and psychiatrically healthy participants (n = 28). Attempters, ideators, and nonsuicidal depressed participants had nonpsychotic major depression (DSM-IV criteria). Decision biases included sunk cost (inability to abort an action for which costs are irrecoverable), framing (responding to superficial features of how a problem is presented), underconfidence/overconfidence (appropriateness of confidence in knowledge), and inconsistent risk perception. Data were collected between June 2010 and February 2014.ResultsBoth high- and low-lethality attempters were more susceptible to framing effects as compared to the other groups included in this study (P ≤ .05, ηp2 = 0.06). In contrast, low-lethality attempters were more susceptible to sunk costs than both the comparison groups and high-lethality attempters (P ≤ .01, ηp2 = 0.09). These group differences remained after accounting for age, global cognitive performance, and impulsive traits. Premorbid IQ partially explained group differences in framing effects.ConclusionsSuicide attempters' failure to resist framing may reflect their inability to consider a decision from an objective standpoint in a crisis. Failure of low-lethality attempters to resist sunk cost may reflect their tendency to confuse past and future costs of their behavior, lowering their threshold for acting on suicidal thoughts.

Dataset Information

Greater decision-making competence is associated with greater expected-value sensitivity, but not overall risk taking: an examination of concurrent validity.

Publications

Greater decision-making competence is associated with greater expected-value sensitivity, but not overall risk taking: an examination of concurrent validity.

Similar Datasets

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