Rozprawy doktorskie na temat „INDIVIDUAL’s DECISION”

The main objective of our essay is to analyze the influence of the spouse on the partner’s retirement decision. Drawing on a large sample of older citizens and a combination of a postal survey and register data, we use standard econometric techniques to identify the impact of the spouse’s characteristics on the partner’s decision to retire. The results of our estimations show that cohabiting/married males’ decision to retire was negatively affected by their partners’ health condition. On the other hand, cohabiting/married women were more likely to retire if their partner had already retired.

Master of Science
Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering
Todd Easton
History has shown that epidemics can occur at random and without warning — devastating the populations which they impact. As a preventative measure, modern medicine has helped to reduce the number of diseases that can instigate such an event, nevertheless natural and man-made disease mutations place us continuously at risk of such an outbreak. As a second line of defense, extensive research has been conducted to better understand spread patterns and the efficacy of various containment and mitigation strategies. However, these simulation models have primarily focused on minimizing the impact to groups of people either from an economic or societal perspective and little study has been focused on determining the utility maximizing strategy for an individual. Therefore, this work explores the decisions of individuals to determine emergent behaviors and characteristics which lead to increased probability of survival during an epidemic. This is done by leveraging linear program optimization techniques and the concept of Agent Based Simulation, to more accurately capture the complexity inherent in most real-world systems via the interactions of individual entities. This research builds on 5 years of study focused on rural epidemic simulation, resulting in the development of a 4,000-line computer code simulation package. This adaptable simulation can accurately model the interactions of individuals to discern the impact of any general disease type, and can be implemented on the population of any contiguous counties within Kansas. Furthermore, a computational study performed on the 17 counties of northwestern Kansas provides game theoretical based insights as to what decisions increase the likelihood of survival. For example, statistically significant findings suggest that an individual is four times more likely to become infected if they rush stores for supplies after a government issued warning instead of remaining at home. This work serves as a meaningful step in understanding emergent phenomena during an epidemic which, subsequently, provides novel insight to an individual’s utility maximizing strategy. Understanding the main findings of this research could save your life.

La presa de decisions morals és entesa com un fenomen molt rellevant que ha despertat un gran interès en molt diversos camps d’estudi. Per exemple, s’ha estudiat des de camps com la filosofia i la psicologia fins a l’àmbit de la robòtica. Aquest interès en la moralitat no solament s’aprecia en l’amplitud de camps d’estudi interessats, sinó també en la permanent presència a través dels segles de filòsofs, pensadors i polítics entre altres, que han dedicat esforços a conceptualitzar i entendre aquest fenomen. Des de la psicologia s’ha despertat en els últims anys un gran interès en l’estudi de la moralitat. Aquest interès s’ha materialitzat en una gran quantitat de treballs que aporten nou coneixement a la comprensió de la moral/ètica. Cal destacar que des de la psicologia l’estudi de la presa de decisions morals ha estat orientada en els últims anys cap a la identificació de les vies cerebrals que regulen les cognicions, emocions i conductes morals. Des de la neurociència, un dels instruments que més atenció han rebut són els escenaris sacrificials. La mateixa estructura d’escenari s’ha repetit en moltes versions del mateix, on s’ha canviat el contingut però sempre s’ha conservat l’essència del cèlebre dilema del tramvia. Per una part la inevitable mort d’éssers humans. D’altra la possibilitat de decidir i actuar per a escollir quants d’aquests moriran. Habitualment, s’enfronta la decisió de deixar morir a cinc persones o matar a una persona. Aquests tipus de dilemes els considerem en aquest treball com a dilemes sacrificials difícils. Les variables de personalitat que s’han estudiat com a relacionades amb la resposta en aquest tipus d’escenaris són dimensions molt amplies tals com la psicopatia o la humilitat. En aquesta tesi utilitzem una aproximació diferent, ja que fem servir a més dels escenaris sacrificials, escenaris més propers a l’experiència i de demolició amb l’objectiu d’explorar diferències individuals i efectes dels factors situacionals en la resposta a aquests. A més, en els escenaris que utilitzem, no enfrontem en la mateixa decisió afavorir a cinc persones contra una assumint tàcitament que el valor de cinc persones és cinc vegades el valor d’una persona. En el present treball enfrontem el valor personal d’elements que han estat jerarquitzats d’acord amb el seu valor subjectiu utilitzant la Subjective Utilitarian Theory. Les diferències individuals que hem utilitzat per a realitzar aquesta tesi són variables més concretes del caràcter moral de les que s’han utilitzat prèviament com a predictors del caràcter moral utilitzant escenaris. En aquesta tesi proposem una àmplia varietat de mesures pròpies del caràcter moral com la integritat moral, la preocupació per les conseqüències futures i immediates, la propensió a experimentar culpa i vergonya, etc. A més, també hem inclòs variables més àmplies com les dimensions de personalitat de l’HEXACO, de la triada fosca i una aproximació a la intel·ligència fluida. L’estructura d’aquesta tesi consta de dos estudis previs i un estudi principal: en el primer estudi previ “Buscant els ítems” identificàrem el valor personal dels ítems que utilitzarem en l’elaboració dels escenaris. En el segon estudi previ “Buscant els escenaris” elaboràrem escenaris estandarditzats tant de demolició, sacrificials i basats en l’experiència. Utilitzàrem una aproximació a través de l’awareness moral per a identificar les situacions basades en l’experiència més moralment dilemàtiques i properes a l’experiència d’una bateria de situacions extretes del joc Scruples. Posteriorment vàrem redactar els escenaris amb una estructura estandarditzada i vàrem incloure en els escenaris els elements amb valor personal seleccionats a través del primer estudi previ. En l’estudi principal d’aquesta tesi vam aplicar un paradigma d’exclusió social (Cyberball) per a estudiar l’efecte d’un factor situacional com l’ostracisme en la presa de decisions moral. També administràrem una bateria de diferències individuals per a estudiar el caràcter moral dels participants amb una proposta de mesures específiques del caràcter moral i utilitzant avançades tècniques estadístiques, com l’anàlisi de perfils latents hem classificat als participants segons el seu caràcter moral en persones més morals, normals o menys morals. Finalment administràrem 18 escenaris morals (6 de demolició, 6 sacrificials i 6 basats en l’experiència) amb valor subjectiu a cada participant amb l’objectiu de capturar les respostes als mateixos d’acord amb dos criteris; l’afavoriment de l’element amb un elevat valor moral i el criteri deontològic. En els resultats d’aquest estudi trobem que el caràcter moral influeix en la presa de decisions en escenaris basats en l’experiència quan el criteri que seguim és deontològic i en els escenaris sacrificials quan és el criteri basat en el valor personal dels elements implicats el que tenim en compte i observem també una tendencia a la significació en els escenaris de demolició amb una grandària de l’efecte menor. La condició d’ostracisme per si mateix no presenta efectes en la presa de decisions moral en cap mena d’escenari mentre que la interacció entre el caràcter moral i l’ostracisme sí que mostra efectes en la presa de decisions moral en escenaris basats en l’experiència quan el criteri és l’afavoriment de l’element amb més valor personal implicat en l’escenari. A continuació, utilitzant les mesures proposades per a mesurar el caràcter moral presentem un sistema d’equacions estructurals del compromís moral amb un bon ajust relatiu del “Model de Schwartz: Good and Bad Apples”. Finalment es discutiran els resultats d’aquesta tesi i s’oferiran conclusions i recomanacions futures de recerca. També es presentaran limitacions rellevants d’aquest estudi.
Moral decision-making is understood as a very important phenomenon that has aroused great interest in a wide variety of fields of study. For example, it has been studied in philosophy, psychology and even robotics. The interest in morality is not only appreciated in the scope of interested fields of study, but also in the permanent presence through centuries in many philosophers, thinkers, and politicians, among others, who have dedicated efforts to conceptualize and understand this phenomenon. In the field of psychology, a great interest in the study of morality has aroused in recent years. This interest has materialized in numerous works that bring new knowledge to the understanding of morality/ethics. It should be noted that in the field of psychology, the study of moral decision- making has been oriented towards the identification of the brain areas or connections that regulate moral cognition, emotion, and behavior in recent years. In neuroscience, sacrificial scenarios are one of the most important instruments. Thus, the same scenario structure, based on the famous trolley dilemma, has been repeated in many versions. On the one hand, in the trolley dilemma, we find the inevitable death of human beings. On the other hand, the possibility of choosing how many of them will die. Usually, there is always the same structure of decision: to let five people die or kill a person. These dilemmas are considered in the present thesis as difficult sacrificial dilemmas. Traditionally, the personality variables studied in relation to the response in this type of scenarios are very broad dimensions such as psychopathy or humility. In the present thesis, we use a different approach that includes everyday- based and demolition scenarios in order to explore individual differences and the effects of situational factors in their response. In addition, we do not present dilemmas where we take for granted that the value of five people is five times the value of a person. We take into account the subjective value given to different individuals depending on our relationship with them, hierarchized according to the Subjective Utilitarian Theory. In this thesis, we also propose a wide variety of measures of moral character such as narrow variables like moral integrity, concern for the future and immediate consequences, propensity to experience guilt and shame, etc. We have also included wider variables such as the HEXACO personality dimensions, the dark triad and an approximation to fluid intelligence. This thesis is structured with two previous studies and one main study. In the first previous study entitled “Searching for the items” we identified the personal value of the items that we will use to elaborate the scenarios. In the second previous study entitled “Looking for the scenarios”, we developed demolition, sacrificial and experience-based standardized scenarios. We used moral awareness measurement to identify moral dilemmas based on experience from the game Scruples. Later, we wrote the scenarios with a standardized structure, and included elements with personal value. In the main study of this thesis, we applied a paradigm of social exclusion (Cyberball) to study the effect of a situational factor such as ostracism in making moral decisions. We administered a battery of individual differences to study the moral character of the participants with a proposal of specific measures of moral character and using advanced statistical techniques, such as the analysis of latent profiles. We classified the participants according to their moral character in more moral, normal or less moral people. Finally, we administered 18 moral scenarios (6 demolition, 6 sacrificial and 6 experience-based) with subjective value to each participant in order to capture the responses to them according to two criteria; the favoring of the element with a high moral value and deontological criteria. In the results of this study we found that the moral character influences the moral decision-making in scenarios based on the experience when the criterion that we follow is deontological and in the sacrificial when we consider the personal value as the criteria of the elements involved. We also found demolition scenarios with a smaller size effect tend to be significant. We found no effect of ostracism in moral decision-making in our study. The interaction between moral character and ostracism showed effects on moral decision-making in scenarios based on experience when we considered the personal value of the elements involved. Then, using the measures proposed to measure the moral character we present a structural equation model with a good relative adjustment for moral commitment from Schwartz’s Good and Bad Apples model. Finally, the results of this thesis will be discussed and future research conclusions and recommendations will be offered. Limitations of this study will be presented too.

Mestrado em Gestão e Estratégia Industrial
A tomada de decisão assume um papel fulcral na gestão das organizações, sendo na maior parte das vezes considerada como o critério relevante na avaliação da performance individual. O presente estudo tem como primeiro objetivo identificar os estilos de tomada de decisão adotados pelos profissionais de gestão e treinadores de basquetebol portugueses. O segundo objetivo visa compreender se o estilo de tomada de decisão influencia a performance individual, consoante o contexto onde os indivíduos estão inseridos. Os resultados obtidos mostram que a performance individual é influenciada pelo estilo de tomada de decisão, nomeadamente existem diferenças na performance alcançada entre o estilo comportamental face ao analítico e parcialmente no estilo diretivo face ao analítico. Por outro lado, o contexto onde os decisores estão inseridos não afeta a relação entre o estilo de tomada de decisão do gestor/treinador e a sua performance individual.
Decision making plays a central role in the management of organizations and is often considered as the most significant criterion for performance evaluation. The main objective of this study is to define the decision-making styles adopted by public and private administration professionals and portuguese basketball coaches, as well as understanding if the decision-making style influences individual performance, considering the context in which variables are embedded. The results obtained in the present study show that the individual performance is influenced by the decision making style, namely there are differences in the performance achieved between the behavioral style towards the analytical and partially in the directive style against the analytical. The context in which decision makers are inserted does not change the correlation between the manager/coach's style and individual performance.
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

La presente tesis se compone de cuatro capítulos independientes, unidos todos ellos en torno a la motivación común del estudio del comportamiento de decisión individual. El primer capítulo constituye la parte de la tesis escrita en español y en él puede encontrarse una extensa revisión de literatura previa relacionada con el carácter endógeno de las preferencias individuales. En el capítulo 2, se presenta un estudio de los fundamentos psicológicos de la conocida discrepancia entre disponibilidad a aceptar (DAA) y disponibilidad a pagar (DAP). En él se lleva a cabo lo que puede considerarse un experimento económico estándar en el ámbito de la disparidad DAA-DAP, introduciendo cinco elementos adicionales destinados a identificar procesos psicológicos clave en la aparición de la discrepancia. El capítulo 3 contiene un estudio experimental sistemático de la imprecisión en las preferencias individuales y la variabilidad estocástica en el comportamiento de decisión, basado en la evaluación de loterías individuales. Por último, en el capítulo 4, se presenta un estudio más reducido relacionado también con el componente estocástico en el comportamiento de decisión. En él se muestra cómo el alto grado de variabilidad presente en el comportamiento de decisión puede producir fuertes efectos de regresión hacia la media, que pueden distorsionar de manera crucial los resultados experimentales.

This thesis consists of three chapters exploring how individuals make decisions (mostly in relation to time), how decisions are influenced by subtle behavioral interventions called nudges, and under which circumstances the effectiveness of the nudges can change. The first chapter shows, in several online experiments and one field experiment in the context of a real market, that the endowment effect (or difference between buying and selling prices) systematically increases as transactions are delayed into the future. In the second chapter, present bias is studied in the gain and the loss domains in a two-stage incentivized experiment, which reveals that both domains show the bias but it is stronger in the loss domain. The third chapter studies how emotions affect the effectiveness of nudges in four experiments. However, emotions consistently failed to have an influence on the effectiveness of nudges, and the expected effects of the nudges themselves failed to replicate previous findings. These results raise doubts about the general effectiveness of some of the most prominent nudging tools.
Esta tesis consta de tres capítulos que exploran cómo las personas toman decisiones (principalmente en relación con el tiempo), cómo las decisiones se ven influenciadas por sutiles intervenciones de comportamiento llamadas "nudges", y en qué circunstancias pueden cambiar la efectividad de las nudges. El primer capítulo muestra, en varios experimentos online y un experimento de campo en el contexto de un mercado real, que el efecto dotación (o diferencia entre los precios de compra y de venta) aumenta sistemáticamente a medida que las transacciones se llevan hacia el futuro. En el segundo capítulo, el sesgo hacia el presente ("present bias") se estudia en los dominios de las ganancias y de las pérdidas en un experimento incentivado de dos etapas, que revela que ambos dominios muestran el sesgo pero es más fuerte en el dominio de las pérdidas. El tercer capítulo estudia cómo las emociones afectan la efectividad de las nudges en cuatro experimentos. Sin embargo, consistentemente, las emociones no tuvieron influencia sobre la efectividad de las nudges, y los efectos de las nudges en sí no lograron replicar investigaciones previas. Estos resultados generan dudas sobre la efectividad general de algunas de las herramientas de "nudging" más prominentes.

The aim of the present study is to gain a deeper understanding of decision-making of individuals involved in the entrepreneurial process. It is achieved by comparing entrepreneurs with different level of expertise in contexts that are more or less entrepreneurship-inducing. The issues of learning and expertise – investigation of what entrepreneurial knowledge is and how it is applied – are also addressed. This is an attempt of a multidisciplinary study based on entrepreneurship theory and empirical research as well as cognitive psychology. The cognitive perspective provides a link between the entrepreneur and the new venture creation through focusing not on the personality traits, but on an individual’s cognitive behaviour. The study’s contributions to the field of entrepreneurship are as follows: Expert entrepreneurs do recognise the cognitive nature of the decision task and are able, to a high extent, to match their decision-making techniques with the nature of the task. It means that the entrepreneurial decision-making is not an inborn aptitude but a skill, which is expressed through the adaptable behaviour of experts. Novice entrepreneurs, however, do not possess this ability, even though they might acquire it in the course of their business lives. Thus, one of the most important implications of the study is the idea that adequate decision behaviour in entrepreneurial context can be taught and learned. To provide optimal methods of learning is a challenge faced by entrepreneurship education.

The instigating pursuit to understand the human behavior, more precisely about the mechanisms involved in the decision-making process of a person, are the basic premise for the accomplishment of this study. Decisions are present in all ambits of people’s life, and the identification and understanding of the factors that can influence them have great importance. Thus, this study aimed to verify how individuals modify the decision process under time’s pressure. The reach of this objective occurred through a laboratory quasi-experiment using three different instruments to collect data. The first stage of the experiment was the choice of a notebook by using the decision support system Decisor (LÖBLER, 2005), the second stage consisted in answer the Feeling Questionnaire in Relation to the Purchase (LUCIAN, 2008) and the third one, answering the Decision Style Inventory (ROWE, 1998). The sample consisted in 178 undergraduate students, divided into 2 groups: the control group and the group submitted to time pressure. The most popular chosen notebook was Sony. It was observed the existence of prior knowledge of the brand and the use of Image Theory to explain that choice. The individual decision-making styles most found in the subjects submitted to the task were the analytical and the conceptual. The hypotheses were tested using the Mann Whitney U test and the chi-square test, however, they were unable to prove statistically the hypotheses. We suggest more studies to prove the existence of low satisfaction with choices made under time pressure.
A instigante busca pela compreensão do comportamento humano, mais precisamente sobre os mecanismos envolvidos no processo decisório dos indivíduos, consistiu na premissa básica para a realização deste estudo. As decisões estão presentes em todos os âmbitos da vida dos indivíduos sendo de grande importância a identificação e compreensão dos fatores que podem influenciá-las. Assim, este estudo teve por objetivo verificar como os indivíduos modificam o processo decisório frente à pressão do tempo. O alcance desse objetivo ocorreu por meio de um quase experimento em laboratório utilizando três diferentes instrumentos de coleta de dados. A primeira etapa do quase experimento consistiu na escolha de um notebook utilizando o sistema de apoio à decisão Decisor (LÖBLER, 2005), a segunda etapa consistiu no preenchimento do Questionário de Sentimentos em Relação à Compra (LUCIAN, 2008) e a terceira no preenchimento do Decision Style Inventory (ROWE, 1998). A amostra foi composta por 178 alunos de graduação, divididos em 2 grupos: o grupo controle e o grupo submetido à pressão do tempo. O notebook mais escolhido pelos dois grupos foi o da marca Sony, observou-se a existência de conhecimento prévio da marca quanto à decisão de compra e também o uso da Teoria da Imagem para explicar a escolha. Os estilos individuais de decisão mais encontrados nos indivíduos submetidos à tarefa foram o analítico e o conceitual. As hipóteses foram testadas através do Teste U de Mann Whitney e do teste Qui-quadrado, contudo, as respostas obtidas nos testes não permitiram comprovar as três hipóteses estatisticamente. Sugere-se a realização de estudos mais aprofundados a fim de comprovar a existência de baixa satisfação com a escolha em decisões realizadas sob pressão do tempo.

The vast majority of behavioral ethical research focuses on the antecedents of unethical behavior. Consequently, questions involving the consequences of organizational unethical behavior remain largely unanswered. Therefore, extant business ethics research largely neglects the impacts of organizational unethical behavior on individuals. Moreover, questions involving what organizations can do to correct or recover from having engaged in unethical behavior as well as individual responses to those efforts are also mostly ignored. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of unethical activity on employees and explore organizations that have failed ethically and their attempts at recovery. This study explores two issues. First, how do employees react to organizational unethical behavior (OUB) and to what extent are those reactions dependent on contextual and individual factors? Second, to what extent can organizations recover from the negative impacts of ethical failure? More specifically, is it possible for organizations that fail in their ethical responsibilities to recover such that they are paradoxically "better-off" than their counterparts that never failed in the first place? To explore these issues I review, integrate and draw upon the ethical decision-making and service failure recovery literatures for theoretical support. Empirical testing included two studies. The first was a field study using survey data acquired from the Ethics Resource Center (ERC) in which over 29,000 participants were asked about their perceptions of ethics at work. Second, a supplemental field study was conducted in which 100 employees rated the characteristics of unethical acts (e.g. severity). Results revealed a negative direct effect of severity and controllability of the OUB on perceptions of organizational ethicality and a negative direct effect of controllability of the OUB on organizational satisfaction. Ethical context moderated the relationship between OUB controllability and perceived organizational ethicality. Partial support was found for the moderating effects of ethical context on the relationship between OUB severity and perceived organizational ethicality. Results also supported an ethical failure recovery paradox.
Ph.D.
Department of Management
Business Administration
Business Administration PhD

The aim of this study was to examine individual differences in ethical decision making. To test this, participants’ Locus of Control and Machiavellianism scores were collected along with the frequency to which they sought different media sources for news, their knowledge of unethical and ethical situations that have occurred in New Zealand and Internationally within the last ten years, and individuals’ decision times to ethical dilemmas. Participants were undergraduate and postgraduate students from the University of Canterbury, who ranged in age from 18 to 50. The study found that the frequency to which an individual seeks information from media sources is a good predictor of their decision time when responding to ethical dilemmas, and the amount of knowledge they had of unethical and ethical situations.

Socioeconomic disparities in life outcomes is a widely observed occurrence. In particular, low socioeconomic status (SES) has been related to a variety of behaviours that tend to perpetuate or even exacerbate the conditions that individuals of such social standing are already facing. The last two decades have been marked by a growing number of studies seeking to disentangle behavioural differences associated with one’s socioeconomic status that fuel the persistence of these differences. This Doctoral thesis joins the discussion by investigating a subset of behaviours associated with low SES. Three empirical chapters and one literature review seeks to answer the following questions: first, what are the consumer behaviour patterns exhibited by low SES individuals? Second, how do poverty-related thoughts influence consumption of (un)taxed temptation goods? Third, what is the effect of perceived individual control on intertemporal preferences? And fourth, how does salient socioeconomic status affect intertemporal choices regarding effort? Chapter 1 overviews literature on socioeconomic status and consumer happiness. We discuss channels through which low SES can impact consumption decisions and present main behavioural patterns of low SES consumers. Low SES has been found to have a significant impact on dietary patterns that include consumption of fruits and vegetables, foods with high calorie content, as well as consumption of temptation goods like alcohol, tobacco, and sugar-sweetened beverages. Moreover, low SES individuals also tend to engage in status-signalling behaviours, despite the scarcity of financial resources. We discuss how SES can delineate consumer happiness, in particular, regarding experiential and material goods. Finally, we review evidence on socioeconomic disparities in satisfaction with product-specific characteristics and health care as well as consumer loyalty. Chapter 2 presents an empirical investigation of the intersection between socioeconomic status and consumer behavior. In particular, we study demand for temptation goods such as alcohol, tobacco or high-calorie foods. One of the most conventional ways that governments control the consumption of these products is through taxes; however, a growing body of research shows the presence of numerous behavioral biases that might prove such fiscal policies less effective. One of these biases is related to financial worries - a concept familiar to deprived individuals. Previous studies have shown that increasing worries shift attention towards pressing needs, potentially at the cost of forward-looking decisions. We run an online experiment in which we manipulate financial worries and ask participants to choose between necessities and temptation goods in the experimental market. We also randomly impose taxes on temptation goods for a subset of participants. Results suggest that under financial worries and no taxes participants demand less temptation goods and this effect is stronger for lower income individuals. However, when taxes are introduced and financial concerns are salient, lower income participants do not react to taxes. This suggests that, on the one hand, financial worries can protect against over-consumption of temptation goods when there are no tax changes; however, low income consumers can be hurt the most when additional taxes are implemented. Chapter 3 investigates another psychological occurrence - a feeling of control - and its impact on intertemporal preferences. Generally, low SES individuals have less chances to exert control in their lives compared with high SES people. If perceived control has a substantial impact on the intertemporal choice, these disparities may have a long lasting impact that might make it harder to move up in terms of social status. In an online experiment we manipulate the feeling of control by asking participants to remember a certain situation. We vary control in terms of level - not having control vs being in full control – and type – being in a situation involving other people or a non-social situation. Afterwards, we ask participants to make intertemporal allocation decisions - either regarding a monetary experimental budget or a number of real effort tasks. We find no evidence of present bias in monetary discounting for either of the control treatments. Results are different for effort discounting: on aggregate level, participants in this condition reverse their preferences more often as they choose to perform more tasks sooner when the decision involves only future points in time, but less when the decision involves also present. Moreover, we find evidence of significant present bias in the low control condition. Allocation decisions are mediated by emotional states activated in the feeling of control manipulation: for money condition, the strongest mediator is the feeling of fear, while for effort discounting it is sadness. Overall, the results suggest that although recalling a situation of (no) control does not influence intertemporal allocation decisions regarding windfall money, it can impact decisions about the allocation of effort. Chapter 4 continues the discussion on intertemporal preferences and socioeconomic status. It is a well established that low SES is related to impatient behaviours. While many works have analyzed psychological channels which mediate this effect, such as cognitive load, stress, emotional affects, and self-control issues, this work seeks to test whether the mere salience of one’s subjective SES has an impact on intertemporal preferences regarding effort. In an online experiment, I prime participants on their SES and ask to make effort allocation decisions. I find that priming affects only low status participants: this group made more present-biased choices by postponing effort to the future even if it mean higher workload. No effect was found for nonprimed low SES participants or higher status individuals in both treatment and control groups. I conclude that even a mere act of making SES salient in your mind can have an adverse effect to low SES individuals by pushing them to postpone work to the future.

This research evaluated the effectiveness of a decision support intervention to guide older people who have advanced stages of kidney disease in making treatment choices about dialysis or conservative treatment. A pragmatic randomised controlled trial was conducted to determine if the intervention lowered decision conflict and decision regret. The research found that the decision support intervention increased participants’ knowledge of risk, benefits and symptoms of dialysis. There were no observable differences between groups for decision conflict or decision regret. The research raises issues about fully informed patient choice in end of life care and lays the foundation for ongoing research.

This paper studies via experimental setting whether diversification discount exists and what factors affect the magnitude of the discount. The results suggest that experience before decision increases the likelihood of exercising the real option of conglomerates. People are also more likely to convert if it is less risky to do so.

A growing economic and psychology literature considers how changes in the attention given to situations and goods can affect consumers’ evaluations of these things. This thesis employs an experimental methodology to investigate the role of attention in explaining a number of irregularities in individual consumer-related decision making that have been established in the behavioural and experimental economic literature: choice effects and order effects. Chapter One presents a novel experimental design to test the different role of choice effects on the valuation of consumable goods when participants assume the roles of buyers and sellers, measuring the effect of choice on the well-known willingness-to-accept- willingness-to-pay disparity. Chapter Two utilises an experimental design to disentangle a number of potential attention-based order effects to explain surprising findings of order effects in Chapter One, where valuations for goods in earlier tasks were significantly higher than for goods valued in later tasks. Chapter Three presents another novel experimental design to capture the effect of choice on willingness-to-donate to charitable causes. Chapter Four takes this experimental design, and measures the effect of choice on consumable goods. A number of interesting results are found within these papers. Evidence of the positive effect of choice is found in Chapters One, Three and Four, consistent with theories of attention. Chapter Two finds evidence that participants give reduced attention to both the general experimental design of later tasks and the specific goods they value in these later tasks. This provides a novel explanation of the causes of order effects. Together, the papers of this thesis show that attention can explain how individuals evaluate goods differently in different consumer-related decision making situations, and that carefully considered experimental methodology can be used to better isolate these effects in laboratory settings.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references.
Individuals are involved in daily decision making situations under varying levels of certainty and ease of gathering information, characterized by many factors such as the need to make payments, or the desire to fulfill goals. Essay 1 proposes that when individuals are faced with environments that offer an abundance of alternative choices and information (increased decision flexibility) consumers will have a harder time deciding and are more likely not to make purchases or to procrastinate. Environments such as the Internet are proposed to increase decision conflict and anticipated regret, as they increase the ease of generating counterfactuals. Limiting flexibility, by using exploding discounts, for example, reduces decision difficulty, and increases purchase likelihood. Essay 2 demonstrates that some of the documented discrepancies between expressed preferences and predicted happiness may be explained by individuals' use of rules when making decisions. Rules are used whenever they are evoked, and exclude a deep factual analysis of the situation. For example, money is proposed to invoke a set of rules that are subsequently used. Specifically, driven by anticipation, consumers' preference for a delayed concert is contradicted by their greater willingness to pay for an immediate one. The overarching nature of rules causes individuals to follow them even when it is not in their best interests. Essay 3 demonstrates that partitioning a task by providing progress information may influence motivation, effort, enjoyment, and performance in two opposing ways: when uncertainty about progress is high, partitioning increases motivation and liking of a task, but when progress uncertainty is low, partitioning decreases motivation, liking, and subsequent choice of the task.
by On Amir.
Ph.D.

Com a individus, definim les nostres identitats de grup mitjançant la categorització dels altres individus i de nosaltres mateixos en moltes categories socials com la de gènere, raça, religió, nacionalitat, conviccions polítiques i professió, entre moltes altres. Aquest procés de categorització ens confereix una noció de "qui" som, a quins grups socials pertanyem i, el que és més important, com s'espera que ens comportem. Aquesta tesi gira entorn a dos fenòmens d'especial rellevància en la literatura sobre la identitat de grup; la discriminació i els conflictes intergrupals. La identitat de grup es considera un factor subjacent de les conductes discriminatòries i l'aparició de conflictes entre membres de diferents grups socials. Hi ha una àmplia evidència que mostra que la mera categorització en categories socials és suficient per desencadenar conductes discriminatòries contra membres d'altres grups socials. A més, la història de la humanitat ofereix molts exemples de conflictes i genocidis més arrelats en la diversitat d'identitats de grup que en les disputes econòmiques. No obstant això, no tots els membres d'un grup social discriminen en la mateixa magnitud, ni tots els grups socials estan involucrats en conflictes. El primer treball d'aquesta tesi proposa una mesura empírica que va més enllà de la categorització dels individus en categories socials. Utilitzant la voluntat d'adquirir béns representatius de grups socials, aquest article mesura i quantifica la intensitat de la identitat de grup per investigar els factors que reforcen i atenuen la identitat de grup dels individus. Els resultats proporcionen evidència sobre com la convergència i divergència en els comportaments de membres d'un grup social reforcen i atenuen la intensitat de la identitat de grup dels individus, la qual cosa és crucial per predir l'aparició de conflictes intergrupals a nivell col·lectiu i forts graus de discriminació a nivell individual. La literatura que estudia els efectes de la identitat de grup en la presa de decisions individuals s'ha centrat principalment en estudiar la discriminació i els conflictes intergrupals assumint que la identitat de grup dels individus és coneguda i observable. No obstant això, moltes identitats de grup es basen en conviccions i creences que no són directament observables a partir dels trets físics dels individus i, per tant, poden ser incertes (per exemple, la religió i la ideologia). El segon treball presentat en aquesta tesi explora els efectes de la incertesa de la identitat de grup sobre els patrons de discriminació quan els individus decideixen amb qui interactuar, i les seves repercussions en l'eficiència de la coordinació col·lectiva. La gestió de la diversitat i incertesa de les identitats de grup és un factor important per determinar els guanys i l'èxit de les organitzacions i empreses, especialment quan la força laboral és diversa i pot tenir dificultats de coordinació i cooperació. Els resultats trobats en el segon treball mostren el paper que juga la incertesa de la identitat de grup en les preferències d'interacció dels individus i ofereixen diverses idees gerencials per dissuadir la discriminació entre els empleats alhora d’interactuar i augmentar la seva eficiència de coordinació quan treballen en equip. Finalment, l'últim treball presentat en aquesta tesi contribueix a la literatura de polítiques i intervencions orientades a mitigar la discriminació i els prejudicis entre membres de grups socials en conflicte. Si bé aquesta literatura s'ha centrat en estudiar com el contacte entre membres de diferents grups socials redueix la discriminació i els prejudicis, hi ha una manca d'evidència sobre intervencions amb les mateixes finalitats que no requereixin contacte entre individus. L'últim treball presentat en aquesta tesi explota un context natural en què els individus de dos grups socials actualment en conflicte es veuen obligats a cooperar per aconseguir un objectiu comú superior sense poder posar-se en contacte. Aquest context ofereix l'oportunitat de posar l'èmfasi no en el contacte entre individus sinó en els objectius comuns superiors com a factor atenuant de la discriminació. Els resultats mostren que els individus es van tornar més egoistes a mesura que s'aconseguia gradualment l'objectiu comú superior. A més, els individus d'un grup social en particular també van augmentar la seva discriminació a mesura que s'aconseguia gradualment l'objectiu comú. Aquests resultats mostren com els objectius comuns superiors poden esdevenir un factor mitigador de la discriminació i l'egoisme.
Como individuos, definimos nuestras identidades grupales mediante la categorización de los demás individuos y de nosotros mismos en muchas categorías sociales como la de género, raza, religión, nacionalidad, convicciones políticas y profesión, entre muchas otras. Este proceso de categorización nos confiere una noción de "quiénes" somos, a qué grupos sociales pertenecemos y, lo que es más importante, cómo se espera que nos comportemos. Esta tesis gira en torno a dos fenómenos de especial relevancia en la literatura sobre identidad grupal; la discriminación y los conflictos intergrupales. La identidad grupal se considera un factor subyacente de las conductas discriminatorias y la aparición de conflictos entre miembros de distintos grupos sociales. Existe una amplia evidencia que muestra que la mera categorización en categorías sociales es suficiente para desencadenar la discriminación contra miembros de otros grupos sociales. Además, la historia de la humanidad ofrece muchos ejemplos de conflictos y genocidios más arraigados en la diversidad de identidades grupales que en las disputas económicas. Sin embargo, no todos los miembros de un grupo social discriminan en la misma magnitud, ni todos los grupos sociales están involucrados en conflictos. El primer trabajo de esta tesis propone una medida empírica que va más allá de la categorización de los individuos en categorías sociales. Utilizando la voluntad de adquirir bienes representativos de grupos sociales, este artículo mide y cuantifica la intensidad de la identidad grupal para investigar los factores que refuerzan y atenúan la identidad grupal de los individuos. Los resultados encontrados proporcionan evidencia sobre cómo la convergencia y divergencia en los comportamientos de miembros de un grupo social refuerzan y atenúan la intensidad de la identidad grupal de los individuos, lo cual es crucial para predecir la aparición de conflictos intergrupales a nivel colectivo y fuertes grados de discriminación a nivel individual. La literatura que estudia los efectos de la identidad grupal en la toma de decisiones individuales se ha centrado principalmente en estudiar la discriminación y los conflictos intergrupales asumiendo que la identidad grupal de los individuos es conocida y observable. Sin embargo, muchas identidades grupales se basan en convicciones y creencias que no son directamente observables a partir de los rasgos físicos individuales y, por lo tanto, pueden ser inciertas (por ejemplo, la religión y la ideología). El segundo trabajo presentado en esta tesis explora los efectos de la incertidumbre de la identidad grupal sobre los patrones de discriminación cuando los individuos deciden con quién interactuar, y sus repercusiones en la eficiencia de la coordinación colectiva. La gestión de la diversidad e incertidumbre de las identidades grupales es un factor importante para determinar las ganancias y el éxito de las organizaciones y empresas, especialmente cuando la fuerza laboral es diversa y puede tener dificultades para coordinarse y cooperar. Los resultados encontrados en el segundo trabajo arrojan luz sobre el papel que juega la incertidumbre de la identidad grupal en las preferencias de interacción de los individuos y ofrecen varias ideas gerenciales para disuadir la discriminación entre los empleados para interactuar y aumentar su eficiencia de coordinación cuando trabajan en equipo. Finalmente, el último trabajo presentado en esta tesis contribuye a la literatura de políticas e intervenciones orientadas a mitigar la discriminación y los prejuicios entre miembros de grupos sociales en conflicto. Si bien esta literatura se ha centrado en estudiar cómo el contacto entre miembros de diferentes grupos sociales reduce la discriminación y los prejuicios, existe una falta de evidencia sobre intervenciones con los mismos fines que no requieran contacto entre individuos. El último trabajo presentado en esta tesis explota un contexto natural en el que los individuos de dos grupos sociales actualmente en conflicto se ven obligados a cooperar para lograr un objetivo común superior sin poder ponerse en contacto. Este contexto ofrece la oportunidad de poner el énfasis no en el contacto entre individuos sino en los objetivos comunes superiores como factor atenuante de la discriminación. Los resultados muestran que los individuos se volvieron más egoístas a medida que se lograba gradualmente el objetivo común superior. Además, los individuos de un grupo social en particular también aumentaron su discriminación a medida que se lograba gradualmente el objetivo común. Estos resultados muestran como los objetivos comunes superiores pueden mitigar la discriminación y el egoísmo.
As individuals, we define our group identities by categorizing others and ourselves into many social categories like gender, race, religion, nationality, political convictions, and profession, among many others. This categorization process confers us a notion of “who” we are, which social groups we belong, and more importantly, how we are expected to behave. This thesis revolves around two phenomena at the core of group identity literature; discrimination and intergroup conflicts. Group identity is considered an underlying factor of discriminatory behaviors and the emergence of conflicts between members of social groups. There is extensive evidence showing that the mere categorization into social categories is enough to trigger discrimination against members of other social groups. Moreover, human history provides many examples of conflicts and genocides rooted in group identity diversity more than in economic disputes. However, not all social group members discriminate in the same magnitude, nor all social groups are involved in conflicts. The first paper of this thesis proposes an empirical measure that goes beyond categorizing individuals into social categories. Using willingness to acquire representative goods of social groups, this paper measures and quantify group identity intensity to investigate reinforcing and attenuating factors of group identity. The results found provide evidence on how convergence and divergence in behaviors among social group members reinforce and attenuate the group identity intensity of individuals, which is crucial in predicting the emergence of intergroup conflicts at the collective level and strong degrees of discrimination at the individual level. The literature studying the effects of group identity on individual decision-making has largely focused on studying discrimination and intergroup conflicts assuming individuals’ group identity is known and observable. However, many group identities rely on convictions and beliefs that are not directly observable from individual physical traits, and therefore, might be uncertain (e.g. religion, ideology). The second paper presented in this thesis explores the effects of group identity uncertainty on discrimination patterns when individuals decide whom to interact with and its repercussions on collective coordination efficiency. Managing group identity diversity and uncertainty is a major factor in determining organizations and firms' profit and success, especially when a diverse workforce might find it difficult to coordinate and cooperate. The results found in the second paper shed light on the role group identity uncertainty plays in individual interaction preferences and offer several managerial insights for deterring discrimination among employees to interact and increase their coordination efficiency when working in teams. Finally, the last paper presented in this thesis, contributes to the literature of policies and interventions aimed at mitigating discrimination and prejudices between members of social groups in conflict. While this literature has focused on studying how the contact between members of different social groups reduces discrimination and prejudices, there is a lack of evidence on interventions with same purposes not requiring contact between individuals. The last paper presented in this thesis exploits a natural occurring context in which individuals of two social groups currently in conflict see themselves forced to cooperate in order to achieve a superordinate common goal without being able to get in contact. This context offers the opportunity to put the emphasis not in the contact between individuals but in the superordinate common goals as a mitigating factor of discrimination. Results show that individuals got more selfish as the superordinate common goal was gradually achieved. Furthermore, individuals from one social group also increased their discrimination as the common goal was gradually achieved. These results highlight superordinate common goals mitigate discrimination and selfishness.

Wann und warum verhalten sich Menschen ethisch (in-)korrekt? Die vorliegende Dissertation fasst allgemeine Theorien und experimentelle Befunde (nicht-)kooperativen, (un-)fairen und (un-)ehrlichen Verhaltens zusammen. Hierzu führt Kapitel 1 experimentelle Spiele als rigoroses Instrument zur Untersuchung (un-)ethischen Verhaltens ein. Kapitel 2 zeigt, dass sich kleine Veränderungen in der kontextuellen Rahmung von experimentellen Spielen langanhaltend auf die Kooperationsneigung der Teilnehmer auswirken können. Kontextuelle Rahmungen verändern zudem Verhaltenserwartungen sowie Aufteilungen in nicht-strategischen Situationen. Diese Effekte sind durch Theorien sozialer Normen erklärbar. Kapitel 3 ergründet, warum sich Studierende der Wirtschaftswissenschaften teils egoistischer verhalten als ihre Kommilitonen. Theorien sozialer Normen werden hierbei um die Bereitschaft erweitert, Nonkonformität mittels Sanktionen zu erzwingen. Es wird gezeigt, dass sich Studierende der Wirtschaftswissenschaften und anderer Fächer in ihren Aufteilungsentscheidungen ähnlich häufig mit Fairness beschäftigen und zu ähnlichen Einschätzungen kommen, welche Aufteilung als fair gilt. Sie teilen jedoch weniger großzügig und erwarten dies auch von anderen. Zudem sind sie weniger bereit, als unfair angesehene Aufteilungen zu sanktionieren. Es wird argumentiert, dass sich Studierende der Wirtschaftswissenschaften egoistischer verhalten, weil sie nicht daran glauben, dass sich andere an eine grundsätzlich geteilte Fairnessnorm halten. Kapitel 4 zeigt, dass intrinsische Sanktionen (wie Scham und Schuld) ausreichen, damit sich Menschen ethisch korrekt verhalten. Das Kapitel bietet zahlreiche Antworten zu aktuellen Debatten, wer sich unter welchen Umständen (un-)ehrlich verhält. Es wird gezeigt, dass Ehrlichkeit sowohl von situativen Einflüssen (z.B. Anreizen und Externalitäten) wie von persönlichen Aspekten (z.B. Geschlecht und Alter) und letztlich auch vom experimentellen Paradigma abhängt.
When and why do people engage in (un)ethical behavior? This dissertation summarizes general theories and synthesizes experimental findings on (non)cooperation, (un)fairness, and (dis)honesty. To this end, Chapter 1 introduces experimental games as a rigorous tool for studying (un)ethical behavior. Chapter 2 demonstrates that small changes in the framing of context (e.g., referring to a social dilemma as a competition vs. a team endeavor) can have long-lasting effects on the participants’ propensity to cooperate. Context framing also shapes beliefs about the cooperative behavior of interaction partners and donations in non-strategic allocation decisions. Taken together, the results suggest that social norm theories provide a plausible explanation for cooperation, including its sensitivity to context framing. Chapter 3 investigates why experimental games regularly find that economics students behave more selfishly than their peers. The concept of social norms is thereby extended to include the enforcement of compliance per sanctions. The results indicate that economics students and students of other majors are about equally concerned with fairness and they have similar notions of fairness in the situation. However, economics students make lower allocations, expect others to make lower allocations, and are less willing to sanction allocations seen as unfair. Skepticism mediated their lower allocations, suggesting that economics students behave more selfishly because they expect others not to comply with a shared fairness norm. Chapter 4 shows that intrinsic sanctions (e.g., shame and guilt) can be sufficient for ethical behavior to emerge. The chapter provides answers to many of the ongoing debates on who behaves dishonestly and under what circumstances. The findings suggest that dishonest behavior depends on situational factors (e.g., reward magnitude and externalities), personal factors (e.g., gender and age) as well as on the experimental paradigm itself.

In 1981 Chile was the fi…rst country in the world to privitise its pension system moving from a pay-as-you-go scheme (PAYG) to a De…fined Contributions (DC) scheme. Individuals in the labour market at the time of the reform were given the choice to either stay in the PAYG system or to opt-out to the DC scheme. New entrants must join the DC system. Exploiting the wide differences in pension formulas across schemes, I …firstly fi…nd that the reform signi…ficantly increased expected pension wealth for most of those who opted-out. I then investigate the extent to which households substitute this increase by decreasing accumulation of other wealth. As the decision to either stay or to opt-out was not random, I gain identi…fication through an instrumental variable approach. I …find a pension offset of around 30%. Among the possible reasons for the incomplete offset are imperfect information, the desire to compensate for new risks faced and habit formation. Lastly, through a non-linear random effects dynamic model that allows for state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity, I estimate the effect of pension system design on individuals' formal/informal labour market decisions. Results indicate that individuals in the DC scheme are 23% more likely to be formal than those in the PAYG scheme at any one period. Further, simulations show that the boost in formality caused by the reform lasts throughout the life cycle. State dependence is even more important indicating that labour market past decisions do affect future ones. The unobserved heterogeneity is also high and signifi…cant but it is only a …fifth of the state dependence. The results on state dependence and initial condition suggest that there is scope for public policy to affect formality decisions.

Favorable and unfavorable demographic processes and their imminent repercussions for local labor markets, regional economic development, and the accomplishment of public duties have spurred the interest around the world. The mobility of individuals and households, in particular in the form of migration and commuting, decisively shapes these demographic trends at the regional and local level. Studying the causes of mobility behavior at the microlevel, therefore, delivers hypotheses needed for the evaluation of various policy options directed at attracting new and retaining existing population shares. Knowing about the various influences in mobility decision making also allows for a better projection of population dynamics and migration flows. In the design of this dissertation, uncertainty is recognized as a key component of day-to-day decision making processes and, thus, serves as the underlying feature in the examinations. The dissertation’s aim is to study the effects of economic uncertainty on household mobility decisions. This includes migration as well as commuting behavior in the presence of income and transport cost uncertainty. In three thematic areas the dissertation investigates migration behavior of individuals and households in the context of both long-distance interregional migration and short-distance local moves. Covered aspects range from the influence of different levels of longevity over the implications of joint migration intentions to the interrelated choice of residence and mode of mobility in a urban-suburban framework.

This thesis is about the human ability to share and combine representations of the uncertainty associated with individual beliefs - an ability which is called metacognition and facilitates effective cooperation. We distinguish between two metacognitive representations: an implicit confidence variable for oneself and an explicit confidence report for sharing with others. Using visual psychophysics and computational modelling, we address the issues of optimality and flexibility in the formation and the utilisation of these representations. We show that people can compute the confidence variable in an optimal manner (the probability that a given belief is correct as per Bayesian inference). Further, we show that the mapping of this variable onto a confidence report can vary flexibly - with people adjusting their reports according to the history of reports given and feedback obtained. This optimality and flexibility is important for effective cooperation. Being a probability, the optimal confidence variable can be compared across people. However, to facilitate this comparison, people must adapt their confidence reports to each other and develop a common metric for reporting the probability that their belief is correct. We show that people solve this communication problem sub-optimally; they match each other's mean confidence and confidence distributions, regardless of whether they are equally likely to be correct or not. In addition, we show that, while people can take into account differences in underlying competence to some extent, they fail to do so adequately; they exhibit an equality bias, weighting their partner's beliefs as if they were as good or as bad as their own, regardless of true differences in their underlying competence. More generally, our results pose a problem for our current understanding of metacognition which assumes that confidence reports are stable over time. In addition, our results show that confidence reports are socially malleable, and thus raise the possibility that well-known biases, such as overconfidence, might reflect particular norms for social interaction.

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e Telemática
A coordenação em sistemas multi-robô é um aspecto crucial no futebol robótico. A maneira como cada equipa coordena cada um dos seus robôs em acções cooperativas define a base da sua estratégia. Este trabalho tem como foco o desenvolvimento da coordenação e estratégia da equipa CAMBADA. CAMBADA é a equipa de futebol robótico da modalidade RoboCup Middle Size League da Universidade de Aveiro. Foi desenvolvida pelo grupo ATRI, pertencente µa unidade de investigação IEETA. O presente trabalho baseia-se em trabalho desenvolvido anteriormente, tentando melhorar o desempenho da equipa. Cada robô da equipa CAMBADA é um agente independente e autónomo capaz de coordenar as suas acções com os colegas de equipa através da comunicação e da partilha de informação. O comportamento de cada robô deverá ser integrado na estratégia global da equipa, resultando assim em acções cooperativas de todos os robôs. Isto é conseguido através do uso de papeis(roles) e comportamentos(behaviours) que definem a atitude de cada robô e as acções que daí resultam. Novos papeis foram desenvolvidos para complementar a estratégia de equipa, e alguns dos papeis existentes foram melhorados. Também foram efectuadas melhorias em alguns dos comportamentos existentes. É efectu- ada a descrição de cada um destes papeis e comportamentos, assim como as alterações efectuadas. O trabalho desenvolvido foi testado nas competições do Robótica 2008 (o desenvolvimento não estava ainda concluído) e por fim nas competições do RoboCup'2008. A participação da equipa no RoboCup'2008 é analisada e discutida. A equipa consagrou-se campeã mundial, vencendo a competição da Middle Size League do RoboCup'2008 em Suzhou, China. ABSTRACT: Multi-robot coordination is one crucial aspect in robotic soccer. The way each team coordinates its individual robots into cooperative global actions define the foundation of its strategy. CAMBADA is the RoboCup Middle Size League robotic soccer team of the University of Aveiro. It was created by the ATRI group, part of the IEETA research unit. This work is focused on coordination and strategy development for the CAMBADA team. It is built upon previous work and tries to improve the team performance further. In CAMBADA each robot is an independent agent, it coordinates its actions with its teammates through communication and information exchange. The resulting behaviour of the individual robot should be integrated into the global team strategy, thus resulting in cooperative actions by all the robots. This is done by the use of roles and behaviours that define each robot attitude in the field and resulting individual actions. In this work, new roles were created to add to the team strategy and some of the previous existing roles were improved. Some of the existing behaviours were also improved to better fit the desired goals. Each role and behaviour is described as well as the changes made. The resulting work was put to test in the portuguese Robotica 2008 competition (while still in progress) and finally in the RoboCup'2008 world competitions. The performance of the team in the latter is analysed and discussed. The team achieved the 1st place in the RoboCup'2008 MSL world competitions.

Cette thèse traite du problème de la façon de prendre des décisions impliquant à la fois la temporisation et l'information ambiguë. Cette thèse se compose de trois chapitres. Le chapitre 1 passe en revue une série d'études sur l'influence de l'ambiguïté et de la temporisation sur la prise de décision individuelle, et soulève deux questions de recherche de la thèse actuelle: 1) Est-ce que les préférences d'ambiguïté des décideurs sont différentes pour les perspectives résolues dans le présent et l'avenir? et 2) Est-ce que les préférences temporelles de décideurs diffèrent sous les récompenses ambiguës et non ambiguës? Les chapitres 2 et 3 sont deux essais indépendants qui traitent de ces deux questions, respectivement. Le premier essai examine les préférences d'ambiguïté sous la résolution actuelle et retardée à travers les probabilités basses et hautes. Les résultats des trois études montrent un effet d'interaction entre le temps de résolution et le niveau de probabilité. Sous résolution immédiate, nous constatons que les individus présentent l'aversion d'ambiguïté à des probabilités élevées et ambiguïté-recherche faible, ou l'indifférence à faibles probabilités, cohérentes avec la littérature antérieure. Toutefois, la résolution future régresse aversion et de comportement de recherché à la neutralité. S’appuyant sur la théorie du niveau de construal et la théorie de double-processus, nous attribuons cet effet d'interaction à la différence de styles de traitement pour les perspectives présentes et futures. Le deuxième essai démontre l'impact de récompenses futures ambigus sur les préférences intertemporelles. Six études montrent que, malgré le fait que les récompenses ambiguës et retardées sont généralement detestés séparément, ensemble, elles produisent un effet positif. C'est-à-dire que, les récompenses ambiguës futures sont plus susceptibles d'être préférés que les récompenses précises (avec les valeurs attendues égales) dans la prise de decision intertemporelle. Nous proposons l'hypothèse de l’eclipse (overshadowing) pour expliquer cet effet et excluons trois autres possibilités. Enfin, nous établissons des conditions aux limites en examinant systématiquement si l'effet persiste à différents niveaux d'ambiguïté et de points de temps
This dissertation addresses the issue of how to make decisions involving both time delay and ambiguous information. This dissertation is arranged into three chapters. Chapter 1 reviews a set of studies on the influence of ambiguity and time delay on individual decision making and raises two relevant research questions: (1) Are decision makers' ambiguity preferences different for prospects resolved in the present and the future?; and (2) Do decision makers' time preferences differ under ambiguous and unambiguous payoffs? Chapter 2 and 3 are two independent essays, each addressing one of the above questions. The first essay examines ambiguity preferences under present and delayed resolutions across low and high probabilities. Results of three studies show an interaction effect between resolution time and probability level. Under the immediate resolution, we find that individuals exhibit ambiguity aversion at high probabilities and weak ambiguity seeking or indifference at low probabilities, consistent with prior literature. However, delayed resolution regresses aversion and seeking behaviors to neutrality. Drawing on the construal level theory and the dual-process theory, we attribute this interaction effect to the difference in processing styles for present and future prospects. The second essay demonstrates the impact of ambiguous future payoffs on intertemporal preferences. Six studies show that, despite the fact that ambiguous and delayed payoffs are generally disliked separately, together they produce a positive effect. That is, ambiguous future payoffs are more likely to be preferred than precise payoffs (with equal expected values) in intertemporal decision-making. We propose the overshadowing hypothesis to explain this effect and rule out three other possibilities. Finally, we establish boundary conditions by systematically examining whether the effect persists at various ambiguity levels and time points

Individuals' concerns for others have been the focus of many experimental investigations since the first appearance of the dictator game, which pointed out that, when people have to allocate resources and determine their own and others' payoffs, they decide accordingly to some well-defined distributional preferences. These, depending on the decisional setting and on individuals, are able to generate discrepancies between decisions that only affect the decision maker and choices that have consequences on others' payoffs. Starting from these considerations, the three studies presented in this thesis have the aim to picture the state of the art in the literature related to decision making and responsibility for others. Specifically, Chapter 2 presents an overview of past contributions, providing an analysis of three different experimental literatures: dictator games, delegated decision making under risk, and leadership in cooperation; the last two are then experimentally investigated more in details in the following chapters. Specifically, Chapter 3 focuses on investment in risk protection when risk is borne either by the decision maker or by another individual. In addition to this, the analysis manipulates who is the subject providing the resources to buy risk protection. Laboratory observations are assessed against behavioral predictions obtained from a linear model for social preferences to test its predictive power in this domain. Chapter 4 drives the attention to the effect of leadership in a public good experiment. Leaders take part to a public good game, aware of the fact that every decision they make directly affects their followers, who can be either passive players or have the opportunity to send short messages to their leader. This experimental setting allows to observe how people decide for themselves and others when involved in strategic interaction.

Individuals' concerns for others have been the focus of many experimental investigations since the first appearance of the dictator game, which pointed out that, when people have to allocate resources and determine their own and others' payoffs, they decide accordingly to some well-defined distributional preferences. These, depending on the decisional setting and on individuals, are able to generate discrepancies between decisions that only affect the decision maker and choices that have consequences on others' payoffs. Starting from these considerations, the three studies presented in this thesis have the aim to picture the state of the art in the literature related to decision making and responsibility for others. Specifically, Chapter 2 presents an overview of past contributions, providing an analysis of three different experimental literatures: dictator games, delegated decision making under risk, and leadership in cooperation; the last two are then experimentally investigated more in details in the following chapters. Specifically, Chapter 3 focuses on investment in risk protection when risk is borne either by the decision maker or by another individual. In addition to this, the analysis manipulates who is the subject providing the resources to buy risk protection. Laboratory observations are assessed against behavioral predictions obtained from a linear model for social preferences to test its predictive power in this domain. Chapter 4 drives the attention to the effect of leadership in a public good experiment. Leaders take part to a public good game, aware of the fact that every decision they make directly affects their followers, who can be either passive players or have the opportunity to send short messages to their leader. This experimental setting allows to observe how people decide for themselves and others when involved in strategic interaction.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2007.
Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xiv, 164 p. : col. ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 128-130).

The thesis compared the likelihood of taking risks in dyads and individuals in varying situations. Patterns of risky decision making were examined in the standard risky choice task and a novel risk management task. The relative successes of two theories of risky decision making were assessed: Prospect Theory emphasizes perceptual and psychophysical processes, whereas Security-Potential/Aspiration Level Theory emphasizes dispositional and motivational processes. The thesis also examined dyads’ decision behavior in light of competing social influence perspectives regarding risky versus cautious shifts and group polarization. Participants, as individuals or as part of a dyad, made decisions in 23 trials about hypothetical two-outcome monetary gambles in one of two different tasks. Risky choice involved making choices between two given 50-50 lotteries which varied in riskiness (i.e., outcome variability), whereas risk management required actively manipulating an existing 50-50 risk by changing outcome values. The 23 trials were equivalent across tasks. Dyad participants communicated via an instant messenger program, while viewing the same lotteries on different computers. Data on risk preferences across gain and loss domains were analyzed using a mixed factorial ANOVA design. Consistent with Prospect Theory value function predictions, the risky choice task led to risk averse preferences for gains and risk seeking preferences for losses, though risk seeking was weak. Consistent with SP/A theory predictions, the risk management task led to overall risk averse preferences, with movement toward risk taking for gains. In addition, there was some evidence of social influences in that dyads tended to be more conservative than individuals in their decision behavior when dealing with undesirable outcomes. Thus, a cautious shift was observed, but only for lotteries involving guaranteed losses. This could not be explained by group polarization.  Each of the theories received some support, but none of them could explain all of the findings. Recommendations were made to give greater attention to defining and measuring risk attitudes and dispositions, and to continue exploring differences in decision situations and social settings to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of risky decision making processes. Findings here suggest the need for an overarching theory that can account for a wide variety of influences. A dual processes approach was recommended as one promising avenue. Social and situational influences may prove an essential part of understanding risky decision making in real life contexts.

Fairness and efficiency are two classical and connected topics in economics. They have become well known, perhaps due to Adam Smith’s two influential works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), which highlights a concern for fairness concern as part of morality, and The Wealth of Nations (1776), which underlines a concern for efficiency. However, during the rapid development of economics, fairness has received disproportionately less attention than efficiency. As a result, many people, including some economists, have incorrectly understood that economics as a subject no longer cares about fairness. The primary objective of this thesis is to dispel this misperception. We would argue here that, similar to efficiency, fairness is an important factor for both social and individual decisions, and sometimes its effect can be determined. Written in a three-paper format, this thesis explores fairness from three different angles. These angles cover the broad areas of how theoretical economists model fairness in social choice theory, how the general public perceive distributive fairness, and how people implement their fairness norms in making real-life donations. This multidimensional exploration is believed to be crucial to a comprehensive understanding of fairness.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Economics, 2005.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-04, Section: A, page: 1430. Adviser: Arlington W. Williams. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Nov. 2, 2006)."

A decision maker’s preferences are revealed through their choices, hence a desirable method for recovering preferences should take into account as much preference information as is available. In the context of choice from convex budget sets, we introduce the Money Metric Index (MMI) which recovers parameters that minimize the inconsistency between a decision maker's revealed preferences and the rankings implied by a given parametric family of utility functions. This approach differs from statistical methods which discard much of this preference information and select parameters based on a comparison between observed and predicted choices alone. Additionally, the MMI has many practical advantages: it is simple to compute, it can accommodate non-convex preferences, and it can be decomposed into separate measures of inconsistency and mis-specification. In Chapter 2, we compare these methods for recovering parameters using a two-stage experimental design. We use the data from the first part of the experiment to construct choices in the second part that can be used to evaluate the predictive success of the two methods. We find that, in all cases, the MMI outperforms the statistical method in terms of its ability to accurately predict subject choices. Additionally, we find substantial evidence of First-Order Risk Aversion, both with respect to the recovered parameters and through direct inspection of subject choices. The final chapter approaches this problem from a different perspective by considering to what extent decision makers are capable of making consistent choices in a laboratory context. We implement a simple experiment in order to assess the effect of computational difficulty on a decision maker's propensity to randomize their choices. We find substantial evidence of stochastic choice when subjects have limited time and computational resources available. An implication of our findings is that observed anomalous behavior in laboratory experiments involving choice under risk may be the result of ambiguity attitudes arising from the computational difficulty of the task rather than risk attitudes.
Arts, Faculty of
Vancouver School of Economics
Graduate

The alleged privacy paradox states that individuals report high values for personal privacy, while at the same time they report behavior that contradicts a high privacy value. This is a misconception. Reported privacy behaviors are explained by asymmetric subjective beliefs. Beliefs may or may not be uncertain, and non-neutral attitudes towards uncertainty are not necessary to explain behavior. This research was conducted in three related parts. Part one presents an experiment in individual decision making under uncertainty. Ellsberg s canonical two-color choice problem was used to estimate attitudes towards uncertainty. Subjects believed bets on the color ball drawn from Ellsberg s ambiguous urn were equally likely to pay. Estimated attitudes towards uncertainty were insignificant. Subjective expected utility explained subjects choices better than uncertainty aversion and the uncertain priors model. A second treatment tested Vernon Smith s conjecture that preferences in Ellsberg s problem would be unchanged when the ambiguous lottery is replaced by a compound objective lottery. The use of an objective compound lottery to induce uncertainty did not affect subjects choices. The second part of this dissertation extended the concept of uncertainty to commodities where quality and accuracy of a quality report were potentially ambiguous. The uncertain priors model is naturally extended to allow for potentially different attitudes towards these two sources of uncertainty, quality and accuracy. As they relate to privacy, quality and accuracy of a quality report are seen as metaphors for online security and consumer trust in e-commerce, respectively. The results of parametric structural tests were mixed. Subjects made choices consistent with neutral attitudes towards uncertainty in both the quality and accuracy domains. However, allowing for uncertainty aversion in the quality domain and not the accuracy domain outperformed the alternative which only allowed for uncertainty aversion in the accuracy domain. Finally, part three integrated a public-goods game and punishment opportunities with the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism to elicit privacy values, replicating previously reported privacy behaviors. The procedures developed elicited punishment (consequence) beliefs and information confidentiality beliefs in the context of individual privacy decisions. Three contributions are made to the literature. First, by using cash rewards as a mechanism to map actions to consequences, the study eliminated hypothetical bias as a confounding behavioral factor which is pervasive in the privacy literature. Econometric results support the  privacy paradox at levels greater than 10 percent. Second, the roles of asymmetric beliefs and attitudes towards uncertainty were identified using parametric structural likelihood methods. Subjects were, in general, uncertainty neutral and believed  bad events were more likely to occur when their private information was not confidential. A third contribution is a partial test to determine which uncertain process, loss of privacy or the resolution of consequences, is of primary importance to individual decision-makers. Choices were consistent with uncertainty neutral preferences in both the privacy and consequences domains.
Ph.D.
Department of Economics
Business Administration
Economics PhD

This research has shown how the nature of the construction project has become increasingly complex and has highlighted how project management decision-making has been supplemented with the use of risk management strategies. Subsequently the use of risk management strategies in construction project execution has had some of its weaknesses exposed, namely the failure of such strategies to consider the role of the individual within the risk management process. Consequently this research has undertaken an investigation to ascertain and understand the nature and impact of individual decision-makers upon the decision-making process. The attributes of and influences upon individual decision-making, risk and uncertainty perceptions and preferences have been explored and discussed in some detail. From those the `risk prism', a metaphor for the perception and preference of risk and uncertainty, was developed to explore the manner in which these decision-making attributes function. An investigation was undertaken to replicate the `risky shift' phenomenon in decisionmaking groups populated by construction project management professionals. The results of this investigation ascertained the influence of the group environment upon construction management decision makers, namely that individuals were influenced to accept greater uncertainty in a group decision environment. Subsequently a case study investigation of an organisations attempt to introduce a new risk management strategy was undertaken from which an enhanced understanding of the group discussion and decision-making environment was ascertained. As a result of these investigations an improved risk management process was developed and is presented within this dissertation.

Urban commuting patterns can be viewed as the spatial manifestation of the outcome of labour market processes. Recent theoretical and empirical work investigating urban labour markets has emphasized the role of spatial wage differentials in mediating the interrelationship between labour supply and demand distributions and the dynamics of land-use change. This thesis represents an extension of such research. A simulation approach to commuting modelling, based on the explicit characterization of the interrelationship between urban location and interaction in terms of labour market processes, is developed. The solution path logic of the simulation model is designed to provide normative commuting outcomes, given the spatial pattern of labour supply and demand, under a wide range of assumptions concerning labour market processes and choice-making behaviour of market participants. An explicit characterization of the labour market, based on the specification of an endogenous behavioural assumption set, defines a model version. Thus, the model may be used to test the ability of various behavioural constructs to explain empirical commuting patterns. The justification and internal logic underlying the development of a specific model version is presented. This version is based on the assumption that the decision by a worker to apply for a job is objectively rational, given that the market environment does not provide certainty as to the outcome of an application. It is shown that such choice behaviour is analogous to the game-theoretic mixed strategy solution to non-cooperative games under uncertainty. The algorithm of the operational model incorporating this approach is detailed. The model was tested on empirical commuting patterns derived from Vancouver Census data, and model results were compared with those obtained from a positive entropy-based model. Commuting predictions exhibited a level of accuracy comparable to that achieved by the calibrated entropy model.
Arts, Faculty of
Geography, Department of
Graduate

Knowledge Management (KM) to date has been poorly recognized, explained, and applied in China, and lack of empirical evidence has become a major barrier to the development of KM research in the Chinese academic community. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions of Chinese business managers in the processes of KM-related decision making, from environmental, informational, individual, and decision-specific perspectives. A qualitative, multiple-case study strategy was used. Primary data were collected from the semi-structured interviews conducted with seventeen Chinese business managers who worked in either the manufacturing or telecommunications industry, and then the data were analyzed using thematic-analysis techniques. Participants perceived KM to be a long term process and believed that KM could not contribute to organizational survival. They thought that the most difficult challenge to successfully implement KM was to nurture a KM-friendly organizational culture. Three factors greatly affected their decision about whether to use KM strategies: perceived importance of knowledge-based assets, perceived contribution to organizational survival, and perceived organizational stability and health. They stressed that Chinese organizational leaders often agreed to support KM in word but not in action, due to KM's low business priority in their managerial agendas. In addition, participants perceived high uncertainties with respect to their internal organizational environments that arose from five major perspectives: 1) willingness to share and learn, 2) shared awareness and understanding, 3) level of management involvement, 4) status of product R&D, and 5) organizational policy and strategy. They also perceived high uncertainties regarding their external organizational environments from three perspectives: 1) customer needs, 2) competitive intensity, and 3) technological development. Participants generally preferred to use internal information sources in the processes of KM-related decision making, and perceived these sources to be relevant, comprehensive, reliable, and accessible. They found external impersonal sources to be highly accessible, but only considered business or professional associates to be relevant, comprehensive, and reliable. They believed that only a systematic, synthesized review of the information collected from multiple information sources could be considered to be complete, and insisted that source reliability was the most fundamental source characteristic. The findings systematically explain why KM has not been extensively applied and developed in the Chinese community, and thus contribute to the promotion of KM practices in China and to the overall development of KM research. The findings also present important theoretical and practical implications for strategic decision making, KM, and information science.
En Chine, le manque de reconnaissance, de compréhension et d'application de la gestion des connaissances (GC) ainsi que l'absence de données empiriques jusqu'à ce jour pose un obstacle majeur au développement de la recherche en gestion des connaissances dans le milieu académique. L'objectif de cette recherche est d'examiner la perception des gestionnaires d'entreprises en ce qui a trait aux processus reliés à la prise de décisions en GC. Ces perceptions sont regroupées en aspects environnementaux, documentaires, individuels et en prise de décisions spécifiques. Une approche qualitative est employée, elle est composée de multiples études de cas. La collecte principale de données a été faite à l'aide d'entrevues semi-structurées auprès de dix-sept gestionnaires chinois œuvrant dans l'industrie minière ou des télécommunications. Ces données sont analysées à l'aide d'une approche thématique. Les participants percevaient la GC comme un processus à long terme et croyaient que la GC ne pouvait pas contribuer à la survie de l'entreprise. Selon eux, le plus grand défi pour implanter la GC est de favoriser une culture organisationnelle favorable. Leur décision d'utiliser des stratégies de GC était influencée par leurs perceptions de trois facteurs, soit 1) l'importance des actifs de la connaissance, 2) la contribution de la GC à la survie de l'entreprise et 3), la santé et la stabilité de l'entreprise. Selon eux, les chefs d'entreprise chinois soutiennent la GC mais ont de la difficulté de joindre l'action à la parole et ceci est illustré par la faible priorité de la GC au sein de leur programme de la gestion des affaires. Les participants perçoivent cinq sources majeures d'incertitude provenant de l'environnement organisationnel interne à l'entreprise, soit 1) la volonté de partager et d'apprendre, 2) la présence d'une conscience et une compréhension commune au sein de l'entreprise, 3) le niveau d'implication des gestionnaires, 4) le statut des produits issus de la recherche et du développement et 5), les stratégies et politiques organisationnelles. Ils perçoivent également trois sources majeures d'incertitudes provenant de l'environnement externe de à l'entreprise, soient 1) les besoins des clients, 2) l'intensité de la concurrence et 3), les développements technologiques. De façon générale, les participants préfèrent utiliser des sources internes d'information afin d'appuyer le processus de décisions liés à la GC et ses sources étaient perçues comme étant pertinentes, complètes, fiables et accessibles. Ils ont constaté que les sources externes impersonnelles sont facilement accessibles, mais ils considéraient que seul leur réseau de contacts professionnels offrait une information pertinente, complète et fiable. Ils croyaient que seule une analyse systématique d'informations provenant de multiples sources serait considérée complète et, ils affirmaient que la fiabilité était la caractéristique la plus importante permettant d'évaluer une source d'information. Ces résultats exposent de façon systématique les raisons qui expliquent le peu de développement et d'applications en GC dans les communautés chinoises et contribuent à la promotion des pratiques de GC en Chine et au développement global de la recherche en GC. Les résultats contiennent également d'importantes contributions théoriques et pratiques applicables à la prise de décisions stratégiques à la GC ainsi qu'aux sciences de l'information.