Extrapolative Beliefs in Perceptual and Economic Decisions: Evidence of a Common Mechanism

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Frydman, Cary; Nave, Gideon
• 署名单位: University of Southern California; University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2016.2453
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 2340-2352
• 关键词: extrapolative beliefs; response times; Belief updating; sequential effects; hot-hand fallacy; judgment biases; drift-diffusion model

摘要

Acritical component of both economic and perceptual decision making under uncertainty is the belief-formation process. However, most research has studied belief formation in economic and perceptual decision making in isolation. One reason for this separate treatment may be the assumption that there are distinct psychological mechanisms that underlie belief formation in economic and perceptual decisions. An alternative theory is that there exists a common mechanism that governs belief formation in both domains. Here, we test this alternative theory by combining a novel computational modeling technique with two well-known experimental paradigms. We estimate a drift-diffusion model (DDM) and provide an analytical method to decode prior beliefs from DDM parameters. Subjects in our experiment exhibit strong extrapolative beliefs in both paradigms. In line with the common mechanism hypothesis, we find that a single computational model explains belief formation in both tasks and that individual differences in belief formation are correlated across tasks.