Acceso usuarios
Tara L. Webb, Michael E. Young
In everyday decision making, people often face decisions with outcomes that differ on multiple dimensions. The trade-off in preferences between magnitude, temporal proximity, and probability of an outcome is a fundamental concern in the decision-making literature. Yet, their joint effects on behavior in an experience-based decision-making task are understudied. Two experiments examined the relative influences of the magnitude and probability of an outcome when both were increasing over a 10-second delay. A first-person shooter video game was adapted for this purpose. Experiment 1 showed that participants waited longer to ensure a higher probability of the outcome than to ensure a greater magnitude when experienced separately and together. Experiment 2 provided a precise method of comparing their relative control on waiting by having each increase at different rates. Both experiments revealed a stronger influence of increasing probability than increasing magnitude. The results were more consistent with hyperbolic discounting of probability than with cumulative prospect theory's decision weight function
