Irwin P. Levin, Ph.D. - US grants

The manner in which a key source of information is presented or "framed" appears to have an effect on judgments and decisions that is both powerful and generalizable. While initial work in the investigator's laboratory supported the robustness of this effect, their recent research suggests that a variety of mediating factors may influence the effect of information frame. A central theme of this program of research is to use information framing manipulations to understand the interactive effects of a variety of factors that influence judgments and decisions. The proposed studies will attempt to move beyond demonstrations of framing effects to provide empirical evidence of mediating factors, develop models that incorporate these factors, and provide implications for understanding individual and managerial decision making.

Abstract
Levin #0001316


Why do two persons, faced with exactly the same decision, decide differently? Tile
existence of individual differences in judgment and decision making has been widely
noted but riot many previous studies have focused on identifying the antecedent
conditions. Tin this proposal we focus on stable person characteristics that relate to the
manner in which information is processed in arriving at a judgment or decision. The
proposed experiments will provide links between individual difference indices and
measures of the process by which a decision maker reaches his or her final choice.
Individual difference measures to be used in the proposed research include personality
factors such as extraversion and neuroticiscn which have been shown in previous research
to account for significant variance in various tasks in memory and cognition, measures of
affective state, and most notably, a measure of cognitive style widely and successfully
used in the areas of persuasion and attitude change but only recently used in the area of
judgment. and decision making. Such measures should provide us with new insights into
why, in the same situation, one person will decide one way and another person will
decide the other way.

There is considerable literature in the area of human judgment and
decision making demonstrating systematic use of simplifying heuristics and
the biases that can arise from them. For example, "framing effects" are
common in which people react to the manner in which information is labelled
by assigning more favorable evaluations to, say, a medical treatment that
is described as having a "75% success rate" as opposed to a "25% failure
rate". However, research by the Principal Investigator and others has
uncovered considerable variation in the extent to which different
individuals display such biases. Most recently, this research, which has
been done almost exclusively with adults, has linked these individual
differences to stable personality traits and decision styles. This
naturally brings up the dual questions of when such biases develop and
whether they can be linked to distinctive childhood dispositions. The
present series of studies is proposed to address these questions.
A major resource for these studies is an available population of 5-6
year-olds whose social and emotional development and cognitive capacity
have been tracked since they were toddlers. Thus, we have the capability of
relating children's decision making behavior to measures such as shyness,
impulsivity, and intelligence. In an initial study we showed that these
traits are related to risk-taking in a gambling-type game. We are in the
process of developing a battery of tasks/games which are "child-friendly"
yet capture the essence of the decision processes observed in adults. An
innovation of the new studies is that the parent as well as the child will
complete the tasks so that we can correlate the two sets of responses to
learn more about the development of decision biases.

We will study basic decision processes in a patient group known to suffer from the inability to integrate thoughts and feelings when considering the long-term consequences of their decisions. This dysfunction has been tied to lesions in a specific neural circuitry within the brain. This patient population is thus ideal for studying the operation and integration of cognition and emotion in decision making. The logic is as follows: if we can characterize these patients by their inability to integrate thoughts and feelings, and if we can show that these patients are less sensitive than controls to selected variables such as risk level, then we will better understand the factors that play a key role in integrating thoughts and feelings for informed decision making. Controls will include a group of non-patients and a group of patients with lesions in other parts of the brain.

Our interdisciplinary research team has the background and experience to work with the target patient group to determine the neurological underpinnings of their decision making deficits and to create controlled tasks for isolating variables and response systems that differentiate between "informed" and "uninformed" decision making. For example, if our new studies show that the target patients are less responsive to changing risk levels than are controls, then we can assert that distorted perceptions of risk level are a key marker of uninformed decision making. We believe that the broader impact of this work will include: (1) demonstrating to future researchers the usefulness of combining traditional behavioral decision theory approaches with analyses of neural circuitries in the brain; (2) developing a more complete description of factors that differentiate "normal" and "abnormal" decision making; and (3) finding ways to understand and counsel groups with demonstrated deficits in making decisions that serve their best interests.

SES - 0721103
Development of Individual Differences in Decision Biases , Phase II: Decision Making Competence in Children
Levin, Irwin P.
University of Iowa

The research proposed here will build onto previous research by the present investigators and others to help us gain a better understanding of how children make decisions. We focus on risky decision making because excessive risk-taking behavior by pre-adolescents and adolescents can be a cause of societal problems in areas such as addiction, traffic safety, and unprotected sex. We have developed techniques for measuring decision making competence through controlled experimental tasks and we use these to compare decisions made by children of different ages and adults. For example, we showed that the ability to take into account the possible outcomes of a risky choice and their likelihoods increases with age.
At the heart of the proposed research is a longitudinal study in which we measure at various points in time individual differences in decision making competence among a group of pre-adolescents. We expect steady increases in competence over a 3-year period but will be able to identify profiles of "at risk" children and track how their deficits affect decisions made in their everyday lives. There is potential here for identifying specific components of decision making for those most at risk for maladaptive behavior, such as lack of attention to risk levels or unwillingness to factor in long-term consequences. These factors can then be isolated for further study to determine the extent to which they can be changed through feedback and experience for any given child.