Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mapping context effects across preference, perceptual, and belief based judgments

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

We make numerous judgments daily, from assessing the size of a parking spot to evaluating the risks of vaccines and assessing presidential candidates for voting. It is widely recognized that context—the set of options under consideration—significantly influences our decisions in areas like perception, preference, and predicting future events. This project aims to deepen our understanding of how context impacts our beliefs in these diverse areas. Knowledge of context effects can lead to powerful tools for influencing judgment and decision-making. For example, school dining services might design menus to promote healthier choices. Additionally, understanding of how context impacts judgments can improve the quality of decisions. For instance, doctors could use this insight to provide more accurate assessments of treatment plans, thereby helping patients make better-informed decisions. This research seeks to unravel the fundamental characteristics of the general context effect and explore its domain specificity or generality. This goal is achieved by constructing detailed and empirical mappings of context effects within domains of perception, preference, and predicting future events. Such comprehensive mapping attempts to provide an extensive understanding of how context effects operate within and across these domains. The dataset generated from this project is an invaluable resource for rigorously evaluating various judgment and decision-making models. The richness of this dataset, combined with the detailed mapping of context effects it provides, presents a substantial challenge to judgment and decision-making models, compelling them to accommodate the full spectrum of these effects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.