Motivational States and Incentives
Final Report Abstract
Our project investigated the impact of motivational states (goals, implementation intentions, the deliberative and the implemental mindsets) and monetary incentives on processes and outcomes of economic decisions. We explored the effect of these interventions on heuristics (e.g., the reinforcement heuristic), biases (e.g., the optimism bias, certainty bias, zero effect), and confidence judgments in own performance. We tested for gender effects, specifically on confidence judgments. The methods we used for collecting process data were the following: response times on decisions, eye movements, pupil dilations, and electrocortical activity (EEG). Our results on the impact of motivational states and incentives on economic decisions and their processes were mixed. Sometimes motivational states and/or incentives affected decisions and their underlying processes, sometimes they did not, or not as expected. For instance, mindsets impacted processes (fixations of probabilities and outcomes of the lotteries; pupil dilations) of incentivized lottery choices while they did not affect the decisions. In confidence judgments, we observed that incentives on performance did not improve performance, but prolonged response times on confidence judgments on performance supposed not to be affected by the incentive. Incentivizing performance also resulted in gender differences, males were overconfident in their performance, while females were underconfident. Using a binary choice mechanism by Healy (2016) to incentivize accurate confidence judgments directly, led to overconfidence in own performance in both genders. Our series on confidence judgments studies consistently showed a strong hard-easy effect. Participants were underconfident in their own performance on easy items, and overconfident on performance on difficult items. This effect occurred irrespective of incentives and motivational states. When analyzing feedback related negativity on decision outcomes in Bayesian updating tasks, intentions that geared at reducing the reinforcement heuristic, we observed a stronger amplitude of this event-related potential in electrocortical activity compared to a control condition that did not induce intentions as motivational states.
Publications
- (2017). Reinforcement, rationality, and intentions: How robust is automatic reinforcement learning in economic decision making? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 30(4), 913–932
Hügelschäfer, S., & Achtziger, A.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2008) - (2019). A self-regulatory approach to rational decisions: The implemental mindset optimizes economic decision making in situations requiring belief updating. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 3(2), 115–126
Li, J., Hügelschäfer, S., & Achtziger, A.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/jts5.38) - (2020). The role of motivation and volition in economic decisions: Evidence from eye movements and pupillometry. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 33(2), 180–195
Ludwig, J., Jaudas, A., & Achtziger, A.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2152) - Errors fast and slow: An analysis of response times in probability judgments. Thinking and Reasoning
Ludwig, J., Ahrens, F., & Achtziger, A.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2020.1781691)
