PSB_03 Seminární práce




1) Primární informace / Sekundární informace / Terciární informace

Introduction


Imagine a student who is uncertain about whether he wants to become a computer programmer or

a poet. If he wants to keep both options available, he has to keep taking classes in both majors.

On the other hand, keeping both options open has its own cost. Double majoring implies that the

student has to divide his time and effort and take classes in both fields-leading him to become

proficient in both, but an expert in neither. Along similar lines, consider a person pursuing two
potential relationships. As long as this romantic decision maker spends sufficient time with each
of

her potential romantic partners, she can keep them both as viable future relationships. However,

once she starts spending more time with one and neglecting the other, the neglected party is likely

to move on and become unavailable. Given the possible loss of the second romantic option, our

enthusiastic dater might try to spend at least some of her time with her less-preferred partner,

largely to maintain the viability of the relationship. However, much like the student with the
double

major, "keeping doors open" has its costs, drawing valuable time and energy away from the more

promising relationship.

Double majoring and dating are just two examples of cases where one must invest extra time and

effort to keep options available. The main questions asked here are whether the threat of future

unavailability makes less-desirable options seem more appealing and whether this causes

individuals to overinvest in these options. In other words, do doors that threaten to close appear

more attractive than doors that remain open? And if so, will individuals overinvest just to keep

them open?

From a naive, rational perspective, one could expect that the value of an option (having the
ability

to make a choice) would be based solely on the expected utility of the outcomes it represents.

From a psychological perspective, however, there are two primary reasons why the subjective

value of an option can exceed its expected value: a desire for flexibility and aversion to loss.

Initial evidence for the value of flexibility was proposed by Brehm (1956), who showed that people

are willing to sacrifice consumption pleasure to increase freedom of choice (see also Simonson

1990, Gilbert and Ebert 2002). The desire for flexibility is not limited to humans; even pigeons

exhibit it (Catania 1975). Such preference for flexibility implies that individuals can get utility

(pleasure) from simply "having the right to choose" (keeping options open) prior to making a final

choice.

Evidence for aversion to loss dates back to Kahneman and Tversky (1979). The most relevant

application of this aversion to loss is the case of endowment effect (Kahneman et al. 1990, 1991;

Bar-Hillel and Neter 1996; Carmon and Ariely 2000), showing that ownership, or even deliberation

(Carmon et al. 2003), can increase attachment and hence valuations. Support for aversion to loss

was also provided in the context of risky choice, in particular the rejection of a pair of mixed

gambles (Markowitz 1952, Williams 1966). Although options for items are very different from the

items themselves-for example, the possibility of dating a person is a very different experience
from

actually dating that person-and although it is not possible to own an option in the same way it is
to

own an item, losing an option (opportunity loss) is closely related to the loss of an item. Namely,

the loss of an option also implies the loss of the item. Based on this similarity in terms of loss
and

the large influence of loss on decision making (Tversky and Kahneman 1991), it can be argued that

individuals will also experience the general aversion to loss and a pseudo-endowment effect for

options. The general aversion to loss implies that the utility that individuals get from simply
having the "right to choose" (keeping options open) is not a utility, but rather disutility or pain
that can

accompany the loss of options.

In summary, the current work asks two questions: First, whether the threat of unavailability

increases the perceived value of an option; and second, if so, whether the higher valuation comes

from a desire for flexibility or from aversion to loss. Four experiments were designed to provide

initial answers to these questions.


General Discussion


The current work examines a basic aspect of human behavior that extends from interpersonal

relationships to abstract monetary options-valuations of options. The experiments attempted to

shed some light on how individual decision makers evaluate options by examining how the threat

of option unavailability influences the value of the options. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the

possibility that the options will become unavailable in the future increases investments in them to

keep them from disappearing. Experiment 2 tested whether this effect can be due to information,

and, in addition, added three more fine-grained measures (pecking, click investment, and

elimination point) to test whether the effort respondents expanded to maintain options open can be

rationally explained; it cannot. Experiment 3 tested whether the distinction between implicit and

explicit cost is the reason that our respondents overinvested in keeping doors open; it was not.

Finally, Experiment 4 contrasted two psychological theories-flexibility and aversion to loss-as

possible mechanisms for the overinvestment in keeping options open. The results from this

experiment point to aversion to loss as being the more powerful of the two (at least in our
set-up).

In a further test of aversion to loss, we created a new measure aiming at examining whether the

room that respondents "gave up on" first (elimination point) was one for which they had more or

less information about compared with the one they "gave up on" second (second elimination point).

We argue that from an informational point of view, subjects should abandon a room they have

more information about, because the amount of information indicates their certainty in the quality

of the room. On the other hand, from an aversion to loss perspective, a room that had attracted

more clicks might also have a higher attachment associated with it, thus leading to a lower

tendency to abandon such a room. Analyzing this measure in Experiment 2 revealed that the

respondents were four times more likely to first abandon rooms they have less information about,

thus supporting the attachment and aversion to loss ideas. Moreover, the increased impact of
availability on the practice-information condition in Experiment 2 strongly supported the aversion

to loss explanation (Figure 3). The experience of actual feeling of the losses of the options
during

the practice trials seemed to cause respondents to be even more resistant to experiencing more

losses during the actual trial.

In summary, the experimental evidence presented suggests that individuals value options in a way

that is different from the expected value of these options, and, in particular, that decision
makers

overvalue their options and are willing to overinvest to keep these options from disappearing.

Based on the results of Experiment 4, we believe that the desirability of keeping options open is a

kind of disutility from loss rather than utility from "having more options to choose from."

In a world where maintaining options has no cost, such a tendency would have been

nonconsequential. However, we believe that in most day-to-day cases, there is substantial cost to

keeping options open, which would lead to erroneous behavior. There are many situations in which

decision makers encounter trade-offs between the future availability of options and their

maintenance costs. We have already mentioned dating and choosing a major in college. Other

examples include trade-offs between focusing on one's current work and looking for new

employment elsewhere; whether to specialize in a way that suits one's current employer or instead

to invest in skills that are valued by other potential employers. These results might also shed
light

on one of life's greater mysteries: Why do some people channel surf rather than, for example,

enjoy a single movie? The answer might be the fear of losing other options.

These results might also be generalized to one-shot cases. For example, when buying a new

computer, consumers face the dilemma of deciding whether to buy a system that suits their

current needs or purchase an expandable system (e.g., more slots for cards, and more memory)

that is more expensive but could better fit their uncertain future needs. In this case, the main

source of the dilemma is the uncertainty as to whether future expansion will be needed, compared

with the current additional cost. Our computer buyer is faced with a situation that is analogous to

the door game one click before a door disappears. She can take a costly action at purchasing time

to ensure that the expansion option remains available to her whether she subsequently decides to

expand or not.

Other examples in which consumers face "disappearing" options are deciding whether to purchase

an extended warranty when buying a new electronic product and deciding whether to buy pictures

of one-self on whitewater rafting trips. In such cases, consumers are given the opportunity to act

on the options (the warranty or the pictures), while realizing this is their only opportunity to
take

this action, and that not acting on the options is irreversible and may cause the "pain" of losing

these options. We suspect that the effectiveness of such tactics is based on the option's

nonavailability in the future, which would cause these options to be perceived more favorably and

to be acted on more frequently. There remain numerous unanswered questions. For example, what are
the mechanisms that

underlie the fear of losing options? What is the relationship between keeping options open and

indecision, particularly when deciding means committing to one out of a multitude of other

possibilities (see also Amir 2004)? What is the impact of options' prospective lifetime and

unavailability on their subjective value? Faced with a large number of options, would decision

makers still value options (Iyengar and Lepper 2000)? What is the number of options people would

like to keep? Finally, under what conditions will individuals want to actively eliminate options?
We

keep these research opportunities open for the future.



2)

a) Catania, A. C. 1975. Freedom and knowledge: An experimental analysis of preference in pigeons.
J. Experiment. Anal. Behavior 24 89-106: Relative responding in initial links of concurrent-chain
schedules showed that pigeons preffered free to forced choices and informative to uninformative
stimuli.


b) Carmon, Z., D. Ariely. 2000. Focusing on the forgone: How value can appear so different to
buyers

and sellers. J. Consumer Res. 27(3) 360-370. : Thus, when an item is a part of one's endowment,
giving it up is foreseen as a loss, whereas passing up the opportunity to obtain the same item is
perceived as a forgone gain.


c) Tversky, A., D. Kahneman. 1991. Loss aversion in riskless choice: A reference-dependent model.

Quart. J. Econom. 106 1039-1061. : Loss aversion implies that the impact of a difference on a
dimension is generally greater when that difference is evaluated as a loss than when the same
difference is evaluated as a gain.


3)

Dle mého názoru nedošlo k nějaké závratné změně v chápání textu po dohledání původního článku,
potažmo zřejmě původní citace. Ovšem při samotném hledání oné části textu bylo potřeba si více méně
celý článek zběžně projít, což dozajista napomohlo k ucelení obrazu na téma dané problematiky, jež
byla ve studii probírána.

Co do možnosti zkreslení informace se domnívám, že by tato situace mohla nastat a to zejména v
případě autorovy přílišné stručnosti při začleňování citace do svého textu.




4)

2230


To, či ono? Studie se ptá, nakolik je možné ponechat si obě rovnocenné možnosti otevřené


Určitě již každý zažil to tísnivé dilema, kdy bylo pouze otázkou času se rozhodnout mezi dvěma
stejně lákavými příležitostmi, ať už jde o to, jakým dalším směrem se bude ubírat student
dvojoboru; muž či žena váhájící nad dvěma lukrativními pracovními nabídkami; nebo člověk rozpolcen
mezi dvojicí sympatických a potenciálních partnerů. A že to není volba podobna rozpacím nad výběrem
cukrovinek za výlohou cukrárny. Jsou to přesně ty chvíle, kdy musí každý zvážit všechna pro a
proti, než učiní rozhodnutí.


Ale co když to nejde tak jednoduše?


Otázkou, nakolik je reálné ponechat si obě dvířka otevřená, se zabývají Shin Jiwoong a Dan Ariely z
Massachusettského technologického insitutu ve článku Keeping Doors Open: The Effect of
Unavailability on Incentives to Keep Options Viable.


S příhledem k teoriím, které ukazují na lidskou potřebu možnosti rozhodování, kvůli níž jsme
schopni obětovat leccos, a urputné tendenci vyhýbat se ztrátě jakékoliv věci v našem vlastnictví –
což se odráží i v jejím subjektivním nadhodnocování – zkonstruovali Jiwoong a Ariely tzv. "hrátky
se dveřmi", pomocí nichž chtěli zjistit, jakým způsobem se mění lidské hodnocení těchto možností
pod hrozbou ztráty jedné z nich. Spočívala ve čtyřech variantách jednoho úkolu, prováděných na
počítačích a pracujících na principu nahlížení do pokojů za trojicí dveří, přičemž v každém z
pokojů byla určitá výhra.


Ve výsledku bylo prokázáno, že se ve většině případů snažíme mermomocí udržet obě potenciální
možnosti na dosah ruky ať to stojí, co to stojí, a to spíše z důvodu strachu ze ztráty než z touhy
po flexibilitě a pocitu možného výběru.


(Jestli je lepší si hodit mincí se však autoři nezmiňují.)