FOR 1410:  Contextualised Decision Making

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 159975155

The general research agenda of the Research Unit is embedded in the area of experimental psychology and social psychology. The participating individual research projects are addressing different, yet connected research questions that all focus on human decision making. Some examples for the investigated questions: Which situational aspects determine whether individuals engage in more intuitive or in more elaborative strategies of decision making? Which factors influence whether individuals’ decisions are guided by a short-term versus a long-term perspective? When do individuals rely on simple decision rules and heuristics and when do they search for more information? Which relation can be observed between the quality of a decision and the amount of information that is considered - and more specifically, can decisions that are based on a small number of information be better than decisions based on a large amount of information? The general assumption that underlies the investigation of these questions holds that human decision making is usually very well adapted towards the requirements of the respective situation. From such a perspective, different decisions, that result from variations of situational context in which the decision is embedded, do not reflect errors but the adjustment to the situational requirements. It is expected, that the research will contribute basic knowledge on human decision making. Moreover, the participating projects will investigate, which implications can be derived from the context-dependent decision making with respect to different fields of application.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Central project (Applicant Bröder, Arndt )
• Contextualized Decision Making (Applicant Bless, Herbert )
• Contingency learning and choice behaviour in the case of context-dependent outcome struktures (Applicant Meiser, Thorsten )
• Decision making in social dilemmas - Vigilant self-regulation as a crucial factor in the formation and maintenance of social norms (Applicant Keller, Johannes )
• Decision Quality as a Function of the Amount of Information: Small Sample versus Large Sample Advantages in individuals and groups (Applicant Hütter, Mandy )
• Decisions based on features and dimensions: How contextual framing changes processing (Applicant Kutzner, Florian Luitpold Wilhelm )
• Determinants of fast-and-frugal decision making with the recognition heuristic: A cost-benefit approach (Applicant Erdfelder, Edgar )
• "Intuitive" and "deliberate" processes in decision making from memory (Applicant Bröder, Arndt )
• Pragmatic Influences on Judgments and Decisions (Applicant Wänke, Michaela )
• The impact of affective and cognitive feelings on decision making (Applicant Bless, Herbert )
• The impact of repeating and splitting information on judgments and decisions. (Applicant Unkelbach, Christian )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Arndt Bröder