Colloquium, Psych, Waterloo, with time and place

[Yvonne Weppler]

This is the same as the last email with the addition of time and place.

Colloquium Presentation

Department of Psychology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
 
March 5, 2004

PAS 1229

 2 :00 pm




Dr. Irwin Levin
University of Iowa

"Information Framing and Reflection Effects in Children and Neurology Patients' Decision Making"

Irwin Levin completed both his undergraduate and graduate studies at UCLA. He has been investigating human judgment and decision making models in the last 38 years at the University of Iowa. He has served as the President of the Society of Judgment and Decision Making (1998-1999), and on the editorial boards of prestigious scholarly journals such as:

Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes and the Journal of Behavioural Decision Making. Some of his recent work--funded by NSF--has investigated heuristics and biases in young children, the role of individual differences in decision making, framing effects, as well as choice narrowing processes.

 

Abstract

Tversky and Kahneman's (1981) report of the "Asian disease problem" was a real eye-opener.  The same objective information led to different levels of riskiness of choice depending on the way outcome information was labeled or "framed."  This led a number of researchers to pursue framing effects in different domains.  For example, we showed that "80% lean" ground beef was rated higher than "20% fat" ground beef (Levin & Gaeth, 1988).  Some authors questioned why different framing effects were obtained in different laboratories.  This led us and others (Levin, Schneider, & Gaeth, 1998; Kuhberger, 1998) to survey the literature and point out that different results are due to different operational definitions of "framing."  We then empirically tested these distinctions (Levin, Gaeth, Schreiber, & Lauriola, 2002), adding a new element:  By using a within-subject design, with sessions spaced one week apart, we were able to define framing effects at the level of the individual decision maker.  This allowed us to identify independent measures of individual difference (e.g., the "'Big 5"personality factors) in susceptibility to these effects.  Broadening our research to include "reflection effects" (differential reactions to actual gains and losses), we were able to extend the search for individual differences to children as well as adults.  A current study uses neurology patients with specific brain lesions that affect their ability to use emotional markers of potential gains and losses.  Our results show that while differential reactions to potential gains and losses are pervasive, the magnitude of these effects varies systematically across different classifications of individuals.