Role of affect in decision making

Bandyopadhyay, Debkumar; Pammi, V. S. Chandrasekhar; Srinivasan, Narayanan

doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-62604-2.00003-4

Cited by 38 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…For example, participants indicated high levels of agreement with statements about it being important that their individual decision making be fair and objective (qualities that reflect an ethic of justice), as well as humanistic and empathetic (qualities that reflect an ethic of care). This finding is important because it points to the influence of contextual elements, such as particular student circumstances or even the emotional state of the committee member, in determining the dominant ethical orientation employed at a given time. Our capacity to operate from both a justice orientation and care orientation may also lead to conflicts when moral clarity about what to actually do is lacking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Justice and care: decision making by medical school student promotions committees

Green

Gruppuso

2017

Med Educ

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CONTEXT The function of medical school entities that determine student advancement or dismissal has gone largely unexplored. Decision making of “academic progress” or student promotions committees is examined using a theoretical framework contrasting ethics of justice and care, with roots in the moral development work of theorists Kohlberg and Gilligan. OBJECTIVES To ascertain promotions committee members’ conceptualization of the role of their committee, ethical orientations used in member decision making, and student characteristics most influential to that decision making. METHODS An electronic survey was distributed to voting members of promotions committees at 143 accredited allopathic medical schools in the U.S. Descriptive statistics were calculated and data were analyzed by gender, role, institution type and class size. RESULTS Respondents included 241 voting members of promotions committees at 55 medical schools. Respondents endorsed various promotions committee roles, including acting in the best interest of learners’ future patients and graduating highly qualified learners. Implementing policy was assigned lower importance. The overall pattern of responses did not indicate a predominant orientation toward an ethic of justice or care. Respondents indicated that committees have discretion to take individual student characteristics into consideration during deliberations, and that they do so in practice. Among the student characteristics with the greatest influence on decision making, professionalism and academic performance were paramount. Eighty-five percent of participants indicated that they received no training. CONCLUSIONS Promotions committee members do not regard orientations of justice and care as being mutually exclusive, and endorse an array of statements regarding committee purpose that may conflict with one another. The considerable variance in the influence of student characteristics, and the general absence of committee member training, indicate a need for clear delineation of the medical profession’s priorities in terms of justice and care, and of the specific student characteristics that should factor into deliberations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Justice and care: decision making by medical school student promotions committees

Green

Gruppuso

2017

Med Educ

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“…[126]), it is important to consider the impact of uncertainty communication on people's affective reactions, given that emotional responses are often dominant in processing risk information [120,124,127,128]. In addition, people's emotions and affective reactions exert an important influence on decision-making [129–131]. Comparatively, there is less work on affect than on cognition in the context of epistemic uncertainty communication specifically.…”

Section: Communicated To What Effect?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science

et al. 2019

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Uncertainty is an inherent part of knowledge, and yet in an era of contested expertise, many shy away from openly communicating their uncertainty about what they know, fearful of their audience's reaction. But what effect does communication of such epistemic uncertainty have? Empirical research is widely scattered across many disciplines. This interdisciplinary review structures and summarizes current practice and research across domains, combining a statistical and psychological perspective. This informs a framework for uncertainty communication in which we identify three objects of uncertainty—facts, numbers and science—and two levels of uncertainty: direct and indirect. An examination of current practices provides a scale of nine expressions of direct uncertainty. We discuss attempts to codify indirect uncertainty in terms of quality of the underlying evidence. We review the limited literature about the effects of communicating epistemic uncertainty on cognition, affect, trust and decision-making. While there is some evidence that communicating epistemic uncertainty does not necessarily affect audiences negatively, impact can vary between individuals and communication formats. Case studies in economic statistics and climate change illustrate our framework in action. We conclude with advice to guide both communicators and future researchers in this important but so far rather neglected field.

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“…A potential strategy is to take information other than the one strictly related to the decision into account. It has been shown that, besides objective probabilities, decision-making is influenced by subjective factors related to the individual and the situation, like personality, affective state, or framing 4,22–24 . At first glance, this subjective weighting of probabilities might seem inaccurate, but it can be a useful strategy to improve the individual’s chances of reward or reduce negative emotions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pessimistic outcome expectancy does not explain ambiguity aversion in decision-making under uncertainty

Ahrends

Bravo

Kringelbach

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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When faced with a decision, most people like to know the odds and prefer to avoid ambiguity. It has been suggested that this aversion to ambiguity is linked to people’s assumption of worst possible outcomes. We used two closely linked behavioural tasks in 78 healthy participants to investigate whether such pessimistic prior beliefs can explain ambiguity aversion. In the risk-taking task, participants had to decide whether or not they place a bet, while in the beliefs task, participants were asked what they believed would be the outcome. Unexpectedly, we found that in the beliefs task, participants were not overly pessimistic about the outcome in the ambiguity condition and in fact closer to optimal levels of decision-making than in the risk conditions. While individual differences in pessimism could explain outcome expectancy, they had no effect on ambiguity aversion. Consequently, ambiguity aversion is more likely caused by general caution than by expectation of negative outcomes despite pessimism-dependent subjective weighting of probabilities.

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Role of affect in decision making

Cited by 38 publications

References 42 publications

Justice and care: decision making by medical school student promotions committees

Justice and care: decision making by medical school student promotions committees

Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science

Pessimistic outcome expectancy does not explain ambiguity aversion in decision-making under uncertainty

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