A simple dice game shines a bit of light on the psychology of regret
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
If I knew the experimenter was trustworthy, I would not switch after the initial decision because there is no point to and definitely would for the $6 alternative. It seems very surprising that the median person needs triple to make it worth it to switch.
If I didn't know the experimenter was trustworthy (for example a street hustler in NYC), I definitely would not switch in the equal reward scenario and may even require 3x to switch because I would expect that they would only offer if my initial selection was wrong.
It seems reasonably likely the actual experiments failed to build trust in the experimentees and so are showing that reasonable decision making process. Given that the described process is very similar to 3 card monte, the experimentees would be primed to distrust the process.
And that how you revealed yourself as a replicant.
Psychological experiments involve trickery very often, because they need test subjects to be unaware of what experiments is trying to measure. I expect the most of subjects of psychological experiments to know this because they heard of other experiments. So I wouldn't expect that the trust building will change anything.
This particular experiment with a strange proposition to switch cups probably forces subjects to think what is happening, they inevitably form some hypotheses and run with them. I wouldn't believe that the results has something with a regret before I've read the research paper and have found there what researches did to ensure that they measured regret avoidance and not the ability of a subject to simulate their immunity to manipulations (if they thought that experiment tried to measure their resolve by coercing them to switch...).
Normally there is a post-experiment interview where researcher could try to learn the reasoning behind decisions of a test subject, but in this case a direct answer probably will not do. Though if "untrustworthy" researchers tricked test subject so they would get a reward in any case, then subjects would be happy and proud, and probably they would love to explain their "winning logic", even (or maybe especially) if they were mistaken about goals of experiment. It would be like researchers were too smart by half when devising the game and so they lost $5. I personally would feel an urge to brag about my "superior" thought process.
But in any case we need the original paper to learn how it was done and could we believe the interpretation of the experimental data.
Long time ago, the joke was that "subjects are 19-23 years old women studying psychology and who happened to walk in the faculty halls that day".
So they think they’re being tricked into it. Perfectly rational.
If I knew it was double blind, I'd switch instantly.
Basically, it would be a repeated game where the subject would be told by the experimenter.
1. I will put a black ball under exactly one of these two cups without you seeing it.
2. You will pick the first cup -- if you keep this cup and it's right, you get $5.
3. You will have an opportunity to change cups always, if you change cups and the changed cup is correct, you get $6.
I cannot see the above experiment failing to generate most people always choosing change if repeated 10 times, with the above structure being common knowledge ahead of time.
That's like saying "choose a cup with your left or right hand -- if you choose correctly with your left hand, you get $5, and if you choose correctly with your right hand, you get $6". Everyone would use their right hands.
From the article it seems that placing the chosen cup in front of the subject, to make it feel like they "own it", is an important part of the experiment.
One rational reason not to switch for $6 would be the hope/expectation that the offered incentive will increase. In the experiment, the subjects who held on to their first choice the longest received 10x the reward, while the quick switchers got only 1.2x (assuming the alternative cup was winning).
If the experiment was designed right, there wasn't a second offer to the same subject and it was made clear that there won't be one. Instead separate test groups were offered different amounts. Or at the very least the game was repeated.
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4...
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167295217006?ic...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5723021/
I recognize a lot of this in “fan” communities. Where people invest a lot of time/money/effort in their hobby, they minimize regret by doing everything to convince themselves they made the right choice. All the classic tech holy wars are susceptible (Mac vs PC, Vim vs Emacs, Xbox vs PlayStation, dozens more…). It’s almost impossible to get a direct measure of regret (e.g. by asking them) on these emotive topics because admitting regret after spending all that time/money/effort is psychologically devastating.
He's otherwise an amazing friend though. The earnestness that makes him a sucker for limited edition scotch comes out in other nicer ways too.
Here’s how you could (possibly) prove that.
Instead of the options being you get the money or not, the options become you win you pocket the money, you lose the money goes to a charity of your choice.
I think 100% the person would always choose the outcome with more money, regardless of the level of trust with the person giving the experiment.
That is, you completely remove trust from the equation.
I wonder if you could do it with a coin, and flip the coin after the decision was made? I think that reintroduce risk and regret, but remove trust.
If you don't trust the experimenter at all, then you might as well not switch, but I don't think that is a better than switching, as you have no basis for assuming any outcome in any circumstance.
If you are dealing with a street hustler in NYC, the optimal move is to disengage.
WRT the first (equal rewards) scenario: a weak bias towards sticking with an original decision might be favored by evolution, as constantly changing one's mind without new knowledge is not optimal behavior.
This would make sense if you had zero knowledge about which answer was right - like if the problem were in a foreign language you didn’t speak. But if you have some knowledge of the subject, it doesn’t make sense to say that your first guess isn’t more likely to be correct. There are some tests that have problems meant to trap people who aren’t thinking deeply enough, but many tests aren’t like this (or maybe these distractors aren’t tricky enough to fool you). Gut instinct on multiple choice tests ain’t nothing.
I had a system, back when multiple choice tests were a significant part of my life. Next to each question, I would write a 1, 2, or 3, so I knew which ones to come back to if I had time at the end. 1 meant I was confident I knew the answer. 2 meant I could eliminate at least one answer, but was guessing among the remaining ones, and 3 meant I didn't know, and had just circled the first thing that came to mind.
I especially appreciated tests where I got my own question sheet back, not just my answer sheet with a grade (like a Scantron) because I could verify that my system worked!
If you want to regret something, regret your decisions.
If you can't regret your decisions because there is nothing to regret, you probably should feel no regret instead, than doing cheap tricks. Of course if you are unable to not feel any regret, then “stick with your first instinct” can be a good cheap trick.
"Well, son, a funny thing about regret is: it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done. Oh by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, would you be sure and tell her... SATAN SATAN SATAN"
"Satan" by Orbital. The 30 something years later mix is an absolute banger.
Is there meaning here? I feel like there is something to get that I don't get.
Even when songs do they aren't that important and it's the meaning the listener gives the song (or the other way around) that's actually meaningful. Or in other words: only the listener's experience of the song is meaningful.
That's what I meant.
Fits perfectly into a question/lesson about regret.
- kid asks something
- he explains
- then he uses kid to annoy wife
I think there is a potential third reason, which is that the question to switch cups may be perceived as a trick of the experimenter: you feel certain that you got it and know which cup is right, and since you assume that the experimenter is aware of this as well, they now try to lure you into switching just to save their skin. Refusing to switch is basically done in the spirit of trying to evade this alleged trap, and the experimenter’s question may further emphasise that your initial guess was correct.
If, as the researchers propose, people experience more regret by changing their decision with "no additional information," they will experience significantly more regret still if they feel as though they have been tricked into giving up on their instinctive choice.
I put no information in quotes because even though the article puts it this way, there actually is some additional information: that the researchers want participants to have the option to change their choice, but only to be aware of that after making their first choice. Although cryptic, this does give some additional information into the real nature of their experiment, and to a random study participant certainly could be suggestive of some trickery going on.
It’s the exact same probability but with less extraneous factors that can confuse people. It also makes it plainly obvious that switching makes no difference to your likelihood, and takes away any interpretation of “why” people don’t switch in the first experiment: because it doesn’t make any difference so what’s the point?
> I then ask you if you want to switch to the cup on the left, to change your choice.
> Would you switch?
Again, like in some Monty cases, the formulation of the problem is annoyingly ambiguous. I would answer "It depends. Do you always offer the switch, no matter the location of the dice, and no matter my initial choice?". Only if they say yes, would I conclude that switching shouldn't affect the odds.
> But now, if you switch and are correct, you win $6. If you stick with your original choice and are right, you still only get $5. Would you switch now?
This only makes people more suspicious that the offer did in fact depend on the initial choice. If they want to study regret, they should go out of their way to make sure the test subject understands that there is no such dependency.
If the value increases, there is this same question, if you can know if I'm right or not, then you offering me a milion is just a trick isn't it? Also, you clearly wouldn't just give out one milion anyways, you dont havr the budget for that.
The only case is seems useufl to switch is when additional information was added in a guaranteed way (monty hall paradox)
Couldn't you ask the opposite question: if the odds are 50-50, why switch? Keeping your initial choice is more passive than switching. If the odds of success are the same, shouldn't the choice with the least energy expenditure be preferred?
> But now, if you switch and are correct, you win $6.
Everyone I know, would switch. It's a linear optimization.
If my undergraduate work had the same scientific rigor and reproducibility possessed by the foundational texts of behavioral economics I would have been failed and every project I ever worked on would have ended up killing somebody.
I don’t know anymore. Everyone, you can feel free to roast me today.
Sorry, I forgot I’m not at Wendy’s.
the answer is that the weight of the market cap of each company, measured against the market cap of the entire market, tells you how much weight these companies should have in your portfolio.
or just buy broadly diversified funds and achieve the same result.
How could someone become attached to a random chance cup?
The participant then assumes, quite rationally, that they are being tricked into losing.
This is a really poor experiment, to be honest, because it is measuring the host's appearance of honesty, not the risk appetite of the subject.
Kahneman and Tversky published entirely based on such experiments where grad students participated for a fee.