In an ESRC-funded programme of research, Professor Andrew Colman, Dr Briony Pulford and Dr Fergus Bolger tackled a number of interlinked questions about confidence in interactive decisions.

Their first study investigated asymmetric dominance effects in games. In individual decision making, when an agent chooses between alternatives x and y, the availability of a third alternative z, to which the agent strictly prefers x but not y, tends to increase the agent’s preference for x. Professor Colman and colleagues showed that an analogous phenomenon occurs in strategy selection in games in which one strategy strongly dominates a second but not a third.

Their second study focused on ambiguity aversion, namely, a tendency for decision makers to prefer risks with known odds of success to ambiguous prospects in which the probabilities are unknown. Professor Colman and colleagues modelled this phenomenon in games (strategic ambiguity aversion) and showed that it influences the actions of players in a variety of games.

Further studies examined:

• Overconfidence effects in chance-based and skill-based market entry games, designed to model decisions of entrepreneurs starting up new businesses.
• The communication of confidence in interpersonal exchanges of uncertain information when players are motivated to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes in pure coordination games.
• The likelihood that decision makers will be more motivated by the common interests of their group, rather than their individual utilities, if they can be confident that the other group members are motivated by similar 'team reasoning'.

The research findings of Professor Colman and colleagues have potential implications for training commercial and political decision makers and advising government ministers, health care professionals, and others regarding the most effective ways of framing public information on issues such as vaccination and environmental protection.

Publications

(For more information and PDFs see CID Project Page)

Bolger, F., Pulford, B. D., & Colman, A. M. (2008). Market entry decisions: Effects of absolute and relative confidence. Experimental Psychology, 55, 113-120.

Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., & Rose, J. (2008). Collective rationality in interactive decisions: Evidence for team reasoning. Acta Psychologica, 128, 387-397. [Target article]

Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., & Rose, J. (2008). Team reasoning and collective rationality: Piercing the veil of obviousness. Acta Psychologica, 128, 409-412. [Reply to commentaries]

Pulford, B. D., & Colman, A. M. (2008). Size doesn’t really matter: Ambiguity aversion in Ellsberg urns with few balls. Experimental Psychology, 55, 31-37.

Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., & Bolger, F. (2007). Asymmetric dominance and phantom decoy effects in games. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 104, 193-206.

Pulford, B. D. (2009). Is luck on my side? Optimism, pessimism, and ambiguity aversion. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 1079 - 1087.

Pulford, B. D., & Colman, A. M. (2007). Ambiguous games: Evidence for strategic ambiguity aversion. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 1083-1100.