Other Research

I have a variety of other research interests and projects going on as well. Usually, I am drawn into these side projects through the expert persuasive abilities of a collaborator. They represent a wide range of interests, I know, but then... psychology is interesting, otherwise I wouldn't be in it!

Priming of Risk Preference

There is a great deal of research on how non-conscious priming influences behavior. One question I have been aiming to answer is whether one can prime risk-seeking or risk-averse behavior, and how one might go about doing so. The data clearly shows that it is possible to prime risk seeking, and I am working with my collaborators to come up with more effective means of doing so.

Intertemporal Discounting

An often overlooked decision that people frequently are faced with is WHEN to consume an item. Do you want the chocolate bar now, or next week? Although normative models assume that people will immediately consume goods if they can, some research suggests that under some circumstances people prefer to delay consumption. My collaborators and I are looking at how risk and uncertainty impact people's decisions on when to consume goods. Further, we investigate whether framing -- the manner in which a decision is presented -- can influence intertemporal decisions under conditions of uncertainty.

Increasing Statistical Power

On a whim, I decided to run a study to look at whether participants actually read the instructions I give them during my tasks. I was stunned to learn that up to 30% fail to read instructions! Since then, I have been developing methods to identify those who don't read instructions, and to increase compliance with instructions. My collaborator Nick Davidenko and I have been working on computing how much statistical power these techniques gain us. The results are striking: using these techniques allows one to run up to 30% fewer subjects while maintaining power. We continue to attempt to find better ways of gaining compliance with instructions during studies.

Pragmatics and Framing Effects

Given several options, people may make different decisions depending on how those options are described. Framing effects have traditionally been considered irrational: the information hasn't changed, just the manner of presentation so why should decisions differ? My collaborator Craig Mckenzie and I have explored the possibility that the speaker's decision of how to frame the options actually reveals information about the options. Thus, using frames to make decisions may actually be rational. We have shown that when one explicitly removes pragmatic information from frames, that the influence of frames is greatly reduced.

Voting Models in Choice

In one of the more eccentric research projects I have worked on, I have explored the implications of voting models in choice. There are many possible strategies individuals could use in making a decision. What if people used several of them at once? And what if differences in the outcomes of those strategies are resolved through a voting mechanism? Although this idea seems farfetched on the surface, using simple voting geometry one can predict a number of decision anomales that have posed major challenges to most theories of decision making. While the theory (at the moment) is rather underconstrained, it does provide an interesting alternative to utility based decision models.

Pointing

This project is really the brainchild of my friend and collaborator Adrian Bangerter . Adrian and I became interested in pointing gestures. In particular, how good were viewers of a point at determining what the pointer was pointing to? What followed was a series of studies in which we learned that pointers weren't actually pointing at what they were trying to point to, and guessers had trouble determining what was being pointed to. We used some very interesting methodologies in looking at these questions. Ask me for details sometime.

Looking and Lying

In communicating about the world around us, it is unsurprising that eye movements and speech are closely linked; after all, people are inclined to look at the things that they think about. Although the link between gaze and speech may not be surprising, its time course is puzzling. Object recognition takes only from 50 to 150 ms However, gazes associated with referring to objects usually persist for 500-1500 ms. So what's going on in that intervening time? My collaborator Zenzi Griffin and I have investigated whether these gazes are used in an attempt to retrieve the label for the object that the speaker is gazing at. By asking speakers to give inaccurate descriptions of scenes, we can decouple what a person is gazing at, from the word he/she is attempting to retrieve. These studies have indicated that people may not be looking at content at all, but are merely marking the spatial location of the object.

Go back to my main page.