7,068 research outputs found
Decision Makers Conceive of Their Choices as Interventions
No full textCausal considerations must be relevant for those making decisions. Whether to bring an umbrella or leave it at home depends on the causal consequences of these options. However, Most Current decision theories do not address causal reasoning. Here, the authors propose a causal model theory of choice based oil causal Bayes nets. The critical ideas are (a) that people decide using causal models of the decision situation and (b) that people conceive of their own choice as an intervention. Four corroborating experiments are reported. The first 2 experiments showed that participants chose on the basis of the causal structure underlying a choice scenario rather than the statistical relation among actions and outcomes. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that participants treated choices and interventions similarly. They also suggest that decision makers use causal models to derive inferences about expected outcomes. Boundary conditions on causal decision making and examples of faulty causal inferences in choice (e.g.. self-deception) are discussed
The causal psycho-logic of choice
No full textChoices do not merely identify one option among a set of possibilities; choosing is an intervention, an action that changes the world. As a result, good decision making generally requires a model specifying how actions are causally related to outcomes. Interventions license different inferences than observations because an event whose state has been determined by intervention is not diagnostic of the normal causes of that event. We integrate these ideas into a causal framework for decision making based on causal Bayes nets theory, and suggest that deliberate decision making is based on simplified causal models and imaginary interventions. The framework is consistent with what we know so far about how people make decisions
Causality in Solving Economic Problems
No full textThe role of causal beliefs in people’s decisions when faced with economic problems was investigated. Two experiments are reported that vary the causal structure in prisoner’s dilemma-like economic situations. We measured willingness to cooperate or defect and collected justifications and think-aloud protocols to examine the strategies that people used to perform the tasks. We found: (i) Individuals who assumed a direct causal influence of their own action upon their competitor’s action tended to be more cooperative in competitive situations. (ii) A variety of different strategies was used to perform these tasks. (iii) Strategies indicative of a direct causal influence led to more cooperation. (iv) Temporal cues were not enough for participants to infer a particular causal relation. It is concluded that people are sensitive to causal structure in these situations, a result consistent with a causal model theory of choice (Sloman & Hagmayer, 2006)
Causality in Solving Economic Problems
No full textThe role of causal beliefs in people’s decisions when faced with economic problems was investigated. Two experiments are reported that vary the causal structure in prisoner’s dilemma-like economic situations. We measured willingness to cooperate or defect and collected justifications and think-aloud protocols to examine the strategies that people used to perform the tasks. We found: (i) Individuals who assumed a direct causal influence of their own action upon their competitor’s action tended to be more cooperative in competitive situations. (ii) A variety of different strategies was used to perform these tasks. (iii) Strategies indicative of a direct causal influence led to more cooperation. (iv) Temporal cues were not enough for participants to infer a particular causal relation. It is concluded that people are sensitive to causal structure in these situations, a result consistent with a causal model theory of choice (Sloman & Hagmayer, 2006)
Self-deception requires vagueness
No full textThe paper sets out to reveal conditions enabling diagnostic self-deception, people's tendency to deceive themselves about the diagnostic value of their own actions. We characterize different types of self-deception in terms of the distinction between intervention and observation in causal reasoning. One type arises when people intervene but choose to view their actions as observations in order to find support for a self-serving diagnosis. We hypothesized that such self-deception depends on imprecision in the environment that allows leeway to represent one's own actions as either observations or interventions. Four experiments tested this idea using a dot-tracking task. Participants were told to go as quickly as they could and that going fast indicated either above-average or below-average intelligence. Precision was manipulated by varying the vagueness in feedback about performance. As predicted, self-deception was observed only when feedback on the task used vague terms rather than precise values. The diagnosticity of the feedback did not matter. (C) 2009 Elsevier By. All rights reserved
Effort denial in self-deception
No full textWe propose a mixed belief model of self-deception. According to the theory, people distribute belief over two possible causal paths to an action, one where the action is freely chosen and one where it is due to factors outside of conscious control. Self-deceivers take advantage of uncertainty about the influence of each path on their behavior, and shift weight between them in a self-serving way. This allows them to change their behavior to provide positive evidence and deny doing so, enabling diagnostic inference to a desired trait. In Experiment 1, women changed their pain tolerance to provide positive evidence about the future quality of their skin, but judgments of effort claimed the opposite. This "effort denial" suggests that participants' mental representation of their behavior was dissociated from their actual behavior, facilitating self-deception. Experiment 2 replicated the pattern in a hidden picture task where search performance was purportedly linked to self-control. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
Steven Bialer and Patti Smith, July 1978
No full textMusician, poet, and author Patti Smith sits on a bed in a hotel room in July 1978. The photograph was taken by Don Hamerman as part of a session for "Unicorn Times," an alternative performing arts periodical in Washington, D.C. Steven Bialer, the Design Director for "Unicorn Times," is seated on the bed next to Smith
Steven Garber
No full textSteven Garber speaks on the importance and value of truth.
Steven Garber is the principal of The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture, which is focused on reframing the way people understand life, especially the meaning of vocation and the common good. A consultant to foundations, corporations and educational institutions, he is a teacher of many people in many places. The author of The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior, and Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good, he is also a contributor to the books, Faith Goes to Work: Reflections from the Marketplace, and Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue. He lives with his wife Meg in Virginia
Landsat MSS classification of fire fuel types in Wood Buffalo National Park, northern Canada
No full textJ1: Global Ecology & Biogeography Letters; M3: Article; Milne, David Franklin, Steven E. Wilson, Bradley A. Ghitter, Geoff Heathcott, Mark McCaffrey, Thomas M. Ow, Charlotte F. Y.; Source Information: Mar1994, Vol. 4 Issue 2, p33; Subject Term: FOREST fires; Author-Supplied Keyword: Canada (Wood Buffalo National Park); Author-Supplied Keyword: Forest fire; Author-Supplied Keyword: Fuel type classification; Author-Supplied Keyword: Landsat data; Number of Pages: 0p; Document Type: Articl
Interview with Steven A. Barnes, October 19, 2010
No full textInterview Themes: How Barnes came to be interested in the gulag (00:57)
The evolution of Barnes's gulag project (04:12)
The argument of Barnes's forthcoming book and how it will likely be received (18:32)
Most interesting and exciting directions in Soviet historiography now (32:10)Interview with Steven A. Barnes, Associate Professor of History at George Mason University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on October 19, 2010. Professor Barnes is the author of the book Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society, which is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in 2011. Barnes is also the author of a website on the history of the gulag called Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives.1_yvj84mn
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