{"pk":28887,"title":"Decision-makers minimize regret when calculating regret is easy","subtitle":null,"abstract":"This paper provides empirical evidence that human decision-\nmakers use prospective regret minimization as their dominant\ndecision strategy when regret calculations are cognitively\neasier to perform, and use expected utility maximization when\nthey aren't. We designed a simple decision problem wherein\nutility maximization and expected regret minimization yield\ndistinctly difference choices, and manipulated the cognitive\neffort involved in making regret calculations across\nrespondent samples to arrive at our results. While previous\nresearch has associated ecological considerations like sense of\nresponsibility and familiarity with this difference, we show\nthat, at least in experimental settings, cognitive calculability\nin regret space appears to predominantly drive this difference.\nWe also show that this preference for regret minimization can\nbe countermanded by changing the distribution of options\npresented to the respondent, posing a challenge to simple\nsequential accounts of strategy selection learning which\nsequence strategy selection and application in order.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"decision-making; cognitive heuristics; cognitive\neffort; regret minimization; utility maximization"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/51t5x280","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Nisheeth","middle_name":"","last_name":"Srivastava","name_suffix":"","institution":"IIT Kanpur","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2019-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28887/galley/18758/download/"}]}