Rationality and Situational Strength: Using Strong Situations to Debias Decision-Making
Open Access
- Author:
- Boemerman, Louis
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- October 19, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Rustin David Meyer, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
James Marshall Lebreton, Committee Member
Stephen Jeffrey Wilson, Committee Member
Kristin Ann Buss, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- situational strength
decision-making
rationality
decision-making styles - Abstract:
- The human condition is marked by irrational tendencies in behavior, thinking, and decision-making (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). However, disparate literatures have found that there are stable individual differences in rational decision-making tendencies (Scott & Bruce, 2005), and the expression of individual differences in general can be influenced by the strength of situations (Meyer, Dalal, & Hermida, 2010). Combining these ideas, the primary goal of this paper was to test whether the expression of individual differences in rationality can be influenced by situational strength in order to encourage those who are most prone to irrational decision-making styles to use more rational strategies. This goal was accomplished through a 3 x 2 online decision-making experiment using undergraduate students with “strong,” “moderate,” and “weak” situational strength as the three levels of IV1 and “General” and “Rationality-Specific” situational strength as the two levels of IV2. I hypothesized that participants in the conditions that emphasize rational behavior will be more likely to engage in rational decision-making behavior, thereby performing better on the decision-making task than participants in the “general” situational strength conditions or the control condition. I also hypothesized that this relationship is mediated by increased time spent on the task. Lastly, I also hypothesized that participants in the general situational strength conditions would be more likely to rely on their intuition and engage in less rational decision-making behavior, and therefore perform worse on the decision-making task than participants in the “rational” situational strength conditions. Findings indicated that while rational decision-making style and rational situational strength both predicted decision-making performance, time spent on task had no impact on these relationships.