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The Study Of Double-dimension Cognitive Mechanisms Of Framing Effect In Entrepreneurial Risky Decision-making: A Cognitive Inertia Perspective

Posted on:2009-02-06Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:J Y DuanFull Text:PDF
GTID:1119360272962304Subject:Applied Psychology
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As the development of economy and society, entrepreneurship increasingly becomes the subject of modern times. In academia, entrepreneurship also attracts the attention of scholars from economy, management, industrial & organizational psychology, etc. Entrepreneurship is a process involving risk, so risk-taking is one of the dimensions of entrepreneurship. Simon (1997) once said that management is decision-making. So, the entrepreneurial decision-making process which includes risks is essentially a risky decision-making process. Risky choice framing effect was first found in 1981 by the 2002 Nobel economy laureate Daniel Kahneman and his coauthor Amos Tversky, it is a classic anomaly that descriptive theory is against normative theory. Although framing effect is not complex, it represents a number of realistic human thinking processes. Traditionally, framing effect is explained by prospect theory, but this explanation is short of cognitive factors besides kind of vicious circle. To fill in this gap, based on samples with work experience and arts specialty, through 6 between-subject design experiments which supplemented with questionnaires, this study explored the features of risky-choice framing effect in entrepreneurial condition as well as its cognitive mechanism, from cognitive resource and cognitive inertia perspectives.Study 1 explored the effect of construct inertia which includes entrepreneurial decision construct and human cognition construct:In the perspective of entrepreneurial decision construction, Subsrudy 1 explored the features of entrepreneurial risky choice framing effect. Specifically, the research explored the impact of payoff, probability and social cues (including entrepreneurship intention and aspiration level) on risky framing effect. We inferred that those factors in relation to survival and adaptation, for instance, entrepreneurship intention in our entrepreneurship condition, are dominant social cues which will impact risky decision-making and framing effect. The specific findings included that (1) high payoff lead to conservative choice; (2) both in lose framing and in win framing, as the probability increased, people tended to choose the risky option; (3) people with high entrepreneurship intention liked to choose the risky option. Additionally, those with high aspiration levels showed the tendency of taking risk. In conclusion, risky framing effect did not emerge in any positive (or win) and negative (or lose) framing scenarios. It is produced in risk preference dilemma or ambiguous situation which lacks dominant entrepreneurial cues or construction inertia is high; While Tversky and Kahneman (1981) found the framing effect, they also found that not everyone is susceptive to it. Which sorts of person are easily affected by framing effect? That is the focus of substudy 2. Testified by high and low education level groups and two entrepreneurship risky decision-making scenarios, study 2 found consistent results that certain cognitive styles including cognitive motive and need for cognition, as well as depth of processing and intrinsic self-relevance, affected entrepreneurial risky decision-making and entrepreneurial risky framing effect. We found that loss-framing scenario inspired people's motive for pursuing potential so as to take risks, win-framing scenario inspired motive for conservation. In addition, we also found that those with high need for cognition were more likely immune to framing effect, the depth of information processing and intrinsic self-relevance could aggravate this phenomenon. These results confirmed arguments that "more thought less framing" and "cognitive inertia leads to framing effect", specifically, maybe people have the intrinsic tendency of shallow thinking (low need for cognition) or the condition need not people think deeply (low intrinsic self-relevance), the combination makes the framing effect conspicuous.Study 2 was conducted from "feature" and "relationship" perspectives to explore the influence of cognitive factors on entrepreneurial risky framing effect, whereas study 2 will be conducted from the perspective of cognitive framing, deeply explored the cognition of processing and its neurological base, study 2 includs three substudy:Substudy 1 compared the explanations of three competing cognitive theories, namely, prospect theory, fuzzy-trace theory and probabilistic mental model, on entrepreneurial risky framing effect. The result showed that fuzzy-trace theory had the best fit, the questionnaire outcome continued to support this view. The result testified repeatedly the cognitive inertia hypothesis, and confirmed the argument that framing effect was domain-specific.Fuzzy-trace theory described the cognitive mechanism for entrepreneurial risky framing effect in a qualitative way, but it was not so clear about the specific steps. So, following cognitive inertia hypothesis, substudy 2 explored the explanation of priority heuristic on entrepreneurial risky framing effect. Priority heuristic integrates many findings of descriptive theory. Substudy 2 found that it could also explain entrepreneurial risky framing effect. Substudy 2 also found that the response time was shorter, and the choice proportion was higher for those scenarios with less choosing reasons, these results support the existence of priority rule, stopping rule and decision rule which confirm the priority heuristic as a process model. This insight-style decision processes saved cognitive resources greatly and represented the features of "direct, fast and frugal" of heuristic.Substudy 3 explored the substance base or hemisphere orientation of entrepreneurial risky framing effect. Research by hemisphere activation and by questionnaire survey both approved that the right hemisphere was related to entrepreneurial risky framing effect. The result was agreement with past research with different decision conditions. This indicated that it was identical in the deepest reason of framing effect for different decision conditions, though there were differences for social cues and best cognitive theory. The result of study 5 repeatedly supported the preceding findings, for instance, "high cognitive inertia, less cognitive resources, more framing effects", fuzzy-trace processing, and insight-style "direct, fast and frugal" heuristic. These processes are related to the function of right hemisphere while are inconsistent with the function of left hemisphere.Based on resources view of cognition and human cognitive inertia hypothesis, this study explored and testified the double-dimension cognitive mechanisms of entrepreneurial risky framing effect. These serial processes showed consistent and reinforcing characteristics. Our results could be explained from two perspectives, one is construction and cognition inertia, and the other is cognitive resource expenditure or framing inertia. In ambiguous entrepreneurial decision scenarios, for short of social cues and limitation of cognitive resources, people come up with expanding or condensing cognition to positive and negative descriptive semantic cues; or for the sake of the neglect of contextual information and generalization of number information, representing by fuzzy-trace style gist or heuristic processing could also lead to expanding or condensing cognition for original information. This is the process of production of entrepreneurial risky framing effect. The whole process is connected with the function of right hemisphere. We concluded our findings and named it cognitive inertia based "construction-framing" double-dimension model for the cognitive mechanism of entrepreneurial risky framing effect. We discussed our results in the end of the study.
Keywords/Search Tags:entrepreneurship, framing effect, prospect theory, fuzzy-trace theory, construct inertia, cognitive process inertia
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