The Effect Of Decision Maker’s Roles And Related Variables On Risk Decision And Intertemporal Decision

In our daily lives, people often need to make different decisions. Other than making decisions for oneself, making decisions for others and predicting others’ decisions are also quite common and relates to many decision fields, such as public decision making, entrepreneurial decision making, and even parents’ decision making in raising their children. The impact of decision makers’ roles on decision behaviors has received increasing attention from researchers.Specifically, risk decisions and intertemporal decisions are two of the most typical decision types, therefore, the study of the effects of decision makers’ roles on risk decision and intertemporal decision has important theoretical and practical implications.This study first reviewed previous studies on decision makers’ roles and related issues, which has demonstrated some different behavioral patterns associated with decision makers’ roles. However, inconsistent results exist among these studies due to their different experimental designs. For example, some compared decision making for oneself with decision making for others while other studies compared decision making for oneself with predicting decision making of others. It is still not clear if decision making for others is different from predicting decision making of others. This study included three different types of decision makers—making decisions for oneself, for others, and predicting decisions other other—to gain a deeper understanding of the self-other decision making bias.In the first part of this study, a questionnaire was used to explore difference among three decision makers’ roles. The results showed that different decision makers had different risk preference and intertemporal choices. In addition, such difference was also moderated by risk decision domain, gain-loss frames, delay time etc., the degree and direction of which had some inconsistent results.Based on the first part, an experiment was held using computer simulation in the money domain with different elicitation modes to further explore the decision makers’ roles effect. The results showed:(1) in risky decision, subjects in loss frame had higher risk scores in comparison to gain frame; and in intertemporal decision, under matching mode, subjects in loss frame had lower time discount rate than in gain frame, which was found in select mode;(2) in the loss frame of matching mode, predicting others’decisions had higher risk scores than making decisions for others, and had higher time discount rate than decision making for self. However, no such difference was found in the gain frame;(3) in comparison to the select mode, higher risk score and time discount rate were observed under the matching mode, but no different behavioral patterns associated with decision makers’roles was found;(4) risk decision and intertemporal decision exhibited certain similarity in individual decision-making preferences, suggesting that there might be some similar underlying psychological processes between them.In the end, the whole study was summarized along with the discussion on the practical implications, limitations of this study, and potential future studies.