The dual-process model of moral judgment proposes that utilitarian choices arise from reflective processes that can override intuitive, rule-based responses. Yet most supporting evidence relies on sacrificial dilemmas with limited ecological validity and problematic associations with antisocial traits. This preregistered study investigated whether individual differences in reflection predict utilitarian behavior in an incentivized setting. At Time 1, 1,200 U.S. participants completed performance-based measures of reflection, reasoning ability, dispositional thinking styles, and the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (OUS). Seventeen months later, 321 participants completed a monetary moral dilemma with real economic consequences and reported their moral justifications. Initial measures of reflection, including the Cognitive Performance Test, Raven’s matrices, and open-minded thinking, predicted utilitarian behavior. Neither impartial beneficence nor instrumental harm subscales of the OUS predicted utilitarian behavior. Exploratory analyses showed that religiosity moderated the reflection–utilitarian behavior association: reflection predicted utilitarian behavior more strongly among non-believers than believers. These findings highlight reflection as a predictor of utilitarian behavior across time, question the validity of self-report utilitarianism scales such as the OUS, and underscore the importance of religious belief in cognitive reflection when examining individual differences in moral behavior.
What is the best way to elicit forecasts if the goal is to measure the skill of forecasters? For continuous outcomes, there are two common approaches: elicit probabilities at fixed quantiles of the outcome distribution (e.g., what is the probability gas will cost less than $4.00 per gallon in 1 month?), or elicit quantiles at fixed probabilities (e.g., what is the price such that there is a 25% chance a gallon of gas will cost less than it in 1 month?). We compare these methods using a simulation study and a longitudinal survey in which 1,194 participants provided five waves of forecasts in both formats on a total of 36 real-world questions. Although probability elicitation is more ubiquitous in the literature, we show in our simulation and survey data that quantile elicitation allows us to estimate forecaster skill more efficiently with less measurement error. While quantile elicitation is time-consuming and associated with comprehension difficulty indicated by incoherent forecasts (violations of monotonicity), there is a clear reduction in incoherence across survey waves, suggesting comprehension of the quantile elicitation format improves with practice and is trainable.
How the odds of winning a casino game are presented impacts whether individuals understand and how they perceive those odds. When framed in terms of what the player will win (return to player), younger and middle-aged adults have lower comprehension and higher perceived chances of winning than when the same odds are framed in terms of what the casino will keep (house edge), suggesting a classic framing effect. In the current study, we tested whether older (mean age = 69.01, SD = 3.02) and younger adults (mean age = 23.50, SD = 3.02) differ in their susceptibility to this framing effect and how measures of positivity, risk propensity, and financial exploitation vulnerability impact understanding and perceptions. Across both age groups, comprehension was lower and perceived chances of winning were higher in the return-to-player condition. Age alone did not predict comprehension, but older adults were less optimistic about coming out ahead, were less risk seeking, and self-reported lower financial exploitation vulnerability than younger adults. Exploratory mediation analyses revealed that lower financial exploitation vulnerability partially explained older adults’ reduced belief that they would win, particularly in the return-to-player frame. Together, these findings suggest that age differences in gambling perceptions reflect trait-level differences in financial vigilance and affective outlook rather than chronological age alone .
Decades of research in judgment and decision making highlight the significant impact of defaults, in which individuals tend to accept preselected options. While some scholars argue that individuals exhibit ‘default neglect’, failing to strategically use defaults for economic or social gain, others suggest people are default aware and capable of using defaults to their advantage. To further investigate default neglect, we conducted 3 experiments in which participants acted as default setters in a decision-making ‘card game’ involving players with aligned, misaligned, unknown, or neutral interests. Across experiments, participants consistently selected high-value cards as defaults for aligned players and low-value cards for opponents. In Experiment 2, they were also willing to override preselected defaults even at a hypothetical cost when it benefited their interests. Experiment 3 revealed that participants could accurately infer which option was better based on the default-setting behavior of others, suggesting they expect others to use defaults strategically. Across all experiments, participants chose the optimal default in over 80% of trials. Together, the results challenge the idea of default neglect and suggest that individuals are attuned to and capable of leveraging defaults to influence others.
Despite its well-established predictive validity across indicators of rationality and sound decision-making, actively open-minded thinking (AOT) remains understudied in adolescent populations. Even less is known about educational activities that might cultivate AOT during adolescence. The present study had two aims: first, to examine the psychometric functioning of existing AOT items in adolescents, and second, to investigate whether participation in competitive debate is associated with longitudinal change in AOT. The first measurement point included 420 high school students (69.5% girls; M = 16.20 years). Longitudinal analyses included 161 participants (73.3% girls; M = 16.55 years), with the primary comparison focusing on 40 debaters and 101 non-debate/non-journalism students. Psychometric analyses indicated substantial item heterogeneity and method effects related to item keying. Although a shorter positively worded item subset showed good internal coherence, its construct coverage and criterion validity were more limited than expected. For the longitudinal analyses, we therefore prioritized broader construct coverage over factorial purity. Debaters showed an increase in AOT over the course of a single semester, whereas the non-debate comparison group remained essentially unchanged. Exploratory item-level analyses suggested that debate-related change was most visible in openness to opposing perspectives, engagement with disagreement, and active search for reasons why one might be wrong. Although the observational design prevents causal conclusions, the findings point to competitive debate as a promising context for fostering AOT in adolescence and highlight the need for future research using larger samples, additional measurement points, and multimethod assessments.
