Irwin P Levin
Biographic Data
| ID | 795239 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Irwin P Levin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Irwin P |
| FAMILY NAME | Levin |
| SIGNATURE | LEVIN I P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Iowa |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 199 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Increased levels of autistic traits are associated with atypical moral judgments
Despite evidence often showing differences between groups with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and neurotypical controls in moral judgment, the precise nature of these differences has been difficult to establish. At least two reasons for this are (1) that ASD (and its associated characteristics) is difficult to define and (2) that morality, and the inclinations that undergird it, are hard to measure empirically. These challenges have made conclusi…
Thinking about decisions
Decisions vary. They may vary in both content and complexity. People also vary. An important way that people vary is how much they think. Some prior research investigating thinking and decision making largely conflicts with most traditional decision theories. For example, if considering an array of products to choose from, thinking more about the alternative's attributes should lead to a better decision. However, some research indicates that thin…
Preadolescent Decision‐Making Competence Predicts Interpersonal Strengths and Difficulties
Recent research has demonstrated that decision‐making competence (DMC), a latent construct reflecting individual differences in rational thought, is predictive of real‐world decision outcomes at various stages of life. This construct has been shown to be associated with concurrent and retrospective accounts of health‐risking behavior, but its predictive validity has yet to be demonstrated. In the present study, we examine this issue using a 2‐yea…
Individual Differences in Risky Decision Making
To represent the state‐of‐the‐art in an effort to understand the relation between personality and risk taking, we selected a popular decision task with characteristics that parallel risk taking in the real world and two personality traits commonly believed to influence risk taking. A meta‐analysis is presented based on 22 studies of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task from which correlations with sensation seeking and impulsivity assessments could be …
Numeracy as a Predictor of Adaptive Risky Decision Making
Numeracy or one's ability to appropriately process and use numerical information has been shown to be an important individual difference factor in decision making. The current study utilized a risky decision‐making task (called the “cups task”) in which choices are made to both earn and avoid losing hypothetical money. Critically, this design allowed investigators to examine numeracy‐related differences in adaptive decision‐making as measured by …
Individual Differences in Decision‐making Competence
no abstract available
Assessment of Decision‐making Competence in Preadolescence
Recent research using late adolescent (18–19 years) and adult samples suggests that within‐subject performance on a variety of standard, controlled laboratory tasks reflects a higher‐order positive manifold of decision‐making competence. The present paper extends this important work by testing whether preadolescent children (10‐ to 11‐year‐olds, n = 101) exhibit a similar structural pattern characterizing their decision‐making performance. Perfor…
Trajectory of risky decision making for potential gains and losses from ages 5 to 85
The ability to make advantageous decisions in the face of uncertainty is an essential human skill, yet the development of such abilities over the lifespan is still not well understood. In the current study, from childhood through older adulthood, we tracked the developmental trajectory of risk taking for gains and losses, and expected value (EV) sensitivity in risky choices. In the gain domain, risk‐taking decreased consistently across the lifesp…
Stability of choices in a risky decision‐making task
In a 3‐year follow‐up to Levin and Hart's ( 2003 ) study, we observed the same children, now 9–11 years old, and their parents in the same risky decision‐making task. At the aggregate level the same pattern of means was observed across time periods. At the individual level the key variables were significantly correlated across time periods for both children and adults. Taken together with the results from the original study and earlier studies, t…
Separating Gender Biases in Screening and Selecting Candidates for Hiring and Firing
A two-stage procedure (consideration set formation and final choice) was used to track the emergence of gender biases in hiring and firing decisions. Participants were allowed to select their own strategy for narrowing choice options (which candidates to retain or which candidates to delete). Each of the two experiments included a condition where job candidates were considered for hiring and a condition where current employees were considered for…
Risk preferences in young children
New methods were developed for studying risky decision making in children as young as age five. Each child was given a block of ‘gain’ trials, for example, a choice between a sure gain of one prize and a 50:50 chance of gaining either two prizes or no prize, and a block of ‘loss’ trials, for example, a choice between a sure loss of one prize and a 50:50 chance of losing either two prizes or no prize. We were thus able to compare risky choice for …
A New Look at Framing Effects
Relating individual differences in Attitude toward Ambiguity to risky choices
Subjects (76 adult Italians of varying ages) completed a two‐part procedure. One part used an Ellsberg‐type task which allowed for both aggregate and individual level analysis of Attitude toward Ambiguity. The other part used an expanded risky choice task to assess the same subjects' Attitude toward Risk. While there was an overall tendency for subjects to be slightly ambiguity‐averse, there was a positive correlation between Attitude toward Ambi…
Relating individual differences in Attitude toward Ambiguity to risky choices
Subjects (76 adult Italians of varying ages) completed a two-part procedure. One part used an Ellsberg-type task which allowed for both aggregate and individual level analysis of Attitude toward Ambiguity. The other part used an expanded risky choice task to assess the same subjects' Attitude toward Risk. While there was an overall tendency for subjects to be slightly ambiguity-averse, there was a positive correlation between Attitude toward Ambi…
Prescreening of choice options in ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ decision‐making tasks
Research on prescreening processes in decision making was extended by manipulating task valence in a series of three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, half the subjects had the ‘positive’ task of screening and then selecting someone to hire for a job and half had the ‘negative’ task of screening and then selecting someone to fire, where the choice options (worker descriptions) were the same in each task. In Experiment 1 some subjects were inst…
All Frames Are Not Created Equal
Choosing versus rejecting options at different stages of decision making
In each of two experiments respondents were asked to narrow a given set of multiattribute options to a final choice in three successive stages. Some participants were asked to record which options they would include at each stage while others were asked to record which options they would exclude at each stage. The choice options in Experiment 1 were 24 alternative automobile descriptions, while in Experiment 2 participants were presented with 32 …
Need for Cognition and Choice Framing Effects
Two experiments tested the hypothesis that framing biases in decision making would affect more strongly individuals with relatively low levels of need for cognition (NC). Participants were classified as high or low NC based on responses to a standard scale and subsequently were exposed to one of two framings of a choice problem. Different choice problems were used in each experiment, modeled after those developed by Kahneman and Tversky. Experime…
A New Laboratory Method for Altering Positive Affect
This paper reports the development with 95 undergraduates of a new method for altering Positive Affect in the laboratory. The method consists of assigning persons to complete a boring task for a specific amount of time and shortly after beginning the task, informing them that the assigned time period has either been increased or reduced. The advantages of this method are that it is effective, relatively free of demand characteristics, ethical, fa…
Order effects in belief updating with consistent and inconsistent evidence
The current study tests for the presence of differential order effects in evaluation tasks with consistent and inconsistent evidence as predicted by the Hogarth and Einhorn (1992) belief‐adjustment model. The results, based on both between‐subjects and within‐subjects experiments, demonstrate that there were significant recency effects with inconsistent evidence as predicted, larger recency effects when the inconsistent evidence was farther apart…
Risk taking, frame of reference, and characterization of victim groups in Aids treatment decisions
Confidence in judgments based on incomplete information
This study assessed how confidence in judgments is affected by the need to make inferences about missing information. Subjects indicated their likelihood of taking each of a series of gambles based on both probability and payoff information or only one of these sources of information. They also rated their confidence in each likelihood judgment. Subjects in the Explicit Inference condition were asked to explicitly estimate the values of missing i…
Information framing effects in social and personal decisions
How Consumers are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information Before and After Consuming the Product
Consumers rated several qualitative attributes of ground beef that framed the beef as either “75% lean” or “25% fat.” The consumers' evaluations were more favorable toward the beef labeled “75% lean” than that labeled “25% fat.” More importantly, the magnitude of this information framing effect lessened when consumers actually tasted the meat. We discuss these results in terms of an averaging model, which suggests that a diagnostic product experi…
How information frame influences risky decisions
How Consumers are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information Before and After Consuming the Product
Consumers rated several qualitative attributes of ground beef that framed the beef as either “75% lean” or “25% fat.” The consumers' evaluations were more favorable toward the beef labeled “75% lean” than that labeled “25% fat.” More importantly, the magnitude of this information framing effect lessened when consumers actually tasted the meat. We discuss these results in terms of an averaging model, which suggests that a diagnostic product experi…
Information framing effects in social and personal decisions
Risk taking, frame of reference, and characterization of victim groups in Aids treatment decisions
Individual Differences in Risky Decision Making
To represent the state‐of‐the‐art in an effort to understand the relation between personality and risk taking, we selected a popular decision task with characteristics that parallel risk taking in the real world and two personality traits commonly believed to influence risk taking. A meta‐analysis is presented based on 22 studies of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task from which correlations with sensation seeking and impulsivity assessments could be …
Trajectory of risky decision making for potential gains and losses from ages 5 to 85
The ability to make advantageous decisions in the face of uncertainty is an essential human skill, yet the development of such abilities over the lifespan is still not well understood. In the current study, from childhood through older adulthood, we tracked the developmental trajectory of risk taking for gains and losses, and expected value (EV) sensitivity in risky choices. In the gain domain, risk‐taking decreased consistently across the lifesp…
More Than Meets the Eye
Information integration models have generally assumed that individuals making evaluations ignore attributes for which no information is available. However, recent evidence indicates that individuals make inferences about missing information and that these inferences have a predictable influence on the evaluations being made. The present study required individuals to evaluate television purchases, which were described by varying amounts of informa…
Stability of choices in a risky decision‐making task
In a 3‐year follow‐up to Levin and Hart's ( 2003 ) study, we observed the same children, now 9–11 years old, and their parents in the same risky decision‐making task. At the aggregate level the same pattern of means was observed across time periods. At the individual level the key variables were significantly correlated across time periods for both children and adults. Taken together with the results from the original study and earlier studies, t…
Risk preferences in young children
New methods were developed for studying risky decision making in children as young as age five. Each child was given a block of ‘gain’ trials, for example, a choice between a sure gain of one prize and a 50:50 chance of gaining either two prizes or no prize, and a block of ‘loss’ trials, for example, a choice between a sure loss of one prize and a 50:50 chance of losing either two prizes or no prize. We were thus able to compare risky choice for …
Confidence in judgments based on incomplete information
This study assessed how confidence in judgments is affected by the need to make inferences about missing information. Subjects indicated their likelihood of taking each of a series of gambles based on both probability and payoff information or only one of these sources of information. They also rated their confidence in each likelihood judgment. Subjects in the Explicit Inference condition were asked to explicitly estimate the values of missing i…
Impression formation as a function of source credibility and order of presentation of contradictory information
How information frame influences risky decisions
The effects of income and inflation on personal satisfaction
Relating individual differences in Attitude toward Ambiguity to risky choices
Subjects (76 adult Italians of varying ages) completed a two‐part procedure. One part used an Ellsberg‐type task which allowed for both aggregate and individual level analysis of Attitude toward Ambiguity. The other part used an expanded risky choice task to assess the same subjects' Attitude toward Risk. While there was an overall tendency for subjects to be slightly ambiguity‐averse, there was a positive correlation between Attitude toward Ambi…
Order effects in belief updating with consistent and inconsistent evidence
The current study tests for the presence of differential order effects in evaluation tasks with consistent and inconsistent evidence as predicted by the Hogarth and Einhorn (1992) belief‐adjustment model. The results, based on both between‐subjects and within‐subjects experiments, demonstrate that there were significant recency effects with inconsistent evidence as predicted, larger recency effects when the inconsistent evidence was farther apart…
Estimating Price-Quality Tradeoffs Using Comparative Judgments
A subtractive model was found to describe how subjects traded off price and quality values when equating two purchases of ground beef. Derived estimates of price change per unit of quality varied as a function of whether price or quality judgments were required and whether the quality dimension was expressed in positive (percent lean) or negative terms (percent fat). Results were discussed in terms of factors that affect the generality of conclus…
Numeracy as a Predictor of Adaptive Risky Decision Making
Numeracy or one's ability to appropriately process and use numerical information has been shown to be an important individual difference factor in decision making. The current study utilized a risky decision‐making task (called the “cups task”) in which choices are made to both earn and avoid losing hypothetical money. Critically, this design allowed investigators to examine numeracy‐related differences in adaptive decision‐making as measured by …
Assessment of Decision‐making Competence in Preadolescence
Recent research using late adolescent (18–19 years) and adult samples suggests that within‐subject performance on a variety of standard, controlled laboratory tasks reflects a higher‐order positive manifold of decision‐making competence. The present paper extends this important work by testing whether preadolescent children (10‐ to 11‐year‐olds, n = 101) exhibit a similar structural pattern characterizing their decision‐making performance. Perfor…
Prescreening of choice options in ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ decision‐making tasks
Research on prescreening processes in decision making was extended by manipulating task valence in a series of three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, half the subjects had the ‘positive’ task of screening and then selecting someone to hire for a job and half had the ‘negative’ task of screening and then selecting someone to fire, where the choice options (worker descriptions) were the same in each task. In Experiment 1 some subjects were inst…
Impression formation as a function of source credibility and the polarity of information
Preadolescent Decision‐Making Competence Predicts Interpersonal Strengths and Difficulties
Recent research has demonstrated that decision‐making competence (DMC), a latent construct reflecting individual differences in rational thought, is predictive of real‐world decision outcomes at various stages of life. This construct has been shown to be associated with concurrent and retrospective accounts of health‐risking behavior, but its predictive validity has yet to be demonstrated. In the present study, we examine this issue using a 2‐yea…
Individual Differences in Decision‐making Competence
no abstract available
Descriptive analysis of the effects of income and inflation on personal satisfaction
Thinking about decisions
Decisions vary. They may vary in both content and complexity. People also vary. An important way that people vary is how much they think. Some prior research investigating thinking and decision making largely conflicts with most traditional decision theories. For example, if considering an array of products to choose from, thinking more about the alternative's attributes should lead to a better decision. However, some research indicates that thin…
Relating individual differences in Attitude toward Ambiguity to risky choices
Subjects (76 adult Italians of varying ages) completed a two-part procedure. One part used an Ellsberg-type task which allowed for both aggregate and individual level analysis of Attitude toward Ambiguity. The other part used an expanded risky choice task to assess the same subjects' Attitude toward Risk. While there was an overall tendency for subjects to be slightly ambiguity-averse, there was a positive correlation between Attitude toward Ambi…
How changes in price and salary affect economic satisfaction
Impression formation as a function of source credibility and order of presentation of contradictory information
Impression formation as a function of source credibility and the polarity of information
Test of an averaging model of person preference
Changes in perceived travel cost and time for the work trip during a period of increasing gasoline costs
The effects of income and inflation on personal satisfaction
Measuring tradeoffs in carpool driving arrangement preferences
Descriptive analysis of the effects of income and inflation on personal satisfaction
Estimating Price-Quality Tradeoffs Using Comparative Judgments
A subtractive model was found to describe how subjects traded off price and quality values when equating two purchases of ground beef. Derived estimates of price change per unit of quality varied as a function of whether price or quality judgments were required and whether the quality dimension was expressed in positive (percent lean) or negative terms (percent fat). Results were discussed in terms of factors that affect the generality of conclus…
How changes in price and salary affect economic satisfaction
More Than Meets the Eye
Information integration models have generally assumed that individuals making evaluations ignore attributes for which no information is available. However, recent evidence indicates that individuals make inferences about missing information and that these inferences have a predictable influence on the evaluations being made. The present study required individuals to evaluate television purchases, which were described by varying amounts of informa…
How information frame influences risky decisions
Confidence in judgments based on incomplete information
This study assessed how confidence in judgments is affected by the need to make inferences about missing information. Subjects indicated their likelihood of taking each of a series of gambles based on both probability and payoff information or only one of these sources of information. They also rated their confidence in each likelihood judgment. Subjects in the Explicit Inference condition were asked to explicitly estimate the values of missing i…
Information framing effects in social and personal decisions
How Consumers are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information Before and After Consuming the Product
Consumers rated several qualitative attributes of ground beef that framed the beef as either “75% lean” or “25% fat.” The consumers' evaluations were more favorable toward the beef labeled “75% lean” than that labeled “25% fat.” More importantly, the magnitude of this information framing effect lessened when consumers actually tasted the meat. We discuss these results in terms of an averaging model, which suggests that a diagnostic product experi…
Risk taking, frame of reference, and characterization of victim groups in Aids treatment decisions
Order effects in belief updating with consistent and inconsistent evidence
The current study tests for the presence of differential order effects in evaluation tasks with consistent and inconsistent evidence as predicted by the Hogarth and Einhorn (1992) belief‐adjustment model. The results, based on both between‐subjects and within‐subjects experiments, demonstrate that there were significant recency effects with inconsistent evidence as predicted, larger recency effects when the inconsistent evidence was farther apart…
A New Laboratory Method for Altering Positive Affect
This paper reports the development with 95 undergraduates of a new method for altering Positive Affect in the laboratory. The method consists of assigning persons to complete a boring task for a specific amount of time and shortly after beginning the task, informing them that the assigned time period has either been increased or reduced. The advantages of this method are that it is effective, relatively free of demand characteristics, ethical, fa…
Need for Cognition and Choice Framing Effects
Two experiments tested the hypothesis that framing biases in decision making would affect more strongly individuals with relatively low levels of need for cognition (NC). Participants were classified as high or low NC based on responses to a standard scale and subsequently were exposed to one of two framings of a choice problem. Different choice problems were used in each experiment, modeled after those developed by Kahneman and Tversky. Experime…
All Frames Are Not Created Equal
Choosing versus rejecting options at different stages of decision making
In each of two experiments respondents were asked to narrow a given set of multiattribute options to a final choice in three successive stages. Some participants were asked to record which options they would include at each stage while others were asked to record which options they would exclude at each stage. The choice options in Experiment 1 were 24 alternative automobile descriptions, while in Experiment 2 participants were presented with 32 …
Relating individual differences in Attitude toward Ambiguity to risky choices
Subjects (76 adult Italians of varying ages) completed a two‐part procedure. One part used an Ellsberg‐type task which allowed for both aggregate and individual level analysis of Attitude toward Ambiguity. The other part used an expanded risky choice task to assess the same subjects' Attitude toward Risk. While there was an overall tendency for subjects to be slightly ambiguity‐averse, there was a positive correlation between Attitude toward Ambi…
Relating individual differences in Attitude toward Ambiguity to risky choices
Subjects (76 adult Italians of varying ages) completed a two-part procedure. One part used an Ellsberg-type task which allowed for both aggregate and individual level analysis of Attitude toward Ambiguity. The other part used an expanded risky choice task to assess the same subjects' Attitude toward Risk. While there was an overall tendency for subjects to be slightly ambiguity-averse, there was a positive correlation between Attitude toward Ambi…
Prescreening of choice options in ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ decision‐making tasks
Research on prescreening processes in decision making was extended by manipulating task valence in a series of three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, half the subjects had the ‘positive’ task of screening and then selecting someone to hire for a job and half had the ‘negative’ task of screening and then selecting someone to fire, where the choice options (worker descriptions) were the same in each task. In Experiment 1 some subjects were inst…
A New Look at Framing Effects
Risk preferences in young children
New methods were developed for studying risky decision making in children as young as age five. Each child was given a block of ‘gain’ trials, for example, a choice between a sure gain of one prize and a 50:50 chance of gaining either two prizes or no prize, and a block of ‘loss’ trials, for example, a choice between a sure loss of one prize and a 50:50 chance of losing either two prizes or no prize. We were thus able to compare risky choice for …
Psychology (34 works) · Social Psychology (26 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (24 works) · Social Psychology (24 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (11 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Task (project management (10 works) · Developmental psychology (7 works)