Geraldine Smieszhala, School of Psychology PhD candidate, will speak on:

The role of description and experience in choices involving loss prevention in (non-)medical contexts

Abstract:

People make different decisions from description (i.e. are told the probability of the event occurring) and experience (i.e. we learn the probability of the event occurring through experience) – the description-experience gap. Researchers have observed the description-experience gap in choices involving gains and losses. The current thesis investigates the description-experience gap in choices involving loss prevention.

Study 1 will look at choices involving loss prevention, gains, and losses in a non-medical context. In Experiment 1, I observed a description-experience gap for loss prevention and gains. Experiment 2 will investigate how accruing experience affects the presence and size of the description-experience gap. Experiment 3 will characterize the effect of outcome probability on the description-experience gap’s presence, size, and direction. To determine whether descriptions or experience have the greater impact on choices involving loss prevention, I will investigate choices made from hybrid information in non-medical (Study 2) and medical (Study 3) contexts.

Supervisors: Anne Macaskill