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Social Decision Heuristics in the Use of Shared Resources
Author(s) -
Allison Scott T.,
Messick David M.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of behavioral decision making
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0771
pISSN - 0894-3257
DOI - 10.1002/bdm.3960030304
Subject(s) - heuristics , divisibility rule , task (project management) , control (management) , psychology , social psychology , heuristic , resource (disambiguation) , microeconomics , affect (linguistics) , cash , economics , cognitive psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , communication , mathematics , computer network , management , discrete mathematics , macroeconomics , operating system
The goals of the present study were (1) to demonstrate again that subjects in social decision tasks involving shared resources cannot be modelled as strategic money maximizers, and (2) to investigate further factors that affect the use of what we have called social decision heuristics. Subjects were led to believe that they were the first of six group members to extract points from a common pool of points. Each point extracted could possibly be exchanged for cash. The independent variables were the magnitude of the payoffs that subjects could receive (high vs. low), the divisibility of the resource (divisible vs. nondivisible), the perceived control of the last members over the group's outcomes (fate control vs. no fate control), and subjects' social values (cooperative vs. noncooperative). The results indicated that subjects anchored their decisions on an equal division heuristic. Subjects withdrew the fewest number of points when the resource was divisible, the payoffs were low, and there was fate control. The most points were taken when the resource was nondivisible, the payoffs were high, and subjects were classified as noncooperative. A model of the choice process in this task is discussed.