Satisficing

Against the maximizing conception of practical rationality, Michael Slote has argued that rationality does not always require choosing what is most rational. Instead, it can sometimes be rational to do something that is less than fully rational. In this paper, I will argue that maximizers have a ready response to Slote's position. Roy Sorensen has argued that 'rational' is an absolute term, suggesting that it is not possible to be rational without being completely rational. Sorensen's view is confirmed by the fact that, by the lights of contemporary linguistics, 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective. Because 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective, being rational requires being at the top of the scale of rationality, making anyone who is not fully rational positively irrational. Contra Slote, the only way to be rational enough is to be maximally rational.

This study examines the use of trap questions as indicators of data quality in online surveys. Trap questions are intended to identify respondents who are not paying close attention to survey questions, which would mean that they are providing sub-optimal responses to not only the trap question itself but to other questions included in the survey. We conducted three experiments using an online non-probability panel. In the first experiment, we examine whether there is any difference in responses to surveys with one trap question as those that have two trap questions. In the second study, we examine responses to surveys with trap questions of varying difficulty. In the third experiment, we test the level of difficulty, the placement of the trap question, and other forms of attention checks. In all studies, we correlate the responses to the trap question(s) with other data quality checks, most of which were derived from the literature on satisficing. Also, we compare the responses to several substance questions by the response to the trap questions. This would tell us whether participants who failed the trap questions gave consistently different answers from those who passed the trap questions. We find that the rate of passing/failing various trap questions varies widely, from 27% to 87% among the types we tested. We also find evidence that some types of trap questions are more significantly correlated with other data quality measures.

Reports of high attrition rates among beginning teachers suggest that new practitioners need help to develop coping strategies, preferably while they are still teacher candidates under the supervision of experienced teachers. Defining teaching as an ill-defined problem, where beginners have a limited repertoire of problem-solving strategies, this paper suggests that the ability to satisfice – that is, develop temporary but sufficient solutions – enables teachers to survive the early years of practice. However, it appears that, paradoxically, satisficing is one of the skills that is developed with experience. As we demonstrate in this paper, veteran practitioners have learned how to cope and by mentoring, they can help newcomers deal with the complex problems of initial practice.

Eine Zusammenfassung der Adaptive Toolbox nach Gerd Gigerenzer. Behandelt wird das Entscheidungsverhalten unter Anwendung von Heuristiken im wirtschaftlichen Kontext. Unter anderem werden begrenzte (Bounded rationality) und unbegrenzte Rationalität (Unbounded rationality), eingeschränkte Optimierung (Optimization under contraints) und Drang-Befriedigung (Satisficing) sowie schnelle und effiziente Heuristiken (Fast & frugal heuristics) unterschieden.

Web surveys can be programmed to capture a variety of respondent paradata regarding how respondents answer questions. These paradata provide great opportunities for researchers to assess response quality, specifically whether respondents engage in satisficing – expending only enough effort to provide acceptable, but not necessarily accurate, responses. In particular, speeding (i.e., giving answers very quickly) has increasingly been used as an indicator for satisficing and low response quality. However, few studies have examined whether speeding actually reflects compromised response quality. To address this gap in the literature, the cur-rent study investigates speeding behaviors among Web respondents from a probability-based panel and whether speeding entails reduced response quality. We first identify and characterize respondents who speed more frequently than others over the entire questionnaire. To explore the impact of speeding on response quality, we then examine whether resp...

Although real options theory normatively suggests that managers should associate real options with project value, little field research has been conducted to test whether they suffer from systematic biases in doing so. We draw on the notion of bounded rationality in managerial decision making to explore this understudied phenomenon. Using data collected from managers in 88 firms, we show that managers exhibit what we label the bounded rationality bias in their assessments: They associate real options with value only when a project's easily quantifiable benefits are low, but fail to do so when they are high. The study also contributes the first set of empirical measures for all six types of real options. The study contributes to managerial practice by identifying the conditions under which managers must be vigilant about inadvertently neglecting real options and by providing a simple approach for assessing real options in technology development projects.

Although 101-point feeling thermometer questions are frequently used in population surveys and political polls, the measurement error associated with this question type has raised some concerns. One challenge of using this type of question arises from the tendency for respondents to round their answers. That is, rather than providing a precise answer, respondents provide an answer that is divisible by 5 which on at least some occasions is rounded up or down from a more precise (unrounded) value. Several national surveys currently use an open-ended numeric text input format for the feeling thermometer questions, which may exacerbate the response rounding. This study presents findings from two Web survey experiments that examine six formats of 101-point rating scales. The findings show that visual analog scales (VAS) result in fewer rounded answers than open-ended numeric text input, while item nonresponse rates are similar across these questions types. Also, responding to VAS tends to be easier than open-ended format. This study concludes by discussing the application of VAS for feeling thermometer questions and future research directions.

Approaches to economics which will be outlined are:
(1)  Neoclassical economics;
(2)  New institutional economics;
(3)  Behavioral or psychological economics;
(4)  Old or orthodox (conventional) institutional economics; and
(5)  Evolutionary economics including co-evolution.
Some attention will also be given to views associated with the Austrian School of Economics and its relationship to the perspectives listed above and to game theory.

Some normative theories—act utilitarianism and rational decision theory among them—both designate some range of outcomes as particularly important, and, with an eye towards securing those outcomes, provide agents with advice concerning what is to be done.  In this paper I argue that there are situations in which these two aspects of such theories are in tension.  I provide a handful of conditions that, when jointly satisfied, pick out situations in which these theories recommend that agents act in ways that do not contribute to the outcomes on which they place value.

We conducted an analysis of the 13-item Maximization Scale (Schwartz et al., 2002) with the goal of establishing its factor structure, reliability and validity. We also investigated the psychometric properties of several proposed refined versions of the scale. Four sets of analyses are reported. The first analysis confirms the 3-part factor structure of the scale and assesses its reliability. The second analysis identifies those items that do not perform well on the basis of internal, external, and judgmental criteria, and develops three shorter versions of the scale. In the third analysis, the three refined versions of the scale are cross-validated to confirm dimensionality, reliability, and validity. The fourth analysis uses an experiment in an investment decision making context to assess the reliability and nomological validity of the refined scales. These analyses lead us to conclude that a shorter, 6-item Maximization Scale performs best and should be used by future researchers...

Although some research effort has been devoted to the comparison of probability- and nonprobability-based Web surveys, different types of nonprobability-based samples have not been thoroughly examined. This exploratory study compares the data quality between online panel and intercept samples. Online panel refers to a pre-recruited and profiled pool of respondents. An intercept sample is a pool of respondents that are obtained through banners, ads, or promotions. Anyone can click on them and subsequently respond to a survey. Respondents are not pre-recruited or profiled. Three surveys with 52, 29, and 19 questions, respectively, were administered to both samples. Propensity score weighting adjustment is used for the analyses. The results show that the completion rates are higher for the panel than the intercept sample. The completion times are similar for these two samples. Data quality, on average, tends to be higher for panel than intercept samples.

To what extent do people adapt their information search policies and subsequent decisions to the long-and short-run consequences of choice environments? To address this question, we investigated exploration and exploitation policies in choice environments that involved single or multiple plays. We further compared behavior in these environments with behavior in the standard sampling paradigm. Frequently used in research on decision from experience, this paradigm does not explicitly implement the choice in terms of the short or long run. Results showed that people searched more in the multi-play environment than in the single-play environment. Moreover, the substantial search effort in the multi-play environment was conducive to choices consistent with expected value maximization, whereas the lesser search effort in the single-play environment was compatible with the goal of maximizing the chance of winning something. Furthermore, choice and search behaviors in the sampling paradigm predominantly echoed those observed in the single-play environment. This suggests that, when not instructed otherwise, participants in the sampling paradigm appear to favor search and choice strategies that embody short-run aspirations. Finally, the present findings challenge the revealed preference approach in decisions from experience, while also suggesting that information search may be an important and potentially even better signal of preference or aspirations than choice.

During elections, political polls provide critical data for the support each candidate receives. For that reason, the measurement of questions asking about candidate support has been receiving some research attention. As the online survey is increasingly becoming a widely used tool for public opinion and election polls, evaluation of the measurement error associated with this survey mode is of importance. This study examines whether a candidate name order effect exists in presidential primary election surveys in the US. The findings show that contrary to previous studies the order of names does not have a significant impact on the support candidates received.

Scheduling complex problem solving tasks, where tasks are interrelated and there are multiple different waysto go about achieving a particular task, is an imprecise science and the justification for this lies soundly in thecombinatorics of the scheduling problem. Intractable problems require approximate solutions. We have developed anew domain-independent approach to task scheduling called Design-to-Criteria that controls the combinatorics viaa satisficing methodology and custom designs...

We conducted an analysis of the 13-item Maximization Scale (Schwartz et al., 2002) with the goal of establishing its factor structure, reliability and validity. We also investigated the psychometric properties of several proposed refined versions of the scale. Four sets of analyses are reported. The first analysis confirms the 3-part factor structure of the scale and assesses its reliability. The second analysis identifies those items that do not perform well on the basis of internal, external, and judgmental criteria, and develops three shorter versions of the scale. In the third analysis, the three refined versions of the scale are cross-validated to confirm dimensionality, reliability, and validity. The fourth analysis uses an experiment in an investment decision making context to assess the reliability and nomological validity of the refined scales. These analyses lead us to conclude that a shorter, 6-item Maximization Scale performs best and should be used by future researchers...

We examined choice behavior in younger versus older adults using a medical decision-making task similar to Medicare Part D. The study was designed to assess age differences in choice processes in general and specifically designed to examine the effect ...