PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Arts and Sciences: Psychology

This study aimed to examine decision-making abilities and debiasing techniques for individuals with epilepsy. Choice and decision-making tasks occur in everyday life and executing them well is critical for daily functioning; however, even typical individuals are often prone to making biased decisions. When unaware that there is a lack of relevant information, people may make overly confident but biased decisions, known as omission neglect. Studies have demonstrated that typical individuals can improve their decision-making using cognitive debiasing procedures. It is, therefore, of interest to determine if these findings can be replicated in individuals with epilepsy, who are at a disproportionate risk to experience cognitive difficulties in memory, attention, executive functioning, and decision-making. People with epilepsy often show high nonadherence (averaging 40%) to antiseizure medications. Medication nonadherence could be conceptualized as a perceived lack of relevant information to decide or a perceived uncertainty about outcomes. Therefore, the degree of nonadherence might be related to the degree of omission neglect. If engagement in episodic simulation effectively decreases the degree of omission neglect, this strategy could be a supplement to help improve medication decision-making and behavior. It was also of interest to explore the relationship between medication adherence, medication beliefs, and quality of life in people with epilepsy. The sample of this study consisted of N=17 participants with epilepsy (Mage=37.8, Meducation=15.2, 70.6% female, and 82.4% White). Participant recruitment occurred through two main avenues: during clinical appointments with their clinician and through an established Epilepsy Registry. The study included four self-report questionnaires and an omission neglect paradigm composed of two advertisement scenarios (one scenario under episodic simulation and one without episodic simulation). The r (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Chung-Yiu Peter Chiu| Ph.D (Committee Chair); Brian Moseley Ph.D (Committee Member); Paula Shear Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Cognitive Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Business: Business Administration

Consumers are selective when processing information. They are more sensitive to available information and tend to tune out absent information. Omission neglect, or the failure to detect the absence of important information, can lead consumers to make extreme judgments on the basis of limited evidence. The failure to notice that information is missing can encourage consumers to form extreme judgments regardless of how much or how little is actually known, because the importance of presented information is overestimated, and the importance of missing information is underestimated. Omission neglect often leads to immediate purchases which consumers regret later. Because of its ubiquitousness and impacts, it is important to investigate both individual and situational factors that bias or debias omission neglect. This research has investigated two important determinants of omission neglect. The first essay in this dissertation explores how self-rated knowledge, an individual factor, can bias information processing by increasing omission neglect. Evidence shows that whereas objective knowledge tends to reduce omission neglect as suggested by prior literature, self-rated knowledge increases omission neglect. The second essay in this dissertation investigates how processing difficulty, a situational factor, can debias information processing by reducing omission neglect. Three studies show that experienced difficulty in information processing (disfluency) can reduce omission neglect by signaling a lack of information about the target product, leading to less extreme evaluations. In combination, the findings of the dissertation not only identify novel variables that impact consumer inference, judgment, and decision making through omission neglect, but fill research gaps that can be interpreted in terms of omission neglect.

Committee: Frank Kardes Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Chung-Yiu Peter Chiu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert Wyer (Committee Member) Subjects: Marketing

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: Psychology

Individuals are prone to making decisions that appear to be suboptimal or biased. The present study focused on two decision paradigms individuals have shown decision biases under specific conditions: omission neglect and temporal discounting. Omission neglect refers to insensitivity to information that is not presented overtly in the moment of decision-making. Temporal discounting is the observation that the subjective value of a reinforcer decreases with delays in the delivery of that reinforce. The present study was designed to assess the extent to which specific cognitive processes (such as executive function, working and long-term memory, and decision styles) modulate performance on these decision-making paradigms, and to evaluate if engaging in episodic simulation, a process where individuals are asked to imagine in concrete details the scenario under their consideration, is effective in de-biasing individuals. Participants attended one two-hour session and were administered omission neglect scenarios, temporal discounting trials, neuropsychological measures, and decision style questionnaires. For omission neglect, participants rated how important they consider various attributes to be with respect to a decision, both in the absence (Time1) and presence (Time2) of certain important additional attribute(s). Participants demonstrated omission neglect when they overrated the importance of core attributes when additional important attributes were not presented yet. In temporal discounting, participants were asked to provide a present value (e.g., $85 now) that they thought was roughly equal to the subjective value of a delayed reward (e.g., $100 available in a month). Omission neglect and temporal discounting were tested both in conditions of episodic simulation and without simulation. All participants showed omission neglect when data were averaged across all scenarios; 63% showed omission neglect in each of the four scenarios tested. A larger omission neglect (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Chung-Yiu Peter Chiu Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Quintino Mano Ph.D. (Committee Member); Paula Shear Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Business: Business Administration

Research on the bias blind spot shows that people are less capable of identifying biases in their own judgment than in others. People generally believe that they are less susceptible to biases than their peers and average people. This dissertation investigates the self-other bias asymmetry with respect to omission neglect. Omission neglect refers to insensitivity to missing or unknown information. Results from bias blind spot research imply a potential relationship between the self-other asymmetry in bias belief and omission neglect. Research on bias correction suggests that people holding a higher degree of asymmetry in bias beliefs may be less likely to correct biases even when omissions are made noticeable. Ironically, consumers who believe that they are less vulnerable to omission neglect may be more susceptible to omission neglect. Consumers may be also less likely to correct their judgment even when omitted information is made noticeable. The goal of the dissertation is to develop debiasing techniques to debias omission neglect in order to improve consumer judgment and decision making. Corrective procedures are designed to debias omission neglect by means of reducing the bias blind spot. Prior to debiasing, two studies are designed to substantiate the assumption about the relationship between the bias blind spot and omission neglect. Study 1 demonstrates that people believe others are susceptible to omission neglect, but they themselves are not. Study 2 shows that higher self-other asymmetry predicts predict greater omission neglect and a decreased likelihood of judgment correction to a moderate position. Last, in study 3, we show that debiasing is most effective when the bias blind spot is most specifically related to omission neglect. However, only people in low need for cognitive closure are responsive to debiasing. Taken together, the studies show that the bias blind spot contributes to omission neglect and reduces responsiveness to debiasing.

Committee: Frank Kardes PhD (Committee Chair); Chung-Yiu Chiu PhD (Committee Member); James Kellaris PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Marketing

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Business: Business Administration

This dissertation investigates substantive questions developed from Kahneman and Tversky's behavioral choice theory. Behavioral choice theory postulates systematic departures from economically rational behavior when consumers face choices described incompletely or probabilistically. Previous research relies nearly exclusively on monetary options, which are intrinsically unidimensional and exhibit monotone utility. These special properties are likely to influence the frequency of preference reversals and other so-called non-rational behaviors in human decision-making. Four contributions emerge from this research. First, I extend the idea of risky choices from monetary to non-monetary options and build a theoretical framework with a foundation in prospect theory and reason-based choice. Second, I test the effect of multidimensional vs. unidimensional non-monetary options on choice focusing on both within- and between-dimensional risk. Third, I examine loss aversion across segments and relate an aggregation fallacy to contradictory results in the literature. Fourth, I suggest an extension of Kahneman and Tversky's behavioral choice theory by incorporating options with missing information. I use three discrete choice experiments to generate decision schema by segments of individuals sharing similar utility functions. Latent class discrete-choice models isolate the direction and magnitude of value for each attribute (level) of a set of multi-attribute options. They do so in choice domains involving both monetary and non-monetary attributes and operate effectively at both the aggregate and segment levels. As such, they support the rigorous design of experiments that circumvent the need to rely on monetary gambles. Study 1 investigates the influence of monetary (vs. non-monetary) goals on multidimensional risky choice when full information on reference points is available to an individual. Findings support goal-driven behavior, but reveal only limited evidence to supp (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David J. Curry PhD (Committee Chair); Frank R. Kardes PhD (Committee Member); Jordan J. Louviere PhD (Committee Member); James J. Kellaris PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Marketing

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Business: Business Administration

Omission neglect refers to insensitivity to missing or unknown information. Omission detection occurs once an omission reaches the threshold of awareness. Research in this area has demonstrated that consumers typically rely heavily on the information provided, and neglect omitted information, resulting in inappropriately extreme and confidently held judgments. Three experiments have been designed investigating the underlying processes of how consumers make inferences about omitted attributes. Two plausible explanations are investigated: anchoring and adjustment versus discounting. Adjustment refers to revising or updating an opinion, whereas discounting refers to not using information that is perceived to be non-diagnostic. In Experiment 1, the underlying process is investigated using a point vs. range procedure. Salience of the omitted attribute is manipulated to elicit omission detection and participants are asked to provide either a point estimate or range estimates of the cost of the omitted attribute. Comparisons of the point and range estimates support an anchoring and adjustment explanation, but do not eliminate a discounting explanation. Experiment 2 further investigates the processing differences utilizing a cognitive load manipulation. The results suggest an anchoring and adjustment mechanism for people low in need for cognitive closure and a discounting mechanism for people high in need for cognitive closure. Experiment 3 combines the two procedures used in Experiments 1 and 2 to more clearly differentiate the underlying process and investigates additional individual differences. The results suggests that people who are low in need for cognitive closure, people who are low self-monitors, and people who are high maximizers are more likely to utilize an anchoring and adjustment process. Conversely, people who are high in need for cognitive closure, people who are high self-monitors, and people who are low maximizers are more likely to be discounting. These (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Frank Kardes PhD (Committee Chair); James Kellaris PhD (Committee Member); David Lundgren PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Marketing; Psychology