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Context dependent sensitivity to losses : range and skew manipulations
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Walasek, Lukasz and Stewart, Neil (2019) Context dependent sensitivity to losses : range and skew manipulations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45 (6). pp. 957-968. doi:10.1037/xlm0000629
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000629
Abstract
The assumption that losses loom larger than gains is widely used to explain many behavioral phenomena in judgment and decision-making. It is also generally accepted that loss aversion is a stable, traitlike individual difference characterizing people’s sensitivity to gains and losses. This interpretation was recently challenged by Walasek and Stewart (2015), who showed that by manipulating the range of the gains and losses used in the accept−reject task it is possible to find loss aversion, loss neutrality, and a reversal of loss aversion. Here, we reexamined the claim that these context effects arise as a result of people being sensitive to the rank position of a given gain among other gains and the rank position of a loss among other losses. We used skewed distributions of outcomes to manipulate the rank position of gains and losses while keeping the range of possible outcomes constant. We found a small but robust effect of skew on the propensity to accept mixed gambles. We compared the sizes of skew and range effects and found that they are of similar magnitude but that the range effects are smaller than those reported by Walasek and Stewart. We were able to attenuate loss aversion, but we were not able to replicate Walasek and Stewart’s reversal of loss aversion. We conclude that rank effects are, at least in part, responsible for the loss aversion seen in the accept−reject task.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||
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| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology | ||||||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science > Psychology | ||||||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Decision making -- Psychological aspects -- Mathematical models | ||||||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition | ||||||||||||
| Publisher: | American Psychological Association | ||||||||||||
| ISSN: | 0278-7393 | ||||||||||||
| Official Date: | June 2019 | ||||||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 45 | ||||||||||||
| Number: | 6 | ||||||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 957-968 | ||||||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1037/xlm0000629 | ||||||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access | ||||||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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