Elliot Ludvig
(Department of Psychology)
Memory biases in risky decisions from experience
When making decisions based on past experiences, people must rely on their memories. These memories,
however, are often not veridical. Here, I briefly present data from a series of related experiments that show
how people’s memory biases can sway risky choice in decisions from experience. Most notably, people are
overly sensitive to extreme events and can be biased at decision time by reminders of past winning
outcomes. I interpret these results in terms of a reinforcement-learning model, which learns values
incrementally from both real and replayed experiences. The model provides a new way of looking at twosystem models of decision-making, where the two systems interact cooperatively rather than competitively.
Thursday 1st May 2014, 2.30 p.m.— 3.50 p.m.
Library, 3rd Floor Extension, Wolfson Research Exchange Area,
Seminar Room 1
Join us for light refreshments (coffee/tea and biscuits) before the Forum at 2.15 p.m.
This event is free and open to public: go.warwick.ac.uk/draw