8 May 2012
Chair:
Professor Mark Taylor (Dean of WBS)
Panel:
Professor Graham Loomes
• Introduction to the Individual Behaviour GPP theme
Dr Thomas Hills
• Search in space and mind: how we find what we are looking for
Dr Dawn Eubanks
• The Impact of Leader Errors on Follower Perceptions
Professor Nick Chater
• The Mind is Flat

Global Priorities Programme - Overview
 Supporting and enhancing multidisciplinary and crossdepartmental research
 Demonstrating the impacts of research and engaging with key users
 Generating research income through interdisciplinary research that addresses major global issues

Professor Graham Loomes
Behavioural Science Group, Warwick Business School

Academic Lead:
Graham Loomes g.c.loomes@warwick.ac.uk
Research Support Lead:
Ronni Littlewood
V.R.Littlewood@warwick.ac.uk

What IS ‘individual behaviour’? What would individuals be without other individuals and the families, groups, organisations and other individuals we interact with?
We may view things from the perspective of an individual – how each of us perceive, absorb, make sense of, decide about and act upon the world and the people around us

Many areas, many puzzles
Do we behave rationally? Predictably irrationally? On average?
What abilities have we evolved to perceive, decide, act?
How do we judge, evaluate, choose?
How do we understand and handle risk and uncertainty – personal and financial?
How do we trade off between present and different future times?
How do we interact with others – co-operating and/or competing?

This GPP aims to be open and welcoming – interested in new associations and cross-fertilisation
Too broad and diverse to cover in one evening
– so some examples . . .

Dr Thomas Hills
Department of Psychology

TIME
TIME
TIME
TIME

TIME
TIME

We solve a similar problem both in space and mind: When to explore and when to exploit?
Area-restricted search

Exploitation Exploration
Innovation and Patent law
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Drug addiction
Looking for your car in a parking lot
Trying to solve a research problem

How can we be helped to navigate our own minds?
What’s the cognitive basis of disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and depression?
How does the way information is structured influence what we learn and remember?

Dr Dawn Eubanks
Behavioural Science Group and MSM, Warwick Business School dawn.eubanks@wbs.ac.uk

Sam Hunter – Penn State
Ethan Waples
University of Central Oklahoma

• Given the complex and ambiguous decisions that leaders are required to make, incidents of error are understandable - indeed expected
• “an avoidable action (or inaction) is chosen by a leader which results in an initial outcome outside
of the leader’s original intent, goal, or prediction”
– Hunter, Tate, Dzieweczynsk, Bedell-Avers (The
Leadership Quarterly, 2011)

• Titanic steering error
– 1,517 casualties
• BP Deepwater Horizon
– 11 casualties

• Not all errors are judged equally.
• Some are viewed as “unfortunate human mistakes”.
• Others make us feel that something corrupt or unjust occurred.
• Our perceptions of errors and judgement of leaders vary.

• How do different types of errors influence follower perceptions of justice?
• Data were collected from 187 undergraduate students.
• Each participant read a vignette where one type of error was represented 3 times. They then completed measures of Justice Perceptions.

• Error types –
Based on Fleishman et al. 1991
– information search and structuring
– information use in problem solving
– managing personnel resources
– managing material resources
• Justice perceptions (Moorman 1991)

1) Information search and structuring errors appear to have the lowest amount of negative influence on justice perceptions compared to other error types.
2) Managing material resources errors seem to have the largest negative impact on justice perceptions compared to other error types.

Take home message:
If there is a perception that a leader is poorly managing resources that are critical to the job performance of the follower, there may be a stronger negative reaction for justice perceptions than when there is a perception that a leader didn’t include all the important components in an information search and structuring activity.

• Errors and the role of time
• Errors and creativity/innovation

Thank You!
Questions?
Behavioural Science Website: http://warwickbehaviouralscience.com

The illusion of mental depth
Professor Nick Chater
Behavioural Science Group, Warwick Business School

• Peering into one’s mental “depths”
– What do I believe?
– What do I want?
– How do I act?
...
– What shall I buy?
– How should I answer this questionnaire?

• We infer our own inner life from our words and actions, just as we infer those of a third person
• And then invent what we will do and say next

• Johansson, Hall et al.,
Science
• False feedback on choices
– not noticed
– rationalization given
– later preferences changed
– And it works with jam
– And ethical dilemmas

• Bentham’s dream of morality and public policy seeking to maximize
“utility”
• We might even hope some approximation to be delivered by the market (welfare economics)
• But this presupposes stable
“utilities” can somehow be
“extracted” from our hidden mental depths

But if the mind is flat, there is no hidden utility to measure
• Test case: can we measure the “(dis)utility” of pain?
• A “BDM” auction with small electric shocks
Vlaev, Seymour, Dolan & Chater, Psychological Science, 2009

You receive 40p
You will receive a shock time
Select price to avoid
15 further shocks
0p 20p 40p
Market price is determined randomly
0p
30p
20p
10p
You offered 14p
Market price was 4p
Sale authorised
Sale price = 4p

Pain magnitudes were presented in pairs in three blocks of ten trials
Two “endowment” conditions
£0.40 per trial
£0.80 per trial

25
20
15
35
30
Endowment = 40 pence
10
5
0
Low-Medium Medium-High
Context Condition
Low-High
High
Medium
Low

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Endowment = 80 pence
High
Medium
Low
0
Low-Medium Medium-High Low-High
Context Condition
• People double their offers, when they have double the money...
• Value of pain changes by x2 within minutes!

• Not because utility is hard to measure
• But because there is no utility to be measured
– our underlying preferences, desires, “utilities” are illusory
– i.e., continually re-invented for each new time and situation

So prices don’t reveal , but are shaped by , prices
• People can’t “know” their values
• So they must partly infer them from market prices
• Allowing feedback loops between values and prices
“value” “price”
• One origin of booms and crashes?
“People know the price of everything, but the value of nothing”

...Consumer behaviour...
...Ethical theory...
...Market behaviour...

Thursday 14 June 5.30pm
Chancellor’s Suite, Rootes Social Building
Global Governance