委托代理风险与国有企业改革简新华（武汉大学经济学院４３００７２）近几年来，公司治理结构和委托代理制问题，一直是我国经济学界和管理学界介绍和研究的热点，发表了大量极有价值的论著，但是对委托代理制问题的研究还不够全面、深入，比如：委托代理的成本和收益怎样...

The existing studies on self-other differences in decision-making still have many inconsistencies in the used tasks, the related findings and theoretical explanations, and lack of exploration of psychological mechanisms and neural basis of this phenomenon. Although some researchers have used psychological distance hypothesis to explain their research results, the manipulation of psychological distance in their experiment are still too simple to form a general theoretical model. In recent years, we have found in a series of studies that: The asymmetry in self-other differences in decision-making exist under gain and loss situations; Manipulation of psychological distance is more effective in inducing self–other differences in decision-making than manipulation of social distance and decision-makers’ roles; Self-esteem levels of decision-makers affect self-other differences in decision-making. Future studies should further explore the essence of psychological distance, the change in psychological distance caused by reversal of decision-makers’ role, as well as the brain mechanisms of self-other differences in decision-making.

The authors review the self-other decision-making differences, and propose that such differences are derived from decision makers’ cognitive differences in construal level. The mental construals are low when people make decisions for themselves, whereas the mental construals are high when they decide for others. Theoretically, self-other decision-making differences are illustrations of bounded rationality. Practically, understanding such differences as well as their mechanisms helps to achieve optimal decisions.

Abstract The classic answer to what makes a decision good concerns outcomes. A good decision has high outcome benefits (it is worthwhile) and low outcome costs (it is worth it). I propose that, independent of outcomes or value from worth, people experience a regulatory fit when they use goal pursuit means that fit their regulatory orientation, and this regulatory fit increases the value of what they are doing. The following postulates of this value from fit proposal are examined: (a) People will be more inclined toward goal means that have higher regulatory fit, (b) people's motivation during goal pursuit will be stronger when regulatory fit is higher, (c) people's (prospective) feelings about a choice they might make will be more positive for a desirable choice and more negative for an undesirable choice when regulatory fit is higher, (d) people's (retrospective) evaluations of past decisions or goal pursuits will be more positive when regulatory fit was higher, and (e) people will assign higher value to an object that was chosen with higher regulatory fit. Studies testing each of these postulates support the value-from-fit proposal. How value from fit can enhance or diminish the value of goal pursuits and the quality of life itself is discussed.

Previous neuroimaging studies on decision making have mainly focused on decisions on behalf of oneself. Considering that people often make decisions on behalf of others, it is intriguing that there is little neurobiological evidence on how decisions for others differ from those for oneself. The present study directly compared risky decisions for self with those for another person using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants were asked to perform a gambling task on behalf of themselves (decision-for-self condition) or another person (decision-for-other condition) while in the scanner. Their task was to choose between a low-risk option (i.e., win or lose 10 points) and a high-risk option (i.e., win or lose 90 points) with variable levels of winning probability. Compared with choices regarding others, those regarding oneself were more risk-averse at lower winning probabilities and more risk-seeking at higher winning probabilities, perhaps due to stronger affective process during risky decisions for oneself compared with those for other. The brain-activation pattern changed according to the target, such that reward-related regions were more active in the decision-for-self condition than in the decision-for-other condition, whereas brain regions related to the theory of mind (ToM) showed greater activation in the decision-for-other condition than in the decision-for-self condition. Parametric modulation analysis using individual decision models revealed that activation of the amygdala and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) were associated with value computations for oneself and for another, respectively, during risky financial decisions. The results of the present study suggest that decisions for oneself and for other may recruit fundamentally distinct neural processes, which can be mainly characterized as dominant affective/impulsive and cognitive/regulatory processes, respectively.

Abstract We propose that when individuals make a decision for themselves they weight attributes more uniformly compared to when they give advice. In Study 1, 138 participants were given a hypothetical choice between two jobs varying on two dimensions and asked either to choose for themselves, offer advice to a best friend, or offer advice to an acquaintance. We hypothesized that respondents offering advice would favor the option with the higher value on the more important dimension. More participants in the acquaintance condition recommended the job with a higher value on the important dimension than participants making the choice for themselves. Study 2 ( N =62) tested the hypothesis in a situation where the options consisted of three dimensions. One option was relatively high on two of the three dimensions and the other option was relatively high on the remaining ‘socially important’, or ‘prominent’, dimension. The uniform weighting hypothesis for self-choice predicts higher frequency of choice for the former option. Data were consistent with this prediction. Study 3 ( N =170) tested the hypothesis in students' choice of major at the university. We made use of an actual event, a pending university budget cut, that would require some students to change majors. Participants either made the decision for themselves, made a recommendation to a student in their same department, or made a recommendation to a student in another department facing the analogous dilemma. Replicating the findings of the first two studies, participants offering advice to a student in another department suggested staying with their current major significantly more than participants making the choice for themselves. Copyright 08 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Three studies are presented that examine the decision-making processes that lead advisors to have preferences distinct from personal decision makers (Kray & Gonzalez, 1999). Advising and personal decision making were hypothesized to invoke different interpersonal frames, which lead to different weighting of decision attributes. Alternatively, advisors might simply exert less effort in decision making for others than do personal decision makers. In Study 1, the contingent weighting of attributes was examined in two decision-making tasks (choice vs. matching). Advisors were more likely to choose in a manner consistent with hat most people would prefer than personal decision makers, but no differences in preferences were observed in the matching task. Advisors subsequently reported experiencing less regret and blame and more strongly preferred the chosen alternative than did personal decision makers. In Study 2, advisors considered more decision attributes to be important in the abstract compared to personal decision makers, and the choice pattern of Study 1 was replicated. In Study 3, advisors and personal decision makers generated more considerations when making a decision compared to individuals making decisions in the abstract. Finally, the preferences of personal decision makers were more consistent with their reported attribute importance judgments than were those of advisors. In total, the results suggest advisors incorrectly infer others' preferences, rather than suffer from a deficit of motivation, when giving advice.

Individuals are frequently forced to make decisions from among undesirable choice-sets. Raise taxes or cut social services? Lay off workers or go bankrupt? Go deep in debt or forgo a college education? The research presented here suggests that in such situations, decision-makers are often evaluated negatively regardless of the choice they make. In Experiment 1, participants read about a judge deciding which of two seemingly unfit parents to award sole custody in a real-life divorce case. In Experiment 2, participants were led to believe that their partner in the experiment was forced to pick one of two unpleasant tasks for the participant to perform. In both cases, the decision and decision-maker were evaluated negatively regardless of the alternative chosen nd regardless of the fact that they were the only options in the choice-set. Discussion focuses on the source, scope, and consequences of this phenomenon.

This article reviews the now extensive research literature addressing the impact of accountability on a wide range of social judgments and choices. It focuses on 4 issues: (a) What impact do various accountability ground rules have on thoughts, feelings, and action? (b) Under what conditions will accountability attenuate, have no effect on, or amplify cognitive biases? (c) Does accountability alter how people think or merely what people say they think? and (d) What goals do accountable decision makers seek to achieve? In addition, this review explores the broader implications of accountability research. It highlights the utility of treating thought as a process of internalized dialogue; the importance of documenting social and institutional boundary conditions on putative cognitive biases; and the potential to craft empirical answers to such applied problems as how to structure accountability relationships in organizations.

Previous studies have demonstrated that when the social context entails possible public scrutiny, consumers may change their judgments and choices to what is perceived to be socially desirable, while they may incorporate more variety seeking when they are making choices for others rather than for themselves. Building upon previous research and in an attempt to better understand consumers’ variety-seeking tendencies, this study aims to uncover the underlying mechanisms for the self–other difference in the variety seeking tendency via experimental designs. This article discusses individual differences of gender, self-monitoring and maximizing tendency with respect to self–other differences when consumers incorporate variety seeking. Consistent with the proposed hypotheses, the results indicate that the individuals’ differences tested in this article moderate the effects of self–other differences on variety seeking. Finally, the academic and practical implications are addressed.

Consumers make trade-offs when they choose between utilitarian and hedonic products. The former is practical, instrumental, and functional, whereas the latter is sensational and experiential. Prior research shows that people feel more guilt when they contemplate on engaging in hedonic consumption than engaging in utilitarian consumption. The current research investigates the effect of decision targets (i.e., making decisions for oneself or another person) on preferences for utilitarian and hedonic products. Consumers deciding for others were more likely to choose hedonic over utilitarian options than were consumers deciding for themselves. Utilitarian/hedonic was manipulated either through attributes of similar products (Study 1) or through different products (Study 2). Anticipatory guilt accounted for such self09“other difference (Study 2). In particular, anticipatory guilt triggered by contemplating hedonic consumption is less for consumers who made choices for others than for those who made choices for themselves. In sum, preferences for utilitarian and hedonic products depend on decision targets.

The status quo effect derived from loss aversion is common in decision making. However, we propose that advisors (vs. personal decision makers) are less susceptible to such an effect because they are less loss-averse. The difference in loss aversion between personal decision makers and advisors is reflected in both the query order and content. Compared to advisors, personal decision makers produce more queries favoring the status quo, at an earlier time, than those favoring the new option. As hypothesized, the status quo effect was observed among personal decision makers, but not among advisors (Studies 1 and 2). Query order and content were found to mediate the impact of decision maker’s role on the status quo effect (Study 2). When personal decision makers and advisors made queries in the same order (Study 3) or of the same content (Studies 4a and 4b), the difference between self–other decision making disappeared.

In contrast to decades of research reporting surprisingly weak relationships between consumption and happiness, recent findings suggest that money can indeed increase happiness if it is spent the “right way” (e.g., on experiences or on other people). Drawing on the concept of psychological fit, we extend this research by arguing that individual differences play a central role in determining the “right” type of spending to increase well-being. In a field study using more than 76,000 bank-transaction records, we found that individuals spend more on products that match their personality, and that people whose purchases better match their personality report higher levels of life satisfaction. This effect of psychological fit on happiness was stronger than the effect of individuals’ total income or the effect of their total spending. A follow-up study showed a causal effect: Personality-matched spending increased positive affect. In summary, when spending matches the buyer’s personality, it appears that money can indeed buy happiness.

ABSTRACT Maximizing tendency has been associated with greater accumulation of choice alternatives prior to selection of a preference. It is not known whether this search behavior extends to situations in which accumulation of new choice alternatives comes with the potential loss of existing ones. In Study 1, we replicate the original finding of greater accumulation of choice alternatives, using a computer-based laboratory task. We then provide evidence, in Studies 2 and 3, that when potential loss of existing options is incorporated into the task, maximization is associated with less rather than more search for additional options. Maximization components of decision difficulty and alternative search, but not high standards or satisficing, explain this behavior. Other task measures are also collected, but few maximization-related differences are observed. The findings support an interpretation of maximizers as decision makers who are as concerned with the potential loss of existing options as with the loss of undiscovered future ones. Copyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The highly contingent nature of decision behavior both poses problems (costs) and creates opportunities (benefits) for decision researchers. That decision processes (DPs) are not invariant across task environments complicates the search for a small set of underlying principles. Questions about the conditions under which different types of information and different DPs are likely to be used can yield such generalizations as (1) the effects of task complexity on decision-strategy use, (2) the importance of gain vs loss in both risky and riskless preference, and (3) the prevalence of the anchoring and adjustment process in judgment. The constructive and contingent nature of DPs has implications for integrating decision research with other areas of psychology and applications such as the practice of decision analysis, the design of information environments, and the measurement of values. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Consumer psychology faces serious issues of internal and external relevance. Most of these issues originate in seven fundamental problems with the way consumer psychologists plan and conduct their research—problems that could be called “the seven sins of consumer psychology.” These seven “sins” are (1) a narrow conception of the scope of consumer behavior research; (2) adoption of a narrow set of theoretical lenses; (3) adherence to a narrow epistemology of consumer research; (4) an almost exclusive emphasis on psychological processes as opposed to psychological content; (5) a strong tendency to overgeneralize from finite empirical results, both as authors and as reviewers; (6) a predisposition to design studies based on methodological convenience rather than on substantive considerations; and (7) a pervasive confusion between “theories of studies” and studies of theories. Addressing these problems (“atoning for these sins”) would greatly enhance the relevance of the field. However, this may require a substantial rebalancing of the field's incentives to reward actual research impact rather than sheer number of publications in major journals.

Abstract A growing stream of research is investigating how choices people make for themselves are different from choices people make for others. In this paper, I propose that these choices vary according to regulatory focus, such that people who make choices for themselves are prevention focused, whereas people who make choices for others are promotion focused. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, in particular work on errors of omission and commission, I hypothesize that people who make choices for others experience a reversal of the choice overload effect. In 6 studies, including a field study, I found that people who make choices for themselves are less satisfied after selecting among many options compared to few options, yet, people who make choices for others are more satisfied after selecting among many options compared to few options. Implications and suggestions for other differences in self-other decision making are discussed.

In eight studies, we tested the prediction that making choices for others involves less loss aversion than making choices for the self. We found that loss aversion is significantly lessened among people choosing for others in scenarios describing riskless choice (Study 1), gambling (Studies 2 and 3), and social aspects of life, such as likeably and status (Studies 4a–e). Moreover, we found this pattern in relatively realistic conditions where people are rewarded for making desirable (i.e., profitable) choices for others (Study 2), when the other for whom a choice is made is physically present (Study 3), and when real money is at stake (Studies 2 and 3). Finally, we found loss aversion is moderated when factors associated with self–other differences in decision making are taken into account, such as decision makers’ construal level (Study 4a), regulatory focus (Study 4b), degree of information seeking (Study 4c), omission bias (Study 4d), and power (Study 4e).

Abstract Past research has shown that people tend to feel depleted by their decisions. In contrast, we found people report that making decisions for others (vs. the self) is less depleting because it is more enjoyable. Our investigation thus replicated a prior finding (that decision-making is depleting), moderated it by target of decision (self vs. other), and demonstrated mediation (enjoyment). We further measured chronic focus on self or others (self-construal) and established a full process model that marries prior findings with the current ones: Choosing for others is more enjoyable and less depleting to the extent that decision makers are independent, and less enjoyable and more depleting to the extent that decision makers are interdependent. That a mismatch between chronic and state orientation leads to the better outcomes for self-control indicates a special link between self-construal and decision-making.

No abstract is available for this item.

Although people prize the ability to choose when making choices for themselves, this right may become a burden when tasked with choosing for others. We show that people are more likely to delegate choices for others than for themselves, especially choices with potentially negative consequences. This is driven by a desire to avoid feeling responsible or being blamed for such decisions rather than a desire to avoid making difficult choices or a lack of concern for others outcomes, and is unique to delegation and does not extend to other methods of choice avoidance, like delaying decisions or flipping a coin, that do not absolve decision makers of responsibility and blame. Moreover, people only delegate to others who can assume responsibility, regardless of their expertise, consistent with the notion that people delegate primarily to cede responsibility and blame, not put choices in the hands of more capable decision makers.

Three experiments tested our social values analysis of self–other differences in decision making under risk. In Experiment 1, we showed that people make riskier decisions for others in domains where risk taking is valued but not in those where risk is not valued. Experiment 2 documented that it is considered more inappropriate to make a risk-averse decision for another person than for oneself in situations where risk is valued. Experiment 3 showed that self–other differences in decision making occur even when there are no self–other differences in prediction and for decisions made for a typical student as well as for a friend. We use these results to argue that decision making for others is based predominantly on the perceived value placed on risk, leading to a norm for how to decide for others in situations where such a social value exists.

The debate about whether making a risky choice is based on a weighting and adding process has a long history and is still unresolved. To address this long-standing controversy, we developed a comparative paradigm. Participants' eye movements in 2 risky choice tasks that required participants to choose between risky options in single-play and multiple-play conditions were separately compared with those in a baseline task in which participants naturally performed a deliberate calculation following a weighting and adding process. The results showed that, when participants performed the multiple-play risky choice task, their eye movements were similar to those in the baseline task, suggesting that participants may use a weighting and adding process to make risky choices in multiple-play conditions. In contrast, participants' eye movements were different in the single-play risky choice task versus the baseline task, suggesting that participants were not likely to use a weighting and adding process to make risky choices in single-play conditions and were more likely to use a heuristic process. We concluded that an expectation-based index for predicting risk preferences is applicable in multiple-play conditions but not in single-play conditions, implying the need to improve current theories that postulate the use of a heuristic process.

Abstract Individuals are consistently observed to be risk averse over gains and risk seeking over losses. This study examined whether increased social distance would change these behavioral patterns. To test our hypothesis, social distance was manipulated by asking the participants to make decisions either for themselves or for another person (Experiment 1), either for a known person or for an unknown person (Experiment 2), and either for a close friend or for a distant friend (Experiment 3). The results of Experiments 1 and 3 showed that increased social distance made people more risk neutral, and such an effect was stronger in the gain domain than in the loss domain. However, the effect of social distance was not observed in Experiment 2. These findings suggest that risk preferences are influenced by the social distance between decision makers and beneficiaries.

Choice confidence is affected by fluency and moderated by construal levels that evoke different theories to interpret the feelings of fluency. At lower construal levels, fluency informs the feasibility of completing the concrete steps of the decision process to choose well, but at higher construal levels, fluency informs (insufficient) effort invested for the desirability of the outcome. We manipulated fluency by varying the font of product descriptions or the number of thoughts we asked participants to recall. Our studies showed that fluency increased confidence for people processing at lower construal levels but decreased confidence for those processing at higher construal levels. Construal level does not affect the persuasiveness of consumers' thoughts, supporting the hypothesis that it is the interpretation of fluency experienced during judgment, not the thought content, that leads to the moderating effects of construal level.

Alternative descriptions of a decision problem often give rise to different preferences, contrary to the principle of invariance that underlies the rational theory of choice. Violations of this theory are traced to the rules that govern the framing of decision and to the psychophysical principles of evaluation embodied in prospect theory. Invariance and dominance are obeyed when their application is transparent and often violated in other situations. Because these rules are normatively essential but descriptively invalid, no theory of choice can be both normatively adequate and descriptively accurate.