Van Tilburg, Wijnand Adriaan Pieter and Mahadevan, Nikhila (2020) When Imitating Successful Others Fails: Accidentally Successful Exemplars Inspire Risky Decisions and can Hamper Performance. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73 (6). pp. 941-956. DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819895705
Van Tilburg, Wijnand Adriaan Pieter and Mahadevan, Nikhila (2020) When Imitating Successful Others Fails: Accidentally Successful Exemplars Inspire Risky Decisions and can Hamper Performance. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73 (6). pp. 941-956. DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819895705
Van Tilburg, Wijnand Adriaan Pieter and Mahadevan, Nikhila (2020) When Imitating Successful Others Fails: Accidentally Successful Exemplars Inspire Risky Decisions and can Hamper Performance. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73 (6). pp. 941-956. DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819895705
Abstract
We examined the impact of viewing exemplars on people’s behavior in risky decision-making environments. Specifically, we tested if people disproportionally choose to view and then imitate the behavior of successful (vs. unsuccessful) others, which in the case of risky decision-making increases risk-taking and can hamper performance. In doing so, our research tested how a fundamental social psychological process (social influence) interacts with a fundamental statistical phenomenon (regression to the mean) to produce biases in decision-making. Experiment 1 (N = 96) showed that people indeed model their own behavior after that of a successful exemplar, resulting in more risky behavior and poorer outcomes. Experiment 2 (N = 208) indicated that people disproportionally choose to examine and then imitate most-successful versus least-successful exemplars. Experiment 3 (N = 381) replicated Experiment 2 in a context where we offered participants the full freedom to examine any possible exemplar or no exemplar whatsoever, and across different incentive conditions. The results have implications for decision-making in a broad range of social contexts such as education, health, and finances where risk-taking can have detrimental outcomes, and they may be particularly helpful to understand the role of social influence in gambling behavior.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | risk; exemplar; decision-making; uncertainty; role model |
Divisions: | Faculty of Science and Health Faculty of Science and Health > Psychology, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 09 Dec 2019 14:53 |
Last Modified: | 30 Oct 2024 17:12 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/26193 |
Available files
Filename: QJEP Author Accepted.pdf