Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads

To what extent are people able to make predictions about other people's preferences and values?We report two experiments that present a novel method assessing some of the basic processes in surrogate decision-making, namely surrogate-utility estimation. In each experiment participants formed dy...

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Main Authors: Tunney, Richard J., Ziegler, Fenja V.
Format: Article
Published: Frontiers 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29323/
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author Tunney, Richard J.
Ziegler, Fenja V.
author_facet Tunney, Richard J.
Ziegler, Fenja V.
author_sort Tunney, Richard J.
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description To what extent are people able to make predictions about other people's preferences and values?We report two experiments that present a novel method assessing some of the basic processes in surrogate decision-making, namely surrogate-utility estimation. In each experiment participants formed dyads who were asked to assign utilities to health related items and commodity items, and to predict their partner's utility judgments for the same items. In experiment one we showed that older adults in long-term relationships were able to accurately predict their partner's wishes. In experiment two we showed that younger adults who were relatively unfamiliar with one another were also able to predict other people's wishes. Crucially we demonstrated that these judgments were accurate even after partialling out each participant's own preferences indicating that in order to make surrogate utility estimations people engage in perspective-taking rather than simple anchoring and adjustment, suggesting that utility estimation is not the cause of inaccuracy in surrogate decision-making. The data and implications are discussed with respect to theories of surrogate decision-making.
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spelling nottingham-293232020-05-04T17:04:11Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29323/ Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads Tunney, Richard J. Ziegler, Fenja V. To what extent are people able to make predictions about other people's preferences and values?We report two experiments that present a novel method assessing some of the basic processes in surrogate decision-making, namely surrogate-utility estimation. In each experiment participants formed dyads who were asked to assign utilities to health related items and commodity items, and to predict their partner's utility judgments for the same items. In experiment one we showed that older adults in long-term relationships were able to accurately predict their partner's wishes. In experiment two we showed that younger adults who were relatively unfamiliar with one another were also able to predict other people's wishes. Crucially we demonstrated that these judgments were accurate even after partialling out each participant's own preferences indicating that in order to make surrogate utility estimations people engage in perspective-taking rather than simple anchoring and adjustment, suggesting that utility estimation is not the cause of inaccuracy in surrogate decision-making. The data and implications are discussed with respect to theories of surrogate decision-making. Frontiers 2015-03-25 Article PeerReviewed Tunney, Richard J. and Ziegler, Fenja V. (2015) Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads. Frontiers in Psychology, 6 (315). ISSN 1664-1078 surrogate decisions surrogate accuracy utility estimations decision-making perspective-taking http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00315/abstract doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00315 doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00315
spellingShingle surrogate decisions
surrogate accuracy
utility estimations
decision-making
perspective-taking
Tunney, Richard J.
Ziegler, Fenja V.
Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads
title Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads
title_full Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads
title_fullStr Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads
title_full_unstemmed Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads
title_short Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads
title_sort surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads
topic surrogate decisions
surrogate accuracy
utility estimations
decision-making
perspective-taking
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29323/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29323/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29323/