Abstract
The demonstration that human decision-making can systematically violate the laws of rationality has had a wide impact on behavioural sciences. In this study, we use a pupillary index to adjudicate between two existing hypotheses about how irrational biases emerge: the hypothesis that biases result from fast, effortless processing and the hypothesis that biases result from more extensive integration. While effortless processing is associated with smaller pupillary responses, more extensive integration is associated with larger pupillary responses. Thus, we tested the relationship between pupil response and choice behaviour on six different foundational decision-making tasks that are classically used to demonstrate irrational biases. Participants demonstrated the expected systematic biases and their pupillary measurements satisfied pre-specified quality checks. Planned analyses returned inconclusive results, but exploratory examination of the data revealed an association between high pupillary responses and biased decisions. The findings provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that biases arise from gradual information integration.
Protocol registration
The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 19 December 2018. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4368452.v1.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study have been deposited on the Open Science Framework and are publicly available at https://osf.io/sygz3/.
Code availability
The custom scripts used for this study have been deposited on the Open Science Framework and are publicly available at https://osf.io/sygz3/.
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Acknowledgements
This project was made possible through grants from the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 1094/20; to E.E.), Army Research Office (grant No. W911NF-14-1-0101; to Y.N.) and Templeton Foundation (to V.F., J.D.C. and Y.N.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
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E.E. conceived of the study. E.E., V.F., J.D.C. and Y.N. developed the methodology. E.E. and V.F. performed the investigations. E.E. and V.F. wrote the original draft of the manuscript. E.E., V.F., J.D.C. and Y.N. reviewed and edited the manuscript. Y.N. acquired funding. J.D.C. and Y.N. supervised the study.
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Peer review information Nature Human Behaviour thanks Christopher Chambers, Joshua Gold, Peter Murphy and Konstantinos Tsetsos for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Marike Schiffer.
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Supplementary Discussion, Supplementary Figs. 1–4, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary References.
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Eldar, E., Felso, V., Cohen, J.D. et al. A pupillary index of susceptibility to decision biases. Nat Hum Behav 5, 653–662 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01006-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01006-3
