Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Thinking through uncertainty: nonconsequential reasoning and choice.

E Shafir1, A Tversky

  • 1Department of Psychology, Princeton University, NJ 08544.

Cognitive Psychology
|October 1, 1992
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Radiation-Induced Wavelength Shifts in Fiber Bragg Gratings Exposed to Gamma Rays and Neutrons in a Nuclear Reactor.

Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)·2025
Same author

Chromatic confocal displacement sensing at oblique incidence angles.

Applied optics·2020
Same author

Involving schoolchildren in radon surveys by means of the "RadonTest" online system.

Journal of environmental radioactivity·2020
Same author

Geometrical separation between the birefringence components in Faraday-rotation fiber-optic current sensors.

Optics letters·2009
Same author

Asymmetric behavior of polished polarization-maintaining couplers.

Optics letters·2009
Same author

Mode-coupling analysis of anisotropic polarization-maintaining fibers.

Optics letters·2009
Same journal

Sublexical semantic decoding during incidental novel word learning in natural Chinese reading.

Cognitive psychology·2026
Same journal

Seeing, hearing, and feeling causation.

Cognitive psychology·2026
Same journal

Separating decision and motor contributions to behavioral biases induced by manipulating stimulus probability.

Cognitive psychology·2026
Same journal

Congruency drives "conflict adaptation" independent of conflict: Converging evidence from behavior and computational modeling.

Cognitive psychology·2026
Same journal

Corrigendum to "Network analyses identify critical factors for facilitating future-oriented decision-making" [Cogn. Psychol. 165 (2026) 101815].

Cognitive psychology·2026
Same journal

The time course of local coherence effects in German: Evidence from self-paced reading times and event-related potentials.

Cognitive psychology·2026
See all related articles

People often fail to consider all decision outcomes under uncertainty, violating consequentialism principles. This research explores this nonconsequential decision-making in scenarios like the Prisoner's Dilemma and its link to quasi-magical thinking.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Decision Theory
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Consequentialism requires evaluating all decision tree branches under uncertainty.
  • Savage's sure-thing principle is often violated in practice.
  • Nonconsequential decision-making is observed in various psychological tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate why individuals fail to adhere to consequentialist decision-making under uncertainty.
  • To analyze the manifestation of nonconsequential reasoning in specific decision-making scenarios.
  • To explore the concept of quasi-magical thinking in relation to decision-making.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of decision-making behavior in the Prisoner's Dilemma game.
  • Examination of responses in Newcomb's Problem and Wason's selection task.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Theoretical discussion on the causes and implications of nonconsequential reasoning.

    • Main Results:

    • Individuals often exhibit nonconsequential behavior, particularly when facing uncertainty.
    • The Prisoner's Dilemma demonstrates a failure to consider all outcomes when opponent's action is unknown.
    • Observed behaviors in Newcomb's Problem and Wason's task align with nonconsequential decision-making.

    Conclusions:

    • Human decision-making under uncertainty frequently deviates from consequentialist norms.
    • This deviation is linked to psychological factors and potentially quasi-magical thinking.
    • Understanding these biases is crucial for fields like behavioral economics and cognitive science.