Guiding Questions:
- Why is it so challenging to do things that are good for us & for society?
- What factors influence risky and impulsive choices?
For example, why is it so challenging to save money? Why is it so challenging to exercise? Why is it so easy to over indulge in tasty foods? Why do we succumb to alcohol or drug addictions? Why is it so challenging to maintain a healthy lifestyle? Why is it so challenging to engage in sustainable behaviors?
These types of behaviors stem from decisions that traverse time and involve uncertainty. More specifically, we often must choose between what matters to us right now and what will matter to us down the road. These are called intertemporal choices. Many people exhibit what’s called “temporal discounting,” where we overvalue what satisfies us now and undervalue (i.e., “discount”) future outcomes. Temporal discounting is also called future discounting, delay discounting, time discounting, or impulsive choice.
Similarly, we often make choices under uncertainty – in other words, when we do not know what the outcome will be. Choice under uncertainty can also be thought of as risky. Like humans tend to discount the future, many individuals tend to be risk averse – meaning they prefer safer options to probabilistic ones, even when the risk has a higher expected utility. On the other hands, some individuals are risk-seeking, meaning they prefer taking chances when the odds are unknown.
Despite these general decision patterns, there are also individual differences in discounting and risk tolerance. We are interested in understanding who discounts the future more? Who takes more risks? How do past environments (like childhood SES or adversity) relate to current decision patterns? How do individual differences in discounting and risk tolerance relate to important real-world behaviors such as financial attitudes, environmentally friendly behaviors, moral judgment, and substance use?
Beyond describing, explaining, and predicting impulsive and risky choices, we also want to understand what factors influence, mitigate, or encourage impulsive, impatient, and risky choices. More specifically, addressing factors that influence impulsive and risky choices will help us understand why people give into immediate temptations, convenience, or display risk aversion. Understanding what influences impulsive and risky choices will also help us facilitate adaptive and/or more successful decision-making.
Most recently, I have especially been interested in factors that predict, explain, or influence sustainable attitudes and behavior.
Currently, we are tackling the following more specific questions:
- Do individual social values predict susceptibility to greenwashing?
- Do social values explain the relationship between political orientation and sustainable behavior?
- What is the effect of legacy or place framing on sustainable behavior among younger and older adults?
- Does uncertainty predict more impulsive financial choices?
So you want to be a scientist 