Login

Publications  •  Project Statistics

Glossary  •  Schools  •  Disciplines
People Search: 
   
Title/Abstract Search: 

Dissertation Information for Richard D. Gonzalez

NAME:
- Richard D. Gonzalez

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Social Psychology

SCHOOL:
- Stanford University (USA) (1990)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: The impact of others' decisions

Abstract: "When making decisions we often infer the value of the alternatives from the behavior of others (e.g., we may infer that a new compact disk player is of high quality if several of our music loving friends recently bought it). In some domains, however, we fail to make such inferences. Stock trading is a case in point--investors often undervalue the significance of the behavior of those who are willing to trade. To test this claim, a simulated market was developed. Subjects made a series of portfolio re-allocations on the basis of reports they read. Subjects in the experimental conditions also saw the responses of another person. This person based their responses either on the same information as the subject (high redundant information) or on different but equally predictive information (low redundant information). In fact, the responses subjects observed were identical in both conditions. Note that, in this situation, the person who read the different report is more ""informative"" because they contribute nonredundant information.

The first experiment showed that, while subjects were influenced by the decisions of the other, they were not more influenced in the low redundancy condition. On the other hand, the second experiment showed that, when subjects saw the other's evaluations (i.e., how the other rated the information they had read), then they gave less weight to the responses of the person who read the same report. Thus, when observing the decisions of others, people did not seem to take into account the degree to which others' decisions are based on information redundant or nonredundant with their own, but, when observing evaluations, they did. Three addition studies were conducted to test various alternative explanations. One noteworthy result was that subjects asked to observe another's decisions and infer the evaluations the other made still did not respond to redundancy."

MPACT Scores for Richard D. Gonzalez

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:29:50

Advisors and Advisees Graph