At the invitation of the Laboratory of Learning and Animal Behavior, and with a presentation by Dr. Carlos Pinto, Dr. Elliot Ludvig will deliver the lecture titled "Cognitive biases in risky choice and gambling?" on November 10th at 12:15 PM in the EPsi Amphitheater. In this series of lectures, Research Laboratories invite national and international experts in their respective research areas to share diverse perspectives, methodologies, and approaches in the scientific investigation of the mind and behavior.
Bio
Elliot Ludvig is Professor of Psychology at the University of Warwick. He has published over 80 papers examining how humans and other animals learn from rewards, using computational, behavioural, and neural perspectives. Since receiving his PhD from Duke University, he has held research positions at Rutgers University, the University of Alberta, Princeton University, and the Technion. He is an associate editor at Psychonomic Bulletin & Review and the British Journal of Psychology and serves as the Research co-Chair for the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling.
Abstract
When people make risky decisions based on past experience, they must rely on their memories. These memories, however, need not be veridical, and biases in those memories can lead to biases in choice. In this talk, I show how people exhibit stronger memories for the best and worst outcomes that they experience in a given context. This memory bias leads people to be more risk seeking for gains than losses, which is opposite to the usual pattern observed when people are told about the odds and outcomes. This choice bias seems very deeply ingrained—and is shared with other animals, including pigeons and chimpanzees. When asked afterward about which outcomes they encountered, people are very poor at recalling the exact outcomes and instead confabulate outcomes in line with their choice biases. I conclude with some suggestions about how to mitigate these cognitive biases to prevent gambling harm.