Joyce Zhao
Department of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania

Towards a space of behavioral interventions: Insights from the drift diffusion model

Choice behavior can be influenced by many different types of incidental contextual factors, including those pertaining to presentation format, emotion, social belief, and cognitive capacity. Many of these contextual factors form the basis of behavioral interventions, or “nudges”, used by academics and practitioners to shape choice. In this paper we propose a space of fifteen different behavioral interventions, based on data from two large-scale choice experiments. Our space analyzes these interventions using the drift diffusion model (DDM), a quantitative theory of decision making whose parameters offer a theoretically compelling characterization of the cognitive and statistical underpinnings of choice behavior. By representing a large number of behavioral interventions using the parameters of the DDM, we are able to precisely measure, quantify, and compare the effects of these interventions, and interpret these effects in terms of their descriptive, mechanistic, and normative implications.

The presentation will begin at 12:00pm. Food and drinks will be provided.