title: Risk attitude in small timesaving decisions.
abstract: Four experiments are presented that explore situations in which a decision maker has to rely on personal experience in an attempt to minimize delays. Experiment 1 shows that risk-attitude in these timesaving decisions is similar to risk-attitude in money-related decisions from experience: A risky prospect is more attractive than a safer prospect with the same expected value only when it leads to a better outcome most of the time. Experiment 2 highlights a boundary condition: It suggests that a difficulty in ranking the relevant delays moves behavior toward random choice. Experiments 3 and 4 show that when actions must be taken during the delay (thereby helping compare delays), this increases the similarity of timesaving decisions to money-related decisions. In these settings the results reflect an increase in risk aversion with experience. The relationship of the results to the study of non-human time-related decisions, human money-related decisions and human time perception is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Max Wertheimer Minerva Center for Cognitive Studies, Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
authors.forename: Nira
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Munichor
authors.forename: Ido
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Erev
authors.forename: Arnon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lotem
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011584:Psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013997:Time Factors