EFFECTS OF GROUPING INFORMATION ON DECISION MAKING UNDER RISK*
通过实验研究决策者如何利用分类标签而非精确数据点进行风险决策，发现信息分组对投注金额影响显著但实际意义不大，对投注多样性和期望值模型拟合度无显著影响，支持决策基于类别标签的观点。
Abstract The ability of decision makers to deal with information in terms of category labels rather than as precise data points is hypothesized as an explanation of how complex choices are made within the limits imposed by human information‐processing capacity. Twenty‐five decision makers placed bets under varying conditions of grouping of cues (probability of winning/losing, amount to be won, amount to be lost) as a test of this hypothesis. The results indicate that experimental pre‐grouping of cues has: (1) a statistically significant but practically unimportant impact on amounts bet; (2) no statistically significant effect on number of different bets made; and (3) no statistically significant effect on the fit of the bets to those predicted by an expected value model, except when grouping categories are very wide. These results support the contention that decision making occurs through the manipulation of category labels rather than exact values. Study of processes by which numerous exact cues are reduced to a smaller number of category labels is suggested as a complement to the study of sequential processing of alternatives, satisficing, the use of heuristics, and other means by which human beings make complex choices with limited cognitive capacity.