The influence of affect on suboptimal strategy choice in the Monty Hall dilemma

Abstract

The Monty Hall dilemma (MHD) presents an intriguing choice anomaly that offers insight into human reasoning. It presents a specific subclass of decision tasks that require the adequate use of Bayes theorem in order to make optimal decisions. In the MHD, participants are presented with three doors with only one door hiding the prize. After their initial choice of a door, they are offered additional information. A different door (one that does not hide the prize and one not chosen by the participant) is opened to reveal nothing behind it. Afterwards, the participants are offered to stay with their initial choice or to switch to the other remaining door. The better strategy is to always switch; a counterintuitive one for most people. We examine the notorious difficulty of the MHD from an affective perspective while relying on the dual processing approach to thinking. We varied participants? reliance on their affective reactions as opposed to a neutral condition and hypothesized that the affective reactions associated with the staying option contribute to worse performance on the task. Indeed, the participants in the affective condition chose the staying option more often than our control participants. Using the MHD as an appropriate paradigm of conditional probability reasoning we show that, for this type of task, an affective strategy is highly inefficient. We attribute these results to the affective reactions associated with the staying option, with regret avoidance associated with the switch option, and the conditional probability construction of the dilemma.

Why Humans Fail in Solving the Monty Hall Dilemma: A Systematic Review

“…Fourth, people’s suboptimal MHD performance can be explained by the larger amount of regret participants anticipate to experience after a loss due to switching rather than to a loss due to staying (Stibel et al, 2009), or by a more general reliance on affect (Efendic & Drace, 2015). In Stibel et al’s (2009) experiment, participants solved one trial of (a variant of) the classical MHD.…”

“…Participants’ switching responses were higher compared with those of participants who themselves made the initial choice. In the study of Efendic & Drace (2015), participants were assigned either to the control condition or to the reliance on affect condition. Participants of the latter condition repeatedly received the instruction to take into account how positive or negative they felt regarding their choice behaviour and to rely on their affect and emotions in order to make their final choice.…”

“…First, in several studies, participants were given multiple trials of the MHD which allowed the researchers to investigate whether repeated experience and feedback with the problem would improve performances (Efendic & Drace, 2015; Franco-Watkins et al, 2003; Herbranson & Schroeder, 2010; Herbranson & Wang, 2014; Hirao et al, 2016, 2017; Klein et al, 2013; Mazur & Kahlbaugh, 2012; Petrocelli, 2013; Petrocelli & Harris, 2011; Saenen et al, 2015b; Slembeck & Tyran, 2004; Tubau & Alsonso, 2003). The results of most of these studies provide strong evidence for learning from experience: Increased switching rates over trials were observed (Franco-Watkins et al, 2003; Herbranson & Schroeder, 2010; Hirao et al, 2017, Klein et al, 2013; Mazur & Kahlbaugh, 2012; Petrocelli, 2013; Petrocelli & Harris, 2011; Saenen et al, 2015b; Slembeck & Tyran, 2004; Tubau & Alonso, 2003).…”

“…Unfortunately, several articles do not report the observed switching percentages (e.g., exact switching percentages and standard errors, as well as individual switching profiles) in sufficient detail, so it is impossible to investigate whether the improvement in switching rates is merely due to a probability matching trend or not (e.g., Franco-Watkins et al, 2003; Klein et al, 2013; Petrocelli, 2013; Petrocelli & Harris, 2011). Several other articles do report results that in principle could be explained by the probability matching phenomenon (e.g., Efendic & Drace, 2015; Herbranson & Schroeder, 2010; Herbranson & Wang, 2014; Hirao et al, 2017; Mazur & Kahlbaugh, 2012). However, an analysis of individual profiles (as reported in Herbranson & Wang, 2014) would still be required in order to find more direct evidence for probability matching in specific participants.…”

“…Second, after elimination and thus when the contestant is confronted with the actual dilemma, humans may fail to take into account the dependency of the host’s behaviour (Burns & Wieth, 2003, 2004; Idson et al, 2004; Krauss & Wang, 2003; Tubau & Alonso, 2003). Furthermore, partitioning-editing-counting (Fox & Levav, 2004; Franco-Watkins et al, 2003), updating (Baratgin & Politzer, 2010), and the anticipation on regret (Stibel et al, 2009) or a more general reliance on affect (Efendic & Drace, 2015) may prevent humans from arriving at the optimal solution. Also humans’ conservative response tendency may play a role (Hirao et al, 2016).…”