BA & BBA, Psychology & Business Administration, Yonsei University, 2007
Selected Publications
Yoon, H., Yang, Y., and Morewedge, C. K. (2022). Early Cost Realization and College Choice. Journal of Marketing Research, 59(1), 136–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437211026337
Abstract
Student loans defer the cost of college until after graduation, allowing many students access to higher lifetime earnings and colleges and universities they otherwise could not afford. Even with student loans, however, the authors find that students psychologically realize the financial costs of a college education long before their loan repayments begin. This early cost realization frames financial decisions between most pairs of colleges as an intertemporal trade-off. Students choose between investments with (1) smaller short-term costs but smaller long-term returns (a lower-cost, lower-return [LC-LR] college) and (2) larger short-term costs but larger long-term returns (a higher-cost, higher-return [HC-HR] college). The authors find that early cost realization increases preferences for LC-LR colleges—preferences that could reduce lifetime earnings—in both simulations and experiments. Preferences for LC-LR colleges are pronounced among financially impatient students and in choice pairs of LC-LR and HC-HR colleges where the equilibrium is set at a low-discount-rate threshold. A return-on-investment strategy, future uncertainty, and debt aversion cannot explain these results. A decision aid synchronizing the psychological realization of costs and benefits reduced preferences for LC-LR colleges, illustrating that the preference is constructed and receptive to interventions.
Yoon, H., Scopelliti, I., and Morewedge, C. K. (2021). Decision Making Can Be Improved Through Observational Learning. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 162, 155-188.
Abstract
Observational learning can debias judgment and decision making. One-shot observational learning-based training interventions (akin to “hot seating”) can produce reductions in cognitive biases in the laboratory (i.e., anchoring, representativeness, and social projection), and successfully teach a decision rule that increases advice taking in a weight on advice paradigm (i.e., the averaging principle). These interventions improve judgment, rule learning, and advice taking more than practice. We find observational learning-based interventions can be as effective as information-based interventions. Their effects are additive for advice taking, and for accuracy when advice is algorithmically optimized. As found in the organizational learning literature, explicit knowledge transferred through information appears to reduce the stickiness of tacit knowledge transferred through observational learning. Moreover, observational learning appears to be a unique debiasing training strategy, an addition to the four proposed by Fischhoff (1982). We also report new scales measuring individual differences in anchoring, representativeness heuristics, and social projection.
Yoon, H. (2020). Impatience and Time-Inconsistency in Discounting Models. Management Science,66(12), 5485-6064.
Abstract
Extant theories of intertemporal choice entangle two aspects of time preference: impatience and time inconsistency. Impatient people focus on present consumption without worrying too much about the future; they may spend freely and avoid exercise. An outsider might question their choices, but impatient people do not experience conflict over those choices. By contrast, people who are time-inconsistent intend to save and exercise, but they fail to do so when temptation is proximate. Such individuals are conflicted; their preferences today differ from their preferences tomorrow. I characterize the interaction between impatience and time inconsistency in three leading models of temporal discounting that go beyond the exponential model, which does not predict time inconsistency at any level of impatience. The quasi-hyperbolic model predicts that time inconsistency increases with patience, while the hyperbolic model makes the opposite prediction. The constant-sensitivity model predicts that time inconsistency peaks at a moderate level of impatience. The results of an experiment using real monetary consequences with delays of up to one year align most closely with the prediction of the constant-sensitivity model.
Yoon, H., & Chapman, G. B. (2016). A Closer Look at the Yardstick: A New Discount Rate Measure with Precision and Range. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 29(5), 470-480.
Abstract
In intertemporal choice research, choice tasks (i.e., choosing between $80 today vs. $100 in a year) are often used to elicit a discount rate. The discount rate derived from a choice task, however, is largely restricted by the granularities and ranges of the questions asked. We examined this restriction in three popular discount rate measurements using simulations and experiments, and we propose an alternative procedure (Three-option Adaptive Discount rate measurement, ToAD), which is capable of measuring a wide range of discount rates (from approximately 0.035% to 350,000% annual percentage rate) with high precision using 10 questions, in under a minute. ToAD can be easily implemented in online surveys (i.e., Qualtrics).
Morewedge, C. K., Yoon, H., Scopelliti, I., Symborski, C. W., Korris, J. H., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Debiasing Decisions: Improved Decision Making With a Single Training Intervention. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2(1), 129-140.
Abstract
From failures of intelligence analysis to misguided beliefs about vaccinations, biased judgment and decision making contributes to problems in policy, business, medicine, law, education, and private life. Early attempts to reduce decision biases with training met with little success, leading scientists and policy makers to focus on debiasing by using incentives and changes in the presentation and elicitation of decisions. We report the results of two longitudinal experiments that found medium to large effects of one-shot debiasing training interventions. Participants received a single training intervention, played a computer game or watched an instructional video, which addressed biases critical to intelligence analysis (in Experiment 1:bias blind spot, confirmation bias, and fundamental attribution error; in Experiment 2: anchoring, representativeness, and social projection). Both kinds of interventions produced medium to large debiasing effects immediately (games > −31.94% and videos > −18.60%) that persisted at least 2 months later (games > −23.57% and videos > −19.20%). Games that provided personalized feedback and practice produced larger effects than did videos. Debiasing effects were domain general: bias reduction occurred across problems in different contexts, and problem formats that were taught and not taught in the interventions. The results suggest that a single training intervention can improve decision making. We suggest its use alongside improved incentives, information presentation, and nudges to reduce costly errors associated with biased judgments and decisions.
Bold, K.W., Yoon, H., Chapman, G.B., & McCarthy, D.E. (2013). Factors predicting smoking in a laboratory-based smoking-choice task. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 21(2), 133-143.
Abstract
This study aimed to expand the current understanding of smoking maintenance mechanisms by examining how putative relapse risk factors relate to a single behavioral smoking choice using a novel laboratory smoking-choice task. After 12 hr of nicotine deprivation, participants were exposed to smoking cues and given the choice between smoking up to two cigarettes in a 15-min window or waiting and receiving four cigarettes after a delay of 45 min. Greater nicotine dependence, higher impulsivity, and lower distress tolerance were hypothesized to predict earlier and more intensive smoking. Out of 35 participants (n = 9 women), 26 chose to smoke with a median time to a first puff of 1.22 min (SD = 2.62 min, range = 0.03–10.62 min). Survival analyses examined latency to first puff, and results indicated that greater pretask craving and smoking more cigarettes per day were significantly related to smoking sooner in the task. Greater behavioral disinhibition predicted shorter smoking latency in the first 2 min of the task, but not at a delay of more than 2 min. Lower distress tolerance (reporting greater regulation efforts to alleviate distress) was related to more puffs smoked and greater nicotine dependence was related to more time spent smoking in the task. This novel laboratory smoking-choice paradigm may be a useful laboratory analog for the choices smokers make during cessation attempts and may help identify factors that influence smoking lapses.
Chapman, G.B., Li, M., Vietri, J.T., Ibuka, Y., Thomas, D., Yoon, H., & Galvani, A. (2012). Using game theory to examine incentives in influenza vaccination behavior. Psychological Science, 23(9), 1008-1015.
Abstract
The social good often depends on the altruistic behavior of specific individuals. For example, epidemiological studies of influenza indicate that elderly individuals, who face the highest mortality risk, are best protected by vaccination of young individuals, who contribute most to disease transmission. To examine the conditions under which young people would get vaccinated to protect elderly people, we conducted a game-theory experiment that mirrored real-world influenza transmission, with “young” players contributing more than “elderly” players to herd immunity. Participants could spend points to get vaccinated and reduce the risk of influenza. When players were paid according to individual point totals, more elderly than young players got vaccinated, a finding consistent with the Nash equilibrium predicting self-interested behavior. When players were paid according to group point totals, however, more young than elderly players got vaccinated—a finding consistent with the utilitarian equilibrium predicting group-optimal behavior—which resulted in higher point totals than when players were paid for their individual totals. Thus, payout structure affected whether individuals got vaccinated for self-interest or group benefit.
Chapman, G.B., Li, M., Colby, H., & Yoon, H. (2010). Opting in versus opting out of influenza vaccination. Journal of the American Medical Association, 304(1), 43-44.
Abstract
Changes in how a choice is presented can affect the actions of decision makers, who have a tendency to stick with the default option.1-3 For example, organ donation rates are much higher in an opt-out system (donor status is the default, explicitly opting out is required if a person does not want to donate) than in an opt-in system (non-donor status is the default, explicitly opting in is required if a person wants to be a donor). Both systems give decision makers autonomy to choose according to their personal principles, but the opt-out system provides a “nudge” toward donation. Although influenza vaccination may help prevent morbidity and mortality from seasonal or other pandemic influenza (such as 2009 influenza A [H1N1]), many people decline to receive an annual flu shot even when it is available for free at the workplace. We assessed whether modifying the default option could influence seasonal influenza vaccination.
