Citation

Demnitz R, Joslyn S. Weather Clim. Soc. 2020; 12(2): 309-322.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, American Meteorological Society)

DOI

10.1175/WCAS-D-19-0115.1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The four experiments reported here tested the impact of recent negative events on decision-making. Participants were given a virtual budget to spend on crops of varying costs and payoffs that, in some cases, depended on drought conditions. Participants made 46 decisions based on either deterministic or probabilistic seasonal climate predictions. Participants experienced a sequence of droughts either immediately prior to the target trials (recent condition) or early in the sequence (distant condition). In experiment 1, participants made overly cautious crop choices when droughts were experienced recently. Subsequent experiments probed the cognitive mechanisms involved. The effect of recency on overcautiousness was reduced by a midexperiment message, although it did not matter whether the message described a changed or consistent venue and time period. This suggests that overcautiousness was not caused by deducing a climatic trend in the particular area. Instead, we argue that availability--events that are easier to recall are judged to be more likely--was the major cause for increased cautiousness following recent droughts. Importantly, probabilistic predictions attenuated the impact of recency, inspired greater trust, and allowed participants to make better decisions overall than did deterministic predictions. Implications are discussed.

Language: en