Procedural Decision-Making in Response to Complexity -- Fixing Approaches

We provide implementers with a choice process description and ask them to implement it on simple and complex lotteries, some of which are repeated and some of which are related by FOSD. We test whether implementers are noisier (i.e., less likely to choose consistently in repeated menus) in complex decisions compared to simple ones. We also test whether implementers violate FOSD more in complex lotteries. We investigate the sensitivity of these effects to specific choice processes, such as "procedures."

2025-06-17

2025-06-18

noise rates, FOSD violations

1. Each implementer faces two simple menus that are each repeated twice and faces two complex menus that are each repeated twice. For each repeated menu, we create an indicator equal to "1" if the implementer chose a different lottery across repeats, 0 otherwise. We call these inconsistent guesses "noise." We compare the aggregate rates of noise between the simple lotteries and the complex lotteries.

2. We conduct a similar analysis at the individual level. For each implementer, we can say whether they were noisier in the complex menus, noisier in the simple menus, or equally noisy. We test whether implementers were noisier in the complex vs. simple menus.

3. We use our measures of procedural decision-making (e.g., whether a message is "perfectly replicable") developed earlier to test whether procedures are less noisy than non-procedures. These measures of procedural decision-making were created in our earlier study.

4. Restricting to the set of comparable lotteries with 10 outcomes, we test whether simple or complex messages lead to more noise and whether procedures interact with this effect.

5. We test whether implementers violate FOSD more for simple or complex lotteries (both at the individual level and in aggregate). We also test whether procedures interact with this effect.


Given potential data quality concerns on Prolific, we will investigate the sensitivity of our results to indicators of low data quality. In particular, we will investigate the sensitivity of our results to removing individuals with very fast survey completion times relative to others, and those with higher comprehension question errors relative to others.

self-reported difficulty

We ask implementers whether they find it easier to implement the message on simple or complex lotteries. We test whether there are differences in reported difficulty depending on whether the implementer was implementing a simple or complex message, and whether they were implementing a procedure or not a procedure.


Given potential data quality concerns on Prolific, we will investigate the sensitivity of our results to indicators of low data quality. In particular, we will investigate the sensitivity of our results to removing individuals with very fast survey completion times relative to others, and those with higher comprehension question errors relative to others.

We vary whether implementers face simple or complex lotteries, and randomly select lottery menus to be repeated.

Not available

All randomization occurs through oTree: (e.g., assignment of either a simple message or a complex message, randomly selected lotteries, and randomly selected lotteries to repeat).

We randomize into treatments at the individual-level: Implementers receive either a simple or a complex message. This interacts with another source of randomness which is whether implementers receive a message that is procedural or non-procedural. The complex messages contain more procedural processes, so these two sources of randomness are not independent.

No

The design is not clustered, so each cluster is one participant. We recruit 1000 implementers to implement simple messages and 1000 implementers to implement complex messages.

We have 2000 total implementers. Each faces 20 menus, including two repeated simple menus, two repeated complex menus, one simple FOSD menu, and one complex FOSD menu.

1000 implementers to implement simple messages and 1000 implementers to implement complex messages, each facing two repeated simple menus, two repeated complex menus, one simple FOSD menu, and one complex FOSD menu