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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Decision Neuroscience
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1509320

Uncertain Choices with asymmetric Information: How Clear Evidence and Ambiguity Interact?

Provisionally accepted
AmirHossein Tehrani-Safa AmirHossein Tehrani-Safa 1,2*Atiye Sarabi-Jamab Atiye Sarabi-Jamab 3Abdol-Hossein Vahabie Abdol-Hossein Vahabie 1,4Babak Nadjar Araabi Babak Nadjar Araabi 1
  • 1 School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Alborz, Iran
  • 2 Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran
  • 3 Faculty of Governance, University of Tehran, Tehran, 1417633461, Iran, Tehran, Iran
  • 4 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Tehran, Tehran, Alborz, Iran

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Real-world decisions often involve partial ambiguity, where the complete picture of potential risks is unclear. In such situations, individuals must make choices by balancing the value of available information against the uncertainty of unknown risks. Our study investigates this challenge by examining how people navigate the trade-off between the favorability of limited evidence and the degree of ambiguity when making decisions under partial ambiguity.Participants (n=77) engaged in a task where the level of ambiguity (small, medium, large) and the favorability of the evidence (asymmetrically positive, neutral, asymmetrically negative) were manipulated in a 3x3 design. We measured their ambiguity attitude in each condition.The key finding reveals a bias in how participants perceived the unknown. They reacted to the unknown differently depending on the initial clues, essentially filling in the missing information in a way that contrasted the evidence. When faced with positive evidence, participants were less tolerant of ambiguity compared to negative evidence. This means people were more careful when they had good news, but less cautious when they had bad news. This bias was particularly pronounced when the ambiguity was low.

    Keywords: ambiguity, information, decision-making, assymetry, risk

    Received: 10 Oct 2024; Accepted: 04 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Tehrani-Safa, Sarabi-Jamab, Vahabie and Araabi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: AmirHossein Tehrani-Safa, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, 4563-11155, Alborz, Iran

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.