How Elicitation Procedure Shapes Beliefs About Others’ Affective Responses to Action and Inaction

Abstract

Humans have long pondered the distinction between action and inaction. Classic work in social sciences provides evidence that most people believe that others experience higher levels of affect when they obtain the same outcome through action as opposed to inaction. In this paper, we theorize that people’s attributions of affect to identical outcomes resulting from action versus inaction are largely constructive in nature, such that they heavily depend on the elicitation procedure. Seven preregistered studies demonstrate that most individuals cease to attribute greater affect to identical outcomes resulting from action as opposed to inaction when it is made possible—or salient—that they can state that action and inaction are associated with equal levels of affect. Consequently, the present studies suggest that researchers can reach different conclusions about participants’ general proclivity to attribute greater affect to identical outcomes resulting from action (vs. inaction) depending on how participants’ beliefs are measured.

Keywords

action inaction omission bias inaction affect affective judgments

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

C. J.

(2003). The psychology of doing nothing: Forms of decision avoidance result from reason and emotion. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 139–167.

Baron

Ritov

(1994). Reference points and omission bias. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 59, 475–498.

DeScioli

Christner

Kurzban

(2011). The omission strategy. Psychological Science, 22(4), 442–446.

Duttwiller

(2006). Liability for omission in international criminal law. International Criminal Law Review, 6, 1–61.

Foot

(1967). The problem of abortion and the doctrine of the double effect. Oxford Review, 5, 5–15.

Gilovich

Wang

R. F.

Regan

Nishina

(2003). Regrets of action and inaction across cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 61–71.

Gleicher

Kost

K. A.

Baker

S. M.

Strathman

A. J.

Richman

S. A.

Sherman

S. J.

(1990). The role of counterfactual thinking in judgments of affect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16, 284–295.

Goldstein

W. M.

Einhorn

H. J.

(1987). Expression theory and the preference reversal phenomena. Psychological Review, 94(2), 236–254.

Kahneman

Tversky

(1982). The psychology of preferences. Scientific American, 246, 160–173.

10.

LaFave

Scott

(1986). Criminal law (2nd ed.). West.

11.

Landman

(1987). Regret and elation following action and inaction: Affective responses to positive versus negative outcomes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 13, 524–536.

12.

Lichtenstein

Slovic

(1971). Reversals of preference between bids and choices in gambling decisions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 89(1), 46–55.

13.

Lichtenstein

Slovic

(2006). The construction of preference. Cambridge University Press.

14.

Payne

J. W.

Bettman

J. R.

Johnson

E. J.

(1992). Behavioral decision research: A constructive processing perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 43, 87–131.

15.

Ritov

Baron

(1992). Status-quo and omission bias. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 49–61.

16.

Samuelson

Zeckhauser

(1988). Status quo bias in decision making. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1, 7–59.

17.

Shafir

Simonson

Tversky

(1993). Reason-based choice. Cognition, 49, 11–36.

18.

Simmons

J. P.

Nelson

L. D.

Simonsohn

(2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22, 1359–1366.

19.

Simmons

J. P.

Nelson

L. D.

Simonsohn

(2018). False-positive citations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13, 255–259.

20.

Simonson

(1989). Choice based on reasons: The case of attraction and compromise effects. Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 158–174.

21.

Slovic

(1995). The construction of preference. American Psychologist, 50(5), 364–371.

22.

Spranca

Minsk

Baron

(1991). Omission and commission in judgment and choice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27, 76–105.

23.

Thomson

J. J.

(1985). The trolley problem. The Yale Law Journal, 94, 1395–1415.

24.

Tversky

Sattath

Slovic

(1988). Contingent weighting in judgment and choice. Psychological Review, 95(3), 371–384.

25.

Zeelenberg

van den Bos

van Dijk

Pieters

(2002). The inaction effect in the psychology of regret. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 314–327.