Decision Scales and Tools
Over the years, my collaborators and I have developed a number of useful instruments that assess individual differences in decision making, ranking from domain-specific risk attitudes (the DoSpeRT Scale), risk taking in dynamic risk situations (the Columbia Card Task), and a free, public resource that categorizes and describes the most common individual difference measures used in JDM research (the Decision Making Individual Differences Inventory, or DMIDI).
Columbia Card Task
Bernd Figner, Elke Weber
Risk taking behaviors in everyday-life typically follow a characteristic developmental pattern. They are low during childhood, increase sharply with puberty, peak in adolescence and early adulthood, and decline again during middle and late adulthood. Though well documented, e.g., from accident statistics, the reasons are still not very well understood. Recent neuroscientific research suggested that the competition between distinct neural networks determines risk taking. Only when affective processes are triggered, adolescents tend show more impulsive risk taking and suboptimal information use than both children and adults due to a usually transient dominance of the affective over the cognitive-control network.
We developed the “Columbia Card Task” (CCT) to investigate developmental changes and individual differences in healthy individuals across the life span and in populations such as substance users. The CCT enables us to compare affect-based versus deliberative risky decisions and their triggering mechanisms as well as predictors of risk taking, such as inhibitory control, need-for-arousal, and impulsivity. Besides behavioral methods, we are using physiological measures, brain imaging, and brain stimulation techniques.
For more information (including CCT demo versions), please visit CCT Webpage
Decision Making Individual Differences Inventory
(DMIDI, rhymes with P Diddy)
With Kirstin Appelt, Kerry Milch and Michel Handgraaf
The DMIDI is a catalogue of over 200 individual difference measures commonly used in judgment and decision-making research.Basic descriptive information (including references & scale information) is available for all measures. Measures that are publicly available are posted for easy downloading for research and educational use only. Detailed information on history of use (including significance and consistency of results) is available for a subset of measures.
View PDF of a paper describing the instrument.