In this session of Hot Politics Lab, Amandine Lerusse (Leiden University) will give a talk titled “Jumping to Solutions? An eye-tracking study of search in response to negative performance feedback.”
The talk will be followed by Q&A, and everyone is welcome to join in the Common Room (Roeterseilandcampus Room B9.22) and online through this link.
Talk abstract:
Behavioral decision-making theories portray decision-makers as informationally and cognitively constrained problem solvers (Cyert and March, 1963). A central assertion is that performance below aspiration levels initiates problemistic search, which is failure-induced and solution-oriented. Search behaviors may also aim to identify relevant characteristics and causal origins of low performance (Posen et al., 2018). Empirical assessment of attention remains scarce, but recent studies suggest that negative performance increases decision-makers’ solution-generation but not problem-definition search (Van der Voet, 2023).
We use eye-tracking to test the expectation that negative performance feedback positively affects problem-definition and solution-generation search, but that its positive effect on solution-generation search is stronger. We collaborate with the Dutch waterboard Rijnland to sample 30 participants who are presented 20 vignettes in random order. Using equivalence framing, we randomly assign participants to a positive or negative framing of factual performance information on the level of individual vignettes. The vignettes contain problem-related and solution-related information in randomized sequence, for which eye movements are registered (dwell time per area of interest).
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