Hunters, Trappers, and Gatherers of the Sea: a Comparative Study of Fishing Strategies

1973 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Cove

This study is a comparison of fishing strategies in three areas: the Newfoundland offshore fishery, the inshore salmon fishery of British Columbia, and an oyster fishery of Cornwall, England. From the Newfoundland fishery, a model was developed to account for differences in risk-taking by fishing captains. The model specified relations between reward structure, technology, and environment that influence captains’ evaluations and, hence, decision-making.The model was then tested in the other fishing contexts. The results indicate that the situational approach to risk-taking can be used for the problem of understanding short-term production strategies. This particular model, however, requires the addition of an historical dimension in order to adequately account for decision-making in all three fisheries.

Author(s):  
Stefan Scherbaum ◽  
Simon Frisch ◽  
Maja Dshemuchadse

Abstract. Folk wisdom tells us that additional time to make a decision helps us to refrain from the first impulse to take the bird in the hand. However, the question why the time to decide plays an important role is still unanswered. Here we distinguish two explanations, one based on a bias in value accumulation that has to be overcome with time, the other based on cognitive control processes that need time to set in. In an intertemporal decision task, we use mouse tracking to study participants’ responses to options’ values and delays which were presented sequentially. We find that the information about options’ delays does indeed lead to an immediate bias that is controlled afterwards, matching the prediction of control processes needed to counter initial impulses. Hence, by using a dynamic measure, we provide insight into the processes underlying short-term oriented choices in intertemporal decision making.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Reda M. S. Abdulaal ◽  
Omer A. Bafail

When decision-makers’ judgments are uncertain, they often express their opinions using grey linguistic variables. Once used, the data often retains its grey nature throughout all subsequent decision-making iterations. Multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) is a tool used when making complicated decisions and in circumstances where several criteria require evaluation to choose the most desirable option. Grey data serves as the basis for several MCDM methods. This paper compares two MCDM methods, Grey-Linear-Programming (GLP) and Grey-Best-Worst-Method (GBWM), in terms of the weights of decision criteria and their rankings. Moreover, Grey-The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (GTOPSIS) was used to rank the weights of the two methods. Study findings demonstrated that GBWM requires more mathematical calculations than GLP, based on linear programming's classic simplex method. On the other hand, when GTOPSIS follows GLP, the alternative rank does not change compared to when GTOPSIS followed GBWM. For the applications used in this comparison, GLP procedure is considered simpler than GBWM procedure.


2020 ◽  
pp. 92-112
Author(s):  
Carolyn James

This chapter explores the ways in which gender shaped the respective approaches to political decision-making by the marquis and his wife. I argue that while the delegated nature of her authority encouraged Isabella to keep her emotions strictly in check and to be prudent in a diplomatic setting, Francesco was far more erratic. On the one hand, he adopted strategies of temporizing, prevarication, and swift changes of allegiance to hedge his bets politically, seen by contemporaries as intrinsically female vices, on the other, he indulged in reckless and competitive behaviour designed to display his masculine courage and princely disdain for caution. Together the couple evaded the dangers posed by the second French descent and the fall of Milan to Louis XII, but it was Isabella’s prudence that neutralized the ill-considered risk-taking of her husband.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Holdaway ◽  
Edward Vul

Humans are social beings, and most of our decisions are influenced by considerations of how others will respond. Whether in poker or political negotiations, the riskiness of a decision is often determined by the variance of the other party’s possible responses. Such socially-contingent decisions can be framed in terms of adversarial games, which differ from other risky situations such as lotteries because the risk arises from uncertainty about the opponent’s decisions, and not some independent stochasticity in the world. We use chess as a lens through which we can study human risk-taking behavior in adversarial decision making. We develop a novel algorithm for calculating the riskiness of each move in a chess game, and apply it to data from over 1 billion online chess games. We find that players not only exhibit state-dependent risk preferences, but also change their risk-taking strategy depending on their opponent, and that this effect differs in experts and novices.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maaike M.H. van Swieten ◽  
Rafal Bogacz ◽  
Sanjay G. Manohar

AbstractWe assess risks differently when they are explicitly described, compared to when we learn directly from experience, suggesting dissociable decision-making systems. Our needs, such as hunger, could globally affect our risk preferences, but do they affect described and learned risks equally? On one hand, explicit decision-making is often considered flexible and contextsensitive, and might therefore be modulated by metabolic needs. On the other hand, implicit preferences learned through reinforcement might be more strongly coupled to biological drives. To answer this, we asked participants to choose between two options with different risks, where the probabilities of monetary outcomes were either described or learned. In agreement with previous studies, rewarding contexts induced risk-aversion when risks were explicitly described, but risk-seeking when they were learned through experience. Crucially, hunger attenuated these contextual biases, but only for learned risks. The results suggest that our metabolic state determines risk-taking biases when we lack explicit descriptions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey Aston ◽  
Marko Nardini ◽  
Ulrik Beierholm

Mature perceptual systems can learn new arbitrary sensory signals (novel cues) to properties of the environment, but little is known about the extent to which novel cues are integrated into normal perception. In normal perception, multiple uncertain familiar cues are combined, often near-optimally (reliability-weighted averaging), to increase perceptual precision. We trained observers to use abstract novel cues to estimate horizontal locations of hidden objects on a monitor. In Experiment 1, four groups of observers each learned to use a different novel cue. All groups benefitted from a suboptimal but significant gain in precision using novel and familiar cues together after short-term training (3 x ~1.5 hour sessions), extending previous reports of novel-familiar cue combination. In Experiment 2, we tested whether two novel cues may also be combined with each other. One pair of novel cues could be combined to improve precision but the other could not, at least not after three sessions of repeated training. Overall, our results provide extensive evidence that novel cues can be learned and combined with familiar cues to enhance perception, but mixed evidence for whether perceptual and decision-making systems can extend this ability to the combination of multiple novel cues with only short-term training.


2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Oettingen ◽  
Doris Mayer ◽  
Babette Brinkmann

Mental contrasting of a desired future with present reality leads to expectancy-dependent goal commitments, whereas focusing on the desired future only makes people commit to goals regardless of their high or low expectations for success. In the present brief intervention we randomly assigned middle-level managers (N = 52) to two conditions. Participants in one condition were taught to use mental contrasting regarding their everyday concerns, while participants in the other condition were taught to indulge. Two weeks later, participants in the mental-contrasting condition reported to have fared better in managing their time and decision making during everyday life than those in the indulging condition. By helping people to set expectancy-dependent goals, teaching the metacognitive strategy of mental contrasting can be a cost- and time-effective tool to help people manage the demands of their everyday life.


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