The role of framing, agency and uncertainty in a focus-divide dilemma

How to prioritise multiple objectives is a common dilemma of daily life. A simple and effective decision 4 rule is to focus resources when the tasks are difficult, and divide when tasks are easy. Nonetheless, in 5 experimental paradigms of this dilemma, participants make highly variable and suboptimal strategic 6 decisions when asked to allocate resources to two competing goals that vary in difficulty. We developed a 7 new version in which participants had to choose where to park a fire truck between houses of varying 8 distances apart. Unlike in the previous versions of the dilemma, participants approached the optimal 9 strategy in this task. Three key differences between the fire truck version and previous versions of the task 10 were investigated: 1) Framing (whether the objectives are familiar or abstract), by comparing a group 11 who placed cartoon trucks between houses to a group performing the same task with abstract shapes; 2) 12 Agency (how much of the task is under the participants’ direct control), by comparing groups who 13 controlled the movement of the truck to those who did not; 3) Uncertainty, by adding variability to the 14 driving speed of the truck to make success or failure on a given trial more difficult to predict. Framing 15 and agency did not influence strategic decisions. When adding variability to outcomes, however, 16 decisions shifted away from optimal. The results suggest choices become more variable when the 17 outcome is less certain, consistent with exploration of response alternatives triggered by an inability to 18 predict success