AMBIGUITY SEEKING IN MULTIATTRIBUTE DECISIONS - EFFECTS OF OPTIMISM AND MESSAGE FRAMING

This paper investigates the influence of message framing and personali ty variables on preferences over ambiguity in the context of multi-att ribute decision scenarios. Undergraduate subjects responded to scenari os in which one of two medical treatments was associated with ambiguou s probabilities of treatment effects. Probabilities were either positi vely or negatively framed. Subjects indicated their degree of preferen ce for one treatment over the other. Subjects' optimism, trait anxiety , health locus of control, need for cognitive structure, and current m ood were measured. In two separate studies, subjects preferred ambigui ty when probabilities were positively framed, and were neutral toward ambiguity when probabilities were negatively framed. Also, in both stu dies the preference for ambiguity in positively framed scenarios was g reater for more optimistic subjects. The unexpected finding of ambigui ty seeking may be associated with the use of different decision strate gies in multi-attribute versus single-attribute decisions.