Would you involove other friends? Why?
Answers
Imagine the following scenario. You are boarding your flight and nearing your seat. You see that the person who will be sitting next to you is already seated and clearly sick with what seems like the flu. You tend to get sick easily and you would really like to avoid getting ill. You could ask the flight attendant to help you find another seat away from this sick passenger, but it would be a bit of a hassle to do so since you would have to wait until all of the other passengers were seated. What do you do?
These types of decision dilemmas—whereby a choice needs to be made between a risky alternative (e.g., taking the seat next to the sick passenger) and a safer alternative (e.g., asking for a different seat)—have formed a cornerstone of judgment and decision-making research for years. A body of research has shown, however, that people make decisions for others differently from the way they make decisions for themselves in situations as diverse as giving advice to a friend who is confronted with the example above, to making medical decisions for a loved one who is unable to make decisions for him- or herself. In particular, people respond to risk differently when they are at risk themselves compared to when it is another person at risk (e.g., Beisswanger, Stone, Hupp, & Allgaier, 2003; Borresen, 1987; Fernandez-Duque & Wifall, 2007; Garcia-Retamero & Galesic, 2012; Raymark, 2000; Roszkowski & Snelbecker, 1990; Stone & Allgaier, 2008; Wray & Stone, 2005).