Overcoming focusing failures in competitive environments

This paper attacks one of the chief limitations of the field of behavioral decision research - the past inability to use this literature to improve decision making. Building on the work of Thompson, Gentner, Loewenstein and colleagues (Loewenstein, Thompson, & Gentner, 1999; Thompson, Gentner, & Loewenstein, 2000; Gentner & Markman, 1997), the current paper finds that it is possible to reduce bias in one of the most robust problems in the decision literature, the Acquiring a Company Problem (Samuelson & Bazerman, 1985). Past research has shown that individuals make sub-optimal offers as a result of the failure to think about the decisions of others and to incorporate a clear understanding of the rules of the game. In the current study, we find that by allowing study participants to see and understand differences in seemingly unrelated decision problems - versions of the Monty Hall Game (Nalebuff, 1987; Friedman, 1998) and Multiparty Ultimatum Game (Messick, Moore, & Bazerman, 1997; Tor & Bazerman, 2003) - study participants can learn to focus more accurately on the decisions of other parties and the rules of the game, the keys to solving the Acquiring a Company Problem. This research offers a new piece of evidence that comparative and analogical processes may be a successful direction for improving decision making.