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Personalized news experiences powered by recommender systems permeate our lives and have the potential to influence not only our opinions, but also our decisions. At the same time, the content and viewpoints contained within news recommendations are driven by multiple factors, including both personalization and editorial selection. Explanations could help users gain a better understanding of the factors contributing to the news items selected for them to read. Indeed, recent works show that explanations are essential for users of news recommenders to understand their consumption preferences and set intentions in line with their goals, such as goals for knowledge development and increased diversity of content or viewpoints. We give examples of such works on explanation and interactive interface interventions which have been effective in influencing readers' consumption intentions and behaviors in news recommendations. However, the state‐of‐the‐art in news recommender systems currently fall short in terms of evaluating such interventions in live systems, limiting our ability to measure their true impact on user behavior and opinions. To help understand the true benefit of these interfaces, we therefore call for improving the realism of studies for news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central question of our study is which determinants drive smoke alarm ownership and intention to purchase one, and whether we can increase smoke alarm ownership by addressing these determinants in a communication‐based intervention. We first made an inventory of possible determinants for smoke alarm prevention by consulting prominent prevention behavior theories protection motivation theory and Health Belief Model and other relevant literature. We expanded this list of determinants based on interviews (n = 15) and used survey data representative for the Netherlands to decide to focus on smoke alarm ownership (rather than installation or maintenance). We then tested the determinants of smoke alarm ownership and buying intention in a survey (n = 622). Based on these results, we ran an A/B test (n = 310) of two messages to stimulate smoke alarm ownership: one emphasized the determinants we found to be strong predictors in the survey (know‐how, social norm, annoyance) and one emphasized typical determinants that are often addressed in campaigns but were poor predictors in the survey (vulnerability, severity, benefits). Results showed that the message based on the strong determinants resulted in a significant increase in smoke alarm ownership (9.1%) compared to the control group (0.9%; p = 0.027), while the message using the typical determinants did not lead to significant effects. Taken together, our results give a promising direction for interventions to increase smoke alarm ownership, and above all, show that a comprehensive problem analysis for a specific target behavior is a necessary step to induce behavioral change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundPhysical exercise is an effective lifestyle intervention to improve blood pressure. Although aerobic sports can be performed anywhere, resistance exercises are traditionally performed at the gym; extending the latter to the home setting may promote an increase in the number of practitioners. ObjectiveThis study aims to evaluate a sensor-based system that guides resistance exercises through ambient lighting and sonification (A/S) feedback in a home setting in 34 study participants who were normotensive and prehypertensive. MethodsParticipants took part in a 1.5-hour exercise session in which they experienced the A/S feedback (ie, experimental condition) as well as a control condition (ie, no feedback) and a reference condition (ie, verbal feedback through a human remote coach). The system was evaluated for improving exercise form (range of motion, timing, and breathing patterns) as well as psychophysiological experience (perceived exertion, attentional focus, competence, and motivation). ResultsA/S feedback was significantly better than the control for concentric (mean 2.48, SD 0.75 seconds; P

Recommender systems are efficient at predicting users' current preferences, but how users' preferences develop over time is still under-explored. In this work, we study the development of users' musical preferences. Exploring musical preference consistency between short-term and long-term preferences in data from earlier studies, we find that users with higher musical expertise have more consistent preferences for their top-listened artists and tags than those with lower musical expertise, while high expertise users also show more diverse listening behavior. Users typically chose to explore genres that were close to their current preferences, and this effect was stronger for expert users. Based on these findings, we conducted a user study on genre exploration to investigate (1) whether it is possible to nudge users to explore more distant genres, (2) how users' exploration behavior within a genre is influenced by default recommendation settings that balance personalization with genre representativeness in different ways, and (3) how nudging for exploration increases the perceived helpfulness of recommendations for users to explore. Our results show that users were more likely to select the more distant genres if these genres were nudged by presented at the top of the list, however, users with high musical expertise were less likely to do so. We also find that the more representative default slider, which by default recommended more genre-representative tracks, made users set the slider at a less personalized level. The more representative slider position alone did not promote more exploration of users' current preferences but when combined with the nudge for distant genres, the more representative slider positions effectively nudged users to explore. Nudging to explore does not necessarily lead to an increase in perceived helpfulness. On the one hand, nudging for exploration improves the perceived helpfulness for exploration by making users explore away from their current preferences. On the other hand, it reduces helpfulness due to lower perceived personalization as users move away from their personalized recommendations. To improve perceived helpfulness, it seems necessary to provide a balanced trade-off between exploration and personalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loss aversion and reference dependence are 2 keystones of behavioral theories of choice, but little is known about their underlying cognitive processes. We suggest an additional account for loss aversion that supplements the current account of the value encoding of attributes as gains or losses relative to a reference point, introducing a value construction account. Value construction suggests that loss aversion results from biased evaluations during information search and comparison processes. We develop hypotheses that identify the influence of both accounts and examine process-tracing data for evidence. Our data suggest that loss aversion is the result of the initial direct encoding of losses that leads to the subsequent process of directional comparisons distorting attribute valuations and the final choice. (Contains 7 figures, 2 footnotes and 8 tables.)

Comments on the article by E. Brandstatter, G. Gigerenzer, and R. Hertwig (2006). Resolution of debates in cognition usually comes from the introduction of constraints in the form of new data about either the process or representation. Decision research, in contrast, has relied predominantly on testing models by examining their fit to choices. The authors examine a recently proposed choice strategy, the priority heuristic, which provides a novel account of how people make risky choices. The authors identify a number of properties that the priority heuristic should have as a process model and illustrate how they may be tested. The results, along with prior research, suggest that although the priority heuristic captures some variability in the attention paid to outcomes, it fails to account for major characteristics of the data, particularly the frequent transitions between outcomes and their probabilities. The article concludes with a discussion of the properties that should be captured by process models of risky choice and the role of process data in theory development.

Resolution of debates in cognition usually comes from the introduction of constraints in the form of new data about either the process or representation. Decision research, in contrast, has relied predominantly on testing models by examining their fit to choices. The authors examine a recently proposed choice strategy, the priority heuristic, which provides a novel account of how people make risky choices. The authors identify a number of properties that the priority heuristic should have as a process model and illustrate how they may be tested. The results, along with prior research, suggest that although the priority heuristic captures some variability in the attention paid to outcomes, it fails to account for major characteristics of the data, particularly the frequent transitions between outcomes and their probabilities. The article concludes with a discussion of the properties that should be captured by process models of risky choice and the role of process data in theory development. Keywords: risky choice, decision making, cognitive processes, process tracing

The effects of vulnerability, severity, costs, effort, and effectiveness on prevention behavior, derived from protection motivation theory and the health belief model, have been extensively tested in the literature and have all been shown to predict rather well. In this study we test the effects of these determinants in a new context: the domestic risk prevention domain. The specific behaviors under study are related to the risks of burglary, fire, and water damage. In addition to previous studies, our multilevel research design allows us to evaluate which differences in the performance of domestic prevention behavior can be attributed to differences between persons and which to differences between behaviors within persons. Our results show that all determinants are relevant predictors for domestic risk prevention behavior. Disentangling the within‐person and between‐person effects shows that prevention behavior depends more on the relative evaluation of the prevention behavior determinants for a given person (e.g., a person perceives a smoke alarm to be more effective than antiburglar strips), than on the differences between persons regarding the general perception of these determinants (e.g., some persons find prevention behaviors in general more effective than other persons). To increase the performance of domestic risk prevention behaviors, we advise that interventions should focus on increasing a person's perception of risks and prevention behaviors relative to other risks and prevention behaviors rather than focusing on changing people's general perceptions of all risks and behaviors or focusing on specific target groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]