Abschlussarbeiten
Anforderungen für das Schreiben einer Abschlussarbeit an unserem Lehrstuhl
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Interesse an unseren Forschungsthemen (bspw. kognitive Psychologie und Entscheidungsverhalten) oder an Methoden der Verhaltensforschung
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Erfolgreicher Abschluss eines der Module "Empirical research methods in management and economics" oder "Consumer Behavior Research Methods" (Note 2,3 oder besser)
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Erfolgreiche Teilnahme an mindestens einem weiteren vom Lehrstuhl angebotenen Modul (für eine Liste unseres Lehrangebots siehe hier)
Erste Schritte zur Abschlussarbeit an unserem Lehrstuhl
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Stimmen Sie das Thema Ihrer Abschlussarbeit mit Ihrem potenziellen Betreuer ab. Schicken Sie uns eine E-Mail (inklusive Lebenslauf und aktuellem Transcript) und reißen Sie kurz ihr Wunschthema an.
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Dabei können Sie sowohl aus den aktuell offenen Themen wählen (s.u.), als auch Ihre eigenen kreativen Forschungsideen einbringen.
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Wir betreuen auch Abschlussarbeiten, die in Kooperation mit einem Unternehmen geschrieben werden, sofern das Thema mit unseren Forschungsschwerpunkten verwandt ist oder hohe Ansprüche an die Methodik gestellt werden.
Aktuell angebotene Themen
This master's thesis aims to explore the intersection of confidence in perceptual and knowledge tasks and its influence on gambling behavior. Confidence in decision-making refers to an individual's belief in the accuracy of their judgment or choice. It is a metacognitive assessment that influences how decisions are made, particularly under conditions of uncertainty. By conducting a comprehensive literature review, the study examines how individuals make use of their confidence to guide decisions under uncertainty, particularly in gambling scenarios. The review will cover existing research on the psychological mechanisms behind confidence judgments, the role of metacognition in decision-making, and the impact of confidence on risk-taking behavior. Additionally, the thesis will draw parallels between gambling on perceptual performance and decision-making in monetary lotteries, highlighting the similarities and differences in risk perception and uncertainty management. The findings will contribute to a deeper understanding of how confidence influences risky choices and provide insights into potential applications in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology.
Supervisor: Sebastian Hellmann (sebastian.hellmann(at)tum.de)
Recommended Literature:
- Moreira, C. M., Rollwage, M., Kaduk, K., Wilke, M., & Kagan, I. (2018). Post-decision wagering after perceptual judgments reveals bi-directional certainty readouts. Cognition, 176, 40–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.02.026
- Law MKH, Stankov L, Kleitman S. I Choose to Opt-Out of Answering: Individual Differences in Giving Up Behaviour on Cognitive Tests. Journal of Intelligence. 2022; 10(4):86. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence10040086
Loss aversion is one of the most prominent concepts in the study of risky decision making. Traditionally, research on loss aversion has utilized paradigms in which participants choose between risky options whose outcome probabilities are given as summary descriptions (decisions from description). But to what extent does loss aversion also emerge in situations in which we have to learn the probability of outcomes by active information search during experiential sampling—that is, in decisions from experience? And: to what extent does the cost of sampling information (as in the feedback- vs. sampling paradigm) play a role for the emergence of loss aversion? This thesis aims to set up an experiment to directly compare decision making in a description- and two experience-based conditions. Choice behavior will be modeled with cumulative prospect theory to directly compare paramater estimates between conditions, with a focus on loss aversion. The focus of this thesis will be on the role of outcome magnitudes for inducing loss aversion.
Requirements: Experience in data analysis using R. Of advantage: Previous experience with programming experiments in PsychoPy, Previous experience with computational modeling
Supervisor: Nuno Busch (nuno.busch(at)tum.de)
Recommended Literature:
- Hertwig, R., & Erev, I. (2009). The description–experience gap in risky choice. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(12), 517–523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2009.09.004
- Yechiam, E. (2019). Acceptable losses: The debatable origins of loss aversion. Psychological Research, 83(7), 1327–1339. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1013-8
- Harinck, F., Van Dijk, E., Van Beest, I., & Mersmann, P. (2007). When Gains Loom Larger Than Losses: Reversed Loss Aversion for Small Amounts of Money. Psychological Science, 18(12), 1099–1105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.02031.x
Decision making is strongly influenced by how attention is allocated across the choice options and option's attributes (outcome values vs. probabilities). One way to quantify the attention allocation is tracking eye movements (eye-tracking), which has traditionally relied on expensive devices to be set up in experimental lab settings. Recent endeavours have tried to revolutionize eye-tracking by leveraging participant's built-in laptop webcams in online experiments (with participant's consent, of course). This thesis aims to implement the webcam-based eye-tracking tool for a new decision making paradigm.
Requirements: Experience in JavaScript and with data analysis using R. Of advantage: Previous experience with computational modeling
Supervisor: Nuno Busch (nuno.busch(at)tum.de)
Recommended Literature:
- Yang, X., & Krajbich, I. (2021). Webcam-based online eye-tracking for behavioral research. Judgment and Decision Making, 16(6), 1485–1505. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500008512
- Zilker, V., & Pachur, T. (2023). Attribute attention and option attention in risky choice. Cognition, 236, 105441. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105441
- Zilker, V., & Pachur, T. (2022). Nonlinear probability weighting can reflect attentional biases in sequential sampling. Psychological Review, 129(5), 949–975. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000304