How do we know what informs people’s judgements and behaviour, what we actually care about, and what we deem as important? Philosophers, and researchers in decision making have been exploring these questions for centuries. For example, Normative (von Neuman & Morgenstern, 1944) and Descriptive (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992) theories of decision making captured the principles and factors that are the foundation of human judgements and behaviours. These theorists also assume stable and consistent pattern of preferences are informed by these general factors (e.g. contextual frame and probability levels). In this thesis, I have explored in six experiments the contextual and behavioural factors that are not part of Normative and Descriptive theories of decision making. Accordingly, I argued that people’s judgements and behaviour are not stable but are instead informed by psychological engagement with context and task factors. Specifically, I have explored the influence of task engagement (high or low), engagement questionnaire type (specific content or non-specific content) (Experiment 1a), task engagement (high or low), engagement questionnaire (specific content or non-specific content) and agent type (self or others) (Experiment 2a) on participants’ willingness to buy an advertised product, and self-reported engagement in the advertisement task, In Experiment 3a I explored the influence of task engagement (high or low) on risk preferences. Moreover, in experiments 1b, 2b, and 3b, I have explored psychological engagement, as context (full, partial) and task (active, passive) on participants’ willingness to buy an advertised product, and self-reported engagement in the advertisement. I have also changed the independent variable agent perspective, from self or others (Experiment 2a) to self or stranger in experiments 2b and 3b to enhance the influence of this variable. The results from all six experiments revealed that engagement influences participants’ willingness to buy, as well as their risk preferences. For example, with high engagement (experiments 1a, and 2a) and active engagement (1b, and 2b) participants reported greater willingness to buy the highlighter pen, than did participants in the low (experiments 1a, and 2a) and passive (1b, and 2b) engagements task. Moreover, with high engagement (experiment 3a) and active engagement (experiment 3b) participants were more likely to be risk averse than in the conditions with low (experiment 3a) and passive (experiment 3b) engagements (only in the high probability gamble). The results also revealed that the independent variable, context (partial or full), significantly influenced participants’ willingness to buy (experiments 1b and 2b) and risk preferences (experiments 3b). Participants were also more willing to buy the product after reading a scenario that offered full rather than partial contextual information (experiments 1b and 2b). Moreover, offering participants’ scenarios with full as opposed to partial contextual information resulted in greater risk aversion (experiment 3b) but only in response to the high probability gamble. The type of agent (self or stranger) also influenced participants’ willingness to buy judgements (experiment 2b) and risk preferences (experiment 3b). Participants were more willing to buy the product when they engaged with the task from their own perspective compared to when they were advising a stranger (experiment 2b). They were also more likely to be risk averse when acted for themself compared to when they were acting on behalf of a stranger (experiment 3b; only in the high probability gamble). Importantly, task, context and type of agent predicted participants risk preferences with the high probability gamble but not when the gamble contained low probability. Together, these results provide initial evidence of systematic effects of psychological engagement on judgements and risky choice. These effects question assumptions of traditional theories of decision-making, Expected Utility Theory and Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992), which do not explicitly incorporate variation in psychological engagement. Moreover, the findings of this thesis contribute to the view (Slovic, 1995, Kusev et al., 2025) that environmental attributes may influence preference construction ‘on the fly’ through underlying psychological processes. Accordingly, building on the findings from this research, future theories of decision making should explore further the lability of people’s judgements and risk preferences.
| Date of Award | 24 Jun 2026 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Alexandros Nikitas (Main Supervisor) & Eleanor Davies (Co-Supervisor) |
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