Research Interests
- Decision Making
- Planning & Strategic Thinking
- Information Integration
- Cognitive Modeling
- Behavioral Economics
Research Description
I study how people make decisions. I am particularly interested in complex choice scenarios, where people must, for example, search for information, learn from experience, or plan for the future. Much of my work takes a cognitive perspective, with the goal of explaining the decision process in terms of psychological constructs such as attention, perception, learning, and memory.
Through a combination of behavioral experiments and computational modeling, I develop and test new theories of decision making. I mathematically formalize these theories as computational models that I compare and select according to various methods. In doing so, my work links traditional research domains in Psychology, Economics, Marketing, Management, Game Design, AI, and Public Policy.
Education
Ph.D., Indiana University
Awards and Honors
Bruno de Finetti Prize, European Association for Decision Making (2015)
Courses Taught
Decision and Judgments
Learning and Decision Making
Heuristic Strategies in Judgment and Decision Making
Highlighted Publications
Hotaling, J. M. (2020). Decision field theory-planning: A cognitive model of planning on the fly in multistage decision making. Decision, 7(1), 20-42. https://doi.org/10.1037/dec0000113
Vanunu, Y., Hotaling, J. M., & Newell, B. R. (2020). Elucidating the differential impact of extreme-outcomes in perceptual and preferential choice. Cognitive Psychology, 119, [101274]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101274
Hotaling, J. M., Jarvstad, A., Donkin, C., & Newell, B. R. (2019). How to Change the Weight of Rare Events in Decisions From Experience. Psychological Science, 30(12), 1767-1779. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619884324
Spektor, M. S., Kellen, D., & Hotaling, J. M. (2018). When the Good Looks Bad: An Experimental Exploration of the Repulsion Effect. Psychological Science, 29(8), 1309-1320. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618779041
Gluth, S., Hotaling, J. M., & Rieskamp, J. (2017). The attraction effect modulates reward prediction errors and intertemporal choices. Journal of Neuroscience, 37(2), 371-382. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2532-16.2016
Recent Publications
Decaro, D. A., Decaro, M. S., Hotaling, J. M., & Johnson, J. G. (2020). Procedural and economic utilities in consequentialist choice: Trading freedom of choice to minimize financial losses. Judgment and Decision Making, 15(4), 517-533.
Hotaling, J. M. (2020). Decision field theory-planning: A cognitive model of planning on the fly in multistage decision making. Decision, 7(1), 20-42. https://doi.org/10.1037/dec0000113
Vanunu, Y., Hotaling, J. M., & Newell, B. R. (2020). Elucidating the differential impact of extreme-outcomes in perceptual and preferential choice. Cognitive Psychology, 119, [101274]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101274
Hotaling, J. M., & Rieskamp, J. (2019). A quantitative test of computational models of multialternative context effects. Decision, 6(3), 201-222. https://doi.org/10.1037/dec0000096
Hotaling, J. M., Jarvstad, A., Donkin, C., & Newell, B. R. (2019). How to Change the Weight of Rare Events in Decisions From Experience. Psychological Science, 30(12), 1767-1779. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619884324