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5PAHPGEN Choices Coursework Assignment 2023-24 – A Research Report
Assignment Brief
The Choices Coursework Assignment is an APA-format Research Report for the experiment on the affective psychology of risky decisions, which was implemented via the Choices Practicals. Your Assignment comprises: a Title of your own devising, Abstract, Introduction, Method and Discussion. A complete Results section will be provided, and therefore you do not write the Results section for this assignment. Appendices may be included.
The word limits are as follows:
Title = 15 words
Abstract = 200 words
Main Text comprising Introduction, Method and Discussion = 3000 words
The word-count for the Main Text excludes the Title, Abstract, References and Appendices; but includes all elements within the body of the Main Text, including titles and sub-titles, footnotes, tables (including table contents, titles and any rubrics/notes) and figure legends. Do not include the Results section in the Report; rather, indicate its position within your report by typing “Results-Here” which will count as one word towards your word count for the Main Text.
Appendices (if included) = 750 words
The word count for the Appendices includes all elements of the Appendices (as per the guidance for the Main Text).
All word-counts above are strict maxima; there will be progressive penalties for assignments that exceed these word-counts. Overlength penalties for the Main Text are as per other BSc assignments. There is no minimum number of words for this assignment.
Please read the Assessment Criteria for a Year 2 (Choices) Coursework Research Report on KEATS (see Coursework Information within the Assessment section) because these indicate how your report will be assessed.
Produce your Research Report as a Word document:
Use the Coversheet for a Coursework Research Report (available on KEATS), completing each word count.
You are not required to include a Title Page or Running Head for a manuscript submitted to a journal, as illustrated in your Gravetter and Forzano textbook; instead, use the Coversheet for a Research Report; also, you must not include your name anywhere in the report.
Use 1.5 or 2.0 line spacing throughout your report; though single-spacing may be used for tables, and for the titles of tables or figures, if preferred.
We request that tables and figures, are placed at an appropriate place within the body of the Report; and not at the end of the Report as is sometimes seen in ‘draft’ work. If it is impractical to do so, you may place tables or figures at the end of the Report, but should clearly indicate where they would appear with a label of the form: “Table-1-Here” or “Figure-1-Here”. Such labels are included in the word count, as is the table/figure itself as outlined above.
If including figures, you may use any software application that you wish to prepare your figures (e.g., Excel, Word or Powerpoint) before inserting them at the appropriate point in your Word document.
If including an extract of text (e.g., participant instructions, stimuli) from the experiment in your report, do not use screenshots of the survey to do so. Rather, include this information as text in your report.
If including tables of information, it is not acceptable to ‘paste’ an image (e.g., pdf, jpeg) of your table from another application. Rather, use ‘Tables’ within Word if you are including a table (or tables) in your report.
Use single-column layout for the page – not two-column page-layout.
Appendices, if included, must have a title and should appear at the end of the Report.
You are reminded that the work you submit must be your own.
You must not collude with other students on the writing of the report.
This applies to the structure and order for the ideas that you present, as well as the words that you use to express these ideas.
The report that you write must be written in your own words.
You are encouraged to make use of the Guide to Writing Up, which follows below, and textbooks and original articles, when deciding what ideas to include in your report. However, please take great care to ensure that you always express ideas in your own words (i.e., be very careful to ensure that you do not plagiarise text from these, or any other sources).
For this Research Report, there are two specific instances where it is appropriate to reproduce sentences verbatim from the study documentation that you have available to you:
oWhen reporting the study methods, it is permissible to report participant instructions and the text of study stimuli using the exact words which were used in the experiment.
oIt is permissible to state pre-registered hypotheses and/or predictions, taken verbatim from the Study Pre-Registration document, as long as you make it clear that these were pre-registered hypotheses/predictions.
In all other aspects, follow the standard practice in academic writing: express ideas in your own words and use citations appropriately when you have made use of the work or ideas of other individuals. Quotations, if included, should be referenced appropriately; and, we recommend that quotations are used sparingly, if at all.

5PAHPGEN Choices: Guide to Writing Up the Choices experiment
There are many technical terms in this guidance, and elsewhere in your resources for this coursework experiment, that we have learned in this module. As with all reporting of research, for your Research Report, you will need to think carefully about when (or whether) you should use this technical vocabulary, which terms you need to define or explain to your reader, and what level of detail is suitable for this. Also, if you can identify better terminology (e.g. names of variables or levels of variables that are more easily understood) than those used below (or elsewhere in the resources for the coursework experiment), then it is good to use that terminology in preference to the terms used here. As a general guide to the nature of your audience, you can assume that your reader has studied psychology at university (including research methods) but has not done the Choices module.
Background and Aims
Risk preference
oResearch has found that there are predictable patterns of (risk) preference that people display when (a) choosing between two options, where one or more of the options has more than one possible outcomes, or (b) placing a value (e.g., price) on an option, when that option has more than one possible outcome.
oThere are some ‘shorthand’ labels for various parts of these patterns such as:
The fourfold pattern of risk preference
The certainty effect
Prospect theory
oProspect theory is the best-known theory about risky decisions (‘decisions under risk’). It provides an account of the patterns of preference that are usually seen in risky choice and the valuation of risky options.
Some propositions in keeping with prospect theory are:
a)Decision makers focus on changes in state (e.g., changes in wealth) rather than the final state (e.g., wealth held) resulting from a decision.
b)Those changes are evaluated relative to a reference point, which determines whether changes are treated as losses or gains.
c)This reference point can vary (e.g., due to the ‘frame’ used when the choice is described), and therefore the same outcome might be treated as a gain in one situation but as a loss in another.
d)The evaluation (i.e., the impact on a decision) of outcomes is non-linear and differs between losses and gains. [This is represented in the prospect theory value function.]
e)Re-framing a decision results in predictable shifts in preference. [See a-d above.]
f)The impact of probabilities on a decision is non-linear. [This is represented in the prospect theory decision weight function.]
Several of those features (a-f above) were not part of the theories of risk preference that came before prospect theory; therefore, prospect theory can account for some patterns of preference that other theories cannot easily explain.
Feature f (in bold above) is particularly important for the 2023 Choices experiment.
Reading on risk preference and prospect theory
oA good starting-point for understanding the research on risk preference and prospect theory that is relevant to our study is to go to the materials and resources for Unit 2 of the Personal Decisions Topic. In particular:
The Lecture Videos (Tasks 11-15)
The recommended reading (Tasks 16, 17 and 19)
oIt sometimes helps to use multiple sources.
To identify such sources, the Reading and Resource Guide for the Personal Decisions Topic has several recommendations.
oResources from the Practicals may also be useful, in particular:
The Choices Week 3 Practical Worksheets 1 & 2
Affect and decision making (how emotions can impact decisions)
oVarious observations and proposals have been made in relation to the role of emotions in decision making, such as:
a)Emotions are an important source of information for us when we make decisions (e.g., how we feel about an item or event is relevant to how much value it has for us).
b)Our current emotional state (e.g., mood) may influence how we decide.
c)In some situations, our decisions are guided by our emotional reactions to options; in such situations there may be a limited role for calculation or a deliberative ‘weighing up’ of the possible outcomes and their probabilities.
d)When the option(s) we consider evoke strong emotions (i.e., are ‘affect rich’) we approach these decisions in a different way to when we are faced with options that are more ‘neutral’ in character (i.e., ‘affect poor’ options). This therefore changes how we use the information available to us, which may then alter our preferences.
Reading on affect (emotions) and decision making
oArticles referenced in the Week 3 Choices Practical Handout:
Rottenstreich, Y., & Hsee, C. K. (2001). Money, kisses, and electric shocks: On the affective psychology of risk. Psychological Science, 12(3), 185-190.
Hsee, C. K., & Rottenstreich, Y. (2004). Music, pandas, and muggers: on the affective psychology of value. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 23-30.
oThese textbooks from the Choices Reading List are available from the KCL Library and each has sections on emotions and decision making:
Newell, Lagnado and Shanks (2015, 2nd ed.) – Chapter 15.
Hastie and Dawes (2010, 2nd ed.) – Pages 304-310.
oThe ‘Many Labs 2’ project carried out a large-scale replication study for Experiment 1 of Rottenstreich and Hsee (2001). This is reported in:
Klein, R. A., Vianello, M., Hasselman, F., Adams, B. G., Adams, R. B., Alper, S., . . . Nosek, B. A. (2018). Many Labs 2: Investigating variation in replicability across samples and settings. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1(4), 443-490.
Aims
oHere is a general expression of our aims:
To replicate and extend previous research on the affective psychology of risk reported by Rottenstreich and Hsee (2001).
Our replication is conceptual rather than exact (literal) because we do not use the exact same stimuli and procedures as Rottenstreich and Hsee (2001).
We extend that prior research in several ways including running a larger number of experiments, both for valuation and choice.
oHere is the general strategy for examining those aims in our data:
For each choice between two options, compare the proportion of participants choosing a given option between conditions.
For each set of four valuations (2 options x 2 probability levels) compare means (e.g., using ANOVA) to examine whether the pattern of means aligns with the predictions set out by Rottenstreich and Hsee (2001)
oThese aims can be expressed with greater precision or detail (e.g., as specific hypotheses) in your Report (and motivated by the background literature that you read and include in your Introduction).
oTo assist with this, see the document that describes the Pre-Registration for our Study. It is permissible to state pre-registered hypotheses and/or predictions, taken verbatim from that document (as long as you make clear that this was a pre-registered hypothesis/prediction).
oIn the Handout for the Week 5 Choices Practical, Homework Tasks H1 and H2 asked you to specify some predictions from the theory outlined by Rottenstreich and Hsee (2001).
Study Design, Methods, Procedure and Outline of the Analysis Plan
See the Resources for Choices Coursework Experiment page within the Coursework Expt and Practicals section of Choices KEATS for:
oDetails of the development of our stimuli and the rationale for some of our design decisions, in the document named: Finalising our design and implementing your recommendations from the Week 5 pilot surveys and the decisions worksheet.
oThe text of the survey questions used in the survey
oA ‘demonstration version’ of the online survey that was used to run our experiment.
oThe Pre-Registration for our Study which includes the plan of analysis for the study.
We used the Qualtrics online survey platform to implement our survey.
We had four stimulus pairs, each having an affect rich option and an affect poor option.
oIn each choice experiment, participants chose between the two options of a given stimulus pair.
Random assignment to one of the probability conditions for each choice
oIn each valuation experiment, participants made valuations for each option in the stimulus pair, at each level of probability
Each participant made:
oFour choices
oValuations for two stimulus pairs
Random assignment to one experiment with negative outcomes, and one with positive outcomes.
The order of choices and valuations was fully randomised for each participant (individually).
At the end of the survey, participants answered a small number of additional questions about themselves (see the other resources for details).
See the resources for the Week 9 Practical for details of the study variables and analyses:
oWorksheet for the Week 9 Practical
Determination of final sample (see also the Worksheet for the Week 9 Practical): 313 participants gave consent and answered at least one question, and were 18 years or over; 116 did not complete the survey; 4 withdrew their data; 6 excluded due to time to complete survey;
oThe data file that can be used identify information for your Participants sub-section, and (if you wish) to run any analyses done for the Results section (e.g., to help your understanding of the Results section that we will provide for you).
Discussion
Always consider what points from your Introduction, Method and Results section are worth expanding upon and developing in your Discussion. Remember, your Discussion should provide new information or analysis (e.g., not simply repeat points made previously).
A simple guide is that the Introduction and Method should include the essential information required to understand why and how the study was performed. Material relating to how the results should be interpreted should be left to the Discussion.
oTherefore, it is legitimate to introduce ideas or findings in the Discussion that were not mentioned in your Introduction. For example, there may be a finding that was not necessary for helping the reader to understand what we did and why we did it – and therefore did not need to be mentioned in the Introduction _x001f_– but which adds to your discussion of the study findings. Therefore, this finding can be brought in at the appropriate point in the Discussion.
Remember, in your Discussion, you are aiming to link what we did and what we found in our study to theory and previous research, and to the research questions and hypotheses for our study.
When identifying limitations of our study, seek to be constructive (e.g., what study can you propose that would address a question that our study could not resolve ).

Support for Writing your Assignment
Your questions
oWe will endeavour to answer your questions promptly (in keeping with the time-scales set out in the Programme Teaching and Learning Agreement).
oWe encourage you to post your questions on the Forum on KEATS because that maximises the chance that you will receive a quick answer (because more people will see your question), and because this benefits other students (who can see the answer or discussion that the question prompts).
Please take the time to frame your questions so that the nature of your query is clear (e.g., any question that begins “Do we have to …” is very difficult to answer because the premise of the question is unclear) – clarity facilitates prompt and informative answers.
oTo ensure that answers can be given before the submission deadline, submit your questions by the end of Thursday 4th January 2024. We will post to the Module Forum with answers to the final set of questions on Friday 5th January. Please note that questions that come on or after 12 MIDDAY on the 20th of December may not be answered until the new year.
There will also be Online Drop-in Sessions for Coursework Queries where you can discuss questions that you have about your Report at 1000-1100 Monday 11th December and Thursday 4th January 2024. For these sessions, use the Teams meeting link for the Choices Online Drop-In Hour.

Assessment Criteria
oPlease read the Assessment Criteria for this assignment carefully. Most elements of the Criteria have a familiar format, because they are similar to the Criteria for a Year 1 Research Report (RM2 module). However, please note that the Year 2 Criteria have been ‘levelled up’ to reflect the greater demands associated with Year 2 (Level 5) work. Additionally, please see the module-specific criteria on the final page of the Criteria, which are applied to the Report content as a whole (rather than to any one specific section of the Report).