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Name of Submitter:
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Corinna Loeckenhoff
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Title of proposed idea:
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Translating basic decision-making research to applied settings
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What is the major obstacle/challenge in the biomedical research field? What is needed to overcome this obstacle/challenge?
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Good decisions at the individual, interpersonal, and societal level are at the core of promoting mental and physical health across the life span. However, there is a gap between laboratory research examining the basic mechanisms of decision-making and the translation of such findings into realistic contexts. |
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What emerging scientific opportunity is ripe for investment by the Common Fund?
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Emergent research streams from the fields of psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience are providing new insights into the basic mechanisms of decision making. If translated into applied settings, these findings have the potential to promote better choices in personal finance, public health, and workplace settings, to name just a few. However, most laboratory tasks involve isolated decision-makers who are presented with hypothetical, decontextualized, and affect-poor scenarios. Realistic choices, in contrast, are intensely personal, highly emotional, and embedded in a social context requiring decision makers to manage input from multiple stakeholders. Although applied decision-making research is well-attuned to such contextual factors, it tends to be descriptive and atheoretical in nature and fails to implement the stringent experimental methodology necessary to investigate causal mechanisms. Thus, key insights into basic decision making have yet to be translated into realistic settings. |
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What are the potential Common Fund investments that could accelerate scientific progress in this field?
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A common funds program could take a two-pronged approach to addressing this translational gap by (1) increasing the external validity of laboratory scenarios and (2) promoting theoretically driven and methodologically stringent research in applied settings. This requires close collaboration among interdisciplinary teams which could be fostered by a series of targeted RFAs. For instance, such programs may apply behavioral economics principles to preventive care decisions or link the neuroscience of social cognition to interpersonal aspects of medical treatment choices. In the long run, we need to incentivize randomized controlled trials to systematically evaluate the efficacy of decision-making interventions in applied settings. |
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If a Common Fund program on this topic achieved its objectives, what would be the impact?
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Poor decisions are not only a leading cause of morbidity and mortality but also put significant strain on limited societal resources. The development of evidence-based interventions to promote better choices would not only benefit individuals’ quality of life but also result in significant cost-savings at the societal level. |
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