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Claudia González Vallejo

Research Area:
Social Judgment & Behavioral Decision Making

Specializations:
Quantitative - Cognitive

Contact Information:

Office: 233 Porter Hall

Phone: (740) 593-1095

E-mail: gonzalez@ohio.edu

Research Interests:

My research focuses on understanding how people make decisions as well as on the factors that affect people's judgments. I am primarily interested in choice behavior (preferences). My work on choice behavior uses a stochastic model that I developed to investigate how individuals make trade-offs among characteristics of the options to be selected. For example, many products may be described in terms of their quality and their price. Because typically higher quality also implies higher price, the decision will not be an easy one. How do individuals resolve the conflict inherit in choosing? What affects the consistency of decision-making? How do people perceive changes in attribute values as a function of the context? How does persuasion affect the evaluation of objects to determine a final choice? Some of the basic notions in this research program are also applied to consumer and medical decision-making situations. Current research is also exploring the interaction between people's affective reactions to choice options and their cognitive evaluations of them.

Recent Publications:

	González-Vallejo, C., Reid, A. A., & Schiltz, J. (in press). Context Effects: The Proportional Difference Model and the Reflection of Preference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
	Sorum, P. C., Stewart, T., Mullet, E., González-Vallejo, C. Shim, J., Chasseigne, G., Muñoz Sastre, M. T, and Grenier, B.(2002). Does choosing a treatment depend on making a diagnosis? U.S. and French physicians’ decision making about acute otitis media. Medical Decision Making, 22, 394-402.
	Sorum, P. C., Shim, J., Chasseigne, G., Mullet, E., Muñoz Sastre, M. T., Stewart, T., and González-Vallejo, C. (2002). Do Parents and Physicians Differ in Making Decisions About Acute Otitis Media? Journal of Family Practice, 51, 51-57.
	Gonzalez-Vallejo, C. (2002). Making trade-offs: A new probabilistic and context sensitive model of choice behavior. Psychological Review, 109, 137-155.
	González-Vallejo, C. and Moran, E. (2001). The evaluability hypothesis revisited: Joint and separate evaluation preference reversals as a function of attribute importance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 86, 216-233.

Recent Presentations:

Payne, K. and González-Vallejo, C. (April 26, 2003).

Factors affecting quality of life ratings.
Paper presented at the Interdisciplinary Conference for the Behavioral Sciences, Mount Union College, Alliance, OH.

González-Vallejo, C. (March 10, 2003).

Context effects: The proportional difference model and the reflection of preference.
Invited presentation to the Quantitative Program, Psychology Department, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

Reid, A. A., González-Vallejo, C., Mitchell, E. (November 2002).

Quantifying consumer attitude change: The decision threshold of a stochastic choice model.
Poster presented at the Society of Judgment and Decision Making Conference, Kansas City, Kansas.

Reid, A. A., González-Vallejo, C., and Patterson, S. (November 2002).

Emotion as a value determinant and attribute importante weight.
Poster presented at the Society of Judgment and Decision Making Conference, Kansas City, Kansas.

González-Vallejo, C., Arkes, H., Reid, A. A., Muntz, C., Wilson, J., & Bonham, A. (November 2002).

Are all judgments equal?
Paper presented at the Society of Judgment and Decision Making Conference, Kansas City, Kansas.

Recent Grants:

• February 1999-February 2000. Ohio University, Research Challenge. PI, Age differences and cognitive processes in learning in a probabilistic environment. (Co-PI Dr. Julie Suhr.) $6000
• August 1998-February 1999. National Science Foundation, REU, Methodology, Measurement, & Statistics Program. PI, A new stochastic, context sensitive, and intransitive choice model. $5,000
• February 1997-June 1997. Ohio University, Interdisciplinary, clinical/health services research, 1804 Fund. PI, Physicians' diagnostic judgments and treatment decisions of acute otitis media (AOM) in children. (Co-Pi Dr. Michael Tomc.) $10,000
• March 1996-February 2000. National Science Foundation, Methodology, Measurement, & Statistics Program. PI, A new stochastic, context sensitive, and intransitive choice model. $100,589
• June 1994-June 1995. National Science Foundation, Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program. Co-PI. Confidence and accuracy: The roles of random error, bias, and learning. (PI: Dr. Joshua Klayman.)

Honors and Awards:

• January 20, 1999. Ohio University, Recognition to the Advancement of Undergraduate Research.

Courses Taught at OU:

Undergraduate:
Introduction to Statistics, Tests and Measurements, Human Judgment and Decision Making

Graduate:
Multivariate Statistics I, Advanced Testing Principles, Judgment and Decision Making

Graduate Students:

• Aaron Reid