Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Culturally grounded
Corey Fincher & Randy Thornhill
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, April 2012, Pages 61-79
Abstract:
Throughout the world people differ in the magnitude with which they value strong family ties or heightened religiosity. We propose that this cross-cultural variation is a result of a contingent psychological adaptation that facilitates in-group assortative sociality in the face of high levels of parasite-stress while devaluing in-group assortative sociality in areas with low levels of parasite-stress. This is because in-group assortative sociality is more important for the avoidance of infection from novel parasites and for the management of infection in regions with high levels of parasite-stress compared with regions of low infectious disease stress. We examined this hypothesis by testing the predictions that there would be a positive association between parasite-stress and strength of family ties or religiosity. We conducted this study by comparing among nations and among states in the United States of America. We found for both the international and the interstate analyses that in-group assortative sociality was positively associated with parasite-stress. This was true when controlling for potentially confounding factors such as human freedom and economic development. The findings support the parasite-stress theory of sociality, that is, the proposal that parasite-stress is central to the evolution of social life in humans and other animals.
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Lukas Neville
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
What effect does economic inequality have on academic integrity? Using data from search-engine queries made between 2003 and 2011 on Google and state-level measures of income inequality and generalized trust, I found that academically dishonest searches (queries seeking term-paper mills and help with cheating) were more likely to come from states with higher income inequality and lower levels of generalized trust. These relations persisted even when controlling for contextual variables, such as average income and the number of colleges per capita. The relation between income inequality and academic dishonesty was fully mediated by generalized trust. When there is higher economic inequality, people are less likely to view one another as trustworthy. This lower generalized trust, in turn, is associated with a greater prevalence of academic dishonesty. These results might explain previous findings on the effectiveness of honor codes.
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Social Class Predicts Generalized Trust But Only in Wealthy Societies
Takeshi Hamamura
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, April 2012, Pages 498-509
Abstract:
This research examined the relationship between social class and generalized trust, or a belief that others have a benign intention in social interactions, in a diverse set of societies represented in the World Values Survey. The strength of the relationship varied significantly across societies: Although social class was a positive predictor of generalized trust in wealthy countries, as reported in past research, among less wealthy countries social class was uncorrelated with trust. These results indicate that resources available to individuals of high social class may make a trusting belief more rewarding; nevertheless, in less wealthy societies, the socio-political-economic infrastructure that supports generalized trust is unavailable, and therefore even individuals of high social class are reluctant to trust others. This finding extends prior theorizing on trust in finding the interactive relationship between an individual-level factor and a society-level factor in shaping individuals' inclination toward trust.
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David Balan & Stephen Knack
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper we analyze the relationship between the correlation between morality and human capital ("ability") on the one hand and aggregate economic performance on the other. Morality is defined as an aversion to consuming goods obtained through appropriative rather than productive activities. In our empirical analysis we adapt the well-known regression framework of Rodrik, Subramanian and Trebbi (2004), using the World Values Survey as a source of proxies for morality. Using our preferred proxy, we find evidence that higher within-country correlation between morality and ability, holding constant the levels of morality and ability, increases per-capita income levels. Under our preferred specification, a one-standard-deviation increase in the correlation between morality and ability raises the log of per-capita income by about one-fourth of a standard deviation, equal to approximately $3600 for the median income country in our sample. Results are robust to correcting for endogeneity and to changes in sample and specification. Results are mixed when we use alternative morality proxies, but the coefficient on the morality-ability correlation is still usually positive and statistically significant. We also develop a simple static general equilibrium model to serve as a possible framework for understanding the empirical results.
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Culture and the body: East-west differences in visceral perception
Christine Ma-Kellams, Jim Blascovich & Cade McCall
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, April 2012, Pages 718-728
Abstract:
This research investigated cross-cultural differences in the accuracy of individuals' perceptions of internal visceral states. We conducted 4 studies to test the hypothesis that Asians are less sensitive to internal physiological cues relative to European Americans. Studies 1 and 2 assessed cultural differences in visceral perception via tests of misattributions of arousal: Study 1 involved false heart rate feedback during an emotionally evocative slideshow and examined subsequent self-reported affective changes; Study 2 manipulated apparent physiological arousal and measured its effects on attraction via an immersive virtual environment. Study 3 directly assessed visceral perception using a heartbeat detection task. All 3 studies found Asians to be less viscerally perceptive than European Americans. Study 4 examined one possible cultural mechanism for the observed difference and found evidence for contextual dependency as a mediator of the culture-visceral perception link.
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Social Capital, Economic Development, and Homicide: A Cross-National Investigation
Blaine Robbins & David Pettinicchio
Social Indicators Research, February 2012, Pages 519-540
Abstract:
This article draws from an ongoing debate over explanations of homicide. Within this debate, we investigate the pro-social effects of civil society and social capital. Few cross-national studies explore whether elements of social capital either increase or decrease homicide. The cross-national work that does is often characterized by small, homogeneous samples and the use of inappropriate statistical techniques. Replicating elements of Lederman et al.'s (Econ Dev Cult Change 50:509-539, 2002) original study but with wave IV World Values Survey data and negative binomial regression, we find weak support for the beneficial consequences of social capital on homicide. One dimension of social capital, however, does exhibit a significant negative association with homicide rates, net of other influences: social activism. We also fail to support the Durkheimian hypothesis that the negative effect of social capital on homicide is conditional on modernization. We explore the implications of the findings along with avenues for future research.
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Garry Gelade
British Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the distribution of national personality dimensions in geographical space. The relationship between geographical location and aggregate personality in a wide range of nations is quantified using spatial autocorrelation, and it is found that the personalities of nations that are geographical neighbours are more similar than those that are far apart. The five factors of both the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI), all show a significant degree of spatial organization. The personality factors most strongly associated with geographical location are NEO-PI-R extraversion and BFI conscientiousness; both vary with position around the globe about as much as the physical climate. These findings support previous research suggesting associations between aggregate personality and geography, and imply that the sources of variation in national personality are themselves geographically organized.
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Markus Hadler
Sociological Quarterly, Spring 2012, Pages 211-237
Abstract:
Societal variation in xenophobia, homophobia, and other prejudices is frequently explained by the economic background and political history of different countries. This article expands these explanations by considering the influence of world societal factors on individual attitudes. The empirical analysis is based on survey data collected within the World Value Survey and European Values Study framework between 1989 and 2010. Data are combined to a three-wave cross-sectional design including about 130,000 respondents from 32 countries. Results show that xenophobia and homophobia are influenced by the national political history, societal affluence, and the presence of international organizations. Global forces, however, are of particular importance for homophobia.
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Culture, Visual Perspective, and the Effect of Material Success on Perceived Life Quality
Derrick Wirtz & Christie Napa Scollon
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, April 2012, Pages 367-372
Abstract:
Is a life characterized by material success one that will be seen favorably by others? In two studies, we explored the effect of a target person's material success on perceptions of the target's life quality. Participants viewed a survey ostensibly completed by another person - which experimentally varied the target's material success in the form of income - before globally rating the target's life. Study 1 provided a cross-cultural comparison, finding that Singaporeans, but not Americans, rated a target high in material success as having a life of greater quality than a target low in material success. Study 2 investigated the moderating effect of visual perspective among Singaporeans, hypothesizing that adopting another's perspective emphasizes the shared belief that material success is an indicator of life quality. Consistent with this reasoning, participants who adopted a third-person visual perspective rated a target high in material success as having a life of greater quality than a target low in material success, but those who adopted a first-person visual perspective did not rate targets differently based on material success.
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The structure of cross-cultural musical diversity
Tom Rzeszutek, Patrick Savage & Steven Brown
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 April 2012, Pages 1606-1612
Abstract:
Human cultural traits, such as languages, musics, rituals and material objects, vary widely across cultures. However, the majority of comparative analyses of human cultural diversity focus on between-culture variation without consideration for within-culture variation. In contrast, biological approaches to genetic diversity, such as the analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) framework, partition genetic diversity into both within- and between-population components. We attempt here for the first time to quantify both components of cultural diversity by applying the AMOVA model to music. By employing this approach with 421 traditional songs from 16 Austronesian-speaking populations, we show that the vast majority of musical variability is due to differences within populations rather than differences between. This demonstrates a striking parallel to the structure of genetic diversity in humans. A neighbour-net analysis of pairwise population musical divergence shows a large amount of reticulation, indicating the pervasive occurrence of borrowing and/or convergent evolution of musical features across populations.
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Communication Behavior and Relationship Satisfaction Among American and Chinese Newlywed Couples
Hannah Williamson et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most research on couple communication patterns comes from North America and Europe and suggests cross-cultural universality in effects, but emerging studies suggest that couple communication takes different forms depending on the cultural context in which it occurs. The current study addressed this discrepancy by comparing the observed social support behaviors of 50 newlywed American couples and 41 newlywed Mainland Chinese couples, first on mean levels of positivity and negativity and second on behavior-satisfaction associations. Consistent with predictions derived from observational work by Tsai and Levenson (1997), Chinese couples were observed displaying significantly more negative behavior than American couples, even after controlling for relationship satisfaction; the 2 groups did not differ in observed positive behaviors. Tests of the moderating role of culture on behavior-satisfaction associations showed that positivity was significantly related to relationship satisfaction only for American husbands, whereas negativity was significantly associated with relationship satisfaction only for Chinese husbands. We speculate that cultural contexts may influence the display and evaluation of behavior in intimate relationships, suggesting the need for caution when generalizing models and associated interventions to non-Western couples.
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Xiaoyan Xu et al.
International Journal of Psychology, March/April 2012, Pages 111-117
Abstract:
Previous research suggests that there is a relationship between social contexts (e.g., economic growth, engagement in wars) and motives within populations. In particular, high achievement motive is associated with subsequent economic growth, which in turn increases power motive. Increased national achievement and power motives have been argued to precede social changes that lead to decreased affiliation motives, and engagement in wars. The present study aimed to examine differences in achievement, power, and affiliation motives between 266 college students in China (a nation with sustained high economic growth) and 255 college students in the USA (a nation with previously strong but now slowing economic growth, and engaged in war). Analysis of personal strivings suggested that Chinese college students showed significantly higher levels of achievement motive than the American college students, but American college students showed significantly higher levels of affiliation motive than Chinese college students. Overall, males exhibited higher achievement motivation than females. No significant interaction effects were found for gender by location for any of the three motives. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research.
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The Chinese Classroom Paradox: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Teacher Controlling Behaviors
Ning Zhou, Shui-Fong Lam & Kam Chi Chan
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Chinese classrooms present an intriguing paradox to the claim of self-determination theory that autonomy facilitates learning. Chinese teachers appear to be controlling, but Chinese students do not have poor academic performance in international comparisons. The present study addressed this paradox by examining the cultural differences in students' interpretation of teacher controlling behaviors. Affective meanings of teacher controlling behaviors were solicited from 158 Chinese 5th graders and 115 American 5th graders. It was found that the same controlling behaviors of teachers had different affective meanings for different cultural groups (Chinese vs. American) and for groups with different levels of social-emotional relatedness with teachers (high vs. low). Chinese children perceived the behaviors as less controlling than American children and, in turn, reported that they were more motivated in their teachers' class than American children. Regardless of culture, children with high social-emotional relatedness with teachers perceived the behaviors as less controlling than children with low social-emotional relatedness with teachers. It was also found that internalization mediated the relation between social-emotional relatedness and children's learning motivation in both cultures. The findings revealed cultural differences as well as similarities in the psychological process of internalization.
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Victoria Wai Lan Yeung & Yoshihisa Kashima
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, April 2012, Pages 446-463
Abstract:
This article presents an ecological approach to communication of stereotype-relevant information. We propose that communicating more stereotype-consistent (SC) and less stereotype-inconsistent (SI) information is a default strategy used by Easterners to fulfill their culturally installed goal - namely, to maintain harmonious relationships with others. And communicating informative information (both SC and SI information, and even more SI information) is a default strategy used by Westerners to fulfill their culturally installed goal - namely, to be accurate. When Easterners and Westerners were asked to communicate a firsthand stereotype-relevant story to a purported (Study 1) and a real (Study 2) communication partner without specifying a clear communication goal, they resorted to their cultural default strategy. However, when they were instructed to have a clear communication goal indicating the inappropriateness of the use of the default strategy, their communication pattern changed (Study 3). Results are discussed in terms of societal constraints of individualistic and collectivistic societies.
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Katja Hanke & Ronald Fischer
International Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We report a meta-analysis on the country-level correlates of the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI), to address (1) whether there are differences in forgiveness between societies, (2) what society-level context variables can account for these differences, and (3) whether conceptual relationships of forgiveness found at the individual level can be replicated at the societal level. We found sizeable differences between societies that are associated with democracy, peacefulness, socioeconomic development, and postmaterialism indices of a society. Replicating individual-level results, subjective wellbeing was positively related to forgiveness. We discuss the importance of macro-level contextual variables for understanding levels of forgiveness.
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The impact of culture and gender on sexual motives: Differences between Chinese and North Americans
Nu Tang, Lisamarie Bensman & Elaine Hatfield
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, March 2012, Pages 286-294
Abstract:
Recently, social scientists have begun to investigate the myriad of reasons why young men and women engage in sexual activities. As yet, however, they have not begun to investigate the impact of culture on people's sexual motivations. In this paper, we will address three questions: Does culture have an impact on sexual motives? Does gender have an impact? Do culture and gender interact in shaping sexual motives? In this study, we asked Chinese and North American college students to indicate the extent to which communal and individualistic sexual motives had influenced their decision to participate in sexual activities. As predicted, both culture and gender had an impact on young people's endorsement of various sexual motives. In a few cases the findings were not entirely as we had predicted, however.
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Blinded by taboo words in L1 but not L2
Katie Colbeck & Jeffrey Bowers
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study compares the emotionality of English taboo words in native English speakers and native Chinese speakers who learned English as a second language. Neutral and taboo/sexual words were included in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task as to-be-ignored distracters in a short- and long-lag condition. Compared with neutral distracters, taboo/sexual distracters impaired the performance in the short-lag condition only. Of critical note, however, is that the performance of Chinese speakers was less impaired by taboo/sexual distracters. This supports the view that a first language is more emotional than a second language, even when words are processed quickly and automatically.
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Michael Boiger et al.
Cognition & Emotion, February 2012, Pages 332-340
Abstract:
Emotions are for action, but action styles in emotional episodes may vary across cultural contexts. Based on culturally different models of agency, we expected that those who engage in European-American contexts will use more influence in emotional situations, while those who engage in East-Asian contexts will use more adjustment. European-American (N=60) and Asian-American (N=44) college students reported their action style during emotional episodes four times a day during a week. Asian Americans adjusted more than European Americans, whereas both used influence to a similar extent. These cultural differences in action style varied across types of emotion experienced. Moreover, influencing was associated with life satisfaction for European Americans, but not for Asian Americans.
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Eric Gleave, Blaine Robbins & Beth Kolko
International Political Science Review, March 2012, Pages 209-229
Abstract:
Although trust is a lively area of research, it is rarely investigated in countries outside of commonly available cross-national public-opinion datasets. In an effort to fill this empirical void and to draw conclusions concerning the general determinants of trust, the current article employs detailed survey data from a frequently overlooked Central Asian country, Uzbekistan, to test the relationship between particularized trust and demographic traits previously identified as influential. While a number of Uzbek demographic characteristics coincide with previously identified determinants of trust, age and education yield negative effects not previously found. Interestingly, individual-level demographic variables become insignificant when controlling for regional, religious, and linguistic variation. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications.
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Cattle Cults of the Arabian Neolithic and Early Territorial Societies
Joy McCorriston et al.
American Anthropologist, March 2012, Pages 45-63
Abstract:
At the cusp of food production, Near Eastern societies adopted new territorial practices, including archaeologically visible sedentism and nonsedentary social defenses more challenging to identify archaeologically. New archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence for Arabia's earliest-known sacrifices points to territorial maintenance in arid highland southern Yemen. Here sedentism was not an option prior to agriculture. Seasonally mobile pastoralists developed alternate practices to reify cohesive identities, maintain alliances, and defend territories. Archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence implies cattle sacrifices were commemorated with a ring of more than 42 cattle skulls and a stone platform buried by 6,400-year-old floodplain sediments. Associated with numerous hearths, these cattle rites suggest feasting by a large gathering, with important sociopolitical ramifications for territories. A GIS analysis of the early Holocene landscape indicates constrained pasturage supporting small resident human populations. Cattle sacrifice in southern Arabia suggests a model of mid-Holocene Neolithic territorial pastoralism under environmental and cultural conditions that made sedentism unsustainable.
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Konstantinos Kafetsios & John Nezlek
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, March 2012, Pages 165-184
Abstract:
The study examined emotional experience and perceived social support during naturally occurring social interactions in Greece and Britain. Multilevel analyses found that people in Greece (a more interdependent culture) perceived less support and experienced less positive and more negative affect in social interactions than those in the UK (a more independent culture). Positive relationships between positive affect and perceptions of support were stronger in Greece than in the UK. Global perceptions of social support did not differ between the two samples, and global perceptions were weakly related to perceived support in interaction. The results support the "less is more" hypothesis (Oishi, S., Diener, E., Choi, D. W., Kim-Prieto, C., & Choi, I. (2007). The dynamics of daily events and well-being across cultures: When less is more. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 685-698) concerning cultural differences in social support and distal and proximal antecedents of interaction-level relational processes.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Order in the court
Kevin McGuire
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
One of the most significant changes in American law was the application of the Bill of Rights to the states. Some members of the U.S. Supreme Court enthusiastically supported the doctrine of incorporation, while others actively opposed it. Why? Evolutionary psychology posits that birth order can explain support for radical change; older siblings identify with authority and resist changes in the rules, while laterborns defy authority and are willing to alter the status quo. Applying the birth order hypothesis to the Court, the author finds that the incorporation revolution was led by laterborns, even after taking account of justices' political preferences.
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William Blake
PS: Political Science & Politics, April 2012, Pages 271-276
Abstract:
During his confirmation hearings, then-judge John Roberts analogized the role of a judge to the role of a baseball umpire. Roberts argued that umpires do not make the rules; they simply apply them. Legal scholars have criticized Roberts from a legal realist perspective because the analogy misconstrues the nature of judging as formalistic. I believe Roberts also misconstrued the nature of umpiring as formalistic. Like judges, umpires must rely on their experience, rather than logic, because the rules of baseball are sometimes incomplete, indeterminate, and contradictory. On occasion, umpires even ignore the rulebook (justifiably). The judges-as-umpires analogy thus illustrates the differences between legal formalism and legal realism in a way that students can more easily understand.
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The Changing Politics of Supreme Court Confirmations
Scott Basinger & Maxwell Mak
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Senate voting on Supreme Court nominees offers a window into macro-political continuity and change. Clashes over confirmations once were reserved for a handful of exceptional cases, but recently have become the norm. Party cohesion in the Senate has also experienced a recent, rapid increase. An analysis of votes on 43 Supreme Court nominees reveals that senators polarize in response to rising levels of average party loyalty. The analysis further reveals that a senator who individually is more loyal to his or her party will be more likely to adopt an extreme position on confirmation, even after controlling for the effects of rising aggregate partisanship. Once the partisan trend is taken into account, our analysis contradicts the conventional wisdom that Robert Bork's nomination instituted a "regime change" with a lasting effect on Senate voting patterns.
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James Gibson & Gregory Caldeira
Journal of Politics, January 2012, Pages 18-34
Abstract:
This article investigates citizen perceptions of the impartiality and legitimacy of courts, focusing on a state (West Virginia) that has recently been a battleground for conflict over campaign support, perceived conflicts of interest, and loss of impartiality. We employ an experimental vignette embedded within a representative sample to test hypotheses about factors affecting perceived judicial impartiality. Perhaps not surprising is our finding that campaign contributions threaten the legitimacy of courts. More unexpected is evidence that contributions offered but rejected by the candidate have similar effects to contributions offered and accepted. And, although recusal can rehabilitate a court/judge to some degree, the effect of recusal is far from the complete restoration of the institution's impartiality and legitimacy. The processes by which citizens form and update their opinions of judges and courts seem to involve preexisting attitudes, normative expectations of judges, and perceptions of contextual factors associated with judicial decision making.
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Do Reasons Matter? The Impact of Opinion Content on Supreme Court Legitimacy
Dion Farganis
Political Research Quarterly, March 2012, Pages 206-216
Abstract:
Is Supreme Court legitimacy affected by the way justices explain their decisions to the public? Existing work shows a link between legitimacy and case outcomes but often overlooks the impact of opinion content. Using a novel experimental design, the author measures the effect of three different types of judicial arguments on public support for the Court. The results suggest that the rationales used by justices in their opinions can affect institutional legitimacy, but to a lesser degree than conventional wisdom suggests. Taken together with other recent legitimacy research, these findings have important implications and set the stage for follow-up research.
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The Role of Case Complexity in Judicial Decision Making
Laura Moyer
Law & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
The literature on ideology and decision making offers conflicting expectations about how judges' ideology should affect their votes in cases that raise many legal issues. Using cases from the U.S. courts of appeals, I examine the strength of ideology as a predictor of sincere voting in single and multi-issue cases, and test whether the same effect for ideology can be seen for liberal and conservative judges. For all judges, ideology yields a larger effect as the number of issues increases; however, conservative judges are much more likely than liberal judges to cast sincere votes at all levels of complexity.
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Racial/Ethnic Differentials in Sentencing to Incarceration
William Bales & Alex Piquero
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Few criminological topics are as controversial as the relationships between race, ethnicity, crime, and criminal justice outcomes - especially incarceration. This paper assesses whether Blacks and Hispanics are disadvantaged at the sentencing phase of the justice system and whether the findings depend on the use of traditional regression-based methods to control for legally relevant variables vs. the use of precision matching methods, which attend to potential sample selection bias that occurs when there are not exact matches for those sentenced to incarceration and non-incarceration. Analysis of the population of Florida offenders from 1994 to 2006 using both methodologies indicates that Black offenders continue to be disproportionately incarcerated compared to White or Hispanic offenders, and that Hispanic offenders were slightly more likely than White offenders to be incarcerated.
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A Fair and Impartial Jury? The Role of Age in Jury Selection and Trial Outcomes
Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson
NBER Working Paper, March 2012
Abstract:
This paper uses data from over 700 felony trials in Sarasota and Lake Counties in Florida from 2000-2010 to examine the role of age in jury selection and trial outcomes. The results of the analysis imply that prosecutors are more likely to use their peremptory challenges to exclude younger members of the jury pool, while defense attorneys exclude older potential jurors. Having established that age has an important role in jury selection, the paper employs a research design that isolates the effect of the random variation in the age composition of the pool of eligible jurors called for jury duty to examine the causal impact of age on trial outcomes. Consistent with the jury selection patterns, the empirical evidence implies that older jurors are indeed more likely to convict. These results are robust to the inclusion of a broad set of controls for the racial and gender composition of the jury and a series of county, time, and judge fixed effects; almost identical effects are estimated separately for each county. These findings have implications for the role that the institution of peremptory challenges has on a defendant's right to a fair trial and to an eligible citizen's rights to serve on a jury.
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Witnesses in Action: The Effect of Physical Exertion on Recall and Recognition
Lorraine Hope et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Understanding memory performance under different operational conditions is critical in many occupational settings. To examine the effect of physical exertion on memory for a witnessed event, we placed two groups of law-enforcement officers in a live, occupationally relevant scenario. One group had previously completed a high-intensity physical-assault exercise, and the other had not. Participants who completed the assault exercise showed impaired recall and recognition performance compared with the control group. Specifically, they provided significantly less accurate information concerning critical and incidental target individuals encountered during the scenario, recalled less briefing information, and provided fewer briefing updates than control participants did. Exertion was also associated with reduced accuracy in identifying the critical target from a lineup. These results support arousal-based competition accounts proposing differential allocation of resources under physiological arousal. These novel findings relating to eyewitness memory performance have important implications for victims, ordinary citizens who become witnesses, and witnesses in policing, military, and related operational contexts.
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Action Alters Object Identification: Wielding a Gun Increases the Bias to See Guns
Jessica Witt & James Brockmole
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, forthcoming
Abstract:
Stereotypes, expectations, and emotions influence an observer's ability to detect and categorize objects as guns. In light of recent work in action-perception interactions, however, there is another, unexplored, factor that may be critical: The action choices available to the perceiver. In five experiments, participants determined whether another person was holding a gun or a neutral object. Critically, the participant did this while holding and responding with either a gun or a neutral object. Responding with a gun biased observers to report "gun present" more than did responding with a ball. Thus, by virtue of affording a perceiver the opportunity to use a gun, he or she was more likely to classify objects in a scene as a gun and, as a result, to engage in threat-induced behavior (raising a firearm to shoot). In addition to theoretical implications for event perception and object identification, these findings have practical implications for law enforcement and public safety.
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Deborah Davis & Richard Leo
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
As reflected in rulings ranging from trial courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, our judiciary commonly views as "voluntary," and admits into evidence, interrogation-induced confessions obtained under conditions entailing stressors sufficient to severely compromise or eliminate the rational decision making capacities and self-regulation abilities necessary to justify such a view. Such decisions reflect, and sometimes explicitly state, assumptions soundly contradicted by science regarding the capacity of normal suspects lacking mental defect to withstand such stressors as severe fatigue, sleep deprivation, emotional distress - and aversive interrogation length, tactics and circumstances - and nevertheless resist the powerful pressures of the interrogation to self-incriminate. Notwithstanding excessive length and other severe interrogation-related stressors and tactics demonstrably associated with elicitation of false confessions, judges overwhelmingly admit confessions into evidence and juries overwhelmingly convict. In this review, we introduce the concept of "interrogation-related regulatory decline" (IRRD) - or decline in the self-regulation abilities necessary to resist the forces of influence inherent to interrogation. We review scientific evidence of the unexpected ease with which self-regulation abilities can be significantly compromised, with the hope that this evidence can (a) encourage more evidence-based objectivity, realism, clarity and specificity in the criteria for assessing voluntariness underlying admissibility decisions, (b) promote reforms aimed at prevention of interrogation practices entailing substantial risk of severe IRRD, and (c) encourage more scholarly research on acute sources of interrogative suggestibility.
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Interrogational Torture: Or How Good Guys Get Bad Information with Ugly Methods
John Schiemann
Political Research Quarterly, March 2012, Pages 3-19
Abstract:
Debate about the sources of intelligence leading to bin Laden's location has revived the question as to whether interrogational torture is effective. Answering this question is a necessary - if not sufficient - condition for any justification of interrogational torture. Given the impossibility of approaching the question empirically, I address it theoretically, asking whether the use of torture to extract information satisfies reasonable expectations about reliability of information as well as normative constraints on the frequency and intensity of torture. I find that although information from interrogational torture is unreliable, it is likely to be used frequently and harshly.
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Rebecca Campbell, Debra Patterson & Deborah Bybee
Violence Against Women, February 2012, Pages 223-244
Abstract:
Most sexual assaults are never reported to law enforcement, and even among reported cases, most will never be successfully prosecuted. This reality has been a long-standing source of frustration for survivors, victim advocates, as well as members of the criminal justice system. To address this problem, communities throughout the United States have implemented multidisciplinary response interventions to improve post-assault care for victims and increase reporting and prosecution rates. One such model is the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program, whereby specially trained nurses (rather than hospital emergency department [ED] physicians) provide comprehensive psychological, medical, and forensic services for sexual assault victims. The purpose of this study was to examine whether adult sexual assault cases were more likely to be investigated and prosecuted after the implementation of a SANE program within a large Midwestern county. A quasi-experimental design was used to compare criminal justice system case progression pre-SANE to post-SANE. Results from longitudinal multilevel ordinal regression modeling revealed that case progression through the criminal justice system significantly increased pre- to post-SANE: more cases reached the "final" stages of prosecution (i.e., conviction at trial and/or guilty plea bargains) post-SANE. These findings are robust after accounting for changes in operation at the focal county prosecutors' office and seasonal variation in rape reporting. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
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Consensus, Disorder, and Ideology on the Supreme Court
Paul Edelman, David Klein & Stefanie Lindquist
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, March 2012, Pages 129-148
Abstract:
Ideological models are widely accepted as the basis for many academic studies of the Supreme Court because of their power in predicting the justices' decision-making behavior. Not all votes are easily explained or well predicted by attitudes, however. Consensus in Supreme Court voting, particularly the extreme consensus of unanimity, has often puzzled Court observers who adhere to ideological accounts of judicial decision making. Are consensus and (ultimately) unanimity driven by extreme factual scenarios or extreme lower court rulings such that even the most liberal and most conservative justice can agree on the case disposition? Or are they driven by other, nonattitudinal influences on judicial decisions? In this article, we rely on a measure of deviations from expected ideological patterns in the justices' voting to assess whether ideological models provide an adequate explanation of consensus on the Court. We find that case factors that predict voting disorder also predict consensus. Based on that finding, we conclude that consensus on the Court cannot be explained by ideology alone; rather, it often results from ideology being outweighed by other influences on justices' decisions.
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Dissensual Decision Making: Revisiting the Demise of Consensual Norms within the U.S. Supreme Court
Marcus Hendershot et al.
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This analysis seeks to understand the decline of Supreme Court consensual norms often attributed to the failed leadership of Chief Justice Stone. A new unit of analysis - justice-level dissent and concurrence rates - supports an alternative view of observed increases in dissensual decision making. When these measures are estimated with time-series techniques, results offer evidence of multiple changepoints in this norm of the Court that both lead and lag Stone's elevation. Broader contextual explanations related to the alteration of the Court's discretionary issue agenda and its ideological and demographic composition also contribute to fractures in the once-unanimous voting coalitions.
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Repeatability and Reproducibility of Decisions by Latent Fingerprint Examiners
Bradford Ulery et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2012
Abstract:
The interpretation of forensic fingerprint evidence relies on the expertise of latent print examiners. We tested latent print examiners on the extent to which they reached consistent decisions. This study assessed intra-examiner repeatability by retesting 72 examiners on comparisons of latent and exemplar fingerprints, after an interval of approximately seven months; each examiner was reassigned 25 image pairs for comparison, out of total pool of 744 image pairs. We compare these repeatability results with reproducibility (inter-examiner) results derived from our previous study. Examiners repeated 89.1% of their individualization decisions, and 90.1% of their exclusion decisions; most of the changed decisions resulted in inconclusive decisions. Repeatability of comparison decisions (individualization, exclusion, inconclusive) was 90.0% for mated pairs, and 85.9% for nonmated pairs. Repeatability and reproducibility were notably lower for comparisons assessed by the examiners as "difficult" than for "easy" or "moderate" comparisons, indicating that examiners' assessments of difficulty may be useful for quality assurance. No false positive errors were repeated (n = 4); 30% of false negative errors were repeated. One percent of latent value decisions were completely reversed (no value even for exclusion vs. of value for individualization). Most of the inter- and intra-examiner variability concerned whether the examiners considered the information available to be sufficient to reach a conclusion; this variability was concentrated on specific image pairs such that repeatability and reproducibility were very high on some comparisons and very low on others. Much of the variability appears to be due to making categorical decisions in borderline cases.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Personal Relationship
Attachment to Objects as Compensation for Close Others' Perceived Unreliability
Lucas Keefer et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Attachment theory posits that close interpersonal relationships provide people with psychological security across the lifespan. Research shows that when people perceive that close others are unreliable, they may seek alternative, non-social sources of security (e.g., deities). Building on this work, the authors hypothesized that attachment to objects compensates for threatened attachment security when close others are unreliable. Participants primed with close others', but not strangers', unreliability reported increased attachment to belongings (Study 1), and this effect was mediated by feelings of attachment anxiety (concern over close others' availability), but not attachment avoidance (avoiding emotional dependence; Study 2), suggesting that object attachment compensates for the perception that close others are unreliable rather than consistently rejecting. In Study 3, when a valued belonging was removed, participants primed with uncertainty about their relationships showed increased separation anxiety and motivation to reunite with the belonging, regardless of the belonging's perceived importance for facilitating relationships.
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Your Love Lifts Me Higher! The Energizing Quality of Secure Relationships
Michelle Anne Luke, Constantine Sedikides & Kathy Carnelley
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies tested and confirmed the hypothesis that secure attachment relationships lead to feelings of security and energy, as well as willingness to explore. In Study 1, priming a secure attachment relationship increased felt security and energy. In Studies 2 and 3, felt energy mediated the effect of (primed) secure attachment relationships on willingness to explore. In Study 3, the effect of (primed) secure attachment relationships on felt energy and willingness to explore was independent of general positive affect. Secure attachments energize partners, thus enabling exploration.
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Terry Pettijohn, Shujaat Ahmed & Terry Pettijohn
Current Psychology, March 2012, Pages 1-5
Abstract:
College students (N = 207) were asked their level of interest in sex, dating, and friendship affiliation before or after eating dinner at a dining hall. The threat of hunger before dinner was predicted to make participants focus on satisfying this need and therefore be less interested in social activities, compared to participants after dinner who were not hungry. Consistent with predictions, hungry males and females were less interested in sex, dating, and hanging out with friends compared to individuals who had just eaten. Results are considered in the context of motivation theory and recent research findings in the areas of physical attraction and social inclusion.
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Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution: An Examination of Recent Marriages
Wendy Manning & Jessica Cohen
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2012, Pages 377-387
Abstract:
An ongoing question remains for family researchers: Why does a positive association between cohabitation and marital dissolution exist when one of the primary reasons to cohabit is to test relationship compatibility? Drawing on recently collected data from the 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examined whether premarital cohabitation experiences were associated with marital instability among a recent contemporary (married since 1996) marriage cohort of men (N = 1,483) and women (N = 2,003). They found that a dichotomous indicator of premarital cohabitation was in fact not associated with marital instability among women and men. Furthermore, among cohabitors, marital commitment prior to cohabitation (engagement or definite plans for marriage) was tied to lower hazards of marital instability among women, but not men. This research contributes to our understanding of cohabitation, marital instability, and broader family change.
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Mending Broken Hearts: Marriage and Survival Following Cardiac Surgery
Ellen Idler, David Boulifard & Richard Contrada
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, March 2012, Pages 33-49
Abstract:
Marriage has long been linked to lower risk for adult mortality in population and clinical studies. In a regional sample of patients (n = 569) undergoing cardiac surgery, we compared 5-year hazards of mortality for married persons with those of widowed, separated or divorced, and never married persons using data from medical records and psychosocial interviews. After adjusting for demographics and pre- and postsurgical health, unmarried persons had 1.90 times the hazard of mortality of married persons; the disaggregated widowed, never married, and divorced or separated groups had similar hazards, as did men and women. The adjusted hazard for immediate postsurgical mortality was 3.33; the adjusted hazard for long-term mortality was 1.71, and this was mediated by married persons' lower smoking rates. The findings underscore the role of spouses (both male and female) in caregiving during health crises and the social control of health behaviors.
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Cohabitation Premium in Men's Earnings: Testing the Joint Human Capital Hypothesis
Arif Mamun
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, March 2012, Pages 53-68
Abstract:
This paper provides new evidence on the increase in wage earnings for men due to marriage and cohabitation (in the literature, commonly referred to as marital and cohabitation wage premiums for men). Using data for a sample of white men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, the paper shows that even after accounting for potential selection bias there is a cohabitation wage premium for men, albeit smaller than the marriage premium. Our analysis shows that a joint human capital hypothesis (a la Benham in J Polit Econ 82(2, Part 2):S57-71, 1974) with intra-household spillover effects of partner's education can explain the existence of the wage premiums. Our estimates provide some empirical support for the joint human capital hypothesis.
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Cameron Anderson, Oliver John & Dacher Keltner
Journal of Personality, April 2012, Pages 313-344
Abstract:
Scholars who examine the psychological effects of power have often argued that possessing power shapes individual behavior because it instills an elevated sense of power. However, little is known about the personal sense of power because very few studies have examined it empirically. In studies involving a total of 1,141 participants and nine different samples, we found that the personal sense of power was coherent within social contexts; for example, individuals who believed that they can get their way in a group also believed that they can influence fellow group members' attitudes and opinions. The personal sense of power was also moderately consistent across relationships but showed considerable relationship specificity; for example, individuals' personal sense of power vis-à-vis their friend tended to be distinct but moderately related to their personal sense of power vis-à-vis their parent. And the personal sense of power was affected not only by sociostructural factors (e.g., social position, status) but also by personality variables such as dominance.
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Gender Rules: Same- and Cross-Gender Friendships Norms
Diane Felmlee, Elizabeth Sweet & Colleen Sinclair
Sex Roles, April 2012, Pages 518-529
Abstract:
We examined the relationships between gender and attitudes towards same- and cross-gender friendship norms for a sample of 269 West Coast, U.S., college students. Participants evaluated violations of friendship norms described in vignettes in which the friend's gender was experimentally manipulated. Women differentiated more between types of violations in their evaluations than did men. There also were several significant gender differences in approval of norm violations. As expected, women tended to have relatively high expectations of their friendships in situations involving trust and intimacy, likely resulting from the high value they placed on affiliation and emotional closeness. Women were more disapproving than men of a friend who canceled plans or failed to come to their defense publicly. Men and women judged a woman who betrayed a secret more harshly than a man. Generally, expectations for cross-gender, versus same-gender, friends were more similar than different; there were no significant cross-gender interactions, with one exception. Men were particularly less approving of a male, as compared to a female, friend who kissed them in a greeting. Furthermore, an overwhelming majority of respondents (81.6%) reported that men and women can be friends. A minority of women were cautious in their responses, with women (18.5%) more apt to reply "maybe," than men (9.9%). Overall, these findings provided evidence that gender, rather than cross-gender, norms primarily influenced friendship evaluations, and demonstrated that even a subtle manipulation of gender can trigger gender stereotypes. They suggested, too, that women may hold their friends to stricter "rules" than men.
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Modulating social behavior with oxytocin: How does it work? What does it mean?
Patricia Churchland & Piotr Winkielman
Hormones and Behavior, March 2012, Pages 392-399
Abstract:
Among its many roles in body and brain, oxytocin influences social behavior. Understanding the precise nature of this influence is crucial, both within the broader theoretical context of neurobiology, social neuroscience and brain evolution, but also within a clinical context of disorders such as anxiety, schizophrenia, and autism. Research exploring oxytocin's role in human social behavior is difficult owing to its release in both body and brain and its interactive effects with other hormones and neuromodulators. Additional difficulties are due to the intricacies of the blood-brain barrier and oxytocin's instability, which creates measurement issues. Questions concerning how to interpret behavioral results of human experiments manipulating oxytocin are thus made all the more pressing. The current paper discusses several such questions. We highlight unresolved fundamental issues about what exactly happens when oxytocin is administered intranasally, whether such oxytocin does in fact reach appropriate receptors in brain, and whether central or peripheral influences account for the observed behavioral effects. We also highlight the deeper conceptual issue of whether the human data should be narrowly interpreted as implicating a specific role for oxytocin in complex social cognition, such a generosity, trust, or mentalizing, or more broadly interpreted as implicating a lower-level general effect on general states and dispositions, such as anxiety and social motivation. Using several influential studies, we show how seemingly specific, higher-level social-cognitive effects can emerge via a process by which oxytocin's broad influence is channeled into a specific social behavior in a context of an appropriate social and research setting.
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Spousal Network Overlap as a Basis for Spousal Support
Benjamin Cornwell
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2012, Pages 229-238
Abstract:
The role social network structure plays in facilitating flows of support between spouses is often overlooked. This study examined whether levels of support between spouses depended on the degree of overlap between spouses' networks. Network overlap may enhance spouses' support capacities by increasing their understanding of each other's support needs and their ability to coordinate support for each other. Data on 1,490 married older adults from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project were examined. Analyses revealed that when one's spouse had more contact with one's other network members, one was more likely to (a) view the spouse as a reliable source of support, (b) open up to the spouse, and (c) discuss health issues with the spouse. These results suggest that spousal support is not only a function of relationship quality or obligations - it also is a structural phenomenon that depends on spouses' connectedness to each other's networks.
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Subliminal activation of social ties moderates cardiovascular reactivity during acute stress
McKenzie Carlisle et al.
Health Psychology, March 2012, Pages 217-225
Objective: The quality of one's personal relationships has been reliably linked to important physical health outcomes, perhaps through the mechanism of physiological stress responses. Most studies of this mechanism have focused on whether more conscious interpersonal transactions influence cardiovascular reactivity. However, whether such relationships can be automatically activated in memory to influence physiological processes has not been determined. The primary aims of this study were to examine whether subliminal activation of relationships could influence health-relevant physiological processes and to examine this question in the context of a more general relationship model that incorporates both positive and negative dimensions.
Method: We randomly assigned participants to be subliminally primed with existing relationships that varied in their underlying positivity and negativity (i.e., indifferent, supportive, aversive, ambivalent). They then performed acute psychological stressors while cardiovascular and self-report measures were assessed.
Results: Priming negative relationships was associated with greater threat, lower feelings of control, and higher diastolic blood pressure reactivity during stress. Moreover, priming relationships high in positivity and negativity (ambivalent ties) was associated with the highest heart rate reactivity and greatest respiratory sinus arrhythmia decreases during stress. Exploratory analyses during the priming task itself suggested that the effects of negative primes on biological measures were prevalent across tasks, whereas the links to ambivalent ties was specific to the subsequent stressor task.
Conclusions: These data highlight novel mechanisms by which social ties may impact cardiovascular health, and further suggest the importance of incorporating both positivity and negativity in the study of relationships and physical health.
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Pierre Balthazard et al.
Leadership Quarterly, April 2012, Pages 244-258
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the viability of using neurological imaging to classify transformational leaders, versus non-transformational leaders, as identified through existing psychometric methods. Specifically, power spectral analysis measures based on electroencephalograms (EEG) were used to develop and validate a discriminant function that can classify individuals according to their transformational leadership behavior. Resting, eyes closed EEG was recorded from 19 scalp locations for 200 civilian and military leaders. We also assessed follower or peer perceptions of transformational leadership through the use of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). Our discriminant analysis, which involved a two-step, neural variable reduction and selection process, was 92.5% accurate in its classification of leaders. Patterns in the spectral measures of the brain of leaders, including activity and network dynamic metrics, are discussed as potential correlates of transformational leadership behavior. The current work provides a better understanding of the latent and dynamic neurological mechanisms that may underpin the transformational leadership qualities of individuals.
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The Role of Listening in Interpersonal Influence
Daniel Ames, Lily Benjamin Maissen & Joel Brockner
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using informant reports on working professionals, we explored the role of listening in interpersonal influence and how listening may account for at least some of the relationship between personality and influence. The results extended prior work which has suggested that listening is positively related to influence for informational and relational reasons. As predicted, we found that: (1) listening had a positive effect on influence beyond the impact of verbal expression, (2) listening interacted with verbal expression to predict influence (such that the relationship between listening and influence was stronger among those more expressive), and (3) listening partly mediated the positive relationships between each of the Big Five dimensions of agreeableness and openness and influence.
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Deception and Its Detection: Effects of Monetary Incentives and Personal Relationship History
Lyn Van Swol, Deepak Malhotra & Michael Braun
Communication Research, April 2012, Pages 217-238
Abstract:
The study examined detection of deception in unsanctioned, consequential lies between either friends or strangers using an ultimatum game. The sender was given an amount of money to divide with the receiver. The receiver did not know the precise amount the sender had to divide, and the sender had the ability to deceive the receiver about the monetary amount. Not surprisingly, senders were more likely to deceive strangers than friends, and receivers were more suspicious of strangers than friends. When senders lied, they stated their offer more times and gave more supporting statements for their offer. Receivers had a strong truth bias, although the majority of senders were truthful, and friends had more of a truth bias than strangers. Receivers were not able to detect deception at a rate above chance. Friends were not better at detecting deception than strangers. However, because most participants were truthful and there was a strong truth bias, a high percentage of participants were able to detect when their partner was truthful, in confirmation of the veracity effect.
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The heritability of emergent leadership: Age and gender as moderating factors
Sankalp Chaturvedi et al.
Leadership Quarterly, April 2012, Pages 219-232
Abstract:
In this study, we examined the moderating influences of gender and age with respect to testing the heritability of leadership emergence. A large data base of 12,112 twins from Sweden was used in the current study to decompose the variance of emergent leadership into an unobservable genetic component and environmental components that are either common or unshared among twin pairs. Consistent with prior leadership research on genetics, we found that a genetic factor is able to explain a significant proportion of the variation across individuals in predicting how twins perceive their emergent leadership behavior (about 44% for women and 37% for men). Furthermore, we also found that the magnitude of genetic influence on emergent leadership varied with age, but only for women with the heritability estimate being highest for the mid-age women versus lowest for the older women. Implications for advancing research on the genetic and environmental influences on leadership emergence are discussed.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Framed
Fast Thought Speed Induces Risk Taking
Jesse Chandler & Emily Pronin
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In two experiments, we tested for a causal link between thought speed and risk taking. In Experiment 1, we manipulated thought speed by presenting neutral-content text at either a fast or a slow pace and having participants read the text aloud. In Experiment 2, we manipulated thought speed by presenting fast-, medium-, or slow-paced movie clips that contained similar content. Participants who were induced to think more quickly took more risks with actual money in Experiment 1 and reported greater intentions to engage in real-world risky behaviors, such as unprotected sex and illegal drug use, in Experiment 2. These experiments provide evidence that faster thinking induces greater risk taking.
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The fast and the dangerous: The speed of events influences risk judgements
Heather Lench & Sarah Flores
British Journal of Social Psychology, March 2012, Pages 178-187
Abstract:
A risk-as-feelings approach suggests that factors irrelevant to the potential risk can influence risk perception. This investigation focused on the speed of events as one such factor. Negative events that occur relatively quickly were judged as more likely to occur than events that occur more slowly. Speed influenced risk perception when it was salient and differences in risk perception were reduced when it was not salient. Further, the likelihood of a negative outcome was judged to be more likely when the same event was described as occurring relatively quickly compared to slowly. Even when only the speed at which information was presented changed, faster events were judged to be riskier than slower events. Theoretically, these findings suggest that speed of an event contributes to risk judgements and suggest speed may be the reason people fear fast but low incidence events and fail to fear slower but higher incidence events.
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The Physical Burdens of Secrecy
Michael Slepian et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present work examined whether secrets are experienced as physical burdens, thereby influencing perception and action. Four studies examined the behavior of people who harbored important secrets, such as secrets concerning infidelity and sexual orientation. People who recalled, were preoccupied with, or suppressed an important secret estimated hills to be steeper, perceived distances to be farther, indicated that physical tasks would require more effort, and were less likely to help others with physical tasks. The more burdensome the secret and the more thought devoted to it, the more perception and action were influenced in a manner similar to carrying physical weight. Thus, as with physical burdens, secrets weigh people down.
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Heartwarming Memories: Nostalgia Maintains Physiological Comfort
Xinyue Zhou et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nostalgia, a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, is a predominantly positive and social emotion. Recent evidence suggests that nostalgia maintains psychological comfort. Here, we propose, and document in five methodologically diverse studies, a broader homeostatic function for nostalgia that also encompasses the maintenance of physiological comfort. We show that nostalgia - an emotion with a strong connotation of warmth - is triggered by coldness. Participants reported stronger nostalgia on colder (vs. warmer) days and in a cold (vs. neutral or warm) room. Nostalgia, in turn, modulates the interoceptive feeling of temperature. Higher levels of music-evoked nostalgia predicted increased physical warmth, and participants who recalled a nostalgic (vs. ordinary autobiographical) event perceived ambient temperature as higher. Finally, and consistent with the close central nervous system integration of temperature and pain sensations, participants who recalled a nostalgic (vs. ordinary autobiographical) event evinced greater tolerance to noxious cold.
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Affective Priming During the Processing of News Articles
Susanne Baumgartner & Werner Wirth
Media Psychology, Winter 2012, Pages 1-18
Abstract:
The present study investigates the role of affective priming during the processing of news articles. It is assumed that the valence of the affective response to a news article will influence the processing of subsequent news articles. More specifically, it is hypothesized that participants who read a positive article will recall subsequent positive information better than negative information. Similarly, participants who read a negative article will recall subsequent negative information better. To test this assumption, an experimental study was conducted (N = 87). Findings show that participants who read an initial positive article recalled more positive than negative information from six subsequent news articles. Participants who read an initial negative article recalled more negative information than positive information from subsequent news messages. Findings suggest that affective states induced by a news article influence how subsequent articles are processed and which information is learned.
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Self-selection bias in hypothesis comparison
Jennifer Whitman & Todd Woodward
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
Here we investigated whether, given equivalent supporting evidence, we judge self-selected hypotheses differently from those selected by an external source. On each trial of a probabilistic reasoning task requiring no retrieval from memory, participants rated the probability of a focal hypothesis, relative to two alternatives. The focal hypothesis was either selected by the participant or by a computer. In four experiments, self-selected focal hypotheses were judged to be more probable than externally selected ones, despite equivalent supporting evidence. This self-selection bias was independent of level of difficulty in selecting the focal hypothesis (cognitive effort) and of whether evidence was gradually accumulated or all presented instantaneously. These results suggest that the cognitive operations involved in selecting a hypothesis lead to assignment of higher probability to that hypothesis, and that this effect is independent of hypothesis selection difficulty and of the rate of evidence accumulation.
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The Future is Bright: The Underdog Label, Availability, and Optimism
Nadav Goldschmied & Joseph Vandello
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Winter 2012, Pages 34-43
Abstract:
Research suggests that people support underdogs. Three studies examined how laypeople conceptualize the underdog label. Study 1 used a free association method to create a semantic network map of the underdog construct. In Study 2, participants provided their own definitions and selected the entity that best exemplified an underdog. In the two studies, the underdog term was linked to both disadvantage and successful qualities. In Study 3, participants read fictional stories about competing entities unlikely to succeed. When targets were labeled as underdogs, participants predicted that they would perform significantly better than expectations. We suggest that, although dictionaries define underdogs as unlikely to prevail, a layperson's conceptions, shaped by inspirational archetypal stories of odds overcome, are more optimistic.
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The disgust-promotes-disposal effect
Seunghee Han, Jennifer Lerner & Richard Zeckhauser
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, April 2012, Pages 101-113
Abstract:
Individuals tend toward status quo bias: preferring existing options over new ones. There is a countervailing phenomenon: Humans naturally dispose of objects that disgust them, such as foul-smelling food. But what if the source of disgust is independent of the object? We induced disgust via a film clip to see if participants would trade away an item (a box of unidentified office supplies) for a new item (alternative unidentified box). Such "incidental disgust" strongly countered status quo bias. Disgusted people exchanged their present possession 51% of the time compared to 32% for people in a neutral state. Thus, disgust promotes disposal. A second experiment tested whether a warning about this tendency would diminish it. It did not. These results indicate a robust disgust-promotes-disposal effect. Because these studies presented real choices with tangible rewards, their findings have implications for everyday choices and raise caution about the effectiveness of warnings about biases.
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Making less of a mess: Scent exposure as a tool for behavioral change
M.A. de Lange et al.
Social Influence, Spring 2012, Pages 90-97
Abstract:
Following a cognitive route from olfactory perception to goal-directed behavior, we aimed to influence littering behavior on Dutch trains. In order to achieve this, the scent of a cleaning product was subtly dispersed in train compartments. Compared to passengers in unscented compartments, passengers littered less as measured by the weight and number of items left behind in compartments containing cleaner scent. Apart from extending research on the influence of scent on behavior in a natural environment, the findings suggest that the cognitive route from scents to behavior provides a tool for behavior change in everyday life.
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Jesse Chandler, David Reinhard & Norbert Schwarz
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Participants evaluated a book as more important when it weighed heavily in their hands (due to a concealed weight), but only when they had substantive knowledge about the book. Those who had read a synopsis (Study 1), had read the book (Study 2) and knew details about its plot (Study 3) were influenced by its weight, whereas those unfamiliar with the book were not. This contradicts the widely shared assumption that metaphorically related perceptual inputs serve as heuristic cues that people primarily use in the absence of more diagnostic information. Instead, perceptual inputs may increase the accessibility of metaphorically congruent knowledge or may suggest an initial hypothesis that is only endorsed when supporting information is accessible.
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Effects of Symptom Presentation Order on Perceived Disease Risk
Virginia Kwan et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People are quick to perceive meaningful patterns in the co-occurrence of events. We report two studies exploring the effects of streaks in symptom checklists on perceived personal disease risk. In the context of these studies, a streak is a sequence of consecutive items on a list that share the characteristic of being either general or specific. We identify a psychological mechanism underlying the effect of streaks in a list of symptoms and show that the effect of streaks on perceived risk varies with the length of the symptom list. Our findings reveal a tendency to infer meaning from streaks in medical and health decision making. Participants perceived a higher personal risk of having an illness when presented with a checklist in which common symptoms were grouped together than when presented with a checklist in which these same symptoms were separated by rare symptoms. This research demonstrates that something as arbitrary as the order in which symptoms are presented in a checklist can affect perceived risk of disease.
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The social impact of pathogen threat: How disease salience influences conformity
Bao-Pei Wu & Lei Chang,
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our human ancestors learned to use morphological deviations from the normal population to identify conspecific pathogen carriers and developed group normative practices in fighting local diseases. Modern conformity is still driven in part by disease avoidance. In this study, we tested the association between pathogen threat and conformity in three studies. A survey of 164 college students revealed that perceived vulnerability to disease uniquely predicted conformity tendencies. Results from the next two experiments showed that, in comparison to the control groups, participants primed by pathogen threat conformed more to majority views when evaluating abstract art drawings and rated themselves as more conforming on a questionnaire. There appears to be an evolved pathogen-avoidance mechanism that includes not only out-group avoidance strategies as have been found by other researchers, but also in-group approach strategies such as conformity.
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Debunking Vaccination Myths: Strong Risk Negations Can Increase Perceived Vaccination Risks
Cornelia Betsch & Katharina Sachse
Health Psychology, forthcoming
Objective: Information about risks is often contradictory, especially in the health domain. A vast amount of bizarre information on vaccine-adverse events (VAE) can be found on the Internet; most are posted by antivaccination activists. Several actors in the health sector struggle against these statements by negating claimed risks with scientific explanations. The goal of the present work is to find optimal ways of negating risk to decrease risk perceptions.
Methods: In two online experiments, we varied the extremity of risk negations and their source. Perception of the probability of VAE, their expected severity (both variables serve as indicators of perceived risk), and vaccination intentions.
Results: Paradoxically, messages strongly indicating that there is "no risk" led to a higher perceived vaccination risk than weak negations. This finding extends previous work on the negativity bias, which has shown that information stating the presence of risk decreases risk perceptions, while information negating the existence of risk increases such perceptions. Several moderators were also tested; however, the effect occurred independently of the number of negations, recipient involvement, and attitude. Solely the credibility of the information source interacted with the extremity of risk negation: For credible sources (governmental institutions), strong and weak risk negations lead to similar perceived risk, while for less credible sources (pharmaceutical industries) weak negations lead to less perceived risk than strong negations.
Conclusions: Optimal risk negation may profit from moderate rather than extreme formulations as a source's trustworthiness can vary.
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Raymond Pingree, Megan Hill & Douglas McLeod
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
An online experiment tested the influence of "he said/she said" coverage versus active adjudication of factual disputes, as well as strategy versus policy framing in postdebate news coverage. Adjudication in policy-framed stories increased epistemic political efficacy (EPE), a measure of confidence in one's own ability to determine the truth in politics. However, adjudicated policy stories also elicited greater cynicism than passive policy framing. This suggests a caveat for the spiral of cynicism, calling into question its assumption that all policy framing behaves similarly in reducing cynicism. Results also provide several forms of evidence that effects of adjudication on EPE differ from spiral of cynicism effects while further validating the EPE construct as distinct from the reverse of political cynicism. Adjudication also positively affected evaluations of the coverage as interesting and informative.
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Keith Marzilli Ericson & Andreas Fuster
Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2011, Pages 1879-1907
Abstract:
While evidence suggests that people evaluate outcomes with respect to reference points, little is known about what determines them. We conduct two experiments that show that reference points are determined, at least in part, by expectations. In an exchange experiment, we endow subjects with an item and randomize the probability they will be allowed to trade. Subjects that are less likely to be able to trade are more likely to choose to keep their item. In a valuation experiment, we randomly assign subjects a high or low probability of obtaining an item and elicit their willingness-to-accept for it. The high probability treatment increases valuation of the item by 20-30%.
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Social comparison and risky choices
Jona Linde & Joep Sonnemans
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, February 2012, Pages 45-72
Abstract:
Theories (and experiments) on decision making under risk typically ignore (and exclude) a social context. We explore whether this omission is detrimental. To do so we experimentally investigate the simplest possible situation with both social comparison and risk: participants choose between two lotteries while a referent faces a fixed payoff. Participants are more risk averse when they can earn at most as much as their referent (loss situation) than when they are ensured they will earn at least as much as their referent (gain situation). Prospect theory with a social reference point would predict the exact opposite behavior. These results show that straightforward extensions of existing theories to allow for social comparison do not provide accurate predictions.
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Thorsten Pachur & Benjamin Scheibehenne
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
People often attach a higher value to an object when they own it (i.e., as seller) compared with when they do not own it (i.e., as buyer) - a phenomenon known as the endowment effect. According to recent cognitive process accounts of the endowment effect, the effect is due to differences between sellers and buyers in information search. Whereas previous investigations have focused on search order and internal search processes (i.e., in memory), we used a sampling paradigm to examine differences in search termination in external search. We asked participants to indicate selling and buying prices for monetary lotteries in a within-subject design. In an experience condition, participants had to learn about the possible outcomes and probabilities of the lotteries by experiential sampling. As hypothesized, sellers tended to terminate search after sampling high outcomes, whereas buyers tended to terminate search after sampling low outcomes. These differences in stopping behavior translated into samples of the lotteries that were differentially distorted for sellers and buyers; the amount of the distortion was predictive of the resulting size of the endowment effect. In addition, for sellers search was more extended when high outcomes were rare compared with when low outcomes were rare. Our results add to the increasing evidence that the endowment effect is due, in part, to differences in predecisional information search.
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Blind in one eye: How psychological ownership of ideas affects the types of suggestions people adopt
Markus Baer & Graham Brown
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, May 2012, Pages 60-71
Abstract:
Two experimental studies demonstrated that feeling as though an object, such as an idea, is "ours" (i.e., experiencing feelings of psychological ownership) propels people to selectively adopt others' suggestions for change. Whereas feelings of ownership caused individuals to embrace the adoption of suggestions that expanded upon their possessions (additive change), it simultaneously made them shun the adoption of suggestions that shrank them (subtractive change) (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, results indicated that both a sense of personal loss and negative affect sequentially mediated this joint effect of psychological ownership and change type on the adoption of others' suggestions for change (Study 2). Our findings suggest that the nature of change and how it impacts high ownership people's sense of loss and negative affect is an important determinant of whether feelings of ownership will cause individuals to remain open to or resist others' suggestions for change.
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A Selective Emotional Decision-Making Bias Elicited by Facial Expressions
Nicholas Furl, Shannon Gallagher & Bruno Averbeck
PLoS ONE, March 2012
Abstract:
Emotional and social information can sway otherwise rational decisions. For example, when participants decide between two faces that are probabilistically rewarded, they make biased choices that favor smiling relative to angry faces. This bias may arise because facial expressions evoke positive and negative emotional responses, which in turn may motivate social approach and avoidance. We tested a wide range of pictures that evoke emotions or convey social information, including animals, words, foods, a variety of scenes, and faces differing in trustworthiness or attractiveness, but we found only facial expressions biased decisions. Our results extend brain imaging and pharmacological findings, which suggest that a brain mechanism supporting social interaction may be involved. Facial expressions appear to exert special influence over this social interaction mechanism, one capable of biasing otherwise rational choices. These results illustrate that only specific types of emotional experiences can best sway our choices.
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Positive emotional context eliminates the framing effect in decision-making
Mathieu Cassotti et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Dual-process theories have suggested that emotion plays a key role in the framing effect in decision-making. However, little is known about the potential impact of a specific positive or negative emotional context on this bias. We investigated this question with adult participants using an emotional priming paradigm. First, participants were presented with positive or negative affective pictures (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant photographs). Afterward, participants had to perform a financial decision-making task that was unrelated to the pictures previously presented. The results revealed that the presentation framed in terms of gain or loss no longer affected subjects' decision-making following specific exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, a positive emotional context did not globally influence risk-taking behavior but specifically decreased the risk propensity in the loss frame. This finding confirmed that a positive emotional context can reduce loss aversion, and it strongly reinforced the dual-process view that the framing effect stems from an affective heuristic belonging to intuitive System 1.
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Decisions beyond boundaries: When more information is processed faster than less
Andreas Glöckner & Tilmann Betsch
Acta Psychologica, March 2012, Pages 532-542
Abstract:
Bounded rationality models usually converge in claiming that decision time and the amount of computational steps needed to come to a decision are positively correlated. The empirical evidence for this claim is, however, equivocal. We conducted a study that tests this claim by adding and omitting information. We demonstrate that even an increase in information amount can yield a decrease in decision time if the added information increases coherence in the information set. Rather than being influenced by amount of information, decision time systematically increased with decreasing coherence. The results are discussed with reference to a parallel constraint satisfaction approach to decision making, which assumes that information integration is operated in an automatic, holistic manner.
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Relative visual saliency differences induce sizable bias in consumer choice
Milica Milosavljevic et al.
Journal of Consumer Psychology, January 2012, Pages 67-74
Abstract:
Consumers often need to make very rapid choices among multiple brands (e.g., at a supermarket shelf) that differ both in their reward value (e.g., taste) and in their visual properties (e.g., color and brightness of the packaging). Since the visual properties of stimuli are known to influence visual attention, and attention is known to influence choices, this gives rise to a potential visual saliency bias in choices. We utilize experimental design from visual neuroscience in three real food choice experiments to measure the size of the visual saliency bias and how it changes with decision speed and cognitive load. Our results show that at rapid decision speeds visual saliency influences choices more than preferences do, that the bias increases with cognitive load, and that it is particularly strong when individuals do not have strong preferences among the options.
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Frank Durgin et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, forthcoming
Abstract:
Experiments take place in a physical environment but also a social environment. Generalizability from experimental manipulations to more typical contexts may be limited by violations of ecological validity with respect to either the physical or the social environment. A replication and extension of a recent study (a blood glucose manipulation) was conducted to investigate the effects of experimental demand (a social artifact) on participant behaviors judging the geographical slant of a large-scale outdoor hill. Three different assessments of experimental demand indicate that even when the physical environment is naturalistic, and the goal of the main experimental manipulation was primarily concealed, artificial aspects of the social environment (such as an explicit requirement to wear a heavy backpack while estimating the slant of a hill) may still be primarily responsible for altered judgments of hill orientation.
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The cognitive ripple of social norms communications
Jessica Nolan
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, September 2011, Pages 689-702
Abstract:
Social norms marketing has become a widely used technique for promoting pro-social behaviors, however, little is known about the cognitive changes produced by these interventions. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent and durability of changes in normative beliefs following a one-shot social norms communication. Participants were surveyed immediately following the intervention, one week later, and one month later. Results showed that (1) normative beliefs spilled over to behaviors and referents not specified in the original message; (2) communication and self-knowledge both contributed to participants' normative belief estimates; and (3) the change in normative beliefs over the one-month period was consistent with Miller and Prentice's (1996) theory of normative belief construction. Possible explanations for the spillover effect are discussed.
Friday, March 23, 2012
To care or not to care
The Utility of Health and Wealth
Moshe Levy & Adi Rizansky Nir
Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Tradeoffs between health and wealth are among the most important decisions individuals make, and are central to social and economic policy. Yet, only a few studies have investigated the utility of health and wealth empirically. This paper investigates this utility function both theoretically and empirically. We conduct detailed personal interviews with 180 cancer patients, and also obtain questionnaires from 132 diabetes patients. We find strong support for the utility function U(h,w) = h•log(w), where h denotes health and w denotes wealth.
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Does Universal Coverage Improve Health? The Massachusetts Experience
Charles Courtemanche & Daniela Zapata
NBER Working Paper, March 2012
Abstract:
In 2006, Massachusetts passed health care reform legislation designed to achieve nearly universal coverage through a combination of insurance market reforms, mandates, and subsidies that later served as the model for national health care reform. Using individual-level data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we provide evidence that health care reform in Massachusetts led to better overall self-assessed health. An assortment of robustness checks and placebo tests support a causal interpretation of the results. We also document improvements in several determinants of overall health, including physical health, mental health, functional limitations, joint disorders, body mass index, and moderate physical activity. The health effects were strongest among women, minorities, near-elderly adults, and those with incomes low enough to qualify for the law's subsidies. Finally, we use the reform to instrument for health insurance and estimate a sizeable impact of coverage on health. The effects on coverage were strongest for men, non-black minorities, young adults, and those who qualified for the subsidies, while the effects of coverage were strongest for women, blacks, the near-elderly, and middle-to-upper income individuals.
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Frank McClellan et al.
Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, forthcoming
Background: There is a perception that socioeconomically disadvantaged patients tend to sue their doctors more frequently. As a result, some physicians may be reluctant to treat poor patients or treat such patients differently from other patient groups in terms of medical care provided.
Questions/purposes: We (1) examined existing literature to refute the notion that poor patients are inclined to sue doctors more than other patients, (2) explored unconscious bias as an explanation as to why the perception of the poor being more litigious may exist despite evidence to the contrary, and (3) assessed the role of culturally competent awareness and knowledge in confronting physician bias.
Methods: We reviewed medical and social literature to identify studies that have examined differences in litigation rates and related medical malpractice claims among socioeconomically disadvantaged patients versus other groups of patients.
Results: Contrary to popular perception, existing studies show poor patients, in fact, tend to sue physicians less often. This may be related to a relative lack of access to legal resources and the nature of the contingency fee system in medical malpractice claims.
Conclusions: Misperceptions such as the one examined in this article that assume a relationship between patient poverty and medical malpractice litigation may arise from unconscious physician bias and other social variables. Cultural competency can be helpful in mitigating such bias, improving medical care, and addressing the risk of medical malpractice claims.
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Health-care reform and bankruptcy: Evidence from Massachusetts
Kayla Badding, Frank Stephenson & Melissa Yeoh
Applied Economics Letters, Fall 2012, Pages 1741-1744
Abstract:
Previous research claims that medical expenses are a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Using data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia from 2001 to 2010, this article examines the relationship between Massachusetts' 2006 health-care reform and bankruptcy filings. After including state- and year-fixed effects and other covariates, the results indicate that, contrary to expectations, bankruptcy filings increased following Massachusetts' move towards universal medical insurance coverage.
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Medicare spending, mortality rates, and quality of care
Jack Hadley & James Reschovsky
International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, March 2012, Pages 87-105
Abstract:
We applied instrumental variable analysis to a sample of 388,690 Medicare beneficiaries predicted to be high-cost cases to estimate the effects of medical care use on the relative odds of death or experiencing an avoidable hospitalization in 2006. Contrary to conclusions from the observational geographic variations literature, the results suggest that greater medical care use is associated with statistically significant and quantitatively meaningful health improvements: a 10% increase in medical care use is associated with a 8.4% decrease in the mortality rate and a 3.8% decrease in the rate of avoidable hospitalizations.
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Mandate-Based Health Reform and the Labor Market: Evidence from the Massachusetts Reform
Jonathan Kolstad & Amanda Kowalski
NBER Working Paper, March 2012
Abstract:
We model the labor market impact of the three key provisions of the recent Massachusetts and national "mandate-based" health reforms: individual and employer mandates and expansions in publicly-subsidized coverage. Using our model, we characterize the compensating differential for employer-sponsored health insurance (ESHI) -- the causal change in wages associated with gaining ESHI. We also characterize the welfare impact of the labor market distortion induced by health reform. We show that the welfare impact depends on a small number of "sufficient statistics" that can be recovered from labor market outcomes. Relying on the reform implemented in Massachusetts in 2006, we estimate the empirical analog of our model. We find that jobs with ESHI pay wages that are lower by an average of $6,058 annually, indicating that the compensating differential for ESHI is only slightly smaller in magnitude than the average cost of ESHI to employers. Because the newly-insured in Massachusetts valued ESHI, they were willing to accept lower wages, and the deadweight loss of mandate-based health reform was less than 5% of what it would have been if the government had instead provided health insurance by levying a tax on wages.
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Andrew Ryan, Brahmajee Nallamothu & Justin Dimick
Health Affairs, March 2012, Pages 585-592
Abstract:
Hospital Compare, Medicare's public reporting initiative, began reporting measures of hospital quality for almost all US acute care hospitals in 2005. The impact of this public reporting initiative on patient mortality is unknown. We used Medicare claims data from the period 2000-08 to estimate the effect of Hospital Compare on thirty-day mortality for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia. Our analysis indicates that the fact that hospitals had to report quality data under Hospital Compare led to no reductions in mortality beyond existing trends for heart attack and pneumonia and led to a modest reduction in mortality for heart failure. We conclude that Medicare's public reporting initiative for hospitals has had a minimal impact on patient mortality.
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Doc, what would you do if you were me? On self-other discrepancies in medical decision making
Rocio Garcia-Retamero & Mirta Galesic
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, March 2012, Pages 38-51
Abstract:
Doctors often make decisions for their patients and predict their patients' preferences and decisions to customize advice to their particular situation. We investigated how doctors make decisions about medical treatments for their patients and themselves and how they predict their patients' decisions. We also studied whether these decisions and predictions coincide with the decisions that the patients make for themselves. We document 3 important findings. First, doctors made more conservative decisions for their patients than for themselves (i.e., they more often selected a safer medical treatment). Second, doctors did so even if they accurately predicted that their patients would want a riskier treatment than the one they selected. Doctors, therefore, showed substantial self-other discrepancies in medical decision making and did not make decisions that accurately reflected their patients' preferences. Finally, patients were not aware of these discrepancies and thought that the decisions their doctors made for themselves would be similar to the decisions they made for their patients. We explain these results in light of 2 current theories of self-other discrepancies in judgment and decision making: the risk-as-feelings hypothesis and the cognitive hypothesis. Our results have important implications for research on expert decision making and for medical practice, and shed some light on the process underlying self-other discrepancies in decision making.
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Judith Rietjens et al.
Social Science & Medicine, April 2012, Pages 1282-1287
Abstract:
Medical end-of-life decisions, defined as end-of-life practices with a potential or certain life-shortening effect, precede almost 50% of deaths in Western countries, and receive ample medical-ethical attention. This systematic review aims to detect whether there are differences in the prevalence of medical end-of-life decisions in ‘vulnerable' patient groups. In 2009, five major databases were scrutinized for publications containing original data on the prevalence of euthanasia/physician-assisted suicide, life-ending without explicit patient request, intensified symptom alleviation, non-treatment decisions and palliative sedation by social factors (eg age, gender and SES). Heterogeneous findings were pooled using a random effects model. We identified 6377 papers of which 51 papers were selected, involving over 1.09 million patients. Most publications reported the prevalence of non-treatment decisions. The most studied social factors were age and gender. Among patients older than eighty years, non-treatment decisions occurred more frequently compared with younger patients, while intensified symptom alleviation, palliative sedation, euthanasia/physician-assisted suicide and life-ending without explicit request were practiced less often. Similar patterns of association, although less strong, were found for female patients compared with males and those with lower levels of education versus more highly-educated patients. We conclude that the administration of medication with a potential or certain life-shortening effect seemed generally to be practiced less often among the elderly, females and less well-educated patients compared with younger, male or more educated patients, while decisions that include the withdrawal or withholding of treatments seem to be more common in these groups. Further studies should focus on investigating whether these differences reflect less than optimal end-of-life care for specific patient groups.
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A Location-Based Comparison of Health Care Services in four U.S. States with Efficiency and Equity
M.L. Burkey, J. Bhadury & H.A. Eiselt
Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, June 2012, Pages 157-163
Abstract:
This paper examines the efficiency and equality in geographic accessibility provided by hospitals. We use the criteria efficiency, availability of the service, and equality. Quantitative measures are defined for all criteria, and are measured using a geographical information system. We then compare existing locations with optimal locations satisfying two objectives, one that minimizes hospital-patient distance, and another that captures as many patients as possible within a pre-specified time or distance. The results of our study indicate that the existing locations provide near-optimal geographic access to health care. Some potential for improvement is indicated.
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Insurance as Delegated Purchasing: Theory and Evidence from Health Care
Robin McKnight, Jonathan Reuter & Eric Zitzewitz
NBER Working Paper, February 2012
Abstract:
Household demand for actuarially unfair insurance against small risks has long puzzled economists. One way to potentially rationalize this demand is to recognize that (non-life) insurance is an incentive-compatible means of engaging an expert buyer. To quantify the benefits of expert buying, we compare prices paid by the insured and uninsured for health care. In categories of health care where uncompensated care is more difficult to obtain (drugs, doctor office visits, and hospital outpatient visits), we find that insurers pay 10-20% less than the uninsured. For forms of care where payment by the uninsured is more likely to be negotiated after services are rendered (hospitalizations and emergency room visits) the uninsured pay about 30% less on average, due largely to the nontrivial share of uninsured who pay 5% or less of their billed charges. At least in settings where free services are difficult to obtain, expert buying is an important benefit of insurance. We discuss the implications of the delegated-purchasing view of insurance for con-sumer-driven health insurance and for self-insurance by employers.
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http://economics.mit.edu/files/7488
Nathaniel Hendren
MIT Working Paper, December 2011
Abstract:
Across a wide set of non-group insurance markets, applicants are rejected based on observable, often high-risk, characteristics. This paper explores private information as a potential cause. To do so, we develop and test a model in which agents have private information about their risk. We derive a new no-trade result that can theoretically explain how private information could cause rejections. We use the no-trade condition to generate measures of the barrier to trade private information imposes. We develop a new empirical methodology to estimate these measures that uses subjective probability elicitations as noisy measures of agents' beliefs. We apply our approach to three non-group markets: long-term care, disability, and life insurance. Consistent with the predictions of the theory, in all three settings we find larger barriers to trade imposed by private information for those who would be rejected relative to those who are served by the market. For those who would be rejected, private information imposes a barrier to trade equivalent to an implicit tax on insurance premiums of roughly 65-75% in long-term care, 90-130% in disability, and 65-130% in life insurance.
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Judith Hibbard et al.
Health Affairs, March 2012, Pages 560-568
Abstract:
Advocates of health reform continue to pursue policies and tools that will make information about comparative costs and resource use available to consumers. Reformers expect that consumers will use the data to choose high-value providers - those who offer higher quality and lower prices - and thus contribute to the broader goal of controlling national health care spending. However, communicating this information effectively is more challenging than it might first appear. For example, consumers are more interested in the quality of health care than in its cost, and many perceive a low-cost provider to be substandard. In this study of 1,421 employees, we examined how different presentations of information affect the likelihood that consumers will make high-value choices. We found that a substantial minority of the respondents shied away from low-cost providers, and even consumers who pay a larger share of their health care costs themselves were likely to equate high cost with high quality. At the same time, we found that presenting cost data alongside easy-to-interpret quality information and highlighting high-value options improved the likelihood that consumers would choose those options. Reporting strategies that follow such a format will help consumers understand that a doctor who provides higher-quality care than other doctors does not necessarily cost more.
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Maria Trottmann, Peter Zweifel & Konstantin Beck
Journal of Health Economics, January 2012, Pages 231-242
Abstract:
Microeconomic theory predicts that if patients are fully insured and providers are paid fee-for-service, utilization of medical services exceeds the efficient level (‘moral hazard effect'). In Switzerland, both demand-side and supply-side cost sharing have been introduced to mitigate this problem. Analyzing a panel dataset of about 160,000 adults, we find both types of cost sharing to be effective in curtailing the use of medical services. However, when moral hazard mitigation is traded off against risk selection, the minimum-deductible, supply-side cost sharing option ranks first, followed by the medium-deductible demand-side alternative, making the supply-side option somewhat more effective.
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Public versus private: Evidence on health insurance selection
Cristian Pardo & Whitney Schott
International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, March 2012, Pages 39-61
Abstract:
This paper models health insurance choice in Chile (public versus private) as a dynamic, stochastic process, where individuals consider premiums, expected out-of pocket costs, personal characteristics and preferences. Insurance amenities and restrictions against pre-existing conditions among private insurers introduce asymmetry to the model. We confirm that the public system services a less healthy and wealthy population (adverse selection for public insurance). Simulation of choices over time predicts a slight crowding out of private insurance only for the most pessimistic scenario in terms of population aging and the evolution of education. Eliminating the restrictions on pre-existing conditions would slightly ameliorate the level (but not the trend) of the disproportionate accumulation of less healthy individuals in the public insurance program over time.
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Peter Huckfeldt et al.
NBER Working Paper, February 2012
Abstract:
Medicare continues to implement payment reforms that shift reimbursement from fee-for-service towards episode-based payment, affecting average and marginal reimbursement. We contrast the effects of two reforms for home health agencies. The Home Health Interim Payment System in 1997 lowered both types of reimbursement; our conceptual model predicts a decline in the likelihood of use and costs, both of which we find. The Home Health Prospective Payment System in 2000 raised average but lowered marginal reimbursement with theoretically ambiguous effects; we find a modest increase in use and costs. We find little substantive effect of either policy on readmissions or mortality.
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Anthony Laverty et al.
Health Affairs, March 2012, Pages 593-601
Abstract:
Amid international concerns about health care safety and quality, there has been an escalation of investigations by health care regulators into adverse events. England has a powerful central health care regulator, the Care Quality Commission, which conducts occasional high-profile investigations into major lapses in quality at individual hospitals. The results have sometimes garnered considerable attention from the news media, but it is not known what effect the investigations have had on patients' behavior. We analyzed trends in admission for discretionary (nonemergency) care at three hospitals that were subject to high-profile investigations by the Healthcare Commission (the predecessor to the Care Quality Commission) between 2006 and 2009. We found that investigations had no impact on utilization for two of the hospitals; in the third hospital, there were significant declines in inpatient admissions, outpatient surgeries, and in numbers of patients coming for their first appointment, but the effects disappeared six months after publication of the investigation report. Thus, the publication and dissemination of highly critical reports by a health care regulator does not appear to have resulted in patients' sustained avoidance of the hospitals that were investigated. Our findings reinforce other evaluations: Reporting designed to affect providers' reputations is likely to spur more improvement in quality and safety than relying on patients to choose their providers based on quality and safety reports, and simplistic assumptions regarding the power of information to drive patient choices are unrealistic.
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Moral hazard and selection among the poor: Evidence from a randomized experiment
Jörg Spenkuch
Journal of Health Economics, January 2012, Pages 72-85
Abstract:
Not only does economic theory predict high-risk individuals to be more likely to purchase insurance, but insurance coverage is also thought to crowd out precautionary activities. In spite of stark theoretical predictions, there is conflicting empirical evidence on adverse selection, and evidence on ex ante moral hazard is very scarce. Using data from the Seguro Popular Experiment in Mexico, this paper documents patterns of selection on observables into health insurance as well as the existence of non-negligible ex ante moral hazard. More specifically, the findings indicate that (i) agents in poor self-assessed health prior to the intervention have, all else equal, a higher propensity to take up insurance; and (ii) insurance coverage reduces the demand for self-protection in the form of preventive care. Curiously, however, individuals do not sort based on objective measures of their health.
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Does service-level spending show evidence of selection across health plan types?
Randall Ellis, Shenyi Jiang & Tzu-Chun Kuo
Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We provide an explanation for the widespread finding that capitated managed care plans attract comparatively healthy, low cost enrollees relative to traditional unmanaged plans. Using disaggregated commercial insurance claims from the Thomson-Reuters MarketScan database, we show that managed care plans spend proportionally less on those types of services that are predicted to be more profitable to ration tightly using a selection index developed by Ellis and McGuire that captures the derivative of profits with respect to reduced spending on disaggregated services. Conventional diagnosis-based risk adjusted premiums reduce selection incentives by about 50% relative to premiums that are not risk-adjusted.
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An Evidence-Based Incentive System for Medicare's End-Stage Renal Disease Program
Donald Lee & Stefanos Zenios
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent legislations directed Medicare to revamp its decades-old system for reimbursing dialysis treatments, with focus on the risk adjustment of payments and on the transition toward a pay-for-compliance system. To design an optimal payment system that incorporates these features, we develop an empirical method to estimate the structural parameters of the principal-agent model underlying Medicare's dialysis payment system. We use the model and parameter estimates to answer the following questions: Can a pay-for-compliance system based only on the intermediate performance measures currently identified by Medicare achieve first-best? How should patient outcomes be risk adjusted, and what welfare gains can be achieved by doing so? Our main findings are as follows: (1) the current set of intermediate measures identified by Medicare are not comprehensive enough for use alone in a pay-for-compliance system; (2) paying for risk-adjusted downstream outcomes instead of raw downstream outcomes can lengthen the hospital-free life of admitted patients by two weeks per patient per year without increasing Medicare expenditures.
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Barbara Mintzes
Annual Review of Public Health, 2012, Pages 259-277
Abstract:
Since the global withdrawal of rofecoxib (Vioxx) in 2004, concerns about public health effects of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) have grown. A systematic review of the research evidence on behavioral, health, and cost effects, published in 2005, found four studies meeting inclusion criteria, which showed that DTCA increases prescribing volume and patient demand, and shifts prescribing. From 2005 to 2010, nine studies met similar criteria. These largely confirm previous results. Additional effects include a shift to less appropriate prescribing, differential effects by patient price sensitivity and drug type, switches to less cost-effective treatment, and sustained sales despite a price increase. Claimed effects on adherence do not stand up to scrutiny and are based mainly on negative trials. There is no evidence of improved treatment quality or early provision of needed care. If policy is to be informed by evidence, the strength of research methods and ability to assess causality need to be considered.
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Melissa McInerney & Kosali Simon
Industrial Relations, January 2012, Pages 57-88
Abstract:
In addition to traditional forms of private and public medical insurance, two other large public programs help pay for costs associated with ill health. In 2008, Workers' Compensation (WC) insurance provided $57.6 billion in medical care and cash benefits to employees who are injured at work or contract a work-related illness, and Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) provided $106 billion to individuals who suffer from permanent disabilities and are unable to engage in substantial gainful activity. During the 1990s, real DI outlays increased nearly 70 percent, whereas real WC cash benefit spending fell by 12 percent. There has been concern that part of this relationship between two of the nation's largest social insurance programs may be due to individuals substituting toward DI as state WC policies tightened. We first show that this negative correlation between the national series does not hold over time within states, the level at which a causal relationship should operate. We then test for a causal effect of changes in WC enrollment on DI applications and new DI cases within states over time, using state policy (the maximum WC benefit) as an instrument for WC enrollment. Despite a strong first stage fit, we find no statistically significant evidence that WC tightening caused DI rolls to increase, although the standard errors are large enough that we cannot reject effects of substantial magnitude. We conclude it is unlikely that state WC changes were a meaningful factor in explaining the rise in DI during our study period of 1986-2001, although further study using individual level data is warranted.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Groundbreaking
Fertile Green: Green Facilitates Creative Performance
Stephanie Lichtenfeld et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research sought to extend the nascent literature on color and psychological functioning by examining whether perception of the color green facilitates creativity. In four experiments, we demonstrated that a brief glimpse of green prior to a creativity task enhances creative performance. This green effect was observed using both achromatic (white, gray) and chromatic (red, blue) contrast colors that were carefully matched on nonhue properties, and using both picture-based and word-based assessments of creativity. Participants were not aware of the purpose of the experiment, and null effects were obtained on participants' self-reported mood and positive activation. These findings indicate that green has implications beyond aesthetics and suggest the need for sustained empirical work on the functional meaning of green.
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The social and scientific temporal correlates of genotypic intelligence and the Flynn effect
Michael Woodley
Intelligence, March-April 2012, Pages 189-204
Abstract:
In this study the pattern of temporal variation in innovation rates is examined in the context of Western IQ measures in which historical genotypic gains and losses along with the Flynn effect are considered. It is found that two alternative genotypic IQ estimates based on an increase in IQ from 1455 to 1850 followed by a decrease from 1850 to the present, best fitted the historical growth and decline of innovation rates (r = .876 and .866, N = 56 decades). These genotypic IQ estimates were found to be the strongest predictors of innovation rates in regression in which a common factor of GDP (PPP) per capita and Flynn effect gains along with a common factor of illiteracy and homicide rates were also included (β = .706 and .787, N = 51 decades). The strongest temporal correlate of the Flynn effect was GDP (PPP) per capita (r = .930, N = 51 decades). A common factor of these was used as the dependent variable in regression, in which the common factor of illiteracy/homicide rates was the strongest predictor (β = - 1.251 and - 1.389, N = 51 decades). The genotypic IQ estimates were significant negative predictors of the Flynn effect (β = -.894 and -.978, N = 51 decades). These relationships were robust to path analysis. This finding indicates that the Flynn effect, whilst associated with developmental indicators and wealth, only minimally influences innovation rates, which appear instead to be most strongly promoted or inhibited by changes in genotypic intelligence.
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Engines of Growth: Farm Tractors and Twentieth-Century U.S. Economic Welfare
Richard Steckel & William White
NBER Working Paper, March 2012
Abstract:
The role of twentieth-century agricultural mechanization in changing the productivity, employment opportunities, and appearance of rural America has long been appreciated. Less attention has been paid to the impact made by farm tractors, combines, and associated equipment on the standard of living of the U.S. population as a whole. This paper demonstrates, through use of a detailed counterfactual analysis, that mechanization in the production of farm products increased GDP by more than 8.0 percent, using 1954 as a base year. This result suggests that studying individual innovations can significantly increase our understanding of the nature of economic growth.
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Digital Copying and the Supply of Sound Recordings
Christian Handke
Information Economics and Policy, March 2012, Pages 15-29
Abstract:
One concern with digitization in markets for information goods is that unauthorized, digital copying will reduce the number and quality of original works supplied. Despite a substantial literature on the effects of piracy on demand for recorded music, information on the supply-effects of digital copying is limited. This paper presents empirical evidence that digital copying has not reduced the supply of new, copyrighted sound recordings in Germany. Even with a strong reduction in sales of sound recordings that accompanied the diffusion of digital copying technology, the annual number of new titles released to the market continued to expand. Results indicate that the number of new titles released has not deviated significantly from a long-term upward trend. The paper also presents evidence that the amount of time listening to sound recordings has not fallen over this period, suggesting no strong decline in the quality of new work.
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Carmit Tadmor et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, April 2012, Pages 384-392
Abstract:
Although recent research has consistently demonstrated the benefits of multicultural experience for individual-level creativity, its potential advantages for collective creativity in culturally diverse teams have yet to be explored. We predicted that multicultural experience among members of a collective would enhance joint creativity in a superadditive fashion. Using a two-step methodology that included both individual and dyadic brainstorming sessions, we found that even after controlling for individual creativity, multicultural experience had a superadditive effect on dyadic creativity. Specifically, dyads performed best on a creative task in terms of fluency, flexibility, and novelty - three classic dimensions of creativity - when both dyad partners had high levels of multicultural experience. These results show that when it comes to multicultural experience, the creative whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Implications for diversity research are discussed.
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Lock-in and unobserved preferences in server operating systems: A case of Linux vs. Windows
Seung-Hyun Hong & Leonardo Rezende
Journal of Econometrics, April 2012, Pages 494-503
Abstract:
This paper investigates to what extent the persistence of Microsoft Windows in the market for server operating systems is due to lock-in or unobserved preferences. While the hypothesis of lock-in plays an important role in the antitrust policy debate for the operating systems market, it has not been extensively documented empirically. To account for unobserved preferences, we use a panel data identification approach based on time-variant group fixed effects, and estimate the dynamic discrete choice panel data model developed by Arellano and Carrasco (2003). Using detailed establishment-level data, we find that once we account for unobserved preferences, the estimated magnitudes of lock-in are considerably smaller than those from the conventional approaches, suggesting that unobserved preferences play a major role in the persistence of Windows. Further robustness checks are consistent with our findings.
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Does AMD Spur Intel to Innovate More?
Ronald Goettler & Brett Gordon
Journal of Political Economy, December 2011, Pages 1141-1200
Abstract:
We estimate an equilibrium model of dynamic oligopoly with durable goods and endogenous innovation to examine the effect of competition on innovation in the personal computer microprocessor industry. Firms make dynamic pricing and investment decisions while consumers make dynamic upgrade decisions, anticipating product improvements and price declines. Consistent with Schumpeter, we find that the rate of innovation in product quality would be 4.2 percent higher without AMD present, though higher prices would reduce consumer surplus by $12 billion per year. Comparative statics illustrate the role of product durability and provide implications of the model for other industries.
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Mark Hirschey, Hilla Skiba & Babajide Wintoki
Journal of Corporate Finance, June 2012, Pages 496-518
Abstract:
The use of research and development (R&D) spending as an empirical proxy for managerial discretion, information asymmetry and growth opportunities, is pervasive in empirical corporate finance research. Underlying this is the implicit assumption that firms choose levels of R&D to maximize value, given firm and industry characteristics. An alternative framework views the level of R&D spending as subject to idiosyncratic behavior as managers myopically manipulate R&D expenditures to meet short-term earnings goals. Using aggregate firm and industry level data, we find evidence consistent with the view that R&D is determined by firm and industry characteristics. Time invariant firm and industry fixed effects explain most of the cross-sectional variation in observed R&D spending, while time-varying factors like size, profitability, or market-to-book explain little of the cross-sectional variation. We find that R&D spending continues to grow faster than advertising and capital expenditures. We also find no evidence of managerial myopia as corporate aggregate R&D expenditures are growing faster than aggregate profitability and the number of firms that undertake R&D has increased over the period from 1976-2010.
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Walter Park & Ralph Sonenshine
Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, March 2012, Pages 143-167
Abstract:
This paper contributes further empirical evidence on the effects of mergers on innovation using company level data. Evidence on this issue has implications for the relationship between innovation and market concentration. Our departure from previous work is that we focus on a sample of horizontal mergers whose market concentration impacts were flagged by U.S. antitrust authorities as potentially posing a problem for antitrust law compliance. We employ propensity score matching and difference-in-differences estimation to compare the innovation activities of challenged and non-challenged merger firms to a control group of non-merged firms. We use R&D, patent grants, and citation-weighted patent grants to measure the innovation activities of firms before and after a merger. Our results indicate that the post-merger innovation outcomes of firms whose mergers were challenged are lower than they would have been had the firms not merged. But for non-challenged mergers, or mergers that do not raise concerns about market concentration, post-merger innovation outcomes are not significantly different from what they would have been without a merger.
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Are Central Cities More Creative? The Intrametropolitan Geography of Creative Industries
Ric Kolenda & Cathy Yang Liu
Journal of Urban Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the location and growth of creative industries within metropolitan areas. In recent years, the creative industries have been increasingly sought after as potential engines of metropolitan economic growth. Although some research has been done on the location decisions by such firms and workers, it has primarily focused on interregional and intermetropolitan disparities. We use establishment-level data to investigate intrametropolitan (central city versus suburban) location and growth for creative industry establishments in 40 of the top 101 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). We compared the number of employees and total annual payroll in each location, and categorize them by region, population size, and creative employment growth. Findings suggest that although creative industries are more centralized, they are decentralizing faster than other industries in general, but this rate, and even the direction, varies widely across MSAs.
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Supply responses to digital distribution: Recorded music and live performances
Julie Holland Mortimer, Chris Nosko & Alan Sorensen
Information Economics and Policy, March 2012, Pages 3-14
Abstract:
Technologies that enable free redistribution of digital goods (e.g., music, movies, software, books) can undermine sellers' ability to profitably sell such goods, which raises concerns about the future development of socially valuable digital products. In this paper we explore the possibility that broad, illegitimate distribution of a digital good might have offsetting effects on the demand for complementary non-digital goods. We examine the impact of file-sharing on sales of recorded music and on the demand for live concert performances. We provide evidence suggesting that while file-sharing reduced album sales, it simultaneously increased demand for concerts. This effect is most pronounced for small artists, perhaps because file-sharing boosts awareness of such artists. The impact of file-sharing on large, well-known artists' live performances is negligible.
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Marleen Gillebaart, Jens Förster & Mark Rotteveel
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Combining regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) and novelty categorization theory (Förster, Marguc, & Gillebaart, 2010), we predicted that novel stimuli would be more positively evaluated when focused on growth as compared with security and that familiar stimuli would be more negatively evaluated when focused on growth as compared with security. This would occur, at least in part, because of changes in category breadth. We tested effects of several variables linked to growth and security on evaluations of novel and familiar stimuli. Using a subliminal mere exposure paradigm, results showed novel stimuli were evaluated more positively in a promotion focus compared to a prevention focus (Experiments 1A-1C), with high power compared to low power (Experiment 2A), and with the color blue compared to red (Experiment 2B). For familiar stimuli, all effects were reversed. Additionally, as predicted by novelty categorization theory, novel stimuli were liked better after broad compared to narrow category priming, and familiar stimuli were liked better after narrow compared with broad category priming (Experiment 3). We suggest, therefore, that although familiarity glows warmly in security-related contexts, people prefer novelty when they are primarily focused on growth.
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Watching Films with Magical Content Facilitates Creativity in Children
Eugene Subbotsky, Claire Hysted & Nicola Jones
Perceptual and Motor Skills, August 2010, Pages 261-277
Abstract:
Two experiments examined the possible link between magical thinking and creativity in preschool children. In Exp. 1, 4- and 6-yr.-old children were shown a film with either a magical or nonmagical theme. Results indicated that the mean scores of children shown the magical film was significantly higher than that of children watching the nonmagical film on the majority of subsequent creativity tests for both age groups. This trend was also found for 6-yr.-olds' drawings of impossible items. In Exp. 2, Exp. 1 was replicated successfully with 6- and 8-yr.-old children. Exposing children to a film with a magical theme did not affect their beliefs about magic. The results were interpreted to accentuate the role of magical thinking in children's cognitive development. Classroom implications of the results were also discussed.
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Myriam Bechtoldt, Hoon-Seok Choi & Bernard Nijstad
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
It has been argued that groups with individualistic norms are more creative than groups with collectivistic norms (Goncalo & Staw, 2006). This conclusion, however, may be too unspecific, as individualism-collectivism denotes a multidimensional continuum and may affect people's self-construal and values. This study analyzed to what extent these dimensions differentially impact upon group creativity. After manipulating self-construal and value orientation, 58 triads engaged in a brainstorming task. Groups with collectivistic value orientation generated more ideas than groups with individualistic value orientation. Furthermore, there was an interaction between value orientation and self-construal on originality: Ideas were more original when group members combined collectivistic value orientation with individualistic self-construal. Thus, groups should integrate elements of both individualism and collectivism to ensure high creativity.
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Rewards and Creative Performance: A Meta-Analytic Test of Theoretically Derived Hypotheses
Kris Byron & Shalini Khazanchi
Psychological Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although many scholars and practitioners are interested in understanding how to motivate individuals to be more creative, whether and how rewards affect creativity remain unclear. We argue that the conflicting evidence may be due to differences between studies in terms of reward conditions and the context in which rewards are offered. Specifically, we examine 5 potential moderators of the rewards-creative performance relationship: (a) the reward contingency, (b) the extent to which participants are provided information about their past or current creative performance, (c) the extent to which the reward and context offer choice or impose control, (d) the extent to which the context serves to enhance task engagement, and (e) the extent to which the performance tasks are complex. Using random-effects models, we meta-analyzed 60 experimental and nonexperimental studies (including 69 independent samples) that examined the rewards-creativity relationship with children or adults. Our results suggest that creativity-contingent rewards tend to increase creative performance - and are more positively related to creative performance when individuals are given more positive, contingent, and task-focused performance feedback and are provided more choice (and are less controlled). In contrast, performance-contingent or completion-contingent rewards tend to have a slight negative effect on creative performance.
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Shyama Ramani, Shuan SadreGhazi & Geert Duysters
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, May 2012, Pages 676-687
Abstract:
There is an emerging body of literature on product innovations for the poor at the bottom of the income pyramid. However, there is little on why delivery systems succeed or fail in this context and the present paper attempts to fill this void by examining why and how sanitation entrepreneurs are succeeding in India to diffuse toilets - an innovation for rural households, which never had access to one before. The literature is analyzed and confronted with the actual field practices. We demonstrate that the common thread that unifies progressive sanitation entrepreneurs is their adoption of a ‘market based approach'. There are market failures stemming from the demand side due to problems in expression of demand and its mismatch with the perceived value of the innovation. In response, sanitation entrepreneurs go beyond the standard linear model of assessing need and appropriateness of technology. They create innovations in ‘technological design' as well as in the ‘delivery platforms' to include practices for ‘accompaniment', ‘sustainable maintenance' and ‘generation of knowledge'. Thus, they make-up for sluggish or missing markets and informational asymmetries to ensure sustained use of toilets.
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Free licensing to boost aggregate odds for success
Gilad Sorek
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
We show how technological leader gains from inviting entrant into R&D competition to improve over existing patented technology, as the entrant takes complementary R&D effort and demand for both current and improved technologies is increasing with aggregate probability for successful quality improvement.
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Eitan Wilf
American Anthropologist, March 2012, Pages 32-44
Abstract:
In this article, I seek to complicate the distinction between imitation and creativity, which has played a dominant role in the modern imaginary and anthropological theory. I focus on a U.S. collegiate jazz music program, in which jazz educators use advanced sound technologies to reestablish immersive interaction with the sounds of past jazz masters against the backdrop of the disappearance of performance venues for jazz. I analyze a key pedagogical practice in the course of which students produce precise replications of the recorded improvisations of past jazz masters and then play them in synchrony with the recordings. Through such synchronous iconization, students inhabit and reenact the creativity epitomized by these recordings. I argue that such a practice, which I call a "ritual of creativity," suggests a coconstitutive relationship between imitation and creativity, which has intensified under modernity because of the availability of new technologies of digital reproduction.
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Artistic Prosumption: Cocreative Destruction at Burning Man
Katherine Chen
American Behavioral Scientist, April 2012, Pages 570-595
Abstract:
Researchers have called for more studies of how organizations institutionalize the unfamiliar as taken for granted. This study answers this call by examining how an organization has advocated an unfamiliar activity, the prosumption of art. To show how particular means and ends become taken for granted, this research analyzes how the Burning Man organization has promoted a logic advocating the prosumption of art. Using an in-depth ethnographic study of the organization behind Burning Man, a weeklong gathering of 50,000 persons around a ceremonial bonfire of a 40-foot-tall sculpture in the Nevada Black Rock Desert, the author shows how the Burning Man organization codified and advocated what she identifies as an inclusive community logic, a set of beliefs and practices that promote artistic prosumption. Members sought to expand who may produce art by recasting producers and consumers as prosumers, what kind of art is produced by encouraging interactions via prosumption, and how art is consumed by imbuing prosumption with specific meaning via connection. However, conflicts about whether particular actions support or undercut the inclusive community logic have not only challenged the Burning Man organization's authority to shape prosumption but also forced organizers to clarify the ambiguous contours between appropriate and inappropriate activities. This research makes three contributions: (a) It reveals how an organization can facilitate new conceptions of activities by promulgating a logic that highlights contrasts between not-yet-familiar and conventional means; (b) it delves into how an organization adjudicates among competing conceptions of appropriate activities, illuminating the promotion of presumption specifically and the emergence of a logic generally; and (c) it synthesizes three separate literatures on the sociology of organizations, prosumption, and art.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Follow the energy
Do alternative energy sources displace fossil fuels?
Richard York
Nature Climate Change, forthcoming
Abstract:
A fundamental, generally implicit, assumption of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and many energy analysts is that each unit of energy supplied by non-fossil-fuel sources takes the place of a unit of energy supplied by fossil-fuel sources. However, owing to the complexity of economic systems and human behaviour, it is often the case that changes aimed at reducing one type of resource consumption, either through improvements in efficiency of use or by developing substitutes, do not lead to the intended outcome when net effects are considered. Here, I show that the average pattern across most nations of the world over the past fifty years is one where each unit of total national energy use from non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-quarter of a unit of fossil-fuel energy use and, focusing specifically on electricity, each unit of electricity generated by non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-tenth of a unit of fossil-fuel-generated electricity. These results challenge conventional thinking in that they indicate that suppressing the use of fossil fuel will require changes other than simply technical ones such as expanding non-fossil-fuel energy production.
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Declining public concern about climate change: Can we blame the great recession?
Lyle Scruggs & Salil Benegal
Global Environmental Change, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social surveys suggest that the American public's concern about climate change has declined dramatically since 2008. This has led to a search for explanations for this decline, and great deal of speculation that there has been a fundamental shift in public trust in climate science. We evaluate over thirty years of public opinion data about global warming and the environment, and suggest that the decline in belief about climate change is most likely driven by the economic insecurity caused by the Great Recession. Evidence from European nations further supports an economic explanation for changing public opinion. The pattern is consistent with more than forty years of public opinion about environmental policy. Popular alternative explanations for declining support - partisan politicization, biased media coverage, fluctuations in short-term weather conditions - are unable to explain the suddenness and timing of opinion trends. The implication of these findings is that the "crisis of confidence" in climate change will likely rebound after labor market conditions improve, but not until then.
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Observed decreases in the Canadian outdoor skating season due to recent winter warming
Nikolay Damyanov, Damon Matthews & Lawrence Mysak
Environmental Research Letters, January-March 2012
Abstract:
Global warming has the potential to negatively affect one of Canada's primary sources of winter recreation: hockey and ice skating on outdoor rinks. Observed changes in winter temperatures in Canada suggest changes in the meteorological conditions required to support the creation and maintenance of outdoor skating rinks; while there have been observed increases in the ice-free period of several natural water bodies, there has been no study of potential trends in the duration of the season supporting the construction of outdoor skating rinks. Here we show that the outdoor skating season (OSS) in Canada has significantly shortened in many regions of the country as a result of changing climate conditions. We first established a meteorological criterion for the beginning, and a proxy for the length of the OSS. We extracted this information from daily maximum temperature observations from 1951 to 2005, and tested it for significant changes over time due to global warming as well as due to changes in patterns of large-scale natural climate variability. We found that many locations have seen a statistically significant decrease in the OSS length, particularly in Southwest and Central Canada. This suggests that future global warming has the potential to significantly compromise the viability of outdoor skating in Canada.
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Lifetime of carbon capture and storage as a climate-change mitigation technology
Michael Szulczewski et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
In carbon capture and storage (CCS), CO2 is captured at power plants and then injected underground into reservoirs like deep saline aquifers for long-term storage. While CCS may be critical for the continued use of fossil fuels in a carbon-constrained world, the deployment of CCS has been hindered by uncertainty in geologic storage capacities and sustainable injection rates, which has contributed to the absence of concerted government policy. Here, we clarify the potential of CCS to mitigate emissions in the United States by developing a storage-capacity supply curve that, unlike current large-scale capacity estimates, is derived from the fluid mechanics of CO2 injection and trapping and incorporates injection-rate constraints. We show that storage supply is a dynamic quantity that grows with the duration of CCS, and we interpret the lifetime of CCS as the time for which the storage supply curve exceeds the storage demand curve from CO2 production. We show that in the United States, if CO2 production from power generation continues to rise at recent rates, then CCS can store enough CO2 to stabilize emissions at current levels for at least 100 y. This result suggests that the large-scale implementation of CCS is a geologically viable climate-change mitigation option in the United States over the next century.
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Is it possible to limit global warming to no more than 1.5°C?
N. Ranger et al.
Climatic Change, April 2012, Pages 973-981
Abstract:
This study explores the feasibility of limiting increases in global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. A probabilistic simple climate model is used to identify emissions paths that offer at least a 50% chance of achieving this goal. We conclude that it is more likely than not that warming would exceed 1.5°C, at least temporarily, under plausible mitigation scenarios. We have identified three criteria of emissions paths that could meet the 1.5°C goal with a temporary overshoot of no more than 50 years: early and strong reductions in emissions, with global emissions peaking in 2015 and falling to at most 44-48 GtCO2e in 2020; rapid reductions in annual global emissions after 2020 (of at least 3-4% per year); very low annual global emissions by 2100 (less than 2-4 GtCO2e) and falling to zero (or below) in the 22nd century. The feasibility of these characteristics is uncertain. We conclude that the proposed date of review of the 1.5°C goal, set at 2015, may be too late to achieve the necessary scaling up of emissions cuts to achieve this goal.
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Economic development and carbon dioxide emissions in China: Provincial panel data analysis
Limin Du, Chu Wei & Shenghua Cai
China Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates the driving forces, emission trends and reduction potential of China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions based on a provincial panel data set covering the years 1995 to 2009. A series of static and dynamic panel data models are estimated, and then an optimal forecasting model selected by out-of-sample criteria is used to forecast the emission trend and reduction potential up to 2020. The estimation results show that economic development, technology progress and industry structure are the most important factors affecting China's CO2 emissions, while the impacts of energy consumption structure, trade openness and urbanization level are negligible. The inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita CO2 emissions and economic development level is not strongly supported by the estimation results. The impact of capital adjustment speed is significant. Scenario simulations further show that per capita and aggregate CO2 emissions of China will increase continuously up to 2020 under any of the three scenarios developed in this study, but the reduction potential is large.
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The impact of climate change on global tropical cyclone damage
Robert Mendelsohn et al.
Nature Climate Change, March 2012, Pages 205-209
Abstract:
One potential impact from greenhouse-gas emissions is increasing damage from extreme events. Here, we quantify how climate change may affect tropical cyclone damage. We find that future increases in income are likely to double tropical cyclone damage even without climate change. Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of high-intensity storms in selected ocean basins depending on the climate model. Climate change doubles economic damage, but the result depends on the parameters of the damage function. Almost all of the tropical cyclone damage from climate change tends to be concentrated in North America, East Asia and the Caribbean-Central American region. This paper provides a framework to combine atmospheric science and economics, but some effects are not yet modelled, including sea-level rise and adaptation.
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Makena Coffman & Ilan Noy
Environment and Development Economics, April 2012, Pages 187-205
Abstract:
The long-term impacts of disasters are ‘hidden' as it becomes increasingly difficult over time to attribute them to a singular event. We use a synthetic control methodology, formalized in Abadie, A. et al. (2010), Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: estimating the effect of California's tobacco control program, Journal of the American Statistical Association 105(490): 493-505, to estimate the long-term impacts of a 1992 hurricane on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Hurricane Iniki, the strongest storm to hit Hawaii in many years, wrought an estimated US$ 7.4 billion (2008) in direct damages. Since the unaffected Hawaiian Islands provide a control group, the case of Iniki is uniquely suited to provide insight into the long-term impact of natural disasters. We show that Kauai's economy has yet to recover, 18 years after this event. We estimate the island's current population to be 12 per cent smaller than it would have been had the hurricane not occurred. Similarly, aggregate personal income and the number of private sector jobs are proportionally lower.
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Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall
Jiping Liu et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
While the Arctic region has been warming strongly in recent decades, anomalously large snowfall in recent winters has affected large parts of North America, Europe, and east Asia. Here we demonstrate that the decrease in autumn Arctic sea ice area is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation that have some resemblance to the negative phase of the winter Arctic oscillation. However, the atmospheric circulation change linked to the reduction of sea ice shows much broader meridional meanders in midlatitudes and clearly different interannual variability than the classical Arctic oscillation. This circulation change results in more frequent episodes of blocking patterns that lead to increased cold surges over large parts of northern continents. Moreover, the increase in atmospheric water vapor content in the Arctic region during late autumn and winter driven locally by the reduction of sea ice provides enhanced moisture sources, supporting increased heavy snowfall in Europe during early winter and the northeastern and midwestern United States during winter. We conclude that the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters.
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Wind Turbines Make Waves: Why Some Residents Near Wind Turbines Become Ill
Magda Havas & David Colling
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, October 2011, Pages 414-426
Abstract:
People who live near wind turbines complain of symptoms that include some combination of the following: difficulty sleeping, fatigue, depression, irritability, aggressiveness, cognitive dysfunction, chest pain/pressure, headaches, joint pain, skin irritations, nausea, dizziness, tinnitus, and stress. These symptoms have been attributed to the pressure (sound) waves that wind turbines generate in the form of noise and infrasound. However, wind turbines also generate electromagnetic waves in the form of poor power quality (dirty electricity) and ground current, and these can adversely affect those who are electrically hypersensitive. Indeed, the symptoms mentioned above are consistent with electrohypersensitivity. Sensitivity to both sound and electromagnetic waves differs among individuals and may explain why not everyone in the same home experiences similar effects. Ways to mitigate the adverse health effects of wind turbines are presented.
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Building vintage and electricity use: Old homes use less electricity in hot weather
Howard Chong
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies whether electricity use in newer or older residential buildings rises more in response to high temperature in a region of Southern California. Peak electricity demand occurs at the highest temperatures which are predicted to increase due to climate change. Understanding how newer buildings differ from older buildings improves forecasts of how peak electricity use will grow over time. Newer buildings are subject to stricter building energy codes, but are larger and more likely to have air conditioning; hence, the cumulative effect is ambiguous. This paper combines four large datasets of building and household characteristics, weather data, and utility data to estimate the electricity-temperature response of different building vintages. Estimation results show that new buildings (1970-2000) have a statistically significantly higher temperature response (i.e., use more electricity) than old buildings (pre-1970). Auxiliary regressions with controls for tiered electricity prices, number of bedrooms, income, square footage, central air conditioning, ownership, and type of residential structure partially decompose the effect. Though California has had extensive energy efficiency building standards that by themselves would lower temperature response for new buildings, the cumulative effect of new buildings is an increase in temperature response. As new buildings are added, aggregate temperature response is predicted to increase.
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Collapse of Classic Maya Civilization Related to Modest Reduction in Precipitation
Martín Medina-Elizalde & Eelco Rohling
Science, 24 February 2012, Pages 956-959
Abstract:
The disintegration of the Classic Maya civilization in the Yucatán Peninsula and Central America was a complex process that occurred over an approximately 200-year interval and involved a catastrophic depopulation of the region. Although it is well established that the civilization collapse coincided with widespread episodes of drought, their nature and severity remain enigmatic. We present a quantitative analysis that offers a coherent interpretation of four of the most detailed paleoclimate records of the event. We conclude that the droughts occurring during the disintegration of the Maya civilization represented up to a 40% reduction in annual precipitation, probably due to a reduction in summer season tropical storm frequency and intensity.
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Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surges: High Stakes for a Small Number of Developing Countries
Henrike Brecht et al.
Journal of Environment & Development, March 2012, Pages 120-138
Abstract:
As the climate changes during the 21st century, larger cyclonic storm surges and growing populations may collide in disasters of unprecedented size. As conditions worsen, variations in coastal morphology will magnify the effects in some areas, while largely insulating others. In this article, we explore the implications for 31 developing countries and 393 of their cyclone-vulnerable coastal cities with populations greater than 100,000. Combining the most recent scientific and demographic information, we estimate the future impact of climate change on storm surges that will strike coastal populations, economies, and ecosystems. We focus on the distribution of heightened impacts, because we believe that greater knowledge of their probable variation will be useful for local and national planners, as well as international donors. Our results suggest gross inequality in the heightened impact of future disasters, with 50% of the burden falling on the residents of 10 Asian cities and over 40% falling on Manila, Karachi, and Jakarta alone. In light of these huge asymmetries, we believe that careful targeting of international assistance will be essential for the effective and equitable allocation of resources for coastal protection and disaster prevention.
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Xi Lu, Jackson Salovaara & Michael McElroy
Environmental Science & Technology, 6 March 2012, Pages 3014-3021
Abstract:
CO2 emissions from the US power sector decreased by 8.76% in 2009 relative to 2008 contributing to a decrease over this period of 6.59% in overall US emissions of greenhouse gases. An econometric model, tuned to data reported for regional generation of US electricity, is used to diagnose factors responsible for the 2009 decrease. More than half of the reduction is attributed to a shift from generation of power using coal to gas driven by a recent decrease in gas prices in response to the increase in production from shale. An important result of the model is that, when the cost differential for generation using gas rather than coal falls below 2-3 cents/kWh, less efficient coal fired plants are displaced by more efficient natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) generation alternatives. Costs for generation using NGCC decreased by close to 4 cents/kWh in 2009 relative to 2008 ensuring that generation of electricity using gas was competitive with coal in 2009 in contrast to the situation in 2008 when gas prices were much higher. A modest price on carbon could contribute to additional switching from coal to gas with further savings in CO2 emissions.
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Arlene Rosen & Isabel Rivera-Collazo
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Climatic forcing during the Younger Dryas (∼12.9-11.5 ky B.P.) event has become the theoretical basis to explain the origins of agricultural lifestyles in the Levant by suggesting a failure of foraging societies to adjust. This explanation however, does not fit the scarcity of data for predomestication cultivation in the Natufian Period. The resilience of Younger Dryas foragers is better illustrated by a concept of adaptive cycles within a theory of adaptive change (resilience theory). Such cycles consist of four phases: release/collapse (Ω); reorganization (α), when the system restructures itself after a catastrophic stimulus through innovation and social memory - a period of greater resilience and less vulnerability; exploitation (r); and conservation (K), representing an increasingly rigid system that loses flexibility to change. The Kebarans and Late Natufians had similar responses to cold and dry conditions vs. Early Natufians and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A responses to warm and wet climates. Kebarans and Late Natufians (α-phase) shifted to a broader-based diet and increased their mobility. Early Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A populations (r- and K-phases) had a growing investment in more narrowly focused, high-yield plant resources, but they maintained the broad range of hunted animals because of increased sedentism. These human adaptive cycles interlocked with plant and animal cycles. Forest and grassland vegetation responded to late Pleistocene and early Holocene climatic fluctuations, but prey animal cycles reflected the impact of human hunting pressure. The combination of these three adaptive cycles results in a model of human adaptation, showing potential for great sustainability of Levantine foraging systems even under adverse climatic conditions.
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Understanding the Solar Home Price Premium: Electricity Generation and "Green" Social Status
Samuel Dastrup et al.
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study uses a large sample of homes in the San Diego area and Sacramento, California area to provide some of the first capitalization estimates of the sales value of homes with solar panels relative to comparable homes without solar panels. Although the residential solar home market continues to grow, there is little direct evidence on the market capitalization effect. Using both hedonics and a repeat sales index approach we find that solar panels are capitalized at roughly a 3.5% premium. This premium is larger in communities with a greater share of college graduates and of registered Prius hybrid vehicles.
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Detecting regional anthropogenic trends in ocean acidification against natural variability
T. Friedrich et al.
Nature Climate Change, March 2012, Pages 167-171
Abstract:
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution humans have released ~500 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere through fossil-fuel burning, cement production and land-use changes. About 30% has been taken up by the oceans. The oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide leads to changes in marine carbonate chemistry resulting in a decrease of seawater pH and carbonate ion concentration, commonly referred to as ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is considered a major threat to calcifying organisms. Detecting its magnitude and impacts on regional scales requires accurate knowledge of the level of natural variability of surface ocean carbonate ion concentrations on seasonal to annual timescales and beyond. Ocean observations are severely limited with respect to providing reliable estimates of the signal-to-noise ratio of human-induced trends in carbonate chemistry against natural factors. Using three Earth system models we show that the current anthropogenic trend in ocean acidification already exceeds the level of natural variability by up to 30 times on regional scales. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the current rates of ocean acidification at monitoring sites in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans exceed those experienced during the last glacial termination by two orders of magnitude.
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Innovation under cap-and-trade programs
Margaret Taylor
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Policies incentivizing the private sector to reach its innovative potential in "clean" technologies are likely to play a key role in achieving climate stabilization. This article explores the relationship between innovation and cap-and-trade programs (CTPs) - the world's most prominent climate policy instrument - through empirical evidence drawn from successful CTPs for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide control. The article shows that before trading began for these CTPs, analysts overestimated the value of allowances in a pattern suggestive of the frequent a priori overestimation of the compliance costs of regulation. When lower-than-expected allowance prices were observed, in part because of the unexpected range of abatement approaches used in the lead-up to trading, emissions sources chose to bank allowances in significant numbers and reassess abatement approaches going forward. In addition, commercially oriented inventive activity declined for emissions-reducing technologies with a wide range of costs and technical characteristics, dropping from peaks before the establishment of CTPs to nadirs a few years into trading. This finding is consistent with innovators deciding during trading that their research and development investments should be reduced, based on assessments of future market conditions under the relevant CTPs. The article concludes with a discussion of the results and their implications for innovation and climate policy.
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Modelling sea level rise impacts on storm surges along US coasts
Claudia Tebaldi, Benjamin Strauss & Chris Zervas
Environmental Research Letters, January-March 2012
Abstract:
Sound policies for protecting coastal communities and assets require good information about vulnerability to flooding. Here, we investigate the influence of sea level rise on expected storm surge-driven water levels and their frequencies along the contiguous United States. We use model output for global temperature changes, a semi-empirical model of global sea level rise, and long-term records from 55 nationally distributed tidal gauges to develop sea level rise projections at each gauge location. We employ more detailed records over the period 1979-2008 from the same gauges to elicit historic patterns of extreme high water events, and combine these statistics with anticipated relative sea level rise to project changing local extremes through 2050. We find that substantial changes in the frequency of what are now considered extreme water levels may occur even at locations with relatively slow local sea level rise, when the difference in height between presently common and rare water levels is small. We estimate that, by mid-century, some locations may experience high water levels annually that would qualify today as 'century' (i.e., having a chance of occurrence of 1% annually) extremes. Today's century levels become 'decade' (having a chance of 10% annually) or more frequent events at about a third of the study gauges, and the majority of locations see substantially higher frequency of previously rare storm-driven water heights in the future. These results add support to the need for policy approaches that consider the non-stationarity of extreme events when evaluating risks of adverse climate impacts.
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Mansour Almazroui et al.
International Journal of Climatology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The rainfall and temperature climatology over the Arabian Peninsula are analysed on an annual basis using various gridded datasets. For Saudi Arabia, the area of which represents almost 80% of the Peninsula, the climatic datasets from its 27 ground observations are analysed for the period 1978-2009, with additional gridded datasets used to describe the observed state and change of the present climate. The gridded datasets represent well the very dry (40-80 mm) area over the world's largest sand desert (Rub Al-Khali), the dry (80-150 mm) area over middle-to-north of Saudi Arabia, and the wettest (>150 mm) region in the southwest of the Peninsula. The annual temperature is relatively high (24-27 °C) in the middle-to-south of the Peninsula and low (<21 °C) in the northwest and southwest. The highest temperature (>27 °C) is obtained over the Rub Al-Khali. Over Saudi Arabia, the observed annual rainfall showed a significant decreasing trend (47.8 mm per decade) in the last half of the analysis period, with a relatively large interannual variability, while the maximum, mean and minimum temperatures have increased significantly at a rate of 0.71, 0.60, and 0.48 °C per decade, respectively. This information is invaluable to consider in any climate impact assessment studies in Saudi Arabia.
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The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification
Bärbel Hönisch et al.
Science, 2 March 2012, Pages 1058-1063
Abstract:
Ocean acidification may have severe consequences for marine ecosystems; however, assessing its future impact is difficult because laboratory experiments and field observations are limited by their reduced ecologic complexity and sample period, respectively. In contrast, the geological record contains long-term evidence for a variety of global environmental perturbations, including ocean acidification plus their associated biotic responses. We review events exhibiting evidence for elevated atmospheric CO2, global warming, and ocean acidification over the past ~300 million years of Earth's history, some with contemporaneous extinction or evolutionary turnover among marine calcifiers. Although similarities exist, no past event perfectly parallels future projections in terms of disrupting the balance of ocean carbonate chemistry - a consequence of the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place.
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Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA
Jennifer Marlon et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 28 February 2012, Pages E535-E543
Abstract:
Understanding the causes and consequences of wildfires in forests of the western United States requires integrated information about fire, climate changes, and human activity on multiple temporal scales. We use sedimentary charcoal accumulation rates to construct long-term variations in fire during the past 3,000 y in the American West and compare this record to independent fire-history data from historical records and fire scars. There has been a slight decline in burning over the past 3,000 y, with the lowest levels attained during the 20th century and during the Little Ice Age (LIA, ca. 1400-1700 CE [Common Era]). Prominent peaks in forest fires occurred during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (ca. 950-1250 CE) and during the 1800s. Analysis of climate reconstructions beginning from 500 CE and population data show that temperature and drought predict changes in biomass burning up to the late 1800s CE. Since the late 1800s , human activities and the ecological effects of recent high fire activity caused a large, abrupt decline in burning similar to the LIA fire decline. Consequently, there is now a forest "fire deficit" in the western United States attributable to the combined effects of human activities, ecological, and climate changes. Large fires in the late 20th and 21st century fires have begun to address the fire deficit, but it is continuing to grow.
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Examining barriers and opportunities for sustainable adaptation to climate change in Interior Alaska
Shannon McNeeley
Climatic Change, April 2012, Pages 835-857
Abstract:
Human adaptation to climate change is comprised of "adjustments" in response to (or anticipation of) climatic impacts. Adaptation does not necessarily imply favorable or equitable change, nor does it automatically imply sustainable use of ecosystems. "Sustainable adaptation" in this case implies strategic, collective action to respond to or anticipate harmful climate change to reduce disruption to key resource flows and adverse effects on general well-being. This research examined social-ecological system responses to recent warming trends in the remote northwest region of Interior Alaska using a unique vulnerability and adaptive capacity assessment (VA) approach that integrated indigenous observations and understanding of climate (IC) with western social and natural sciences. The study found that Alaska Native communities that were historically highly mobile and flexible across the landscape for subsistence hunting are increasingly restricted by the institutional rigidity of the regulatory system for wildlife and subsistence management. This has resulted in negative impacts to game harvest access and success threatening food security and community well-being. This suggests that policies limiting the ability of natural resource-dependent societies to be flexible, diversify, or innovate can threaten livelihoods and exacerbate vulnerability. Nevertheless, opportunities for sustainable adaptation exist where wildlife management is adaptive and includes an understanding of and response to climate variability and slow-onset climate change with the human dimensions of subsistence hunting for more effective "in-season" management.
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Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet
Alexander Robinson, Reinhard Calov & Andrey Ganopolski
Nature Climate Change, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent studies have focused on the short-term contribution of the Greenland ice sheet to sea-level rise, yet little is known about its long-term stability. The present best estimate of the threshold in global temperature rise leading to complete melting of the ice sheet is 3.1 °C (1.9-5.1 °C, 95% confidence interval) above the preindustrial climate1, determined as the temperature for which the modelled surface mass balance of the present-day ice sheet turns negative. Here, using a fully coupled model, we show that this criterion systematically overestimates the temperature threshold and that the Greenland ice sheet is more sensitive to long-term climate change than previously thought. We estimate that the warming threshold leading to a monostable, essentially ice-free state is in the range of 0.8-3.2 °C, with a best estimate of 1.6 °C. By testing the ice sheet's ability to regrow after partial mass loss, we find that at least one intermediate equilibrium state is possible, though for sufficiently high initial temperature anomalies, total loss of the ice sheet becomes irreversible. Crossing the threshold alone does not imply rapid melting (for temperatures near the threshold, complete melting takes tens of millennia). However, the timescale of melt depends strongly on the magnitude and duration of the temperature overshoot above this critical threshold.
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High tide of the warm Pliocene: Implications of global sea level for Antarctic deglaciation
Kenneth Miller et al.
Geology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We obtained global sea-level (eustatic) estimates with a peak of ∼22 m higher than present for the Pliocene interval 2.7-3.2 Ma from backstripping in Virginia (United States), New Zealand, and Enewetak Atoll (north Pacific Ocean), benthic foraminiferal δ18O values, and Mg/Ca-δ18O estimates. Statistical analysis indicates that it is likely (68% confidence interval) that peak sea level was 22 ± 5 m higher than modern, and extremely likely (95%) that it was 22 ± 10 m higher than modern. Benthic foraminiferal δ18O values appear to require that the peak was <20-21 m. Our estimates imply loss of the equivalent of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and some volume loss from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, and address the long-standing controversy concerning the Pliocene stability of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Clannish
More Than Skin Deep: Visceral States Are Not Projected Onto Dissimilar Others
Ed O'Brien & Phoebe Ellsworth
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
What people feel shapes their perceptions of others. In the studies reported here, we examined the assimilative influence of visceral states on social judgment. Replicating prior research, we found that participants who were outside during winter overestimated the extent to which other people were bothered by cold (Study 1), and participants who ate salty snacks without water thought other people were overly bothered by thirst (Study 2). However, in both studies, this effect evaporated when participants believed that the other people under consideration held political views opposing their own. Participants who judged these dissimilar others were unaffected by their own strong visceral-drive states, a finding that highlights the power of dissimilarity in social judgment. Dissimilarity may thus represent a boundary condition for embodied cognition and inhibit an empathic understanding of shared out-group pain. Our findings reveal the need for a better understanding of how people's internal experiences influence their perceptions of the feelings and experiences of those who may hold values different from their own.
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Competitive victimhood as a response to accusations of ingroup harm doing
Daniel Sullivan et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, April 2012, Pages 778-795
Abstract:
Accusations of unjust harm doing by the ingroup threaten the group's moral identity. One strategy for restoring ingroup moral identity after such a threat is competitive victimhood: claiming the ingroup has suffered compared with the harmed outgroup. Men accused of harming women were more likely to claim that men are discriminated against compared with women (Study 1), and women showed the same effect when accused of discriminating against men (Study 3). Undergraduates engaged in competitive victimhood with university staff after their group was accused of harming staff (Study 2). Study 4 showed that the effect of accusations on competitive victimhood among high-status group members is mediated by perceived stigma reversal: the expectation that one should feel guilty for being in a high-status group. Exposure to a competitive victimhood claim on behalf of one's ingroup reduced stigma reversal and collective guilt after an accusation of ingroup harm doing (Study 5).
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The power of being heard: The benefits of ‘perspective-giving' in the context of intergroup conflict
Emile Bruneau & Rebecca Saxe
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although hundreds of dialogue programs geared towards conflict resolution are offered every year, there have been few scientific studies of their effectiveness. Across 2 studies we examined the effect of controlled, dyadic interactions on attitudes towards the ‘other' in members of groups involved in ideological conflict. Study 1 involved Mexican immigrants and White Americans in Arizona, and Study 2 involved Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. Cross-group dyads interacted via video and text in a brief, structured, face-to-face exchange: one person was assigned to write about the difficulties of life in their society (‘perspective-giving'), and the second person was assigned to accurately summarize the statement of the first person (‘perspective-taking'). Positive changes in attitudes toward the outgroup were greater for Mexican immigrants and Palestinians after perspective-giving and for White Americans and Israelis after perspective-taking. For Palestinians, perspective-giving to an Israeli effectively changed attitudes towards Israelis, while a control condition in which they wrote an essay on the same topic without interacting had no effect on attitudes, illustrating the critical role of being heard. Thus, the effects of dialogue for conflict resolution depend on an interaction between dialogue condition and participants' group membership, which may reflect power asymmetries.
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Emotions in context: Anger causes ethnic bias but not gender bias in men but not women
Toon Kuppens et al.
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotions influence information processing because they are assumed to carry valuable information. We predict that induced anger will increase ethnic but not gender intergroup bias because anger is related to conflicts for resources, and ethnic groups typically compete for resources, whereas gender groups typically engage in relations of positive interdependence. Furthermore, we also predict that this increased ethnic intergroup bias should only be observed among men because men show more group-based reactions to intergroup conflict than women do. Two studies, with 65 and 120 participants, respectively, indeed show that anger induction increases ethnic but not gender intergroup bias and only for men. Intergroup bias was measured with an implicit measure. In Study 2, we additionally predict (and find) that fear induction does not change ethnic or gender intergroup bias because intergroup bias is a psychological preparation for collective action and fear is not associated with taking action against out-groups. We conclude that the effect of anger depends on its specific informational potential in a particular intergroup context. These results highlight that gender groups differ on a crucial point from ethnic groups and call for more attention to the effect of people's gender in intergroup relations research.
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Occupational status differences in attributions of uniquely human emotions
Tilemachos Iatridis
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Infrahumanization theory has claimed that groups tend to infrahumanize, and thus denigrate, each other irrespective of group status. However, research on infrahumanization has mainly addressed status in the context of national, ethnic, and regional divisions. The present studies tested the effect of group status in infrahumanization by employing occupational groups of varied status, both in abstract (blue-collar vs. white-collar workers) and specific terms (lawyers vs. shopkeepers, and high school teachers vs. university faculty members and primary school teachers). The results showed that only relatively higher status groups always attributed uniquely human emotions more to their in-group than to lower status out-groups. In contrast, lower status groups showed no bias in attributions of uniquely human emotions, or were biased in favour of the higher status out-group. The discussion of these results points to the role of consensus in the distribution of social value amongst groups of asymmetric status.
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A lay-statistician explanation of minority discrimination
Brent Simpson & Kimmo Eriksson
Social Science Research, May 2012, Pages 637-645
Abstract:
We outline a new explanation of discrimination against numerical minorities. In contrast to prior work that focuses on how the content of categories affects discrimination, our argument describes how the size of categories leads to discrimination. Specifically, we argue that, when comparing multiple categories, actors tend to view larger categories as more closely approximating an underlying population than smaller ones. As a result, a decision maker will tend to expect that members of a numerical majority are more likely to be what he/she is searching for, whether it is the best or worst candidate. We report the results of two studies designed to test these arguments. To demonstrate the generality of the proposed mechanism, Study 1 tested the argument in a non-social domain. Participants disproportionately favored the majority (vs. minority) category when searching for a single winning lottery ticket, and favored the minority category when the goal was to avoid a single losing ticket. Our second study supported an additional implication of the argument in a social domain: decision makers tended to rank highly qualified majority job candidates as better than equally qualified minority candidates, and relatively unqualified majority candidates as worse than equally unqualified minority candidates.
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Uri Gneezy, John List & Michael Price
NBER Working Paper, February 2012
Abstract:
Social scientists have presented evidence that suggests discrimination is ubiquitous: women, nonwhites, and the elderly have been found to be the target of discriminatory behavior across several labor and product markets. Scholars have been less successful at pinpointing the underlying motives for such discriminatory patterns. We employ a series of field experiments across several market and agent types to examine the nature and extent of discrimination. Our exploration includes examining discrimination based on gender, age, sexual orientation, race, and disability. Using data from more than 3000 individual transactions, we find evidence of discrimination in each market. Interestingly, we find that when the discriminator believes the object of discrimination is controllable, any observed discrimination is motivated by animus. When the object of discrimination is not due to choice, the evidence suggests that statistical discrimination is the underlying reason for the disparate behavior.
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Thomas Chadefaux & Dirk Helbing
PLoS ONE, February 2012
Abstract:
We model an -player repeated prisoner's dilemma in which players are given traits (e.g., height, age, wealth) which, we assume, affect their behavior. The relationship between traits and behavior is unknown to other players. We then analyze the performance of "prejudiced" strategies - strategies that draw inferences based on the observation of some or all of these traits, and extrapolate the inferred behavior to other carriers of these traits. Such prejudiced strategies have the advantage of learning rapidly, and hence of being well adapted to rapidly changing conditions that might result, for example, from high migration or birth rates. We find that they perform remarkably well, and even systematically outperform both Tit-For-Tat and ALLD when the population changes rapidly.
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Is support for multiculturalism threatened by...threat itself?
Linda Tip et al.
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, January 2012, Pages 22-30
Abstract:
Three studies investigated the effects of British majority members' perceptions of minority members' acculturation preferences and perceived identity threat on their support for multiculturalism. The following hypotheses were tested: (1) a perception that minority members want to maintain their original culture will negatively affect support for multiculturalism; (2) a perception that minority members want to adopt the British culture will positively affect support for multiculturalism; and (3) a perception that minority members desire contact with British people will positively affect support for multiculturalism. All three effects were predicted to be mediated by identity threat. Studies 1 and 2 focussed on Pakistanis as a target group, and study 3 focussed on ethnic minority members more generally. All studies yielded evidence in support of the hypotheses.
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Observer Perceptions of Moral Obligations in Groups With a History of Victimization
Ruth Warner & Nyla Branscombe
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors investigated when observers assign contemporary group members moral obligations based on their group's victimization history. In Experiment 1, Americans perceived Israelis as obligated to help Sudanese genocide victims and as guiltworthy for not helping if reminded of the Holocaust and its descendants were linked to this history. In Experiment 2, participants perceived Israelis as more obligated to help and guiltworthy for not helping when the Holocaust was presented as a unique victimization event compared with when genocide was presented as pervasive. Experiments 3 and 4 replicated the effects of Experiment 1 with Cambodians as the victimized group. Experiment 5 demonstrated that participants perceived Cambodians as having more obligations under high just world threat compared with low just world threat. Perceiving victimized groups as incurring obligations is one just world restoration method of providing meaning to collective injustice.
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Mangy Mutt or Furry Friend? Anthropomorphism Promotes Animal Welfare
Max Butterfield, Sarah Hill & Charles Lord
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research has demonstrated that people have an affinity for non-human entities that appear to have human qualities. The current studies build on this research, examining whether anthropomorphism can be used to promote animal welfare. In Study 1 (n = 42), participants read scenarios about dogs and reported more willingness to help the ones described with anthropomorphic language relative to those described with non-anthropomorphic language. In Study 2 (n = 57), participants rated dogs on either human or canine characteristics (e.g., good listener vs. good at listing to commands). Relative to the non-anthropomorphism condition, participants in the anthropomorphism condition reported more willingness to adopt dogs from a shelter, and more support for animal rights, animal welfare, and vegetarian and vegan attitudes. Moreover, these pro-animal attitudes fully mediated the effect of the anthropomorphism manipulation on willingness to adopt the dogs.
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Peter Kahn et al.
Developmental Psychology, March 2012, Pages 303-314
Abstract:
Children will increasingly come of age with personified robots and potentially form social and even moral relationships with them. What will such relationships look like? To address this question, 90 children (9-, 12-, and 15-year-olds) initially interacted with a humanoid robot, Robovie, in 15-min sessions. Each session ended when an experimenter interrupted Robovie's turn at a game and, against Robovie's stated objections, put Robovie into a closet. Each child was then engaged in a 50-min structural-developmental interview. Results showed that during the interaction sessions, all of the children engaged in physical and verbal social behaviors with Robovie. The interview data showed that the majority of children believed that Robovie had mental states (e.g., was intelligent and had feelings) and was a social being (e.g., could be a friend, offer comfort, and be trusted with secrets). In terms of Robovie's moral standing, children believed that Robovie deserved fair treatment and should not be harmed psychologically but did not believe that Robovie was entitled to its own liberty (Robovie could be bought and sold) or civil rights (in terms of voting rights and deserving compensation for work performed). Developmentally, while more than half the 15-year-olds conceptualized Robovie as a mental, social, and partly moral other, they did so to a lesser degree than the 9- and 12-year-olds. Discussion focuses on how (a) children's social and moral relationships with future personified robots may well be substantial and meaningful and (b) personified robots of the future may emerge as a unique ontological category.
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Emile Bruneau, Nicholas Dufour & Rebecca Saxe
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 5 March 2012, Pages 717-730
Abstract:
In contexts of cultural conflict, people delegitimize the other group's perspective and lose compassion for the other group's suffering. These psychological biases have been empirically characterized in intergroup settings, but rarely in groups involved in active conflict. Similarly, the basic brain networks involved in recognizing others' narratives and misfortunes have been identified, but how these brain networks are modulated by intergroup conflict is largely untested. In the present study, we examined behavioural and neural responses in Arab, Israeli and South American participants while they considered the pain and suffering of individuals from each group. Arabs and Israelis reported feeling significantly less compassion for each other's pain and suffering (the ‘conflict outgroup'), but did not show an ingroup bias relative to South Americans (the ‘distant outgroup'). In contrast, the brain regions that respond to others' tragedies showed an ingroup bias relative to the distant outgroup but not the conflict outgroup, particularly for descriptions of emotional suffering. Over all, neural responses to conflict group members were qualitatively different from neural responses to distant group members. This is the first neuroimaging study to examine brain responses to others' suffering across both distant and conflict groups, and provides a first step towards building a foundation for the biological basis of conflict.
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Motivated social memory: Belonging needs moderate the own-group bias in face recognition
Jay Van Bavel et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2012, Pages 707-713
Abstract:
The current research examines why people have superior recognition memory for own-group members compared to other-group members. In two studies, we provide evidence for one motivational mechanism underlying own-group bias - social belonging needs. In Study 1, participants assigned to a minimal group had superior memory for own-group compared to other-group faces, replicating previous research on the own-group bias. This pattern was moderated by participants' need to belong: participants who reported a higher (versus lower) need to belong showed greater own-group memory bias. In Study 2, participants who were socially excluded had superior memory for own-university compared to other-university faces than participants who were selected to work alone by a computer. Together, these studies suggest that chronic belonging needs and social exclusion motivate own-group bias.
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Witness to hypocrisy: Reacting to ingroup hypocrites in the presence of others
Amber Gaffney et al.
Social Influence, Spring 2012, Pages 98-112
Abstract:
How is one's reaction to a fellow ingroup member's normative hypocrisy affected by the presence of a third party observer who is an ingroup member or an outgroup member? To investigate this question we experimentally manipulated the group membership and reaction of a third party to ingroup hypocrisy in a 2 × 2 design (N = 78) and measured participants' personal endorsement of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors that were normative of the ingroup. As predicted from a social identity analysis of the function of norms and prototypes in social influence processes, personal endorsement of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors was strongest when an outgroup member remarked negatively on the hypocrisy, and weakest when an outgroup member did not appear to notice the hypocrisy.
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Implicit measures of the stereotype content associated with disability
Odile Rohmer & Eva Louvet
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research aimed to show that the mixed stereotype content of persons with disability observed at an explicit level does not manifest itself using implicit measures. Two experimental studies were conducted to analyse the stereotype content of persons with a disability at the implicit level. The procedure used in this study was the concept priming paradigm. Furthermore, Study 2 also included an explicit measure. Results show important discrepancies between implicit and explicit measures. At an explicit level, previous work supporting the mixed stereotype content of persons with disability was replicated: participants judged these persons as warmer but less competent than persons without a disability. At an implicit level, a quite different pattern of results emerged: persons with a disability were associated not only with less competence than persons without disability, but also with less warmth. These findings suggest that the mixed pattern between warmth and competence generally observed at an explicit level may be based on societal pressures against prejudice and discrimination.
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Intergroup Contact Can Undermine Disadvantaged Group Members' Attributions to Discrimination
Tamar Saguy & Lily Chernyak-Hai
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2012, Pages 714-720
Abstract:
In the current research we investigated social settings through which attributions to discrimination are undermined. Drawing on work linking intergroup contact to perceptions of inequality, we tested the prediction that experiences of commonality-focused contact would reduce disadvantaged group members' tendency to attribute negative treatment of fellow group members to discrimination. In Study 1 students were randomly assigned to either a commonality-focused, differences-focused, or no-contact condition, ostensibly with a student from a higher status university. Commonality-focused interactions led participants to view the status hierarchy as more legitimate, and consequently, to be less likely to attribute negative treatment to discrimination. In Study 2 this effect was replicated among Ethiopian-Jews (a disadvantaged minority in Israel) who reported the amount of commonality-focused contact they experience with non-Ethiopian Jews. Theoretical and practical implications regarding intergroup contact and perceptions of inequality are discussed.
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Bart Duriez, Joke Meeus & Maarten Vansteenkiste
Journal of Research in Personality, April 2012, Pages 164-172
Abstract:
Whereas an individual differences perspective recently pointed to the importance of a relative extrinsic to intrinsic value orientation in the prediction of outgroup attitudes, the intergroup relations perspective stresses the importance of threat. This study investigates the interplay of both perspectives. A scenario study among high-school students showed that only people who attach greater relative importance to extrinsic values react with a negative attitude towards an outgroup that is portrayed as threatening. A longitudinal study among university students then showed that people with a relatively greater extrinsic value orientation are not only more likely to react to threat but also to perceive threat. Specifically, cross-lagged analyses showed that a relatively greater extrinsic value orientation predicted over-time increases in threat perceptions.
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I Undervalue You but I Need You: The Dissociation of Attitude and Memory Toward In-Group Members
Ke Zhao et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2012
Abstract:
In the present study, the in-group bias or in-group derogation among mainland Chinese was investigated through a rating task and a recognition test. In two experiments, participants from two universities with similar ranks rated novel faces or names and then had a recognition test. Half of the faces or names were labeled as participants' own university and the other half were labeled as their counterpart. Results showed that, for either faces or names, rating scores for out-group members were consistently higher than those for in-group members, whereas the recognition accuracy showed just the opposite. These results indicated that the attitude and memory for group-relevant information might be dissociated among Mainland Chinese.
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Max Weisbuch & Kristin Pauker
Social Issues and Policy Review, December 2011, Pages 257-291
Abstract:
Social and policy interventions over the last half-century have achieved laudable reductions in blatant discrimination. Yet members of devalued social groups continue to face subtle discrimination. In this article, we argue that decades of antidiscrimination interventions have failed to eliminate intergroup bias because such bias is contagious. We present a model of bias contagion in which intergroup bias is subtly communicated through nonverbal behavior. Exposure to such nonverbal bias "infects" observers with intergroup bias. The model we present details two means by which nonverbal bias can be expressed - either as a veridical index of intergroup bias or as a symptom of worry about appearing biased. Exposure to this nonverbal bias can increase perceivers' own intergroup biases through processes of implicit learning, informational influence, and normative influence. We identify critical moderators that may interfere with these processes and consequently propose several social and educational interventions based on these moderators.
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Outgroup Helping as a Tool to Communicate Ingroup Warmth
Esther van Leeuwen & Susanne Täuber
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors extend previous research on the effects of metastereotype activation on outgroup helping by examining in more detail the role of group impression management motives and by studying direct helping (i.e., helping the outgroup believed to hold a negative view of the ingroup). Data from three experiments provided full support for the communicative nature of direct outgroup helping by demonstrating that outgroup helping in response to a negative metastereotype was predicted by participants' concern for the image of their ingroup, but not by their self-image concerns. Moreover, group image concerns predicted outgroup helping but not ingroup helping and predicted outgroup helping only when a negative metastereotype was activated, compared with a positive metastereotype, or a (negative or positive) autostereotype. The results also ruled out an alternative explanation in terms of denying the self-relevance of the metastereotype.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Workers of the World
Compensation for State and Local Government Workers
Maury Gittleman & Brooks Pierce
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2012, Pages 217-242
Abstract:
Are state and local government workers overcompensated? In this paper, we step back from the highly charged rhetoric and address this question with the two primary data sources for looking at compensation of state and local government workers: the Current Population Survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation microdata collected as part of the National Compensation Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In both data sets, the workers being hired in the public sector have higher skill levels than those in the private sector, so the challenge is to compare across sectors in a way that adjusts suitably for this difference. After controlling for skill differences and incorporating employer costs for benefits packages, we find that, on average, public sector workers in state government have compensation costs 3-10 percent greater than those for workers in the private sector, while in local government the gap is 10-19 percent. We caution that this finding is somewhat dependent on the chosen sample and specification, that averages can obscure broader differences in distributions, and that a host of worker and job attributes are not available to us in these data. Nonetheless, the data suggest that public sector workers, especially local government ones, on average, receive greater remuneration than observably similar private sector workers. Overturning this result would require, we think, strong arguments for particular model specifications, or different data.
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More Machines, Better Machines...or Better Workers?
James Bessen
Journal of Economic History, March 2012, Pages 44-74
Abstract:
How much of the rapid growth in output per man-hour in nineteenth-century cotton weaving arose from technical change and how much arose from price-driven substitution of capital for labor? Using an engineering production function, I find that factor price changes account for little of the growth in output per man-hour. However, much of the growth and most of the apparent labor-saving bias arose not from inventions, but from improved labor quality - better workers spent less time monitoring the looms. Labor quality played a critical role in the persistent association between economic growth and capital deepening in this important sector.
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Wal-Mart's Monopsony Power in Metro and Non-Metro Labor Markets
Alessandro Bonanno & Rigoberto Lopez
Regional Science and Urban Economics, July 2012, Pages 569-579
Abstract:
This paper measures the potential degree of monopsony power that Wal-Mart can exert over retail workers using a dominant-firm model and nationwide, county-level data, presenting for the first time a measure of the company's potential anti-competitive behavior and detailed spatial impacts on wages, particularly for metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties. Empirical results show that, at the national level, Wal-Mart's potential wage markdown below the competitive level amounts to less than 3% on average. However, the potential markdowns in non-metropolitan counties are three-fold those in metropolitan counties and are highest in non-metro areas of the south and central states but negligible in northeastern states.
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State Minimum Wage Differences: Economic Factors or Political Inclinations?
William Ford, Travis Minor & Mark Owens
Business Economics, January 2012, Pages 57-67
Abstract:
This paper examines the importance of factors that influence a state's decision to adopt an above-federal minimum wage level. Our results indicate that state political leanings are the primary factor explaining differences in state minimum wage laws since 1991. Further, state cost of living differences do not appear to influence a state's decision to increase its minimum wage above the federal level. This result is interesting since proponents of raising the minimum wage cite the rising cost of living as a principal justification for an increase. Our findings should be of special interest to economists responsible for analyzing and forecasting labor cost trends within and among states where their employers operate or plan to relocate.
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Despina Alexiadou
European Journal of Political Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do governments find the political capital to raise interest rates in pursuit of inflation stabilisation? Against common wisdom, this article shows that the ability of governments to exercise tight monetary policy largely depends on the level of unemployment insurance. Unemployment insurance is particularly useful to social democratic parties since their core constituency - labour - is the hardest hit by economic downturns. Empirical evidence from 17 OECD countries over thirty years demonstrates that high levels of unemployment insurance present a strong incentive for social democratic governments to respond more aggressively to positive changes in inflation. These findings resolve the puzzle of why partisan monetary cycles are not often observed in the literature and have important policy implications, given continued calls for scaling down social insurance.
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Hiring, Churn and the Business Cycle
Edward Lazear & James Spletzer
NBER Working Paper, March 2012
Abstract:
Churn, defined as replacing departing workers with new ones as workers move to more productive uses, is an important feature of labor dynamics. The majority of hiring and separation reflects churn rather than hiring for expansion or separation for contraction. Using the JOLTS data, we show that churn decreased significantly during the most recent recession with almost four-fifths of the decline in hiring reflecting decreases in churn. Reductions in churn have costs because they reflect a reduction in labor movement to higher valued uses. We estimate the cost of reduced churn to be $208 billion. On an annual basis, this amounts to about .4% of GDP for a period of 3 1/2 years.
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Leveraged buyouts, private equity and jobs
Kevin Amess & Mike Wright
Small Business Economics, May 2012, Pages 419-430
Abstract:
Using a unique data set of 533 leveraged buyouts (LBOs) observed over the 1993-2004 period, covering all size ranges, the study conducts a systematic analysis to determine and quantify: (1) the effect of private equity (PE) and LBO governance on employment and (2) whether the size of the target firm impacts on post-buyout employment effects. After accounting for endogeneity, we find that LBOs, whether PE financed or not, do not have significantly different employment levels compared with a control sample of firms. Additionally, there are no employment effects contingent on the size of the target firm. The findings contrast with anecdotal claims of job destruction. The study therefore makes an important contribution to the debate on the impact of LBOs and PE.
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Trading away what kind of jobs? Globalization, trade and tasks in the US economy
Thomas Kemeny & David Rigby
Review of World Economics, April 2012, Pages 1-16
Abstract:
Economists and other social scientists are calling for a reassessment of the impact of international trade on labor markets in developed and developing countries. Classical models of globalization and trade, based upon the international exchange of finished goods, fail to capture the fragmentation of much commodity production and the geographical separation of individual production tasks. This fragmentation, captured in the growing volume of intra-industry trade, prompts investigation of the effects of trade within, rather than between, sectors of the economy. In this paper we examine the relationship between international trade and the task structure of US employment. We link disaggregate US trade data from 1972 to 2006, the NBER manufacturing database, the Decennial Census, and occupational and task data from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Within-industry shifts in task characteristics are linked to import competition and technological change. Our results suggest that trade has played a major role in the growth in relative demand for nonroutine tasks, particularly those requiring high levels of interpersonal interaction.
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International Trade and the Composition of Labor Market Turnover
Nicholas Sly
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
The composition of labor market turnover is shown to influence patterns of international trade. Job and worker turnover have opposing marginal effects on industry export intensity, highlighting the importance of relative turnover shares on either side of the labor market, as opposed to total volumes of labor mobility, in shaping economic outcomes. Industries with relatively greater shares of worker turnover export more of total production, and those with higher job turnover export less. Furthermore, relatively high job turnover hinders industry adjustment following trade liberalization. These predictions receive support for U.S. manufacturing industries using turnover data in the Quarterly Workforce Indicators available from the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Housing Liquidity, Mobility, and the Labour Market
Allen Head & Huw Lloyd-Ellis
Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the interactions among geographical mobility, unemployment, and home-ownership in an economy with heterogeneous locations, endogenous construction, and search frictions in the markets for both labour and housing. The decision of home-owners to accept job offers from other cities depends on how quickly they can sell their houses (i.e. the houses' liquidity), which in turn depends on local labour market conditions. Consequently, home-owners accept job offers from other cities at a lower rate than do renters, generating a link between home-ownership and unemployment both at the city level and in the aggregate. When calibrated to match aggregate U.S. statistics on mobility, housing, and labour flows, the model predicts that the effect of home-ownership on aggregate unemployment is small. When unemployment is high, however, changes in the rate of home-ownership can have economically significant effects.
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Are Public Employees Overpaid?
Jeffrey Keefe
Labor Studies Journal, March 2012, Pages 104-126
Abstract:
The research reported in this article shows that public employees, both state and local government employees, are not overpaid and may be slightly undercompensated. Comparisons with the private-sector employees that control for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, and disability indicate that the public-employment compensation (wages and benefits) penalty is relatively small. On average there is a 3.7 percent penalty in total compensation for full-time state and local employees when compared to similar private-sector employees. The data analysis also reveals substantially different approaches to staffing and compensation between the private and public sectors. On average, state and local public-sector workers are more highly educated than the private-sector workforce; 54 percent of full-time state and local public-sector workers hold at least a four-year college degree compared to 35 percent of full-time private sector workers. For college-educated labor, state and local governments pay salaries on average over 25 percent less than private employers. The public sector appears to set a floor on compensation, particularly improving the compensation of workers with high-school educations, when compared to similarly educated workers in the private sector. Benefits are allocated differently between private- and public-sector full-time workers. State and local government employees receive a higher portion of their compensation in the form of employer-provided benefits. Public employers provide better health insurance and pension benefits. National polling data indicate that the public does not believe public employees are overpaid. They oppose pay and benefit cuts, but believe pay freezes and greater employee contributions to their health and pensions plans may be appropriate. Nevertheless, thirteen states revised their public-sector collective-bargaining laws, mainly weakening employee bargaining power or severely restricting or eliminating collective bargaining, while the majority of the public opposed those changes.
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Can Public Sector Wage Bills Be Reduced?
Pïerre Cahuc & Stephane Carcillo
NBER Working Paper, March 2012
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the relation between public wage bills and public deficits in the OECD countries from 1995 to 2009. The paper shows that fiscal drift episodes, characterized by simultaneous increases in the GDP shares of public wage bills and budget deficits, are more frequent during booms and election years, but not during recessions, except for the 2009 exceptionally strong recession. The emergence of fiscal drift episodes during booms and election years is less frequent in countries with more transparent government, more freedom of the press, as well as in countries with presidential regimes and less union coverage. Inversely, fiscal tightening episodes, characterized by simultaneous decreases in the GDP shares of public wage bills and budget deficits, occur less often during booms than during recessions. The emergence of fiscal tightening episodes during recessions and election years is less frequent in countries with more union coverage.
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John Hutchinson & Damiaan Persyn
Review of World Economics, April 2012, Pages 17-43
Abstract:
Over the last two decades the share of national income which accrues to labour has followed a marked downward trend across a host of industrialised countries. This paper reassesses the relative importance of several potential causes of this phenomenon. Overall, the findings suggest that lower trade costs and factors often associated with economic integration such as international low-wage competition and industry concentration have contributed to the decline in the labour share. However, their effects have been limited when compared to the effects of skill-based technological change and cyclical price changes of intermediary goods.
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Job Market Signaling of Relative Position, or Becker Married to Spence
Ed Hopkins
Journal of the European Economic Association, April 2012, Pages 290-322
Abstract:
This paper considers a matching model of the labor market where workers, who have private information on their quality, signal to firms that also differ in quality. Signals allow assortative matching in which the highest-quality workers send the highest signals and are hired by the best firms. Matching is considered both when wages are rigid (nontransferable utility) and when they are fully flexible (transferable utility). In both cases, equilibrium strategies and payoffs depend on the distributions of worker and firm types. This is in contrast to separating equilibria of the standard model, which do not respond to changes in supply or demand. With sticky wages, despite incomplete information, equilibrium investment in education by low-ability workers can be inefficiently low, and this distortion can become worse in a more competitive environment. In contrast, with flexible wages, greater competition improves efficiency.
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‘Excessive' wages and the return on capital
Margarita Katsimi, Sarantis Kalyvitis & Thomas Moutos
Cambridge Journal of Economics, March 2012, Pages 435-461
Abstract:
Received wisdom suggests that ‘excessive' wages, defined as the part of real wages that do not follow labour productivity developments, are adversely associated with the return on capital. This paper argues that excessive wages and profits are better thought of as responses to changes in the economic, political and institutional environment, and there is no a priori reason for a negative relationship between them. We thus investigate whether there is a causal effect of excessive wages on capital return using aggregate panel data for 19 OECD countries for the period 1970-2000. We account for the endogeneity of excessive wages by exploiting variations in institutional and labour market characteristics. Our main finding is that excessive wages do not affect the return on capital. This result remains robust to alternative empirical specifications and to alternative definitions of profitability and excessive wages, and questions the standard advice by international economic organizations on wage moderation.
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Distributional consequences of labor-demand shocks: The 2008-2009 recession in Germany
Olivier Bargain et al.
International Tax and Public Finance, February 2012, Pages 118-138
Abstract:
The distributional consequences of the recent economic crisis are still broadly unknown. While it is possible to speculate which groups are likely to be hardest-hit, detailed distributional studies are still largely backward-looking due to a lack of real-time microdata. This paper studies the distributional and fiscal implications of output changes in Germany 2008-2009, using data available prior to the economic downturn. We first estimate labor demand on 12 years of detailed, administrative matched employer-employee data. The distributional analysis is then conducted by transposing predicted employment effects of actual output shocks to household-level microdata. A scenario in which labor demand adjustments occur at the intensive margin (hour changes), close to the German experience, shows less severe effects on the income distribution compared to a situation where adjustments take place through massive layoffs. Adjustments at the intensive margin are also preferable from a fiscal point of view. In this context, we discuss the cushioning effect of the tax-benefit system and the conditions under which German-style work-sharing policies can be successful in other countries.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Moral Hazard
To defy or not to defy: An experimental study of the dynamics of disobedience and whistle-blowing
Piero Bocchiaro, Philip Zimbardo & Paul Van Lange
Social Influence, Winter 2012, Pages 35-50
Abstract:
This study introduces a new paradigm for investigating the dynamic processes of disobedience between individuals and unjust authority. Our experimental setting allowed participants (n = 149) to deal with an unethical request by the experimenter with options of (dis)obeying or "blowing the whistle". Results revealed that the majority (77%) complied while the minority was split between those refusing (14%) and those reporting the misconduct to higher authorities (9%). No significant differences were found in personal characteristics and dispositional variables distinguishing between obedient, disobedient, and whistleblower participants. An independent sample (n = 138), when asked to predict their behavior, gave exactly the opposite reaction to our experimental participants: Only 4% believed they would obey that authority.
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Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism
Scott Eidelman et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors test the hypothesis that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. In Study 1, alcohol intoxication was measured among bar patrons; as blood alcohol level increased, so did political conservatism (controlling for sex, education, and political identification). In Study 2, participants under cognitive load reported more conservative attitudes than their no-load counterparts. In Study 3, time pressure increased participants' endorsement of conservative terms. In Study 4, participants considering political terms in a cursory manner endorsed conservative terms more than those asked to cogitate; an indicator of effortful thought (recognition memory) partially mediated the relationship between processing effort and conservatism. Together these data suggest that political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.
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Is It Light or Dark? Recalling Moral Behavior Changes Perception of Brightness
Pronobesh Banerjee, Promothesh Chatterjee & Jayati Sinha
Psychological Science, forthcoming
"[W]e explored whether recalling abstract concepts such as evil (as exemplified by unethical deeds) and goodness (as exemplified by ethical deeds) can indeed influence the sensory experience of the brightness of light. Specifically, we hypothesized that individuals who recall a time when they performed an ethical deed should perceive their immediate surroundings to be brighter than should individuals who recall a time when they performed an unethical deed. We tested our prediction in two studies. In addition, in Study 2, we tested a second prediction that follows from our first one: If people perceive less light after recalling an unethical behavior than after recalling an ethical behavior, participants who have recalled an unethical behavior should exhibit a greater preference for light-producing objects (but not for other objects) than should participants who have recalled an ethical behavior."
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Hamilton vs. Kant: Pitting adaptations for altruism against adaptations for moral judgment
Robert Kurzban, Peter DeScioli & Daniel Fein
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prominent evolutionary theories of morality maintain that the adaptations that underlie moral judgment and behavior function, at least in part, to deliver benefits (or prevent harm) to others. These explanations are based on the theories of kin selection and reciprocal altruism, and they predict that moral systems are designed to maximize Hamiltonian inclusive fitness. In sharp contrast, however, moral judgment often appears Kantian and rule-based. To reconcile this apparent discrepancy, some theorists have claimed that Kantian moral rules result from mechanisms that implement simple heuristics for maximizing welfare. To test this idea, we conducted a set of studies in which subjects (N=1290) decided whether they would kill one person to save five others, varying the relationship of the subject with the others involved (strangers, friends, brothers). Are participants more likely to observe the Kantian rule against killing in decisions about brothers and friends, rather than strangers? We found the reverse. Subjects reported greater willingness to kill a brother or friend than a stranger (in order to save five others of the same type). These results suggest that the rule-based structure of moral cognition is not explained by kin selection, reciprocity, or other altruism theories.
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Nora Walter et al.
Brain and Cognition, April 2012, Pages 268-273
Abstract:
Perspective-taking has become a main focus of studies on moral judgments. Recent fMRI studies have demonstrated that individual differences in brain activation predict moral decision making. In particular, pharmacological studies highlighted the crucial role for the neuropeptide oxytocin in social behavior and emotional perception. In the present study N = 154 participants were genotyped for a functional polymorphism (rs2268498) in the promoter region of the OXTR gene. We found a significant difference between carriers and non-carriers of the C-allele in exculpating agents for accidental harms (F(1,152) = 11.49, p = .001, η2 = .07) indicating that carriers of the C-allele rated accidentally committed harm as significantly more blameworthy than non-carriers. This is the first study providing evidence for a genetic contribution to moral judgments.
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Ibrahim Ismail et al.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, March 2012, Pages 735-750
Abstract:
The naturalistic fallacy is the erroneous belief that what is natural is morally acceptable. Two studies assessed whether people commit the naturalistic fallacy by testing whether genetic explanations for killing and male promiscuity, as compared to experiential explanations (i.e., learning/"nurture" explanations) increase acceptance of these behaviors. In Study 1, participants who read a genetic explanation for why people kill bugs viewed bug killing as more morally acceptable than participants who read an experiential explanation, although they did not reliably kill more bugs. In Study 2, men who read a genetic explanation for why men are more promiscuous than women reported decreased interest in long-term romantic commitment compared with men who read experiential explanations and women who read either explanation.
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The Gleam of the Double-Edged Sword: The Benefits of Subgroups for Organizational Ethics
Margaret Ormiston & Elaine Wong
Psychological Science, forthcoming
"Although subgroups are omnipresent in organizations, little is known about the benefit of subgroups for organizational-level outcomes. Our work speaks to this research gap and is the first to empirically demonstrate that subgroup fragmentation within leadership teams is positively related to organizational outcomes such as organizational ethics. Further, decentralization moderates this relationship; in our study, subgroups benefited organizational ethics only in decentralized organizations. Given these positive effects of information-based subgroups, future research should explore how other types of subgroups (e.g., ethnicity-based subgroups) influence organizational outcomes."
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Be Aware to Care: Public Self-Awareness Leads to a Reversal of the Bystander Effect
Marco van Bommel et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The classic bystander effect stipulates that people help others more when they are alone than when other bystanders are present. We reason that, sometimes, the presence of bystanders can increase helping, notably in situations where public self-awareness is increased through the use of accountability cues (e.g., a camera). We conducted two experiments in which we tested this line of reasoning. In both experiments, participants read messages soliciting support in an online forum. We varied the number of people that were present in that forum to create a bystander and an alone condition. In Study 1, we introduced an accountability cue by making participants' screen-names more salient, and in Study 2, we used a webcam. Both studies indicate that, as expected, the bystander effect can be reversed by means of cues that raise public self-awareness in social settings.
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The Pot Calling the Kettle Black: Distancing Response to Ethical Dissonance
Rachel Barkan et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Six studies demonstrate the "pot calling the kettle black" phenomenon whereby people are guilty of the very fault they identify in others. Recalling an undeniable ethical failure, people experience ethical dissonance between their moral values and their behavioral misconduct. Our findings indicate that to reduce ethical dissonance, individuals use a double-distancing mechanism. Using an overcompensating ethical code, they judge others more harshly and present themselves as more virtuous and ethical (Studies 1, 2, 3). We show this mechanism is exclusive for ethical dissonance and is not triggered by salience of ethicality (Study 4), general sense of personal failure, or ethically neutral cognitive dissonance (Study 5). Finally, it is characterized by some boundary conditions (Study 6). We discuss the theoretical contribution of this work to research on moral regulation and ethical behavior.
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Marina Kouzakova et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article presents two studies demonstrating the implications of having different values (vs. interests) in a situation where people take opposite positions. Study 1 examined how people respond to a range of conflict issues that were framed either as referring to conflicting values or as referring to conflicting interests. Study 2 used a more immersive methodology, in which participants were led to consider either their values or interests in taking up a particular position, after which they were presented with a confederate who took up the opposite position. Results of both studies converge to demonstrate that framing a particular conflict issue in terms of values causes people to experience more self-involvement and to perceive less common ground. This result can be seen as a potential explanation of why value conflicts tend to escalate more easily than conflicts of interests and also offers scope for interventions directed at value conflict resolution.
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Anticipatory stress interferes with utilitarian moral judgment
Katrin Starcke, Anne-Catrin Ludwig & Matthias Brand
Judgment and Decision Making, January 2012, Pages 61-68
Abstract:
A recent study indicates that acute stress affects moral decision making (Youssef et al., in press). The current study examines whether results can be replicated using a different kind of stressor and a different kind of stress measurement. We induced stress in 25 participants with a cover-story of an anticipated speech. Another group of 25 participants was tested in a control condition. Stress levels and stress responses were assessed with questionnaires and heart rate. All participants performed a moral decision-making task describing moral dilemmas. These dilemmas were either personal or impersonal and each offered a utilitarian and a non-utilitarian option. Acutely stressed participants, compared to control participants, made fewer utilitarian judgments and needed longer for making a decision. Individual physiological stress response was related to fewer utilitarian judgments. Results are in line with those previously found although different instruments were used.
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Drawing the line somewhere: An experimental study of moral compromise
Alan Lewis et al.
Journal of Economic Psychology, August 2012, Pages 718-725
Abstract:
In a study by Shalvi, Dana, Handgraaf, and De Dreu (2011) it was convincingly demonstrated that psychologically, the distinction between right and wrong is not discrete, rather it is a continuous distribution of relative ‘rightness' and ‘wrongness'. Using the ‘die-under-the-cup' paradigm participants over-reported high numbers on the roll of a die when there were financial incentives to do so and no chance of detection for lying. Participants generally did not maximize income, instead making moral compromises. In an adaptation of this procedure in a single die experiment 9% of participants lied that they had rolled a ‘6' when they had not compared to 2.5% in the Shalvi et.al. study suggesting that when the incentive is donation to charity this encourages more dishonesty than direct personal gain. In a follow-up questionnaire study where sequences of three rolls were presented, lying increased where counterfactuals became available as predicted by Shalvi et.al. A novel finding is reported where ‘justified' lying is more common when comparative gains are higher. An investigation of individual differences revealed that economics students were much more likely to lie than psychology students. Relevance to research on tax evasion, corporate social responsibility and the ‘credit crunch' is discussed.
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Why Do We Punish Groups? High Entitativity Promotes Moral Suspicion
Anna-Kaisa Newheiser, Takuya Sawaoka & John Dovidio
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People typically take a moral deservingness perspective when deciding on appropriate punishment for intentional wrongdoings committed by individuals. Considerably less is known about how people reason about wrongdoings committed by groups, even though there are fundamental differences in how people perceive individuals versus groups. The present research examined perceived entitativity, the degree to which a group is perceived to be a unified, single agent, as a potential determinant of moral reasoning about transgressions committed by groups. We found that participants recommended more severe punishments for high-entitativity (vs. low-entitativity) perpetrator groups, particularly in the presence of morally mitigating circumstances that typically lessen punitiveness. This effect was mediated by perceptions of greater moral accountability in high-entitativity groups. Thus, justice is not equal for all groups. Implications for retributive justice and the criminal justice system are discussed.
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How the Moralization of Issues Grants Social Legitimacy to Act on One's Attitudes
Daniel Effron & Dale Miller
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Actions that do not have as their goal the advancement or protection of one's material interests are often seen as illegitimate. Four studies suggested that moral values can legitimate action in the absence of material interest. The more participants linked sociopolitical issues to moral values, the more comfortable they felt advocating on behalf of those issues and the less confused they were by others' advocacy (Studies 1 and 2). Crime victims were perceived as being more entitled to claim special privileges when the crime had violated their personal moral values (Studies 3 and 4). These effects were strongest when the legitimacy to act could not already be derived from one's material interests, suggesting that moral values and material interest can represent interchangeable justifications for behavior. No support was found for the possibility that attitude strength explained these effects. The power of moralization to disinhibit action is discussed.
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Psychopathy Increases Perceived Moral Permissibility of Accidents
Liane Young et al.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Psychopaths are notorious for their antisocial and immoral behavior, yet experimental studies have typically failed to identify deficits in their capacities for explicit moral judgment. We tested 20 criminal psychopaths and 25 criminal nonpsychopaths on a moral judgment task featuring hypothetical scenarios that systematically varied an actor's intention and the action's outcome. Participants were instructed to evaluate four classes of actions: accidental harms, attempted harms, intentional harms, and neutral acts. Psychopaths showed a selective difference, compared with nonpsychopaths, in judging accidents, where one person harmed another unintentionally. Specifically, psychopaths judged these actions to be more morally permissible. We suggest that this pattern reflects psychopaths' failure to appreciate the emotional aspect of the victim's experience of harm. These findings provide direct evidence of abnormal moral judgment in psychopathy.
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Frank Krueger et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
The neuropeptide oxytocin functions as a hormone and neurotransmitter and facilitates complex social cognition and approach behavior. Given that empathy is an essential ingredient for third-party decision-making in institutions of justice, we investigated whether exogenous oxytocin modulates empathy of an unaffected third-party towards offenders and victims of criminal offenses. Healthy male participants received intranasal oxytocin or placebo in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subjects design. Participants were given a set of legal vignettes that described an event during which an offender engaged in criminal offenses against victims. As an unaffected third-party, participants were asked to rate those criminal offenses on the degree to which the offender deserved punishment and how much harm was inflicted on the victim. Exogenous oxytocin selectively increased third-party decision-makers perceptions of harm for victims but not the desire to punish offenders of criminal offenses. We argue that oxytocin promoted empathic concern for the victim, which in turn increased the tendency for prosocial approach behavior regarding the interpersonal relationship between an unaffected third-party and a fictional victim in the criminal scenarios. Future research should explore the context- and person-dependent nature of exogenous oxytocin in individuals with antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy, in whom deficits in empathy feature prominently.
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Reasoning about highly emotional topics: Syllogistic reasoning in a group of war veterans
Isabelle Blanchette & Michelle Campbell
Journal of Cognitive Psychology, February 2012, Pages 157-164
Abstract:
Previous studies have generally found that emotion impairs logical reasoning. However, laboratory experiments have typically involved relatively mild levels of emotion where affect is not linked to personal experience. In this study we examined how army veterans reasoned about syllogisms of three types: neutral, generally emotional, and combat-related emotional. We also measured intensity of combat experience. Veterans were more likely to provide logically accurate answers when reasoning about combat-related compared to neutral problems. Participants with more intense combat experiences showed a reduced advantage in reasoning about combat-related emotional problems.
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The Cost of Callousness: Regulating Compassion Influences the Moral Self-Concept
Daryl Cameron & Keith Payne
Psychological Science, March 2012, Pages 225-229
Abstract:
It has often been argued that compassion is fundamental to morality. Yet people often suppress compassion for self-interested reasons. We provide evidence that suppressing compassion is not cost free, as it creates dissonance between a person's moral identity and his or her moral principles. We instructed separate groups of participants to regulate their compassion, regulate their feelings of distress, or freely experience emotions toward compassion-inducing images. Participants then reported how central morality was to their identities and how much they believed that moral rules should always be followed. Participants who regulated compassion - but not those who regulated distress or experienced emotions - showed a dissonance-based trade-off. If they reported higher levels of moral identity, they had a greater belief that moral rules could be broken. If they maintained their belief that moral rules should always be followed, they sacrificed their moral identity. Regulating compassion thus has a cost of its own: It forces trade-offs within a person's moral self-concept.
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Corrado Corradi-Dell'Acqua et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Rejections of unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game are commonly assumed to reflect negative emotional arousal mediated by the anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex (Sanfey et al., 2003; Koenigs & Tranel, 2007). We aimed to disentangle those neural mechanisms associated with direct personal involvement ("I have been treated unfairly") from those associated with fairness considerations, such as the wish to discourage unfair behavior or social norm violations ("this person has been treated unfairly"). For this purpose, we used fMRI and asked participants to play the Ultimatum Game (UG) as responders either for themselves (Myself) or on behalf of another person (third-party, Civai et al., 2010). Unfair offers were equally often rejected in both conditions. Neuroimaging data revealed a dissociation between the medial prefrontal cortex, specifically associated with rejections in the Myself condition, thus confirming its role in self-related emotional responses, and the left anterior insula, associated with rejections in both Myself and Third-Party conditions, suggesting a role in promoting fair behavior also towards third-parties. Our data extend the current understanding of the neural substrate of social decision making, by disentangling the structures sensitive to direct emotional involvement of the self from those implicated in pure fairness considerations.
