Calling It
Short-term fluctuations in incidental happiness and economic decision-making: Experimental evidence from a sports bar
Judd Kessler et al.
Experimental Economics, February 2022, Pages 141-169
Abstract:
We develop a new experimental paradigm to study how emotions affect decision-making. We use it to investigate the impact of short-term fluctuations in incidental happiness on economic decisions. Experimental subjects watch an NFL football game in a sports bar. At various commercial breaks, we measure subjects' happiness and observe their decisions regarding charitable giving, willingness to pay for a consumer good, risk taking, and trust. We find that events in the game impact the incidental happiness of our subjects, and these changes lead to predictable changes in choices. We provide a simple model that rationalizes how subjects' behavior varies with incidental happiness and provides insight into how mood can be tractably included in economics models. Our experimental paradigm can be leveraged by other researchers interested in exploring the impact of emotions on behavior.
Framing effects and preference reversals in crowd-sourced ranked opinions
Michael Lee & Michelle Ke
Decision, forthcoming
Abstract:
Framing effects influence the measurement of knowledge, preference, and opinions, and they have implications for understanding mental representation and cognitive processes. Much of the evidence for framing effects, however, comes from controlled laboratory experiments rather than naturally occurring real-world behavior. We demonstrate how a crowd-sourced opinion website provides naturally occurring data to test for preference reversals and framing effects in subjective preferences. The data take the form of people's top-n rankings of lists of items in response to specific questions, and we consider related pairs of lists for which the same people provide rankings. We compare the list "best actors in film history" with "best actors working today" and the list "best National Basketball Association (NBA) players of all time" with "best white NBA players of all time." These lists have a conjunctive relationship, since the second list asks the same question as the first, but about a restricted set of items. We also compare the list "best U.S. presidents of all time" with "worst U.S. presidents." These lists ask the same question but use "best" versus "worst" contexts. For all three comparisons, we find many cases in which the same person reverses their preferences for pairs of items between lists, and for which the same set of people systematically change their rate of ordering pairs of items. Our results provide real-world evidence for the presence of preference reversals and framing effects in subjective preferences. They also provide an example of the strengths and limitations of studying choice and preference using naturally occurring data.
The role of discomfort in the continued influence effect of misinformation
Mark Susmann & Duane Wegener
Memory & Cognition, February 2022, Pages 435-448
Abstract:
Research examining the continued influence effect (CIE) of misinformation has reliably found that belief in misinformation persists even after the misinformation has been retracted. However, much remains to be learned about the psychological mechanisms responsible for this phenomenon. Most theorizing in this domain has focused on cognitive mechanisms. Yet some proposed cognitive explanations provide reason to believe that motivational mechanisms might also play a role. The present research tested the prediction that retractions of misinformation produce feelings of psychological discomfort that motivate one to disregard the retraction to reduce this discomfort. Studies 1 and 2 found that retractions of misinformation elicit psychological discomfort, and this discomfort predicts continued belief in and use of misinformation. Study 3 showed that the relations between discomfort and continued belief in and use of misinformation are causal in nature by manipulating how participants appraised the meaning of discomfort. These findings suggest that discomfort could play a key mechanistic role in the CIE, and that changing how people interpret this discomfort can make retractions more effective at reducing continued belief in misinformation.
When it is Best to be Last: How Constructed Distributions Influence Sequential Judgments
Siyuan Yin & Maurice Schweitzer
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, November 2021
Abstract:
When evaluating alternatives, individuals often view options in an ordered sequence. Prior studies investigating order effects have yielded conflicting results. In some cases, consumers prefer the first product they evaluate in a sequence (primacy effects); in others, they prefer the last product they evaluate in a sequence (recency effects). We introduce and test a novel theoretical framework: Constructed Distribution Theory. We show that individuals construct and revise reference distributions as they evaluate alternatives. Our theory explains how the underlying quality of alternatives moderates primacy and recency effects. Across five pre-registered experiments (N=2,773) and a field study (N=7,835), we demonstrate that people evaluate attractive options more favorably when they are presented last than when they are presented first. We also find that individuals are more enthusiastic about both their most preferred option and the entire choice set when they evaluate alternatives in ascending rather than descending quality order. Experience and expertise moderate, but do not eliminate, these patterns.
Leveraging metacognitive ability to improve crowd accuracy via impossible questions
Stephen Bennett & Mark Steyvers
Decision, January 2022, Pages 60-73
Abstract:
The aggregate of judgments across individuals can be quite accurate, especially when individuals with expert judgment can be identified. A number of procedures have been developed to identify expert judgments using historical performance or questionnaire data. Here, we measure expertise with the participant's tendency to skip impossible questions. These questions have no correct answers and serve as a metacognitive measure of a participant's ability to recognize when they lack knowledge. In contexts where individuals choose which questions to answer, those who are selective about when to contribute to the crowd are valuable. We find that an individual's propensity to skip impossible questions is related to their expertise and leverage these questions to form highly accurate crowds, outperforming other methods of identifying experts that rely on historical accuracy.
The cognitive cost of closeness: Interpersonal closeness reduces accuracy and slows down decision-making
Pınar Uğurlar, Nebi Sümer & Ann-Christin Posten European
Journal of Social Psychology, October 2021, Pages 1007-1018
Abstract:
Interpersonal closeness increases the overlap between mental representations of the self and the other, thus rendering it more difficult to differentiate between self- and other-related information. We suggest that closeness challenges computational capacity during decision-making when the decision requires a differentiation between self- and other-related information. Correlational Study 1 showed that when participants imagined engaging in a two-person economic problem-solving task with another person, their cognitive performance decreased with increased levels of closeness felt toward their counterpart. Three experiments showed that when participants engaged in the problem-solving task with a close (vs. a distant) other, they tended to recall the correct solutions less (Study 2), used more time to find the solution (Study 3) and gave less accurate responses under time pressure (Study 4). These four studies are the first to jointly demonstrate that closeness influences interpersonal decision processes by being cognitively more costly.
Easily accessible but easily forgettable: How ease of access to information online affects cognitive miserliness
Esther Kang
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
Ubiquitous Internet access has provided easy access to information and has influenced users' attention and knowledge management. In an online information service context, this research examines how the perception of easy access to information affects strategies to learn two types of information: "what it is" and "how to access it." This study also examines how the learning process is moderated by individual differences in working memory capacity, which can determine efficient management of attentional resources. The results show that individuals, especially those who rank high in working memory capacity, are less likely to remember the details but are more likely to remember how to access the information (e.g., a keyword for a search engine query). Those with higher working memory capacity are also more likely to ensure easy access to information by subscribing to information sources. The findings suggest that cognitive miserliness is not due to users' lack of cognitive capacity but to the accessibility of online information and efficient execution of attentional resources.