Good call
Seeing the Other Side: Perspective Taking and the Moderation of Extremity
Hannah Tuller et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 18–23
Abstract:
Recognizing the reasonableness of others’ positions is important for conflict reduction, but is notoriously hard. We tested a perspective-taking approach to decreasing attitude entrenchment. Participants were held accountable in a task in which they wrote about a controversial issue from the perspective of a partner with an opposing viewpoint. This approach was effective at changing views on controversial issues -- in Study 1 on weight discrimination, an issue participants were unlikely to have thought much about, and in Study 2 on abortion, where beliefs tend to be more deeply held. Studies 3 and 4 showed this change only took place under conditions where participants met the individual with an opposing view in person, and where that individual would see the perspective-taking effort. These results suggest that it is possible to reduce attitude entrenchment by encouraging people to think about the opposing perspective of another as long as there is real contact and accountability.
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Equality bias impairs collective decision-making across cultures
Ali Mahmoodi et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
We tend to think that everyone deserves an equal say in a debate. This seemingly innocuous assumption can be damaging when we make decisions together as part of a group. To make optimal decisions, group members should weight their differing opinions according to how competent they are relative to one another; whenever they differ in competence, an equal weighting is suboptimal. Here, we asked how people deal with individual differences in competence in the context of a collective perceptual decision-making task. We developed a metric for estimating how participants weight their partner’s opinion relative to their own and compared this weighting to an optimal benchmark. Replicated across three countries (Denmark, Iran, and China), we show that participants assigned nearly equal weights to each other’s opinions regardless of true differences in their competence — even when informed by explicit feedback about their competence gap or under monetary incentives to maximize collective accuracy. This equality bias, whereby people behave as if they are as good or as bad as their partner, is particularly costly for a group when a competence gap separates its members.
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Wisdom in the Military Context
Hannes Zacher et al.
Military Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
On the basis of the Berlin wisdom paradigm, we define wisdom in the military context as expert knowledge and judgment concerning in extremis military operations. We measured wisdom in the military context by asking participants to give advice to an inexperienced officer facing an in extremis operation; subsequently, we coded their responses. Data were provided by 74 senior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in the U.S. defense forces. In support of convergent validity, wisdom in the military context was positively related to general objective wisdom and general self-assessed wisdom. Relationships of wisdom in the military context and general objective wisdom with Big Five personality characteristics were nonsignificant, whereas general self-assessed wisdom was positively related to extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience, and it was negatively related to neuroticism. The findings provide initial support for the validity of the new wisdom in the military context measure. We discuss several implications for future research and practice regarding wisdom in the military context.
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The mnemonic muse: Nostalgia fosters creativity through openness to experience
Wijnand van Tilburg, Constantine Sedikides & Tim Wildschut
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 1–7
Abstract:
We proposed and tested the hypothesis that nostalgia fosters creativity. In Experiments 1 and 2, we examined whether nostalgia increases creativity. Nostalgia, relative to control, sparked creative prose in a writing task. We proceeded to test the mediating role of openness to experience. As hypothesized, openness to experience emerged as a plausible mediator of nostalgia's positive influence on creativity in Experiment 3. Finally, in Experiment 4, nostalgia, mediated by openness, boosted creativity above and beyond positive affect. The findings showcase the relevance of nostalgic reverie for the present and future, and establish nostalgia as a force of creative endeavors.
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The Sunk-Cost Fallacy in the National Football League: Salary Cap Value and Playing Time
Quinn Keefer
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The National Football League (NFL) draft is used to examine the presence of the sunk-cost fallacy in teams’ playing time decisions. In the NFL, salary cap value represents a significant sunk cost to teams. We use the structure of the NFL draft to conduct a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. Optimal bandwidth local linear results suggest a 10% increase in salary cap value yields an additional 2.7 games started, for players selected near the cutoff between the first two rounds. Despite being no more productive, the first round selections receive a compensation premium, which leads to them starting significantly more games.
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Using EEG to predict consumers' future choices
Ariel Telpaz, Ryan Webb & Dino Levy
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is now established that neural imaging technology can predict preferences over consumer products. However the applicability of this method to consumer marketing research remains in question, partly because of the expense required. In this article, we demonstrate that neural measurements made with a relatively low-cost and widely available measurement method — Electroencephalogram (EEG) — can predict future choices over consumer products. In our experiment, subjects viewed individual consumer products in isolation, without making any actual choices, while we measured their neural activity with EEG. After these measurements were taken, subjects then made choices between pairs of the same products. We find that neural activity measured from a mid-frontal electrode displays an increase in the N200 component and a weaker theta band power that correlates with a more preferred good. Using state-of-the-art techniques for relating neural measurements to choice prediction, we demonstrate that these measures predict subsequent choices. Moreover, the accuracy of prediction depends on both the ordinal and cardinal distance of the EEG data: the larger the difference in EEG activity between two goods, the better the predictive accuracy.
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The Effect of Providing Peer Information on Retirement Savings Decisions
John Beshears et al.
Journal of Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a field experiment in a 401(k) plan, we measure the effect of disseminating information about peer behavior on savings. Low-saving employees received simplified plan enrollment or contribution increase forms. A randomized subset of forms stated the fraction of age-matched coworkers participating in the plan or age-matched participants contributing at least 6% of pay to the plan. We document an oppositional reaction: the presence of peer information decreased the savings of nonparticipants who were ineligible for 401(k) automatic enrollment, and higher observed peer savings rates also decreased savings. Discouragement from upward social comparisons seems to drive this reaction.
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Imperfect Recall: The Impact of Composite Spending Information Disclosure on Credit Card Spending
Amit Poddar, Cameron Ellis & Timucin Ozcan
Journal of Consumer Policy, March 2015, Pages 93-104
Abstract:
In the past 30 years, consumer credit card debt has expanded tremendously. We know that consumers willingly pay more for the same product when using credit cards versus cash, contrary to the classical rational agent model. Research suggests that it happens due to three imperfections in the classical model: imperfect self-knowledge, imperfect willpower, and imperfect recall. Traditional solutions to credit abuse address the first two imperfections; we examine the third. We propose reminding consumers, on every receipt, how much they have spent cumulatively. We test the effect of this proposal on spending via a controlled experiment. We find that printing this additional information on credit card receipts leads to a significant 9.6% reduction in overall spending compared to the status quo. We discuss the public policy implications of this finding as well as implementation issues.
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The brain in your pocket: Evidence that Smartphones are used to supplant thinking
Nathaniel Barr et al.
Computers in Human Behavior, July 2015, Pages 473–480
Abstract:
With the advent of Smartphone technology, access to the internet and its associated knowledge base is at one’s fingertips. What consequences does this have for human cognition? We frame Smartphone use as an instantiation of the extended mind — the notion that our cognition goes beyond our brains — and in so doing, characterize a modern form of cognitive miserliness. Specifically, that people typically forego effortful analytic thinking in lieu of fast and easy intuition suggests that individuals may allow their Smartphones to do their thinking for them. Our account predicts that individuals who are relatively less willing and/or able to engage effortful reasoning processes may compensate by relying on the internet through their Smartphones. Across three studies, we find that those who think more intuitively and less analytically when given reasoning problems were more likely to rely on their Smartphones (i.e., extended mind) for information in their everyday lives. There was no such association with the amount of time using the Smartphone for social media and entertainment purposes, nor did boredom proneness qualify any of our results. These findings demonstrate that people may offload thinking to technology, which in turn demands that psychological science understand the meshing of mind and media to adequately characterize human experience and cognition in the modern era.
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Anuj Shah, Eldar Shafir & Sendhil Mullainathan
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Economic models of decision making assume that people have a stable way of thinking about value. In contrast, psychology has shown that people’s preferences are often malleable and influenced by normatively irrelevant contextual features. Whereas economics derives its predictions from the assumption that people navigate a world of scarce resources, recent psychological work has shown that people often do not attend to scarcity. In this article, we show that when scarcity does influence cognition, it renders people less susceptible to classic context effects. Under conditions of scarcity, people focus on pressing needs and recognize the trade-offs that must be made against those needs. Those trade-offs frame perception more consistently than irrelevant contextual cues, which exert less influence. The results suggest that scarcity can align certain behaviors more closely with traditional economic predictions.
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Field Experiments on the Anchoring of Economic Valuations
Jonathan Alevy, Craig Landry & John List
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
A pillar of behavioral research is that preferences are constructed during the process of choice. A prominent finding is that uninformative numerical “anchors” influence judgment and valuation. It remains unclear whether such processes influence market equilibria. We conduct two experiments that extend the study of anchoring to field settings. The first experiment produces evidence that some consumers' valuations can be anchored in novel situations; there is no evidence that experienced agents are influenced by anchors. The second experiment finds that anchors have only transient effects on market outcomes that converge to equilibrium predictions after a few market periods.
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The excess choice effect: The role of outcome valence and counterfactual thinking
Rebecca Hafner, Mathew White & Simon Handley
British Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Contrary to economic theory, psychological research has demonstrated increased choice can undermine satisfaction. When and why this ‘excess choice effect’ (ECE) occurs remains unclear. Building on theories of counterfactual thinking we argue the ECE is more likely to occur when people experience counterfactual thought or emotion and that a key trigger is a negative versus positive task outcome. Participants either selected a drink (Experiment 1) or chocolate (Experiment 2) from a limited (6) versus extensive (24) selection (Experiment 1) or were given no choice versus extensive (24) choice (Experiment 2). In both experiments, however, the choice was illusory: Half the participants tasted a ‘good’ flavour, half a ‘bad’ flavour. As predicted, extensive choice was only detrimental to satisfaction when participants tasted the ‘bad’ drink or chocolate, and this was mediated by the experience of counterfactual thought (Experiment 1) or emotion (Experiment 2). When outcomes were positive, participants were similarly satisfied with limited versus extensive and no choice versus extensive choice. Implications for our theoretical understanding of the ECE and for the construction of choice architectures aimed at promoting individual satisfaction and well-being are discussed.
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Physiological Correlates of Choice-Induced Dissonance: An Exploration of HPA-Axis Responses
Sasha Kimel, Nestor Lopez-Duran & Shinobu Kitayama
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
Choice can produce a negatively arousing cognitive conflict (called dissonance), which is thought to motivate the chooser to spread their preferences for the relevant options (called Spreading of Alternatives, or SA). The current work aimed to determine the relationship between HPA-axis activity and both choice-induced dissonance and its reduction (i.e. SA) among individuals with varying cultural backgrounds. European–Americans and Asians made a choice between two equally attractive CDs either in the presence of a cue indicative of social eyes (i.e. public-choice condition) or in the absence thereof (i.e. private-choice condition). As predicted, European–Americans and Asians showed a reliable SA primarily in the private and public choice conditions, respectively. Importantly, a sharp decline of salivary cortisol was observed over the span of 30 min, and, moreover, this decline was reliably predicted by the magnitude of SA regardless of either culture or the choice being private vs. public. These results suggest that although choice-induced dissonance is too weak to elicit an HPA-axis stress response, SA is associated with variability in the decline of salivary cortisol during the laboratory task.
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Two Languages, Two Minds: Flexible Cognitive Processing Driven by Language of Operation
Panos Athanasopoulos et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People make sense of objects and events around them by classifying them into identifiable categories. The extent to which language affects this process has been the focus of a long-standing debate: Do different languages cause their speakers to behave differently? Here, we show that fluent German-English bilinguals categorize motion events according to the grammatical constraints of the language in which they operate. First, as predicted from cross-linguistic differences in motion encoding, bilingual participants functioning in a German testing context prefer to match events on the basis of motion completion to a greater extent than do bilingual participants in an English context. Second, when bilingual participants experience verbal interference in English, their categorization behavior is congruent with that predicted for German; when bilingual participants experience verbal interference in German, their categorization becomes congruent with that predicted for English. These findings show that language effects on cognition are context-bound and transient, revealing unprecedented levels of malleability in human cognition.