In my judgment
Long live the King! Beginnings loom larger than endings of past and recurrent events
Karl Halvor Teigen et al.
Cognition, June 2017, Pages 26–41
Abstract:
Events are temporal “figures”, which can be defined as identifiable segments in time, bounded by beginnings and endings. But the functions and importance of these two boundaries differ. We argue that beginnings loom larger than endings by attracting more attention, being judged as more important and interesting, warranting more explanation, and having more causal power. This difference follows from a lay notion that additions (the introduction of something new) imply more change and demand more effort than do subtractions (returning to a previous state of affairs). This “beginning advantage” is demonstrated in eight studies of people’s representations of epochs and events on a historical timeline as well as in cyclical change in the annual seasons. People think it is more important to know when wars and reigns started than when they ended, and are more interested in reading about beginnings than endings of historical movements. Transitional events (such as elections and passages from one season to the next) claim more interest and grow in importance when framed as beginnings of what follows than as conclusions of what came before. As beginnings are often identified in retrospect, the beginning advantage may distort and exaggerate their actual historical importance.
Hate the Sin, Love the Saints: Activities Versus Actors in Message Design
Matthew McGlone & Elizabeth Glowacki
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The reported study investigated the persuasive effects of nouns describing activities and their human actors in message design. Fictitious op-ed essays were created from the point of view of authors taking a complimentary or critical stance on two controversial topics. Different versions were created in which activity nouns (immigration, cosmetic surgery) or actor nouns (immigrants, cosmetic surgeons) referring to the topics were manipulated orthogonally to essay stance. Participants considered essays praising actors to be more persuasive than others praising activities, but were more persuaded by essays indicting activities than actors. The implications for message design theory and practice are discussed.
Speaking to the Heart: Social Exclusion and Reliance on Feelings versus Reasons in Persuasion
Fang-Chi Lu & Jayati Sinha
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors of this study identify an alternative frame of communication for persuading people who feel socially excluded to behave in ways that benefit individual and social wellbeing, regardless of future connection possibilities. The authors suggest that socially excluded (included) consumers tend to rely on affect (cognition) in processing information, and to consequently prefer persuasive messages based on feelings (reasons). The effect occurs because people tend to ruminate about exclusionary events, which depletes self-regulatory resources. Thus, distraction that interferes with rumination can mitigate the social exclusion effect on affective processing. The authors present findings from five studies across various paradigms promoting personal and social wellbeing (i.e., donating blood, recycling, and consuming healthful foods) and discuss the theoretical and policy implications.
Performance Evaluation and Favoritism: Evidence From Mixed Martial Arts
Paul Gift
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article investigates various types of bias and favoritism that may be present in the performance evaluations of state-licensed and state-selected judges for mixed martial arts (MMA) events. Using detailed fighter performance statistics collected from after-the-fact video analysis, I investigate live, round-by-round judging decisions for major MMA events held in Nevada and California from 2001 to 2012. Findings do not support hypotheses that judges favor titleholders or disfavor fighters given point deductions but do support bias toward larger betting favorites, those with insurmountable leads, and the fighter who won the previous round. Findings provide nonexperimental support for possible biases in a relatively opaque decision environment involving substantial complexity. The results also have strategic implications for MMA fighters and coaches as well as certified judge trainers the athletic commissions that license and oversee the judges.
Evaluating erroneous offside calls in soccer
Stefanie Hüttermann, Benjamin Noël & Daniel Memmert
PLoS ONE, March 2017
Abstract:
The ability to simultaneously attend to multiple objects declines with increases in the visual angle separating distant objects. We explored whether these laboratory-measured limits on visual attentional spread generalize to a real life context: offside calls by soccer assistant referees. We coded all offside calls from a full year of first division German soccer matches. By determining the x-y coordinates of the relevant players and assistant referee on the soccer field we were able to calculate how far assistant referees had to spread their visual attention to perform well. Counterintuitively, assistant referees made fewer errors when they were farther away from the action due to an advantageous (smaller) visual angle on the game action. The pattern held even when we accounted for individual differences in a laboratory-based attentional spread measure of ten of the assistant referees. Our finding that errors are linked to smaller visual angles may explain the complaints of fans in some situations: Those seated directly behind the assistant referee, further from the players, might actually have it easier to make the right call because the relevant players would form a smaller visual angle.
The Effects of Gain- and Loss-Framed Advice Messages on Recipients’ Responses to Advice
JooYoung Jang & Bo Feng
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Features of advice messages have received considerable attention in prior research, but the framing of advice has remained underexplored. This study examined the influence of advice message framing (i.e., gain-framed message vs. loss-framed message) on recipients’ responses to advice in terms of evaluation of advice quality, facilitation of coping, and intention to implement advice. The mediating roles of regard for face and efficacy were also assessed. A total of 605 participants read and responded to a hypothetical conversation in which they received advice from a friend. Results indicated that gain-framed advice messages elicited higher evaluations of advice quality and higher perceptions of facilitation of coping in comparison with loss-framed advice messages. Recipient’s perceptions of the advice-giver’s regard for face mediated the impact of framing on evaluation of advice quality and facilitation of coping.
Mindless resistance to persuasion: Low self-control fosters the use of resistance-promoting heuristics
Loes Janssen & Bob Fennis
Journal of Consumer Behaviour, forthcoming
Abstract:
In our consumer society, people are confronted on a daily basis with unsolicited persuasion attempts. The present research challenges the prevailing view that resisting persuasion is more likely to fail when consumers have low self-control. Four experiments tested the hypothesis that impaired self-regulation may actually facilitate resistance to persuasion when the influence context contains resistance-promoting heuristics. Indeed, participants with low self-control were less likely to comply with a persuasive request (Experiments 1 and 3), reported a less favourable attitude towards an advertised product (Experiment 2), and generated more negative responses towards a persuasive message (Experiment 4) than participants with high self-control, when they could rely on resistance-promoting heuristics: a violation of the norm of reciprocity (Experiments 1 and 3), an advertisement disclaimer (Experiment 2), or negative social proof (Experiment 4). Together, these studies demonstrate that contextual cues can bolster resistance when one does not carefully scrutinize an influence attempt.
Risk Aversion as a Perceptual Bias
Mel Win Khaw, Ziang Li & Michael Woodford
NBER Working Paper, March 2017
Abstract:
The theory of expected utility maximization (EUM) explains risk aversion as due to diminishing marginal utility of wealth. However, observed choices between risky lotteries are difficult to reconcile with EUM: for example, in the laboratory, subjects' responses on individual trials involve a random element, and cannot be predicted purely from the terms offered; and subjects often appear to be too risk averse with regard to small gambles (while still accepting sufficiently favorable large gambles) to be consistent with any utility-of-wealth function. We propose a unified explanation for both anomalies, similar to the explanation given for related phenomena in the case of perceptual judgments: they result from judgments based on imprecise (and noisy) mental representation of the decision situation. In this model, risk aversion is predicted without any need for a nonlinear utility-of-wealth function, and instead results from a sort of perceptual bias — but one that represents an optimal Bayesian decision, given the limitations of the mental representation of the situation. We propose a specific quantitative model of the mental representation of a simple lottery choice problem, based on other evidence regarding numerical cognition, and test its ability to explain the choice frequencies that we observe in a laboratory experiment.