Pros and cons
Simone Tang, Steven Shepherd & Aaron Kay
Psychological Science, forthcoming
"What types of situations might predictably motivate belief in fate? We suggest that one such situation is decision difficulty...In two studies, we tested this novel hypothesis using a real-world, important, imminent decision: which candidate to vote for in the 2012 U.S. presidential election...Participants were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk 1 week before the election (N = 202)...As predicted, greater decision difficulty was related to greater belief in fate, r(187) = .19, p = .01...In Study 2, we experimentally investigated the link between decision difficulty and belief in fate by manipulating the ease of distinguishing between two options, a known component of decision difficulty. Participants read real policy statements from the two presidential candidates; the statements were chosen to make the candidates appear either more distinguishable or less distinguishable...Data were collected via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk 2 days before the election (N = 200)...As predicted, participants in the similar-candidates condition reported greater belief in fate (M = 3.45, SD = 1.46) than did those in the different-candidates condition (M = 3.04, SD = 1.44), t(180) = 1.92, p = .057."
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Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity
Francesca Gino & Scott Wiltermuth
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose that dishonest and creative behavior have something in common: They both involve breaking rules. Because of this shared feature, creativity may lead to dishonesty (as shown in prior work), and dishonesty may lead to creativity (the hypothesis we tested in this research). In five experiments, participants had the opportunity to behave dishonestly by overreporting their performance on various tasks. They then completed one or more tasks designed to measure creativity. Those who cheated were subsequently more creative than noncheaters, even when we accounted for individual differences in their creative ability (Experiment 1). Using random assignment, we confirmed that acting dishonestly leads to greater creativity in subsequent tasks (Experiments 2 and 3). The link between dishonesty and creativity is explained by a heightened feeling of being unconstrained by rules, as indicated by both mediation (Experiment 4) and moderation (Experiment 5).
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People Claim Objectivity After Knowingly Using Biased Strategies
Katherine Hansen et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
People tend not to recognize bias in their judgments. Such “bias blindness” persists, we show, even when people acknowledge that the judgmental strategies preceding their judgments are biased. In Experiment 1, participants took a test, received failure feedback, and then were led to assess the test’s quality via an explicitly biased strategy (focusing on the test’s weaknesses), an explicitly objective strategy, or a strategy of their choice. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants rated paintings using an explicitly biased or explicitly objective strategy. Across the three experiments, participants who used a biased strategy rated it as relatively biased, provided biased judgments, and then claimed to be relatively objective. Participants in Experiment 3 also assessed how biased they expected to be by their strategy, prior to using it. These pre-ratings revealed that not only did participants’ sense of personal objectivity survive using a biased strategy, it grew stronger.
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Can exposure to prenatal sex hormones (2D:4D) predict cognitive reflection?
Antoni Bosch-Domènech, Pablo Brañas-Garza & Antonio Espín
Psychoneuroendocrinology, May 2014, Pages 1–10
Abstract:
The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a test introduced by Frederick (2005). The task is designed to measure the tendency to override an intuitive response that is incorrect and to engage in further reflection that leads to the correct response. The consistent sex differences in CRT performance may suggest a role for prenatal sex hormones. A now widely studied putative marker for relative prenatal testosterone is the second-to-fourth digit ratio (2D:4D). This paper tests to what extent 2D:4D, as a proxy for the prenatal ratio of testosterone/estrogens, can predict CRT scores in a sample of 623 students. After controlling for sex, we observe that a lower 2D:4D (reflecting a relative higher exposure to testosterone) is significantly associated with a higher number of correct answers. The result holds for both hands’ 2D:4Ds. In addition, the effect appears to be stronger for females than for males. We also control for patience and math proficiency, which are significantly related to performance in the CRT. But the effect of 2D:4D on performance in CRT is not reduced with these controls, implying that these variables are not mediating the relationship between digit ratio and CRT.
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People with Easier to Pronounce Names Promote Truthiness of Claims
Eryn Newman et al.
PLoS ONE, February 2014
Abstract:
When people make judgments about the truth of a claim, related but nonprobative information rapidly leads them to believe the claim – an effect called “truthiness”. Would the pronounceability of others’ names also influence the truthiness of claims attributed to them? We replicated previous work by asking subjects to evaluate people’s names on a positive dimension, and extended that work by asking subjects to rate those names on negative dimensions. Then we addressed a novel theoretical issue by asking subjects to read that same list of names, and judge the truth of claims attributed to them. Across all experiments, easily pronounced names trumped difficult names. Moreover, the effect of pronounceability produced truthiness for claims attributed to those names. Our findings are a new instantiation of truthiness, and extend research on the truth effect as well as persuasion by showing that subjective, tangential properties such as ease of processing can matter when people evaluate information attributed to a source.
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The Harder the Task, The Higher the Score: Findings of a Difficulty Bias
Hillary Morgan & Kurt Rotthoff
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studies have found that going first or last in a sequential order contest leads to a biased outcome, commonly called order bias (or primacy and recency). Studies have also found that judges have a tendency to reward contestants they recognize with additional points, called reference bias. Controlling for known biases, we test for a new type of bias we refer to as “difficulty bias,” which reveals that athletes attempting more difficult routines receive higher execution scores, even when difficulty and execution are judged separately. Despite some identification challenges, we add to the literature by finding strong evidence of a difficulty bias in gymnastics. We also provide generalizations beyond athletics.
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Where could we stand if I had…? How social power impacts counterfactual thinking after failure
Annika Scholl & Kai Sassenberg
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
After failure, individuals often imagine how they could have achieved a better outcome, thereby learning to improve their behavior in the future. The current research investigated how social power affects such self-focused counterfactual thinking. Previous findings indicate that power evokes a sense of personal control. Sensed control in turn guides counterfactual thought, facilitating thoughts about those aspects individuals perceive control over. We thus proposed that compared to the powerful, the powerless sense lower personal control and therefore engage in less self-focused counterfactual thinking after failure. A field study and three experiments indeed demonstrated that being powerless (vs. powerful) diminished self-focused counterfactual thinking by lowering sensed personal control. This mechanism was also supported by experimentally manipulating the mediator and by ruling out an alternative mechanism (i.e., felt responsibility). Additional data indicated that self-focused counterfactuals in turn promoted learning (i.e., behavioral intentions). Extending prior research on power, action, and diminished thought, the results thus show that at times, those low, rather than high, in power think less about their own actions before taking the next step.
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Christopher Lucas et al.
Cognition, May 2014, Pages 284–299
Abstract:
Children learn causal relationships quickly and make far-reaching causal inferences from what they observe. Acquiring abstract causal principles that allow generalization across different causal relationships could support these abilities. We examine children’s ability to acquire abstract knowledge about the forms of causal relationships and show that in some cases they learn better than adults. Adults and 4- and 5-year-old children saw events suggesting that a causal relationship took one of two different forms, and their generalization to a new set of objects was then tested. One form was a more typical disjunctive relationship; the other was a more unusual conjunctive relationship. Participants were asked to both judge the causal efficacy of the objects and to design actions to generate or prevent an effect. Our results show that children can learn the abstract properties of causal relationships using only a handful of events. Moreover, children were more likely than adults to generalize the unusual conjunctive relationship, suggesting that they are less biased by prior assumptions and pay more attention to current evidence. These results are consistent with the predictions of a hierarchical Bayesian model.
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Perceptual symbols of creativity: Coldness elicits referential, warmth elicits relational creativity
Hans IJzerman, Angela Leung & Lay See Ong
Acta Psychologica, May 2014, Pages 136–147
Abstract:
Research in the cognitive and social psychological science has revealed the pervading relation between body and mind. Physical warmth leads people to perceive others as psychological closer to them and to be more generous towards others. More recently, physical warmth has also been implicated in the processing of information, specifically through perceiving relationships (via physical warmth) and contrasting from others (via coldness). In addition, social psychological work has linked social cues (such as mimicry and power cues) to creative performance. The present work integrates these two literatures, by providing an embodied model of creative performance through relational (warm = relational) and referential (cold = distant) processing. The authors predict and find that warm cues lead to greater creativity when 1) creating drawings, 2) categorizing objects, and 3) coming up with gifts for others. In contrast, cold cues lead to greater creativity, when 1) breaking set in a metaphor recognition task, 2) coming up with new pasta names, and 3) being abstract in coming up with gifts. Effects are found across different populations and age groups. The authors report implications for theory and discuss limitations of the present work.
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Analytical reasoning task reveals limits of social learning in networks
Iyad Rahwan et al.
Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, 6 April 2014
Abstract:
Social learning — by observing and copying others — is a highly successful cultural mechanism for adaptation, outperforming individual information acquisition and experience. Here, we investigate social learning in the context of the uniquely human capacity for reflective, analytical reasoning. A hallmark of the human mind is its ability to engage analytical reasoning, and suppress false associative intuitions. Through a set of laboratory-based network experiments, we find that social learning fails to propagate this cognitive strategy. When people make false intuitive conclusions and are exposed to the analytic output of their peers, they recognize and adopt this correct output. But they fail to engage analytical reasoning in similar subsequent tasks. Thus, humans exhibit an ‘unreflective copying bias’, which limits their social learning to the output, rather than the process, of their peers’ reasoning — even when doing so requires minimal effort and no technical skill. In contrast to much recent work on observation-based social learning, which emphasizes the propagation of successful behaviour through copying, our findings identify a limit on the power of social networks in situations that require analytical reasoning.
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Effect of Temporal Spacing between Advertising Exposures: Evidence from Online Field Experiments
Navdeep Sahni
Stanford Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
This paper aims to understand the impact of temporal spacing between ad exposures on the likelihood of a consumer purchasing the advertised product. I create an individual-level data set with exogenous variation in the spacing and intensity of ads by running online field experiments. Using this data set, I first show that (1) ads significantly increase the likelihood of the consumers purchasing from the advertiser and (2) this increase carries over to future purchase occasions. Importantly, I find evidence for the spacing effect: the likelihood of a product's purchase increases if the product's past ads are spread apart rather than bunched together, even if the spreading apart of ads involves shifting some ads away from the purchase occasion. Because the traditional models of advertising do not explain the data patterns, I build a new memory-based model of how advertising influences consumer behavior. Using a nested test, I reject the restrictions imposed by the canonical goodwill stock model based on the Nerlove and Arrow [1962] approach, in favor of the more general memory-based model. Counterfactual simulations using the parameter estimates show that not accounting for the features of the memory model might lead to significantly lower profits for the advertisers.
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An Investigation of the Endowment Effect in the Context of a College Housing Lottery
Jane Gradwohl Nash & Robert Rosenthal
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The endowment effect was examined in a two-part study in the context of a college housing lottery. Students who were awarded their first choice of residence hall were asked the lowest dollar amount they would be willing to accept (WTA) to give up their first choice hall whereas students who were denied their first choice were asked the highest dollar amount they would be willing to pay (WTP) to obtain their first choice. Results from the Initial Assessment showed the presence of the endowment effect regarding students’ valuation of their first choice residence hall immediately after the housing lottery (i.e., WTA price was significantly higher than WTP price). The Follow-Up surveyed participants from the Initial Assessment who responded when contacted a second time after they had experienced two months of life in the residence hall they were awarded in the lottery. Results from the Follow-Up showed that the endowment effect was still present after experiencing life in the residence hall. Moreover, further analyses revealed that the endowment effect was, in fact, enhanced after the living experience. These findings demonstrate that within the context of a housing lottery, a highly-valued commodity, long-term experiences substantially increase the magnitude of the endowment effect, even when controlling for other factors that have been shown to impact this effect.
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Limited Availability Reduces the Rate of Satiation
Julio Sevilla & Joseph Redden
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Consumers generally enjoy products less with repeated consumption. Unfortunately, there are few known ways to slow such satiation. We show that consumers satiate slower on a product when it is available for consumption only at limited times. Specifically, perceived limited availability made a product more enjoyable, yet this effect largely emerged only after repeated consumption. We attribute this finding to an urge to take advantage of a rare consumption opportunity, which leads people to pay less attention to the quantity consumed and subsequently to experience less satiation. A series of studies establish the effect of perceived limited availability on the rate of satiation, show it influences how much people eat, provide mediation evidence of our proposed theoretical account, and eliminate the effect by making salient the total amount consumed. We conclude with implications of our findings.
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It Tastes As Good As It Looks! The Effect of Food Presentation on Liking for the Flavor of Food
Debra Zellner et al.
Appetite, forthcoming
Abstract:
Diners in a restaurant were served the same meal (composed of a sautéed chicken breast with a fines herbes sauce, brown rice pilaf, and sautéed green beans with toasted almonds served on a round white china plate). The same food was presented in two different arrangements on two different nights. Although the two presentations were judged as equally “neat”, one was judged as more attractive. Subjects reported liking the food on the plate (when all items were judged together) more when it was presented in the more attractive than the less attractive manner. When food items were judged separately, subjects reported liking the chicken and the sauce significantly more when presented in the more attractive manner. Subjects also reported more positive responses to the brown rice pilaf when presented in the more attractive plating style. How attractively food is plated can affect liking for the flavor of the food and could be used to increase acceptance of “healthy” foods.
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Acceleration With Steering: The Synergistic Benefits of Combining Power and Perspective-Taking
Adam Galinsky et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Power is a psychological accelerator, propelling people toward their goals; however, these goals are often egocentrically focused. Perspective-taking is a psychological steering wheel that helps people navigate their social worlds; however, perspective-taking needs a catalyst to be effective. The current research explores whether combining power with perspective-taking can lead to fairer interpersonal treatment and higher quality decisions by increasing other-oriented information sharing, the propensity to communicate and integrate information that recognizes the knowledge and interests of others. Experiments 1 and 2 found that the combining power with perspective-taking or accountability increased interactional justice, the tendency for decision makers to explain their decisions candidly and respectfully. Experiment 3 involved role-based power embedded in a face-to-face dyadic decision-making task; the combination of power and perspective-taking facilitated the sharing of critical information and led to more accurate dyadic decisions. Combining power and perspective-taking had synergistic effects, producing superior outcomes to what each one achieved separately.
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Keeping your gains close but your money closer: The prepayment effect in riskless choices
Guy Hochman, Shahar Ayal & Dan Ariely
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although research on loss aversion now spans more than three decades, researchers are still debating whether (or in which cases) the finding holds true for money. We contribute to this debate by exploring how prepayment affects financial decisions. In one set of experiments, we show that when faced with a tradeoff between post- and prepayment, participants overvalue prepaid money, and sometimes even prefer it over objectively higher gains. Importantly, this effect was more pronounced when prepayment was more distant from its pure representation in dollars and cents (Experiment 1A), as well as when potential losses were directly linked to specific options (Experiment 1B). As far as the processes involved, our results suggest that prepayment leads to increased personal commitment to prepaid options (Experiment 1 C). In a second set of experiments, we show that even when the tradeoff element is eliminated, participants are more motivated and engaged in a task that is prepaid rather than post-paid (Experiments 2A and 2B). Based on our findings, we discuss how firms can use prepayment mechanisms to get more out of their agents, and how individuals can be motivated to better utilize their money.
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Lisa Cavanaugh
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Marketers regularly remind consumers of valued social relationships (e.g. close friends, family, romantic couples) in order to influence choice and consumption. Interestingly, my research shows that such relationship reminders can backfire when consumers do not or no longer have these highlighted relationships. I show that reminding consumers of relationships they lack reduces consumers’ perceptions of deservingness and causes them to restrict indulgent consumption. Five studies establish the effect of relationship reminders on indulgence and provide support for the underlying process by both measuring and manipulating perceptions of deservingness.