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MindReader Weekly - 4th - Why our university should heat us up a bit more and how thinking experientially solves "treadmill of consumerism"

Potentially MindShifting Papers:*^{(see below)}

• Jennie Branda, Yu Xieb (2010):

„[W]e consider how the economic return to a college education varies across members of the U.S. population. Based on principles of comparative advantage, scholars commonly presume that positive selection is at work, that is, individuals who are most likely to select into college also benefit most from college. Net of observed economic and noneconomic factors influencing college attendance, we conjecture that individuals who are least likely to obtain a college education benefit the most from college. We call this theory the negative selection hypothesis. To adjudicate between the two hypotheses, we study the effects of completing college on earnings by propensity score strata using an innovative hierarchical linear model with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. For both cohorts, for both men and women, and for every observed stage of the life course, we find evidence suggesting negative selection. Results from auxiliary analyses lend further support to the negative selection hypothesis.“

• Jonathan Levav, Jennifer Arg (2010):

„We show that minimal physical contact can increase people’s sense of security and consequently lead them to increased risktaking behavior. In three experiments, with both hypothetical and real payoffs, a female experimenter’s light, comforting pat on the shoulder led participants to greater financial risk taking. Further, this effect was both mediated and moderated by feelings of security in both male and female participants. Finally, we established the boundary conditions for the impact of physical contact on risk-taking behaviors by demonstrating that the effect does not occur when the touching is performed by a male and is attenuated when the touch consists of a handshake. The results suggest that subtle physical contact can be strongly influential in decision making and the willingness to accept risk.“

• Philip Babcock, Mindy Marks (2010):

„Using multiple datasets from different time periods, we document declines in academic time investment by full-time college students in the United States between 1961 and 2003. Full-time students allocated 40 hours per week toward class and studying in 1961, whereas by 2003 they were investing about 27 hours per week. Declines were extremely broad-based, and are not easily accounted for by framing effects, work or major choices, or compositional changes in students or schools. We conclude that there have been substantial changes over time in the quantity or manner of human capital production on college campuses.“

• Christopher Olivola, Alexander Todorov (2010):

„Recent research has shown that rapid judgments about the personality traits of political candidates, based solely on their appearance, can predict their electoral success. This suggests that voters rely heavily on appearances when choosing which candidate to elect. Here we review this literature and examine the determinants of the relationship between appearance-based trait inferences and voting. We also reanalyze previous data to show that facial competence is a highly robust and specific predictor of political preferences. Finally, we introduce a computer model of face-based competence judgments, which we use to derive some of the facial features associated with these judgments.“

• Hans Jzerman, Gün Semin (2009):

„Holding warm feelings toward someone“ and „giving someone the cold shoulder“ indicate different levels of social proximity. In this article, we show effects of temperature that go beyond these metaphors people live by. In three experiments, warmer conditions, compared with colder conditions, induced (a) greater social proximity, (b) use of more concrete language, and (c) a more relational focus. Different temperature conditions were created by either handing participants warm or cold beverages (Experiment 1) or placing them in comfortable warm or cold ambient conditions (Experiments 2 and 3). These studies corroborate recent findings in the field of grounded cognition revealing that concrete experiences ground abstract concepts with which they are coexperienced. Our studies show a systemic interdependence among language, perception, and social proximity: Environmentally induced conditions shape not only language use, but also the perception and construal of social relationships.“

• Gui Xue, Zhonglin Lu, Irwin Levin, and Antoine Bechara (2010):

„Human decision-making involving independent events is often biased and affected by prior outcomes. Using a controlled task that allows us to manipulate prior outcomes, the present study examined the effect of prior outcomes on subsequent decisions in a group of young adults. We found that participants were more risk-seeking after losing a gamble (riskloss) than after winning a gamble (riskwin), a pattern resembling the gambler’s fallacy. Functional MRI data revealed that decisions after riskloss were associated with increased activation in the frontoparietal network, but decreased activation in the caudate and ventral striatum. The increased risk-seeking behavior after a loss showed a trend of positive correlation with activation in the frontoparietal network and the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex but a trend of negative correlation with activation in the amgydala and caudate. In addition, there was a trend of positive correlation between feedback-related activation in the left lateral frontal cortex and subsequent increased risk-seeking behavior. These results suggest that a strong cognitive control mechanism but a weak affective decision-making and reinforcement learning mechanism that usually contribute to flexible, goal-directed decisions can lead to decision biases involving random events. This has significant implications for our understanding of the gambler’s fallacy and human decision making under risk.“

• Yohsuke Ohtsubo, Esuka Watanabea (2009):

„The present study examined a costly signaling model of human apology. The model assumes that an unintentional transgressor is more motivated to restore the relationship with the victim than an intentional transgressor who depreciates the relationship. The model predicts the existence of a separating equilibrium, in which only sincere apologizers will pay a certain cost to restore the relationship, while dishonest apologizers will not. Accordingly, we hypothesized that the receivers of an apology would be sensitive to the cost involved in the apology. Sections 2  and 3  were vignette experiments, in which participants imagined that they were victims of an interpersonal transgression and received either a costly or no-cost apology. The costliness of the apology was manipulated by the presence of an apology gift in Experiment 1, and by inconvenience voluntarily experienced by the transgressor to make an apology in Experiment 2. In both experiments, participants found the costly apologizer to be more sincere than the no-cost apologizer. Experiment 3 employed a modified dictator game, in which a fictitious partner behaved in an unfair manner and apologized to the participants. The apology cost was manipulated as a fee for sending the apology message. The results of Sections 2  and 3  were replicated. In addition, when given a chance to send a complaint message to the unfair person, participants in the costly apology condition abstained from doing so. Implications of the study are discussed in relation to applications of the costly signaling theory to interpersonal behavior.“

• Giorgio Coricelli, Mateus Joffily, Claude Montmarquette, and Marie Claire Villeval (2010):

„The economics-of-crime approach usually ignores the emotional cost and benefit of cheating. In this paper, we investigate the relationships between emotions, deception, and rational decision-making by means of an experiment on tax evasion. Emotions are measured by skin conductance responses and self-reports. We show that the intensity of anticipated and anticipatory emotions before reporting positively correlates with both the decision to cheat and the proportion of evaded income. The experienced emotional arousal after an audit increases with the monetary sanctions and the arousal is even stronger when the evader’s picture is publicly displayed. We also find that the risk of a public exposure of deception deters evasion whereas the amount of fines encourages evasion. These results suggest that an audit policy that strengthens the emotional dimension of cheating favors compliance.“

• John Horton, David Rand, and Richard Zeckhauser (2010):

„Online labor markets have great potential as platforms for conducting experiments, as they provide immediate access to a large and diverse subject pool and allow researchers to conduct randomized controlled trials. We argue that online experiments can be just as valid – both internally and externally – as laboratory and field experiments, while requiring far less money and time to design and to conduct. In this paper, we first describe the benefits of conducting experiments in online labor markets; we then use one such market to replicate three classic experiments and confirm their results. We confirm that subjects (1) reverse decisions in response to how a decision-problem is framed, (2) have pro-social preferences (value payoffs to others positively), and (3) respond to priming by altering their choices. We also conduct a labor supply field experiment in which we confirm that workers have upward sloping labor supply curves. In addition to reporting these results, we discuss the unique threats to validity in an online setting and propose methods for coping with these threats. We also discuss the external validity of results from online domains and explain why online results can have external validity equal to or even better than that of traditional methods, depending on the research question. We conclude with our views on the potential role that online experiments can play within the social sciences, and then recommend software development priorities and best practices.“

• Travis Carter, Thomas Gilovich (2010):

„When it comes to spending disposable income, experiential purchases tend to make people happier than material purchases … We propose that the evaluation of experiences tends to be less comparative than that of material possessions, such that potentially invidious comparisons have less impact on satisfaction with experiences than with material possessions. Support for this contention was obtained in 8 studies. We found that participants were less satisfied with their material purchases because they were more likely to ruminate about unchosen options (Study 1); that participants tended to maximize when selecting material goods and satisfice when selecting experiences (Study 2); that participants examined unchosen material purchases more than unchosen experiential purchases (Study 3); and that, relative to experiences, participants’ satisfaction with their material possessions was undermined more by comparisons to other available options (Studies 4 and 5A), to the same option at a different price (Studies 5B and 6), and to the purchases of other individuals (Study 5C). Our results suggest that experiential purchase decisions are easier to make and more conducive to well-being.“

* If you can‘t get any of the mentioned papers, please, contact me. If there is a bunch of curious students interested in discussing the topics published in MindReader, the debate will be held by myself or by Petr Koblovský, Ph.D. in „my“ restaurant at 19:00, June 7, 2010. Discussion will be in Czech (unless notified otherwise). If you are interested to participate, please send me an e-mail before June 4.