{"title":"Expectations, gender, and choking under pressure: Evidence from alpine skiing","authors":"Christoph Bühren , Martin Gschwend , Alex Krumer","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102692","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102692","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In alpine skiing competitions, one of the coaches of the participating countries sets the course. This may provide an advantage, but it may also exert higher pressure on the racers. We analyze 45,467 men’s and 41,221 women’s performances from all competitions in alpine skiing’s Slalom, Giant Slalom, and Super Giant disciplines that took place in the World Cups, World Championships, and Olympic Games between the 2001/2002 and 2019/2020 seasons. We compare the performance of racers when competing on a course that was set by their compatriot to the performance of the same racers in the same season when the course was set by a coach from another country. Having a compatriot course setter only has an effect in the second (and decisive) run of the most technical discipline Slalom. We find that men fail significantly more often to complete their run when their compatriots set the course, whereas women fail significantly less in the same situation. The most likely drivers of our results relate to gender differences in response to expectations and choking under pressure in skill-based tasks.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487023000934/pdfft?md5=790678b52dfcb43391a7621d18d4a22c&pid=1-s2.0-S0167487023000934-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138568860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Brains, hormones, and genes: Introduction to the special issue on the biological foundations of economic decision-making","authors":"Kim Fairley , Helena Fornwagner , Aysu Okbay","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102683","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Journal of Economic Psychology’s previous Special Issue related to biology - the Special Issue on Decision Neuroscience by Smith and Huettel (2010) - was released over a decade ago. Since then, technological advances have led to better data availability and methodologies across various scientific fields. New techniques and biomedical measures, such as brain stimulation and genotyping, have become more accessible to researchers. Therefore, we found it timely to organize a Special Issue on the Biological Foundations of Economic Decision-Making. The Introduction to this Special Issue will provide an overview of the latest research findings in this field and the selected papers for this Special Issue. The different contributions are grouped into three main subtopics, namely Neuroeconomics, hormones and neuroendocrine signaling, and studies utilizing genetic information.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138356228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yvonne Oberholzer , Sebastian Olschewski , Benjamin Scheibehenne
{"title":"Complexity aversion in risky choices and valuations: Moderators and possible causes","authors":"Yvonne Oberholzer , Sebastian Olschewski , Benjamin Scheibehenne","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102681","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In the age of digitalization and globalization, an abundance of information is available, and our decision environments have become increasingly complex. However, it remains unclear under what circumstances complexity affects risk taking. In two experiments with monetary lotteries (one with a stratified national sample), we investigate behavioral effects and provide a cognitive explanation for the impact of complexity on risk taking. Results show that complexity, defined as the number of possible outcomes of a risky lottery, decreased the choice probability of an option but had a smaller and less consistent effect when evaluating lotteries independently. Importantly, choices of participants who spent more time looking at the complex option were less affected by complexity. A tendency to avoid cognitive effort can explain these effects, as the effort associated with evaluating the complex option can be sidestepped in choice tasks, but less so in valuation tasks. Further, the effect of complexity on valuations was influenced by individual differences in cognitive ability, such that people with higher cognitive ability showed less complexity aversion. Together, the results show that the impact of complexity on risk taking depends on both, decision format and individual differences and we discuss cognitive processes that could give rise to these effects.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748702300082X/pdfft?md5=0eed069962bc3c2a101541aca55d0ae9&pid=1-s2.0-S016748702300082X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134843662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: Less risk taking or more reflective? A tDCS study based on a Bayesian-updating task","authors":"Daqiang Huang, Yuzhen Li, Jiahui Li","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102680","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span><span>To identify the causal role of the DLPFC in </span>decision making, we used </span>transcranial direct current stimulation<span> (tDCS) to investigate the contribution of DLPFC to performance in an incentivized decision task where optimal decisions require Bayesian<span> updating of beliefs. In this task, an impulsive reinforcement-based heuristic can either conflict or be aligned with Bayesian updating. Previous research showed that in case of conflict individuals rely on the faulty heuristic, hence committing many decision errors. Based on the involvement of the DLPFC in inhibitory control we hypothesized that tDCS of the DLPFC would influence individual’s use of the reinforcement heuristic in case of conflict. 364 participants (158 in the original study; 206 in the replication study) received the anodal or cathodal tDCS stimulation to the right, left DLPFC or sham. While we observed improved decision making in first-draw decisions following anodal stimulation to the right DLPFC, our study did not find evidence indicating that tDCS stimulation over the DLPFC affected inhibition of reinforcement.</span></span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"92067585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Risky and non-risky financial investments and cognition","authors":"Nicolau Martin-Bassols","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102677","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102677","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Much policy attention has been placed on encouraging saving behaviours to avoid financial deprivation at older adulthood. However, optimising financial investments is highly dependent on cognitive capacity, which can be deteriorated by the natural ageing process. This paper explores the relationship between age-related cognitive deterioration with risky and non-risky financial investments. The data analysed comes from eight waves (2002 to 2019) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) which, for a nationally representative sample, contains information about cognitive ability and their ownership of financial investments over time. Cognition emerges as one of the strongest predictors of the type and number of financial products that individuals hold. Specifically, the results show a positive relation of cognitive level with risky and non-risky financial investments. Even alongside other important factors – such as education, labour status, age, and household wealth – the explanatory power of cognition is found to be significant at the 0.1% significance level. The results are robust when accounting for unobservables and when using a genetic measure of cognition as main explanatory variable. More importantly, cognitive deterioration is only significantly associated with risky financial investments. That means, individuals reduce their risky financial investments when they start suffering old age related cognitive deterioration, while they do not change their holdings in non-risky ones in a significant manner. There are also no significant differences in the reactions to stock-market fluctuations due to cognitive level. In other words, individuals react to stock market fluctuations changing their financial holdings, but those reactions do not differ due to their cognitive level.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91984574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Martin Müller , Jerome Olsen , Erich Kirchler , Christoph Kogler
{"title":"How explicit expected value information affects tax compliance decisions and information acquisition","authors":"Martin Müller , Jerome Olsen , Erich Kirchler , Christoph Kogler","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102679","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In a MouselabWEB experiment with 345 participants, we investigated whether different presentations of expected value information in tax compliance decisions increase conformity with classical deterrence models’ assumptions. Recording both choice and process data, we compare conditions of verbal explanation only, verbal explanation plus numerical cue, verbal explanation plus visual cue, and a control condition without expected value information. Only when the expected value was presented as a visual cue the option with the higher expected value (i.e., evasion) was chosen more often than the control condition (58.3% vs. 38.4%). Nevertheless, individuals were more compliant than predicted by the deterrence model. While we identified differences between the experimental conditions in information acquisition patterns and decision times, they do not suggest that one way of presenting expected value information was easier to process than the others or that the main behavioral effect can be explained by higher saliency of the visual cue. These results indicate that individuals' decisions are not predominantly driven by outcome maximization, even when explicit expected value information is provided.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487023000806/pdfft?md5=c02ede694d3e4e5ffc01586ead56b062&pid=1-s2.0-S0167487023000806-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91964471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effect of perceived similarity and social proximity on the formation of prosocial preferences","authors":"Christoph A. Schütt","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102678","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Homophily, the tendency of interacting with similar others, has been found to be an important determinant of the existence and stability of social groups, whereas social relationships within these groups vary in the degree of social proximity. In this paper, I investigate how perceived similarity affects social proximity and care towards a partner and altruistic giving. In a between-subjects design, subjects are matched with either a similar or a dissimilar partner and play a dictator game. Similarity is induced via objective similarities on pre-elicited personality profiles based on Big-Five personality traits. I show that perceiving someone as more similar increases giving in a dictator game. A mediation analysis shows that social proximity and care towards the partner mediate the treatment effect. That is, subjects in the similar treatment feel a higher degree of social proximity to their partner, leading to a higher degree of care towards the latter and therefore, give more in the dictator game.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49870856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carina Cavalcanti , Philip J. Grossman , Elias L. Khalil
{"title":"Leadership heuristic","authors":"Carina Cavalcanti , Philip J. Grossman , Elias L. Khalil","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102661","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102661","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The economics literature offers at least two main explanations of why individuals adopt the heuristic of following their leader’s suggestion: First, the leader has information or a talent relevant to the task at hand and, second, the leader’s suggestion helps to reduce uncertainty and to coordinate the group on one choice. The psychology literature offers another explanation: The leader, acting as an “ethical example,” helps to increase job satisfaction, performance, and prosocial behavior. Both lines of literature, although in different ways, assume rational choice on the part of followers. Neither literature addresses the question: Would people adopt the leadership heuristic if the leader lacks any relevant information, talent advantage, ethical character, or other desirable traits? We report experimental evidence that suggests the answer is yes. In our experiment, leaders suggest the outcome of a fair “coin toss.” Leaders vary in (irrelevant) “information” and (irrelevant) “ability” possessed. Although there is no feedback after each period, we find that one-third of all the decisions of the participants heuristically follow the leader’s choice. This is surprising given that, first, the leader’s choice is irrelevant and, second, to follow it would be payoff-reducing. Payoff-reducing choices of subjects are more frequent with irrelevantly informed leaders than with irrelevantly talented leaders. Crucially, we also show that the findings are not driven by lack of understanding of random events. In short, neither the hot-hand and gambler’s fallacies nor attributes that might inspire trust/loyalty can explain subjects’ choices.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44657089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Laura Bierut , Pietro Biroli , Titus J. Galama , Kevin Thom
{"title":"Challenges in studying the interplay of genes and environment. A study of childhood financial distress moderating genetic predisposition for peak smoking","authors":"Laura Bierut , Pietro Biroli , Titus J. Galama , Kevin Thom","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102636","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102636","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable disease and death in the U.S., and it is strongly influenced both by genetic predisposition and childhood adversity. Using polygenic indices (PGIs) of predisposition to smoking, we evaluate whether childhood financial distress (CFD; a composite measure of financial adversity) moderates genetic risk in explaining peak-cigarette consumption in adulthood. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we find a substantial reduction in the relationship between genetic risk and peak smoking for those who did not suffer financial adversity in childhood. Among adult smokers who grew up in high-CFD households, a one standard deviation higher PGI is associated with 2.9 more cigarettes smoked per day at peak. By contrast, among smokers who grew up in low-CFD households, this gradient is reduced by 37 percent (or 1.1 fewer). These results are robust to controlling for a host of prime confounders. By contrast, we find no evidence of interactions between the PGI and typical measures of childhood SES such as parental education - a null result that we replicate in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA). This suggests the role of childhood financial distress in the relationship with peak smoking is distinct from that of low childhood SES, with high CFD potentially reflecting more acute distress than do measures of low childhood SES. Our evidence also suggests low childhood SES is a weaker proxy for acute distress, providing an alternative explanation for the childhood SES null result.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10358858/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9866651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}