Journal of Economic Psychology最新文献

Collaborative evasion of taxes and social security fees is prevalent when two parties can coordinate to circumvent third-party reporting mechanisms. Prominent examples are household services when a household hires a service provider and no third party is involved; however, the evidence on the determinants of collaborative tax evasion is scarce. This study examines two coordination mechanisms of collaborative tax evasion: a partner’s signaled intention and information about the majority’s evasion behavior (empirical evasion expectation). We implement an interactive online tax evasion game with 560 participants from an online labor market. Our findings show that manipulating an empirical evasion expectation increases the fraction of evaded transactions by 19 percentage points. Our treatment manipulation of intention signals does not significantly affect evasion; however, when the willingness to evade is signaled first in the chat, the probability of evasion increases by 44 percentage points.

The paper explores the potential influence of subjective factors on salary determination, particularly examining the impact of physical appearance on the earnings of soccer players. This study encompasses data from 373 Major League Soccer players over 12 seasons (2007-2018). Facial symmetry, quantified using the coordinates of each player’s facial features, is utilized as an indicator of physical attractiveness. Various analytical models, including linear, semiparametric, and quantile models, are applied. The results point to a notable 'beauty premium' in the salary structure within this context, with the effects being more significant among the highest earners.

Policy makers often implement laws or mandates to attempt to change people’s behavior. Such policies act not only as deterrents, but also as societal signposts for what is considered morally right and wrong within a society. In this paper we argue that the presence of laws and mandates may be associated with citizens’ inclination to engage in social norm enforcement within their own network. We studied this using four different datasets in different settings (text-and-drive laws, influenza vaccination mandates, speed limit laws, and COVID-19 mask mandates), in three different countries (total N = 3,156). In all datasets, we found associations between mandates or laws and the inclination to socially confront norm violators. This is in line with our theorizing that mandates and laws may help to increase citizens’ inclination to engage in social norm enforcement, and to foster interpersonal policing of behavior, inviting future research to establish more direct causal conclusions in this regard.

Teams play a key role in tackling complex societal challenges, such as developing vaccines or novel clean energy technologies. Yet, the effect of air pollution on team performance in non-routine problem-solving tasks is not well explored. Here, we document a sizable adverse effect of air pollution on team performance using data from 15,000 live escape games in London, United Kingdom. On high-pollution days, teams take on average 5% more time to solve a sequence of non-routine analytical tasks, which require collaborative skills analogous to those needed in the modern workplace. Negative effects are non-linear and only occur at high levels of air pollution, which are however commonplace in many developing countries. As team efforts predominantly drive innovation, high levels of air pollution may significantly hamper economic development.

Whereas several studies find that financial scarcity has a detrimental impact on cognitive functioning, some studies find no relationship and others even report beneficial effects. To shed light on this issue we conducted a meta-analysis on the relationship between financial scarcity and cognitive functioning. We went beyond testing the direct relationship between these two concepts and looked at potential moderators, namely education, the moment of scarcity, the severity of scarcity, the type of tasks used to assess cognitive functioning, and the type of study. Our findings suggest that scarcity does have a detrimental effect on cognitive functioning. Across 256 effect sizes from 29 datasets involving 111,852 respondents, we found a detrimental total effect of scarcity on cognitive performance of Hedge’s g = -0.43. We then estimated a meta-regression model of the drivers of the effect of scarcity on cognition. Education strongly explained this relationship, reducing the effect size by 60 % (partial effect of scarcity on cognitive performance is Hedge’s g = -0.15, when accounting for education), to a small effect size. The moment and the severity of scarcity also contribute to this relationship, by moderating the effect, such that lifetime and adulthood scarcity have a larger effect than childhood scarcity, and more extreme levels of scarcity lead to higher cognitive dysfunction. The type of task used to assess cognitive functioning did not moderate the effect. And when controlling for education, higher effect sizes were found for non-correlational designs. We discuss these findings and their implications in light of existing research and theories.

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.

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.

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.

To identify the causal role of the DLPFC in decision making, we used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to investigate the contribution of DLPFC to performance in an incentivized decision task where optimal decisions require Bayesian 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.