Pub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-02-04DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2025.102800
Dalia Shilian , Eyal Pe'er
Native advertising of online content, such as articles embedded within news websites, is a covert attempt by marketers to influence consumers’ attitudes and behavior. Despite attempts to regulate and mandate disclosure for native ads, studies repeatedly find that consumers continue to fail to detect native and disguised ads even when they include various disclosure labels. We argue that the failure of these disclosures stems from consumers becoming so habituated to these notices that they do not recognize or use them effectively. We propose and test a form of “smart disclosure” for native ads requiring explicit identification of the name of the company or marketing agent paying for the non-original content. In two online experiments, we show how identified disclosures significantly and consistently increase detection of native ads rates compared to no disclosures or generic disclosures. We discuss important implications arising from using smart disclosures for native ads in particular and consumer protection in general.
{"title":"Identified disclosure to increase Consumers’ detection of native advertising","authors":"Dalia Shilian , Eyal Pe'er","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102800","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102800","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Native advertising of online content, such as articles embedded within news websites, is a covert attempt by marketers to influence consumers’ attitudes and behavior. Despite attempts to regulate and mandate disclosure for native ads, studies repeatedly find that consumers continue to fail to detect native and disguised ads even when they include various disclosure labels. We argue that the failure of these disclosures stems from consumers becoming so habituated to these notices that they do not recognize or use them effectively. We propose and test a form of “smart disclosure” for native ads requiring explicit identification of the name of the company or marketing agent paying for the non-original content. In two online experiments, we show how identified disclosures significantly and consistently increase detection of native ads rates compared to no disclosures or generic disclosures. We discuss important implications arising from using smart disclosures for native ads in particular and consumer protection in general.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 102800"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143372963","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}
Pub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-01-16DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2025.102797
Tobias Schütze , Carsten Spitzer , Philipp C. Wichardt
Is being informed about a nudge detrimental to its effect? This paper reports results from an experimental online study testing the effects of transparency on the effectiveness of a default nudge while accounting for psychological reactance and response time. Overall and in line with earlier studies, we find no negative effect of transparency on average behaviour. Adding to the previous discussion, we find that effects of transparency differ depending on response time. In particular, decision makers with longer response time in fact react more positively (keeping the default) if nudging is made transparent. Moreover, the data show an interaction of reactance and response time in that more reactant subjects with longer response time leave the default more often. Thus, a positive effect of transparency as well as a negative impact of reactance can be established in the data if response time is accounted for.
{"title":"Nudging: An experiment on transparency, accounting for reactance and response time","authors":"Tobias Schütze , Carsten Spitzer , Philipp C. Wichardt","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102797","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102797","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Is being informed about a nudge detrimental to its effect? This paper reports results from an experimental online study testing the effects of transparency on the effectiveness of a default nudge while accounting for psychological reactance and response time. Overall and in line with earlier studies, we find no negative effect of transparency on average behaviour. Adding to the previous discussion, we find that effects of transparency differ depending on response time. In particular, decision makers with longer response time in fact react more positively (keeping the default) if nudging is made transparent. Moreover, the data show an interaction of reactance and response time in that more reactant subjects with longer response time leave the default more often. Thus, a positive effect of transparency as well as a negative impact of reactance can be established in the data if response time is accounted for.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 102797"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153857","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}
Pub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-01-09DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102788
Jingcheng Fu , Songfa Zhong
Building upon the much-celebrated sex-specific hypothesis regarding visceral responses, we explore the potential impact of visceral responses on the well-replicated gender difference in competitiveness. In the first experiment, we document that exposure to the piece-rate and tournament tasks leads to an arousal of sex hormones among men, while women do not experience a similar response. This arousal is positively associated with competitiveness. In the second experiment, we observe that the gender gap in competitiveness is reduced by introducing a resting period. Our results contribute to the literature on gender differences in the willingness to compete and suggest that mitigating visceral influences is beneficial for promoting gender equality.
{"title":"Visceral influences and gender difference in competitiveness","authors":"Jingcheng Fu , Songfa Zhong","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102788","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102788","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Building upon the much-celebrated sex-specific hypothesis regarding visceral responses, we explore the potential impact of visceral responses on the well-replicated gender difference in competitiveness. In the first experiment, we document that exposure to the piece-rate and tournament tasks leads to an arousal of sex hormones among men, while women do not experience a similar response. This arousal is positively associated with competitiveness. In the second experiment, we observe that the gender gap in competitiveness is reduced by introducing a resting period. Our results contribute to the literature on gender differences in the willingness to compete and suggest that mitigating visceral influences is beneficial for promoting gender equality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 102788"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153858","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}
Pub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-02-18DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2025.102805
Redzo Mujcic , Nattavudh Powdthavee
In a controlled field setting, in which the majority of people in our sample lose more than £90,000, we examine how human beings respond to major financial losses. University ethics boards would not allow this kind of huge-loss phenomenon to be studied with normal social-science experiments. Yet the scientific and practical issues at stake are unusually important ones. In the analyzed gameshow setting, individuals are handed £100,000 in cash. They then have to make risky decisions. Facing a sequence of seven questions, individuals are required to distribute their cash endowment over a set of possible answers. Participants lose any cash placed on a wrong answer. In a sample of British participants, we find that people become increasingly more cautious as they lose more of their cash endowment. A realized prior loss of £75,000 or more increases the propensity to fully diversify by 50 percentage points compared to a prior loss of £25,000. We find a similar cautious response in a smaller sample of US participants when the stakes are raised to $1 million US dollars. Our study appears to be the first to be able to calculate systematically how human beings react to large and unrecoverable financial losses.
{"title":"How do humans respond to large realized losses?","authors":"Redzo Mujcic , Nattavudh Powdthavee","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102805","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102805","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In a controlled field setting, in which the majority of people in our sample lose more than £90,000, we examine how human beings respond to major financial losses. University ethics boards would not allow this kind of huge-loss phenomenon to be studied with normal social-science experiments. Yet the scientific and practical issues at stake are unusually important ones. In the analyzed gameshow setting, individuals are handed £100,000 in cash. They then have to make risky decisions. Facing a sequence of seven questions, individuals are required to distribute their cash endowment over a set of possible answers. Participants lose any cash placed on a wrong answer. In a sample of British participants, we find that people become increasingly more cautious as they lose more of their cash endowment. A realized prior loss of £75,000 or more increases the propensity to fully diversify by 50 percentage points compared to a prior loss of £25,000. We find a similar cautious response in a smaller sample of US participants when the stakes are raised to $1 million US dollars. Our study appears to be the first to be able to calculate systematically how human beings react to large and unrecoverable financial losses.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 102805"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143444654","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}
Pub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-02-12DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2025.102801
Eldad Yechiam, Dana Zeif
There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the existence and boundary conditions of loss aversion. In a recent paper Brown et al. (2024) meta-analyzed the literature on empirical estimates of loss aversion, spanning thirty years, and reported strong loss aversion across studies. Here, we re-meta-analyzed their dataset, dividing studies into those with asymmetric gains and losses (typically smaller losses than gains) versus symmetric gains and losses, and studies where the presentation of gains or losses was ordered by size compared to those with no ordering. This analysis was possible for 84 papers (163 estimates of loss aversion, n = 149,218). The results showed that while the findings of strong loss aversion are replicated when losses are smaller than gains and when gains and losses are presented in an ordered fashion, for studies with symmetric gains and losses and no ordering of items, the loss aversion parameter was approximately 1.07 and not significantly above 1.0, suggesting similar weighting of gains and losses. This casts considerable doubts on the robustness of loss aversion.
{"title":"Loss aversion is not robust: A re-meta-analysis","authors":"Eldad Yechiam, Dana Zeif","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102801","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102801","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the existence and boundary conditions of loss aversion. In a recent paper <span><span>Brown et al. (2024)</span></span> meta-analyzed the literature on empirical estimates of loss aversion, spanning thirty years, and reported strong loss aversion across studies. Here, we re-meta-analyzed their dataset, dividing studies into those with asymmetric gains and losses (typically smaller losses than gains) versus symmetric gains and losses, and studies where the presentation of gains or losses was ordered by size compared to those with no ordering. This analysis was possible for 84 papers (163 estimates of loss aversion, n = 149,218). The results showed that while the findings of strong loss aversion are replicated when losses are smaller than gains and when gains and losses are presented in an ordered fashion, for studies with symmetric gains and losses and no ordering of items, the loss aversion parameter was approximately 1.07 and not significantly above 1.0, suggesting similar weighting of gains and losses. This casts considerable doubts on the robustness of loss aversion.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 102801"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143436963","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}
Pub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-01-18DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2025.102798
Sem Manna , Alessandro Stringhi
We study whether image preferences in isolation from strategic considerations, namely purely hedonic image concerns, can motivate prosocial behavior and whether this audience effect is mediated by the number of observers. Answers to related questions from the extant experimental literature are often mixed or influenced by multiple mechanisms evoked by the context at hand or design employed. We employ an experiment involving a dictator game with a charity receiver and a binary choice with unambiguous social valence. Choices are observed by an anonymous, passive, and external audience whose size varies across treatments. Our simple experimental design allows us to isolate purely hedonic image concerns about appearing altruistic from strategic considerations and other confounding features of alternative designs. We find that donations rise by 10.2 percentage points on average when audiences are present, with every observer increasing the probability of donating by an estimated 2.12 percentage points. We provide evidence that the size of the audience also matters.
{"title":"Purely hedonic image concerns and audience size: Evidence from a charity dictator game","authors":"Sem Manna , Alessandro Stringhi","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102798","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102798","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study whether image preferences in isolation from strategic considerations, namely <em>purely hedonic image concerns</em>, can motivate prosocial behavior and whether this audience effect is mediated by the number of observers. Answers to related questions from the extant experimental literature are often mixed or influenced by multiple mechanisms evoked by the context at hand or design employed. We employ an experiment involving a dictator game with a charity receiver and a binary choice with unambiguous social valence. Choices are observed by an anonymous, passive, and external audience whose size varies across treatments. Our simple experimental design allows us to isolate <em>purely hedonic image concerns</em> about appearing altruistic from strategic considerations and other confounding features of alternative designs. We find that donations rise by 10.2 percentage points on average when audiences are present, with every observer increasing the probability of donating by an estimated 2.12 percentage points. We provide evidence that the size of the audience also matters.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 102798"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143153854","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}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2024-11-13DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102776
Yu Pan , Marco Henriques Pereira , Carlos Gomez-Gonzalez , Helmut M. Dietl
We conduct a novel experiment to investigate whether football superstars consistently receive more favorable evaluations than non-superstars. Engaging 500 participants from Prolific, we randomly assign them to evaluate the same football videos with either visible or obscured players. In the control group, where players are visible, superstars receive lower performance ratings than non-superstars, challenging common perceptions. This trend is more intensified in the treatment group, where obscured identities result in even lower ratings for superstars, relative to non-superstars, suggesting a diminished superstar premium. These findings provide causal experimental evidence contributing to the literature on evaluation bias and the superstar effect.
{"title":"The superstar effect on perceived performance in professional football: An online experiment","authors":"Yu Pan , Marco Henriques Pereira , Carlos Gomez-Gonzalez , Helmut M. Dietl","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102776","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102776","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We conduct a novel experiment to investigate whether football superstars consistently receive more favorable evaluations than non-superstars. Engaging 500 participants from Prolific, we randomly assign them to evaluate the same football videos with either visible or obscured players. In the control group, where players are visible, superstars receive lower performance ratings than non-superstars, challenging common perceptions. This trend is more intensified in the treatment group, where obscured identities result in even lower ratings for superstars, relative to non-superstars, suggesting a diminished superstar premium. These findings provide causal experimental evidence contributing to the literature on evaluation bias and the superstar effect.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"106 ","pages":"Article 102776"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142719684","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}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2024-12-26DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102787
Sean Duffy , John Smith
Noise is a pervasive feature of economic choice. However, standard economics experiments are not well equipped to study the noise because experiments are constrained: preferences are often either unknown or only imperfectly measured by experimenters. As a result of these designs – where the optimal choice is not observable to the analyst – many important questions about the noise in apparently random choice cannot be addressed. There is a long tradition in psychology of studying settings where subjects make choices about objectively measurable, but imperfectly perceived objects. We simply supplement this design with material incentives in a way that resembles economic choice. In our design, subjects make incentivized binary choices between lines and are paid a function of the length of the selected line. We find a gradual (not sudden) relationship between the difference in the lengths of the lines and the optimal choice. Our analysis suggests that the errors are better described as having a Gumbel distribution rather than a normal distribution, and our simulated data increase our confidence in this inference. We find evidence that suboptimal choices are associated with longer response times than optimal choices.
{"title":"Stochastic choice and imperfect judgments of line lengths: What is hiding in the noise?","authors":"Sean Duffy , John Smith","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102787","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102787","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Noise is a pervasive feature of economic choice. However, standard economics experiments are not well equipped to study the noise because experiments are constrained: preferences are often either unknown or only imperfectly measured by experimenters. As a result of these designs – where the optimal choice is not observable to the analyst – many important questions about the noise in apparently random choice cannot be addressed. There is a long tradition in psychology of studying settings where subjects make choices about objectively measurable, but imperfectly perceived objects. We simply supplement this design with material incentives in a way that resembles economic choice. In our design, subjects make incentivized binary choices between lines and are paid a function of the length of the selected line. We find a gradual (not sudden) relationship between the difference in the lengths of the lines and the optimal choice. Our analysis suggests that the errors are better described as having a Gumbel distribution rather than a normal distribution, and our simulated data increase our confidence in this inference. We find evidence that suboptimal choices are associated with longer response times than optimal choices.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"106 ","pages":"Article 102787"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143173693","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}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2024-12-10DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102784
Eldad Yechiam
Meta-analysis is a valuable tool for synthesizing empirical findings across studies, particularly in light of weak or contradicting findings. However, applying meta-analysis in economic psychology and behavioral economics presents unique challenges, partly due to the fact that these two disciplines have originated from studies demonstrating strong contradictions to rationality and rationality-based models. The counter-examples themselves are often reliable when using the original study parameters (e.g., same payoff structure as those of the original studies). However, in meta-analyses seeking to broaden the breadth across different parameters, the presence of a plethora of studies using the same or similar parameters, may lead to an implicit selection bias that is difficult to characterize and control for. This article discusses this challenge and potential solutions and presents the articles in the special issue on meta-analyses in economic psychology.
{"title":"From strong exceptions to parameter spaces: A précis to the special issue on meta-analyses in economic psychology","authors":"Eldad Yechiam","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102784","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102784","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Meta-analysis is a valuable tool for synthesizing empirical findings across studies, particularly in light of weak or contradicting findings. However, applying meta-analysis in economic psychology and behavioral economics presents unique challenges, partly due to the fact that these two disciplines have originated from studies demonstrating strong contradictions to rationality and rationality-based models. The counter-examples themselves are often reliable when using the original study parameters (e.g., same payoff structure as those of the original studies). However, in meta-analyses seeking to broaden the breadth across different parameters, the presence of a plethora of studies using the same or similar parameters, may lead to an implicit selection bias that is difficult to characterize and control for. This article discusses this challenge and potential solutions and presents the articles in the special issue on meta-analyses in economic psychology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"106 ","pages":"Article 102784"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143173695","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}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2024-12-15DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102785
Anja Bodenschatz , Gari Walkowitz
We investigate how gender affects ethical outcomes in repeated same- or mixed-gender interactions. In our first study (N = 681), we use an experimental slippery-slope audit setting (Gino and Bazerman, 2009), in which an “auditor” makes an approval decision about the emerging unethical behavior of an “estimator” whose gender has been made salient. Based on previous evidence, unethical behavior is more likely to be accepted when it emerges gradually compared to a situation where it occurs abruptly. While we do not find a general slippery-slope effect across the whole sample, a significant slippery-slope effect is detected when the estimator is male (d = 0.36) or when the auditor is female (d = 0.27). We observe no slippery-slope effects in same-gender estimator-auditor constellations. However, in mixed-gender constellations, we find opposite effects: when male estimators are audited by females, we observe a significant slippery-slope effect (d = 0.53), driven by a high approval rate in the slippery-slope treatment. Conversely, when female estimators are audited by males, the approval rate increases in the abrupt treatment (d = 0.33). To better understand the drivers of these findings, we asked a different sample of participants (N = 90) to indicate the level of competence or honesty they attribute to male and female estimators in the estimation task. Responses suggest that the detected slippery-slope effects may be driven by auditors (especially females), attributing more competence to male estimators (d = 0.62), which is particularly relevant in the slippery-slope treatment where unethical behavior is difficult to detect. Moreover, our finding that male auditors are particularly inclined to approve overvaluations by females in the abrupt treatment, where unethical behavior becomes salient, may be driven by a more ethical assessment of female estimators (d = 0.90).
{"title":"Slipping on stereotypes – Interactive gender effects in the erosion of ethical behavior","authors":"Anja Bodenschatz , Gari Walkowitz","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102785","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102785","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate how gender affects ethical outcomes in repeated same- or mixed-gender interactions. In our first study (<em>N</em> = 681), we use an experimental slippery-slope audit setting (Gino and Bazerman, 2009), in which an “auditor” makes an approval decision about the emerging unethical behavior of an “estimator” whose gender has been made salient. Based on previous evidence, unethical behavior is more likely to be accepted when it emerges gradually compared to a situation where it occurs abruptly. While we do not find a general slippery-slope effect across the whole sample, a significant slippery-slope effect is detected when the estimator is male (<em>d</em> = 0.36) or when the auditor is female (<em>d</em> = 0.27). We observe no slippery-slope effects in same-gender estimator-auditor constellations. However, in mixed-gender constellations, we find opposite effects: when male estimators are audited by females, we observe a significant slippery-slope effect (<em>d</em> = 0.53), driven by a high approval rate in the slippery-slope treatment. Conversely, when female estimators are audited by males, the approval rate increases in the abrupt treatment (<em>d</em> = 0.33). To better understand the drivers of these findings, we asked a different sample of participants (<em>N</em> = 90) to indicate the level of competence or honesty they attribute to male and female estimators in the estimation task. Responses suggest that the detected slippery-slope effects may be driven by auditors (especially females), attributing more competence to male estimators (<em>d</em> = 0.62), which is particularly relevant in the slippery-slope treatment where unethical behavior is difficult to detect. Moreover, our finding that male auditors are particularly inclined to approve overvaluations by females in the abrupt treatment, where unethical behavior becomes salient, may be driven by a more ethical assessment of female estimators (<em>d</em> = 0.90).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"106 ","pages":"Article 102785"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143173696","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}