Pub 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":"2024-11-13","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 : 2024-10-21DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102775
Erna Kokić , Laure Wagner , Ana García López del Amo , Charlotte L. Giering , Van Ly Truong , Hannes M. Petrowsky , Onno M. Husen , David D. Loschelder
Gender differences in negotiation behavior—for instance, men’s vs. women’s likelihood to make (assertive) first offers—contribute to the globally prevalent gender pay gap (GPG). In an attempt to mitigate the social and economic consequences of this gender disparity, we first empirically validated two pre-negotiation message interventions in a pilot study (N = 203). In the main experimental intervention study (N = 585), male versus female participants randomly received this (1) informative message about the GPG, or (2) gender-specific empowering message, or (3) no message in the control condition. In a subsequent negotiation task on the starting salary for a new job, we assessed participants’ (a) likelihood-to-initiate a first offer and (b) first-offer assertiveness. Results showed a remarkably robust behavioral gender disparity: across all conditions, men were more likely to make the first offer (d = 0.178) and made them more assertively (d = 0.339). Importantly, compared to the control condition, the informative (dinform = 0.304) and the empowering (dempower = 0.255) pre-negotiation interventions increased women’s first-offer assertiveness. Similar intervention benefits emerged for men (dinform = 0.259; dempower = 0.284), however, yielding an overall remarkably robust gender difference. To explore the underlying reasons for this gender disparity, we tested four competing psychological mechanisms (i.e., self-esteem, positive and negative affect, GPG awareness, and self-efficacy). Our results highlight the impact that even short, minimal interventions can have on gender differences in negotiation behavior and illustrate which psychological mechanisms explain the emergence of gender disparity in the first place.
{"title":"Empowered or informed? Seeking to mitigate gender differences in first-offer assertiveness through pre-negotiation interventions","authors":"Erna Kokić , Laure Wagner , Ana García López del Amo , Charlotte L. Giering , Van Ly Truong , Hannes M. Petrowsky , Onno M. Husen , David D. Loschelder","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102775","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102775","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Gender differences in negotiation behavior—for instance, men’s vs. women’s likelihood to make (assertive) first offers—contribute to the globally prevalent gender pay gap (GPG). In an attempt to mitigate the social and economic consequences of this gender disparity, we first empirically validated two pre-negotiation message interventions in a pilot study (<em>N</em> = 203). In the main experimental intervention study (<em>N</em> = 585), male versus female participants randomly received this (1) informative message about the GPG, or (2) gender-specific empowering message, or (3) no message in the control condition. In a subsequent negotiation task on the starting salary for a new job, we assessed participants’ (a) likelihood-to-initiate a first offer and (b) first-offer assertiveness. Results showed a remarkably robust behavioral gender disparity: across all conditions, men were more likely to make the first offer (<em>d</em> = 0.178) and made them more assertively (<em>d</em> = 0.339). Importantly, compared to the control condition, the informative (<em>d</em><sub>inform</sub> = 0.304) and the empowering (<em>d</em><sub>empower</sub> = 0.255) pre-negotiation interventions increased women’s first-offer assertiveness. Similar intervention benefits emerged for men (<em>d</em><sub>inform</sub> = 0.259; <em>d</em><sub>empower</sub> = 0.284), however, yielding an overall remarkably robust gender difference. To explore the underlying reasons for this gender disparity, we tested four competing psychological mechanisms (i.e., self-esteem, positive and negative affect, GPG awareness, and self-efficacy). Our results highlight the impact that even short, minimal interventions can have on gender differences in negotiation behavior and illustrate which psychological mechanisms explain the emergence of gender disparity in the first place.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102775"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142531046","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 : 2024-10-21DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102773
Martin Binder
The relationship between self-employment and life satisfaction has been shown to be heterogeneous in the literature. This paper analyzes a channel through which lower well-being can come about for the self-employed, namely, their worries about their business (“entrepreneurial worries”). Using a two-way fixed effects estimator on German panel data (1984–2020), I find no overall effect of becoming self-employed on life satisfaction, and heterogeneity analysis shows that only those self-employed individuals who change from unemployment to self-employment report higher life satisfaction. Mediation analysis reveals that worries about one’s financial situation (and, to some extent, job security) mediate the relationship between self-employment and life satisfaction. Life satisfaction decreases as self-employed individuals worry more about their financial situation as a result of becoming self-employed. Only if one does not worry about one’s financial situation at all does self-employment contribute positively to life satisfaction.
{"title":"Entrepreneurial worries: Self-employment and potential loss of well-being","authors":"Martin Binder","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102773","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102773","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The relationship between self-employment and life satisfaction has been shown to be heterogeneous in the literature. This paper analyzes a channel through which lower well-being can come about for the self-employed, namely, their worries about their business (“entrepreneurial worries”). Using a two-way fixed effects estimator on German panel data (1984–2020), I find no overall effect of becoming self-employed on life satisfaction, and heterogeneity analysis shows that only those self-employed individuals who change from unemployment to self-employment report higher life satisfaction. Mediation analysis reveals that worries about one’s financial situation (and, to some extent, job security) mediate the relationship between self-employment and life satisfaction. Life satisfaction decreases as self-employed individuals worry more about their financial situation as a result of becoming self-employed. Only if one does not worry about one’s financial situation at all does self-employment contribute positively to life satisfaction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102773"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142531044","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 : 2024-10-17DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102774
Tanja Artiga González , Francesco Capozza , Georg D. Granic
We investigate how participation in the electoral process can causally change policy preferences drawing on the framework of cognitive dissonance theory. We present an innovative experimental design, which allows us to isolate the net effect of cognitive dissonance on preference changes. Our results suggest that cognitive dissonance created by expressing support for a losing candidate causally led participants to align their policy preferences with that of the supported candidate more closely. Our results, however, also uncovered a strong dependency of such preference changes on the outcome of the election. When supported candidates won the election, no preference change was observed. Our results may be an indication that previous studies overestimated the cognitive dissonance effect on preference changes.
{"title":"Cognitive dissonance, political participation, and changes in policy preferences","authors":"Tanja Artiga González , Francesco Capozza , Georg D. Granic","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102774","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102774","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate how participation in the electoral process can causally change policy preferences drawing on the framework of cognitive dissonance theory. We present an innovative experimental design, which allows us to isolate the net effect of cognitive dissonance on preference changes. Our results suggest that cognitive dissonance created by expressing support for a losing candidate causally led participants to align their policy preferences with that of the supported candidate more closely. Our results, however, also uncovered a strong dependency of such preference changes on the outcome of the election. When supported candidates won the election, no preference change was observed. Our results may be an indication that previous studies overestimated the cognitive dissonance effect on preference changes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102774"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142531042","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 : 2024-10-16DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102771
Adrián Caballero , Raúl López-Pérez
A recent experimental literature has documented that people are (sometimes) asymmetric updaters: good news is over-weighted relative to bad news. This phenomenon might be due to selective recall (SR), whereby people better recall positive evidence than negative evidence. To test this hypothesis, we ran a balls-and-urns experiment where each subject faced a box with 100 balls, each bearing a different boy or girl name (N = 448). Subjects received a prize for each ’female’ ball but did not know the exact composition of the urn. Each subject then observed 20 consecutive random draws from her urn, with distracting tasks placed between some extractions. In a subsequent incentivized memory task, unexpected by the subjects, they were asked to write down as many extracted names as they could recall. Since female draws were (exogenously manipulated) good news, SR predicts that they are more likely to be remembered, which is exactly what we found. When subjects received a prize per ’male’ ball, in contrast, they recalled significantly better the extracted boy names. This SR effect persisted even after we controlled for other factors that may influence recall in our design, such as the timing of the extraction or the length of the name. When subjects were asked to estimate the share of ’paying’ balls in the urn, however, we observed no biases at the mean level. That is, SR does not always lead to overestimation of the frequency of positive events.
{"title":"Memory bias beyond ego: Selective recall of positive financial outcomes","authors":"Adrián Caballero , Raúl López-Pérez","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102771","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102771","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A recent experimental literature has documented that people are (sometimes) asymmetric updaters: good news is over-weighted relative to bad news. This phenomenon might be due to selective recall (SR), whereby people better recall positive evidence than negative evidence. To test this hypothesis, we ran a balls-and-urns experiment where each subject faced a box with 100 balls, each bearing a different boy or girl name (N = 448). Subjects received a prize for each ’female’ ball but did not know the exact composition of the urn. Each subject then observed 20 consecutive random draws from her urn, with distracting tasks placed between some extractions. In a subsequent incentivized memory task, unexpected by the subjects, they were asked to write down as many extracted names as they could recall. Since female draws were (exogenously manipulated) good news, SR predicts that they are more likely to be remembered, which is exactly what we found. When subjects received a prize per ’male’ ball, in contrast, they recalled significantly better the extracted boy names. This SR effect persisted even after we controlled for other factors that may influence recall in our design, such as the timing of the extraction or the length of the name. When subjects were asked to estimate the share of ’paying’ balls in the urn, however, we observed no biases at the mean level. That is, SR does not always lead to overestimation of the frequency of positive events.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102771"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142531043","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 : 2024-10-12DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102772
Marek Vranka, Petr Houdek
We have examined how much money participants take for themselves from an amount designated either for a well-known charity or for a state’s public budget. For a third of the participants, the decision was real – they were paid the chosen amount afterward, and the donation to a charity or public budget was lowered by this amount. For the rest, the decision was hypothetical, with no consequences. In a follow-up study, a different sample of participants was tasked with estimating behavior in both conditions. As expected, participants took more money from the public budget than the charity. However, when the decision was hypothetical, they took less money only from the public budget. Participants who could take money from the charity did not take less in the hypothetical than in the real condition. This was unexpected also for participants in the follow-up study, who significantly underestimated the amount of money taken from charities in the hypothetical condition. The results highlight limited generalizability of findings regarding moral and prosocial choices that use only hypothetical or vignette scenarios and suggest that interactions between positive self-presentation and monetary incentives are more context-dependent than expected.
{"title":"Moral hypocrisy and the dichotomy of hypothetical versus real choices in prosocial behavior","authors":"Marek Vranka, Petr Houdek","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102772","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102772","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We have examined how much money participants take for themselves from an amount designated either for a well-known charity or for a state’s public budget. For a third of the participants, the decision was real – they were paid the chosen amount afterward, and the donation to a charity or public budget was lowered by this amount. For the rest, the decision was hypothetical, with no consequences. In a follow-up study, a different sample of participants was tasked with estimating behavior in both conditions. As expected, participants took more money from the public budget than the charity. However, when the decision was hypothetical, they took less money only from the public budget. Participants who could take money from the charity did not take less in the hypothetical than in the real condition. This was unexpected also for participants in the follow-up study, who significantly underestimated the amount of money taken from charities in the hypothetical condition. The results highlight limited generalizability of findings regarding moral and prosocial choices that use only hypothetical or vignette scenarios and suggest that interactions between positive self-presentation and monetary incentives are more context-dependent than expected.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102772"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142551980","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}
We empirically examine the value of modern digital communication tools for inducing prosocial behavior. In our online experiment (), charity members transmit a standardized message to potential donors through alternative digital communication channels varying the amount of nonverbal content (written message in the baseline Text condition vs. voice recording in Audio vs. video-recorded discourse in Video). We find partial support for the initial conjecture that individuals get more prosocial towards strangers once the latter become less anonymous to the former. Compared to the baseline Text condition, our Audio treatment induces a significant and substantial (nearly 40%) increase in the average donation. However, the effect observed in the richest Video condition has only half the magnitude of the one in Audio and donations made therein are not statistically different to those in the remaining conditions. We rule out the possibility that these treatment effects stem from perceptual mechanisms by which the changes in prosociality are driven by the differences in the perception of charity members in the stimuli, suggesting that the treatment effects capture the intrinsic value of reducing anonymity for promoting prosociality in the digital world.
{"title":"Anonymity, nonverbal communication and prosociality in digitized interactions: An experiment on charitable giving","authors":"Adam Zylbersztejn , Zakaria Babutsidze , Nobuyuki Hanaki , Marie-Sophie Roul","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102769","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102769","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We empirically examine the value of modern digital communication tools for inducing prosocial behavior. In our online experiment (<span><math><mrow><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>594</mn></mrow></math></span>), charity members transmit a standardized message to potential donors through alternative digital communication channels varying the amount of nonverbal content (written message in the baseline Text condition vs. voice recording in Audio vs. video-recorded discourse in Video). We find partial support for the initial conjecture that individuals get more prosocial towards strangers once the latter become less anonymous to the former. Compared to the baseline Text condition, our Audio treatment induces a significant and substantial (nearly 40%) increase in the average donation. However, the effect observed in the richest Video condition has only half the magnitude of the one in Audio and donations made therein are not statistically different to those in the remaining conditions. We rule out the possibility that these treatment effects stem from perceptual mechanisms by which the changes in prosociality are driven by the differences in the perception of charity members in the stimuli, suggesting that the treatment effects capture the intrinsic value of reducing anonymity for promoting prosociality in the digital world.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102769"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142418242","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 : 2024-09-26DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102770
Francesca Barigozzi , José J. Domínguez , Natalia Montinari
This paper explores whether college students are aware of gender disparities in academic performance and labor market outcomes, and examines the effect of providing information about these gaps. The study uses a lab experiment that includes (i) a questionnaire eliciting beliefs, (ii) a task assignment game where participants act as employers, and (iii) a game measuring willingness to compete. The experiment features two feedback treatments: one providing information only on gender gaps in labor market outcomes, and the other including information on both academic performance and labor market outcomes. In another treatment, the questionnaire was administered without providing new information to make gender salient. Results indicate that most participants are unaware of gender gaps. Feedback treatments did not significantly affect hiring decisions but, making gender salient, positively influenced women’s assignment to the difficult task, particularly among those previously unaware of the gaps, possibly due to social desirability bias. Men with implicit stereotypes were more inclined to compete regardless of treatment, while women with implicit stereotypes competed more after receiving information on the gap in academic performance. Overall, the study suggests that highlighting gender issues and informing women who hold implicit stereotypes can have mild positive effects.
{"title":"Entering a gender-neutral workplace? College students’ expectations and the impact of information provision","authors":"Francesca Barigozzi , José J. Domínguez , Natalia Montinari","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102770","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102770","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores whether college students are aware of gender disparities in academic performance and labor market outcomes, and examines the effect of providing information about these gaps. The study uses a lab experiment that includes (i) a questionnaire eliciting beliefs, (ii) a task assignment game where participants act as employers, and (iii) a game measuring willingness to compete. The experiment features two feedback treatments: one providing information only on gender gaps in labor market outcomes, and the other including information on both academic performance and labor market outcomes. In another treatment, the questionnaire was administered without providing new information to make gender salient. Results indicate that most participants are unaware of gender gaps. Feedback treatments did not significantly affect hiring decisions but, making gender salient, positively influenced women’s assignment to the difficult task, particularly among those previously unaware of the gaps, possibly due to social desirability bias. Men with implicit stereotypes were more inclined to compete regardless of treatment, while women with implicit stereotypes competed more after receiving information on the gap in academic performance. Overall, the study suggests that highlighting gender issues and informing women who hold implicit stereotypes can have mild positive effects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102770"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142531045","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 : 2024-09-02DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102760
Konstantinos Georgalos
Gender differences in decision making is a topic that has attracted much attention in the literature and the debate seems to be inconclusive. In a recent study, Bouchouicha et al. (2019) using data from an incentivised experiment with almost 3000 students and 30 different countries, estimate gender effects assuming four commonly employed definitions of loss aversion. Despite the fact that their analysis is based on the same data and the same functional forms and econometric setup, their results are inconclusive regarding the existence and the direction of gender effects for loss aversion. In this study, we investigate two extensions of their work in an effort to shed some light on the potential reasons behind this contradictory result. In particular, we explore whether: (1) a more flexible estimation method that allows for individual heterogeneity and generates more robust estimates in the presence of noise and; (2) a different utility function, can generate more robust inference regarding gender effects. We show that while a more flexible Hierarchical Bayesian estimation method is not sufficient to explain the contradictory results, an alternative utility function detects a uniform gender effect, with women being always more loss-averse, regardless the adopted definition of loss aversion.
{"title":"Gender effects for loss aversion: A reconsideration","authors":"Konstantinos Georgalos","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102760","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102760","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Gender differences in decision making is a topic that has attracted much attention in the literature and the debate seems to be inconclusive. In a recent study, Bouchouicha et al. (2019) using data from an incentivised experiment with almost 3000 students and 30 different countries, estimate gender effects assuming four commonly employed definitions of loss aversion. Despite the fact that their analysis is based on the same data and the same functional forms and econometric setup, their results are inconclusive regarding the existence and the direction of gender effects for loss aversion. In this study, we investigate two extensions of their work in an effort to shed some light on the potential reasons behind this contradictory result. In particular, we explore whether: (1) a more flexible estimation method that allows for individual heterogeneity and generates more robust estimates in the presence of noise and; (2) a different utility function, can generate more robust inference regarding gender effects. We show that while a more flexible Hierarchical Bayesian estimation method is not sufficient to explain the contradictory results, an alternative utility function detects a uniform gender effect, with women being always more loss-averse, regardless the adopted definition of loss aversion.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102760"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487024000680/pdfft?md5=fd5a2de938af4c5e8817103addb677ca&pid=1-s2.0-S0167487024000680-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142149990","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 : 2024-08-30DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102759
Igor Asanov , Helena Schirmacher , Christoph Bühren
The lost-letter technique (Milgram et al., 1965) has been used for almost 60 years to measure social attitudes and helping behavior in psychological, sociological, and economic research. We provide a meta-analysis of lost-letter experiments to summarize the evidence. We analyze 78 studies with an overall sample size of 53,504 letters from 18 countries on five continents. We find an average return rate of 50 percent across all countries. Our meta-analysis shows that the return rate is lower for political or deviant issues. Stamped letters are also more likely to be returned, but letters with money are not more likely to be returned. A high socio-economic environment increases the chances of the return. We conclude that in line with the lost-letter paradigm, the technique allows capturing citizens’ attitudes toward the issue communicated. However, citizens do not act selflessly but react differently depending on the type of incentives.
{"title":"A meta analysis of lost-letter field experiments","authors":"Igor Asanov , Helena Schirmacher , Christoph Bühren","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102759","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102759","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The lost-letter technique (<span><span>Milgram et al., 1965</span></span>) has been used for almost 60 years to measure social attitudes and helping behavior in psychological, sociological, and economic research. We provide a meta-analysis of lost-letter experiments to summarize the evidence. We analyze 78 studies with an overall sample size of 53,504 letters from 18 countries on five continents. We find an average return rate of 50 percent across all countries. Our meta-analysis shows that the return rate is lower for political or deviant issues. Stamped letters are also more likely to be returned, but letters with money are not more likely to be returned. A high socio-economic environment increases the chances of the return. We conclude that in line with the lost-letter paradigm, the technique allows capturing citizens’ attitudes toward the issue communicated. However, citizens do not act selflessly but react differently depending on the type of incentives.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102759"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487024000679/pdfft?md5=51a919574f01610dd690d22bf74abad3&pid=1-s2.0-S0167487024000679-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142121851","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}
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