September 1, 2010
Brilliant
Abstract (via Leslie K. John, Alessandro Acquisti, and George Loewenstein)
New marketing paradigms that exploit the capabilities for data collection, aggregation, and dissemination introduced by the Internet provide benefits to consumers but also pose real or perceived privacy hazards. In four experiments, we seek to understand consumer decisions to reveal or withhold information and the relationship between such decisions and objective hazards posed by information revelation. Our central thesis, and a central finding of all four experiments, is that disclosure of private information is responsive to environmental cues that bear little connection, or are even inversely related, to objective hazards. We address underlying processes and rule out alternative explanations by eliciting subjective judgments of the sensitivity of inquiries (experiment 3) and by showing that the effect of cues diminishes if privacy concern is activated at the outset of the experiment (experiment 4). This research highlights consumer vulnerabilities in navigating increasingly complex privacy issues introduced by new information technologies.
Click Here To Read: When Are We Most Likely to Divulge Secrets! Think Strangers On A Plane
September 1, 2010
I’m tempted to say…I knew it all along but here’s the research.
Abstract (via Serra, Serneels, Barr)
Economists have traditionally assumed that individual behavior is motivated exclusively by extrinsic incentives. Social psychologists, in contrast, stress that intrinsic motivations are also important. In recent work, economic theorists have started to build psychological factors, like intrinsic motivations, into their models. Besley and Ghatak (2005) propose that individuals are differently motivated in that they have different “missions,” and their self-selection into sectors or organizations with matching missions enhances organizational efficiency. We test Besley and Ghatak’s model using data from a unique cohort study. We generate two proxies for intrinsic motivations: a survey-based measure of the health professionals philanthropic motivations and an experimental measure of their pro-social motivations. We find that both proxies predict health professionals’ decision to work in the non-profit sector. We also find that philanthropic health workers employed in the non-profit sector earn lower wages than their colleagues.
Click Here To Read: Intrinsic Motivation Leads Health Professionals to Work in Non Profits
September 1, 2010
Excerpts (Via PhysOrg)
As any nine-to-fiver will testify, a new paycheck brings with it a familiar sense of freedom, albeit one that dwindles in lockstep with the balance in one’s checking account. But, it’s not the checking account size that influences consumer behavior; rather, it’s the time that has elapsed since payday, according to a new study published in the September issue of the Journal of Marketing.
Payday proximity means more than awareness of the amount of money in the bank and product prices. It actually changes consumer motives, response to messages and purchase behavior, report University of Utah marketing professors Himanshu and Arul Mishra.
The researchers found that the proportion of “aspired” products declined and the proportion of “ought” products increased as the participants got further away from their paychecks. The team also demonstrated that these results were not related to declining checking account balances during the month or to product prices.
Click Here To Read: Approaching Paydays Change Our Behavior & Motivation!!!
September 1, 2010
Excerpt (via Phys Org)
“The results suggest that economic migrants might well experience disappointment. Migrants do gain happiness from higher incomes, to a greater extent than natives – but the relationship is weak even for migrants. In fact, it also works out that migrants are less happy than natives. The probable reason is that they expect to be happier by virtue of earning the greater incomes available in a wealthy country – but they end up wanting even more after they get there: aspirations probably increase at least as much as incomes.
“In short, even after an increase migrants find it difficult to feel satisfied with their incomes – just like the rest of us.
“Many of us are guilty of believing that money is more important for happiness than it is – and this research suggests that migrants are not terribly different in this regard. Life as an immigrant in a wealthy country can be very hard.”
Click Here To Read: The Grass Is Not Always Greener: migration may not bring happiness
September 1, 2010
Recommended Excerpts (via Jonah Lehrer @ Wired)
The miners have already survived underground longer than anyone else – they broke the 25 day record today – and will mostly like remain underground for at least another few months.
But this post is not about the miners, and their Dantesque plight. Instead, it’s about our reaction to them, and the extraordinary outpouring of emotion that occurs whenever we can latch onto a set of identifiable victims.
Of course, this is a deeply irrational reaction. We are much less interested in helping a victim – we only want to help the victim. (This bias is known as the identifiable victim effect, since it suggests that we react much more strongly when the victim can be specified.) Why do we this? Because human charity is ultimately rooted in our compassionate feelings, and not in some rational, utilitarian calculations. We are not Vulcans.
What’s interesting, though, is that some people are much less vulnerable to the identifiable victim effect than others. (There are Spocks among us!) Consider this new paper led by James Friedrich, at Willamette University, which measured differences in “analytic processing” style among 120 undergraduates. (The test for this is a rather straightforward survey, which includes questions such as “I enjoy intellectual challenges” and “I believe in trusting my hunches”.) Not surprisingly, people who tend toward analysis were also less likely to display the identifiable victim bias:
Click Here To Read: Jonah Lehrer on The Identifiable Victim Bias & Chilean Miners
August 31, 2010
Awesome…check out the conclusion
Abstract (via Tanel Mehine)
The purpose of this article is to find out the relationship between yellow price tags and consumer reference prices. A laboratory study was conducted among 150 respondents, who were put in an experimental purchase situation and their initial internal reference prices were compared affected reference prices. The results revealed that consumers perceive yellow price tags as presenters of discounts. A comparison of the mean values showed that yellow price tags influence the reference price and, moreover, a yellow price tag increased the reference price. As a practical outcome, the results of the study indicated that companies have the opportunity to increase the consumer’s reference price and thereby to raise revenues by changing the colour of the price tag without offering an actual discount.
Excerpted Implications (via Tanel Mehine)
From a practical perspective, the positive effect of yellow price tags on the reference price means that a company can increase the consumer’s reference price in quickly and easily. As was also mentioned in the earlier sections, a higher reference price means that the consumer is more likely to accept expensive prices. For example, this would mean that a consumer has a fixed internal reference price of 10 EEK for a certain product and the prices in the store also offer 10 EEK as the average price, but the price tag on one of the products is yellow. The consumer now interprets the price marked on the yellow price tag as a discount and calculates the average price of the product by adding a value to the yellow price tag (the amount of the assumed discount). The next time s/he goes to the store, however, the price of the product, which seemed too expensive during the last visit, does not necessarily seem so expensive anymore as a result of the increase in the average price of the store and a positive buying decision is more likely. The result is particularly important in the case of brand loyal consumers, where using a yellow price tag and thereby increasing the price helps to gain additional revenues. In addition, what is also important is that the consumer him/herself regards the new higher price as being entirely justified. From the perspective of the business operator, an increase in the consumer’s assessment would mean additional revenues as well; at the same time, it is possible to hide a price increase because the limit of the change perceived by the consumer has risen. Thus, since the Estonian legislation does not set any restrictions on such price tags, the business operator can show the consumer a discount and thereby increase sales quantities without actually lowering any prices and by simply altering the colour of the price tag. So the yellow price tag is a good promotional tool but, at the same time, also an unethical trading method.
Click Here To Read: Do yellow price tags matter to consumers?
August 31, 2010
Bakadesuyo reports…
“the folks who heard a warm two sentence thank you from a boss made an average of about 50% more calls during the subsequent week.”
Click Here To Read: How powerful are the words “thank you”?
August 31, 2010
Brilliant find via Freakonomics blog
Abstract (Joseph Henricha, Steven J. Heinea, and Ara Norenzayana @ Cambridge)
Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.
Click Here To Read: Why Are American’s Weird Decision Makers? Other Citizens Act Like Rational Economists!
August 31, 2010
Abstract (via Francesca Gino & Lamar Pierce @ HBS)
Unethical and dishonest behavior has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars from various disciplines. Recent work has begun to focus on a previous overlooked factor predicting dishonest behavior: the beneficiary or victim of dishonest acts. In two laboratory experiments, we manipulate the level of resources allocated to our participants (their “wealth”) and investigate whether perceived inequity from wealth that is randomly or subjectively assigned leads individuals to cross ethical boundaries through helping or hurting others. The results show that dishonest behavior is influenced by positive and negative inequity that motivates helping and hurting acts. Furthermore, a third experiment shows that people tend to discount the wrongness of crossing ethical boundaries to hurt or help others when the action restores equity.
Excerpted (Conclusion)
Our findings suggest that perceptions of negative inequity are powerful drivers of dishonest behavior that hurts a referent other. But, as our results show, even perceptions of positive inequity can have negative consequences, since they motivate dishonest behavior that helps others. Furthermore, our findings suggest that when dishonest behavior is used as a means to restore equity, individuals discount the immorality of their actions, behaving like modern Robin Hoods. This suggests that rules and ethical norms (such as honesty) can be easily bypassed due to highly subjective perceptions of ethically-safe behaviors when such behaviors, while actually dishonest, restore equity.
Click Here To Read: Lying to Level the Playing Field: Why People May Dishonestly Help or Hurt Others to Create Equity
August 31, 2010
Introduction (via BPS research)
Sloshed, trollied, hammered, plastered. We’ve done a sterling job of inventing words for the inebriated state, but when it comes to judging from their behaviour how much a person has drunk, we could do (a lot) better. That’s according to a review of the literature by US psychologist Steve Rubenzer.
We all have our trusted indices for judging other people’s drunkenness. Perhaps it’s when the eyeballs start floating about as if under the control of a clumsy puppeteer. Or maybe the effusive ‘you know I love you’ delivered with a trickle of dribble. However, the vast majority of studies find that lay people, police officers and bartenders are in fact hopeless at distinguishing a drunk person from a sober one, at least at moderate levels of intoxication. To take just one example, after watching drunk and sober people being interviewed and negotiating a stair case, bartenders rated them as slightly, moderately or very drunk with an accuracy of just 25 per cent.
It’s a similar story when participants are equipped with more structured means of detecting drunkenness. One 1958 study, for example, found no relation between doctors’ assessments of people’s intoxication (based on pulse rate, general appearance, gait and mental status) and the subsequent performance of those people on a driving course.
Conclusion (via BPS research)
‘…[J]udging low to moderate levels of intoxication in strangers is a difficult task,’ Rubenzer concludes. ‘A variety of professions that might be expected to show substantial skill assessing intoxication do not. [And] no behavioural or physical sign has emerged that is consistently related to a specific level of blood alcohol concentration level without large variation among individuals, with the possible exception of nystagmus.’
Click Here To Read: How good are we at estimating other people’s drunkenness?
