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on Cognitive and Behavioural Economics |
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Issue of 2018‒01‒29
seven papers chosen by Marco Novarese Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Ronayne, David (Economics Dept.and Nuffield College, University of Oxford,); Sgroi, Daniel (Economics Dept. and CAGE, University of Warwick and Nuffield College, University of Oxford,) |
| Abstract: | We present results from an experiment involving 1,500 participants on whether, when and why good advice is ignored, focusing on envy and stubbornness. Participants performance in skill-based and luck-based tasks generated a probability of winning a bonus. About a quarter ignored advice that would have increased their chance of winning. Good advice was followed less often when the adviser was relatively highly remunerated or the task was skill-based. More envious advisees took good advice more often in the skill-based task, but higher adviser remuneration significantly reduced this effect. Susceptibility to the sunk cost fallacy reduced the uptake of good advice. |
| Keywords: | advice ; skill ; remuneration ; envy ; sunk cost fallacy |
| JEL: | C91 C99 D91 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1150&r=cbe |
| By: | Nicolas Houy (Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE L-SE UMR 5824, F-69130 Ecully, France); Jean-Philippe Nicolaï (ETH Zürich, Chair of Integrative Risk Management and Economics, Zurichbergstrasse 18, 8032 Zürich); Marie Claire Villeval (Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE L-SE UMR 5824, F-69130 Ecully, France) |
| Abstract: | Achieving an ambitious goal frequently requires succeeding in a sequence of intermediate tasks, some being critical for the final outcome, and others not. However, individuals are not always able to provide a level of effort sufficient to guarantee success in all such intermediate tasks. The ability to manage effort throughout the sequence of tasks is therefore critical when resources are limited. In this paper we propose a criterion that defines the importance of a task and identifies how an individual should optimally allocate a limited stock of exhaustible efforts over tasks. We test this importance criterion in a laboratory experiment that reproduces the main features of a tennis match. We show that our importance criterion is able to predict the individuals’ performance and it outperforms the Morris importance criterion that defines the importance of a point in terms of its impact on the probability of achieving the final outcome. We also find no evidence of choking under pressure and stress, as proxied by electrophysiological measures. |
| Keywords: | Critical ability, choking under pressure, Morris-importance, Skin Conductance Responses, experiment |
| JEL: | C72 C92 D81 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:1736&r=cbe |
| By: | Julie Beugnot (Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, CRESE); Bernard Fortin (Université Laval, CRREP, CIRANO); Guy Lacroix (Université Laval, CRREP, CIRANO); Marie-Claire Villeval (Université de Lyon, CNRS, GATE, IZA) |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether peer effects at work differ by gender and whether the gender difference in peer effects –if any- depends on work organization, precisely the structure of social networks. We develop a social network model with gender heterogeneity that we test by means of a real effort laboratory experiment. We compare sequential networks in which information on peers flows exclusively downward (from peers to the worker) and simultaneous networks where it disseminates bi-directionally along an undirected line (from peers to the worker and from the worker to peers). We identify strong gender differences in peer effects, as males’ effort increases with peers’ performance in both types of network, whereas females behave conditionally. While they are influenced by peers in sequential networks, females disregard their peers’ performance when information flows in both directions. We reject that the difference between networks is driven by having one’s performance observed by others or by the presence of peers in the same session in simultaneous networks. We interpret the gender difference in terms of perception of a higher competitiveness of the environment in simultaneous than in sequential networks because of the bi-directional flow of information. |
| Keywords: | Gender, peer effects, social networks, work effort, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 J16 J24 J31 M52 |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crb:wpaper:2017-03&r=cbe |
| By: | Michał Wiktor Krawczyk (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw); Joanna Rachubik (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw) |
| Abstract: | Despite having the same probability of being drawn, certain number combinations are more popular than others among the lottery players. One explanation of such a preference is the representativeness heuristic (RH). Unlike previous hypothetical experiments, in the present experiment we used real-life lottery tickets, involving a high payout in case of winning to elicit true preferences. To verify if people prefer randomly-looking number combinations, participants were to choose a preferred ticket. To validate if it is likely to be caused by RH, we correlated preference for “random” sequences with the belief in dependence between subsequent coin tosses. We confirm that people strongly prefer random sequences and that a non-trivial fraction believes in dependence between coin tosses. However, there is no correlation between these two tendencies, questioning the RH explanation. By contrast, participants who have an (irrationally) strong preference for number combinations also tend to make (irrationally) specific predictions in the coin task. Unexpectedly, we find that females are considerably more likely to belong to this group than males. |
| Keywords: | decision bias, gambler’s fallacy, gender difference, hot hand fallacy, lottery choice, misperception of randomness, number preference in lotteries, representativeness heuristic |
| JEL: | C93 D01 D81 D91 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2018-03&r=cbe |
| By: | Anaëlle Camarda (LaPsyDE - UMR 8240 - Laboratoire de psychologie du développement et de l'éducation de l'enfant - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Hicham Ezzat (MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris); Mathieu Cassotti (LaPsyDE - UMR 8240 - Laboratoire de psychologie du développement et de l'éducation de l'enfant - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Marine Agogué (HEC Montréal - HEC Montréal); Benoit Weil (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Pascal Le Masson (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | There are today large expectations towards creative thinking and innovation in both educational and industrial contexts. Creativity defined as the ability to think of something truly new (i.e., original, unexpected), and appropriate (i.e., useful, adaptive concerning task constraints) is considered as a crucial skill required in numerous organizations and is largely viewed as fundamental process for any innovation. Nevertheless, generating, evaluating and developing new ideas might not be as easy as it seems, and individuals often failed to propose creative solutions to a specific problem, focusing on a narrow scope of existing solutions. Decades of cognitive psychology studies has demonstrated that previously acquired and existing knowledge or ideas can limit creative ideation, leading a phenomena named " mental fixation " or " fixation effect ". Experimental studies with students converged in showing that the fixation effect is reinforced when adults are exposed to uncreative examples of solutions before being asked to generate new ideas. Although, considerable efforts have been devoted at identifying the negative influence of examples on creative ideas generation in experiments made on thousands of engineers' students, as well as novices from different disciplines, surprisingly there are to date few study that have examined whether examples may constrain (or facilitate) creative ideation in expert engineers or designers. Therefore, the present study aimed to clarify the potential role of expertise in creative idea generation. In this study, 64 expert engineers from a prestigious French Aerospatiale multinational were asked to design solutions to ensure that a hen's egg dropped from a height of ten meters does not break (the egg task). The participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions (a control condition without an example or a test condition with an uncreative example) and were given ten minutes to solve the egg task. The problems were identical across conditions, except that the group with an example read the following: " One solution classically given is to slow the fall with a parachute ". Our results show that expert engineers were able to overcome design fixation, and interestingly they provided more solutions within the expansion path and fewer solution within the fixation path when they were given an uncreative example. As such, our results expand the understandings of the critical characteristics of expertise for overcoming cognitive biases to creativity, and give new sights to managerial implications for the role of creative leaders in this concern, more specifically when managing innovative processes with team members having varying levels of expertise. |
| Keywords: | creativity, ideation, design fixation, expertise, leadership |
| Date: | 2017–06–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01626164&r=cbe |
| By: | Laetitia Renier; Claudia Toma |
| Abstract: | Why do employees help more or less their colleagues? Why do they feel misunderstood and not supported by their superiors or peers? Why is employees’ professional development not necessarily improved after multisource feedback? Could all of these organizational outcomes be influenced by people’s metaperception, a phenomenon largely ignored in the field of organizational behavior? The literature about Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB), Workplace Relationship (WR), Perceived Organizational Support (POS) and Multisource Feedback (MSF) seems to carry a black box. It may concern the motivational aspects of OCB, the conceptualization of POS or even the mechanisms behind MSF’s shortfalls. This paper highlights several gaps in the field of Organizational Behavior and then, addresses this gap through the lens of metaperception. This paper aims to provide convincing evidence that metaperception is the missing link to improve our understanding of OCB, WR, POS and MSF. We conclude on clear directions for future research investigating how metaperception could intervene in these three outcomes. |
| Keywords: | metaperception; perceived support; organizational citizenship behavior; multisource feedback |
| JEL: | D23 D83 D84 |
| Date: | 2018–01–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/264416&r=cbe |
| By: | Mario Le Glatin (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Pascal Le Masson (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Benoit Weil (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Organisations trying to innovate, despite being naturally encouraged to use project management and associated rational theories of choice, will necessarily experiment in some way or another due to the high levels of uncertainty and the unknown to be discovered. Exploratory project management may face situations requiring a constant reconfiguration of beliefs and hypotheses as a reaction to external factors. In this paper, we propose to discuss the existence of a generative rationality breaking away from classical decision theory by deliberately reversing preferences and designing decisions. |
| Keywords: | decision,design,project,innovation,preferences reversal,rationality,generative |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01674309&r=cbe |