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on Cognitive and Behavioural Economics |
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Issue of 2025–05–12
four papers chosen by Marco Novarese, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Yuval Salant; Jorg L. Spenkuch; David Almog |
| Abstract: | We explore the role of memory for choice behavior in unfamiliar environments. Using a unique data set, we document that decision makers exhibit a "memory premium." They tend to choose in-memory alternatives over out-of-memory ones, even when the latter are objectively better. Consistent with well-established regularities regarding the inner workings of human memory, the memory premium is associative, subject to interference and repetition effects, and decays over time. Even as decision makers gain familiarity with the environment, the memory premium remains economically large. Our results imply that the ease with which past experiences come to mind plays an important role in shaping choice behavior. |
| JEL: | D01 D03 D87 D91 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33649 |
| By: | Mackenzie Alston; Tatyana Deryugina; Olga Shurchkov |
| Abstract: | There is much disagreement about the extent to which financial incentives motivate study participants. We elicit preferences for being paid for completing a survey, including a one-in-twenty chance of winning a $100 electronic gift card, a guaranteed electronic gift card with the same expected value, and an option to refuse payment. More than twice as many participants chose the lottery as chose the guaranteed payment. Given that most people are risk averse, this pattern suggests that factors beyond risk preferences—such as hassle costs—influenced their decision-making. Almost 20 percent of participants actively refused payment, demonstrating low monetary motivation. We find both systematic and unobserved heterogeneity in the characteristics of who turned down payment. The propensity to refuse payment is more than four times as large among individuals 50 and older compared to younger individuals, suggesting a tradeoff between financially motivating participants and obtaining a representative sample. Overall, our results suggest that modest electronic gift card payments violate key requirements of Vernon Smith’s induced value theory. |
| JEL: | C83 C90 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33657 |
| By: | Hager, Anselm (Humboldt University Berlin); Kazakbaeva, Elnura (Evidence Central Asia); Hensel, Lukas (Peking University); Esenaliev, Damir (ISDC - International Security and Development Center) |
| Abstract: | Social norms are crucial drivers of human behavior. However, misperceptions of others’ opinions may sustain norms and conforming behavior even if a majority opposes the norm. Privately shifting individuals’ beliefs about true societal support may be insufficient to change behavior if others are perceived to continue to hold incorrect beliefs (“lack of mutual knowledge”). We conduct a field experiment with 5, 201 women in Kyrgyzstan to test whether creating mutual knowledge about social norms affects how perceived social norms influence behavior. We show that providing information about societal support for female political activism alone does not affect women’s political engagement. However, when perceived mutual knowledge is created, the effect of information about social norms increases significantly. Using vignette experiments, we show that the effect of mutual knowledge on social punishment is a plausible mechanism behind the behavioral impact. These findings suggest that higher-order beliefs about social norms are an important force linking social norms and behavior. |
| Keywords: | social norms, higher-order beliefs, field experiment, political activism |
| JEL: | D70 D83 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17748 |
| By: | Malte Baader (University of Zurich); Urs Fischbacher (University of Konstanz); Chris Starmer (University of Nottingham); Fabio Tufano (University of Leicester) |
| Abstract: | Identifying creative ability and its determinants is crucial in understanding artistic and innovative achievements. Previous work has shown that performance across established creativity tasks does not correlate within participants. A potential reason for this finding is that most creativity tasks lack well-defined performance criteria. In this paper, we develop a novel tool for measuring creative ability and assess its performance through experimental tests. We construct a semantic network serving as the underlying structure of our tool. Based on this network, participants perform two associative thinking tasks, Local Search and Depth Search. We characterise each task by relating it to an established measure of creativity, finding that performance in our proposed tasks is significantly related to their matched creativity task across several dimensions. Our new tool improves on established creativity tasks by utilising a predefined solution space. While capturing key features of established methodologies, it substantially increases on the ease of implementation and interpretation. In addition we also provide causal evidence on the effect of incentives on our tool. |
| Keywords: | Creativity; Associative Thinking; Methodology |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2025-01 |