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on Cognitive and Behavioural Economics |
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Issue of 2025–10–06
four papers chosen by Marco Novarese, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Tommaso Bondi; Daniel Csaba; Evan Friedman; Salvatore Nunnari |
| Abstract: | Several behavioral models assume that choice over multi-attribute goods is systematically affected by the ranges of attribute values. Two recurring principles in this literature are contrast, whereby attributes with larger ranges attract attention and are therefore overweighted, and normalization, whereby attributes with larger ranges are underweighted as fixed differences appear smaller against a larger range. These principles lead to divergent predictions, and yet, both contrast-based and normalization-based models have found strong empirical support, albeit in different contexts and with different experimental designs. The question remains: when does one effect emerge over the other? We experimentally test a unifying explanation: normalization dominates in simple choices, while contrast dominates in complex choices. We conduct an experiment with real-effort tasks in which we manipulate attribute ranges in both simple and complex choices. We find that, indeed, contrast dominates as the number of attributes increases. We also find that contrast emerges with cognitive load induced by time pressure. |
| Keywords: | multi-attribute choice, range effects, focusing, relative thinking, salience, bottom-up attention, context dependence, complexity, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D91 D12 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12175 |
| By: | Roland Bénabou; Luca Henkel |
| Abstract: | We review the economic literature on self-image, which conceptualizes identity as a set of beliefs about one’s core traits, values, goals, and social ties. Self-image concerns lead individuals to process information and make choices in non-standard ways that help affirm and protect certain valued identities. We first present the main cognitive mechanisms involved within a simple unifying framework. We then survey the extensive laboratory, online, and field experimental literature on the nature and behavioral implications of self-image concerns. We discuss in particular how they give rise to information and decision avoidance, motivated memory and beliefs, excuse-driven behavior, preferences for truth-telling, hypothetical bias, moral cleansing and moral licensing, collective identities, political preferences, and other forms of self-signaling or self-deception. We subsequently discuss common empirical strategies used to identify self-image concerns, as well as the threats to their validity and how to alleviate them. We conclude by outlining open questions and directions for future research on the belief-based approach to identity. |
| JEL: | D64 D82 D91 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34297 |
| By: | Béla Elmshauser; Evan Friedman; Yoon Joo Jo |
| Abstract: | Conveying private information to interested parties is central to almost every economic and social activity. In such interactions, the sender may lie by misreporting the truth, but may also deceive by inducing inaccurate beliefs about the payoff-relevant state. While a huge experimental literature documents aversion to lying, there is little evidence regarding aversion to deceiving others. Deception aversion is conceptually difficult to document because it depends on unobserved second-order beliefs: the sender’s belief over the receiver’s belief (over the payoff-relevant state). In this paper, we introduce a novel game and show theoretically how to identify deception aversion from choice data alone, with minimal assumptions on second-order beliefs. We run a laboratory experiment and find strong support for deception aversion that is robust to several natural variations of the game. Many subjects lie in order to avoid deception, and structural estimates imply that 30% of subjects are deception-averse. |
| Keywords: | lying, deception, lying aversion, deception aversion, image concerns, strategic communication, psychological game theory |
| JEL: | C44 C72 C92 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12154 |
| By: | Megan N Cesarini-Williams (Karolinska Institutet [Stockholm]); Julie Lasselin (Stockholm University, Karolinska Institutet [Stockholm]); Mats Lekander (Stockholm University, Karolinska Institutet [Stockholm]); John Axelsson (Stockholm University, Karolinska Institutet [Stockholm]); Mats J Olsson (Karolinska Institutet [Stockholm]); Arnaud Tognetti (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier) |
| Abstract: | A behavioral defense against disease involves detecting sickness cues in others and responding adaptively, such as by avoiding social interactions. While studies have shown that humans can discriminate sickness cues above chance in faces after sickness induction, whether this discrimination affects approach-avoidance behaviors remains uncertain. Here, we investigated how facial sickness cues influence judgments of trustworthiness, serving as a proxy measure for social avoidance. In a prior study, facial photographs were taken of 21 individuals when sick (two hours after an endotoxin injection causing a transient systemic inflammation) and healthy (following placebo injection). In the current study, participants in two separate experiments viewed these paired facial photographs and were asked, in a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, to identify which face appeared sick (n = 94) or more trustworthy (n = 82). Participants discriminated sick faces significantly above chance (73.1 %), with females (76.0 %) performing significantly better than males (69.3 %). Additionally, sick faces were perceived as significantly less trustworthy, being selected in only 34.9 % of trials. Notably, the higher the sickness discrimination accuracy for a particular face, the less likely that face was to be judged as trustworthy. Moreover, females (30.5 %) were significantly less likely than males (39.5 %) to judge sick faces as the more trustworthy looking. Individual differences in participants' disease vulnerability, disgust sensitivity, and frequency of sickness, as well as facial stimulus participants' inflammatory response intensity measured via interleukin-6 blood concentrations, body temperature, and sickness symptoms, did not predict sickness discrimination accuracy or trustworthiness judgments. Together, these findings suggest that visual sickness cues negatively affect trustworthiness judgments, potentially reflecting social avoidant behaviors towards individuals who appear sick. While judgments of facial trustworthiness may be considered a social inference about whether an individual is safe to approach, future research should also include manifest measures of approach-avoidance in response to sickness cues. |
| Keywords: | Sex differences, Acute inflammation, Pro-inflammatory markers, Lipopolysaccharide, Approach-avoidance behaviors, Behavioral immune system, Sickness detection, Disease avoidance, Trustworthiness, Sickness cues |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05271984 |