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on Neuroeconomics |
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Issue of 2013‒11‒14
two papers chosen by |
| By: | Alison L. Booth; Lina Cardona-Sosa; Patrick Nolen |
| Abstract: | Single-sex classes within coeducational environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking attitudes in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment using first year college students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two distinct dates. Students were randomly assigned to weekly classes of three types: all female, all male, and coeducational. They were not allowed to change group subsequently. We found that women are less likely to make risky choices than men at both dates. However, after eight weeks in a single-sex class environment, women were significantly more likely to choose the lottery than their counterparts in coeducational groups. These results are robust to the inclusion of controls for IQ and for personality type, as well as to a number of sensitivity tests. Our findings suggest that observed gender differences in behavior under uncertainty found in previous studies might partly reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits. |
| Keywords: | Gender, risk preferences, single-sex groups, cognitive ability. Classification JEL: C9, C91, C92, J16, D01, D80, J16, J24 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdr:borrec:786&r=neu |
| By: | Marko Pitesa (MC - Management et Comportement - Grenoble École de Management (GEM)); Stefan Thau (INSEAD - INSEAD) |
| Abstract: | This research tested the idea that lack of material resources (e.g., low income) causes people to make harsher moral judgments because lack of material resources is associated with a lower ability to cope with the effects of others' harmful behavior. Consistent with this idea, a large cross-cultural survey (Study 1) found that both chronic (low income) and situational (inflation) lack of material resources were associated with harsher moral judgments. The effect of inflation was stronger for low-income individuals, whom inflation renders relatively more vulnerable. A follow-up experiment (Study 2) caused participants to perceive they lacked material resources by employing different anchors on the scale they used to report their income. The manipulation led to harsher judgments of harmful, but not of non-harmful, transgressions and this effect was explained by a sense of vulnerability. Alternative explanations were excluded. These results demonstrate a functional and contextually situated nature of moral psychology. |
| Keywords: | moral judgments, material resources, income, moral transgressions, moral psychology |
| Date: | 2013–10–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:gemwpa:hal-00877140&r=neu |