nep-neu New Economics Papers
on Neuroeconomics
Issue of 2016‒05‒21
seven papers chosen by



  1. Happy People Have Children: Choice and Self-Selection into Parenthood By Sophie Cetre; Andrew E. Clark; Claudia Senik
  2. The influence of gender and expressed emotions on evaluation of manager’s behavioral and professional competen By Ewa Magier-Šakomy; Honorata Neumueler
  3. Language and Emotion By Niall Bond; Victor Ginsburgh
  4. Maternal Education, Parental Investment and Non-Cognitive Skills in Rural China By Jessica Leight; Elaine M. Liu
  5. A Note on The Evolution of Preferences By Oliver Enrique Pardo Reinoso
  6. The Effects of Mood on Emotion Recognition and its Relationship with the Global vs Local Information Processing Styles By Victoria Ovsyannikova
  7. Hayek on Expectations: The Interplay between two Complex Systems By Agnès Festré; Pierre Garrouste

  1. By: Sophie Cetre; Andrew E. Clark; Claudia Senik
    Abstract: There is mixed evidence in the existing literature on whether children are associated with greater subjective well-being, with the correlation depending on which countries and populations are considered. We here provide a systematic analysis of this question based on three different datasets: two cross-national and one national panel. We show that the association between children and subjective well-being is positive only in developed countries, and for those who become parents after the age of 30 and who have higher income. We also provide evidence of a positive selection into parenthood, whereby happier individuals are more likely to have children.
    Keywords: Happiness; fertility; children; income; selection
    Date: 2016–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpm:docweb:1604&r=neu
  2. By: Ewa Magier-Šakomy (WSB University in Gdańsk); Honorata Neumueler (WSB University in Gdańsk)
    Abstract: The gender issue in management is still vividly discussed (i.e. :Byron 2008; Chua; Murray, 2015; Lakshmi, Peter, 2015). Researchers are interested in both: relation between manager’s gender and real efficacy, and between manager’s gender and perceiving his/her efficacy. The aim of this work is to understand the role of manager’s gender and his/her emotions in the perception of his/her professional competencies and social or personal skills. Authors try to answer the question whether the evaluation of the manager’s professional and behavioral competencies depends on manager’s gender and emotions expressed at his/her face. It was expected that negative emotion, especially expressed by female manager would decrease the evaluation of her competencies. To test the hypotheses, 4 questionnaires were developed. Each questionnaire consist of picture, short description of manager and 25 characteristics given in the form of semantic differential scale. Each version differed with an attached picture according to independent variables included to the research: gender (man vs woman) and emotion (joy vs anger). 25 characteristics referred to professional and behavioral skills. 160 subjects (employees) participated in the study. Results show that expressed emotion more significantly determines female manager’s competencies than male. In addition, negative emotion expressed by woman conduces to low evaluation. The emotion expressed by man does not influence how he is perceived, sometimes his negative emotion leads to perceiving his competencies as higher (i.e.: in decision making, or being reliable). The results are discussed in the frame of social perception theories.
    Keywords: economic psychology, manager's competencies, gender, emotions, social perception, decision making, ANOVA
    JEL: A10 A13 A14
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:3606360&r=neu
  3. By: Niall Bond; Victor Ginsburgh
    Abstract: The authors consider the emergence of emotions and their treatment in the human sciences and look specifically at positions taken by multilingual writers who relate emotions they have felt to the languages in which their emotions are expressed. They enquire into whether language exists in the absence of language communities and consider how authors have expressed their anchoring or lack of anchoring in one or more languages and what motivates them in their choice of a given language for emotional expression.
    Date: 2016–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/229782&r=neu
  4. By: Jessica Leight; Elaine M. Liu
    Abstract: The importance of non-cognitive skills in determining long-term human capital and labor market outcomes is widely acknowledged, but relatively little is known about how educational investments by parents may respond to non-cognitive skills early in life. This paper evaluates the parental response to variation in non-cognitive skills among their children in rural Gansu province, China, employing a household fixed effects specification; non-cognitive skills are defined as the inverse of both externalizing challenges (behavioral problems and aggression) and internalizing challenges (anxiety and withdrawal). The results suggest that on average, parents invest no more in terms of educational expenditure in children who have better non-cognitive skills relative to their siblings. However, there is significant heterogeneity with respect to maternal education; less educated mothers appear to reinforce differences in non-cognitive skills between their children, while more educated mothers compensate for these differences. Most importantly, there is evidence that these compensatory investments lead to catch-up in non-cognitive skills over time for children of more educated mothers.
    JEL: D13 I24 O15
    Date: 2016–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22233&r=neu
  5. By: Oliver Enrique Pardo Reinoso
    Abstract: This note checks the robustness of a surprising result in Dekel et al. (2007). The result states that strict Nash equilibria might cease to be evolutionary stable when agents are able to observe the opponent’s preferences with a very low probability. This note shows that the result is driven by the assumption that there is no risk for the observed preferences to be mistaken. In particular, when a player may observe a signal correlated with the opponent’s preferences, but the signal is noisy enough, all strict Nash equilibria are evolutionary stable.
    Date: 2015–09–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000495:014568&r=neu
  6. By: Victoria Ovsyannikova (National Research University Higher School of Economics)
    Abstract: This study examines the effect of mood on emotion recognition and the relationship of mood, emotion recognition and information processing styles. This study hypothesized that a positive mood promotes a global processing style, associated with more efficient emotion recognition. In this study, subjects’ eye movements were analyzed to measure global versus local processing styles. The results suggest that people in a positive mood recognize happiness expression more slowly than those in a neutral mood. Participants’ processing styles were not related to emotion recognition speed. The findings clarify mechanisms of efficient emotion recognition.
    Keywords: emotion recognition, mood induction, congruency effect, global and local information processing styles, eye movements
    JEL: Z
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:60psy2016&r=neu
  7. By: Agnès Festré (GREDEG CNRS; University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France); Pierre Garrouste (GREDEG CNRS; University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France)
    Abstract: In this paper we argue that Hayek’s expectations approach can be better understood by taking account of the interplay between two related complex systems: the complex system of cognition and the complex system of behavioral rules of action. The former is located at the individual level and concerns the way human beings perceive the physical world as and well as their fellow men. The second one concerns how human beings behave (essentially how they follow rules) and form expectations based on the properties of their cognitive systems, such that the system of rules to which they adhere provides higher order regularities which preserve their existence over time, that is, the existence of societies. The article is organized as follows. Section 1 provides a detailed description of these complex systems and emphasizes their differences. Section 2 deals with the interplay between these two systems, and discusses the consequences of forming expectations. Section 3 sums up the paper’s main arguments.
    Keywords: Hayek, emergence, complexity, knowledge, expectations
    JEL: B25 B4 B53 D84
    Date: 2016–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2016-13&r=neu

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