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on Cognitive and Behavioural Economics |
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Issue of 2019‒11‒18
four papers chosen by Marco Novarese Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Thomas Görzen (University of Paderborn) |
| Abstract: | Companies increasingly involve the crowd for collective decision making and, to aggregate the decisions, they commonly average the scores. By ignoring crowdworkers’ different levels of experience and decision biases, this method may not favor the best outcome. Alternatively, decisions can be weighted in favor of the more experienced judges in the crowd. However, previous research is inconclusive as to whether more experienced individuals are any better at avoiding decision biases. To answer this question, we conduct online crowd-based experiments with a range of treatments, comparing the anchoring effect of individuals with different levels of experience. Results indicate that not only does greater experience not protect crowdworkers from the anchoring effect but it increases their confidence in their decision, compared to less experienced individuals, even if they are wrong. Our findings provide valuable insights for both researchers and practitioners interested in improving the effectiveness of crowdworking decision-making.\\ |
| Keywords: | behavioral economics, digital nudging, decision bias, anchoring, crowdsourcing |
| JEL: | L86 C93 M55 O32 |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pdn:dispap:55&r=all |
| By: | Thomas Görzen (University of Paderborn); Dennis Kundisch (University of Paderborn) |
| Abstract: | Companies increasingly engage the crowd in the evaluation of a large pool of ideas to sift out the better ones among them. The crowd, however, seems to be better at eliminating the worst ideas than identifying the better ones. Using the anchoring effect as a treatment, and the decreasing effect on the variance of ratings, we develop an approach that enables the use of crowd evaluation for the identification of high-quality ideas. To investigate whether our approach is effective, we conduct several experiments on a crowdworking-platform. Our empirical results indicate that evaluating ideas of high quality represents a more challenging task for the crowd than evaluating those of low quality. Accordingly, idea quality moderates the effect of an anchor for idea evaluation. Following a mixed methods approach, results of an additional qualitative study support our empirical results, indicating that participants are less certain about their evaluation when evaluating ideas of high quality. Our findings both extend the existing literature on crowd evaluation and offer practical solutions for how a crowd can be used to identify the most promising ideas.\\ |
| Keywords: | crowd evaluation, task complexity, idea quality, anchoring effect, mixed methods |
| JEL: | L86 C93 M55 O32 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pdn:dispap:57&r=all |
| By: | Béatrice Boulu-Reshef (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne); Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (University of Virginia, The Department of Politics) |
| Abstract: | Parochial altruism-individual sacrifice to benefit the in-group and harm an out-group-undermines inter-group cooperation and is implicated in a plethora of politically-significant behaviors. We report new experimental findings about the impact of variation in social distance within the in-group together with variation in social distance between the in-and out-groups on parochial altruism. Building from a minimal group paradigm setup , we find that differential social distance has a systematic effect on individual choice in a setting of potential inter-group conflict. In particular, parochial altruism is stimulated when individuals' distance to both their in-and out-group is high. A long-standing finding about behavior in contexts of inter-group conflict is that low social distance facilitates collective action. Our results suggest that the effects of high social distance may create a potential additional pathway to group-based individual action. Research on inter-group conflict and collective action can be advanced by investigating such effects. |
| Date: | 2019–05–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02135633&r=all |
| By: | Kröger, Sabine; Pierrot, Thibaud |
| Abstract: | Survey questions that elicit point predictions regarding uncertain events face an important challenge as human forecasters use various statistics to summarise their subjective expectations. In this paper, we take up the challenge and study whether alternative formulations of the questions used to elicit point predictions can be successful in driving forecasters towards reporting a particular central tendency (median or mean) of their subjective expectations distribution. We set up a laboratory experiment in which the participants act as forecasters and are asked to predict the next realisation of iid random draws coming from an objectively known distribution. We elicit the subjects' point predictions in four treatments, in which we ask for either (1) a "guess" of the next draw, as is standard in survey measures, (2) a "guess" as close as possible to the next 6 draws, and (3) the mean, or (4) the median of the next six draws. We then compare the predictions reported in the different treatments and their proximity to the three main central tendencies (mean, median, mode) of the objectively known distributions. We also investigate the cognitive process that affects the production of point predictions. We find that the majority of predictions in the two guess treatments, (1) and (2), are close to the mode. In treatment (2) ("one guess for the next six draws"), the forecasters report the mean and the median more often in comparison to (1) ("guess for the next draw"), but the mode remains the central tendency around which most of the predictions are located. In treatments (3) and (4), we find that forecasters adjust the point they report in the direction of a particular central tendency when specifically asked to report the mean or the median. Adjustments are more precise for forecasters with higher measures of numeracy and for those who have more experience. However, numeracy has no explanatory power when the forecasters are asked to report a "guess for the next draw" in treatment (1) which suggests that forecasters have different ways to summarise a distribution. |
| Keywords: | subjective expectations,forecasting,eliciting point predictions,experiment |
| JEL: | C91 C72 D84 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2019213&r=all |