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on Cognitive and Behavioural Economics |
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Issue of 2025–04–21
six papers chosen by Marco Novarese, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Deer, Lachlan; Krishna, Adithya; Zhang, Lyla |
| Abstract: | Leib et al. (2024) examine how artificial intelligence (AI) generated advice affects dishonesty compared to equivalent human advice in a laboratory experiment. In their preferred empirical specification, the authors report that dishonesty-promoting advice increases dishonest behavior by approximately 15% compared to a baseline without advice, while honesty-promoting advice has no significant effect. Additionally, they find that algorithmic transparency - disclosing whether advice comes from AI or humans - does not affect behavior. We computationally reproduce the main results of the paper using the same procedures and original data. Our results confirm the sign, magnitude, and statistical significance of the authors' reported estimates across each of their main findings. Additional robustness checks show that the significance of the results remains stable under alternative specifications and methodological choices. |
| Keywords: | artificial intelligence, dishonesty, laboratory experiment, computational reproducibility |
| JEL: | D01 D91 C91 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:212 |
| By: | Shinsuke Ikeda; Takeshi Ojima |
| Abstract: | Consumers often exhibit behavioral cycles with alternating abstinence and indulgence over time. In the framework of tempting good consumption under limited willpower, we develop a simple model of the self-control cycles. To do so, based on the empirically relevant property of self-control, we incorporate two countervailing effects that self-control behaviors have on willpower with different delays. First, exercising self-control as of restraining tempting consumption depletes willpower in the next instant, and thereby reduces mental capital available for self-control thereafter. Second, as the self-control experience is accumulated, the consumer's willpower is gradually enhanced. The resulting predator-prey type dynamics in consumers' cognitive mechanics lead to cycles in tempting good consumption. The self-control cycles occur when (i) the self-control cost reducing effect of willpower and (ii) the willpower enhancing effect of self-control are both sufficiently strong. |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1277 |
| By: | Nina Xue (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business); Lata Gangadharan (Monash University); Philip J. Grossman (Monash University) |
| Abstract: | Many decisions are made by groups operating under uncertainty, with beliefs playing a critical role. However, little is known about how groups, often driven by self-serving motivations, aggregate these beliefs. In an experiment, we examine how groups form and update beliefs following communication. Belief updating in groups is more asymmetric (and pessimistic) but this asymmetry is not driven by self-serving motivations. Based on text analyses, risk is a prominent topic in discussions and we observe a self-serving bias in more risk-averse groups. Group decision making is a necessary but not sufficient condition for biased beliefs – group composition also matters. |
| Keywords: | belief updating, group decision making, self-serving bias, communication, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 C92 D23 D83 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwwuw:wuwp375 |
| By: | Hagmann, David (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology); Liao, Yi-tsen; Chater, Nick; Loewenstein, George |
| Abstract: | Policy challenges can typically be addressed both through systemic changes (e.g., taxes and mandates) and by encouraging individual behavior change. In this paper, we propose that, while in principle complementary, systemic and individual perspectives can compete for the limited attention of people and policymakers. Thus, directing policies in one of these two ways can distract the public’s attention from the other—an “attentional opportunity cost.” In two pre-registered experiments (n = 1, 800) covering three high-stakes domains (climate change, retirement savings, and public health), we show that when people learn about policies targeting individual behavior (such as awareness campaigns), they are more likely to themselves propose policies that target individual behavior, and to hold individuals rather than organizational actors responsible for solving the problem, than are people who learned about systemic policies (such as taxes and mandates, Study 1). This shift in attribution of responsibility has behavioral consequences: people exposed to individual interventions are more likely to donate to an organization that educates individuals rather than one seeking to effect systemic reforms (Study 2). Policies targeting individual behavior may, therefore, have the unintended consequence of redirecting attention and attributions of responsibility away from systemic change to individual behavior. |
| Date: | 2023–04–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:z2vwb_v1 |
| By: | Marta Ruiz-Delgado (Programa de Doctorado en Economía y Empresa, Universidad de Málaga); Adriana Alventosa (ERI-CES, Universitat de València); Miguel A. Meléndez-Jiménez (Departamento de Teoría e Historia Económica, Universidad de Málaga); Antonio J. Morales (Departamento de Teoría e Historia Económica, Universidad de Málaga) |
| Abstract: | We report on a laboratory experiment on team production when a principal decides, before contributions are made, how the team output will be allocated between himself and the team members. The allocation determines the marginal per capita rate of contributions. Despite free-riding being the dominant strategy, if workers perceive more generous allocations as a gift by the employer, reciprocity motives may increase contributions. We also explore the impact of communication on the employer's side. Our results show the presence of reciprocity, evidencing that the gift-exchange phenomenon is robust to team production. Regarding communication, we find that messages with a positive connotation significantly increase contributions to the common project. |
| Keywords: | public goods game, gift exchange game, communication, experiments |
| JEL: | C92 H41 D91 M52 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mal:wpaper:2025-1 |
| By: | GUÉNIN--CARLUT, Avel; White, Ben; Sganzerla, Lorena |
| Abstract: | We draw from the recent enactivist literature to articulate an operational definition of Wittgensteinien forms of life as a self-productive collection of constraints over collective behavior. We propose that humans integrate and enact those account through the Active Inference of shared “regimes of attentions”, which are experienced as embedded normativity within direct engagement with a shared sociocultural niche. Given those elements, we discuss how sociocultural lifeforms “encode information” in the material niche, and discuss how this information may be recovered by cognitive archeologists. |
| Date: | 2023–03–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:qxszh_v1 |