Greater effort increases perceived value in an invertebrate

Czaczkes, T. J., Brandstetter, B., di Stefano, I., & Heinze, J. (2018). Greater effort increases perceived value in an invertebrate. Journal of Comparative Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/com0000109

Abstract: Expending effort is generally considered to be undesirable. However, both humans and vertebrates will work for a reward they could also get for free. Moreover, cues associated with high-effort rewards are preferred to low-effort associated cues. Many explanations for these counterintuitive findings have been suggested, including cognitive dissonance (self-justification) or a greater contrast in state (e.g., energy or frustration level) before and after an effort-linked reward. Here, we test whether effort expenditure also increases perceived value in ants, using both classical cue-association methods and pheromone deposition, which correlates with perceived value. In 2 separate experimental setups, we show that pheromone deposition is higher toward the reward that requires more effort: 47% more pheromone deposition was performed for rewards reached via a vertical runway (high effort) compared with ones reached via a horizontal runway (low effort), and deposition rates were 28% higher on rough (high effort) versus smooth (low effort) runways. Using traditional cue-association methods, 63% of ants trained on different surface roughness, and 70% of ants trained on different runway elevations, preferred the high-effort related cues on a Y maze. Finally, pheromone deposition to feeders requiring memorization of one path bifurcation was up to 29% higher than to an identical feeder requiring no learning. Our results suggest that effort affects value perception in ants. This effect may stem from a cognitive process, which monitors the change in a generalized hedonic state before and after reward.

h/t: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf

Achievement is often attributed to natural talent (naturals) or hard work (strivers). There is a preference for naturals over strivers when evaluating professionals, but strivers are preferred when the target appeared to be an ordinary person

Contextual and personal determinants of preferring success attributed to natural talent or striving. Christina M. Brown, Nicole S. Troy, Katie R. Jobson , Jennifer K. Link. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.03.017

Highlights
•    Achievement is often attributed to natural talent (naturals) or hard work (strivers).
•    Past research has found a preference for naturals over strivers.
•    We replicated the bias among experienced perceivers evaluating professional targets.
•    Conversely, strivers were preferred when the target appeared to be an ordinary person.
•    We observed a new naturalness bias: Strivers are assumed to have natural talent.

Abstract: Evidence to date has established a preference for successful individuals whose achievements are attributed to natural talent (“naturals”) rather than focused effort (“strivers”). Across six studies, we discovered a reversal of the bias depending on contextual and personal factors. Strivers, rather than naturals, are favored when evaluating ordinary people. This preference is particularly strong among perceivers who have experience in the performance domain, and it replicates across different domains and participant populations. Strivers are also preferred as cooperative partners and are expected to perform better on novel, unrelated tasks. The direction of the preference for naturals versus strivers can be traced to a combination of the perceiver's experience and the target's professional status. Specifically, a naturalness bias was only present among experienced perceivers evaluating professional targets. On the other hand, a more implicit form of the naturalness bias was observed in attributions made about the target's achievement, such that strivers were assumed to have natural talent more than naturals were assumed to have worked diligently.

Keywords: Natural talent; Naturals; Strivers; Naturalness bias; Essentialism

In jobs that require substantial amounts of interpersonal interaction a large beauty premium exists. In jobs where attractiveness seems unlikely to truly enhance productivity (like working with information and data) there is no premium

Beauty, Job Tasks, and Wages: A New Conclusion about Employer Taste-Based Discrimination. Todd R. Stinebrickner, Ralph Stinebrickner, Paul J. Sullivan. NBER Working Paper No. 24479
www.nber.org/papers/w24479

We use novel data from the Berea Panel Study to reexamine the labor market mechanisms generating the beauty wage premium. We find that the beauty premium varies widely across jobs with different task requirements. Specifically, in jobs where existing research such as Hamermesh and Biddle (1994) has posited that attractiveness is plausibly a productivity enhancing attribute—those that require substantial amounts of interpersonal interaction—a large beauty premium exists. In contrast, in jobs where attractiveness seems unlikely to truly enhance productivity—jobs that require working with information and data—there is no beauty premium. This stark variation in the beauty premium across jobs is inconsistent with the employer-based discrimination explanation for the beauty premium, because this theory predicts that all jobs will favor attractive workers. Our approach is made possible by unique longitudinal task data, which was collected to address the concern that measurement error in variables describing the importance of interpersonal tasks would tend to bias results towards finding a primary role for employer taste-based discrimination. As such, it is perhaps not surprising that our conclusions about the importance of employer taste-based discrimination are in stark contrast to all previous research that has utilized a similar conceptual approach.

Participants rated the fictitious politician’s public approval & perceived character as higher if the politician was a member of their own political party than if the politician was a member of the another one

Judging scandal: Standards or bias in politics. Erin D. Solomon, Jana M. Hackathorn & David Crittendon. The Journal of Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2018.1453468

ABSTRACT: As the number of political scandals rises, we examined the circumstances that might influence how a politician would be judged as a result of a scandal. Specifically, we hypothesized that ingroup bias theory and shifting standards theory would produce different patterns of judgements. In two studies, we found support for the ingroup bias theory, such that participants rated the fictitious politician’s public approval and perceived character as higher if the politician was a member of their own political party (i.e. their ingroup) than if the politician was a member of the another political party (i.e. their outgroup). These results may explain, in part, why people may judge politicians involved in scandal more or less harshly depending on whether they are an ingroup member or outgroup member.

KEYWORDS: infidelity, ingroup bias, political scandal, shifting standards, social identity theory

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Rolf Degen https://twitter.com/DegenRolf: A politician involved in a sex scandal is always judged more harshly if he/she is from the other side of the political aisle - no matter how people view sex outside marriage in general.

We prefer to delegate a moral task to a human, despite that machine errors are not perceived significantly different from human errors and the level of trust toward machines and toward humans does not differ significantly

Rage Against the Machine: Automation in the Moral Domain. Jan Gogoll, Matthias Uhl. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2018.04.003

Highlights
•    We are the first to experimentally investigate delegation to machines in the moral domain
•    Subjects prefer to delegate a moral task to a human
•    Delegators were rewarded less for delegating to a machine
•    Machine errors are not perceived significantly different from human errors
•    Level of trust toward machines and toward humans does not differ significantly

Abstract: The introduction of ever more capable autonomous systems is moving at a rapid pace. The technological progress will enable us to completely delegate to machines processes that were once a prerogative for humans. Progress in fields like autonomous driving promises huge benefits on both economical and ethical scales. Yet, there is little research that investigates the utilization of machines to perform tasks that are in the moral domain. This study explores whether subjects are willing to delegate tasks that affect third parties to machines as well as how this decision is evaluated by an impartial observer. We examined two possible factors that might coin attitudes regarding machine use—perceived utility of and trust in the automated device. We found that people are hesitant to delegate to a machine and that observers judge such delegations in relatively critical light. Neither perceived utility nor trust, however, can account for this pattern. Alternative explanations that we test in a post-experimental survey also do not find support. We may thus observe an aversion per se against machine use in the moral domain.