Bayesian Occam's razor: People's judgments penalize hypotheses as a function not only of their numbers of free parameters but also as a function of the size of the parameter space, and they penalize those hypotheses even when their parameters can be “tuned” to fit the data better than comparatively simpler hypotheses

Blanchard, T., Lombrozo, T. and Nichols, S. (2017), Bayesian Occam's Razor Is a Razor of the People. Cogn Sci. doi:10.1111/cogs.12573

Abstract: Occam's razor—the idea that all else being equal, we should pick the simpler hypothesis—plays a prominent role in ordinary and scientific inference. But why are simpler hypotheses better? One attractive hypothesis known as Bayesian Occam's razor (BOR) is that more complex hypotheses tend to be more flexible—they can accommodate a wider range of possible data—and that flexibility is automatically penalized by Bayesian inference. In two experiments, we provide evidence that people's intuitive probabilistic and explanatory judgments follow the prescriptions of BOR. In particular, people's judgments are consistent with the two most distinctive characteristics of BOR: They penalize hypotheses as a function not only of their numbers of free parameters but also as a function of the size of the parameter space, and they penalize those hypotheses even when their parameters can be “tuned” to fit the data better than comparatively simpler hypotheses.

Through employing more than 3000 workers, usage of Corporate Social Responsibility increases employee misbehavior — 20% more employees act detrimentally toward our firm by shirking on their primary job duty

When Corporate Social Responsibility Backfires: Theory and Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment. John A. List, Fatemeh Momeni. NBER Working Paper No. 24169. www.nber.org/papers/w24169

Abstract: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a cornerstone of modern business practice, developing from a “why” in the 1960s to a “must” today. Early empirical evidence on both the demand and supply sides has largely confirmed CSR's efficacy. This paper combines theory with a large-scale natural field experiment to connect CSR to an important but often neglected behavior: employee misconduct and shirking. Through employing more than 3000 workers, we find that our usage of CSR increases employee misbehavior — 20% more employees act detrimentally toward our firm by shirking on their primary job duty when we introduce CSR. Complementary treatments suggest that “moral licensing” is at work, in that the “doing good” nature of CSR induces workers to misbehave on another dimension that hurts the firm. In this way, our data highlight a potential dark cloud of CSR, and serve to forewarn that such business practices should not be blindly applied.

Updated: Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-term Trends

Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-term Trends. Gerald Auten, David Splinter. November 12, 2017. http://davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-Tax_Data_and_Inequality.pdf

Abstract: Previous studies using U.S. tax return data, such as Piketty and Saez (2003), concluded that top one percent income shares increased substantially since 1960. But tax return based measures are biased by tax base changes and missing income sources. Accounting for these limitations reduces the increase in top one percent income shares by two-thirds. Further, accounting for government transfers reduces the increase over 80 percent. After-tax income results are similar. This shows that unadjusted tax return based measures present a distorted view of inequality because incomes reported on tax returns are sensitive to tax law changes and omit significant income sources.

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Update to Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends in U.S. Income Inequality. Gerald Auten and David Splinter. Draft Paper, Annual Conference, ASSA Annual Meeting, 2017. http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/09/using-tax-data-to-measure-long-term.html

Using deep learning and Google Street View to estimate the demographic makeup of neighborhoods across the United States

Using deep learning and Google Street View to estimate the demographic makeup of neighborhoods across the United States. Timnit Gebru et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114 no. 50. http://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13108.abstract

Significance: We show that socioeconomic attributes such as income, race, education, and voting patterns can be inferred from cars detected in Google Street View images using deep learning. Our model works by discovering associations between cars and people. For example, if the number of sedans in a city is higher than the number of pickup trucks, that city is likely to vote for a Democrat in the next presidential election (88% chance); if not, then the city is likely to vote for a Republican (82% chance).

Abstract: The United States spends more than $250 million each year on the American Community Survey (ACS), a labor-intensive door-to-door study that measures statistics relating to race, gender, education, occupation, unemployment, and other demographic factors. Although a comprehensive source of data, the lag between demographic changes and their appearance in the ACS can exceed several years. As digital imagery becomes ubiquitous and machine vision techniques improve, automated data analysis may become an increasingly practical supplement to the ACS. Here, we present a method that estimates socioeconomic characteristics of regions spanning 200 US cities by using 50 million images of street scenes gathered with Google Street View cars. Using deep learning-based computer vision techniques, we determined the make, model, and year of all motor vehicles encountered in particular neighborhoods. Data from this census of motor vehicles, which enumerated 22 million automobiles in total (8% of all automobiles in the United States), were used to accurately estimate income, race, education, and voting patterns at the zip code and precinct level. (The average US precinct contains ∼1,000 people.) The resulting associations are surprisingly simple and powerful. For instance, if the number of sedans encountered during a drive through a city is higher than the number of pickup trucks, the city is likely to vote for a Democrat during the next presidential election (88% chance); otherwise, it is likely to vote Republican (82%). Our results suggest that automated systems for monitoring demographics may effectively complement labor-intensive approaches, with the potential to measure demographics with fine spatial resolution, in close to real time.

Closing Your Eyes to Follow Your Heart: Avoiding Information to Protect a Strong Intuitive Preference

Closing Your Eyes to Follow Your Heart: Avoiding Information to Protect a Strong Intuitive Preference. Woolley, Kaitlin, and Risen, Jane L. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Dec 18 , 2017, http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspa0000100

Abstract: Rationally, people should want to receive information that is costless and relevant for a decision. But people sometimes choose to remain ignorant. The current paper identifies intuitive-deliberative conflict as a driver of information avoidance. Moreover, we examine whether people avoid information not only to protect their feelings or experiences, but also to protect the decision itself. We predict that people avoid information that could encourage a more thoughtful, deliberative decision to make it easier to enact their intuitive preference. In Studies 1 and 2, people avoid learning the calories in a tempting dessert and compensation for a boring task to protect their preferences to eat the dessert and work on a more enjoyable task. The same people who want to avoid the information, however, use it when it is provided. In Studies 3–5, people decide whether to learn how much money they could earn by accepting an intuitively unappealing bet (that a sympathetic student performs poorly or that a hurricane hits a third-world country). Although intuitively unappealing, the bets are financially rational because they only have financial upside. If people avoid information in part to protect their intuitive preference, then avoidance should be greater when an intuitive preference is especially strong and when information could influence the decision. As predicted, avoidance is driven by the strength of the intuitive preference (Study 3) and, ironically, information avoidance is greater before a decision is made, when the information is decision relevant, than after, when the information is irrelevant for the decision (Studies 4 and 5).

Personality, IQ, and Lifetime Earnings: The payoffs to personality traits display a concave life-cycle pattern, with the largest effects between the ages of 40 and 60

Personality, IQ, and Lifetime Earnings. Miriam Gensowski. Labour Economics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2017.12.004

Highlights
•    This paper estimates the effects of personality traits and IQ on lifetime earnings, both as a sum and individually by age.
•    The payoffs to personality traits display a concave life-cycle pattern, with the largest effects between the ages of 40 and 60.
•    The largest effects on earnings are found for Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness (negative).
•    An interaction of traits with education reveals that personality matters most for highly educated men.
•    The overall effect of Conscientiousness operates partly through education, which also has significant returns.

Abstract: This paper estimates the effects of personality traits and IQ on lifetime earnings of the men and women of the Terman study, a high-IQ U.S. sample. Age-by-age earnings profiles allow a study of when personality traits affect earnings most, and for whom the effects are strongest. I document a concave life-cycle pattern in the payoffs to personality traits, with the largest effects between the ages of 40 and 60. An interaction of traits with education reveals that personality matters most for highly educated men. The largest effects are found for Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness (negative), where Conscientiousness operates partly through education, which also has significant returns.

Keywords: Personality traits; Socio-emotional skills; Cognitive skills; Returns to education; Lifetime earnings; Big Five; Human capital; Factor analysis

Liars failed to simulate the truthtellers' pattern of forgetting & reported similar amounts of detail when interviewed without or after a delay, demonstrating a stability bias in reporting

A stability bias effect among deceivers. Harvey, Adam Charles, Vrij, Aldert, Hope, Lorraine, Leal, Sharon, and Mann, Samantha. Law and Human Behavior, Vol 41(6), Dec 2017, 519-529. http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Flhb0000258

Abstract: Research examining how truth tellers’ and liars’ verbal behavior is attenuated as a function of delay is largely absent from the literature, despite its important applied value. We examined this factor across 2 studies in which we examined the effects of a hypothetical delay (Experiment 1) or actual delay (Experiment 2) on liars’ accounts. In Experiment 1—an insurance claim interview setting—claimants either genuinely experienced a (staged) loss of a tablet device (n = 40) or pretended to have experienced the same loss (n = 40). Truth tellers were interviewed either immediately after the loss (n = 20) or 3 weeks after the loss (n = 20), whereas liars had to either pretend the loss occurred either immediately before (n = 20) or 3 weeks before (n = 20) the interview (i.e., hypothetical delay for liars). In Experiment 2—a Human Intelligence gathering setting—sources had to either lie (n = 50) or tell the truth (n = 50) about a secret video they had seen concerning the placing of a spy device. Half of the truth tellers and liars where interviewed immediately after watching the video (n = 50), and half where interviewed 3-weeks later (n = 50; i.e., real delay for liars). Across both experiments, truth tellers interviewed after a delay reported fewer details than truth tellers interviewed immediately after the to-be-remembered event. In both studies, liars failed to simulate this pattern of forgetting and reported similar amounts of detail when interviewed without or after a delay, demonstrating a stability bias in reporting.

Public Response to a Near-Miss Nuclear Accident Scenario Varying in Causal Attributions and Outcome Uncertainty

Cui, J., Rosoff, H. and John, R. S. (2017), Public Response to a Near-Miss Nuclear Accident Scenario Varying in Causal Attributions and Outcome Uncertainty. Risk Analysis. doi:10.1111/risa.12920

Abstract: Many studies have investigated public reactions to nuclear accidents. However, few studies focused on more common events when a serious accident could have happened but did not. This study evaluated public response (emotional, cognitive, and behavioral) over three phases of a near-miss nuclear accident. Simulating a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) scenario, we manipulated (1) attribution for the initial cause of the incident (software failure vs. cyber terrorist attack vs. earthquake), (2) attribution for halting the incident (fail-safe system design vs. an intervention by an individual expert vs. a chance coincidence), and (3) level of uncertainty (certain vs. uncertain) about risk of a future radiation leak after the LOCA is halted. A total of 773 respondents were sampled using a 3 × 3 × 2 between-subjects design. Results from both MANCOVA and structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate that respondents experienced more negative affect, perceived more risk, and expressed more avoidance behavioral intention when the near-miss event was initiated by an external attributed source (e.g., earthquake) compared to an internally attributed source (e.g., software failure). Similarly, respondents also indicated greater negative affect, perceived risk, and avoidance behavioral intentions when the future impact of the near-miss incident on people and the environment remained uncertain. Results from SEM analyses also suggested that negative affect predicted risk perception, and both predicted avoidance behavior. Affect, risk perception, and avoidance behavior demonstrated high stability (i.e., reliability) from one phase to the next.

KEYWORDS: Causal attribution; near-miss; nuclear power; risk perception; structural equation modeling

Overconfidence Among Beginners: Is a Little Learning a Dangerous Thing?

Overconfidence Among Beginners: Is a Little Learning a Dangerous Thing? Sanchez, Carmen, and Dunning, David. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nov 02 , 2017, http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspa0000102

Abstract: Across 6 studies we investigated the development of overconfidence among beginners. In 4 of the studies, participants completed multicue probabilistic learning tasks (e.g., learning to diagnose “zombie diseases” from physical symptoms). Although beginners did not start out overconfident in their judgments, they rapidly surged to a “beginner’s bubble” of overconfidence. This bubble was traced to exuberant and error-filled theorizing about how to approach the task formed after just a few learning experiences. Later trials challenged and refined those theories, leading to a temporary leveling off of confidence while performance incrementally improved, although confidence began to rise again after this pause. In 2 additional studies we found a real-world echo of this pattern of overconfidence across the life course. Self-ratings of financial literacy surged among young adults, then leveled off among older respondents until late adulthood, where it begins to rise again, with actual financial knowledge all the while rising more slowly, consistently, and incrementally throughout adulthood. Hence, when it comes to overconfident judgment, a little learning does appear to be a dangerous thing. Although beginners start with humble self-perceptions, with just a little experience their confidence races ahead of their actual performance.

The “hostile media effect” occurs when opposing partisans perceive identical news coverage of a controversial issue as biased against their own side

The Hostile Media Effect. Lauren Feldman. Chapter in  The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication, edited by Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199793471.013.011

Abstract: The “hostile media effect” occurs when opposing partisans perceive identical news coverage of a controversial issue as biased against their own side. This is a robust phenomenon, which has been empirically demonstrated in numerous experimental and observational studies across a variety of issue contexts and has been shown to have important consequences for democratic society. This chapter reviews the literature on the hostile media effect with an eye toward the theoretical explanations for it, its relationship to other psychological processes, and its broader implications for perceived public opinion, news consumption patterns, attitudes toward democratic institutions, and political discourse and participation. Particular attention is paid to how the hostile media phenomenon can help explain the public’s eroding trust in the news media and the recent polarization among news audiences. The chapter concludes with several suggestions for future research.

Keywords: active audience, biased assimilation, hostile media phenomenon, hostile media perception, media bias, perceived bias, persuasive press inference, polarization, partisan involvement, selective exposure, selective perception

Can political cookies leave a bad taste in one’s mouth?: Political ideology influences taste

Aner Tal, Yaniv Gvili, Moty Amar, Brian Wansink, (2017) "Can political cookies leave a bad taste in one’s mouth?: Political ideology influences taste", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 51 Issue: 11/12, pp.2175-2191, https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-04-2015-0237

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to examine whether companies’ donations to political parties can impact product experience, specifically taste.

Design/methodology/approach: Research design consists of four studies; three online, one in person. Participants were shown a cookie (Studies 1-3) or cereal (Study 4) and told that the producing company donated to either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party (Studies 1-3) or an unspecified party (Study 4).

Findings: Participants rated food products as less tasty if told they came from a company that donated to a party they object to. These effects were shown to be mediated by moral disgust (Study 3). Effects were restricted to taste and willingness to buy (Study 4), with no effects on other positive product dimensions.

Research limitations/implications: The studies provide a first piece of evidence that political donations by companies can negatively impact product experience. This can translate to purchase decisions through an emotional, rather than calculated, route.

Practical implications: Companies should be careful about making donations some of their consumers may find objectionable. This might impact both purchase and consumption decisions, as well as post-consumption word-of-mouth.

Originality/value: Companies’ political involvement can negatively impact subjective product experience, even though such information has no bearing on product quality. The current findings demonstrate that alterations in subjective product quality may underlie alterations in consumer decision-making because of ideologically tinged information, and reveals moral disgust as the mechanism underlying these effects. In this, it provides a first demonstration that even mild ideological information that is not globally bad or inherently immoral can generate moral disgust, and that such effects depend on consumers’ own attitudes.

Keywords: Evaluation, Food, Politics, Taste, Moral, Disgust

Frequency of sexual intercourse tends to be lower among Japanese couples compared to couples overseas, or are having more extramarital sex

Proximate Determinants of Fertility in Japan. Shoko Konishi, Emi Tamaki.. Biodemography of Fertility in Japan pp 13-42, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-0176-5_2

Abstract: Proximate determinants link both social and biological factors to fertility. In this section, we will summarize available data related to proximate determinants of fertility in Japan while referring to some of the related literature targeting populations overseas. In addition to data from published studies, we present our original data collected in the biodemography project, an Internet-based cross-sectional survey on reproductive history conducted in 2014 targeting Japanese women between 20 and 44 years of age. Following Wood’s conceptualization, the specific components of the proximate determinants of fertility referred to in this chapter are lactational infecundability, fecund waiting time to conception, and fetal loss (both spontaneous and induced). Additionally, papers on factors that are expected to significantly affect fecund waiting time to conception, i.e., frequency of sexual intercourse, length and regularity of menstrual cycle, and use of contraception and infertility treatment, will be reviewed.

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Recent research suggests that frequency of sexual intercourse tends to be lower among Japanese couples compared to couples overseas (e.g., [1,21]).

The biodemography project revealed an overall low frequency of intercourse (Table 2.4). Additionally, when the participants were further categorized by their pregnancy intention, only 24% of married women who wanted to become pregnant and were not pregnant at the time of the survey were having intercourse 1+ day per week [1]. The proportion of women having intercourse 1+ day per week was even smaller for those who wanted to become pregnant in the future (14%) or who did not want to become pregnant (12%) [1]. The National Survey of Work and Family in Japan conducted in 2007 [21] also reported low coital frequency (Table 2.5); only 23% of women desiring a child had sexual intercourse at least once a week. The same survey showed that 21% of women aged between 20 and 29 years and 37% of women aged between 30 and 39 years were in sexless marriages, which refers to married or cohabitating couples who have not had any sexual intercourse for more than 1 month (Table 2.5, sum of “once in 2 months”, “once in 6 months”, and “not at all”) [21]. In a series of studies conducted by Arakawa and colleagues [16] to examine a possible association between chemical exposure and TTP, more than 70% of the respondents answered that the frequency of intercourse before their latest pregnancy was equal to or less than once a week (Table 2.6). These data suggest that the frequency of intercourse tends to be low among couples in Japan today, even when the sample is limited to couples who eventually achieved pregnancy or were actively trying to conceive.

[...] Although recent studies report relatively low frequency of sexual intercourse among Japanese couples compared to those in Western countries, studies conducted in the past report a higher frequency of intercourse among Japanese couples. For example, in 1955, Tsukamoto [25] reported that more than 80% of married women had sexual intercourse once a week or more (Table 2.7). Infrequent sexual intercourse among Japanese couples in recent years may be the result of sociocultural factors, including prevalent premarital sex [26], higher unemployment rates, and long working hours among those who are employed [27]. It is also possible that a lower frequency of marital sexual intercourse is often accompanied by active sexual activity outside the marital relationship, although we do not have sufficient data to support or reject this supposition.

People in last place were more than 4 times more likely to renege from queues, altogether giving up on the service for which they were queuing; this behavior is partially explained by the inability to make a downward social comparison

Last Place Aversion in Queues. Ryan W. Buell. Harvard Business School, https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbs/wpaper/18-053.html

Abstract: This paper investigates whether people exhibit last place aversion in queues and its implications for their experiences and behaviors in service environments. An observational analysis of customers queuing at a grocery store, and three online field experiments in which participants waited in virtual queues, revealed that waiting in last place diminishes wait satisfaction while increasing the probabilities of switching and abandoning queues. After controlling for other factors, people in last place were more than twice as likely to switch queues, which increased the duration of their wait and diminished their overall satisfaction. Moreover, people in last place were more than four times more likely to renege from queues, altogether giving up on the service for which they were queuing. The results indicate that this behavior is partially explained by the inability to make a downward social comparison; namely, when no one is behind a queuing individual, that person is less certain that continuing to wait is worthwhile. Furthermore, this paper provides evidence that queue transparency is an effective service design lever that managers can use to reduce the deleterious effects of last place aversion in queues. When people can't see that they're in last place, the behavioral effects of last place aversion are nullified, and when they can see that they're not in last place, the tendency to renege is greatly diminished.