People presumably choose and create their daily environments according to their personality. Prior research shows that, for example, more extraverted people engage more often in social situations, ...and more conscientious people engage more often in work-related activities compared with less extraverted or less conscientious people, respectively. The current study examined such personality-situation transactions in people's daily life. Based on the assumption that older people know themselves and their personality better than younger people, we investigated whether momentary and proximate personality-situation associations (i.e., changing from 1 type of situation into another) increase with older age. Three-hundred and 78 people aged 14 to 82 years described their Big Five traits and took part in a 3-week experience-sampling phase. Using mobile-phone based assessments in daily life, participants reported on average 55 times on their momentary situation. Multilevel modeling results showed that personality-situation associations varied with the age of participants. Some of the "established" personality-situation associations, such as for extraversion and time spent with friends or conscientiousness and time spent with work activities, were only observed in adolescence and young adulthood. In contrast, other personality-situation associations appeared only in late adulthood, such as for openness and time spent with friends. Yet most personality-situation associations did not vary significantly with people's age. In addition, personality traits predicted maintaining or entering personality-congruent situations. The latter results point to the active role of personality in shaping one's environment. The findings imply that some personality-situation transactions may be largely similarly across the life span.
We investigate how often replication studies are published in empirical economics and what types of journal articles are replicated. We find that between 1974 and 2014 0.1% of publications in the top ...50 economics journals were replication studies. We consider the results of published formal replication studies (whether they are negating or reinforcing) and their extent: Narrow replication studies are typically devoted to mere replication of prior work, while scientific replication studies provide a broader analysis. We find evidence that higher-impact articles and articles by authors from leading institutions are more likely to be replicated, whereas the replication probability is lower for articles that appeared in top 5 economics journals. Our analysis also suggests that mandatory data disclosure policies may have a positive effect on the incidence of replication.
This paper studies risk attitudes using a large representative survey and a complementary experiment conducted with a representative subject pool in subjects' homes. Using a question asking people ...about their willingness to take risks "in general", we find that gender, age, height, and parental background have an economically significant impact on willingness to take risks. The experiment confirms the behavioral validity of this measure, using paid lottery choices. Turning to other questions about risk attitudes in specific contexts, we find similar results on the determinants of risk attitudes, and also shed light on the deeper question of stability of risk attitudes across contexts. We conduct a horse race of the ability of different measures to explain risky behaviors such as holdings stocks, occupational choice, and smoking. The question about risk taking in general generates the best all-round predictor of risky behavior.
Personality traits like neuroticism show both continuity and change across adolescence and adulthood, with most pronounced changes occurring in young adulthood. It has been assumed, but ...insufficiently examined, that trait changes occur gradually over the years through the accumulation of daily experiences. The current longitudinal measurement burst study examined (a) how changes in average momentary stress reactivity are coupled with changes in trait neuroticism, (b) the extent to which this coupling is specific to stress reactivity and neuroticism, and (c) the extent to which there are age differences in the association between changes in stress reactivity and changes in neuroticism. Participants (N = 581; 50% male) between 14 and 86 years of age completed up to 3 waves (T1-T3) of Big Five trait questionnaires and experience-sampling assessments during 6 years. During each three-week experience-sampling period, participants reported their momentary affect and occurrences of hassles on average 55 times. Latent change models showed that increases over time in affective reactivity to daily hassles were associated with increases in neuroticism. This effect was consistent from T1 to T2 as well as from T2 to T3, and most pronounced in young adulthood. Importantly, the results were specific to associations between stress reactivity and neuroticism because changes in frequency of hassles in daily life did not predict changes in neuroticism, and stress reactivity did not consistently predict changes in the other Big Five traits. The findings help to inform theoretical models that outline how short-term states might contribute to gradual longer-term changes in traits like neuroticism.
We examine the effects of Covid-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of day care center and school closures, which may be ...regarded as a “disruptive exogenous shock” to family life. We make use of a novel representative survey of parental well-being collected in May and June 2020 in Germany, when schools and day care centers were closed but while other measures had been relaxed and new infections were low. In our descriptive analysis, we compare well-being during this period with a pre-crisis period for different groups. In a difference-in-differences design, we compare the change for individuals with children to the change for individuals without children, accounting for unrelated trends as well as potential survey mode and context effects. We find that the crisis lowered the relative well-being of individuals with children, especially for individuals with young children, for women, and for persons with lower secondary schooling qualifications. Our results suggest that public policy measures taken to contain Covid-19 can have large effects on family well-being, with implications for child development and parental labor market outcomes.
We examined measurement invariance and age-related robustness of a short 15-item Big Five Inventory (BFI–S) of personality dimensions, which is well suited for applications in large-scale ...multidisciplinary surveys. The BFI–S was assessed in three different interviewing conditions: computer-assisted or paper-assisted face-to-face interviewing, computer-assisted telephone interviewing, and a self-administered questionnaire. Randomized probability samples from a large-scale German panel survey and a related probability telephone study were used in order to test method effects on self-report measures of personality characteristics across early, middle, and late adulthood. Exploratory structural equation modeling was used in order to test for measurement invariance of the five-factor model of personality trait domains across different assessment methods. For the short inventory, findings suggest strong robustness of self-report measures of personality dimensions among young and middle-aged adults. In old age, telephone interviewing was associated with greater distortions in reliable personality assessment. It is concluded that the greater mental workload of telephone interviewing limits the reliability of self-report personality assessment. Face-to-face surveys and self-administrated questionnaire completion are clearly better suited than phone surveys when personality traits in age-heterogeneous samples are assessed.
Informed decision making in medicine, defined as basing one's decision on the best current medical evidence, requires both informed physicians and informed patients. In cancer screening, however, ...studies document that these prerequisites are not yet met. Many physicians do not know or understand the medical evidence behind screening tests, do not adequately counsel (asymptomatic) people on screening, and make recommendations that conflict with existing guidelines on informed choice. Consistent with this situation, nation-wide studies showed that the general public misperceives the contribution of cancer screening but that understanding considerably improves when evidence-based information is provided. However, can evidence-based patient information about cancer screening make people also less likely to simply follow a physician's non-evidence-based advice? A national sample of 897 German citizens, surveyed in face-to-face computer-assisted personal interviews, received either evidence-based (e.g., absolute risks on benefits and harms; n = 451) or non-evidence-based (e.g., relative risks on benefits only; n = 446) patient information about a cancer screening test and were then asked to make their initial cancer screening choice. Thereafter, participants received a hypothetical physician's recommendation, which was non-evidence-based in terms of existing guidelines on informed decision making (i.e., reporting either benefits or harms but not both; no provision of numbers). When provided with non-evidence-based patient information (n = 446), a mean of 33.1% of 235 participants whose initial screening choice contradicted the hypothetical physician's non-evidence-based recommendation adjusted their choice in deference to that recommendation (95% CI: 27.4 to 39.4%), whereas with evidence-based patient information (n = 451), only half as many, a mean of 16.0% of 225 (95% CI: 11.8 to 21.4%), modified their choice. Thus, evidence-based patient information makes people less likely to simply follow non-evidence-based recommendations of physicians and supports people in making evidence-based decisions even when not adequately counseled on cancer screening.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Using a mobile-phone-based experience-sampling technology in a sample of 378 individuals ranging from 14 to 86 years of age, we investigated age differences in how people want to influence their ...feelings in their daily lives. Contra-hedonic motivations of wanting either to maintain or enhance negative affect or to dampen positive affect were most prevalent in adolescence, whereas prohedonic motivations of wanting either to maintain, but not enhance, positive affect or to dampen negative affect were most prevalent in old age. This pattern was mirrored by an age-related increase in self-reported day-to-day emotional well-being. Analyses of the emotional experiences that accompanied prohedonic and contra-hedonic motivations are consistent with the notions that contra-hedonic motivations are more likely to serve utilitarian than hedonic functions, and that people are more likely to be motivated to maintain negative affect when it is accompanied by positive affect. Implications for understanding affective development are discussed.
Can risk-taking propensity be thought of as a trait that captures individual differences across domains, measures, and time? Studying stability in risk-taking propensities across the life span can ...help to answer such questions by uncovering parallel, or divergent, trajectories across domains and measures. We contribute to this effort by using data from respondents aged 18 to 85 in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and by examining (a) differential stability, (b) mean-level differences, and (c) individual-level changes in self-reported general (N = 44,076) and domain-specific (N = 11,903) risk-taking propensities across adulthood. In addition, we investigate (d) the correspondence between cross-sectional trajectories of self-report and behavioral measures of social (trust game; N = 646) and nonsocial (monetary gamble; N = 433) risk taking. The results suggest that risk-taking propensity can be understood as a trait with moderate stability. Results show reliable mean-level differences across the life span, with risk-taking propensities typically decreasing with age, although significant variation emerges across domains and individuals. Interestingly, the mean-level trajectory for behavioral measures of social and nonsocial risk taking was similar to those obtained from self-reported risk, despite small correlations between task behavior and self-reports. Individual-level analyses suggest a link between changes in risk-taking propensities both across domains and in relation to changes in some of the Big Five personality traits. Overall, these results raise important questions concerning the role of common processes or events that shape the life span development of risk-taking across domains as well as other major personality facets.
Psychologists and economists take contradictory approaches to research on what psychologists call happiness or subjective wellbeing, and economists call subjective utility. A direct test of the most ...widely accepted psychological theory, set-point theory, shows it to be flawed. Results are then given, using the economists’ newer “choice approach”—an approach also favored by positive psychologists—which yields substantial payoffs in explaining long-term changes in happiness. Data come from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984–2008), a unique 25-y prospective longitudinal survey. This dataset enables direct tests of theories explaining long-term happiness.
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