The Scarecrow and the Tin Man Loewenstein, George; Small, Deborah A
Review of general psychology,
06/2007, Volume:
11, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Why do some victims elicit outpourings of sympathy from those who are unaffected, while others do not? The authors propose a theoretical framework for making sense of the vicissitudes of sympathy ...based on the interaction between two qualitatively different mental processes. One, which the authors term "sympathy," is caring but immature and irrational. The other process, which the authors term "deliberation," is rational but uncaring. After proposing a framework for how these two factors interact, the authors first discuss a variety of factors that affect the strength of sympathy, including whether one is in the same state as the victim, one's past and vicarious experiences, proximity, similarity, vividness, and newness. Next, the authors discuss factors that affect the relative influence of deliberation. The framework helps to integrate a wide range of disparate experimental findings and provides a possible resolution to parallel debates taking place in psychology and economics over the nature of altruism.
•We examine how economic motives and fairness concerns interact to influence cheating.•We manipulate pay-level and awareness of others’ pay in a task that allows cheating.•Underpaid participants ...cheat more only when they are aware others are earning more.•Effect is driven by aversive social comparisons, rather than counterfactual thinking.•Fairness concerns override economic motives for the underpaid.
Intuitively, people should cheat more when cheating is more lucrative, but we find that the effect of performance-based pay-rates on dishonesty depends on how readily people can compare their pay-rate to that of others. In Experiment 1, participants were paid 5 cents or 25 cents per self-reported point in a trivia task, and half were aware that they could have received the alternative pay-rate. Lower pay-rates increased cheating when the prospect of a higher pay-rate was salient. Experiment 2 illustrates that this effect is driven by the ease with which poorly compensated participants can compare their pay to that of others who earn a higher pay-rate. Our results suggest that low pay-rates are, in and of themselves, unlikely to promote dishonesty. Instead, it is the salience of upward social comparisons that encourages the poorly compensated to cheat.
We report results from two surveys of representative samples of Americans with private health insurance. The first examines how well Americans understand, and believe they understand, traditional ...health insurance coverage. The second examines whether those insured under a simplified all-copay insurance plan will be more likely to engage in cost-reducing behaviors relative to those insured under a traditional plan with deductibles and coinsurance, and measures consumer preferences between the two plans. The surveys provide strong evidence that consumers do not understand traditional plans and would better understand a simplified plan, but weaker evidence that a simplified plan would have strong appeal to consumers or change their healthcare choices.
Although it has been claimed that people care more about identifiable than statistical victims, demonstrating this "identifiable victim effect" has proven difficult because identification usually ...provides information about a victim, and people may respond to the information rather than to identification per se. We show that a very weak form of identifiability—determining the victim without providing any personalizing information—increases caring. In the first, laboratory study, subjects were more willing to compensate others who lost money when the losers had already been determined than when they were about to be. In the second, field study, people contributed more to a charity when their contributions would benefit a family that had already been selected from a list than when told that the family would be selected from the same list.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND
Previous efforts to use incentives for weight loss have resulted in substantial weight regain after 16 weeks.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate a longer term weight loss intervention using ...financial incentives.
DESIGN
A 32-week, three-arm randomized controlled trial of financial incentives for weight loss consisting of a 24-week weight loss phase during which all participants were given a weight loss goal of 1 pound per week, followed by an 8-week maintenance phase.
PARTICIPANTS
Veterans who were patients at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center with BMIs of 30–40.
INTERVENTION
Participants were randomly assigned to participate in either a weight-monitoring program involving a consultation with a dietician and monthly weigh-ins (control condition), or the same program with one of two financial incentive plans. Both incentive arms used deposit contracts (DC) in which participants put their own money at risk (matched 1:1), which they lost if they failed to lose weight. In one incentive arm participants were told that the period after 24 weeks was for weight-loss maintenance; in the other, no such distinction was made.
MAIN MEASURE
Weight loss after 32 weeks.
KEY RESULTS
Results were analyzed using intention-to-treat. There was no difference in weight loss between the incentive arms (
P
= 0.80). Incentive participants lost more weight than control participants mean DC = 8.70 pounds, mean control = 1.17,
P
= 0.04, 95% CI of the difference in means (0.56, 14.50). Follow-up data 36 weeks after the 32-week intervention had ended indicated weight regain; the net weight loss between the incentive and control groups was no longer significant (mean DC = 1.2 pounds, 95% CI, -2.58–5.00; mean control = 0.27, 95% CI, -3.77–4.30,
P
= 0.76).
CONCLUSIONS
Financial incentives produced significant weight loss over an 8-month intervention; however, participants regained weight post-intervention.
Intangibility in intertemporal choice Rick, Scott; Loewenstein, George
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences,
12/2008, Volume:
363, Issue:
1511
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Since the advent of the discounted utility (DU) model, economists have thought about intertemporal choice in very specific terms. DU assumes that people make explicit trade-offs between costs and ...benefits occurring at different points in time. While this explicit trade-off perspective is simple and tractable, and has stimulated productive research, it does not provide a very realistic representation of a wide range of the most important intertemporal trade-offs that people face in daily life. If one considers the most important and commonly discussed examples of intertemporal choices, a striking pattern emerges: in almost all cases, early outcomes tend to be concrete (e.g. purchasing this latte), but later outcomes tend to be much less tangible (e.g. the unknown item that could have been purchased later with the money spent on this latte). We propose that people rely on anticipatory emotions as a proxy for intangible outcomes when trade-offs are implicit. This paper reviews neuroeconomic evidence that has begun to elucidate the role of anticipatory emotions in decisions involving intangible outcomes. Although most progress has been made in the domain of spending and saving, we discuss how the existing neuroeconomic research could be extended to other domains where trade-offs are ill defined.
The Psychology of Curiosity Loewenstein, George
Psychological bulletin,
07/1994, Volume:
116, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Research on curiosity has undergone 2 waves of intense activity. The 1st, in the 1960s, focused mainly on curiosity's psychological underpinnings. The 2nd, in the 1970s and 1980s, was characterized ...by attempts to measure curiosity and assess its dimensionality. This article reviews these contributions with a concentration on the 1st wave. It is argued that theoretical accounts of curiosity proposed during the 1st period fell short in 2 areas: They did not offer an adequate explanation for why people voluntarily seek out curiosity, and they failed to delineate situational determinants of curiosity. Furthermore, these accounts did not draw attention to, and thus did not explain, certain salient characteristics of curiosity: its intensity, transience, association with impulsivity, and tendency to disappoint when satisfied. A new account of curiosity is offered that attempts to address these shortcomings. The new account interprets curiosity as a form of cognitively induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge or understanding.
Tightwads and Spendthrifts Rick, Scott I.; Cryder, Cynthia E.; Loewenstein, George
The Journal of consumer research,
04/2008, Volume:
34, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave. We propose that an anticipatory pain of paying drives “tightwads” to spend less than they would ideally like to spend. ...“Spendthrifts,” by contrast, experience too little pain of paying and typically spend more than they would ideally like to spend. This article introduces and validates the “spendthrift‐tightwad” scale, a measure of individual differences in the pain of paying. Spending differences between tightwads and spendthrifts are greatest in situations that amplify the pain of paying and smallest in situations that diminish the pain of paying.
Drawing on diverse lines of research in psychology, economics, and neuroscience, we develop a model in which a person's behavior is determined by an interaction between deliberative processes that ...assess options with a broad, goal-based perspective, and affective processes that encompass emotions and other motivational states. Our model provides a framework for understanding many departures from rationality discussed in the literature and captures the familiar feeling of being "of 2 minds." Most important, by focusing on factors that moderate the relative influence of the 2 processes, our model generates a variety of novel testable predictions. We apply our model to intertemporal choice, risky decisions, and social preferences.
•Research has found a positive correlation between sexual frequency and happiness.•The causal connection between the two variables is unclear.•We assessed causation by randomly assigning some couples ...to increase their frequency of sex.•The manipulation did increase frequency, but decreased happiness and sexual enjoyment.
Prior research observing a positive correlation between happiness and sexual frequency has not been able to determine whether increased frequency leads, causally, to an increase in happiness. We present results from the first experimental study to address the question of causality. We recruited couples and randomly assigned half to double their frequency of intercourse. We find that increased frequency does not lead to increased happiness, perhaps because it leads to a decline in wanting for, and enjoyment of, sex.
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