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- Hansson, Kajsa, 1991-
(author)
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Moral Illusions
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Just as optical illusions can trick our visual senses, our moral sense can be misguided by moral illusions. In this thesis, I investigate whether moral illusions can arise from mental shortcuts (availability bias), cognitive biases (attribution bias), contextual factors (possibility to avoid information), and decision rules (democratic decision-making).The results in the thesis provide two main findings. First, I find that moral illusions occur in competitive situations where many people compete for the same reward. In Essay I, I find that inaccurate beliefs about procedural fairness can motivate people to act selfishly, and that simple information cues about procedural fairness can reduce such behavior. In Essay II, I demonstrate that increased confidence has polarizing effects on meritocratic beliefs and that success (as opposed to failure) decreases preferences for redistribution. Second, the results show that moral behavior can be surprisingly similar across contextual factors. In Essay III, I find that the possibility to avoid information about other people’s the efforts has limited effects on selfish behavior. In Essay IV, the results show no evidence that democratic decision-making, as opposed to individual decision making, increases selfish and immoral behavior.The results in the thesis suggest that our moral sense have many similarities with our visual perception. In most cases, it is not significantly affected by contextual factors. However, when the information is vague or uncertain, the brain sometimes fills in missing information and creates images that does not match with reality. The analogy between optical illusions and moral illusion can help us to better understand our own, and others’, moral behavior. We may not always agree with everyone’s interpretations of reality, but we can understand where they come from.
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| 2. |
- Strömbäck, Camilla, 1989-
(author)
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Self-Control, Financial Well-Being, and Motivated Reasoning : Essays in Behavioral Finance
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The objective of this thesis is to improve our understanding of how individual differences in intuitive and analytic decision making are associated with people’s behavior as well as their well-being. The first three essays investigate, in turn, how self-control—a typical System 2 driven ability—correlates with financial behavior, financial well-being, and affective forecasting ability. The fourth essay leverages an experimental design, in which a randomized treatment attempts to inhibit the use of System 2 processing by individuals by setting them under time pressure, while measuring how they interpret numerical information.The first essay, Does Self-Control Predict Financial Behavior and Financial Well-Being?, describes how variation in self-reported individual differences in self-control, optimism and deliberativeness predicts financial behavior and financial well-being. Data was collected by means of an online survey distributed to a representative, adult Swedish sample. Results indicate that individuals with better self-control were more likely to engage in sound financial behaviors, were less anxious about financial matters, and felt more secure in their current and future financial situation than individuals displaying lower levels of self-control.The second essay, Subjective Self-Control but Not Objective Measures of Executive Functions Predicts Financial Behavior and Well-Being, is a follow-up study of the first essay. Apart from using the same self-reported measures of self-control, optimism, and deliberativeness as essay one does, this analysis additionally includes an extensive test battery of objective performance measures of executive functions and intelligence. Findings suggest that, while self-reported self-control predicts both financial behavior and subjective financial well-being, neither of the executive functions, nor intelligence do so. This indicates that an ability to form good habits and avoid temptation is more important for sound financial behavior and financial well-being than actual inhibitory control.The third essay, Better Self-Control Does Not Imply Fewer Affective Forecasting Errors, explores whether individual-level differences in self-control can explain observed variation in affective forecasting ability. Moreover, it assesses whether participants with strong self-control are more likely to make “optimal choices” in an intertemporal choice task: i.e. choices that maximize their own expected happiness. To test this, the study leveraged a laboratory experiment with a student sample in Linköping and Stockholm. Study results uncover no evidence of self-control predicting affective forecasting ability. Equally, self-control seemingly had no effect on the probability of individuals’ choosing happiness maximizing options.The fourth essay, Motivated Reasoning, Fast and Slow, investigates whether prior beliefs may hinder individuals from interpreting information about immigration and gender quotas correctly: a process commonly referred to as motivated reasoning. In general terms, motivated reasoning can be conceptualized as an intuitive or analytic process. Testing the prevalence of this form of sense-making, we ran an online experiment where half the respondents were tasked to interpret numeric information under time constraints, and the rest without said constraints. Findings provide clear evidence of the existence of motivated reasoning with regards to issues of both immigration and gender quotas. Numeric ability seemingly reduced the probability of individuals to engage in motivated reasoning, while time pressure had no effect on said likelihood. Hence, results suggest that motivated reasoning is an intuitive, rather than an analytic process.
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| 3. |
- Andersson, Per A, 1986-
(author)
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Norms in Prosocial Decisions : The Role of Observability, Avoidance, and Conditionality
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Prosocial behaviors benefit other people and range from donations to charity to behavior limiting the spread of disease, such as masking and vaccination. The overarching purpose of this thesis was to contribute to our understanding of how social norms and conformity affect prosocial behavior. Here, three norm-related factors that affect such prosocial behavior were investigated: observability, avoidance and conditionality. Observability concerns whether a person is being observed during prosocial decisions, which can typically increase conformity to norms. Avoidance concerns whether a person avoids or seeks out knowledge about prosocial norms. Conditionality concerns the conditional nature of when behavior shifts occur in relation to others behavior. For instance, a person may want to follow a prosocial norm only if a very large majority adheres to it, or only if the goal of the norm is realistic to attain. Paper I focused on observability of prosocial decisions. Making decisions while knowing they would be shown to others increased prosocial behavior in the form of cooperation in a Public Goods Game, and preferences for deontological choices in moral dilemmas, but not donations given to charity. Paper II examined the existence of avoidance behavior regarding social norm about donations. Such norm avoiders appeared to be comprised of both prosocial and less prosocial individuals. Paper III investigated the interplay between descriptive (what people do) and injunctive (what one should do) norms in regards to masking during COVID-19. Paper IV then explored how varying the goal set for a prosocial norm affects willingness to try to achieve the goal, in the context of thresholds for herd immunity and vaccines for COVID-19. Some individuals were demotivated by seeing a higher goal as harder to achieve and others were motivated by believing a higher goal to lead to more people getting vaccinated. Taken together, these papers point to the inherent complexity of how norms relate to prosocial behavior, and suggest relevant aspects to consider when wanting to promote prosocial behavior.
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| 4. |
- Koppel, Lina, 1988-
(author)
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Pain, Touch, and Decision Making : Behavioral and Brain Responses to Affective Somatosensory Stimulation
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Stimulation of sensory nerves can give rise to powerful affective experiences. Noxious stimuli can give rise to pain, an unpleasant experience which, in turn, causes suffering and constitutes a major societal burden. Touch, on the other hand, can feel pleasant and plays an important role in social relationships and well-being. Slow, gentle stroking of the skin in particular has been shown to activate C-tactile (CT) afferents, which are thought to signal affective and socially relevant aspects of touch. However, little is known about how pain and affective touch influence everyday decision making.In Paper I, we investigated the effect of acute physical pain on risk taking and intertemporal choice. Participants (n = 109) performed a series of economic decision-making tasks, once while experiencing acute thermal pain and once in a no-pain control condition. Results indicated that pain increased risk taking for monetary gains but not for equivalent losses, and increased impatience.In Paper II, we investigated the effect of affective touch on betrayal aversion, altruism, and risk taking. Participants (n = 120) performed a series of economic decision-making tasks, once while being stroked on the forearm at CT-optimal speed using a soft painter’s brush and once in a no-touch control condition. Results indicated no effect of affective touch on any of the outcome measures.In Paper III, we investigated how the ability to affect an upcoming painful event via voluntary action influences cortical processing of ongoing somatosensory stimulation. fMRI data was collected from 30 participants while they performed a task that involved pressing a response button to reduce the duration of upcoming thermal stimuli. Whole-brain analyses revealed no significant task-related effects in brain regions typically involved in pain, except activation in a cluster in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was greater when upcoming stimulation was painful than when it was nonpainful. However, region-of-interest analyses in anterior insula (AI) and midcingulate cortex (MCC) indicated that the noxious nature of the upcoming stimulation, as well as the ability to affect it, influenced processing of ongoing stimulation in both of these regions. Activation in MCC, but not AI, also correlated with response times.Taken together, these studies contribute to the broader understanding of everyday decision making, and of how affective experiences such as pain and touch shape everyday decisions and behaviors.
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| 5. |
- Toelstede, Björn
(author)
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Social Hierarchies between Democracy and Autocracy
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Social hierarchies exist in democracies as well as in authoritarian societies. However, their nature is different. Democratic hierarchies are built bottom-up through election, while autocratic hierarchies are built top-down through coalition formation and domination. Both have power asymmetries between the weaker citizens and the stronger politicians, which are amplified the stronger the hierarchies are. This thesis introduces a model which combines pro-/anti-social behavior with different degrees of hierarchies which I unite in a model called the Structure-Behavior Diagram (Toelstede, 2020/1). This model has the power to categorize countries according to these criteria, and indicates when and how societies move between democracy and authoritarianism.The movements of societies in the political space of the Structure-Behavior Diagram are marked by certain patterns and dynamics. I use the path dependence theory (Toelstede, 2019/2) and examine how so-called path-creating mechanisms can emerge and influence societies to move from democracy to authoritarianism. I show that path dependency-induced dynamics can put democracies at risk and are more serious in hierarchical societies than in horizontal societies.Institutional punishment is widely seen as more stable then peer punishment. However, in political reality, institutional punishment – here in the form of policing – can be marked by over- and under-punishment as well as changes in sociality (Toelstede, 2019/1 and 2020/2). These findings show, together with hierarchy-sensitive characteristics of the path dependency, that institutional punishment and social hierarchies require more attention.Lastly, I show that most democratic societies are intuitively aware of the power asymmetries and long principal-agent chains between them and their political agents. Together, these features provide increasing benefits for an anti-social descent of the agents, although some societies are prepared to trade personal freedom for higher socio-economic welfare. They therefore strive for higher socio-economic efficiency by embracing strong governmental forms and high conformity levels. I call this efficient statism (Toelstede, 2019/2). In doing so, societies compliantly put their free and democratic order at risk.
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| 6. |
- Andersson, David
(author)
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Deciding Fast and Slow : How Intuitive and Reflective Thinking Influence Decision Making
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Paper I “Intuition and cooperation reconsidered”: Does intuition make people more cooperative? Rand et al. (Rand, Greene, & Nowak, 2012) reported increased cooperation in social dilemmas after forcing individuals to decide quickly. We test the robustness of this finding in a series of five experiments involving about 2,500 subjects in three countries. None of the experiments confirms the Rand et al. (2012) finding, indicating that their result was an artefact of excluding about 50% of the subjects who failed to respond on time.Paper II “Intuition and moral decision-making – the effect of time pressure and cognitive load on moral judgment and altruistic behavior”: Do individuals intuitively favor certain moral actions over others? This study explores the role of intuitive thinking — induced by time pressure and cognitive load — in moral judgment and behavior. Overall we find converging evidence that intuitive states do not influence moral decisions. Across all samples and decision tasks men were more likely to make utilitarian moral judgments and act selfishly compared to women, providing further evidence that there are robust gender differences in moral decision-making.Paper III “Public views on policies involving nudges”: When should nudging be deemed as permissible and when should it be deemed as intrusive to individuals’ freedom of choice? The main objective of this study is to elicit public views on the use of nudges in policy. In particular we investigate attitudes toward two broad categories of nudges that we label pro-self (i.e. focusing on private welfare) and pro-social (i.e. focusing on social welfare) nudges. Results show that the level of acceptance toward nudge-policies was generally high. Nudge polices classified as pro-social had a significantly lower acceptance rate compared to pro-self nudges.Paper IV “The effect of fast and slow decisions on financial risk-taking”: Are individuals financial risk taking influenced by time available? We experimentally compare fast and slow decisions in a series of experiments on financial risk taking in three countries involving over 1,700 subjects. We find that time pressure increases risk aversion for gains and risk taking for losses compared to time delay; implying that time pressure increase the reflection effect of Prospect Theory.Paper V “Incidental effect and financial risk-taking – a neural investigation: This study builds on the results from Paper IV. Here I explore the influence of incidental negative emotions on financial risk-taking in an fMRI environment in order to assess underlying neural mechanisms. I experimentally compare neutral and unpleasant valence framing on gambles involving pure monetary gain and pure monetary loss. I find a significantly increased BOLD response in left amygdala and bilateral visual cortex when contrasting when showing unpleasant pictures, a neural effect which is in line with previous neuroimaging studies on negative emotions. However the neural effect of showing unpleasant pictures did not affect choices in the risk tasks. Consequently, I did not find any support for the hypothesis that the reflection effect of Prospect theory should be more pronounced when making risky choices influenced by incidental negative emotions.
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