This tree in the forest is mine: The effect of concreteness on psychological ownership

This research examines how the concreteness of product presentations influences consumers’ psychological ownership. Across seven studies, we demonstrate that concrete (vs. abstract) mental processing of products increases psychological ownership, with downstream effects including elevated product valuation. Conversely, abstract descriptions reduce psychological ownership and encourage sharing or trading. We identify several moderators and boundary conditions for the effect, which support that the nature of concrete thinking allows feelings of ownership as it processes a product as a specific instance related to the self. The effect is strongest in an egocentric (self) perspective (vs. allocentric or other based), when the product is attractive, not yet strongly connected to the self and for individuals who seek uniqueness. These findings offer actionable insights for marketers responding to trends favoring temporary access over permanent ownership, suggesting that concrete language can enhance psychological ownership (for temporary access and product care), while abstraction can temper it (to support return, trade, or resale in circular models). This research connects psychological ownership to construal level theory and literature on linguistic concreteness, underscoring how strategic shifts in product representation can foster desired ownership behaviors in a landscape increasingly defined by flexible consumption and sustainable practicespublishedVersio

Exploring the role of early childhood educators’ emotion socialization strategies in the development of young children’s social and non-social play behaviors

It is widely postulated that caregivers’ emotion socialization strategies support children’s positive socio-emotional functioning with peers. However, this theoretical model has been rarely examined empirically in the context of early childhood education and care (ECEC), despite ECEC being a prominent environment for children to practice peer play (a robust marker variable for social and emotional competencies). This study explored the role of ECEC teachers’ emotion coaching and emotion distracting strategies in the development of children’s social and non-social play behaviors over time. Participants were 275 teachers and 487 children (aged 36–57 months) from 123 classrooms in 56 ECEC centers in Norway. Results from multilevel linear mixed modeling analyses indicated that emotion coaching was associated with a steeper increase in social play and steeper decrease in reticent behavior. In contrast, although emotion distracting was also associated with a steeper decrease in reticent behavior, it also predicted a less steep increase in social play. These results suggest that emotion coaching is a supportive socialization strategy for children’s peer relations in ECEC, whereas findings for distracting were more mixed. Using responses from multiple teachers within each classroom to examine both average classroom scores, in addition to minimum and maximum classroom scores, offers a novel insight into the group dynamics of teacher-child interactions in ECEC to support children’s peer relations.publishedVersio

Privacy-Friendly and Trustworthy Technology for Society

We have witnessed an increased use of technology in every facet of our lives. These technologies come with great promises, such as enabling more independent living for older adults or people with physical disabilities, yet also fears, for instance, over privacy concerns or trust in automated systems. In this Topical Collection, we focus on Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies, which require trustworthiness and adherence to privacy regulations for successful adoption. The Collection contains six selected papers that address themes like privacy-by-design, trust in AI, and balancing privacy with technological innovation under regulations like GDPR and the AI Act. The presented articles emphasize the user-centered, privacy-friendly approaches to AAL designs, robust regulatory frameworks, and interdisciplinary methodologies to ensure ethical, trustworthy technologies.Privacy-Friendly and Trustworthy Technology for SocietypublishedVersio

The Norwegian Parliamentary Debates Dataset

Recent advancements in computing power and machine learning techniques have facilitated the digitization of new corpora, as well as new methods for studying high-dimensional data. This has enabled empirical investigations of fundamental questions in the social sciences that were previously restricted by technical limitations or data availability. In this note, we introduce a new dataset covering debates in the Norwegian Parliament in the 1945-2024 period. This dataset, which covers close to one million speeches, includes information about speeches (full text, date of speech, and chamber), speakers’ status (parliamentary president, member of parliament, deputy member of parliament, or cabinet minister), as well as speaker background characteristics (party affiliation, committee membership, district affiliation, rank on electoral lists, gender, and birth year). This dataset will enable extensive research into political representation in a party-centered electoral framework. More broadly, this dataset serves as a vital resource for interdisciplinary research, enabling studies on the evolution of language, rhetoric, and the broader socio-economic factors influencing legislative behavior.publishedVersio

Informational and cushioning properties of conservative balance sheets: a study of crises resilience

This study examines the informational and cushioning properties of balance sheet conservatism (BSC) and their role in mitigating the adverse effects of financial crises. I document that, due to informational property, high-BSC firms raise more debt and have a lower cost of debt financing during the crisis. The cushioning property of BSC is associated with lower earnings volatility, likelihood of significant asset write-downs and probability of covenant violations. These properties contribute to superior performance, including smaller declines in stock prices, investment, employment, and productivity. An out-of-sample test using the setting of the Great Depression (1929–1933) confirms the aforementioned findings. Overall, a path analysis suggests that BSC effects operate mostly through cushioning (informational) property contributing 39% (11%) to overall firms’ performance during the crisis.Informational and cushioning properties of conservative balance sheets: a study of crises resiliencepublishedVersio

Social and Societal Issues in AAL

Active Assisted Living (AAL) systems use advanced technology to help older, impaired, or frail people live independently and stay active in society. These systems rely on automated data monitoring in home or care environments, processing video, image, audio, environmental, and motion data through artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning. Thus, AAL systems offer considerable opportunities for efficient health monitoring, increased autonomy, and enhanced quality of life for older adults. However, AAL technologies also present ethical, legal, and social challenges, particularly around privacy due to the sensitive nature of the data collected and the vulnerability of the populations served. Beyond privacy, the broader social implications of AAL must be considered, including the potential reshaping of care relationships and work within the sector. This chapter provides an in-depth overview of the social and societal issues surrounding AAL, offering a comprehensive literature review that highlights the challenges in implementing these systems in everyday life. Specifically, the chapter discusses cultural differences, biases, the normalization of surveillance, the reshaping of care work and relationships, and matters of trust and adoption, alongside the opportunities AAL technology offers for prolonged independent living.publishedVersio

Why Is the Ceiling Silver? Uncovering the Role of Potential Appraisals in the Age–Promotion Relationship

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Asset-Price Redistribution

several decades. While these rising valuations had important effects on the distribution of wealth, little is known regarding their redistributive effects in terms of welfare. To make progress on this question, we develop a sufficient statistic for the money-metric welfare gain of deviations in asset valuations. This welfare gain depends on the present value of an individual’s net asset sales rather than asset holdings: higher asset valuations benefit prospective sellers and harm prospective buyers. We estimate this quantity using panel microdata covering the universe of financial transactions in Norway from 1994 to 2019. We further demonstrate how to adapt our baseline statistic to account for important considerations, such as incomplete markets and collateral constraints. We find that the rise in asset valuations had large redistributive effects: it redistributed from the young to the old and from the poor to the wealthy.acceptedVersio

SHOULD MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY PULL IN THE SAME DIRECTION?

There is a common view that if monetary and fiscal policy are to be used together for macroeconomic stabilization, they should pull in the same direction. We challenge this view by analyzing the optimal policy mix in a small open economy. We show that when the economy is hit by inflation shocks or exchange rate shocks, monetary and fiscal policy should pull in opposite directions. This policy mix makes more effective use of the exchange rate channel of monetary policy, allowing inflation to be reduced after a shock with lower costs in terms of unemployment. Only in the case of demand shocks, or if there are significant costs associated with the active use of the interest rate, should monetary and fiscal policy pull in the same direction. We then consider automatic stabilizers. As we show, for demand shocks, automatic stabilizers imply that monetary and fiscal policy pull in the same direction. For inflation and exchange rate shocks, on the other hand, automatic stabilizers imply that the two policy instruments pull in opposite directions. These policy interactions are all consistent with our results on the optimal policy mix. Strong automatic stabilizers could therefore serve as a substitute for optimal discretionary fiscal policy in open economies

Leveraging quality improvement initiatives to support development of decision support tools in healthcare

Modelling and simulation studies have been used to inform the choices and development of quality improvement (QI) initiatives in health care, for example, by helping refine the intervention to be implemented or support decisions around the management of demand and capacity. We do not know whether a modelling study can itself be informed by a QI project and what are the associated benefits and challenges. In this research, we sought to investigate the opportunities and challenges associated with an ongoing health service-led QI project in informing the development of a stochastic simulation-based decision support tool to inform decisions around the commissioning of anticoagulation services for patients with atrial fibrillation. We found that the positive synergies offered by the QI project included good access to stakeholders and envisaged end users, co-producing relevant and impactful scenarios for experimentation, as well as access to good quality individual patient level data. On the other hand, substantial effort was required to populate input parameters with values that pertain to the natural history of the disease and the effectiveness of the different treatments. Our findings indicate that, if stakeholders require modelling results to inform aspects of a QI project, upfront investment is needed to ensure timely interaction between the two studies.Leveraging quality improvement initiatives to support development of decision support tools in healthcarepublishedVersio