43 research outputs found
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The martyrdom effect : when pain and effort increase prosocial contributions
Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effortful rather than easy and enjoyable. Across five experiments, we document this âmartyrdom effect,â show that the observed patterns defy standard economic and psychological accounts, and identify a mediator and moderator of the effect. Experiment 1 showed that people are willing to donate more to charity when they anticipate having to suffer to raise money. Experiment 2 extended these findings to a non-charity laboratory context that involved real money and actual pain. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the martyrdom effect is not the result of an attribute substitution strategy (whereby people use the amount of pain and effort involved in fundraising to determine donation worthiness). Experiment 4 showed that perceptions of meaningfulness partially mediate the martyrdom effect. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrated that the nature of the prosocial cause moderates the martyrdom effect: the effect is strongest for causes associated with human suffering. We propose that anticipated pain and effort lead people to ascribe greater meaning to their contributions and to the experience of contributing, thereby motivating higher prosocial contributions. We conclude by considering some implications of this puzzling phenomenon. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Eliciting taxpayer preferences increases tax compliance
Two experiments show that eliciting taxpayer preferences on government spendingâproviding taxpayer agency--increases tax compliance. We first create an income and taxation environment in a laboratory setting to test for compliance with a lab tax. Allowing a treatment group to express nonbinding preferences over tax spending priorities, leads to a 16% increase in tax compliance. A followup online study tests this treatment with a simulation of paying US federal taxes. Allowing taxpayers to signal their preferences on the distribution of government spending, results in a 15% reduction in the stated take-up rate of a questionable tax loophole. Providing taxpayer agency recouples tax payments with the public services obtained in return, reduces general anti-tax sentiment, and holds satisfaction with tax payment stable despite increased compliance with tax dues. With tax noncompliance costing the US government $385billion annually, providing taxpayer agency could have meaningful economic impact. At the same time, giving taxpayers a voice may act as a two-way "nudge," transforming tax payment from a passive experience to a channel of communication between taxpayers and government
Mood and the Market: Can Press Reports of Investorsâ Mood Predict Stock Prices?
We examined whether press reports on the collective mood of investors can predict changes in stock prices. We collected data on the use of emotion words in newspaper reports on tradersâ affect, coded these emotion words according to their location on an affective circumplex in terms of pleasantness and activation level, and created indices of collective mood for each trading day. Then, by using time series analyses, we examined whether these mood indices, depicting investorsâ emotion on a given trading day, could predict the next dayâs opening price of the stock market. The strongest findings showed that activated pleasant mood predicted increases in NASDAQ prices, while activated unpleasant mood predicted decreases in NASDAQ prices. We conclude that both valence and activation levels of collective mood are important in predicting trend continuation in stock prices
Guidance for the practical management of warfarin therapy in the treatment of venous thromboembolism
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Genome-wide association study identifies acyl-lipid metabolism candidate genes involved in the genetic control of natural variation for seed fatty acid traits in Brassica napus L.
Brassica napus L. represents a potential plant feedstock for the sustainable production of hydrotreated renewable fuels needed to support carbon-based energy production. However, to increase the use of plant-derived oils for energy needs, breeding efforts are required to optimize the amount and profile of fatty acids (FAs) contained in the oil extracted from B. maims seed to meet demands of the various market categories. To this end, we analyzed the genetic basis of FA content and composition of seed from a diverse panel of spring-type B. napus accessions evaluated at four US locations across multiple years. The extent of phenotypic variations for total oil content, nine FA compounds, and 14 derivative traits were found, in general, to be highly heritable. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) was conducted that detected 53 SNPs significantly associated with one or more of the 24 FA seed traits, resulting in the implicated genetic role of 12 candidate genes, four of which had two homologs each, from the acyl-lipid pathway. To our knowledge, the two detected homologs of 3-Ketoacyl-CoA thiolase (KAT), have never been associated with seed oil traits in B. napus. Through the application of whole-genome prediction, the 24 FA seed traits were generally found to have moderately high predictive abilities (70% of traits with abilities > 0.70), suggesting that these traits are highly amenable to genomic selection. Overall, our results contribute to the expanding body of knowledge regarding key enzymes in the acyl-lipid pathway at the quantitative genetic level and illustrate how genomics-assisted breeding could be leveraged to genetically improve FA seed traits in B. napus.24 month embargo; published online: 6 January 2020This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]
Mental Imagery, Impact, and Affect: A Mediation Model for Charitable Giving
One of the puzzling phenomena in philanthropy is that people can show strong compassion
for identified individual victims but remain unmoved by catastrophes that affect large numbers
of victims. Two prominent findings in research on charitable giving reflect this idiosyncrasy:
The (1) identified victim and (2) victim number effects. The first of these suggests that
identifying victims increases donations and the second refers to the finding that people's
willingness to donate often decreases as the number of victims increases. While these
effects have been documented in the literature, their underlying psychological processes
need further study. We propose a model in which identified victim and victim number effects
operate through different cognitive and affective mechanisms. In two experiments we present
empirical evidence for such a model and show that different affective motivations
(donor-focused vs. victim-focused feelings) are related to the cognitive processes of impact
judgments and mental imagery. Moreover, we argue that different mediation pathways exist
for identifiability and victim number effects