Risk, reproducibility, and reproduction : Essays on scholar’s analytic decisions and consumers' product purchases

This thesis investigates how evolutionary biology theories can be used to better understand consumer behavior. The first paper lays the groundwork for the methodologies used throughout the thesis. Here, the focus is on the (ab-)use of p-values and how easy it is to find a false-positive research result under different common circumstances. The second paper investigates what happens with the willingness to engage in risky choices when people have a low level of blood glucose. The third and fourth papers focus on conspicuous consumption and examine the circumstances that induce people to purchase prestigious products. The empirical studies have in common the idea that the respective choices involved in each paper are embedded in an evolutionary process. In the first paper, we find that obtaining a false positive result is easy, especially when there is no pre-registration of the hypothesis or no correction of p-values for multiple hypothesis testing. In some important cases, pre-registration alone is not sufficient to overcome the problem of inflated false positives. Applying these insights to an empirical case and using theoretical arguments from evolutionary biology, the second paper uses cross-validation and a meta-analysis to show that people with low levels of blood glucose show a higher willingness to pay for risky food items, whereas this is not the case for non-food products. The third paper shows through two studies that conspicuous consumption is particularly prevalent among single men. Building on these findings, the fourth paper shows, through a newly constructed uncertainty index, that increased uncertainty amplifies people’s propensity to engage in conspicuous consumption. Overall, this thesis adds to the literature on false-positive findings and illuminates how social scientists can reach a deeper understanding of human behavior by adopting an evolutionary lens

Smaller prize, bigger size? Exploring the impact of money on men's self-reported markers of masculinity

Bodily markers, often self-reported, are frequently used in research to predict a variety of outcomes. The present study examined whether men, at the aggregate level, would overestimate certain bodily markers linked to masculinity, and if so, to what extent. Furthermore, the study explored whether the amount of monetary rewards distributed to male participants would influence the obtained data quality. Men from two participant pools were asked to self-report a series of bodily measures. All self-report measures except weight were consistently found to be above the population mean (height and penis size) or the scale midpoint (athleticism). Additionally, the participant pool that received the lower (vs. higher) monetary reward showed a particularly powerful deviation from the population mean in penis size and were significantly more likely to report their erect and flaccid penis size to be larger than the claimed but not verified world record of 34 cm. These findings indicate that studies relying on men’s self-reported measures of certain body parts should be interpreted with great caution, but that higher monetary rewards seem to improve data quality slightly for such measures

Stories vs. facts: triggering emotion and action-taking on climate change

Publisher's version (útgefin grein)Climate change is an issue which elicits low engagement, even among concerned segments of the public. While research suggests that the presentation of factual information (e.g., scientific consensus) can be persuasive to some audiences, there is also empirical evidence indicating that it may also increase resistance in others. In this research, we investigate whether climate change narratives structured as stories are better than informational narratives at promoting pro-environmental behavior in diverse audiences. We propose that narratives structured as stories facilitate experiential processing, heightening affective engagement and emotional arousal, which serve as an impetus for action-taking. Across three studies, we manipulate the structure of climate change communications to investigate how this influences narrative transportation, measures of autonomic reactivity indicative of emotional arousal, and pro-environmental behavior. We find that stories are more effective than informational narratives at promoting pro-environmental behavior (studies 1 and 3) and self-reported narrative transportation (study 2), particularly those with negatively valenced endings (study 3). The results of study 3 indicate that embedding information in story structure influences cardiac activity, and subsequently, pro-environmental behavior. These findings connect works from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, narratology, and climate change communication, advancing our understanding of how narrative structure influences engagement with climate change through emotional arousal, which likely incites pro-environmental behavior as the brain's way of optimizing bodily budgets.This research has been supported by seed funding from the Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, as well as the Aarhus University Research Foundation."Peer Reviewed

A meta-analytical and experimental examination of blood glucose effects on decision making under risk

Previous research has shown that short-term changes in blood glucose influence our preferences and may affect decisions about risk as well. However, consensus is lacking about whether and how blood glucose influences decision making under risk, and we conduct two experiments and a meta-analysis to examine this question in detail. In Study 1, using a pecuniary valuation method, we find no effect of blood glucose on willingness to pay for risky products that may act as allergens. In Study 2, using risky gambles, we find that low levels of blood glucose increase risk taking for food and to a lesser degree for non-food rewards. Combining our own and previous findings in a meta-analysis, we show that low levels of blood glucose on average increase risk taking about food. Low blood glucose does not increase risk taking about non-food rewards although this is subject to heterogeneity. Overall, our studies suggest that low blood glucose increases our willingness to gamble on how much food we can get, but not our willingness to eat food that can harm us. Our findings are best explained by the energy budget rule