Experimentally Induced Empathy Has No Impact on Generosity in a Monetarily Incentivized Dictator Game

In a monetarily incentivized Dictator Game, we expected Dictators' empathy toward the Recipients to cause more pro-social allocations. Empathy was experimentally induced via a commonly used perspective taking task. Dictators (N = 474) were instructed to split an endowment of 10(sic) between themselves and an unknown Recipient. They could split the money 8/2 (8(sic) for Dictator, 2(sic) for Recipient) or 5/5 (5(sic) each). Although the empathy manipulation successfully increased Dictators' feelings of empathy toward the Recipients, Dictators' decisions on how to split the money were not affected. We had ample statistical power (above 0.99) to detect a typical social psychology effect (corresponding to r around 0.20). Other possible determinants of generosity in the Dictator Game should be investigated.Peer reviewe

Economic Attitudes, Social Attitudes and Their Psychological Underpinnings – A Study of the Finnish Political Elite

We investigated the relation between economic and social attitudes and the psychological underpinnings of these attitudes in candidates (N = 9515) in the Finnish 2017 municipal elections. In this politically elite sample, right-wing economic attitudes and social conservatism were positively correlated (r = 0.41), and this correlation was predominantly driven by those on the economic left being socially liberal, and vice versa. In terms of underlying psychological processes, consistent with dual process models of political ideology, the anti-egalitarian aspect of social dominance orientation was more strongly associated with right-wing economic attitudes, and the conventionalism and aggression aspects of right-wing authoritarianism with social conservatism. Our results show that even in a non-United States context in which the masses organize their political attitudes on two independent dimensions, these dimensions are moderately aligned among certain parts of the political elite, and that the political attitudes of the political elite can be traced to underlying psychological motivations. We argue that equality concerns could play a role in explaining why the left-right and liberal-conservative dimensions are more strongly aligned among those on the left and those more liberal.Peer reviewe

Issues in socially desirable responding and personality research

The four studies presented in this dissertation were designed to examine the influence of socially desirable responding (SDR) on personality research outcomes. The assessment of personality relies heavily on the use of self-report questionnaires. Their validity could be threatened by people being dishonest in their self-descriptions and ascribing more desirable traits to themselves than would be warranted by their behaviour. Scales designed to detect SDR have been around for half a century, but their status continues to be debated. Paulhus (1991) Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) is perhaps the most prominent of the scales developed to distinguish between those individuals who have distorted their responses and those who have not. The first two studies included in this dissertation mostly deal with the properties of the BIDR. The other two studies are less focused on SDR scales and investigate, more generally, the potential effects of SDR on two phenomena that are of central interest to the general personality discourse personality stability over time and volunteering as participants in psychological research. The data of Studies I and II showed that Paulhus BIDR scales, designed to be indicators of SDR, are not pure measures both the communion management and self-deceptive enhancement scales are, at once, measures of response bias and measures of more substantive individual differences in behaviour. The data further suggested that the communion management and self-deceptive enhancement scales of the BIDR are somewhat accurate measures of communal and agentic bias, respectively. No evidence for a suppressor model of SDR, and only weak evidence for a moderator model, was found in those studies. Concerning research on personality stability, some data in Study I suggested that SDR may add reliable and common variance to a personality questionnaire administered at two different points in time, thus artificially inflating the test-retest correlation of that questionnaire. Furthermore, Study III demonstrated that the maturity-stability hypothesis may be in part, but not entirely, a product of SDR. Study IV suggested that some of the observed personality differences between research volunteers and nonvolunteers may be due to heightened SDR of volunteers. However, those personality differences were by no means exclusively attributable to differences in SDR. In sum, the work presented in this thesis reveals some ambiguity regarding the effects of SDR on personality research, as is true of much of the previous research on SDR. Clear-cut conclusions are difficult to reach, as the data were neither fully consistent with the view that SDR can be ignored, nor with the view that SDR needs to be controlled in some way. The struggle to understand the influence of SDR on personality research continues.Tähän väitöskirjaan kuuluvat neljä tutkimusta suunniteltiin selvittämään miten sosiaalisesti suotuisa vastaamistyyli vaikuttaa persoonallisuuspsykologisen tutkimuksen tuloksiin. Persoonallisuutta mitatessa luotetaan useimmiten itsearviointimittareihin. Näiden mittareiden validiteettia voi uhata itseään epärehellisesti kuvaavat henkilöt, jotka väittävät omaavansa enemmän suotavia piirteitä kuin mihin heidän käyttäytymisensä oikeuttaisi. Sosiaalisesti suotuisan vastaamisen havaitsemiseen suunniteltuja mittareita on ollut saatavilla jo puoli vuosisataa, mutta niiden hyödyllisyydestä kiistellään yhä. Todennäköisesti paras vastauksiaan vääristelevien ja rehellisesti vastaavien erottamiseen kehitetty mittari on Paulhusin (1991) sosiaalisen suotavuuden mittari. Kaksi ensimmäistä tähän väitöskirjaan kuuluvaa tutkimusta käsittelevät tämän mittarin ominaisuuksia. Toiset kaksi tutkimusta keskittyvät niihin vaikutuksiin jota sosiaalisesti suotavalla vastaamisella voi olla kahteen persoonallisuuspsykologisessa tutkimuksessa keskeiseen ilmiöön persoonallisuuden stabiliteettiin ajan yli ja halukkuuteen osallistua koehenkilönä psykologiseen tutkimukseen. Tutkimusten I ja II tulokset osoittivat, että Paulhusin (1991) mittarin asteikot eivät ole puhtaita mittareita sekä vaikutelmanluonti- että itsepetosasteikko mittaavat samanaikaisesti vastaustaipumusta ja todellisia yksilöiden välisiä eroja. Tulokset viittasivat myös siihen, että vaikutelmanluonti- ja itsepetosasteikot mittaavat yhteisöllistä ja agenttista vastaustaipumusta, tässä järjestyksessä. Tukea sosiaalisesti suotuisan vastaamisen tilastolliselle kontrolloinnille ei juuri löytynyt. Mitä tulee persoonallisuuden stabiliteetin tutkimukseen, Tutkimus I osoitti, että sosiaalisesti suotuisa vastaaminen voi lisätä luotettavaa ja yhteistä varianssia persoonallisuusmittariin joka annetaan kahtena eri ajankohtana, vääristäen näin arvioita persoonallisuuden stabiliteetista. Tämän lisäksi Tutkimus III osoitti, että kypsyys-stabiliteetti hypoteesi voi olla osittain, mutta ei täysin, sosiaalisesti suotavan vastaamisen tuottama. Tutkimus IV osoitti, että mitatut persoonallisuuserot tutkimuksiin vapaaehtoisesti osallistuvien ja ei-osallistuvien välillä voivat olla osittain, mutta eivät täysin, sosiaalisesti suotavan vastaamisen tulosta. Tässä väitöskirjassa esitellyn tutkimuksen tulokset ovat monitulkintaisia sen suhteen miten sosiaalisesti suotava vastaamistyyli vaikuttaa persoonallisuuspsykologian tutkimustuloksiin. Toisaalta tulokset eivät tue näkemystä, että sosiaalisesti suotavan vastaamisen voi jättää huomiotta, mutta eivät toisaalta myöskään sitä näkemystä että sosiaalisesti suotavaa vastaamista pitäisi jollain lailla kontrolloida. Ponnistelut sosiaalisesti suotavan vastaamisen ymmärtämiseksi jatkuvat

Measuring Individual Risk Attitudes in the Lab: Task or Ask?: An Empirical Comparison

This paper compares two prominent empirical measures of individual risk attitudes - the Holt and Laury (2002) lottery-choice task and the multi-item questionnaire advocated by Dohmen, Falk, Huffman, Schupp, Sunde and Wagner (forthcoming) - with respect to (a) their within-subject stability over time (one year) and (b) their correlation with actual risk-taking behaviour in the lab - here the amount sent in a trust game (Berg, Dickaut, McCabe, 1995). As it turns out, the measures themselves are uncorrelated (both times) and, most importantly, only the questionnaire measure exhibits test-re-test stability ( · =.78), while virtually no such stability is found in the lottery-choice task. In addition, only the questionnaire measure shows the expected correlations with a Big Five personality measure and is correlated with actual risk-taking behaviour. The results suggest that the questionnaire is the more adequate measure of individual risk attitudes for the analysis of behaviour in economic (lab) experiments. Moreover, with respect to trust, the high re-test stability of trust transfers ( ·= .70) further supports the conjecture that trusting behaviour indeed has a component which itself is a stable individual characteristic (Glaeser, Laibson, Scheinkman and Soutter, 2000).Risk attitudes, trust, personality, lab experiments

Group-level and intraindividual stability of national stereotypes : a four-year longitudinal study on Ingrian Finn immigrants’ pre-and postmigration stereotypes of a typical Finn

Peer reviewe

Similarity-attraction effects in friendship formation : Honest platoon-mates prefer each other but dishonest do not

Friends tend to be similar on many characteristics, including personality traits. Yet, a real-world similarity-attraction effect based on actual personality traits is not supported by current research. One reason for this apparent contradiction could be that dark personality traits have been absent from this literature. In a sample (N = 181) of military cadet freshmen, we investigated homophily (“love of the same”) based on the traits identified by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) and two dark personality traits, Manipulativeness and Egotism. We did not find homophily based on the FFM traits. However, platoon-mate dyads with similar levels of trait Manipulativeness or Egotism were more likely to mutually like each other. Furthermore, response surface analyses revealed that homophily for these two traits occurred only at the low, or bright, end of these traits. Our results support arguments derived from evolutionary theory that argue for the importance of trait honesty in friendship formation.Peer reviewe

Experimentally Induced Empathy does not Affect Monetarily Incentivized Dictator Game Behavior

In a monetarily incentivized Dictator Game we expected Dictators’ empathy towards the Recipients to cause more pro-social allocations. Empathy was experimentally induced via a commonly used perspective taking task. Dictators (N = 476) were instructed to split an endowment of 10€ between themselves and an unknown Recipient. They could split the money 8/2 (8€ for Dictator, 2€ for Recipient) or 5/5 (5€ each). Although the empathy manipulation successfully increased Dictators’ feelings of empathy towards the Recipients, Dictators’ decisions on how to split the money were not affected. We had ample statistical power (above .99) to detect a typical social psychology effect (corresponding to r around .20). Other possible determinants of generosity in the Dictator Game should be investigated

Experimentally Induced Empathy does not Affect Monetarily Incentivized Dictator Game Behavior

In a monetarily incentivized Dictator Game we expected Dictators’ empathy towards the Recipients to cause more pro-social allocations. Empathy was experimentally induced via a commonly used perspective taking task. Dictators (N = 476) were instructed to split an endowment of 10€ between themselves and an unknown Recipient. They could split the money 8/2 (8€ for Dictator, 2€ for Recipient) or 5/5 (5€ each). Although the empathy manipulation successfully increased Dictators’ feelings of empathy towards the Recipients, Dictators’ decisions on how to split the money were not affected. We had ample statistical power (above .99) to detect a typical social psychology effect (corresponding to r around .20). Other possible determinants of generosity in the Dictator Game should be investigated

Values as predictors of anticipated socio-cultural adaptation among potential migrants from Russia to Finland

Peer reviewe