Managing Self-Confidence: Theory and Experimental Evidence

Evidence from social psychology suggests that agents process information about their own ability in a biased manner. This evidence has motivated exciting research in behavioral economics, but has also garnered critics who point out that it is potentially consistent with standard Bayesian updating. We implement a direct experimental test. We study a large sample of 656 undergraduate students, tracking the evolution of their beliefs about their own relative performance on an IQ test as they receive noisy feedback from a known data-generating process. Our design lets us repeatedly measure the complete relevant belief distribution incentive-compatibly. We find that subjects (1) place approximately full weight on their priors, but (2) are asymmetric, over-weighting positive feedback relative to negative, and (3) conservative, updating too little in response to both positive and negative signals. These biases are substantially less pronounced in a placebo experiment where ego is not at stake. We also find that (4) a substantial portion of subjects are averse to receiving information about their ability, and that (5) less confident subjects are causally more likely to be averse. We unify these phenomena by showing that they all arise naturally in a simple model of optimally biased Bayesian information processing.

Conformal and Superconformal Mechanics Revisited

We find, at the Lagrangian off-shell level, the explicit equivalence transformation which relates the conformal mechanics of De Alfaro, Fubini and Furlan to the conformal mechanics describing the radial motion of the charged massive particle in the Bertotti-Robinson AdS$_2\times S^2$ background. Thus we demonstrate the classical equivalence of these two systems which are usually regarded as essentially different ``old'' and ``new'' conformal mechanics models. We also construct a similar transformation for N=2, $SU(1,1|1)$ superconformal mechanics in N=2 superfield formulation. Performing this transformation in the action of the N=2 superconformal mechanics, we find an off-shell superfield action of N=2 superextension of Bertotti-Robinson particle. Such an action has not been given before. We show its on-shell equivalence to the AdS$_2$ superparticle action derived from the spontaneous partial breaking of $SU(1,1|1)$ superconformal symmetry treated as the N=2 AdS$_2$ supersymmetry.Comment: LaTeX, 15 page

Relativistic Coulomb problem for particles with arbitrary half-integer spin

Using relativistic tensor-bispinorial equations proposed in hep-th/0412213 we solve the Kepler problem for a charged particle with arbitrary half-integer spin interacting with the Coulomb potential.Comment: Misprints are correcte

Pauli equation and the method of supersymmetric factorization

We consider different variants of factorization of a 2x2 matrix Schroedinger/Pauli operator in two spatial dimensions. They allow to relate its spectrum to the sum of spectra of two scalar Schroedinger operators, in a manner similar to one-dimensional Darboux transformations. We consider both the case when such factorization is reduced to the ordinary 2-dimensional SUSY QM quasifactorization and a more general case which involves covariant derivatives. The admissible classes of electromagnetic fields are described and some illustrative examples are given.Comment: 18 pages, Late

Galilei-invariant equations for massive fields

Galilei-invariant equations for massive fields with various spins have been found and classified. They have been derived directly, i.e., by using requirement of the Galilei invariance and various facts on representations of the Galilei group deduced in the paper written by de Montigny M, Niederle J and Nikitin A G, J. Phys. A \textbf{39}, 1-21, 2006. A completed list of non-equivalent Galilei-invariant wave equations for vector and scalar fields is presented. It shows two things. First that the collection of such equations is very broad and describes many physically consistent systems. In particular it is possible to describe spin-orbit and Darwin couplings in frames of Galilei-invariant approach. Second, these Galilei-invariant equations can be obtained either via contraction of known relativistic equations or via contractions of quite new relativistic wave equations.Comment: Minor improvements of the text has been made and misprints are correcte

Career success: the role of teenage career aspirations, ambition value and gender in predicting adult social status and earnings

Links between family social background, teenage career aspirations, educational performance and adult social status attainment are well documented. Using a contextual developmental framework, this article extends previous research by examining the role of gender and teenage ambition value in shaping social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. Drawing on data from an 18-year British follow up study we tested a path model linking family background factors (such as family social status and parental aspirations) and individual agency factors in adolescence (in particular, career aspirations and ambition value) to social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. The findings suggest that ambition value is linked to adult earnings. That is, young people for whom it is important to get on in their job earn more money in adulthood than their less ambitious peers. The findings also confirm that teenage career aspirations are linked to adult social status attainment, and suggest that family background factors, teenage career aspirations and ambition value interact to influence social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. Gender differences are discusse

Emirati women do not shy away from competition: evidence from a patriarchal society in transition

We explore gender attitudes towards competition in the United Arab Emirates—a traditionally patriarchal society which in recent times has adopted numerous policies to empower women and promote their role in the labor force. The experimental treatments vary whether individuals compete in single-sex or mixed-sex groups. In contrast to previous studies, women in our sample are not less willing to compete than men. In fact, once we control for individual performance, Emirati women are more likely to select into competition. Our analysis shows that neither women nor men shy away from competition, and both compete more than what would be optimal in monetary terms as the fraction of men in their group increases. We offer a detailed survey of the literature and discuss possible reasons for the lack of gender differences in our experiment