4,004 research outputs found
The Costs of Deception: Evidence From Psychology
Recently, it has been argued that the evidence in social science research suggests that deceiving subjects in an experiment does not lead to a significant loss of experimental control. Based on this assessment, experimental economists were counseled to lift their de facto prohibition against deception to capture its potential benefits. To the extent that this recommendation is derived from empirical studies, we argue that it draws on a selective sample of the available evidence. Building on a systematic review of relevant research in psychology, we present two major results: First, the evidence suggests that the experience of having been deceived generates suspicion which in turn is likely to affect judgment and decision making of a non-negligible number of participants. Second, we find little evidence for reputational spillover effects that have been hypothesized by a number of authors in psychology and economics (e.g., Kelman, 1967; Davis and Holt, 1993). Based on a discussion of the methodological costs and benefits of deception, we conclude that experimental economists' prohibition of deception is a sensible convention that economists should not abandon.experimental economics; deception; reputational spillover effects
Reach and speed of judgment propagation in the laboratory
In recent years, a large body of research has demonstrated that judgments and
behaviors can propagate from person to person. Phenomena as diverse as
political mobilization, health practices, altruism, and emotional states
exhibit similar dynamics of social contagion. The precise mechanisms of
judgment propagation are not well understood, however, because it is difficult
to control for confounding factors such as homophily or dynamic network
structures. We introduce a novel experimental design that renders possible the
stringent study of judgment propagation. In this design, experimental chains of
individuals can revise their initial judgment in a visual perception task after
observing a predecessor's judgment. The positioning of a very good performer at
the top of a chain created a performance gap, which triggered waves of judgment
propagation down the chain. We evaluated the dynamics of judgment propagation
experimentally. Despite strong social influence within pairs of individuals,
the reach of judgment propagation across a chain rarely exceeded a social
distance of three to four degrees of separation. Furthermore, computer
simulations showed that the speed of judgment propagation decayed exponentially
with the social distance from the source. We show that information distortion
and the overweighting of other people's errors are two individual-level
mechanisms hindering judgment propagation at the scale of the chain. Our
results contribute to the understanding of social contagion processes, and our
experimental method offers numerous new opportunities to study judgment
propagation in the laboratory
The development of the albino rat, Mus norvegicus albinus. II. Abnormal ova; end of the first to the end of the ninth day
No Abstract.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50237/1/1050260206_ftp.pd
The psychology and rationality of decisions from experience
Most investigations into how people make risky choices have employed a simple drosophila: monetary gambles involving stated outcomes and probabilities. People are asked to make decisions from description. When people decide whether to back up their computer hard drive, cross a busy street, or go out on a date, however, they do not enjoy the convenience of stated outcomes and probabilities. People make such decisions either in the void of ignorance or in the twilight of their own often limited experience of such real-world options. In the latter case, they make decisions from experience. Recent research has consistently documented that decisions from description and decisions from experience can lead to substantially different choices. Key in this description-experience gap is people's treatment of rare events. In this paper, I briefly review studies that have documented the description-experience gap, offer several explanations for this gap, and discuss to what extent people's decisions from experience are in conflict with benchmarks of rationalit
Search-Based vs. Task-Based Space Surveillance for Ground-Based Telescopes
Persistent Space Situational Awareness (SSA) is one of the top priorities of the DoD. Currently the Space Surveillance Network (SSN) operates using only a task-based method. The goal of this thesis was to compare the current task-based space surveillance performance to a search-based method of space surveillance in the GEO belt region. The performance of a ground telescope network, similar to the Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (GEODSS) network, was modeled and simulated using AGI’s Systems Tool Kit (STK) and Python. The model compared search-based and task-based space surveillance methods by simulating 813 Resident Space Objects (RSOs) on the summer solstice, fall equinox and winter solstice. Four performance metrics for comparing the search-based and task-based methods were minimum detectable size, detection rate, coverage area, and latency. The search-based method modeled six different search patterns at varying starting positions. Results show that the minimum detectable size average for task-based was 47.6 cm in diameter while search-based methods ranged from 38.3 cm - 45.4 cm in diameter. Detection rate for task-based was 100% while the search-based ranged from 91.7% - 96.8%. Coverage area for task-based was 46% of the GEO belt and the search-based method ranged from 3.5% - 84.4%. Average latency (revisit time) for task-based was 78 minutes and search-based methods ranged from 62 - 469 minutes. It was found that task-based surveillance was the better method for current operational conditions by using a weighted decision criteria. However, as the number of RSOs increase there is a point at which the search method has better performance
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