Does Transition Experience Improve Newcomer Performance? Evidence From the National Basketball Association

A substantial body of research has highlighted the effects of experience on individual performance in groups. However, the challenges individuals confront after moving between groups require the adoption of more finely grained categorizations of experience to understand how they will help or hinder performance in novel group environments. This article develops a distinct form of experience here termed transition experience to deal specifically with insights individuals accumulate as they shift membership between different groups and contrasts its impact with that of the frequently examined component of related task experience. Player movement data from the National Basketball Association is used to show that related task experience can produce negative consequences, consistent with prior research. Conversely, low to moderate levels of transition experience can aid performance. This holds true for both individual performance and performance more closely related to coordinated actions with teammates

The Manifestation of Stress and Rumination in Musicians

Here we offer a brief review of research on individual differences that are common to musicians, focusing on our own work on rumination and stress. Rumination and stress have been linked with depression and negative health outcomes. We discuss two of our published studies and two new, unpublished replications that find elevated levels of rumination and stress in musicians. Further, we review literature that finds this combination of rumination and stress might be especially toxic. Even though people frequently use music to help combat stress, musicians may not be taking advantage of their frequent exposure to music, further exacerbating the problem. Interventions aimed at alleviating stress and rumination might prove helpful to musicians

Inconsistent, Vague, and…Just? An Analysis of the National Football League’s 2021 COVID-19 Policy

The National Football League, the premier professional organization for American football, developed a policy concerning the protocol in cases where players contract COVID-19. This policy includes elements such as collective punishment that appear, at first glance, to be morally problematic. To the contrary, the policy is indeed morally acceptable as we should not think of organizations such as the NFL in the same way we think of governments in stable nations, but rather in the same way that we think of hybrid justice systems in countries where because of histories of colonialism, the identity of citizens is divided, with tribal identities being more important than national citizenship

Just How Comparative Are Comparative Judgments?

Three studies investigate comparative judgment processes, examining the circumstances under which judgments tend to concentrate disproportionately on one of the two elements that underlie the comparison (i.e., focused comparisons). Our findings suggest focused comparisons occur at the judgment formation stage but not the information retrieval stage

OMA: Overprecision and Manipulating the Audience

Presents the unpublished results from a series of disappointing studies

Unpacking, summing and anchoring in retrospective time estimation

We examined whether or not interventions that have been used to try to influence predictions of future task duration – unpacking, summing and anchoring – had a similar effect on retrospective estimations of duration. In three studies, participants experienced a number of short stimuli, such as watching videos, before estimating the duration for each of the stimuli and the overall duration. The first estimation given served as an anchor for all following estimates. If the first estimation was highly biased in one direction, then subsequent estimates were more likely to also be biased in the same direction. Additionally, separate estimates for a number of individual tasks differed from the estimates for all of the tasks combined. This incongruity happened even though all estimates were given in sequence. Overall, results indicated that memories of past task duration could be influenced by the manner in which they were elicited

Whom do you distrust and how much does it cost? An experiment on the measurement of trust

We advance the measurement of trust in economics in two ways. First, we highlight the importance of clearly identifying the target of trust, particularly for obtaining concordance between attitudinal and behavioral measures of trust. Second, we introduce a novel behavioral measure of (dis)trust, based on individuals? willingness to pay to avoid being vulnerable to the target of trust. We conduct an experiment in which we vary the target of trust among passersby at several locations around a city, measuring both behavioral distrust and trust attitudes towards these varying targets. We find that subjects discriminate based on perceived characteristics of different targets in determining whether to trust, in a manner consistent with trust elicited using attitudinal measures and with actual trustworthiness. Risk aversion and altruism do not correlate highly with our measure of distrust

Myopic Biases in Competitions: Implications for Strategic Decision Making

Recent research has shown that when people compare one thing to another, they tend to focus myopically on the target of the comparative judgment and do not sufficiently consider the referent to which the target is being compared. This paper applies this recent theoretical progress to the problem of predicting the outcomes of athletic competitions. In three studies, we show that the focal competitor’s strengths and weaknesses feature more prominently than do the strengths and weaknesses of the opponents. People are more confident of success when their own side is strong, regardless of how strong the competition is. Implications for theories of strategic decision making in competitive settings are discusse

Who Do You Distrust and How Much Does it Cost? An Experiment on the Measurement of Trust

We address two problems with how trust is frequently measured in economics. First, we highlight the importance of clearly identifying the target of trust, which when ignored can lead to inconsistencies between trust measures. Second, we note the importance of distinguishing trust from other closely related concepts. We conduct an experiment using a new behavioral measure of trust – individuals’ willingness to pay to avoid being vulnerable to the target of trust – and vary the target of trust. To test our behavioral measure, we also collect data on potentially confounding effects (i.e., altruism and risk aversion) and on attitudinal measures of trust. Subjects discriminate based on perceived characteristics of different targets in determining whether to trust, in a manner consistent with trust elicited using attitudinal measures and with actual trustworthiness. Risk aversion and altruism do not correlate highly with our measure of trust