Models of governance of public services: empirical and behavioural analysis of 'econs' and 'humans'

How can individuals best be encouraged to take more responsibility for their well-being and their environment or to behave more ethically in their business transactions? Across the world, governments are showing a growing interest in using behavioural economic research to inform the design of nudges which, some suggest, might encourage citizens to adopt beneficial patterns of behaviour. In this fascinating collection, leading academic economists, psychologists and philosophers reflect on how behavioural economic findings can be used to help inform the design of policy initiatives in the areas of health, education, the environment, personal finances and worker remuneration. Each chapter is accompanied by a shorter 'response' that provides critical commentary and an alternative perspective. This accessible book will interest academic researchers, graduate students and policy-makers across a range of disciplinary perspectives. A selection of the world's leading behavioural economists apply behavioural science research to practical policy concerns in the areas of health, education, the environment, personal finances and worker remuneration Will appeal to people across a range of disciplinary backgrounds - students, practitioners and policy makers who are interested in the contributions that behavioural economics can make. Each chapter is accompanied by a shorter 'response' to provide commentary and an alternative perspective to help readers engage more fully with the issues raised

Revisiting embodied approach and avoidance effects on behavior: the influence of sitting posture on purchases of rewarding foods

The body is central to theoretical understanding of approach and avoidance, but previous research comprehensively investigated the embodiment of the two motivational orientations only in relation to basic motor reactions such as push and pull, and psychological processes such as attitudes. Our research addresses the neglected impact on more sophisticated behaviors that go beyond psychological processes or basic motor responses. Specifically, in the present research we probed how leaning (approach) versus reclining (avoidance) influence a representative motivated behavior—purchases of rewarding foods—in the context of an online grocery shopping task. We also examined a personality—Behavioral Activation System (BAS)—and a situational—construal level—moderator of this effect. Across Studies 1 and 2, it was established that leaning made people spend more on rewarding foods compared to reclining, but only for individuals high in the drive component of BAS. In Study 3, leaning again enhanced purchases of rewarding foods, but only in a situation that induced low construal level. The moderated effects had strong evidential value across all three studies (as indicated by a p-curve analysis), yet the main effects were significant only in Studies 1 and 3. These findings underline the importance of adding personality and situational factors when examining the impact of bodily positions that activate approach and avoidance on motivated behavior such as food choice

After 2008, the reputation of bankers took a nosedive, but are bankers really that bad?

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” That’s what Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and third president of the United States, once said. If that’s true, then you might think that bankers are stuck on the first page, such is the public perception of them. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, the reputation of bankers took a nosedive. Public scandals and negative press coverage portrayed bankers as greedy and dishonest. This was compounded by the findings of a Swiss study published in Nature in 2014, entitled “Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry”. By using an experimental task, the authors of this study explored the culture of the banking industry to see if it made bankers more likely to act dishonestly to maximise profits compared to professionals from other industries. Their findings suggested bankers were more dishonest than other professions, when they were asked to think about their profession – which the researchers put down to the culture of the banking industry. These findings garnered plenty of press attention and further painted the banking sector in a negative light. We assembled a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to see whether the study’s findings were the same across other countries and contexts

Heterogeneity in banker culture and its influence on dishonesty

The social sciences are going through what has been described as a ‘reproducibility crisis’1,2. Highly influential findings derived from accessible populations, such as laboratories and crowd-sourced worker platforms, are not always replicated. Less attention has been given to replicating findings that are derived from inaccessible populations, and recent high-profile replication attempts explicitly excluded such populations3. Pioneering experimental work4 offered a rare glimpse into banker culture and found that bankers, in contrast to other professionals, are more dishonest when they think about their job. Given the importance of the banking sector, and before academics or policy-makers rely on these findings as an accurate diagnosis of banking culture, an exploration of their generalizability is warranted. Here we conduct the same incentivized task with bankers and non-bankers from five different populations across three continents (n = 1,282 participants). In our banker studies in the Middle East and Asia Pacific (n = 148 and n = 620, respectively), we observe some dishonesty, although—in contrast to the original study4—this was not significantly increased among bankers primed to think about their work compared to bankers who were not primed. We also find that inducing non-banking professionals to think about their job does not have a significant effect on honesty. We explore sampling and methodological differences to explain the variation in findings in relation to bankers and identify two key points. First, the expectations of the general population regarding banker behaviour vary across jurisdictions, suggesting that banking culture in the jurisdiction of the original study4 may not be consistent worldwide. Second, having approached 27 financial institutions, many of which expressed concerns of adverse findings, we expect that only banks with a sound culture participated in our study. The latter introduces possible selection bias that may undermine the generalizability of any similar field study. More broadly, our study highlights the complexity of undertaking a high-fidelity replication of sensitive, highly publicized fieldwork with largely inaccessible populations resulting from institutional and geographical barriers. For policy-makers, this work suggests that caution should be exercised in generalizing the findings of the original study4 to other populations

Deception about study purpose does not affect participant behavior

The use of deception in research is divisive along disciplinary lines. Whereas psychologists argue that deception may be necessary to obtain unbiased measures, economists hold that deception can generate suspicion of researchers, invalidating measures and ‘poisoning’ the participant pool for others. However, experimental studies on the efects of deception, notably false-purpose deception— the most common form of experimental deception—are scarce. Challenges with participant attrition and avoiding confounds with a form of deception in which two related studies are presented as unrelated likely explain this scarcity. Here, we avoid these issues, testing within an experiment to what extent false-purpose deception afects honesty. We deploy two commonly used incentivized measures of honesty and unethical behavior: coin-fip and die-roll tasks. Across two pre-registered studies with over 2000 crowdsourced participants, we found that false-purpose deception did not afect honesty in either task, even when we deliberately provoked suspicion of deception. Past experience of deception also had no bearing on honesty. However, incentivized measures of norms indicated that many participants had reservations about researcher use of false-purpose deception in general—often considered the least concerning form of deception. Together, these fndings suggest that while false-purpose deception is not fundamentally problematic in the context of measuring honesty, it should only be used as a method of last resort. Our results motivate further experimental research to study the causal efects of other forms of deception, and other potential spillovers

The ‘nudge’ agenda is at the forefront of contemporary economic debate for good reason, but it is not yet clear that it can be applied in straightforward way in all circumstances

Behavioural economists from LSE and elsewhere have recently examined the ‘nudge’ research agenda and its limits in a special journal issue. Here, Joan Costa-Font, David Just, Barbara Fasolo and Nick Powdthavee, argue that, although appealing and policy relevant, more research is required

Maximizing versus satisficing in the digital age: disjoint scales and the case for “construct consensus”

A question facing us today, in the new and rapidly evolving digital age, is whether searching for the best option – being a maximizer – leads to greater happiness and better outcomes than settling on the first good enough option found – or “satisficing.” Answers to this question inform behavioural insights to improve well-being and decision-making in policy and organizational settings. Yet, the answers to this fundamental question of measurement of the happiness of a maximizer versus a satisficer in the current psychological literature are: 1) conflicting; 2) anchored on the use of the first scale published to measure maximization as an individual-difference, and 3) unable to describe the search behaviour of decision makers navigating the digital world with tools of the 21st century - apps, smartphones or tablets, and most often all of them. We present, based on a review and analysis of the literature and scales, a call to stop the development of more maximization scales. Furthermore, we articulate the argument for a re-definition of maximizing that balances the face validity of the construct and the relevance to decision making in an age of digital tools so that future scales are useful for future choice architects and researcher

Poor peer work does not boost student confidence

Students' low confidence, particularly in numerical topics, is thought to be a barrier to keeping them engaged with education. We studied the effects on confidence of exposure to a peer's work of varying quality (very good or bad) and neatness (messy or neat). Previous research underpinned our hypothesis that a peer's bad-quality work—which students rarely see—might boost student confidence more than very good work. We also predicted that a peer's very good work—which students are often shown—might be less discouraging if it were messy, suggesting it required effort and struggle. However, in experiments with university students and low-educated adults, these hypotheses were not supported, and all participants decreased in confidence after seeing any peer work. The failure to find support for these hypotheses can inform future research into social comparison effects on self-confidence in numerical topics. These results also have practical implications for teachers and managers who are expected to provide examples of peer work