Uninews just published a piece written by me in collaboration with Rainer Greifeneder on insights from (social) psychology that can help us to make good decisions given the current pandemic. The article is available in English and German – feel free to share!
Covid-19: Nine lessons from psychology to make good decisions now
Covid-19: Neun Erkenntnisse aus der Psychologie, um jetzt gute Entscheidungen zu treffen
The 2016 US Presidential race is proving quite entertaining. One aspect that has not taken center stage is the Democratic and Republican candidates’ age. Yet, Hillary Clinton, 68, is the oldest Democratic nominee to date, while Trump, at 70, is the 4th oldest Republican nominee ever, begging the question of whether candidates’ age represents a relevant political factor. One reason why age could be a topic is voters’ concern that older individuals are not up to the demands of the presidential office. Another, less discussed, but potentially relevant issue, is whether candidates’ age has implications for their political decisions.
It’s worth mentioning that while presidential candidates have been getting older in the past decades, the relative age of US candidates relative to the mean life expectancy has stayed constant. In other words, candidates seem to be getting older in proportion to the average age of US citizens. Moreover, health concerns regarding a candidate can in principle be dispelled through some sort of vetting, such as it is (typically) done by making candidates’ health records public.
Understanding the political implications of an hegemony of older politicians is interesting – albeit hard to pin down. It is clear that younger and older voters have different opinions about policy, suggesting that this could be the case for politicians as well. For example, according to a recent poll in Switzerland, younger individuals feel that older adults live at their expense and may not have the same priorities (see the infographic below). Importantly, younger voters also seem to feel that older voters have too much weight concerning issues for which the main implications will take place in the distant future, such as those regarding the funding of social security.
In addition, young and older politicians seem to have different strategies and approaches to policy making. For example, a recent study from Année Politique Suisse suggests that younger Swiss parliamentarians make a larger number of proposals but, over time, come in line with the (older) establishment, most likely as a function of experience with failed initiatives.
Of course, a political candidate isn’t only (or mostly) defined by his or her age, just like he or she isn’t simply defined by other single characteristics, like gender, religion, and so on. Regardless, in the current political scene in which so many decisions with long-term consequences must be made, including those concerning the acceptable amount of sovereign debt or the future of entitlements, politicians and voters’ age may become ever more relevant.
Did you ever want to read a research paper but couldn’t because the license of the University Library didn’t cover a certain volume or the journal wasn’t licensed at all?
Instead of paying for an article, here is an alternative:
But beware: this is Guerilla Open Access, initiated by Aaron Swartz
Legal? Moral? Judge for yourselves:
This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free. (Washinton Post, 2016/03/30)
The issue of reproducibility in science in general, and psychological science in particular, has been getting a lot of attention. Rightly so. After all, the extent to which once can stand on the shoulders of giants depends on the giants having a solid (empirical) base. A new paper out in Science by the Open Science Collaboration has conducted replications of 100 psychological studies and found that only about 1/3 actually replicated the original findings. This result is obviously making a splash: I’ve already seen it commented in the Economist, NYT, Spiegel, and NZZ this morning. There may be a bad news/good news interpretation of these efforts though: On the one hand, it’s troubling that so few studies fail to replicate, on the other, psychologists are taking the reproducibility issue seriously by engaging in collaborative work and adopting open science practices…
Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science
Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available. Replication effects (Mr = .197, SD = .257) were half the magnitude of original effects (Mr = .403, SD = .188), representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had significant results (p < .05). Thirty-six percent of replications had significant results; 47% of original effect sizes were in the 95% confidence interval of the replication effect size; 39% of effects were subjectively rated to have replicated the original result; and, if no bias in original results is assumed, combining original and replication results left 68% with significant effects. Correlational tests suggest that replication success was better predicted by the strength of original evidence than by characteristics of the original and replication teams.
Leading a healthy life is on everyone’s agenda. But is there a role for the decision sciences in achieving this goal? One interesting approach concerns the use of choice architecture principles or nudging to guide individual choices. The main idea is to design choice situations such that individuals are more likely to make personally or socially desirable choices without limiting their freedom of choice.
There are many societal problems that could profit from the choice architecture approach and the concept seems to get traction in Switzerland. For example, a recent NZZ piece gives a few examples of studies that have redesigned cafeterias to improve children’s food choices and suggests that these strategies could be applied here. A recent report on health in Switzerland from the Swiss Health Observatory suggests that such measures may be sorely needed. The prevalence of non-communicable diseases (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, obesity), also sometimes called lifestyle diseases, is on the rise: The proportion of overweight 16- to 24-year-olds has doubled in the last 20 years, from 11% to 24% in males (8% to 14% in females).
Bettina von Helversen here in Basel is contributing to make the use of choice architecture a reality by offering a seminar that could be interesting for those interested in applying such methods to real-world problems. Here’s a link and description of the seminar:
Nudges: Verhalten beeinflussen ohne die Wahlfreiheit einzuschränken
Policymaker für Firmen oder die Regierung versuchen die Entscheidungen von Menschen zu beinflussen. Eine Möglichkeit sind sogenannte Nudges: Veränderungen der Umwelt oder der Aufgabenstruktur, die das Verhalten verändern, ohne dass es explizite Instruktionen oder Verbote gibt und ohne dass die Walhfreiheit eingeschränkt wird. Zum Beispiel zeigt eine Studie, dass Pfeile, die den Weg zu der nächsten Mülltonne markieren, reduzieren wie viele Abfall auf die Strasse geworfen wird. Das Ziel des Seminars ist zu untersuchen wie Nudging funktioniert und welche Mechanismen den verschiedenen Nudges zugrunde liegen.
An article in today’s NZZ by Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hens, from the University of Zurich provides a dire overview of the methods used to elicit risk tolerance. Dr. Hens reviews what he terms the socioeconomic (i.e., the link between age, sex, and other demographics to real portfolio choices), psychometric (i.e., questionnaires), and experimental (i.e., monetary gambles) methods to measuring risk preferences – I find it reassuring that other researchers in the field are also skeptical about the power of current measures to provide reliable prediction of risk tolerance. Interestingly, he concludes with an optimistic view on so-called “simulated experience” methods in which individuals are allowed to sample from the returns distribution before making their choices:
“Bevor ein Pilot mit einem Flugzeug fliegen darf, muss er einige Stunden im Flugsimulator verbringen, um auf diese Weise Erfahrungen zu sammeln. Ein weiterer vielversprechender Schritt in der Forschung zur Risikotoleranz könnte darin bestehen, einen möglichst realistischen «Flugsimulator» für die Finanzmärkte zu entwickeln. Denn wie die langfristig angelegten grossen Umfragen zeigen, hilft Erfahrung, die persönliche Risikotoleranz zu erlernen. Ein Flugsimulator für Finanzmärkte könnte es den Anlegern ermöglichen, dies ohne reale Verluste zu erreichen.”
This sounds an awful lot like the type of decisions from experience that many of us study here in Basel and raises the issue of whether such methods could be better used to predict real-world risk taking… We should have some answers concerning this soon – stay tuned!