Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Entscheidungspsychologie


Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Blog

Archive for December, 2018

taking stock (Bilanz)

Every fall, I cover some ideas on philosophy of science and epistemology in the lecture Geschichte der Psychologie; this year I read, as preparation, two autobiographies (Karl Popper, Paul Feyerabend) and an autobiographical interview (Thomas Kuhn) as way to source the origins of these authors’ ideas.

I found myself thinking how much of how these authors’ personalities poured into their work and autobiographical narratives. Popper: the logician, always interested in demarcation and a clear line of argument for his work as much as his life. Feyerabend: the nazi war-hero that stumbled into philosophy, self-absorbed, forever in opposition, restless and unstructured. Kuhn: the “physicist turned historian for philosophical purposes”, clearly preoccupied with the solving of (scientific/sociological?) puzzles, perhaps taking himself less seriously than the other two, but equally ambitious and preoccupied with making a mark on science/history/philosophy. 

For the authors themselves autobiographies are, I imagine, a way of coming to terms with one’s own life, building a narrative, taking stock. For the reader, autobiographies offer a window into someone’s mind, they help put authors’ work into as much as historical as a personal context, and to see science as an all too human enterprise. After all, how much “ego” does it take to write an autobiography in the first place? How much modesty is compatible with success in science or art?

I would venture that few academics share F.W. Bernstein’s (tongue in cheek?) self-deprecation…

Bilanz

Hab keine Romane geschrieben,

keine einzige Sinfonie.

Mein Umsturz ist Stückwerk geblieben,

wie meine Tanztheorie.

Nicht eine Kathedrale!

Kein Dachgeschoss ausgebaut!

Und wenn ich mal male,

wird’s Mist!

Nie im Puff und keine Visionen,

kein Sieg, keine Oper, kein Mord.

Kein Starkult und keine Millionen,

kein Hit, kein Hut, kein Rekord.

Nobelpreis? Nix draus geworden.

Kein Kriegsheld, Konzernherr, null Orden.

Tor des Monats, Befreiungskampf, Geige?

Macht? Schönheit? Genie? Fehlanzeige.

Nur dieses kleine Gedicht,

Reicht das nicht?

Ulrich Schmidt

On Thursday 13 December, Ulrich Schmidt, Professor of Public Economics, Social Policy & Health Economic and Research Fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, University of Kiel, is the final speaker in this semester’s SWE colloquium series.

Differential discounting and the equity premium puzzle

The speaker proposes a novel behavioral explanation for the equity premium puzzle which is based on the assumption that individuals discount future losses less than future gains, reporting a paper providing experimental evidence for our hypothesis: First, we show that the discount rate for losses is smaller than for gains. Second, we show that mixed lotteries become less attractive over time and this effect is not driven via changes in risk attitudes. Given our first finding, differential discounting is a plausible explanation and therefore might be the source of an additional premium on stocks beyond the level of investor risk aversion.

Peter Juslin

This week’s speaker in the SWE colloquium is Peter Juslin, who visits on 6 December from Uppsala University, Sweden.

Precise or non-precise: Modeling error distributions to distinguish between intuitive and analytic cognitive processes

The Precise/Not Precise (PNP) model: A Brunswikian conception of intuitive and analytic cognitive processes. Authors: Joakim Sundh, Philip Millroth, August Collsiöö, & Peter Juslin, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

One of the most influential distinctions in theorizing on human thought is between intuitive and analytic processes (James, 1890), a distinction very much alive in present-day so called dual-systems theories (Evans, & Stanovich, 2013; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002; Sloman, 1996). While this research draws on a popular notion, it has been repeatedly criticized (Gigerenzer, 2011, Keren & Schul, 2009; Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011; Melnikoff & Bargh, 2018) for confusing different distinctions, such as implicit vs. explicit, automatic vs. controlled processes, impulsiveness vs. reflection, and intuition vs. analysis. In this talk, I will describe our ongoing work exploring a more technical (operational) definition of intuitive and analytic cognitive processes inspired by the work by Egon Brunswik (1956). This definition has its roots in the distinction between perceptual and conceptual processes, emphasizing the stochastic nature of these processes and the associated error distributions. Consistently with Brunswik’s claims, the PNP-model assumes that intuitive processes involve a homogenous Gaussian noise around the output of a cognitive algorithm, whereas analytic processes are characterized by a heterogeneous error distribution, effectively sampling from two different distributions: error-free application of the algorithm, and responses affected by errors in execution of the algorithm. We demonstrate that the PNP-model can a) identify the intuitive and analytical nature of cognitive processes, b) can often recover the true parameters of the process more effectively than a model with the standard assumption of a Gaussian error, and c) often provides a better fit to data, suggesting that the standard Gaussian assumption in cognitive modeling is sometimes a misspecification. We propose that this sort of more limited operational definition of intuition and analysis can serve to enlighten the debate on the properties of different cognitive processes, but also that it can allow for more accurate description of cognitive processes characterized by heterogeneous error.