Research

Anchoring is considered one of the most robust psychological phenomena in judgment and decision-making. Earlier studies produced strong and consistent evidence that anchoring is relevant for the elicitation of economic preferences, but subsequent studies found weaker and less consistent effects. We examined the economic significance of numerical anchoring by conducting a meta-analysis of 53 studies. We used the Pearson correlation coefficient between the anchor number and target response (in our case, Willingness-to-Pay and Willingness-to-Accept) as the primary effect size. Both fixed-effects and random effects models pointed to a moderate overall effect, smaller than the effects reported in early studies. Given some well-known limitations of our meta-analytic methodology, these results should be viewed with caution and the effect size as an upper bound. Also, metaregression analysis indicates that non-random anchors and non-laboratory experiments were associated with higher anchoring effects, whereas selling tasks and anchors incompatible with the evaluated item were associated with lower (but often non-significant) anchoring effects. The use of financial incentives did not have a discernible effect.

We introduce a new methodological approach for studying the effect of biased polls on election outcomes and apply it to a set of new experiments with 375 participants. Voters may observe and learn about the bias by playing multiple voting rounds. While in control conditions, polls are unbiased, in treatment conditions, participants view only poll results where a particular candidate's vote share is the largest. This candidate is consistently elected more often in the treatments than in the controls, because biased polls robustly distort voters' expectations about vote shares. This effect holds after eighteen election rounds, out of which the first three are practice rounds, but somewhat more weakly in our main treatment where voters are explicitly informed about the bias.

The global rise in temperatures contributes to the increase of climate-sensitive diseases. Despite mitigation efforts, temperatures are projected to keep rising, highlighting the need for integrated methods to assess the impact of thermal environments on human health. This study summarizes the existing evidence on the statistical relationships (associations) between thermal indices and health outcomes. Medline, Scopus, and Web of Science were systematically searched until December, 2023 for studies examining the association between thermal indices and health outcomes in outdoor environments (protocol registration: PROSPERO CRD42023412470). The quality of the included studies was assessed using the United States National Institutes of Health Quality Assessment Tool. The search identified 5038 records, with 310 meeting eligibility criteria and examining 1143 associations. These associations represented 51 countries, primarily in North America (n=448, 39.2%) and Europe (n=399, 34.9%). Temperate climates (n=597, 52.2%) were the most frequently examined. Seventeen indices were identified, with Apparent Temperature being the most common (141 publications, 634 associations). Frequently used indices included also Heat Index, Universal Thermal Climate Index, and Physiologically Equivalent Temperature. About half of the associations focused on mortality and half on morbidity. The most frequently examined associations were for diseases of the circulatory system (n=304, 26.6%), all-cause morbidity/mortality (n=288, 25.2%), and diseases of the respiratory system (n=151, 13.2%). Among associations examining heat-related outcomes (n=882), 57.8% (n=510) suggested an increased risk of adverse health outcomes as indices increased, while for cold-related outcomes (n=367), 44.1% (n=162) suggested an increased risk as indices decreased. This systematic review reveals significant associations between thermal indices and health outcomes, indicating that thermal indices could be valuable tools for public health planning. However, the diversity in methodologies across studies highlights the need for standardization in methodology and reporting, including the reporting of non-significant findings.

Salience theory is a powerful alternative to prospect theory in accounting for paradoxes of choice under risk. In risk choice settings where the majority of subjects exhibits unstable risk attitudes, we experimentally investigate the descriptive and predictive power of salience theory, and compare it with cumulative prospect theory. We find that both theories unsurprisingly outperform expected utility theory, which does not account for the instability of risk preferences and cumulative prospect theory outperforms salience theory by an insignificant margin. We attribute this small gap to the unsophisticated specification of the salience function and the substantial heterogeneity of the local thinking parameter. Salience theory captures important features of unstable risk preferences, yet further work on the functional representation of the theory is necessary to make it as applicable as cumulative prospect theory.

This study examines the shadow mommy effect—discrimination against women of prime childbearing age in the labor market. We sent 35,713 fabricated CVs to genuine job advertisements in the IT, accounting, and HR sectors across four major cities in China, accurately simulating real job-seeking conditions. Our findings reveal that women of prime childbearing age face disadvantages in the job search process, even when their maternal and marital status is not disclosed. The impact of this effect varies by occupation, firm ownership, and location. Consistent with intersectionality theory, our results suggest that employers' decision biases are largely shaped by the intersection of gender and age perceptions. Social expectations regarding motherhood heighten concerns about the costs associated with gendered parental responsibilities, thereby driving the shadow mommy effect.

Peer assessment's reliability can be undermined when participants behave strategically. Using a formal model we show how reciprocity can lead to reviewers inflating their rating of each others' work, which is exacerbated when review takes place sequentially. We conduct a pre-registered online experiment and we find that reviewers engaged in mutual-review relationships inflate their reports more, compared to when reviews are one-sided. For sequential reviews, a non-trivial fraction of first movers maximally over-report. In accordance to our theoretical model, we also find that second movers are responsive to the review they received, but only when reviews are mutual. This reveals the potential for a quid-pro-quo element in mutual reviews. Our results highlight the importance of appropriately structuring peer assessment to take strategic reciprocity motives into account and ensure the system's reliability.

We replicate the classical centipede game of McKelvey and Palfrey (1992) and examine the effect of feedback about aggregate behavior in each round. Our subjects exhibit Nash behavior more often than subjects in the original experiment, and aggregate feedback causes even stronger convergence to Nash equilibrium. However, after a slight modification to the game's payoff structure, the treatment effects of aggregate information often shift in the opposite direction.