scholarly journals Absolute vs. relative success: Why overconfidence is an inefficient equilibrium

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Solda ◽  
Changxia Ke ◽  
Bill von Hippel ◽  
Lionel Page
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Noisy Signal ◽  
Joint Effort ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
Unequal Allocation

Overconfidence is one of the most ubiquitous biases in the social sciences, but the evidenceregarding its overall costs and benefits is mixed. To test the possibility that overconfidence mightyield important relative benefits that offset its absolute costs, we conducted an experiment (N=298university students) in which pairs of participants bargain over the unequal allocation of a prizethat was earned via a joint effort. We manipulated confidence using a binary noisy signal toinvestigate the causal effect of negotiators’ beliefs about their relative contribution on the outcomeof the negotiation. Our results provide evidence that high levels of confidence lead to relativebenefits (how much one earns compared to one’s partner) but absolute costs (how much moneyone receives overall). These results suggest that overconfidence creates an inefficient equilibriumwhereby overconfident negotiators benefit over their partners even as they bring about joint losses.

scholarly journals Absolute Versus Relative Success: Why Overconfidence Creates an Inefficient Equilibrium

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110074
Author(s):  
Alice Soldà ◽  
Changxia Ke ◽  
William von Hippel ◽  
Lionel Page
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
University Students ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Noisy Signal ◽  
Joint Effort ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
Unequal Allocation

Overconfidence is one of the most ubiquitous biases in the social sciences, but the evidence regarding its overall costs and benefits is mixed. To test the possibility that overconfidence might yield important relative benefits that offset its absolute costs, we conducted an experiment ( N = 298 university students) in which pairs of participants bargained over the unequal allocation of a prize that was earned through a joint effort. We manipulated confidence using a binary noisy signal to investigate the causal effect of negotiators’ beliefs about their relative contribution to the outcome of the negotiation. Our results provide evidence that high levels of confidence lead to relative benefits (how much one earns compared with one’s partner) but absolute costs (how much money one receives overall). These results suggest that overconfidence creates an inefficient equilibrium whereby overconfident negotiators benefit over their partners even as they bring about joint losses.

When Natural Experiments Are Neither Natural nor Experiments

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASJEET S. SEKHON ◽  
ROCÍO TITIUNIK
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Unbiased Estimate ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Treatment Control ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Alternative Research ◽  
Conceptual Difficulties

Natural experiments help to overcome some of the obstacles researchers face when making causal inferences in the social sciences. However, even when natural interventions are randomly assigned, some of the treatment–control comparisons made available by natural experiments may not be valid. We offer a framework for clarifying the issues involved, which are subtle and often overlooked. We illustrate our framework by examining four different natural experiments used in the literature. In each case, random assignment of the intervention is not sufficient to provide an unbiased estimate of the causal effect. Additional assumptions are required that are problematic. For some examples, we propose alternative research designs that avoid these conceptual difficulties.

scholarly journals The Necessity of Construct and External Validity for Generalized Causal Claims

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Esterling ◽  
David Brady ◽  
Eric Schwitzgebel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Construct Validity ◽  
External Validity ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Internal Validity ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Tremendous Progress ◽  
The Social

The credibility revolution has facilitated tremendous progress in the social sciences by advancing design-based strategies that rely on internal validity to deductively identify causal effects. We demonstrate that prioritizing internal validity while neglecting construct and external validity prevents causal generalization and misleadingly converts a deductive claim of causality into a claim based on speculation and exploration -- undermining the very goals of the credibility revolution. We develop a formal framework of causal specification to demonstrate that internal, external and construct validity are jointly necessary for generalized claims regarding a causal effect. If one lacks construct validity, one cannot assign meaningful labels to the cause or to the outcome. If one lacks external validity, one cannot make statements about the conditions required for the cause to occur. Re-balancing considerations of internal, construct and external via causal specification preserves and advances the intent of the credibility revolution to understand causal effects.

Gender Regimes in Western Societies from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (03) ◽  
pp. 391-399
Author(s):  
Didier Lett
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gender Regimes ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One

The concept of gender has become such an important subject in international historiography over the last two decades that it might appear odd to devote an entire dossier of the Annales to the topic. However, the relative success of this field of research may also conceal ambiguities in both the intellectual project underlying the term as well as its reception in the social sciences. For certain authors, undertaking a history of gender has meant writing a history of women. Though this form of history now enjoys proper recognition, it is still depreciated in two ways: on the one hand, it is qualified as a militant—and therefore unscholarly—history; and, on the other, it is criticized according to some vague argument claiming that no matter how it is labeled—“gender” or “women”—the inquiry is already dated. Without a doubt, the now canonical expression “history of women and gender” has generated real confusion among those scholars who are not particularly engaged with the field.1

Interpretive Approaches: A Psycholinguistic Perspective

1985 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 779-784
Author(s):  
Dane L. Harwood
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Joint Effort ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Public Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interpretive Approach ◽  
Public Behavior

An interpretive approach to studying human activity is a potentially powerful set of procedures for the social sciences. The proponents of this methodology focus on levels of “discourse constraints” that give meaning to public behavior in their attempt to link the “explanation” of texts to an “understanding” of context. The argument can be extended to the search by cognitive scientists and psycholinguists for constraints on the “discourse of thought,” including the interrelationship of thought and the context within which thinking takes place.The “texts” of human behavior, linguistic or otherwise, seem to cohere. Discovering how the principles of coherence are acquired by individuals as they develop, and how this “tacit knowledge” informs “public action,” will require joint effort by many social scientists, including psychologists. A rigorous interpretive approach also requires that we acknowledge how, as researchers, we add layers of meaning to the activities we observe.

What Can We Learn From Factorial Surveys About Human Behavior?

Methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Petzold ◽  
Tobias Wolbring
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Factorial Survey ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Intended Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
High Level

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.

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