The chilling effect of optimism: The case of final-offer arbitration

This article examines the incentive effects of final-offer arbitration (FOA) when disputants have optimistic (i.e., biased) beliefs about the arbitrator's settlement preferences. Optimism is shown to increase the divergence in Nash equilibrium final offers, and the divergence is largest under naïve, rather than sophisticated, optimism. Therefore, though FOA rules were instituted to lessen the “chilling” effect of arbitration, FOA interacts with optimism to worsen the chilling effect. Data from controlled laboratory experiments confirm that optimism leads to more divergent final bargaining positions and higher dispute rates. These results highlight the role that de-biasing expectations can play in improving bargaining outcomes.     

Nash implementation of Lindahl allocations

We define a class of Nash based mechanisms that implement Lindahl allocations in standard public good economies. As those that first proved Nash implementation of Lindahl allocations, defined by Hurwicz (1979) and Walker (1981), the mechanisms provided here are continuous, feasible, and independent of agents' characteristics. In economies with two agents (e.g., bilateral monopolies, duopolies, principal-agent models), our mechanisms are also applicable, in contrast to the well-behaved mechanisms in the literature, and they satisfy favourable stability properties.     

Intergovernmental negotiation, willingness to compromise, and voter preference reversals

A policy is the outcome of negotiations between two three-party parliamentary states. An election in jurisdiction A determines the composition of the legislature that selects a representative to negotiate an intergovernmental policy agreement with the representative from the legislature of jurisdiction B. Negotiations are modeled using Nash (Econometrica 18(2):155?C162, 1950) bargaining framework. With heterogeneous parties, agreements and electoral outcomes depend on the concavity of the utility functions of negotiators and on the relative location of their ideal policies, i.e., depend on the negotiators relative willingness to compromise. Agreements between the bargainers may not follow the ordering of the parties?? ideal policies. An electoral outcome where support for the center party comes from extreme voters may emerge.     

The effects of listener and speaker training on emergent relations in children with autism

The current study assessed the use of standard conditional discrimination (i.e., listener) and textual/tact (i.e., speaker) training in the establishment of equivalence classes containing dictated names, tacts/textual responses, pictures and printed words. Four children (ages 5 to 7 years) diagnosed with autism were taught to select pictures and printed words in the presence of their dictated names, and to emit the tact or textual response corresponding to a presented picture or printed word. Both speaker and listener training resulted in the formation of stimulus classes for 3 of 4 participants.     

Risk Taking in Late Adolescence: Relations Between Sociomoral Reasoning,Risk Stance,and Behavior

This study explored relations among late adolescents' sociomoral reasoning about risk taking, risk stance, and behavior. One‐hundred and thirty‐two participants (18–20‐year‐olds) were surveyed about their own risk stance (Avoidant, Opportunistic, Curious, Risk Seeking) and behavior in three realms (Alcohol Use, Drug Use, Reckless Driving), and sociomoral reasoning about hypothetical risk taking in a baseline scenario with no social domain information and a final scenario that highlighted the moral (i.e., harmful consequences for others), conventional (i.e., sociolegal consequences), personal (i.e., personal prerogative), and prudential (i.e., harmful consequences for self) domains bearing on risk taking. The complex relations among sociomoral reasoning about risk taking, risk stance, and behavior are discussed in terms of social domain theory and dual‐process theories of risk taking.     

Derived Equivalence Relations of Geometry Skills in Students with Autism: an Application of the PEAK-E Curriculum

The present study evaluated the efficacy of equivalence-based instruction (EBI) as described in the PEAK-E curriculum (Dixon, 2015) for promoting the emergence of derived geometry skills in two children with high-functioning autism. The results suggested that direct training of shape name (A) to shape property (B) (i.e., A-B relations) was effective for both participants. Following A-B training, both participants demonstrated emergent relations that are consistent with symmetry (B-A), as well as emergent shape name (A) to shape picture (C) relations that are consistent with transitivity (A-C). The results expand on existing literature by demonstrating the emergence of an A-C relation when neither A nor B stimuli were ever trained to C stimuli and illustrate the efficacy of EBI for training geometry skills.

     

ENDOGENOUS DESTRUCTION IN CONFLICT: THEORY AND EXTENSIONS

This article develops a general equilibrium model of conflict to characterize the implications of endogenous destruction for bargaining and fighting. Specifically, we consider the scenario where two contending parties engage in bargaining to avoid fighting when there are direct costs (e.g., arms buildups) and indirect costs (e.g., destruction to consumable resources) of conflict. Without imposing specific functional form restrictions on conflict, production, and destruction technologies, we show their interactions in determining an optimal decision between fighting and bargaining. We find that, under the shadow of conflict, bargaining is costly as the contending parties always allocate more resources to arming for guarding settlement through bargaining than in the event of fighting. In contrast to conventional thinking that bargaining is Pareto superior over fighting, we show conditions under which fighting dominates bargaining as the Nash equilibrium choice. The positive analysis may help explain the general causes of fighting, without resorting to the assumption of incomplete information or misperceptions. (JEL D74, H56, C7)     

AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF RESEARCH TOURNAMENTS

Research tournaments are predicted to encourage R&D. Recent theoretical developments in research tournaments are grounded in search theory. Although the economic intuition behind tournaments is straightforward, computing equilibrium strategies is complex. The participants compute a stopping rule based on the number of participants, the prize and the cost of research. It is an empirical question whether agents will behave as predicted or will employ simple "rule of thumb" strategies such as taking a predetermined number of draws. This paper reports the results of a series of laboratory experiments designed to test the predictions of the search model of tournaments. ( JEL C9, D8)     

What drives a tough call: Determining the importance of contingency factors and individual characteristics in communication executives’ stance decision-making through a conjoint analysis

To further the understanding of how communication executives make tough calls in times of organizational-public conflict, we use a conjoint analysis to identify key drivers for organizational stance decision-making. This is the first-ever conjoint analysis applied to advancing the contingency theory of strategic conflict management by examining the relative importance of key contingency factors as determined by practitioners with varied individual characteristics. This study investigates: 1) the relevant importance of and dynamics between three key contingency factors (i.e., external threats, organizational characteristics, and dominant coalition characteristics); 2) the influence of individual characteristics (e.g., gender, experience, and personal ethics) in stance decision-making process; and 3) how different types of organizational stances (i.e., general stance, action-based accommodation, and qualified-rhetoric-mixed accommodation) are determined by these contingency factors and individual characteristics in different conflict situations. Results generated among our communication executive participants include: individual characteristics (i.e., gender, ethics and social responsibility, whistleblowing tendencies, and over 20 years in the communications field) are influential for their strategic conflict management decision-making. Implications for refining the contingency theory and unearthing complex public relations decision-making processes via novel statistical techniques are discussed.     

First and second best voting rules in committees

A committee of people with common preferences but different abilities in identifying the best alternative (e.g., a jury) votes in order to decide between two alternatives. The first best voting rule is a weighted voting rule that takes the different individual competences into account, and is therefore not anonymous, i.e., the voters’ identities matter. Under this rule, it is rational for the committee members to vote according to their true opinions, or informatively. This is not necessarily true for an anonymous voting rule, under which members may have an incentive to vote non-informatively. Thus, strategic, sophisticated voters may vary their voting strategies according to the voting rule rather than naively voting informatively. This paper shows that the identity of the best anonymous and monotone (i.e., quota) voting rule does not depend on whether the committee members are strategic or naive or whether some are strategic and some are naive. One such rule, called the second best rule, affords the highest expected utility in all cases.

“Wasn’t he sweet?” said Yossarian. “Maybe they should give him three votes.” Joseph Heller, Catch-22

     

Direct and Moderating Effects of Social Affordances on School Involvement and Delinquency Among Young Adolescents

Using social control theory and attachment theory as guides, this study examined how qualities of young adolescents' social relationships (i.e., mother, sibling, and friend) and dynamic interactions among characteristics of those relationships are associated with school involvement and delinquency. The participants included older siblings (M age=14.3), younger siblings (M age=11.6), and their mothers from 434 families who completed web‐based surveys. Results were largely consistent with tenets of social control theory and attachment theory. Young adolescents' social relationships mostly worked in additive ways, but sometimes in compensatory ways for older siblings, to promote positive adjustment. The results suggest that young adolescents' social relationships may be differently associated with adjustment depending on birth order or developmental stage.     

A Nash bargaining model for simple exchange networks

Starting from exogenously given negotiation networks, sociological exchange theories explain bilateral divisions of fixed surpluses (e.g., cake, dollar) as consequences of the partners’ structural embeddedness. In accordance with the available experimental evidence, we focus on simple exchange networks and present a formal model for predicting profit splits from such structures. In contrast to other approaches, we combine the generalized Nash bargaining solution from game theory with the assumption that both relational features and network positions affect exchange outcomes. The resulting point predictions for profit splits correspond closely with experimental results obtained by Cook et al. [Cook, K.S., Emerson, R.M., Gillmore, M.R., Yamagishi, T., 1983. The distribution of power in exchange networks: theory and experimental results. American Journal of Sociology 89, 275–305], Lovaglia et al. [Lovaglia, M.J., Skvoretz, J., Willer, D., Markovsky, B., 1995. Negotiated exchanges in social networks. Social Forces 74, 123–155], Markovsky et al. [Markovsky, B., Willer, D., Patton, T., 1988. Power relations in exchange networks. American Sociological Review 53, 220–236], Simpson and Willer [Simpson, B., Willer, D., 1999. A new method for finding power structures. In: Willer, D. (Ed.), Network Exchange Theory. Praeger, Westport, CT, pp. 270–284], Skvoretz and Fararo [Skvoretz, J., Fararo, T.J., 1992. Power and network exchange: an essay toward theoretical unification. Social Networks 14, 325–344], Skvoretz and Willer [Skvoretz, J., Willer, D., 1993. Exclusion and power: a test of four theories of power in exchange networks. American Sociological Review 58, 801–818] as well as Yamagishi et al. [Yamagishi, T., Gillmore, M.R., Cook, K.S., 1988. Network connections and the distribution of power in exchange networks. American Journal of Sociology 93, 833–851].     

NETWORK STRUCTURE IN A LINK FORMATION GAME: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

In this article, we use an experiment to evaluate the performance of alternative refinements in a Myersonian link formation game with a supermodular payoff function. Our results show that a non‐cooperative refinement, the global games (GG) approach, outperforms alternative cooperative refinements (strong Nash equilibrium, coalition‐proof Nash equilibrium, and pairwise stable Nash equilibrium) in explaining the observed experimental behavior in the static game of complete information with three players. The results are robust to some comparative statics and the GG approach shows a high predictive power under incomplete information. However, under repeated interaction or with a greater number of players, the GG approach loses predictive power, but so do the cooperative refinements. The results illustrate the importance of coordination failure in practice and the need to design mechanisms to reduce this effect in practical decision‐making problems. (JEL C70, C92, D20, D44, D82)     

Can I Trust You? Laterality of Facial Trustworthiness in an Economic Game

People tend to turn their left or right cheek to express or conceal emotions, respectively. We examined the lateral posing bias for displaying trustworthiness during a trust game in which participants and their virtual partners cooperated or did not cooperate with their counterparts to earn a monetary reward. Right-handed participants (N = 81) were asked to pose for a photograph and then play the trust game. Participants showed an overall left posing bias (i.e., showing their left cheek to the camera). The left cheek bias was more stable for participants that cooperated very little in the trust game (non-cooperators) than for those that cooperated a lot (cooperators). In the rating experiment (N = 28 and 25), non-cooperators showing their left cheek were rated equally as trustworthy as cooperators. On the other hand, non-cooperators who showed their right cheek were rated as less trustworthy than cooperators. These results suggest that non-cooperators intuitively use the left hemiface to exploit others in social interactions.     

Social support and social structure

The burgeoning study of social support in relation to social stress and health would benefit from increased attention to issues of social structure. Three aspects of social relationships, all often referred to as social support, must be more clearly distinguished—(1) their existence or quantity (i.e., social integration), (2) their formal structure (i.e., social networks), and (3) their functional or behavioral content (i.e., the most precise meaning of social support)—and the causal relationships between the structure of social relationships (social integration and networks) and their functional content (social support) must be more clearly understood. Research and theory are needed on the determinants of social integration, networks, and support as well as their consequences for stress and health. Among potential determinants, macrosocial structures and processes particularly merit attention.     

A reverse sunk cost effect in risky decision making: Sometimes we have too much invested to gamble

The sunk cost effect refers to the empirical finding that people tend to let their decisions be influenced by costs made at an earlier time in such a way that they are more risk seeking than they would be had they not made these costs. This finding seems to be in conflict with economic theory which implies that only incremental costs and benefits should affect decisions. The effect is often explained in terms of prospect theory of (Kahneman, D., Tversky, A., 1979. Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica 47, 263–291), suggesting that sunk costs may induce a ‘loss frame,’ consequently causing risk seeking behavior. We argue that sunk costs may also result in risk aversion. In the present study we investigated the effect of time and effort investments (Behavioral Sunk Costs) on risky decision making in gain and loss situations. The results show that, in agreement with prospect theory, participants were more risk averse in gain situations than in loss situations. Moreover, incurring Behavioral Sunk Costs appeared to increase risk aversive choices, i.e., a reverse sunk cost effect. Furthermore, the results suggest that, in loss situations, Behavioral Sunk Costs mainly lead to risk aversive behavior if opting for the ‘safe’ alternative is not accompanied by an increased possibility to regret the decision.     

Manipulations of the Features of Standard Video Lottery Terminal (VLT) Games: Effects in Pathological and Non-Pathological Gamblers

The present study was conducted to identify game parameters that would reduce the risk of abuse of video lottery terminals (VLTs) by pathological gamblers, while exerting minimal effects on the behavior of non-pathological gamblers. Three manipulations of standard VLT game features were explored. Participants were exposed to: a counter which displayed a running total of money spent; a VLT spinning reels game where participants could no longer stop the reels by touching the screen; and sensory feature manipulations. In control conditions, participants were exposed to standard settings for either a spinning reels or a video poker game. Dependent variables were self-ratings of reactions to each set of parameters. A set of 2(3) × 2 × 2 (game manipulation [experimental condition(s) vs. control condition] × game [spinning reels vs. video poker] × gambler status [pathological vs. non-pathological]) repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted on all dependent variables. The findings suggest that the sensory manipulations (i.e., fast speed/sound or slow speed/no sound manipulations) produced the most robust reaction differences. Before advocating harm reduction policies such as lowering sensory features of VLT games to reduce potential harm to pathological gamblers, it is important to replicate findings in a more naturalistic setting, such as a real bar.     

Dealing with powerlessness: The strategic use of ingroup stereotypes

Abstract

Several studies have shown the impact of legitimacy on dealing with group power disadvantage. In the present paper we focus on the impact of internal legitimacy (i.e., the ingroup's appraisal of the fairness of its own powerless position) on the ingroup stereotype as a way of contesting the power disadvantage. Results show that especially in the internal legitimate conditions (i.e., when the ingroup seems to accept the low status position), participants reacted by way of overemphasizing the positive stereotypic dimension (warmth, Study 1), or contradicting the negative ingroup stereotype (perceiving the ingroup as less incompetent, Study 1 and 2). The last strategy was used especially by those highly identified with the ingroup, and when the legitimate/illegitimate argument is supported by a small ingroup sample (i.e., low social constraint, Study 2). Such responses can be understood as a social creativity strategy to contest the ingroup's disadvantaged and powerless position.     

Recombinative Generalization of Tacts Through Matrix Training with Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Foss (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76, 450–459, 1968a; Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 341–344, 1968b) compared overlap and non-overlap instruction to promote recombinative response generalization using a matrix training procedure. In the present study, we used a similar set of procedures to teach tacting of kitchen items and prepositions (i.e., relational autoclitics) to three females ages 13–20, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. We taught some kitchen items/prepositions as tacts (e.g., “the strainer is to the right of the box”) according to a non-overlap instructional sequence. Subsequently, we taught more combinations in an overlap instructional sequence. Each training procedure was followed by probes of untrained relations. Two participants demonstrated recombinative generalization of untrained combinations following the first non-overlap phase, while the third participant demonstrated some response generalization of untrained relations after a few additional training sequences. All three participants demonstrated generalized tacting of object components while two participants showed generalized tacting of preposition components.