Suchergebnisse

The reliability of human behavior in situations where cooperation is beneficial for all but is hindered by individual incentives not to cooperate is a central research question in economics and the social sciences. Little is known about how the interaction results of a subject with one partner may affect this subject's behavior when subsequently matched with a new partner. We extend this knowledge by studying the development of cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma experiment. After several rounds, each subject is matched with a new partner. We analyse whether the interaction outcomes with the first partner lead subjects to change their behavior when they interact with the second partner. We focus on niceness as introduced by Axelrod and find statistically significant effects. Mutual cooperation with the first partner is positively correlated with the continuation of a nice strategy, whereas mutual defection leads subjects to give up their nice strategy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Despite the omnipresence of inter-group conflicts, little is known about the heterogeneity and stability of individuals' social preferences toward in-group and out-group members. To identify the prevalence and stability of social preferences in inter-group conflict, we gather quota-representative, incentivized data from a lab-in-the-field study during the heated 2016 Austrian presidential election. We assess social preferences toward in-group and out-group members one week before, one week after, and three months after the election. We find considerable heterogeneity in individuals' group-(in)dependent social preferences. Utilizing various econometric strategies, we find largely stable social preferences over the course of conflict. Yet, there is some indication of variation, particularly when the conflict becomes less salient. Variation is larger in social preferences toward in-group members and among specific preference types. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings and outline potential avenues for future research.

Studies on environmental behavior commonly assume single respondents to represent their entire household or employ proxy-reporting, where participants answer for other household members. It is contested whether these practices yield valid results. Therefore, we interviewed 84 couples, wherein both household members provided self- and proxy-reports for their partner. For use of electrical household appliances, consumption of hot water, space heating, everyday mobility, and environmental values, many variables fail to achieve criteria for validity. Consistency (agreement between self-reports of household members) is higher if behaviors are undertaken jointly or negotiated between partners. Accuracy (agreement of proxy-reports with corresponding self-reports) is higher for routine behaviors and for behaviors easily observable by the partner. Overall, indices perform better than items on single behaviors. We caution against employing individual responses in place of the entire household. Interventions for energy conservation should approach the specific person undertaking the target behavior.

There is accumulating evidence that decision makers (DMs) are sensitive to the distribution of resources among themselves and others, beyond what is expected from the predictions of narrow self-interest. These social preferences are typically conceptualized as being static and existing independently of information about the other people influenced by a DM's allocation choices. In this article, we consider the reactivity of a DM's social preferences in response to information about the intentions or past behavior of the person to be affected by the DM's allocation choices (i.e., how do social preferences change in relation to the other's type). This article offers a conceptual framework for characterizing the link between distributive preferences and reciprocity, and reports on experiments in which these two constructs are disentangled and the relation between the two is characterized.

"Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Ergebnisse der Analyse der Verkehrsmittelwahl für den Weg zum Arbeits- bzw. Ausbildungsort der Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner in sieben Grazer Stadtgebieten präsentiert. Dabei wird neben soziodemographischen Merkmalen und Einstellungen insbesondere der Einfluss der subjektiven Wahrnehmung der Reisezeit und der errechneten Reisezeit aus Routingdaten untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die subjektiv wahrgenommene Reisezeit einen deutlich stärkeren Einfluss auf die Wahl des Verkehrsmittels hat als dies bei der errechneten Reisezeit der Fall ist. Dies zeigt, dass vor allem die subjektiven Einschätzungen einer gegebenen Situation das Verhalten bestimmen. Zudem finden wir Einkommenseffekte." (Textauszug)

Despite the high potential of artificial intelligence (AI), its actual adoption in recruiting is low. Explanations for this discrepancy are scarce. Hence, this paper presents an exploratory interview study investigating HR professionals' beliefs about AI to examine their impact on use cases and barriers and to identify the reasons that lead to the non-adoption of AI in recruiting. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 HR professionals from 21 companies. The results revealed that HR professionals' beliefs about AI could be categorised along two dimensions: (1) the scope of AI and (2) the definition of instruction. "Scope of Al" describes the perceived technical capabilities of AI and determines the use cases that HR professionals imagine. In contrast, the "definition of instruction" describes the perceived effort to enable an AI to take on a task and determines how HR professionals perceive barriers to Al. Our findings suggest that HR professionals' beliefs are based on vague knowledge about AI, leading to non-adoption. Drawing on our findings, we discuss theoretical implications for the existing literature on HR and algorithm aversion and practical implications for managers, employees, and policymakers.

While the ontogeny of prosociality during infancy, childhood, and adolescence has received substantial attention over the last decades, little is known about how prosocial preferences develop beyond emerging adulthood. Recent evidence suggests that the previously observed positive association between age and prosocial preferences is less robust than assumed. This study reports results on the association between social preferences, age, gender, and education from an Austrian representative sample (N = 777, aged 16-94 years) in which incentivized social value orientations (SVO) were measured along with various other sociodemographic characteristics. The analyses confirm that men are less prosocial than women, however, mainly during emerging adulthood (16-25 years). At the same time, the decline of prosociality is stronger among women leading to a convergence of prosociality between men and women as they age. Overall, we find that a prosocial value orientation is negatively correlated with people's age. We suspect that the susceptibility of peoples' social preferences to the preferences of others in their social environment is a critical factor unifying these different observations in the development of prosociality. We hypothesize that the opposite associations between age and SVO observed in two previous studies using unincentivized measures of social preferences are explained in parts by an age-related change in social desirability, measurement inaccuracy (continuous vs. categorical), and cross-cultural differences promoting competitive preferences among emerging adults in Japan. Moreover, we find that political orientations towards right-wing populists are consistently associated with less prosocial preferences, while education seems to be positively associated with prosociality. Overall, our study highlights the importance of conducting representative studies using incentivized measurements across cultures.