Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.

/pdf/the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-480wr4m3kb.pdf

The WEIRDest People in the World

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is an online labor market where requesters post jobs and workers choose which jobs to do for pay. The central purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to use this website for conducting behavioral research and lower the barrier to entry for researchers who could beneﬁt from this platform. We describe general techniques that apply to a variety of types of research and experiments across disciplines. We begin by discussing some of the advantages of doing experiments on Mechanical Turk, such as easy access to a large, stable, and diverse subject pool, the low cost of doing experiments and faster iteration between developing theory and executing experiments. We will discuss how the behavior of workers compares to experts and to laboratory subjects. Then, we illustrate the mechanics of putting a task on Mechanical Turk including recruiting subjects, executing the task, and reviewing the work that was submitted. We also provide solutions to common problems that a researcher might face when executing their research on this platform including techniques for conducting synchronous experiments, methods to ensure high quality work, how to keep data private, and how to maintain code security.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1798687_code1554670.pdf?abstractid=1691163&mirid=1&type=2

Conducting Behavioral Research on Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is an online labor market where requesters post jobs and workers choose which jobs to do for pay. The central purpose of this article is to demonstrate how to use this Web site for conducting behavioral research and to lower the barrier to entry for researchers who could benefit from this platform. We describe general techniques that apply to a variety of types of research and experiments across disciplines. We begin by discussing some of the advantages of doing experiments on Mechanical Turk, such as easy access to a large, stable, and diverse subject pool, the low cost of doing experiments, and faster iteration between developing theory and executing experiments. While other methods of conducting behavioral research may be comparable to or even better than Mechanical Turk on one or more of the axes outlined above, we will show that when taken as a whole Mechanical Turk can be a useful tool for many researchers. We will discuss how the behavior of workers compares with that of experts and laboratory subjects. Then we will illustrate the mechanics of putting a task on Mechanical Turk, including recruiting subjects, executing the task, and reviewing the work that was submitted. We also provide solutions to common problems that a researcher might face when executing their research on this platform, including techniques for conducting synchronous experiments, methods for ensuring high-quality work, how to keep data private, and how to maintain code security.

/pdf/conducting-behavioral-research-on-amazon-s-mechanical-turk-1xjwv92e5j.pdf

Conducting behavioral research on Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Статья посвящена вопросам влияния власти на поведение человека. Авторы рассматривают данные различных источников, в которых увеличение власти связывается с напористостью, а ее уменьшение - с подавленностью. Конкретно, власть ассоциируется с: а) позитивным аффектом; б) вниманием к вознаграждению и к свойствам других, удовлетворяющим личные цели; в) автоматической переработкой информации и резкими суждениями; г) расторможенным социальным поведением. Уменьшение власти, напротив, ассоциируется с: а) негативным аффектом; б) вниманием к угрозам и наказаниям, к интересам других и к тем характеристикам я, которые отвечают целям других; в) контролируемой переработкой информации и совещательным типом рассуждений; г) подавленным социальным поведением. Обсуждаются также последствия этих паттернов поведения, связанных с властью, и потенциальные модераторы.

Power, approach, and inhibition. Власть, напористость и подавленность

The self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders derives primarily from clinical observations of patients with substance use disorders. Individuals discover that the specific actions or effects of each class of drugs relieve or change a range of painful affect states. Self-medication factors occur in a context of self-regulation vulnerabilities--primarily difficulties in regulating affects, self-esteem, relationships, and self-care. Persons with substance use disorders suffer in the extreme with their feelings, either being overwhelmed with painful affects or seeming not to feel their emotions at all. Substances of abuse help such individuals to relieve painful affects or to experience or control emotions when they are absent or confusing. Diagnostic studies provide evidence that variously supports and fails to support a self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders. The cause-consequence controversy involving psychopathology and substance use/abuse is reviewed and critiqued. In contrast, clinical observations and empirical studies that focus on painful affects and subjective states of distress more consistently suggest that such states of suffering are important psychological determinants in using, becoming dependent upon, and relapsing to addictive substances. Subjective states of distress and suffering involved in motives to self-medicate with substances of abuse are considered with respect to nicotine dependence and to schizophrenia and posttraumatic stress disorder comorbid with a substance use disorder.

The Self-medication Hypothesis of Substance Use Disorders: A Reconsideration and Recent Applications

Needs, affect, and interactive products - Facets of user experience

Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media

Two meta-analyses review the effectiveness of incentives in Web studies. The first analysis summarizes 32 experiments on the impact of material incentives on response. It is based on a sample of 212,810 people. A significant effect (odds ratio = 1.19; 95% confidence interval: 1.13—1.25) is revealed, indicating that incentives motivate people to start a Web survey. The second analysis comprises 26 experiments on the impact of incentives on retention and is based on a sample of 7,073 people. It yields a significant effect (odds ratio = 1.27; 95% confidence interval: 1.12—1.44), indicating that once people have accessed a survey for whatever reasons, they are more likely to finish if an incentive is offered. The established incentive effects are stable across various study characteristics. Conclusions did not appear to be due to publication bias.

/pdf/incentives-in-web-studies-methodological-issues-and-a-review-4245wfxa88.pdf

Incentives in Web Studies: Methodological Issues and a Review

Trust has been found to be crucial for consumer behaviour towards online shops. However, existing studies on the role of trust in electronic commerce are mainly based on ad hoc scales to measure trustworthiness, merely rely on self-reported consequences of trust such as intention to buy, and focus on low-risk products.




In a web-based study, 634 participants interacted with a provider of medical goods, that is a simulated online pharmacy. The study develops and employs a psychometrically sound scale for assessing perceived trustworthiness of online shops. Moreover, it examines the impact of trustworthiness on both consumers' intended and actual behaviour towards online shops.




Results show that trustworthiness promotes both intention to buy and actual financial risk taking. Perceived risk was not found to moderate the relationship between trustworthiness and intention to buy. Instead, trustworthiness partially mediated the influence of perceived risk on intention to buy. The results from the scale development challenge multidimensional conceptualizations of trust; comparing this finding with other studies suggests that the duration of the relationship might moderate the dimensionality of trust.




Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Perceived trustworthiness of online shops

Two incentive experiments were conducted in different online access panels. Experiment 1 was carried out in a commercial market research panel. It examined whether three different types of promised incentives (redeemable bonus points, money lottery and gift lottery), four different amounts of bonus points or raffled money, and two different denominations of raffled money influenced response quantity, sample composition, response quality and survey outcome. Type of incentive and number of bonus points mildly influenced dropout and sample composition. Moreover, response was higher with bonus points than with the two types of lotteries. Response quality and survey outcome were not affected. Experiment 2 was conducted in a non-profit panel, which holds one half selfselected and one half non-self-selected participants. Incentives were two different amounts of raffled money in two different denominations. Response, dropout, response quality, survey outcome and sample composition were not affected. Based on a cost-benefit analysis, recommendations for employing incentives in online access panels are given.

/pdf/the-impact-of-material-incentives-on-response-quantity-299phf9s31.pdf

Anja S. Göritz

Papers

Needs, affect, and interactive products - Facets of user experience

Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media

Incentives in Web Studies: Methodological Issues and a Review

Perceived trustworthiness of online shops

The impact of material incentives on response quantity, response quality, sample composition, survey outcome, and cost in online access panels