Papers by Christopher Olivola
Going With Your Gut Feelings Lands You in the Financial Gutter: Decision Making Style in Adolescence Predicts Financial Well- Being in Adulthood
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2011
This chapter reviews the literature on the consumer psychology of taxes. We begin with a discussi... more This chapter reviews the literature on the consumer psychology of taxes. We begin with a discussion of consumers’ attitudes toward taxes and how they influence decisions to comply with tax payments that regulators can neither directly monitor nor enforce with certainty (e.g., taxes on incomes that are “off the books”). Next, we examine how taxes can shape consumer preferences and purchasing choices. We then consider key demographic variables that seem to moderate consumers’ sensitivity to taxes. We conclude by discussing future directions of research and some unanswered questions.
Year after year, thousands of human lives are permanently extinguished by large-scale events such... more Year after year, thousands of human lives are permanently extinguished by large-scale events such as disasters, epidemics, and armed conflicts, while millions more are claimed by frequent small-scale events, such road accidents and fires. Preventing these fatalities should be a priority for policymakers, because death is irreversible, and survival necessarily precedes other forms of human welfare. Minimizing fatalities requires that policymakers respond to deadly events and that they effectively focus their attention, efforts, and life-saving resources on preventing the largest (aggregated) death tolls. However, the deployment of any major intervention, even one designed to save lives, requires sufficient political will, which in turn depends on people being moved to action by the number of lives at risk. All else being equal, responses to deadly events should be proportional to their potential death tolls, and support for life-saving interventions should grow steadily with the number of lives they are expected to save. Unfortunately, people’s reactions to deadly events generally fall short of these principles and instead reveal systematic limitations in their ability to properly evaluate human fatalities. This article discusses some of the cognitive factors that govern, and often skew, the way people perceive and respond to deadly events. I show that our failures to correctly prioritize and address the biggest causes of human casualties are driven by limitations and biases in perception, attention, and categorization. Understanding these psychological fallibilities will help policymakers recognize, and ultimately guard against, biases that hinder the deployment of important life-saving policies.
Our success and well-being, as individuals and societies, depend on our ability to make wise soci... more Our success and well-being, as individuals and societies, depend on our ability to make wise social decisions about important interpersonal matters, such as the lea- ders we select and the individuals we choose to trust. Nevertheless, our impressions of people are shaped by their facial appearances and, consequently, so too are these social decisions. This article summarizes research linking facial morphological traits to important social outcomes and discusses various factors that moderate this relationship.
Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributin... more Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributing social and personality characteristics from facial ap- pearance. Recent studies have shown that surprisingly little time and effort are needed to arrive at this consensus. Here we review recent research on so- cial attributions from faces. Section I outlines data-driven methods capable of identifying the perceptual basis of consensus in social attributions from faces (e.g., What makes a face look threatening?). Section II describes non- perceptual determinants of social attributions (e.g., person knowledge and incidental associations). Section III discusses evidence that attributions from faces predict important social outcomes in diverse domains (e.g., investment decisions and leader selection). In Section IV, we argue that the diagnostic validity of these attributions has been greatly overstated in the literature. In the final section, we offer an account of the functional significance of these attributions.
Recent research has identified several judgment and decision making tendencies associated with ri... more Recent research has identified several judgment and decision making tendencies associated with right-leaning political ideologies that are difficult (if not impossible) to explain in terms of stable, negative affective appraisals because they (1) are uncorrelated with the negativity of the stimuli being considered, (2) do not reflect divergent affective evaluations, and (3) can be eliminated by superficial manipulations and interventions.
Recent studies provide convincing evidence that data on online information gathering, alongside m... more Recent studies provide convincing evidence that data on online information gathering, alongside massive real-world datasets, can give new insights into real-world collective decision making and can even anticipate future actions. We argue that Bentley et al.’s timely account should consider the full breadth, and, above all, the predictive power of big data.
Vast quantities of data on human behavior are being created by our everyday internet usage. Build... more Vast quantities of data on human behavior are being created by our everyday internet usage. Building upon a recent study by Preis, Moat, Stanley, and Bishop (2012), we used search engine query data to construct measures of the time-perspective of nations, and tested these measures against per-capita gross domestic product (GDP). The results indicate that nations with higher per-capita GDP are more focused on the future and less on the past, and that when these nations do focus on the past, it is more likely to be the distant past. These results demonstrate the viability of using nation-level data to build psychological constructs.
Previous research has shown that people form impressions of potential leaders from their faces an... more Previous research has shown that people form impressions of potential leaders from their faces and that certain facial features predict success in reaching prestigious leadership positions. However, much less is known about the accuracy or meta-accuracy of face-based leadership infer- ences. Here we examine a simple, but important, question: Can leadership domain be inferred from faces? We find that human judges can identify business, military, and sports leaders (but not political leaders) from their faces with above-chance accuracy. However, people are sur- prisingly bad at evaluating their own performance on this judgment task: We find no relationship between how well judges think they performed and their actual accuracy levels. In a follow-up study, we identify several basic dimensions of evaluation that correlate with face-based judgments of leadership domain, as well as those that predict actual leadership domain. We discuss the implications of our results for leadership perception and selection.
Abstract People are quick to perceive meaningful patterns in the co-occurrence of events. We repo... more Abstract People are quick to perceive meaningful patterns in the co-occurrence of events. We report two studies exploring the effects of streaks in symptom checklists on perceived personal disease risk. In the context of these studies, a streak is a sequence of consecutive items on a list that share the characteristic of being either general or specific. We identify a psychological mechanism underlying the effect of streaks in a list of symptoms and show that the effect of streaks on perceived risk varies with the length of the symptom list.
Abstract: We introduce two auction-based methods for eliciting discount rates. In these patience ... more Abstract: We introduce two auction-based methods for eliciting discount rates. In these patience auctions, participants bid the smallest future sum they would prefer-or-the longest time they would wait for a reward, rather than receive a smaller, immediate payoff. The most patient bidder receives the delayed reward; all others receive the immediate payoff. These auctions, in addition to offering certain potential methodological advantages, allow us to compare discounting when participants' attention is focused on the temporal vs.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, Sep 2012
Previous research suggests that voting in elections is influenced by appearance-based personality... more Previous research suggests that voting in elections is influenced by appearance-based personality inferences (e.g., whether a political candidate has a competent-looking face). However, since voters cannot objectively evaluate politicians’ personality traits, it remains to be seen whether appearance-based inferences about a characteristic continue to influence voting when clear information about that characteristic is available. The authors examine the impact of appearance-based inferences for a characteristic that is well known about candidates: their political affiliation. Across two studies, the authors show that U.S. candidates facing conservative electorates benefit from looking more stereotypically Republican than their rivals (controlling for gender, ethnicity, and age). In contrast, no relationship between political facial stereotypes and voting is found for liberal electorates (using identical controls). The authors further show that this contrast between liberal and conservative electorates has more to do with individual-level differences between liberal and conservative voters than with macro-level differences between liberal and conservative states.
PLoS-ONE, Mar 2012
Background:
Many human interactions are built on trust, so widespread confidence in first impre... more Background:
Many human interactions are built on trust, so widespread confidence in first impressions generally favors individuals with trustworthy-looking appearances. However, few studies have explicitly examined: 1) the contribution of unfakeable facial features to trust-based decisions, and 2) how these cues are integrated with information about past behavior.
Methodology/Principal Findings:
Using highly controlled stimuli and an improved experimental procedure, we show that unfakeable facial features associated with the appearance of trustworthiness attract higher investments in trust games. The facial trustworthiness premium is large for decisions based solely on faces, with trustworthy identities attracting 42% more money (Study 1), and remains significant though reduced to 6% when reputational information is also available (Study 2). The face trustworthiness premium persists with real (rather than virtual) currency and when higher payoffs are at stake (Study 3).
Conclusions/Significance:
Our results demonstrate that cooperation may be affected not only by controllable appearance cues (e.g., clothing, facial expressions) as shown previously, but also by features that are impossible to mimic (e.g., individual facial structure). This unfakeable face trustworthiness effect is not limited to the rare situations where people lack any information about their partners, but survives in richer environments where relevant details about partner past behavior are available.
Journal of Marketing Research, 2011
Tax collection is critical for the proper functioning of society. However, many people strongly d... more Tax collection is critical for the proper functioning of society. However, many people strongly dislike paying taxes. Although this distaste could be rational on economic grounds, the authors show that this attitude extends beyond simply disliking the costs incurred and affects behavior in coun- ternormative ways. They demonstrate the phenomenon of tax aversion: a desire to avoid taxes per se that exceeds the rational economic moti- vation to avoid a monetary cost. Across five experiments, the authors provide evidence that people have a stronger preference to avoid tax- related costs than to avoid equal-sized (or larger) monetary costs unre- lated to taxes. Tax aversion affects consumer preferences in a variety of domains, including standard store purchases, financial investments, and job selection. Furthermore, this tendency is most prevalent among people who identify with political parties that generally favor less taxation. Finally, encouraging participants who identify with “antitax” parties to consider positive uses of their tax payments mitigates tax aversion. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for consumer behavior research and tax policies.
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2013
Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to b... more Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effortful rather than easy and enjoyable. Across five experiments, we document this “martyrdom effect,” show that the observed patterns defy standard economic and psychological accounts, and identify a mediator and moderator of the effect. Experiment 1 showed that people are willing to donate more to charity when they anticipate having to suffer to raise money. Experiment 2 extended these findings to a non-charity laboratory context that involved real money and actual pain. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the martyrdom effect is not the result of an attribute substitution strategy (whereby people use the amount of pain and effort involved in fundraising to determine donation worthiness). Experiment 4 showed that perceptions of meaningfulness partially mediate the martyrdom effect. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrated that the nature of the prosocial cause moderates the martyrdom effect: the effect is strongest for causes associated with human suffering. We propose that anticipated pain and effort lead people to ascribe greater meaning to their contri- butions and to the experience of contributing, thereby motivating higher prosocial contributions. We conclude by considering some implications of this puzzling phenomenon.
The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to …, Jan 1, 2011
he decision to donate one's money and time is a particularly interesting kind of choice because i... more he decision to donate one's money and time is a particularly interesting kind of choice because it involves trade-offs between personal, selfinterested goals (i.e., goals that primarily benefit the decision maker) on the one hand, and collective, altruistic goals (i.e., goals that contribute to the greater good) on the other. Why and how people make altruistic choices has been a topic of great interest in many fields, including philosophy, biology, economics, sociology, political science, and psychology. as a result, plenty of energy has gone into devising models and theories that can explain altruistic behaviors or provide normative standards for how we should make decisions when faced with trade-offs between personal well-being and collective welfare. in this chapter, i start by considering two normative standards for making donation choices, which i call Pareto hedonism and Pareto utilitarianism. Next, i briefly review literature that suggests that people may not always be motivated to follow these standards, instead preferring means of charitable giving that involve significant pain and effort-a phenomenon called the martyrdom effect. i then discuss recent research showing that, as a result of the martyrdom effect, donation decisions often violate both pareto hedonism and pareto utilitarianism. i conclude by discussing the implications and dilemmas that result from this preference for challenging forms of altruism.
Because the field of judgment and decision making is largely a formal one (similar to mathematics... more Because the field of judgment and decision making is largely a formal one (similar to mathematics), its principles and findings are applicable to a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, medicine, social policy, law, management science, economics, and accounting. The purpose of this series is to convey the general principles and findings of research in judgment and decision making to the many academic and professional fields to which it applies.
Four experiments showed that the decisions people make for future selves and other people are sim... more Four experiments showed that the decisions people make for future selves and other people are similar to each other and different from their decisions for present selves. Experiments involved decisions to drink a disgusting liquid for scientific purposes (Experiment 1), tutor peers during exam week (Experiment 2), receive e-mails for charity (Experiment 3), and defer a lottery prize for a larger one (Experiment 4). These findings seemed to be at least partially rooted in the tendency for decisions regarding the ongoing, present self to be uniquely influenced by internal subjective experience. Specifically, these effects emerged for real, but not hypothetical, decisions. Also, they were mitigated by manipulations that altered participants' attention to present or future subjective experience. In addition, when participants' subjective experience primarily involved empathy for others (Experiment 3), their decisions on behalf of present selves were more generous than their decisions for future selves and others. Applications are discussed.
People tend to believe that sequences of random events produce fewer and shorter streaks than is ... more People tend to believe that sequences of random events produce fewer and shorter streaks than is actually the case. Although this error has been demonstrated repeatedly and in many forms, nearly all studies of randomness cognition have focused on how people think about random events occurring in the present or future. This article examines how our biased beliefs about randomness interact with properties of memory to influence our judgments about and memory for past random events. We explore this interaction by examining how beliefs about randomness affect our memory for random events and how certain properties of memory alter our tendency to categorize events as random. Across three experiments, we demonstrate an interaction between randomness cognition and three well-established but distinct properties of memory: (1) the reconstructive nature of memory, (2) primacy and recency effects, and (3) duration neglect. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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Papers by Christopher Olivola
Many human interactions are built on trust, so widespread confidence in first impressions generally favors individuals with trustworthy-looking appearances. However, few studies have explicitly examined: 1) the contribution of unfakeable facial features to trust-based decisions, and 2) how these cues are integrated with information about past behavior.
Methodology/Principal Findings:
Using highly controlled stimuli and an improved experimental procedure, we show that unfakeable facial features associated with the appearance of trustworthiness attract higher investments in trust games. The facial trustworthiness premium is large for decisions based solely on faces, with trustworthy identities attracting 42% more money (Study 1), and remains significant though reduced to 6% when reputational information is also available (Study 2). The face trustworthiness premium persists with real (rather than virtual) currency and when higher payoffs are at stake (Study 3).
Conclusions/Significance:
Our results demonstrate that cooperation may be affected not only by controllable appearance cues (e.g., clothing, facial expressions) as shown previously, but also by features that are impossible to mimic (e.g., individual facial structure). This unfakeable face trustworthiness effect is not limited to the rare situations where people lack any information about their partners, but survives in richer environments where relevant details about partner past behavior are available.