OSF Preprints

Journal: OSF Preprints

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Center for Open Science

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Publications 1 - 10 of 15

Skin conductance predicts earnings in a market bubble-and-crash scenario
Wichary, Szymon; Allenbach, Monika; von Helversen, Bettina; et al. (2023)
OSF Preprints
In financial markets, profit is usually associated with risk-taking, as those who take risks, use the opportunities that markets present.However, during market bubbles, risk-taking might lead to losses, whereas risk aversion can lead to more profit. Emotion-based warning signals might play a role here by helping to recognize when risk aversion is preferable. To study this, we used a trading simulator, where 27 male participants traded on a historical stock price trend during a market bubble-and-crash scenario, and we continuously monitored their skin conductance level. We found that participants earning the most were characterized by an adaptive pattern of risk-taking —they invested much in the asset in the initial phase of the bubble but sold their stocks before the crash. Their skin conductance level was closely associated with the price trend, peaking before the crash started. This suggests that skin conductance provided a bodily warning signal in this group. Moreover, in high earners, skin conductance level correlated negatively with the proportion of stocks, indicating that the high earners used this warning signal to sell stocks. These results underscore the adaptive role of bodily signals in decision-making and elucidate the neural basis of success in uncertain financial markets.
Concern and anticipation of sea-level rise provide grounds for social tipping towards climate action
Smith, E. Keith; Wiedermann, Marc; Donges, Jonathan F.; et al. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Effective climate change mitigation necessitates swift societal transformations. Social tipping processes, where small triggers initiate qualitative systemic shifts, are potential key mechanisms instigating societal change. With large shares of the world's population coastally concentrated, sea-level rise is among the most severe impacts of climate change. Here we combine future sea-level rise estimates, social survey data, and a social activation model to exemplify a transformative pathway where climate change concern increases the social tipping potential, and extended anticipation time horizons shift the system towards an alternative sustainable state of climate action. We find that in many countries, climate change concern is sufficient, such that opportunities for social activation towards this tipped state already exist. Further, drawing upon the interrelation between climate change concern and anticipation of SLR, we find evidence of three qualitative classes of tipping potential that are regionally clustered, with greatest potential for tipping in Western Pacific rim and East Asian countries. These findings propose a transformative pathway, where increased climate change concern shifts tipping potential upwards and extended anticipation time horizons lowers the required size for critical interventions necessary to kick a social system into a more sustainable state.
Embracing the intuitive-analytical paradox? How intuitive and analytical decision-making drive paradoxes in simple and complex environments
Fellnhofer, Katharina; Sornette, Didier (2022)
OSF Preprints
Research proposal to tackle following research questions: To what extend is unconscious intuitive decision-making in complex and uncertain conditions more accurate than conscious analytical decision-making? Is – paradoxically – analytical thinking more successful when making simple decisions and intuitive thinking when deciding in complex environments?
Could closing the knowledge gap help in reducing global environmental impacts of local consumption?
Presberger, David; Quoß, Franziska; Rudolph, Lukas; et al. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Vastly increased international trade over the past few decades has resulted in an ever larger geographical spread in the environmental impacts of local consumption. Particularly in the case of high-income countries, a large share of their total environmental footprint of local consumption now materializes in places far beyond the respective national border. On the presumption that democratic policy-makers should, and often do, act in line with prevailing public opinion we examine whether currently weak policies addressing consumption-based environmental impacts abroad may reflect a knowledge gap amongst citizens, and how closing this knowledge gap would affect policy preferences concerning the greening of international supply chains. We do so based on an experiment, embedded in a large representative survey (N=8’000) in Switzerland, a high-income country with a very large extraterritorial environmental footprint. The main finding is that there is a major knowledge gap amongst the mass public in this area, and that this gap can be closed. However, closing the knowledge gap does not lead to a significant change in policy preferences in favor of reducing the global environmental footprint of local consumption. This points to major policy challenges in trying to mitigate problems of environmental impact shifting in the global economy.
Polarization of Climate and Environmental Attitudes in the United States, 1973-2022
Smith, E. Keith; Bognar, M. Julia; Mayer, Adam P. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Since the early 1990s, political polarization has been the largest determinant of individual-level environmental and climate change attitudes. But several patterns remain unclear: whether polarization has been largely bimodal or is rather asymmetrical, how polarization patterns have changed over time, and if these patterns are generalizable across different environmental and climate change attitudes. We harmonized four unique sets of historical pooled cross-sectional survey data from the past 50 years to investigate shifts in seven distinct measures of citizen environmental and climate change attitudes for evidence of asymmetric polarization. We find evidence of two distinct historical patterns of asymmetric polarization: first, with Republicans becoming less environmentally-minded, beginning in the early-1990s, and second, a more recent greening of Democratic environmental attitudes since the mid-2010s. These polarization patterns diverge across seven measures of environmental and climate change attitudes, and are robust against sociodemographic, period, and birth cohort factors
Measuring the Semantic Priming Effect Across Many Languages
Buchanan, Erin M.; Cuccolo, Kelly M.; Coles, Nicholas; et al. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. These studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations in both healthy and clinical populations; however, they have suffered from several issues including generally low sample sizes and a lack of diversity in linguistic implementations. Here, we will test the size and the variability of the semantic priming effect across ten languages by creating a large database of semantic priming values, based on an adaptive sampling procedure. Differences in response latencies between related word-pair conditions and unrelated word-pair conditions (i.e., difference score confidence interval is greater than zero) will allow quantifying evidence for semantic priming, whereas improvements in model fit with the addition of a random intercept for language will provide support for variability in semantic priming across languages.
Public Preference Formation Towards Sustainable Global Supply Chains Policy
Kolcava, Dennis; Smith, E. Keith; Bernauer, Thomas (2022)
OSF Preprints
Effectively governing environmental and social externalities throughout the global economy poses challenges for democratic policy-makers in the court of public opinion. Following the median voter model, as the stringency of policy proposals increases, support rises amongst some citizens and falls amongst others. We argue informational disclosure-based governance presents a potential strategy to mitigate this zero-sum logic as citizens discount policy costs while expecting substantive benefits. We focus on political efforts to increase sustainability throughout global supply chains, drawing on two original survey experiments with representative samples in the 12 largest high-income importing economies (N=24,000). Indeed, at higher levels of policy stringency, citizens expect greater benefits than costs. Further, we find that expected benefits are more strongly associated with support than costs. Lastly, we note how policy stringency promotes convergence of expected benefits across the political ideological spectrum. Hence, our findings provide insights into public preference formation towards the globalization-sustainability nexus.
Political Conspiratorial Beliefs are Likely Over-Estimated and Transitory
Smith, E. Keith; Mayer, Adam; Bognar, Julia (2022)
OSF Preprints
Prominent conspiracy beliefs, such as QAnon or 2020 Presidential Election beliefs, constitute a unique form of conspiracy theories that are often explicitly partisan, "politically instrumental conspiracy theories" (PICTs). PICTs can spread rapidly, quickly becoming consensus beliefs among partisan in-groups. But PICTs are not necessarily deeply held, rather primarily serving immediate instrumental partisan needs. We use novel survey list experiments to estimate the prevalence of QAnon and 2020 Presidential Election conspiracy theories in the United States. We find that standard survey techniques likely overestimate the prevalence of PICTs by a factor of $\sim$2. Over-reporting of PICTs is driven by right-wing media consumption (QAnon), and partisanship (2020 Presidential Election). Further, we find that PICT attitudes are heterogeniously related to engagement in political and pro-social behaviors. While the prevalence of PICTs is commonly over-estimated and the beliefs may be transitory, they can serve an instrumental role in the contemporary American electorate.
Does international “offshoring” of environmental impacts reflect consumer NIMBYism?
Presberger, David; Kolcava, Dennis; Bernauer, Thomas (2022)
OSF Preprints
Consumption of imported goods whose production affects the natural environment abroad implies international ``insourcing'' of consumer benefits and ``outsourcing'' of environmental impacts. We examine to what extent consumer choices driving such ecological outsourcing in the aggregate, often from the Global North to the Global South, are motivated by environmental NIMBY (not in my backyard) preferences. The analysis relies on an original survey-embedded choice experiment in three large, high-income economies (Germany, Japan, United States, total N=7,494). We find considerable support for environmental NIMBYism in consumer decisions. Whereas consumers generally tend to prefer domestically sourced products, this home bias becomes weaker with increasing environmental impacts of production. One important implication of this finding is that policy makers should address potential unintended side-effects of more stringent eco-labeling requirements. The latter may in fact contribute to further ecological outsourcing by making both information on environmental impacts and product provenance more explicit.
Children’s Reciprocity and Relationship Formation with a Robot Across Age
Leisten, Luca M.; Heyselaar, Evelien; Bosse, Tibor; et al. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Reciprocity, responding to another one’s actions with similar actions, is central to the formation and maintenance of relationships. Reciprocity and relationship formation change with children’s development and are key aspects in human-robot interaction. So far, it is unclear how children reciprocate and build a relationship with a social robot and how reciprocity to social robots develops with age. In the current preregistered study, we collected data from 147 children aged 5 to 12 years to investigate the developmental trajectory of reciprocity towards a social robot and the formation of a relationship with this robot. To test reciprocity, children completed an Alternated Repeated Ultimatum Game with a social entertainment robot and another child. A recently validated survey on relationship formation was used that assesses trust, closeness, and social support. Results from a linear-mixed effects Bayesian analysis indicated that children reciprocated similarly to a robot as to another child. While reciprocity differed across age with lower values for 8-10-year-olds compared to younger and older children, this difference in the developmental trajectory of reciprocity was also observed when children interacted with the robot. Exploratory analysis showed differing results for positive (reciprocating positive actions with positive actions) and negative reciprocity (reciprocating negative actions with negative actions). Children’s relationship formation with a social robot changed with age but showed different developmental trajectories for trust (linear), closeness (negative quadratic), and social support (constant). No association was found between reciprocity towards the robot and relationship formation. Our findings suggest that established theories from human-human literature, such as the developmental trajectory of reciprocity, are also relevant for human-robot interaction. Children’s age is an important determinant for how children interact with and perceive robots. This therefore needs to be considered when designing robotic systems and experiments in the future as it could influence the success and effectiveness of both.

Publications 1 - 10 of 15

Journal: OSF Preprints

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