Speical issue on Cognitive Perspectives on Group Decision and Negotiation

In the journal of Group Decision and Negotiation, Vol 22 (5).  

According to the special issue editor, "Cognitive research has mainly focused on individual tasks.  in order to design interventions that importer cognitive efficiency in collaborative tasks we seek to understand individual cognition in the context of collaborative tasks. This special issue therefore intends to spark a rather new perspective, or at least an increased emphasis, in research on group work and collaboration; the cognitive perspective."

The impacts of little emperors on Chinese Society

A paper in the recent Science documented the impact of China's One-Child Policy, and they conclude that the policy has produced "less trusting, less trustworthy, more risk-averse, less competitive, more pessimistic, and less conscientious individuals."

The authors conducted standard games from the economics literature, including the Dictator Game to elicit the extent of altruism, the Trust Game for trusting and trust-worthiness, the risk Game for risk attitude, and the Competition Game.  

Prefer to be green than greedy?

Which of the following message will pomp you to check the pressure of your tyres? 

1) Want to protect the environment? Check your car’s tire pressure.
2) Want to save money? Check your car’s tire pressure.

A paper in Nature Climate Change found that an economic tyre-check appeal (the first one) elicited significantly less compliance than parallel biospheric one.  The authors argued that economic self-interest aside, people also care about maintaining a favorable image of themselves and may prefer to see themselves as green rather than greedy.

The implication of this study is that the dominant reliance on economic appeals to promote environmentally-friendly behaviors might not be so productive.  "Social marketers change behaviour may thus benefit from also considering another, basic source of human motivation: the need to maintain a favourable view of oneself".

I am not surprised by the results of the study.  The study was conducted in the Netherlands, a country with bike culture and 40% of people in Amsterdam ride their bike on a daily basis. 

Why climate disasters might not increase concern about cimate change

A post by George Marshall, who founded Britain’s Climate Outreach and Information Network.  

His main argument was that "Disasters encourage powerful and compelling survival narratives (that can overwhelm weaker and more complex climate change narratives)."  Basically, at the time of crisis, people stick to their community and stick to what they have believed, and there might be no room for new messages.  

 

Climate change: communication and behavioral science

Two open-access libraries on research about climate communication and behavioral science,  The former is from a UK-based partnership called Talking Climate, and the latter is a product of Garrison Institute's Climate, Mind and Behavior Initiative. 

Projection bias in the car and houseing markets

An interesting paper tested project bias/how people over-predicted the degree to which their future tastes will resemble one's current tastes ("never shop on an empty stomach!"). 

"We find that the choice to purchase a convertible, a 4-wheel drive, or a vehicle that is black in color is highly dependent on the weather at the time of purchase in a way that is inconsistent with classical utility theory. Similarly, we find that the hedonic value that a swimming pool and that central air add to a house is higher when the house goes under contract in the summertime compared to the wintertime."

Try to be rational? Think in a second language

This blog post reported a study where researchers found that speaking a foreign language makes people less affected by framing effects or loss aversion.  The conclusion was reached after the theory was tested for multiple languages.

This finding might have important implications for the Australian society, where over 40% of the population was born overseas (according to my Citizen test preparation book, if I remember correctly)... 

The importance of having a trustworthy face

If you want to get people to invest their money with you, it is more important to have a trustworthy face than a better history, according to a recent PLOS ONE study.