Davidai, S. & Tepper, S. (2023). The psychology of zero-sum beliefs. Nature Psychology Review, 2, 472-482.
People often hold zero-sum beliefs (subjective beliefs that, independent of the actual distribution of resources, one party’s gains are inevitably accrued at other parties’ expense) about interpersonal, intergroup and international relations. In this Review, we synthesize social, cognitive, evolutionary and organizational psychology research on zero-sum beliefs. In doing so, we examine when, why and how such beliefs emerge and what their consequences are for individuals, groups and society. Although zero-sum beliefs have been mostly conceptualized as an individual difference and a generalized mindset, their emergence and expression are sensitive to cognitive, motivational and contextual forces. Specifically, we identify three broad psychological channels that elicit zero-sum beliefs: intrapersonal and situational forces that elicit threat, generate real or imagined resource scarcity, and inhibit deliberation. This systematic study of zero-sum beliefs advances our understanding of how these beliefs arise, how they influence people’s behaviour and, we hope, how they can be mitigated.
Weingarten, E., Barasch, A., & Davidai, S. (2023). Who's on first? People asymmetrically attend to higher-ranked (vs. lower-ranked) competitors. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 104, 104405
Rankings, hierarchies, and competitions are an integral part of peoples' personal and professional lives and knowing one's standing vis-à-vis others helps employees decide how to outdo higher-ranked colleagues and how to refrain from being outdone by lower-ranked others. But whom do people attend to when considering these rankings? In seven studies (and five supplementary studies; N = 4496) we document a robust asymmetry in attention to higher-ranked versus lower-ranked competitors. First, using unobtrusive measures, we show that people attend more to and exhibit better memory for their higher-ranked (vs. lower-ranked) peers. Second, we demonstrate that this asymmetry is reduced when attention is shifted to lower-ranked competitors, and is moderated by participants' own standing. Finally, we find that asymmetrically attending to higher-ranked others leads people to overestimate minority representation in rankings and to make suboptimal financial decisions. We discuss implications for social comparison theory, workplace rankings, and the psychology of competition.
Andrews Fearon, P. & Davidai, S. (2023). Is status a zero-sum game? Zero-sum beliefs about status increase preference for dominance but not prestige. Journal for Experimental Psychology: General, 152(2), 389–409
Davidai, S., White, W.M., & Gregorich, V. (2022). The fear of conflict leads people to systematically avoid potentially valuable zero-sum situations. Scientific Reports, 12, 17944
From interpersonal interactions to international arms races, game theorists and social scientists have long studied decision-making in zero-sum situations. Yet, what happens when people can freely choose whether to enter zero-sum situations in the first place? Thirteen studies (including five pre-registered) consistently document evidence for zero-sum aversion—the desire to avoid situations that are (or are believed to be) zero-sum. Across different contexts (economic games, market entry decisions, performance reviews, negotiations, job applications), samples (online participant pool, MBA students, community sample), and designs (within- and between-participant, real and hypothetical decisions), people avoid zero-sum situations that inversely link their and others’ outcomes as well as refrain from putting others in such situations. Because people fear that zero-sum situations will be rife with conflict, they exhibit zero-sum aversion even when doing so is costly. Finally, we find that people require zero-sum situations to provide substantially higher payoffs (e.g., compensation) to overcome their zero-sum aversion. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for interpersonal and intergroup conflict.
Jachimowicz, J. M., Davidai, S., Goya-Tocchetto, D., Szaszi, B., Day, M. V., Tepper, S. J., Phillips, L. T., Mirza, M. U., Ordabayeva, N., & Hauser, O. P. (2022). Inequality in researchers’ minds: Four guiding questions for studying subjective perceptions of economic inequality. Journal of Economic Surveys, 1-28.
Subjective perceptions of inequality can substantially influence policy attitudes, public health metrics, and societal well-being, but the lack of consensus in the scientific community on how to best operationalize and measure these perceptions may impede progress on the topic. Here, we provide a theoretical framework for the study of subjective perceptions of inequality, which brings critical differences to light. This framework— which we conceptualize as a series of four guiding questions for studying subjective perceptions of economic inequality—serves as a blueprint for the theoretical and empirical decisions researchers need to address in the study of when, how, and why subjective perceptions of inequality are consequential for individuals, groups, and societies. To lay the foundation for a comprehensive approach to the topic, we offer four theoretical and empirical decisions in studying subjective perceptions of inequality, urging researchers to specify: (1) What kind of inequality? (2) What level of analysis? (3) What part of the distribution? and (4) What comparison group?We subsequently discuss how this framework can be used to organize existing research and highlight its utility in guiding future research across the social sciences in both the theory and measurement of subjective perceptions of inequality.
Chernyak-Hai, L. & Davidai, S. (2022). “Don’t teach them how to fish:” The effect of zero-sum thinking on help giving. Journal for Experimental Psychology: General, 151(10), 2466-2480.
How do zero-sum beliefs—the beliefs that one person’s success is inevitably balanced by others’ failure —affect people’s willingness to help their peers and colleagues? In nine studies (and 2 supplementary studies, N = 2,324), we find consistent evidence for the relationship between the belief that success is zero-sum and help giving preferences. Across various hypothetical scenarios and actual help giving decisions, and even when the effort required for helping was minimal, zero-sum beliefs negatively predicted participants’ willingness to help their colleagues learn how to succeed on their own (i.e., autonomy-oriented help). In contrast, the belief that success can only be achieved at others’ expense did not affect participants’ willingness to offer the kind of help that would completely solve their colleagues’ problems for them (i.e., dependency-oriented help). Moreover, we find that the effect of zerosum beliefs on the reluctance to give autonomy-oriented help is mediated by concerns about losing one’s status to the recipient, and that removing these concerns about status loss mitigates the negative effect of zero-sum beliefs on help giving. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this robust yet nuanced link between the belief that success is zero-sum and prosocial helping behaviors.
Ongis, M., & Davidai, S. (2022). Personal relative deprivation and the belief that economic success is zero-sum. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(7), 1666-1680.
Why do people view economic success as zero-sum? In seven studies (including a large, nationally representative sample of more than 90,000 respondents from 60 countries), we explore how personal relative deprivation influences zero-sum thinking—the belief that one person’s gains can only be obtained at other people’s expense. We find that personal relative deprivation fosters a belief that economic success is zero-sum, and that this is true regardless of participants’ household income, political ideology, or subjective social class. Moreover, in a large and preregistered study, we find that the effect of personal relative deprivation on zero-sum thinking is mediated by lay perceptions of society. The more people see themselves as having been unfairly disadvantaged relative to others, the more they view the world as unjust and economic success as determined by external forces beyond one’s control. In turn, these cynical views of society lead people to believe that economic success is zero-sum. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on social comparisons, the distribution of resources, and the psychological consequences of feeling personally deprived.
Roberts, R., & Davidai, S. (2022). The psychology of asymmetric zero-sum beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 123(3), 559-575.
Zero-sum beliefs reflect the perception that one party’s gains are necessarily offset by another party’s losses. Although zero-sum relationships are, from a strictly theoretical perspective, symmetrical, we find evidence for asymmetrical zero-sum beliefs: The belief that others gain at one’s own expense, but not vice versa. Across various contexts (international relations, interpersonal negotiations, political partisanship, organizational hierarchies) and research designs (within- and between-participant), we find that people are more prone to believe that others’ success comes at their own expense than they are to believe that their own success comes at others’ expense. Moreover, we find that people exhibit asymmetric zero-sum beliefs only when thinking about how their own party relates to other parties but not when thinking about how other parties relate to each other. Finally, we find that this effect is moderated by how threatened people feel by others’ success and that reassuring people about their party’s strengths eliminates asymmetric zero-sum beliefs. We discuss the theoretical contributions of our findings to research on interpersonal and intergroup zero-sum beliefs and their implications for understanding when and why people view life as zero-sum.
Davidai, S., & Walker, J. (2022). Americans misperceive racial disparities in economic mobility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 48(5), 793-806.
What do people know about racial disparities in “The American Dream”? Across six studies (N = 1,761), we find that American participants consistently underestimate the Black–White disparity in economic mobility, believing that poor Black Americans are significantly more likely to move up the economic ladder than they actually are. We find that misperceptions about economic mobility are common among both White and Black respondents, and that this undue optimism about the prospect of mobility for Black Americans results from a narrow focus on the progress toward equality that has already been made. Consequently, making economic racial disparities salient, or merely reflecting on the unique hardships that Black Americans face in the United States, calibrates beliefs about economic mobility. We discuss the importance of these findings for understanding lay beliefs about the socioeconomic system, the denial of systemic racism in society, and support for policies aimed at reducing racial economic disparities.
Hansson, K., Tinghog, G., Davidai, S., & Persson, E. (2021). Losing sense of fairness: How information about a level playing field reduces selfish behavior. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 190, 66-75.
Inaccurate beliefs about procedural fairness often motivate people to act in self-serving and selfish manners. We investigate whether information about a level playing field might mitigate such behaviors. In a pre-registered behavioral experiment (n = 444), using a competitive and real-effort task, we manipulate whether participants are informed about the fairness of a competition or not. Following the competition, participants (who either won or lost the competition) decided how to distribute earnings between themselves and their opponent. We show that informing participants about the fairness of the competition reduces selfish behavior among losers, while behavior among winners remains unaffected. Moreover, we show that losers who were not informed about the fairness of the competition incorrectly viewed it as having been unfairly stacked against them (i.e., believing that they encountered significantly more difficult tasks than their opponents). Our findings suggest that information about a level playing field reduces selfish behavior and is important for understanding when and why motivated reasoning about procedural fairness helps people uphold a positive self-image.
Davidai, S. (2021). How do people make sense of wealth and poverty? Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 42-47.
Economic outcomes reflect an intricate mixture of people's internal dispositions and external circumstances that are beyond their control. How, then, do people make sense of wealth and poverty? I suggest that attributions of economic outcomes are susceptible to various influences that can be grouped into two broad categories-who people are (i.e. personal influences) and what people see in the world (i.e. societal influences). Personal influences include people's ideological leanings and worldviews, socioeconomic standing, and experiences of economic success or failure. Societal influences include macroeconomic circumstances, cultural narratives, structural prejudices, and salient consumption behaviors by the rich and the poor. I discuss how these influences shape (and distort) attributions of economic outcomes and lay beliefs about wealth and poverty.
Davidai, S. & Wienek, M. (2021). The psychology of lay perceptions in economic mobility. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15(8), e12625.
Although economic mobility is an objectively defined term, lay beliefs about mobility—the configuration of ideas and attitudes about economic mobility that is not necessarily grounded in economic data—are often formed in a subjective manner. Drawing on research from the United States and beyond, we propose a novel framework for understanding how people construe, think about, and understand economic mobility. We highlight the importance of systematically examining the type, time frame, trajectory, and target of mobility that people have in mind for understanding when they most and least strongly believe in it. In addition, our framework offers a conceptual roadmap for examining the factors that influence lay beliefs about mobility, including individual differences in these lay beliefs and their important downstream consequences. Finally, we outline several important open questions that are highlighted by our framework as a guide for future research on lay beliefs about economic mobility.
Wice, M. & Davidai, S. (2020). Benevolent conformity: The influence of perceived motives on judgments of conformity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Although people often disapprove of conformity, they also dislike when others deviate from group norms. What explains this ambivalence? We hypothesized that judgments of conformity would be affected by whether people view it as motivated by self-interested or benevolent motives. Four studies (N = 808), using both hypothetical and real-life instances of conformity, support this prediction. We find that people judge those who conform to gain social approval (self-interested conformity) as weak-willed, but those who conform out of concern for their group (benevolent conformity) as competent and possessing strong character. In addition, we predict and find that people view self-interested conformity as “fake” but benevolent conformity as revealing one’s true self. Finally, we show that differences in perceived intentions explain how people sustain positive self-regard while succumbing to group pressures and why people judge their own conformity more favorably than others’ conformity. We discuss implications for encouraging and discouraging conformity.
Davidai, S., Deri, S., & Gilovich, T., (2020) There must be more to life than this: The impact of salient exemplars on self-evaluation and experiential angst. Self & Identity.
We examine how self-assessments are influenced by readily-accessible extreme exemplars that embody specific traits, skills, or behavioral tendencies. Because individuals who live especially active and adventurous lives are so noticeable, they tend to spring to mind and serve as benchmarks for self-evaluation, and thereby encourage people to feel that they aren’t getting as much out of life as they should. This is part of a more general psychological phenomena whereby highly accessible extreme benchmarks negatively influence self-assessments. In four studies, we find that when such extreme exemplars are likely to spring to mind, people tend to see themselves as lagging behind others. In contrast, when extreme exemplars are not readily available, self-assessments tend to be more positive.
Black, J., & Davidai, S. (2020). Do rich people “deserve” to be rich? Charitable giving, internal attributions of wealth, and judgments of economic deservingness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 90
People often judge how much “the rich” deserve to be rich by taking into consideration how they had made their wealth. How do people make such judgments about the origins of others' wealth? In nine studies (N = 1707) and two supplemental analyses (N = 197), we examine whether the attributions people make about wealth are influenced by the way wealthy people spend their money. We find that people are more likely to attribute economic success to internal factors (such as hard work and competence) when “the rich” spend their money charitably versus when they spend it in a more luxurious manner. Moreover, we find that the tendency to attribute wealth to internal factors is due to judgments about wealthy individuals' character, and that the influence of spending on trait attribution is substantially larger for merit-related traits (e.g., persistence or industriousness) than other positive traits that are unrelated to merit (e.g., elegance or youthfulness). Finally, we find that how “the rich” spend their fortunes influences beliefs about how much they deserve to be rich. The more wealthy people give their money to charity, the more people believe that they deserve to have it in the first place.
Davidai, S. & Ongis, M. (2019). The politics of zero-sum thinking: The relationship between political ideology and the belief that life is a zero-sum game. Science Advances,5, eaay3761
The tendency to see life as zero-sum exacerbates political conflicts. Six studies (N = 3223) examine the relationship between political ideology and zero-sum thinking: the belief that one party’s gains can only be obtained at the expense of another party’s losses. We find that both liberals and conservatives view life as zero-sum when it benefits them to do so. Whereas conservatives exhibit zero-sum thinking when the status quo is challenged, liberals do so when the status quo is being upheld. Consequently, conservatives view social inequalities—where the status quo is frequently challenged—as zero-sum, but liberals view economic inequalities—where the status quo has remained relatively unchallenged in past decades—as such. Overall, these findings suggest potentially important ideological differences in perceptions of conflict—differences that are likely to have implications for understanding political divides in the United States and the difficulty of reaching bipartisan legislation.
Davidai, S., & Deri, S. (2019). The second pugilist’s plight: Why people believe they are above average but are not especially happy about it. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(3), 570-587.
People’s tendency to rate themselves as above average is often taken as evidence of undue self-regard. Yet, everyday experience is occasioned with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. How can these 2 experiences be reconciled? Across 12 studies (N = 2,474; including 4 preregistered studies) we argue that although people do indeed believe that they are above average they also hold themselves to standards of comparison that are well above average. Across a host of domains, we find that people’s typical standards of comparison are significantly above the level of the “average” person (Studies 1A, 1B, 2A, and 3). We further show that people’s tendency to measure themselves against above-average others is due to the increased mental availability of such high-performing standards of comparison (Studies 4A and 4B). Finally, we present evidence that this is not simply the result of self-enhancement by showing that people measure themselves against above-average others even when they feel subjectively inadequate (Study 5A), receive objective information about their poor performance (Study 5B), or evaluate themselves on domains in which they chronically underperform (Study 5C). Even in domains where being above average is undesirable (e.g., rudeness), people bring to mind and compare themselves with above average targets (Studies 2B and 2C). We discuss the implications for self-enhancement research and the importance of examining who people compare themselves to in addition to how people believe they compare with others.
Davidai, S. (2018). Why do Americans believe in economic mobility? Economic inequality, external attributions of wealth and poverty, and the belief in economic mobility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 79, 138-148.
Although the rates of economic inequality in the United States are at their highest since the onset of The Great Depression, many Americans do not seem as concerned as may be expected. This apparent lack of concern has been attributed to people's deeply-entrenched belief in economic mobility – the belief that through hard work, determination, and skill people are able to rise up the economic ladder. Little is known, however, about why Americans so strongly believe in economic mobility. In five studies (N = 3112, including two pre-registered studies, one with a large, income-stratified sample), I examine the relationship between economic inequality and the belief in economic mobility. I find that people (accurately) perceive a negative relationship between economic inequality and economic mobility, and that this is due to the attributions they make about wealth and poverty. As economic inequality rises, people increasingly attribute economic success and failure to external factors that are beyond a person's control (vs. internal dispositions), and therefore expect economic mobility to drop. As a consequence, people's tendency to underestimate economic inequality reinforces their belief in economic mobility. I discuss how these findings contribute to our understanding of lay beliefs about the economic system and public opinion regarding inequality.
Davidai, S. & Gilovich, T. (2018). How should we think about Americans’ perceptions of socio-economic mobility? Judgment and Decision Making, 13(3), 297-304.
Recent evidence suggests that Americans’ beliefs about upward mobility are overly optimistic. Davidai & Gilovich (2015a), Kraus & Tan (2015), and Kraus (2015) all found that people overestimate the likelihood that a person might rise up the economic ladder, and underestimate the likelihood that they might fail to do so. However, using a different methodology, Chambers, Swan, and Heesacker (2015) reported that Americans’ beliefs about mobility are much more pessimistic. Swan, Chambers, Heesacker, and Nero (2017) provide a much-needed summary of these conflicting findings and question the utility of measuring population-level biases in judgments of inequality and mobility. We value their summary but argue that their conclusion is premature. By focusing on measures that best tap how laypeople naturally think about the distribution of income, we believe that researchers can draw meaningful conclusions about the public’s perceptions of economic mobility. When more ecologically representative measures are used, the consistent finding is that Americans overestimate the extent of upward mobility in the United States. To explain the divergent findings in the literature, we provide evidence that the methods used by Chambers et al. (2015) inadvertently primed participants to think about immobility rather than mobility. Finally, using a novel method to examine beliefs about economic mobility, we show that Americans indeed overestimate the degree of mobility in the United States.
Davidai, S. & Shafir, E. (2018). Are “nudges” getting a fair shot? Joint versus separate evaluations. Behavioual Public Policy, 1-19.
The most effective behavioral policies are often also the most contentious. Psychologically-informed interventions that promote non-deliberative behaviors (including “nudges”) are often more effective than “traditional” policies (like informational and educational campaigns) that target more deliberative processes. Yet, precisely because of their deliberative nature, people are often said to prefer the latter over the former. In contrast, we provide evidence that people’s preferences regarding nudges are malleable and influenced by the method of evaluation—whether the policy alternatives are evaluated separately or jointly. We show that while people exhibit a strong preference for more traditional public policies in joint evaluation, this preference is significantly attenuated in separate evaluation. We find that people perceive nudges as less paternalistic when judged on their own merits, that they are more likely to endorse nudges in separate than in joint evaluation, and that, provided with relative effectiveness information, people are willing to endorse nudges even in joint evaluation. We discuss the implications of these findings for researchers, policymakers, and the general public.
Deri., S., Davidai, S., & Gilovich, T. (2017) Home Alone: Why people believe others’ social lives are richer than their own. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(6), 858-877.
Although decades of research show that people tend to see themselves in the best possible light, we present evidence that people have a surprisingly grim outlook on their social lives. In 11 studies (N = 3,293; including 3 preregistered), we find that most people think that others lead richer and more active social lives than they do themselves. We show that this bias holds across multiple populations (college students, MTurk respondents, shoppers at a local mall, and participants from a large, income-stratified online panel), correlates strongly with well-being, and is particularly acute for social activities (e.g., the number of parties one attends or proximity to the “inner circle” of one’s social sphere). We argue that this pessimistic bias stems from the fact that trendsetters and socialites come most easily to mind as a standard of comparison and show that reducing the availability of extremely social people eliminates this bias. We conclude by discussing implications for research on social comparison and self-enhancement.
Davidai, S. & Gilovich, T. (2017) The ideal road not taken: The self-discrepancies involved in people’s most enduring regrets. Emotion, 18(3), 439-452
Research on the structural features of people’s most enduring regrets has focused on whether they result from having acted or having failed to act. Here we focus on a different structural feature, their connection to a person’s self-concept. In 6 studies, we predict and find that people’s most enduring regrets stem more often from discrepancies between their actual and ideal selves than their actual and ought selves. We also provide evidence that this asymmetry is at least partly due to differences in how people cope with regret. People are quicker to take steps to cope with failures to live up to their duties and responsibilities (ought-related regrets) than their failures to live up to their goals and aspirations (ideal-related regrets). As a consequence, ideal-related regrets are more likely to remain unresolved, leaving people more likely to regret not being all they could have been more than all they should have been.
Davidai, S. & Gilovich, T. (2016). The headwind/tailwind asymmetry: An availability bias in assessments of barriers and blessings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(6), 835-851.
Seven studies provide evidence of an availability bias in people’s assessments of the benefits they’ve enjoyed and the barriers they’ve faced. Barriers and hindrances command attention because they have to be overcome; benefits and resources can often be simply enjoyed and largely ignored. As a result of this “headwind/tailwind” asymmetry, Democrats and Republicans both claim that the electoral map works against them (Study 1), football fans take disproportionate note of the challenging games on their team’s schedules (Study 2), people tend to believe that their parents have been harder on them than their siblings are willing to grant (Study 3), and academics think that they have a harder time with journal reviewers, grant panels, and tenure committees than members of other subdisciplines (Study 7). We show that these effects are the result of the enhanced availability of people’s challenges and difficulties (Studies 4 and 5) and are not simply the result of self-serving attribution management (Studies 6 and 7). We also show that the greater salience of a person’s headwinds can lead people to believe they have been treated unfairly and, as a consequence, more inclined to endorse morally questionable behavior (Study 7). Our discussion focuses on the implications of the headwind/tailwind asymmetry for a variety of ill-conceived policy decisions.
Davidai, S. & Gilovich, T. (2016). The tide that lifts all focal boats: Asymmetric predictions of ascent and descent in rankings. Judgment and Decision Making, 11(1), 7-20.
In six studies, we find evidence for an upward mobility bias, or a tendency to predict that a rise in ranking is more likely than a decline, even in domains where motivation or intention to rise play no role. Although people cannot willfully change their height (Study 1), and geographical entities cannot willfully alter their temperature (Study 2), number of natural disasters (Study 3), levels of precipitation (Studies 4A and 4B), or chemical concentration (Study 5), subjects believed that each is more likely to rise than drop in ranking. This bias is due to an association between a ranking’s order and the direction of absolute change, and to the tendency to give considerable weight to a focal agent over non-focal agents. Because people generally expect change to be represented in terms of higher ranks, and because they tend to focus on specific, focal targets, they believe that any given target will experience a larger relative increase than other targets. We discuss implications for social policy
Davidai, S. & Gilovich, T. (2015). What goes up apparently needn’t come down: Asymmetric predictions of ascent and descent in rankings. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 28(5), 491-503.
n eight studies, we document an upward mobility bias, or a tendency to predict that a rise in rankings is more likely than a decline. This asymmetry was observed in predictions of classroom performance, NBA and NFL standings, business school rankings, and employee performance rankings. The bias was found for entities people care about and want to see improve their standing, as well as entities in which people are not invested. It appears to result from people's tendency to give considerable weight to a focal agent's intentions and motivation, but to give less weight to the intentions of competitors and other factors that would thwart the focal agent's improvement. We show that this bias is most pronounced for implicit incremental theorists, who believe that performance is malleable (and hence assign more weight to intentions and effort). We discuss implications of this asymmetry for decision making and for an understanding of the underdog bias.
Davidai, S. & Gilovich, T. (2015). Building a more mobile America – one income quintile at a time. Perspectives on Psychological Sciences, 10(1), 60-71.
A core tenet of the American ethos is that there is considerable economic mobility. Americans seem willing to accept vast financial inequalities as long as they believe that everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We examined whether people’s beliefs about the amount of economic mobility in the contemporary United States conform to reality. We found that (a) people believe there is more upward mobility than downward mobility; (b) people overestimate the amount of upward mobility and underestimate the amount of downward mobility; (c) poorer individuals believe there is more mobility than richer individuals; and (d) political affiliation influences perceptions of economic mobility, with conservatives believing that the economic system is more dynamic—with more people moving both up and down the income distribution—than liberals do. We discuss how these findings can shed light on the intensity and nature of political debate in the United States on economic inequality and opportunity.
Davidai, S., Gilovich, T. & Ross, L. (2012). The meaning of default options for potential organ donors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 109, 15201-15205.
Rates of participation in organ donation programs are known to be powerfully influenced by the relevant default policy in effect (“opt-in” vs. “opt-out”). Three studies provide evidence that this difference in participation may occur in part because the requirement to opt-in or opt-out results in large differences in the meaning that individuals attach to participation. American participants in Study 1 rated participation as a significantly more substantial action when agreement was purportedly obtained under opt-in rather than opt-out conditions, and nonagreement as a greater abrogation of responsibility when that decision was made under opt-out rather than under opt-in conditions. Study 2 replicated these findings with respondents who live in Germany, which employs an opt-in donation policy, and in Austria, which has an opt-out policy. Study 3 required American participants to rate various actions that differ in the effort and self-sacrifice they demand. As predicted, the placement of organ donation on the resulting multidimensional scaling dimension differed significantly depending on whether it purportedly was made in an opt-in country (where it was considered roughly akin to giving away half of one’s wealth to charity upon one’s death) or an opt-out country (where it fell between letting others get ahead of one in line and volunteering some time to help the poor). We discuss the relationship between this change of meaning account and two other mechanisms—behavioral inertia and implicit norms—that we believe underlie the default effect in decision making and other effects of policies designed to influence decision-makers.