Are Economists' Preferences Psychologists' Personality Traits?

Are Economists' Preferences Psychologists' Personality Traits?

Author: Tomáš Jagelka

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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This paper proposes a method for empirically mapping psychological personality traits to economic preferences. Careful modelling of random components of decision making is crucial to establishing the long supposed but empirically elusive link between economic and psychological systems for understanding differences in individuals' behavior. I use factor analysis to extract information on individuals' cognitive ability and personality and embed it within a Random Preference Model to estimate distributions of risk and time preferences, of their individual-level stability, and of people's propensity to make mistakes. I explain up to 50% of the variation in both average risk and time preferences and in individuals' capacity to make consistent rational choices using four factors related to cognitive ability and three of the Big Five personality traits. True differences in desired outcomes are related to differences in personality whereas actual mistakes in decisions are related to cognitive skill.


Personality and Cognition in Economic Decision Making

Personality and Cognition in Economic Decision Making

Author: Aurora García-Gallego

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

Published: 2017-08-22

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 2889452360

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Psychologists studying cognitive processes and personality have increasingly benefited from the wealth of theory, methodology, and decision making paradigms used in economics and game theory. Similarly, for the economists, personality traits and basic cognitive processes offer a set of coherent explanatory constructs in economic behavior. Given the debate on preference invariance and behavioral consistency across contexts and domains, the papers in this topic shed light on the existence and effect of stable sets of idiosyncratic features on economic decision-making. While the effects of personality and cognition on economic decisions remain under-explored, the papers contributed in this topic offer more than a stimulus for further research. The general message could be that personality and cognitive processes offer the stable idiosyncratic ground on which individual decisions are made.


Personality Psychology and Economics

Personality Psychology and Economics

Author: Mathilde Almlund

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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This paper explores the power of personality traits both as predictors and as causes of academic and economic success, health, and criminal activity. Measured personality is interpreted as a construct derived from an economic model of preferences, constraints, and information. Evidence is reviewed about the "situational specificity" of personality traits and preferences. An extreme version of the situationist view claims that there are no stable personality traits or preference parameters that persons carry across different situations. Those who hold this view claim that personality psychology has little relevance for economics. The biological and evolutionary origins of personality traits are explored. Personality measurement systems and relationships among the measures used by psychologists are examined. The predictive power of personality measures is compared with the predictive power of measures of cognition captured by IQ and achievement tests. For many outcomes, personality measures are just as predictive as cognitive measures, even after controlling for family background and cognition. Moreover, standard measures of cognition are heavily influenced by personality traits and incentives. Measured personality traits are positively correlated over the life cycle. However, they are not fixed and can be altered by experience and investment. Intervention studies, along with studies in biology and neuroscience, establish a causal basis for the observed effect of personality traits on economic and social outcomes. Personality traits are more malleable over the life cycle compared to cognition, which becomes highly rank stable around age 10. Interventions that change personality are promising avenues for addressing poverty and disadvantage.


Economic Psychology

Economic Psychology

Author: Rob Ranyard

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2017-06-22

Total Pages: 651

ISBN-13: 1118926390

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A comprehensive overview of contemporary economic psychology Economic Psychology presents an accessible overview of contemporary economic psychology. The science of economic mental life and behavior is increasingly relevant as people are expected to take more responsibility for their household and personal economic decisions. The text will, in addition to reviewing current knowledge on each topic presented, consider the practical and policy implications for supporting economic decision making. Economic Psychology examines the central aspects of adult decision making in everyday life and includes the theories of economic decision making based on risk, value and affect, and theories of intertemporal choice. The text reviews the nature and behavioral consequences of economic mental representations about such things as material possessions, money and the economy. The editor Robert Ranyard—a noted expert on economic psychology—presents a life-span developmental approach, from childhood to old age. He also reviews the important societal issues such as charitable giving and economic sustainability. This vital resource: Reviews the economic psychology in everyday life including financial behaviour such as saving and tax-paying and matters such as entrepreneurial activity Offers an introduction to the field and traces the emergence of the discipline, from Adam Smith to George Katona and Herbert Simon Includes information on societal issues such as charitable giving and pro-environmental behaviour Considers broader perspectives on economic psychology: life-span psychological development from childhood to old age Written for students of psychology, Economic Psychology reviews the most important information on contemporary economic psychology with a focus on individual and household economic decision making, ranging widely across financial matters such as borrowing and saving, and economic activities such as buying, trading, and working.


Elicitation of Preferences

Elicitation of Preferences

Author: Baruch Fischhoff

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-14

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9401714061

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Economists and psychologists have, on the whole, exhibited sharply different perspectives on the elicitation of preferences. Economists, who have made preference the central primitive in their thinking about human behavior, have for the most part rejected elicitation and have instead sought to infer preferences from observations of choice behavior. Psychologists, who have tended to think of preference as a context-determined subjective construct, have embraced elicitation as their dominant approach to measurement. This volume, based on a symposium organized by Daniel McFadden at the University of California at Berkeley, provides a provocative and constructive engagement between economists and psychologists on the elicitation of preferences.


The Psychology of Economic Decisions

The Psychology of Economic Decisions

Author: Isabelle Brocas

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0199257221

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This volume brings together contributions to the burgeoning research area of behavioral economics from a number of well-known international scholars in the field. Topics covered include 'irrational' conducts; imperfect self-knowledge; imperfect memory; time and utility; and experimental practices in psychology, economics, and finance. This book will provide a point of entry to anyone wishing to discover what the intellectual terrain between economics and psychology looks like.


Preference Change

Preference Change

Author: Till Grüne-Yanoff

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-06-11

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 9048125936

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Changing preferencesis a phenomenonoften invoked but rarely properlyaccounted for. Throughout the history of the social sciences, researchers have come against the possibility that their subjects’ preferenceswere affected by the phenomenato be explainedor by otherfactorsnot taken into accountin the explanation.Sporadically, attempts have been made to systematically investigate these in uences, but none of these seems to have had a lasting impact. Today we are still not much further with respect to preference change than we were at the middle of the last century. This anthology hopes to provide a new impulse for research into this important subject. In particular, we have chosen two routes to amplify this impulse. First, we stress the use of modellingtechniquesfamiliar from economicsand decision theory. Instead of constructing complex, all-encompassing theories of preference change, the authors of this volume start with very simple, formal accounts of some possible and hopefully plausible mechanism of preference change. Eventually, these models may nd their way into larger, empirically adequate theories, but at this stage, we think that the most importantwork lies in building structure.Secondly,we stress the importance of interdisciplinary exchange. Only by drawing together experts from different elds can the complex empirical and theoretical issues in the modelling of preference change be adequately investigated.


Noncognitive Skills and Their Influencing Factors for Children

Noncognitive Skills and Their Influencing Factors for Children

Author: Jinyan Zhou

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-19

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 100051787X

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"Non-cognitive skills" are often used to refers to those skills that do not fall within the cognitive category but to describe a stable pattern of thought, feeling, and behavior in different situations and backgrounds with profitable and investable characteristics, such as conscientiousness, perseverance, and teamwork, which are critically important in education. However, for many years, "non-cognitive skills" have always been ignored in human capital theory. The book, using a multidisciplinary approach, tries to uncover the noncognitive components of human capital, so as to answer the question "what is the skill that should be invested in?" The author expands the connotations of human capital by exploring the value of noncognitive skills and their production patterns, constructing a measurement framework and a set of tools to measure noncognitive skills. She especially carries out an empirical survey which covers primary and secondary school students from seven provinces of China’s east, middle, and west areas. With the data collected, she analyzes Chinese students’ noncognitive development and further identifies the critical factors that may impact their noncognitive skills by applying the Bayesian Model Average approach. The book will be a theoretical contribution to education economics. Researchers interested in education in China, children’s development, and policymakers in the field of education will find this book helpful and resourceful.