For They Know Not What They Do: Selection Through Incentives When Information is Costly

Ambuehl, Sandro; Ockenfels, Axel; Stewart, Colin

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3154197

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Our vignette study considers a situation in which this requirement is in conflict with libertarian principles. It is motivated by the results in Ambuehl, Ockenfels, and Stewart (2017) who show that individuals with higher marginal costs of information processing often respond disproportionately to a rise in the incentive, and decide to participate based on an inferior understanding of the consequences of their choice. Respondents to our survey have qualms about incentivizing people for whom information processing is more difficult.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To test whether moral concerns are plausibly related to the selection effects described in Ambuehl, Ockenfels, and Stewart (2017), respondents predicted the behavioral effects of incentives. They did so before we elicited ethical judgments.…”

Section: Predictions Of Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The effect of ability is significantly smaller if the initial information was discouraging. 5 Such information acquisition behavior implies that low-ability women will respond more strongly to an increase in the incentive, and will therefore be selected disproportionately.…”

Section: Predictions Of Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As panel C shows, respondents predict stronger selection effects if they have predicted a stronger effect of cognitive ability on the response of information acquisition to a higher incentive. 6 Hence, moral concerns about incentives are plausibly related to the selection effects they exert, as documented in Ambuehl, Ockenfels, and Stewart (2017).…”

Section: Predictions Of Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Ethics of Incentivizing the Uninformed: A Vignette Study

Ambuehl

Ockenfels²

2017

American Economic Review

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Our recent working paper (Ambuehl, Ockenfels, and Stewart 2017) shows theoretically and experimentally that people with higher costs of information processing respond more to an increase in the incentive for a complex transaction, and decide to participate based on a worse understanding of its consequences. Here, we address the resulting tradeoff between the principle of informed consent and the principle of free contract. Respondents to our vignette study on oocyte donation overwhelmingly favor the former and support policies that require donors to thoroughly understand the transaction. This finding helps design markets that are not only efficient but also considered ethical.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Predictions Of Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Predictions Of Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Predictions Of Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Ethics of Incentivizing the Uninformed: A Vignette Study

Ambuehl

Ockenfels²

2017

American Economic Review

Self Cite

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“…2 Failure to take these selection effects into account may therefore result in a false interpretation of the observed behavior in terms of population averages. For example, Tinghög et al (2013) argue that failures to replicate time pressure effects on cooperation in ethical dilemmas (Rand et al 2012) may be due to the original studies excluding about half of the participants because of a failure to meet the time constraint (Casari et al (2007) make a similar observation in the context of auction bidding; Ambuehl et al (2018) show how high incentives disproportionally lure cognitively disadvantaged agents to self-select into transactions of unclear consequences).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Risk, time pressure, and selection effects

et al. 2018

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Time pressure is a central aspect of economic decision making nowadays. It is therefore natural to ask how time pressure affects decisions, and how to detect individual heterogeneity in the ability to successfully cope with time pressure. In the context of risky decisions, we ask whether a person's performance under time pressure can be predicted by measurable behavior and traits, and whether such measurement itself may be affected by selection issues. We find that the ability to cope with time pressure varies significantly across decision makers, leading to selected subgroups that differ in terms of their observed behaviors and personal traits. Moreover, measures of cognitive ability and intellectual efficiency jointly predict individuals' decision quality and ability to keep their decision strategy under time pressure.

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Promoting Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge Studies

Lynch

Darton

Levy³

et al. 2021

The American Journal of Bioethics

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To prepare for potential human infection challenge studies (HICS) involving SARS-CoV-2, we convened a multidisciplinary working group to address ethical questions regarding whether and how much SARS-CoV-2 HICS participants should be paid. Because the goals of paying HICS participants, as well as the relevant ethical concerns, are the same as those arising for other types of clinical research, the same basic framework for ethical payment can apply. This framework divides payment into reimbursement, compensation, and incentives, focusing on fairness and promoting adequate recruitment and retention as counterweights to concerns about undue inducement. Within the basic framework, several factors are especially salient for HICS, and for SARS-CoV-2 HICS in particular, including the nature of participant confinement, anticipated discomfort, risks and uncertainty, participant motivations, and trust. These factors are reflected in a payment worksheet created to help sponsors, researchers, and ethics reviewers systematically develop and assess ethically justifiable payment amounts.

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For They Know Not What They Do: Selection Through Incentives When Information is Costly

Cited by 5 publications

References 55 publications

The Ethics of Incentivizing the Uninformed: A Vignette Study

The Ethics of Incentivizing the Uninformed: A Vignette Study

Risk, time pressure, and selection effects

Promoting Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge Studies

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