The rank principle in social and cognitive comparison
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: Psychology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
Publications
Aldrovandi S
(2015)
Social norms and rank-based nudging: Changing willingness to pay for healthy food.
in Journal of experimental psychology. Applied
Aldrovandi S
(2011)
Preference stability and memory: two unlikely companions.
in Frontiers in psychology
Aldrovandi S
(2013)
Sentencing, severity, and social norms: A rank-based model of contextual influence on judgments of crimes and punishments
in Acta Psychologica
Aldrovandi S
(2014)
Students' concern about indebtedness: a rank based social norms account
in Studies in Higher Education
Bilderbeck AC
(2014)
Serotonin and social norms: tryptophan depletion impairs social comparison and leads to resource depletion in a multiplayer harvesting game.
in Psychological science
Boyce CJ
(2013)
Money, well-being, and loss aversion: does an income loss have a greater effect on well-being than an equivalent income gain?
in Psychological science
Brown GD
(2015)
Do Student Evaluations of University Reflect Inaccurate Beliefs or Actual Experience? A Relative Rank Model.
in Journal of behavioral decision making
Brown GD
(2011)
Decision by sampling and memory distinctiveness: range effects from rank-based models of judgment and choice.
in Frontiers in psychology
Dewar M
(2011)
Restoring primacy in amnesic free recall: evidence for the recency theory of primacy.
in Cognitive neuropsychology
Maltby J
(2012)
Contextual effects on the perceived health benefits of exercise: the exercise rank hypothesis.
in Journal of sport & exercise psychology
| Description | The project explored the idea that people's answers to everyday questions such as whether they are exercising enough, whether they are satisfied with their educational experience, whether they are drinking too much, or what constitutes an appropriate prison sentence, are influenced by their (often inaccurate) beliefs about the context of comparison. For example, consider two students who both drink the same amount of alcohol each week. However one student believes that 80% of other students drink more than she does herself; the other student thinks that only 15% of students drink less than he does himself. We find that the second student is likely to be more concerned about her level of drinking than the first, even though in fact they both drink the same amount. We have shown that the same principles of context-dependent judgement apply to a number of different domains - such as students' concern with their anticipated indebtedness at the end of their studies; people's judgements of other people's personalities, individuals' judgements of the healthiness of different food products, and the amounts of money people are willing to pay for consumer goods. We developed and tested a simple mathematical model of everyday judgements such as those listed above. In all cases it was found the judgements were influenced by the context of comparison in ways predicted by the model. We have also developed an extended version of the model, dubbed Social Sampling Theory, to account for social-level phenomena such as political polarization. An important general finding is that judgments depend not just on the context of available choice options (such as products in a shop, or pension savings options) but also depend - in ways predicted by the model we have developed - on people's (often inaccurate) beliefs about what is "normal" in the population. This has led to a further finding on how people's behavior (e.g., healthy lifestyle choices) can better be "nudged" by provision of social norm information. We found, as predicted by our model, that providing people with information about where they rank within a population (e.g., "8 out of 10 students drink less alcohol than you do") has more of an influence on their behaviour than standard nudges, which instead tell people what the mean population behaviour is ("the average student drinks 12 units of alcohol per week"). |
| Exploitation Route | A number of findings are of potential or actual relevance for both academic and non-academic audiences. These include findings on how context affects people's judgements of the adequacy of their pension contributions, the sufficiency of their exercise habits, the safety of their alcohol intake, their subjective experience of pain, and their satisfaction with their educational experience. Additional outputs concern the three-way relationship between income, inequality, and subjective well-being. We have adopted a two-pronged strategy to maximize the opportunity for impact. First, as envisaged in the original grant application, we have targeted not just the topmost general academic psychology journals (e.g., Psychological Science), but also the highest-impact academic journals within specific fields. Thus findings above have been reported in field-specific journals such as Pain, Studies in Higher Education, Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, and Alcohol and Alcoholism. Second, we have engaged with non-academic research users through a number of routes. We have given presentations on the research at, for example, meetings such as the Allianz Oxford Pensions Forum, 2012; a meeting with a major credit card company seeking to reduce inappropriate lending, and with the Financial Services Authority. We have also individually given a number of talks and presentation at relevant workshops. CI Wood is one of the coordinators of six Behavioural Science Workshops (held in 2014/15, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council) hosted by the Stirling Behavioural Science Centre. A key aim of this series of workshops is to bring together economics and psychology researchers in key areas of research and practice, and results of the research have been presented by both Wood and Brown at these workshops. PI Brown is a CI (and member of the management committee) for the ongoing ESRC-funded Centre NIBS (Network for Integrated Behavioural Science). Several NIBS user-oriented workshops have already been held, at which several findings from the present grant have been presented. |
| Sectors | Education,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Description | The research findings that are of potential relevance to policy and practice have only recently appeared in print, and hence there has as yet been little time for demonstrable impacts on policy and practice to have occurred. As noted in other sections, there is potential impact (beyond academia) in areas including medicine (pain perception), education (assessment of student satisfaction) and policy (perception of "fair" sentencing; relationship between income, inequality, and subjective well-being). Also as noted in other sections, we have given priority to presenting results at a number of specialist and general workshops aimed at introducing results to practitioners. These efforts will continue. |