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Zhuo, Shi (2021) Essays in behavioural economics. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3763824
Abstract
This thesis explores topics in behaviour economics summarized below. Chapter 1 investigates norms of apology in the context of group cooperation. Apologies are widely used across various cultures/contexts and have likely evolved to support mutual cooperation in groups. We conduct an experiment examining how apologies affect cooperation in a repeated public goods game. In two separate treatments, participants are given the option to say “I am sorry” either publicly, or privately to group members. In the control, no such option is available. We find that the opportunity to apologise leads to an increase in contributions of 0.37 and 0.61 standard deviations in the private and public treatments respectively. Generally, “norms of apology” exist — participants apologise when contributing less than others, subsequently raising their contributions. Recipients of apologies also believe that apologisers care more about others and will contribute more. In groups, adhering to apology norms is associated with greater salience of cooperative norms — especially in the public treatment where there is common knowledge.
Chapter 2 looks at ingroup bias when multiple dimensions of identities are salient. Group identity is known to exert a powerful socio-psychological influence on behaviour but to date has been largely explored as a uni-dimensional phenomenon. Carefully selecting two politically charged identity dimensions documented to have similar strength and to be largely orthogonal (religious belief and views about government size), we find that priming individuals to consider both dimensions rather than one has a noticeable effect on behaviour. Moving from one to two dimensions can produce a significant increase in ingroup allocations at the expense of fairness to outgroup individuals, although the effect varies as we switch from primarily considering religion to government size. Evidence suggests that the heterogeneity of such effects is related to the degree of “harmony” between groups in the dimensions concerned.
Chapter 3 studies how mindfulness meditation affects information avoidance. Mindfulness meditation has been found to influence various important outcomes such as health, stress, depression, productivity, and altruism. We conduct a randomised-controlled trial to explore a previously untested effect of mindfulness: avoiding information that may cause worry or regret. We find that a relatively short mindfulness treatment (two weeks, 15 minutes a day) is able to induce a statistically significant reduction in information avoidance. Possible mechanisms and policy implications are discussed.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Economics -- Psychological aspects, Apologizing, Social groups, Group identity, Mindfulness (Psychology), Avoidance (Psychology) | ||||
| Official Date: | September 2021 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Theses Department: | Department of Economics | ||||
| Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
| Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Sgroi, Daniel | ||||
| Sponsors: | Leverhulme Trust | ||||
| Format of File: | |||||
| Extent: | vi, 129 leaves : illustrations | ||||
| Language: | eng |
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