Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics ( Archive )

Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics
_ Archive

Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008

Sex hormonal modulation of hyperbolic discount factor in men

Taiki Takahashi, Kikue Sakaguchi, Mariko Oki, Toshikazu Hasegawa

Hormones in the brain have many types of visceral infl uences on social behavior and economic decision-making. Although hormone-associated visceral effects attract attention in neuroeconomics, little is known regarding the relationship between sex hormones and hyperbolic discounting. Furthermore, although the “discount factor” (a parameter indicating patience in intertemporal choice) is economically relevant and has neural correlates, most neuroeconomic studies on intertemporal choice have been focusing on neuromodulation of logged discount rates, which sometimes results in diffi culty in interpretation. This study was aimed to examine linear correlations between chronic sex hormone levels and hyperbolic discount factors of gains and losses in healthy male students. Participants’ salivary sex hormone (testosterone) levels were also assessed. We observed a positive linear relationship between testosterone levels and hyperbolic discount factor of gains; while no linear relationship between testosterone levels and discount factor of losses was observed. The results indicate that (i) chronic elevation in testosterone may be associated with patience (indicated by a discount factor) in intertemporal choice on gains, (ii) testosterone is unrelated to discounting of delayed losses. Implications for sex hormone-related visceral effects on problematic decision-making (e.g. addiction) and possible neuroendocrinological mechanism (e.g. conversion of testosterone into female hormones in the brain) are discussed.

Analyzing numerical responses – a model and its application to examples from personnel and organizational management

Thomas Spengler, Bodo Vogt

We analyze the structure of the numerical responses of persons connected with money and present a mental model together with its connection to fuzzy theory. The numerical response is one single number containing information about the value and the exactness of a variable. We test the rules describing the process, generating these responses experimentally as well as using examples from a personal questionnaire, and provide further empirical evidence. The simultaneous determination of the value and exactness of a response resulting in one number causes severe problems in using these responses as input to decision models. We propose a pre-analysis of the data with the rules provided in this paper.

Trading goods versus sharing money - An experiment testing whether fairness and efficiency are frame ependent

Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Gueth, Annette Kirstein

Systematic experiments with distribution games have shown that participants are strongly motivated by considerations of fairness and efficiency. This evidence, however, results mainly from experimental designs in which money is shared directly. Furthermore, fairness does not necessarily require equal payoffs, but may instead require equal allocations. We investigate experimentally the frame dependency of reaching equal (commodity or payoff) splits by systematically comparing net-trade proposals and payoff proposals for the same exchange economy with two traders, two commodities and multi-period negotiations. We can confirm the hypothesis that asking participants to allocate money directly, rather than more naturally via the allocation of commodities, is far from being harmless and likely overstates fairness and efficiency concerns. What is more, we try to apply the insights gained from our experiment to management problems.

Impacts on decision making of executives - Probabilities versus outcomes

Klaus-Juergen Jeske, Ute Werner

The determinants of decision making of executives are of special interest for companies. For along time choices have been investigated based on theories that assume an equal impact of expected outcomes and expected probabilities (von Neumann and Morgenstern 1953; Savage 1954; Kahneman and Tversky 1979). The influence of probabilities in decision processes is, however, questioned by a growing body of research (Rottenstreich and Kivetz 2006; Shapira 1995; March and Shapira 1987; 1992). To monitor the information acquisition process of board members and highranking executives in the German insurance industry we conducted 51 personal interviews, which included computer-aided simulations. These simulations clearly and objectively support former statements of executives (Shapira 1995) that they focus more on the amount of decision outcomes than on the corresponding probabilities.