Lewend

I'd say 9 rejections is pretty cool yes😄

Huge thanks to:
Editor Michał Białek for recognizing the value of publishing this kind of work!

And Linda Lai for her support and for inviting me to work with brilliant executive students at BI Norwegian Business School who helped with data collection!

It’s great to see null findings like these published.

Hopefully, contributions like this can help build a more balanced and cumulative research base—currently, everything in this literature seems to be significant.

Of course, these null results might be task-specific (hypothetical, one-shot, no incentives), context-dependent, or related to recipient type.

But given existing theories + prior findings, the lack of effects here is still surprising.

But: Participants in all experiments remained susceptible to the classic loss vs. gain framing effect.

Only the financial advisors did demonstrate lower risk-seeking when deciding between investment plans for (hypothetical) clients vs for themselves, and lower reliance on intuition (i.e., gut feelings).

Overall, there was extremely weak evidence for self-other differences among these professionals.

Even in a larger and more general sample, no effects.

Deciding for others didn’t change:
• risk preferences
• analytical or intuitive processing
• emotional intensity or valence

Across 4 preregistered experiments, professionals in Norway (financial advisors, hospital leaders, municipal leaders) completed hypothetical risky choice tasks tailored to their work contexts. They then reported intuitive and analytical processing (+ response time), and affect.

This study tested whether professional decision-makers (who regularly decide for others) also show such self-other differences in decision-making.

Example: simply imagining that you are deciding for someone else can eliminate loss aversion—one of the most robust findings in behavioral science.

It’s well established that people approach risky decisions differently when deciding for themselves vs. for others.

A common idea is that we become more emotionally detached and objective when deciding for others—like how it’s easier to advise a friend than yourself.

My most rejected paper — and my final PhD paper, and first solo-author article — is out in @SocialPsychBull!

Preprint (+ data, code, materials): osf.io/bp4au_v1/

🧵 A thread 👇🏻

New paper in JPSP with dream team Erik Løhre, S. Prasad Chandrashekar, & Thorvald Hærem! Registered report replication + extension: desire for status is linked to greater overconfidence.

Many thanks to Erik for initiating the idea and project!

psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/ps…

OA: osf.io/fyx9c_v1