No evidence of inequality aversion in the investment game.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Rodriguez-Lara I
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6198942 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:In five experiments (N = 3,828), we investigate whether people prefer investment decisions to be made by human investment managers rather than by algorithms ("robos"). In all of the studies we investigate morally controversial companies, as it is plausible that a preference for humans as investment managers becomes exacerbated in areas where machines are less competent, such as morality. In Study 1, participants rated the permissibility of an algorithm to autonomously exclude morally controversial stocks from investment portfolios as lower than if a human fund manager did the same; this finding was not different if participants were informed that such exclusions might be financially disadvantageous for them. In Study 2, we show that this robo-investment aversion manifests itself both when considering investment in controversial and non-controversial industries. In Study 3, our findings show that robo-investment aversion is also present when algorithms are given the autonomy to increase investment in controversial stocks. In Studies 4 and 5, we investigate choices between actual humans and an algorithm. In Study 4 -which was incentivized-participants show no robo-investment aversion, but are significantly less likely to choose machines as investment managers for controversial stocks. In contrast, in Study 5 robo-investment aversion is present, but it is not different across controversial and non-controversial stocks. Overall, our findings show a considerable mean effect size for robo-investment aversion (d = -0.39 [-0.45, -0.32]). This suggests that algorithm aversion extends to the financial realm, supporting the existence of a barrier for the adoption of innovative financial technologies (FinTech).
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Project description:This paper reports data from three subject pools (n=717 subjects) using techniques based on those of Loewenstein, et al. (1989) and Blanco, et al. (2011) to obtain parameters, respectively, of stated and revealed inequality aversion. We provide a replication opportunity for those papers, with two innovations: (i) a design which allows stated and revealed preferences to be compared at the individual level; (ii) assessment of robustness of findings across subjects from a UK university, a Turkish university and Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our findings on stated aversion to inequality are qualitatively similar to those of Loewenstein, et al. in each of our subject pools, whereas there are notable differences between some of our findings on revealed preference and those of Blanco, et al. We find that revealed advantageous inequality aversion is often stronger than revealed dis-advantageous inequality aversion. In most subject pools, we find some (weak) correlation between corresponding parameters of stated and revealed inequality aversion.
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Project description:Health inequality aversion parameters can be used to represent alternative value judgements about policy concern for reducing health inequality versus improving total health. In this study, we use data from an online survey of the general public in England (n?=?244) to elicit health inequality aversion parameters for both Atkinson and Kolm social welfare functions. We find median inequality aversion parameters of 10.95 for Atkinson and 0.15 for Kolm. These values suggest substantial concern for health inequality among the English general public which, at current levels of quality adjusted life expectancy, implies weighting health gains to the poorest fifth of people in society six to seven times as highly as health gains to the richest fifth. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Project description:As robots become more advanced and capable, developing trust is an important factor of human-robot interaction and cooperation. However, as multiple environmental and social factors can influence trust, it is important to develop more elaborate scenarios and methods to measure human-robot trust. A widely used measurement of trust in social science is the investment game. In this study, we propose a scaled-up, immersive, science fiction Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) scenario for intrinsic motivation on human-robot collaboration, built upon the investment game and aimed at adapting the investment game for human-robot trust. For this purpose, we utilize two Neuro-Inspired COmpanion (NICO) - robots and a projected scenery. We investigate the applicability of our space mission experiment design to measure trust and the impact of non-verbal communication. We observe a correlation of 0.43 ( p=0.02 ) between self-assessed trust and trust measured from the game, and a positive impact of non-verbal communication on trust ( p=0.0008 ) and robot perception for anthropomorphism ( p=0.007 ) and animacy ( p=0.00002 ). We conclude that our scenario is an appropriate method to measure trust in human-robot interaction and also to study how non-verbal communication influences a human's trust in robots.
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Project description:Political polarization and extremism are widely thought to be driven by the surge in economic inequality in many countries around the world. Understanding why inequality persists depends on knowing the causal effect of inequality on individual behavior. We study how inequality affects redistribution behavior in a randomized "give-or-take" experiment that created equality, advantageous inequality, or disadvantageous inequality between two individuals before offering one of them the opportunity to either take from or give to the other. We estimate the causal effect of inequality in representative samples of German and American citizens (n = 4,966) and establish two main findings. First, individuals imperfectly equalize payoffs: On average, respondents transfer 12% of the available endowments to realize more equal wealth distributions. This means that respondents tolerate a considerable degree of inequality even in a setting in which there are no costs to redistribution. Second, redistribution behavior in response to disadvantageous and advantageous inequality is largely asymmetric: Individuals who take from those who are richer do not also tend to give to those who are poorer, and individuals who give to those who are poorer do not tend to take from those who are richer. These behavioral redistribution types correlate in meaningful ways with support for heavy taxes on the rich and the provision of welfare benefits for the poor. Consequently, it seems difficult to construct a majority coalition willing to back the type of government interventions needed to counter rising inequality.
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Project description:It has been suggested that inequity aversion is a mechanism that evolved in humans to maximize the pay-offs from engaging in cooperative tasks and to foster long-term cooperative relationships between unrelated individuals. In support of this, evidence of inequity aversion in nonhuman animals has typically been found in species that, like humans, live in complex social groups and demonstrate cooperative behaviours. We examined inequity aversion in the kea (Nestor notabilis), which lives in social groups but does not appear to demonstrate wild cooperative behaviours, using a classic token exchange paradigm. We compared the number of successful exchanges and the number of abandoned trials in each condition and found no evidence of an aversion to inequitable outcomes when there was a difference between reward quality or working effort required between actor and partner. We also found no evidence of inequity aversion when the subject received no reward while their partner received a low-value reward.
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Project description:There is evidence that in more economically unequal societies, social relations are more strained. We argue that this may reflect the tendency for wealth to become a more fitting lens for seeing the world, so that in economically more unequal circumstances, people more readily divide the world into "the haves" and "have nots." Our argument is supported by archival and experimental evidence. Two archival analyses reveal that at times of greater inequality, books in the United Kingdom and the United States and news media in English-speaking countries were more likely to mention the rich and poor. Three experiments, two preregistered, provided evidence for the causal role of economic inequality in people's use of wealth categories when describing life in a fictional society; effects were weaker when examining real economic contexts. Thus, one way in which inequality changes the world may be by changing how we see it.
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