Throughout my life, I have loved eating meat, but my two best friends at Duke are vegetarians, and because of them I was persuaded to read Eating Animals by one of my favorite contemporary authors, Jonathan Safran Foer. While Foer mainly writes novels, his newest book is non-fiction, and discusses many topics that revolve around, well…eating animals.

One of the main takeaways from the book is that the vast majority (about 99%) of the meat we eat in America comes from factory farms, where animals face a shocking level of unnecessary suffering, a kind of suffering that is generally unseen at local, organic farms. After reading the book, I still eat meat, but only if it comes from humanely-raised sources.

While reading Eating Animals, I couldn’t help but think of behavioral economics (a topic which, admittedly, is often on my mind anyway), and how so many behavioral economic principles seem to apply to various patterns of people’s general thoughts, emotions, and actions regarding meat. While I do not have the empirical data to support my musings, I figured I would share them as “food for thought.”

Identifiable Victim Effect: The massive scale on which factory farms operate is precisely what makes it so difficult to sympathize with the animals within them.

• Animal Abuse: Many people would be horrified if they saw a dog being hit by its owner, yet are relatively unconcerned (or just don’t think about) that the piece of meat they are eating undoubtedly lived a life of incomparably greater pain.
• Hunting: Many find hunting immoral, yet animals that are hunted would generally have lived a much better life up until death than animals in factory farms (e.g., the Sarah Palin hunting controversy and Aaron Sorkin’s infamous letter criticizing her, even though he is not a vegetarian, and so presumably eats factory-farmed meat..

One Step Removed (see the “Coke vs. dollar” study): Many would find it immoral to treat a cow, pig, or chicken the way that the ones we eventually eat are, but aren’t fazed with it being done for us indirectly by others (or just don’t think about it either way).

Social Norms and “Us” vs. “Them” (see the CMU vs. UPitt cheating study): Many non-vegetarians see others eating meat indiscriminately and so think doing so is OK, and may not stop and think much about a vegetarian’s reasons for not eating meat (which may be reasons non-vegetarians would actually agree with, too) because vegetarians may automatically be categorized as a fringe group.

“Hot” vs. “Cold” States (see the “laptop” study): Our food decisions (and therefore, our thinking about food) often occur when we are already in the “hot” state of hunger. When we are not hungry at all (in a “cold” state), we are probably more receptive to the logical arguments against eating factory-farmed meat, and might agree to do so. But the hungrier we get, the more likely we are to do something we might think of as unethical. This is the same reason that people find it so easy to find the resolve to quit smoking just after a cigarette, but nearly impossible when cravings set back in.

Paradox of Choice: Limiting our food options (by cutting out factory-farmed food options) should help us better appreciate the options that remain for us.

Dating: I was told that many vegetarians will only date fellow vegetarians, and the majority of vegetarians are female (60-67%)…so the demand for potential vegetarian males is much greater than the supply. Thus, for males, it would be irrational not to be a vegetarian to allow yourself access to this wonderful market of potential dates.

~Jared Wolfe~

On my drive to Asheville, NC this past weekend, I passed a multitude of billboards like the one below. According to multimillionaire Harold Camping, tomorrow is Judgment Day. You may have heard.

The idea of imminent rapture piqued my interest, so I looked into the matter, filling my brain with more than I ever wanted to know about the mathematically-inclined radio broadcaster and his cult of hopeful followers.

Although Camping’s 1994 doomsday prediction (clearly) turned out to be false, he has no doubts that this time he is on the right track. And why not? As you can see, the bible guarantees it! The alleged proof in favor of tomorrow’s rapture not only comes from the bible, but also from “indisputable” evidence in the form of devastating natural disasters and war, technological advances, economic crises, global governments…and, of course, the rise of the gays.

However, I’ve compiled a list of my own — a compendium of evidence in support of the impending demise of humanity:

• The Great Mississippi Flood
• The Sky is Falling
• Paris Hilton has a new reality show
• Sarah Palin has a NYT bestseller
• Extrasensory Perception (ESP) exists
• Touchdown Jesus is struck
• Kate and William postponed their honeymoon
• Charlie Sheen is no longer winning
• Obama becomes a US citizen
• Osama liked porn

• And, most notably, at this very minute I find myself wearing jeggings

When you think about behavioral science research, the image that probably comes to mind is that of laboratories, computers, surveys, electrodes, and maybe even rats — but you may not realize the amount of research conducted in the field. At the Center for Advanced Hindsight we certainly do our share of lab research, but we also like to shake things up and occasionally target the unsuspecting participant in their favorite local setting. For instance, you might find us at a popular eatery, your favorite independent bookstore, a busy shopping center, a science fair, or even driving around in our fancy research mobile.

On one of our latest excursions, we ventured out to Franklin Street, a hot spot for many Chapel Hillians to have a drink (or a few) and a good time. When the night was upon us we set out to answer the question: are you more likely to cheat when you’re drunk?

So we set up two research stations and waited for the bar crawlers to crawl. As the night progressed we surveyed the bar, recruiting bar-goers of varying drunkenness. Participants, many with drink in hand, played a 15-minute computer game that was designed to test their honesty. The game was a simple task where participants chose to pay themselves more or less money based on their choices in the game, and of course some of their decisions turned out to be more honest than others. We visited a wide array of bar scenes from the local band crowd to the underground pool players, the 90’s hip hoppers, the indie rockers, and even the Carrborites — and we found the same thing.

Our data shows a low to moderate correlation between cheating and drunkenness, which may suggest that the more alcohol you consume the more dishonest you become. Were the participants actually more dishonest? One could argue that perhaps that they were less capable of completing the task while intoxicated. Of course, we’ll need to keep looking into the possibility. And you can, too. Next time you are out with some friends, you might want to take a few minutes and conduct an “experiment” on your own.

~Jennifer Fink~

How the Start of a Month Changes Everything (or seems that way)

A couple days ago, we took advantage of the changing of the months to run a series of studies on people’s confidence in achieving their closely approaching goals.

We asked them questions about how successful they felt they would be in reaching their goals tomorrow and in the next few days and how different things would be. For some, we subtly reminded them of the upcoming May 1st.

  

We found that the reminder of “May” made people think that they and others would be far more successful. This was controlling for gender, level of current struggling, importance of the goal, and previous contentment with goal progress. And we looked at both specific and general sets of goals.

Why?  Calendar boundaries show how relatively irrelevant boundaries can drastically change how we compartmentalize events (For an example of how statelines can ‘prevent’ earthquakes see here). In this instance, a simple reminder of the upcoming month does not lead people to think that they themselves will change a lot but that the externalities that have recently been in their way will wane.

An Upside to Irrationality?

So how should we view this new finding? Are people being rational, irrational, or strategically irrational? We know from tons of research that people ignore base rates and make egregious forecasting errors about their life.

I think that this is an upside to irrationality. The new month gives us the opportunity to refocus and pre-commit to our goals through new gym memberships or a trip to an organic grocery store (I just signed up for an organic vegetable/fruit/bread delivery service, which I highly recommend). Furthermore, these temporal boundaries fill us with self-efficacy, which have been shown to be positively related to accomplishing goals.

Industries of self-help could take advantage of these boundaries and possibly create more “meaningless” boundaries to help motivate their clients.

Irrational or not, putting the past in the past is a great way to motivate us in the present. May your May be full of success!

~Troy Campbell~

The concept of opportunity cost can be seen in the emergent societal dilemma presented by Rebecca Black through her insightful lyrics:

“Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?”

As we can see, Rebecca must choose between kicking in the front seat and sitting in the back seat – two mutually exclusive options where her choice of either eliminates the opportunity to choose the other.

The same evaluation of opportunity cost can be seen in monetary exchanges that we make every day. In my dissertation work, I’ve focused on when consumers are more or less likely to reframe purchase decisions (like “Do I buy Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ or not?”) as allocation decisions (like “Do I buy Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday,’ or do I spend my money on something else instead?”).

Two important drivers are:
1) how constrained consumers feel
2) how much their resources bring other purchases to mind

First, I find that when consumers face more constraints, they are more likely to incorporate other purchases into their decisions. This constraint can be driven by cash on hand, annual income, or even the cycle on which you are paid. People paid weekly face less constraints on average (at least until the end of the month) than those paid monthly. As a result, those paid monthly are more likely to think “Do I buy this CD or not?” whereas those paid weekly are more likely to think “Do I buy this CD or do I spend my money on something else instead?”

Second, consumers can actually be more likely to fixate on their opportunity costs when they use resources with specific associations. Think about spending a Starbucks gift card versus a Visa gift card to buy Rebecca Black’s CD (imagining that it could be on the eclectic menu of CDs at Starbucks). The Starbucks gift card immediately makes you think about the coffee you could buy, so the decision changes from “Do I buy the CD or not?” to “Do I buy the CD or coffee?” The Visa gift card could be used to buy nearly anything but it doesn’t make you think about something else in particular, so the decision remains “Do I buy the CD or not?” What does this mean in practice? Starbucks coffee lovers are actually more likely to spend the Visa gift card than the Starbucks gift card even though the Visa gift card could be used to buy anything – including a Starbucks gift card!

Here at the Center for Advanced Hindsight, we see these factors at play constantly — and not just when spending money. At the beginning of the day, I have plenty of time (or convince myself of that at least), so the decision to write a blog post is “Do I write it or not?” but at the end of the day, the decision is “Do I write it now, or do I work on my paper, or do I watch the ‘Friday’ video, or do I go to sleep?” Some times of day have specific associations, so at 10:00am, the question may be “Do I write the blog post or not?” whereas as at 12:00pm, the question is “Do I write the blog post or do I eat lunch?” Take a guess when I finally got around to writing this… But our discussion of procrastination will have to wait for another day.

For more details, see “Opportunity Cost Consideration,” forthcoming in the December 2011 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

~Stephen Spiller~