To gain a deeper understanding of people's behavior, it can be insightful to look at people's individual characteristics. These individual disparities may explain varying decision-making and behavior in similar environments. In my studies so far, I used well-established elicitation methods for several different preferences some of which we adjusted for our experiments in Ghana. As well as that, we have created a multiple-choice real-effort task.
In the following, I give a summary of the measures that we used to elicit preferences (and other characteristics) and provide links to the original paper and supporting material for the practical implementation. I differentiate between incentivized (experimental; based on decision-making with monetary consequences) and non-incentivized (hypothetical; based on survey questions) measurement methods. In an ongoing study, we investigate if well-established experimental measures such as competitive preferences can be approximated with simple survey measures. First results look promising!
I do not claim that the list is exhaustive since I only refer to people's attributes that I have chosen to elicit in my own past research projects.
Some people can be categorized as risk averse and others as risk seeking. Risk averse people prefer situations with certainty over situations with uncertainty even when the uncertain situation hold potentially higher payoffs. Risk preferences may play a role, e.g., for the choice for an occupation or the decision to invest in risky stocks. There is a vast range of elicitation methods available. Charness et al. (2013) balance off pros and cons of different lab methods and discuss for which questions one or the other measure may be superior. When lab experiments cannot be implemented, a study by Dohmen et al. (2011) suggest that the general question in the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) correlates best with behavior in a lottery experiment.
Incentivized elicitation method:
Find a simple way to elicit risk preferences in the paper by Charness & Viceisza (2016) which is based on the Gneezy-Potters task. We used a modified version of this measure in the project "Competition and Prosociality - A Field Experiment in Ghana".
Another simple way to elicit risk preferences with lottery choice had been developed by Eckel & Grossmann (2002). We use this measure in our study "Contract Compliance under Biased Expectations".
Non-incentivized / survey elicitation method:
"Are you generally willing to take risks, or do you try to avoid risks? Please tick a box on the scale, where the value 0 means: “risk averse” and the value 10 means “fully prepared to take risks”". Asking this general question on risk from the SOEP is a very time-efficient way to elicit risk preferences and had been proven as a good approximation of experimental lab measures (see in the introductory text above).
Losses loom larger than gains (Kahneman & Tversky 1979). Loss aversion refers to people's preference rather not to lose a certain amount than gaining this exact similar amount. Put differently, the utility loss is higher in magnitude when losing 5€ than an utility gain would be when winning 5€.
Loss aversion may play a role in any situation where someone anticipates a loss in the future. Hence, it may influence the decision to take up an insurance or people's saving's rate.
Incentivized elicitation method:
Find a simple way to elicit loss aversion in the paper by Gächter et al. (2010).
We modified the version slightly for our lab-in-the-field experiment in Ghana; see here for the instructions (p. 51).
Some people seek for competition, some people try to avoid competitive environments. It seems that women rather shy away from competition. May that explain why women do not ask for a promotion and forgo chances for high-ranked positions in the job market? Maybe...
Incentivized elicitation method:
A preference for competition can be elicited with a method by Niederle and Vesterlund (2007).
We used this measure in a modified form in our project "Competition and Prosociality". Here, we played a simple marble game where one marble was placed at the wall. Another marble is given to the participant who has to try to hit the marble on the wall from a certain distance as often as s/he can. 10 shots are granted. There are 3 rounds. The payment scheme of round 1 and 2 are randomly varied and it is either a piece-rate payment scheme or a competitive payment scheme where winning against another anonymous participant yields a high earning while losing a relatively low earning. In the 3rd round, this is the crucial round, the participant has the choice: tournament or piece-rate payment? This determines his/her preference: either competitive (choice for the tournament) or non-competitive (choice for a piece-rate payment).
Some people may feel guilty when they do not stick to their promise or pass a beggar on a street without donating any coins. Pupils may be ashamed when they are in school being detected of not having completed their homework. How can we measure the strength of guilt and shame feelings?
Non-incentivized / survey elicitation method:
Cohen (2011) offers an elicitation method with different scenarios that participants have to rate.
We used this measure in our experiment on "Contract compliance under biased expectations" with students in Ghana.
Inequality aversion measures the level of aversion towards monetary inequalities between oneself and an anonymous other person (Fehr & Schmidt (1999)). It can be differentiated between advantageous inequality aversion, i.e., the preference to possess a larger amount than another person, and disadvantageous inequality aversion, i.e., the preference to possess a smaller amount than another person.
This preference may play a role for income satisfaction and work motivation when salaries among employees vary and are disclosed. People with a high inequality aversion may try to equalize incomes between themselves and other people. That way, inequality aversion may help to explain donation decisions to charities or other altruistic deeds.
Incentivized elicitation methods:
Blanco, Engelmann & Normann (2011) provide a method to elicit advantageous inequality aversion ("beta") and disadvantageous inequality aversion ("alpha"). This measure is based on the paper by Fehr & Schmidt (1999). Have a look at our paper on discriminatory pay regimes (instructions can be found at the appendix of the paper) for an idea of how to implement the game.
We used a simplified version of this method in our lab experiment "Contract Compliance under Biased Expectations" with students in Ghana. Have a glance at our instructions (p.27).
Fehr et al. (2008) introduce in their paper a very simple elicitation method for inequality aversion that we used in our project "Competition and Prosociality - A Field Experiment in Ghana" for a study with farm workers.
Social Value Orientation (SVO) can be described as the magnitude of concern people have for others. For instant, people can be altruistic and always try to maximize other people's welfare; or they may be individualistic and selfishly maximize their own payoff rather than being concerned with other people's payoff.
Applications for SVO are manifold. For instance, in work departments more altruistic types would try to make everybody else in the department happy by taking over tasks or allocating money to coworkers' projects and more individualistic types would sharpen their elbows to carry their own individual interests through.
Incentivized elicitation method:
Murphy et al. (2011) provide evidence for the validity of their SVO measure and information about how to implement the method.
Material for implementation can be found here.
We used this elicitation method in several research projects since it is relatively easy to explain and to understand. Among the projects is one with mainly illiterate workers from Ghana. A proctor explained the game orally and used a poster for illustration. For further details have a look at the paper and the instructions of this project.
Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they can control their outcomes over their life. The more people believe that they can control their life's fate, rather than being directed by external powers, the higher is the internal locus of control.
Non-incentivized / survey elicitation method:
Rotter (1975) introduces a battery of opposing statements that have to be rated by the participant. The preference for one or the other statement is then assigned as either belief in internal or belief in external locus of control. Summed up over a list of statements that participant's decide on, a measure can be generated that gives insight on the level of internal locus of control.
We used this measure in our experiment on "Contract compliance under biased expectations" with students in Ghana.
Always anticipating good outcomes and interpreting situations in one's own favor is very optimistic whereas expecting something bad to happen and making oneself reliable for the occurrence of bad events is very pessimistic.
Non-incentivized / survey elicitation method:
Scheier et al (1985) developed a short catalogue of questions that can be quickly added to any survey.
We used this measure in our experiment on "Contract compliance under biased expectations" with students in Ghana.
Personality traits are seen as relatively stable over time. The big five personality traits encompass openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They are often referred to by the acronym OCEAN. Find here more information on each personality trait.
It has been found that personality traits have explanatory power for antisocial behavior at the workplace (e.g. Lynam & Miller 2001). As well, there is evidence that some personality traits, such as neuroticism and conscientiousness, are correlated with performance motivation (Judge & Illies 2002).
Non-incentivized / survey elicitation method:
The questionnaires used to measure the personality traits are usually long and cost time. There are short versions, too, that have been found good proxies. We used the Big-5 NEO FFI based on McCrae & Costa (1987) for our paper "Do Discriminatory Pay Regimes Unleash Antisocial Behavior?"
Core self-evaluation reflects an individual's evaluations about themselves, their own abilities and their own control. People who have high core self-evaluations will think positively of themselves and be confident in their own abilities.
The concept of core self-evaluations was first examined by Judge, Locke, and Durham (1998) and can predict positive work outcomes, specifically, job satisfaction and work performance.
Non-incentivized / survey elicitation method:
For our paper "Contract Compliance Under Biased Expectations" we used the scale suggested in Judge & Bono (2001) which is relatively simple and quite short.