Papers by Christopher Olivola
Going With Your Gut Feelings Lands You in the Financial Gutter: Decision Making Style in Adolescence Predicts Financial Well- Being in Adulthood
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2011
This chapter reviews the literature on the consumer psychology of taxes. We begin with a discussi... more This chapter reviews the literature on the consumer psychology of taxes. We begin with a discussion of consumers’ attitudes toward taxes and how they influence decisions to comply with tax payments that regulators can neither directly monitor nor enforce with certainty (e.g., taxes on incomes that are “off the books”). Next, we examine how taxes can shape consumer preferences and purchasing choices. We then consider key demographic variables that seem to moderate consumers’ sensitivity to taxes. We conclude by discussing future directions of research and some unanswered questions.
Year after year, thousands of human lives are permanently extinguished by large-scale events such... more Year after year, thousands of human lives are permanently extinguished by large-scale events such as disasters, epidemics, and armed conflicts, while millions more are claimed by frequent small-scale events, such road accidents and fires. Preventing these fatalities should be a priority for policymakers, because death is irreversible, and survival necessarily precedes other forms of human welfare. Minimizing fatalities requires that policymakers respond to deadly events and that they effectively focus their attention, efforts, and life-saving resources on preventing the largest (aggregated) death tolls. However, the deployment of any major intervention, even one designed to save lives, requires sufficient political will, which in turn depends on people being moved to action by the number of lives at risk. All else being equal, responses to deadly events should be proportional to their potential death tolls, and support for life-saving interventions should grow steadily with the number of lives they are expected to save. Unfortunately, people’s reactions to deadly events generally fall short of these principles and instead reveal systematic limitations in their ability to properly evaluate human fatalities. This article discusses some of the cognitive factors that govern, and often skew, the way people perceive and respond to deadly events. I show that our failures to correctly prioritize and address the biggest causes of human casualties are driven by limitations and biases in perception, attention, and categorization. Understanding these psychological fallibilities will help policymakers recognize, and ultimately guard against, biases that hinder the deployment of important life-saving policies.
Our success and well-being, as individuals and societies, depend on our ability to make wise soci... more Our success and well-being, as individuals and societies, depend on our ability to make wise social decisions about important interpersonal matters, such as the lea- ders we select and the individuals we choose to trust. Nevertheless, our impressions of people are shaped by their facial appearances and, consequently, so too are these social decisions. This article summarizes research linking facial morphological traits to important social outcomes and discusses various factors that moderate this relationship.
Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributin... more Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributing social and personality characteristics from facial ap- pearance. Recent studies have shown that surprisingly little time and effort are needed to arrive at this consensus. Here we review recent research on so- cial attributions from faces. Section I outlines data-driven methods capable of identifying the perceptual basis of consensus in social attributions from faces (e.g., What makes a face look threatening?). Section II describes non- perceptual determinants of social attributions (e.g., person knowledge and incidental associations). Section III discusses evidence that attributions from faces predict important social outcomes in diverse domains (e.g., investment decisions and leader selection). In Section IV, we argue that the diagnostic validity of these attributions has been greatly overstated in the literature. In the final section, we offer an account of the functional significance of these attributions.
Recent research has identified several judgment and decision making tendencies associated with ri... more Recent research has identified several judgment and decision making tendencies associated with right-leaning political ideologies that are difficult (if not impossible) to explain in terms of stable, negative affective appraisals because they (1) are uncorrelated with the negativity of the stimuli being considered, (2) do not reflect divergent affective evaluations, and (3) can be eliminated by superficial manipulations and interventions.
Recent studies provide convincing evidence that data on online information gathering, alongside m... more Recent studies provide convincing evidence that data on online information gathering, alongside massive real-world datasets, can give new insights into real-world collective decision making and can even anticipate future actions. We argue that Bentley et al.’s timely account should consider the full breadth, and, above all, the predictive power of big data.
Vast quantities of data on human behavior are being created by our everyday internet usage. Build...
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Papers by Christopher Olivola