Eldar Shafir
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1831868 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Eldar Shafir |
| NOMBRES | Eldar |
| APELLIDO | Shafir |
| FIRMA | SHAFIR E |
| AFILIACIONES | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8811-4296 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 40 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 143 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 38 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1989 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Poverty, piety, and pride”
In the present study, we delved into the personal and societal impacts of poverty in the low-income Ultraorthodox Jewish communities of Williamsburg, Borough Park, Lakewood, and Passaic along the East Coast of the United States. Based on 44 interviews with individuals who live in poverty, three main themes were found. The first revolved around issues of identity unique to Ultraorthodox society, characterized by deliberate segregation, the preserv…
Choice Set Size Shapes Self-Expression
Across six studies (total N = 3,549), we find that participants who were randomly assigned to choose from larger assortments thought their choices were more self-expressive, an effect that emerged regardless of whether larger sets actually enabled participants to better satisfy their preferences. Studies examining the moderating role of choice domain and cultural context show that the effect of choice set size on perceived self-expression may be …
Temporary Self-Deprivation Can Impair Cognitive Control
During Ramadan, people of Muslim faith fast by not eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset. This is likely to have physiological and psychological consequences for fasters, and societal and economic impacts on the wider population. We investigate whether, during this voluntary and temporally limited fast, reminders of food can impair the fasters’ reaction time and accuracy on a non-food-related test of cognitive control. Using a repeated me…
The thick skin bias in judgments about people in poverty
We present a series of studies documenting what we call a ‘thick skin bias’ in people's perceptions of those living in poverty. Across a wide range of life events, from major to minor, people of lower socioeconomic status (SES) are systematically perceived as being less harmed by negative experiences than higher-SES people, even when this is patently false. In 18 studies, including a pre-registered survey of a nationally representative sample, we…
An exercise in self-replication
Economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces
Money in the Mental Lives of the Poor
Recent research has studied how resource scarcity draws attention and creates cognitive load. As a result, scarcity improves some dimensions of cognitive function, while worsening others. Still, there remains a fundamental question: how does scarcity influence the content of cognition? In this article, we find that poor individuals (i.e., those facing monetary scarcity) see many everyday experiences through a different lens. Specifically, thought…
Economic Inequality and Social Progress
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Behaviorally Informed Regulation
Policy makers typically approach human behavior from the perspective of the rational agent model, which relics on normativc, a priori analyses. The model assumes people make insightful, well-planned, highly controlled, and calculated decisions guided by considerations of personal utility. This perspective is promoted in the social sciences and in professional schools and has come to dominate much of the formulation and conduct of policy. An alter…
Are ‘nudges’ getting a fair shot? Joint versus separate evaluation
The most effective behavioral policies are often also the most contentious. Psychologically informed interventions that promote non-deliberative behaviors (‘nudges’) are often more effective than ‘traditional’ policies (like informational and educational campaigns) that target more deliberative processes. Yet, precisely because of their deliberative nature, people are often said to prefer the latter over the former. In contrast, we provide eviden…
An opportunity for self-replication
Scarcity Frames Value
Economic models of decision making assume that people have a stable way of thinking about value. In contrast, psychology has shown that people’s preferences are often malleable and influenced by normatively irrelevant contextual features. Whereas economics derives its predictions from the assumption that people navigate a world of scarce resources, recent psychological work has shown that people often do not attend to scarcity. In this article, w…
The Persistence of Poverty in the Context of Financial Instability
We review recent findings regarding the psychology of decisionmaking in contexts of poverty, and consider their application to public policy. Of particular interest are the oft‐neglected psychological and behavioral consequences of economic scarcity coupled with financial instability. The novel framework highlights the psychological costs of low and unstable incomes, and how these can transform small and momentary financial hurdles into long‐last…
The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy
Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function
Burden of Poverty Lacking money or time can lead one to make poorer decisions, possibly because poverty imposes a cognitive load that saps attention and reduces effort. Mani et al. (p. 976 ; see the Perspective by Vohs) gathered evidence from shoppers in a New Jersey mall and from farmers in Tamil Nadu, India. They found that considering a projected financial decision, such as how to pay for a car repair, affects people's performance on unrelated…
The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy
In recent years, remarkable progress has been made in behavioral research on a wide variety of topics, from behavioral finance, labor contracts, philanthropy, and the analysis of savings and poverty, to eyewitness identification and sentencing decisions, racism, sexism, health behaviors, and voting. Research findings have often been strikingly counterintuitive, with serious implications for public policymaking. In this book, leading experts in ps…
Some Consequences of Having Too Little
Poor Choices Two categories of reasons for why poor people make economically unsound choices, such as obtaining a payday loan at an extraordinarily high rate of interest, reflect, first, the environment: Poor people are more likely to be living in poor neighborhoods with higher rates of crime and lower rates of social services. Second, they reflect the individual: People are poor in part because of their own psychological dispositions toward impa…
The Martyrdom Effect
Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effor…
Behavioral Economics and Marketing in Aid of Decision Making among the Poor
This article considers several aspects of the economic decision making of the poor from the perspective of behavioral economics, and it focuses on potential contributions from marketing. Among other things, the authors consider some relevant facets of the social and institutional environments in which the poor interact, and they review some behavioral patterns that are likely to arise in these contexts. A behaviorally more informed perspective ca…
The long and short of it
Attempts to reconstruct the magnitude of recently encountered physical stimuli were influenced by the provision of physical anchors. Whether estimating length, weight, or loudness, those increasing the magnitude of a relatively small (short, light, or quiet) physical anchor produced estimates that were reliably lower than did those decreasing the magnitude of a relatively large (long, heavy, or loud) anchor. Estimates produced without an anchor w…
Now that i think about it, i'm in the mood for laughs
Four studies examined the impact that thinking about mood can have on people's choices. In Study 1, participants who were asked to suppose they were in good, bad, or neutral moods were more likely to choose a silly comedic movie over an otherwise more attractive drama, compared to others who had not thought about mood. Similar patterns were observed when people introspected about how they felt before making a hypothetical choice (Study 2) or an a…
Invest now, drink later, spend never
A Behavioral-Economics View of Poverty
Economics
Deep thoughts and shallow frames
This paper examines the occurrence of framing effects when more thought is given to problems. In Study 1, participants were presented with one of two frames of several decision problems. Participants' Need for Cognition (NC) scores were obtained, and half the participants were asked to justify their choices. Substantial framing effects were observed, but the amount of thought purportedly given to a problem, whether manipulated by justification el…
Rationality
This chapter reviews selected findings in research on reasoning, judgment, and choice and considers the systematic ways in which people violate basic requirements of the corresponding normative analyses. Recent objections to the empirical findings are then considered; these objections question the findings' relevance to assumptions about rationality. These objections address the adequacy of the tasks used in the aforementioned research and the ap…
The Persistence of Poverty in the Context of Financial Instability
We review recent findings regarding the psychology of decisionmaking in contexts of poverty, and consider their application to public policy. Of particular interest are the oft‐neglected psychological and behavioral consequences of economic scarcity coupled with financial instability. The novel framework highlights the psychological costs of low and unstable incomes, and how these can transform small and momentary financial hurdles into long‐last…
The Martyrdom Effect
Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effor…
Deep thoughts and shallow frames
This paper examines the occurrence of framing effects when more thought is given to problems. In Study 1, participants were presented with one of two frames of several decision problems. Participants' Need for Cognition (NC) scores were obtained, and half the participants were asked to justify their choices. Substantial framing effects were observed, but the amount of thought purportedly given to a problem, whether manipulated by justification el…
Prospect Theory and Political Analysis
Certain difficulties from the point of view of psychological theorizing arise from the application of prospect theory to the analysis of political events. A number of issues, ranging from probability estimation and risk attitudes to the endowment effect and loss aversion, are discussed as they relate to the decision-maker, his or her current position, the values of outcomes, and their probabilities
Invest now, drink later, spend never
Are ‘nudges’ getting a fair shot? Joint versus separate evaluation
The most effective behavioral policies are often also the most contentious. Psychologically informed interventions that promote non-deliberative behaviors (‘nudges’) are often more effective than ‘traditional’ policies (like informational and educational campaigns) that target more deliberative processes. Yet, precisely because of their deliberative nature, people are often said to prefer the latter over the former. In contrast, we provide eviden…
An exercise in self-replication
On the pursuit and misuse of useless information
Decision makers often pursue noninstrumental information--information that appears relevant but, if simply available, would have no impact on choice. Once they pursue such information, people then use it to make their decision. Consequently, the pursuit of information that would have had no impact on choice leads people to make choices they would not otherwise have made. The pursuit of noninstrumental information is documented and its effects on …
An advantage model of choice
A descriptive model of choice between simple lotteries is proposed. According to the model, people combine 'absolute' and 'comparative' strategies in choice situations. Three experimental tests of the model are reported. In its limited domain, the model appears superior to Prospect Theory on qualitative grounds, and to 1‐parameter versions of Expected Utility Theory on both qualitative and quantitative grounds
The thick skin bias in judgments about people in poverty
We present a series of studies documenting what we call a ‘thick skin bias’ in people's perceptions of those living in poverty. Across a wide range of life events, from major to minor, people of lower socioeconomic status (SES) are systematically perceived as being less harmed by negative experiences than higher-SES people, even when this is patently false. In 18 studies, including a pre-registered survey of a nationally representative sample, we…
The long and short of it
Attempts to reconstruct the magnitude of recently encountered physical stimuli were influenced by the provision of physical anchors. Whether estimating length, weight, or loudness, those increasing the magnitude of a relatively small (short, light, or quiet) physical anchor produced estimates that were reliably lower than did those decreasing the magnitude of a relatively large (long, heavy, or loud) anchor. Estimates produced without an anchor w…
Thinking about Politics
Economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces
Now that i think about it, i'm in the mood for laughs
Four studies examined the impact that thinking about mood can have on people's choices. In Study 1, participants who were asked to suppose they were in good, bad, or neutral moods were more likely to choose a silly comedic movie over an otherwise more attractive drama, compared to others who had not thought about mood. Similar patterns were observed when people introspected about how they felt before making a hypothetical choice (Study 2) or an a…
An opportunity for self-replication
Obituary
An advantage model of choice
A descriptive model of choice between simple lotteries is proposed. According to the model, people combine 'absolute' and 'comparative' strategies in choice situations. Three experimental tests of the model are reported. In its limited domain, the model appears superior to Prospect Theory on qualitative grounds, and to 1‐parameter versions of Expected Utility Theory on both qualitative and quantitative grounds
Category-based induction.
An argument is categorical if its premises and conclusion are of the form All members ofC have property F, where C is a natural category like FALCON or BIRD, and P remains the same across premises and conclusion. An example is Grizzly bears love onions. Therefore, all bears love onions. Such an argument is psychologically strong to the extent that belief in its premises engenders belief in its conclusion. A subclass of categorical arguments is ex…
Thinking through uncertainty
Choice under Conflict
Choice often produces conflict. This notion, however, plays no role in classical decision theory, in which each alternative is assigned a value, and the decision maker selects from every choice set the option with the highest value. We contrast this principle of value maximization with the hypothesis that the option to delay choice or seek new alternatives is more likely to be selected when conflict is high than when it is low. This hypothesis is…
The Disjunction Effect in Choice under Uncertainty
One of the basic axioms of the rational theory of decision under uncertainty is Savage's (1954) sure-thing principle (STP) It states that if prospect x is preferred to y knowing that Event A occurred, and if x is preferred to y knowing that A did not occur, then x should be preferred to y even when it is not known whether A occurred We present examples in which the decision maker has good reasons for accepting x if A occurs, and different reasons…
Thinking about Politics
Prospect Theory and Political Analysis
Certain difficulties from the point of view of psychological theorizing arise from the application of prospect theory to the analysis of political events. A number of issues, ranging from probability estimation and risk attitudes to the endowment effect and loss aversion, are discussed as they relate to the decision-maker, his or her current position, the values of outcomes, and their probabilities
Reason-based choice
Choosing versus rejecting
Compatibility in Cognition and Decision
Money Illusion
The term “money illusion” refers to a tendency to think in terms of nominal rather than real monetary values. Money illusion has significant implications for economic theory, yet it implies a lack of rationality that is alien to economists. This paper reviews survey questions regarding people's reactions to variations in inflation and prices, designed to shed light on the psychology that underlies money illusion. We propose that people often thin…
Obituary
Obituary
On the pursuit and misuse of useless information
Decision makers often pursue noninstrumental information--information that appears relevant but, if simply available, would have no impact on choice. Once they pursue such information, people then use it to make their decision. Consequently, the pursuit of information that would have had no impact on choice leads people to make choices they would not otherwise have made. The pursuit of noninstrumental information is documented and its effects on …
Problems and methods in naturalistic decision‐making research
Rationality
This chapter reviews selected findings in research on reasoning, judgment, and choice and considers the systematic ways in which people violate basic requirements of the corresponding normative analyses. Recent objections to the empirical findings are then considered; these objections question the findings' relevance to assumptions about rationality. These objections address the adequacy of the tasks used in the aforementioned research and the ap…
Deep thoughts and shallow frames
This paper examines the occurrence of framing effects when more thought is given to problems. In Study 1, participants were presented with one of two frames of several decision problems. Participants' Need for Cognition (NC) scores were obtained, and half the participants were asked to justify their choices. Substantial framing effects were observed, but the amount of thought purportedly given to a problem, whether manipulated by justification el…
A Behavioral-Economics View of Poverty
Economics
Behavioral Economics and Marketing in Aid of Decision Making among the Poor
This article considers several aspects of the economic decision making of the poor from the perspective of behavioral economics, and it focuses on potential contributions from marketing. Among other things, the authors consider some relevant facets of the social and institutional environments in which the poor interact, and they review some behavioral patterns that are likely to arise in these contexts. A behaviorally more informed perspective ca…
The long and short of it
Attempts to reconstruct the magnitude of recently encountered physical stimuli were influenced by the provision of physical anchors. Whether estimating length, weight, or loudness, those increasing the magnitude of a relatively small (short, light, or quiet) physical anchor produced estimates that were reliably lower than did those decreasing the magnitude of a relatively large (long, heavy, or loud) anchor. Estimates produced without an anchor w…
Now that i think about it, i'm in the mood for laughs
Four studies examined the impact that thinking about mood can have on people's choices. In Study 1, participants who were asked to suppose they were in good, bad, or neutral moods were more likely to choose a silly comedic movie over an otherwise more attractive drama, compared to others who had not thought about mood. Similar patterns were observed when people introspected about how they felt before making a hypothetical choice (Study 2) or an a…
Invest now, drink later, spend never
The Martyrdom Effect
Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effor…
Some Consequences of Having Too Little
Poor Choices Two categories of reasons for why poor people make economically unsound choices, such as obtaining a payday loan at an extraordinarily high rate of interest, reflect, first, the environment: Poor people are more likely to be living in poor neighborhoods with higher rates of crime and lower rates of social services. Second, they reflect the individual: People are poor in part because of their own psychological dispositions toward impa…
The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy
Psychology (36 obras) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (24 obras) · Social Psychology (23 obras) · Computer Science (19 obras) · Economics (19 obras) · Microeconomics (12 obras) · Epistemology (10 obras) · Political science (10 obras) · Social Psychology (10 obras) · Cognitive psychology (9 obras)