Jonathan Robinson

Biographic Data

ID3604772
NAMEJonathan Robinson
GIVEN NAMESJonathan
FAMILY NAMERobinson
SIGNATUREROBINSON J
AFFILIATIONSAnglo-Boer War Museum
ORCID0000-0002-4862-204X
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS49
TOTAL CITATIONS483
AUTHOR COUNT49
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1949
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX11

  • The Bots Ruining Social Science Are Not Bots at All

    Open AccessShalom N Jaffe, Aaron J Mo et al.ARTICLEPerspectives on Psychological…2026

    Researchers who employ online data collection from human subjects currently face a conundrum: It is both essential to how behavioral science functions and threatened by low-quality data. It is often assumed that random, inconsistent, and otherwise incomprehensible data in online surveys comes mainly from bots. Despite this assumption, few studies have directly examined where problematic data comes from, even though identifying the source has impo…

  • Self-caught reports of dreaming and mind wandering in a naturalistic environment: An online questionnaire study

    Open AccessManuela Kirberg, Jonathan Robinson et al.ARTICLEPhenomenology and the Cognitive…2025

    Spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as dreaming and mind wandering, form a significant part of our conscious mental lives. Yet, the precise phenomenological and content-related similarities and differences between dreaming and waking mind wandering remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we address this gap by comparing 340 dreaming and mind wandering questionnaire responses that depending on the answers of participants ranged fro…

  • Dwelling on the positive: Eye-tracking and electroencephalogram indicators of posttraumatic growth

    Open AccessA J Glazebrook, Jane Shakespeare-Finch et al.ARTICLEPsychological Trauma Theory…2025

    Eye-tracking findings offer novel physiological evidence of the salience of positive imagery for people with greater PTG. Larger N170 responses to negative images may offer a physiological marker of the pronounced threat recognition present in people with increased PTSD symptom severity. The propensity for individuals with more PTG to focus on positive, life-affirming images may underpin the more constructive worldviews and contemplative delibera…

  • Market Access, Trade Costs, and Technology Adoption: Evidence from Northern Tanzania

    Shilpa Aggarwal, Brian Giera et al.ARTICLEThe Review of Economics and…2024

    We collect data on prices, travel costs, and farmer decisions to quantify market access for chemical fertilizer and its impact on agricultural productivity in 1,180 villages in Northern Tanzania. Villages at the bottom of the travel cost-adjusted input price distribution face 40%–55% less favorable prices than those at the top. A standard deviation increase in village-level remoteness is associated with 20%–25% lower input adoption. A spatial mod…

  • Shortening the path to productive investment: Evidence from input fairs and cash transfers in Malawi

    Open AccessShilpa Aggarwal, Dahyeon Jeong et al.ARTICLEJournal of Development Economics2024Cited by: 2References: 2

  • Is Digital Credit Filling a Hole or Digging a Hole? Evidence from Malawi

    Open AccessValentina Brailovskaya, Pascaline Dupas et al.ARTICLEThe Economic Journal2023Cited by: 3

    Digital credit has expanded rapidly in Africa, with opaque loan terms amidst low consumer financial literacy. Rich data from Malawi shows substantial demand for a digital loan with a base interest rate of 10% over 15 days, yet most borrowers are not aware of loan terms, repay late and incur substantial late fees. Regression discontinuity analyses show no evidence that access to small digital loans harms consumers’ perceived well-being. A short, r…

  • Evaluating CloudResearch’s Approved Group as a solution for problematic data quality on MTurk

    Open AccessDavid Hauser, Aaron J Mo et al.ARTICLEBehavior Research Methods2022

    Maintaining data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has always been a concern for researchers. These concerns have grown recently due to the bot crisis of 2018 and observations that past safeguards of data quality (e.g., approval ratings of 95%) no longer work. To address data quality concerns, CloudResearch, a third-party website that interfaces with MTurk, has assessed ~165,000 MTurkers and categorized them into those that provide high- …

  • Exhaustive or exhausting? Evidence on respondent fatigue in long surveys

    Open AccessDahyeon Jeong, Shilpa Aggarwal et al.ARTICLEJournal of Development Economics2022Cited by: 10References: 2

  • Paranoia and belief updating during the Covid-19 crisis

    Open AccessPraveen Suthaharan, Eric J Reed et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2021Cited by: 7References: 44

    The COVID-19 pandemic has made the world seem less predictable. Such crises can lead people to feel that others are a threat. Here, we show that the initial phase of the pandemic in 2020 increased individuals’ paranoia and made their belief updating more erratic. A proactive lockdown made people’s belief updating less capricious. However, state-mandated mask-wearing increased paranoia and induced more erratic behaviour. This was most evident in s…

  • Online panels in social science research: Expanding sampling methods beyond Mechanical Turk

    Open AccessJoan Chandler, Jesse Chandler et al.ARTICLEBehavior Research Methods2019

    Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is widely used by behavioral scientists to recruit research participants. MTurk offers advantages over traditional student subject pools, but it also has important limitations. In particular, the MTurk population is small and potentially overused, and some groups of interest to behavioral scientists are underrepresented and difficult to recruit. Here we examined whether online research panels can avoid these limitat…

  • Both Intrinsic and Extrinsic Religious Orientation are Positively Associated with Attitudes Toward Cleanliness: Exploring Multiple Routes from Godliness to Cleanliness

    Open AccessLeib Litman, Jonathan Robinson et al.ARTICLEJournal of Religion and Health2019

  • The Effect of Savings Accounts on Interpersonal Financial Relationships: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Rural Kenya

    Open AccessPascaline Dupas, Anthony Keats et al.ARTICLEThe Economic Journal2019Cited by: 9References: 22

    The welfare impact of expanding access to bank accounts depends on whether accounts crowd out pre-existing financial relationships, or whether private gains from accounts are shared within social networks. In this experiment, we provided free bank accounts to a random subset of 885 households. Across households, we document positive spillovers: treatment households become less reliant on grown children and siblings living outside their village, a…

  • Grain today, gain tomorrow: Evidence from a storage experiment with savings clubs in Kenya

    Open AccessShilpa Aggarwal, Eilin Francis et al.ARTICLEJournal of Development Economics2018Cited by: 8References: 8

  • Racial Disparities in Cleanliness Attitudes Mediate Purchasing Attitudes Toward Cleaning Products: A Serial Mediation Model

    Open AccessLeib Litman, M T Williams et al.ARTICLEJournal of Racial and Ethnic…2018References: 30

  • TurkPrime.com: A versatile crowdsourcing data acquisition platform for the behavioral sciences

    Open AccessLeib Litman, Jonathan Robinson et al.ARTICLEBehavior Research Methods2017

    In recent years, Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has revolutionized social science by providing a way to collect behavioral data with unprecedented speed and efficiency. However, MTurk was not intended to be a research tool, and many common research tasks are difficult and time-consuming to implement as a result. TurkPrime was designed as a research platform that integrates with MTurk and supports tasks that are common to the social and behavioral scienc…

  • Adaptive Radiation in The Australopithecines and The Origin of Man

    J T Robinson, Jonathan RobinsonCHAPTERAfrican Ecology and Human Evolution2017

    This chapter speculates about the selective forces which brought the australopithecine group into existence, caused adaptive radiation within the group, and resulted in the origin of man. The literature also contains many statements that such and such are Australopithecine characteristics as though all known Australopithecines have the same characteristics. South African Australopithecines are divided into two taxa, Australopithecus africanus Dar…

  • Minding small change among small firms in Kenya

    Open AccessLori Beaman, Jeremy Magruder et al.ARTICLEJournal of Development Economics2014Cited by: 4References: 2

  • Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya

    Pascaline Dupas, Jonathan RobinsonARTICLEAmerican Economic Journal Applied…2013

    Does limited access to formal savings services impede business growth in poor countries? To shed light on this question, we randomized access to noninterest-bearing bank accounts among two types of self-employed individuals in rural Kenya: market vendors (who are mostly women) and men working as bicycle taxi drivers. Despite large withdrawal fees, a substantial share of market women used the accounts, were able to save more, and increased their p…

  • Why Don't the Poor Save More? Evidence from Health Savings Experiments

    Pascaline Dupas, Jonathan RobinsonARTICLEAmerican Economic Review2013

    Using data from a field experiment in Kenya, we document that providing individuals with simple informal savings technologies can substantially increase investment in preventative health and reduce vulnerability to health shocks. Simply providing a safe place to keep money was sufficient to increase health savings by 66 percent. Adding an earmarking feature was only helpful when funds were put toward emergencies, or for individuals that are frequ…

  • Keeping the doctor away: Experimental evidence on investment in preventative health products

    Open AccessJennifer Meredith, Jonathan Robinson et al.ARTICLEJournal of Development Economics2013Cited by: 11References: 5

  • The (hidden) costs of political instability: Evidence from Kenya's 2007 election crisis

    Open AccessPascaline Dupas, Jonathan RobinsonARTICLEJournal of Development Economics2012Cited by: 10References: 11

  • Risk-coping through sexual networks: Evidence from client transfers in Kenya

    Jonathan Robinson, Ethan YehBOOK2011

    Why do women engage in transactional sex? While much of the explanation is that sex-for-money pays more than other jobs, this paper uses a unique panel dataset constructed from 192 self-reported diaries of sex workers in Western Kenya to show that women who supply transactional sex develop relationships with regular clients, and that these clients send transfers in response to negative income shocks. Regular clients are the primary source of inte…

  • Nudging Farmers to Use Fertilizer: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Kenya

    Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer et al.ARTICLEAmerican Economic Review2011

    We model farmers as facing small fixed costs of purchasing fertilizer and assume some are stochastically present biased and not fully sophisticated about this bias. Such farmers may procrastinate, postponing fertilizer purchases until later periods, when they may be too impatient to purchase fertilizer. Consistent with the model, many farmers in Western Kenya fail to take advantage of apparently profitable fertilizer investments, but they do inve…

  • Transactional Sex As A Response To Risk In Western Kenya

    Jonathan Robinson, Ethan YehBOOK2009

    Formal and informal commercial sex work is a way of life for many poor women in developing countries. Though sex workers have long been identified as crucial in affecting the spread of HIV/AIDS, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, the nature of sex-for-money transactions remains poorly understood. Using a unique panel dataset constructed from 192 self-reported sex worker diaries which include detailed information on sexual behavior, labor supply,…

  • Sex Markets: A Denied Industry

    Jonathan RobinsonARTICLEFeminist Economics2009Cited by: 2References: 3

    Sex Markets: A Denied Industry, by Marina Della Giusta, Maria Laura Di Tommaso, and Steinar Str⊘m. New York: Routledge, 2008. 112 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-415-39717-9 (hbk.). US$140.00; ISBN-13: 978-0-41