The main focus of this thesis is to combine the multiple findings from social psychology and apply them with an economic approach to decision making. To this purpose, we investigate accountability and its interaction with market mechanisms, more specifically real incentives in experimental settings. This PhD thesis is structured as follows. Chapter 2 studies the effect of accountability on ambiguity aversion-the preference for known over normatively equivalent unknown probabilities. Chapter 3 follows up on the ambiguity aversion issue by studying preference reversals under ambiguity. Chapter 4 examines the influence of accountability on risk attitude. Chapter 5 is of a methodological nature. We separate accountability and incentives, and find several effects. Accountability is found to reduce preference reversals between frames, for which incentives have no effect. Incentives on the other hand are found to reduce risk seeking for losses, where accountability has no effect.

By 2030 there will be about 70 million people in the United States who are older than 64. Approximately 26 percent of these will be racial and ethnic minorities. Overall, the older population will be more diverse and better educated than their earlier cohorts. The range of late-life outcomes is very dramatic with old age being a significantly different experience for financially secure and well-educated people than for poor and uneducated people. The early mission of behavioral science research focused on identifying problems of older adults, such as isolation, caregiving, and dementia. Today, the field of gerontology is more interdisciplinary. When I'm 64 examines how individual and social behavior play a role in understanding diverse outcomes in old age. It also explores the implications of an aging workforce on the economy. The book recommends that the National Institute on Aging focus its research support in social, personality, and life-span psychology in four areas: motivation and behavioral change; socioemotional influences on decision-making; the influence of social engagement on cognition; and the effects of stereotypes on self and others. When I'm 64 is a useful resource for policymakers, researchers and medical professionals.

While social psychology has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of basic principles that underlie social behavior, these principles themselves--including expectancies, goals, explanations, arousal, social influence, interdependence, social conflict, persuasion, and social standards--have never been directly reviewed in a comprehensive manner. Filling a significant gap in the literature, this authoritative reference and text illuminates the essential processes, mechanisms, and structures at different levels of analysis--biological, cognitive, motivational, interpersonal, and group/cultural--to provide access to the central principles that guide social psychological investigation. Formatted for easy reference and comparison, each chapter describes alternative conceptualizations of a particular principle and reviews research supporting (and failing to support) these different perspectives. Covering all the significant theories and research programs, the empirical literature is surveyed not for the traditional function of providing comprehensive reviews of content areas, but for its relevance to broad conceptual issues. This enables readers to get a better idea of the "big picture" concerning various social psychological principles, facilitating their ability to keep track of conceptual trends and developments in social psychology. An essential tool for all social psychologists, as well as professionals in related fields, this authoritative handbook also serves as an invaluable text for advanced classes in social psychology.

Professional judgement and decision making are central to social work, both in everyday professional practice and in public perceptions of social work as a profession. This book examines key issues that are relevant today. The chapters cover child protection, mental health, and elder care settings in Europe, Australia and Canada. They discuss organisational and cultural contexts for professional judgement; the role of experience in the development of expertise and professional discretion; understanding variability in decision making; and the role of legal frameworks in decision making. This book will enable practitioners, managers, policy makers, and researchers to appreciate the complexities of professional judgement and decision making in different social work settings and to apply this understanding to their own practice. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice. The book is linked to sister text Risk in Social Work Practice: Current Issues, which examines key debates around the understanding of risk in contemporary social work practice.

People interact and perform in group settings in all areas of life. Organizations and businesses are increasingly structuring work around groups and teams. Every day, we work in groups such as families, friendship groups, societies and sports teams, to make decisions and plans, solve problems, perform physical tasks, generate creative ideas, and more. Group Performance outlines the current state of social psychological theories and findings concerning the performance of groups. It explores the basic theories surrounding group interaction and development and investigates how groups affect their members. Bernard A. Nijstad discusses these issues in relation to the many different tasks that groups may perform, including physical tasks, idea generation and brainstorming, decision-making, problem-solving, and making judgments and estimates. Finally, the book closes with an in-depth discussion of teamwork and the context in which groups interact and perform. Offering an integrated approach, with particular emphasis on the interplay between group members, the group task, interaction processes and context, this book provides a state-of-the-art overview of social psychological theory and research. It will be highly valuable to undergraduates, graduates and researchers in social psychology, organizational behavior and business.

This volume brings together classic key concepts and innovative theoretical ideas in the psychology of judgment and decision-making in social contexts. The chapters of the first section address the basic psychological processes underlying judgment and decision-making. The guiding question is "What information comes to mind and how is it transformed?" The second section poses the question of how social judgments and decisions are to be evaluated. The chapters in this section present new quantitative models that help separate various forms of accuracy and bias. The third section shows how judgments and decisions are shaped by ecological constraints. These chapters show how many seemingly complex configurations of social information are tractable by relatively simple statistical heuristics. The fourth section explores the relevance of research on judgment and decision making for specific tasks of personal or social relevance. These chapters explore how individuals can efficiently select mates, form and maintain friendship alliances, judiciously integrate their attitudes with those of a group, and help shape policies that are rational and morally sound. The book is intended as an essential resource for senior undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, and practitioners.

There is an explosion of interest in Bayesian statistics, primarily because recently created computational methods have finally made Bayesian analysis tractable and accessible to a wide audience. Doing Bayesian Data Analysis, A Tutorial Introduction with R and BUGS, is for first year graduate students or advanced undergraduates and provides an accessible approach, as all mathematics is explained intuitively and with concrete examples. It assumes only algebra and 'rusty' calculus. Unlike other textbooks, this book begins with the basics, including essential concepts of probability and random sampling. The book gradually climbs all the way to advanced hierarchical modeling methods for realistic data. The text provides complete examples with the R programming language and BUGS software (both freeware), and begins with basic programming examples, working up gradually to complete programs for complex analyses and presentation graphics. These templates can be easily adapted for a large variety of students and their own research needs.The textbook bridges the students from their undergraduate training into modern Bayesian methods. - Accessible, including the basics of essential concepts of probability and random sampling - Examples with R programming language and BUGS software - Comprehensive coverage of all scenarios addressed by non-bayesian textbooks- t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and comparisons in ANOVA, multiple regression, and chi-square (contingency table analysis). - Coverage of experiment planning - R and BUGS computer programming code on website - Exercises have explicit purposes and guidelines for accomplishment