Decision Science News

THE SMART MONEY SENSED SOMETHING WAS UP

As you probably know, the well-known Science article on attitudes toward gay marriage by LaCour and Green has been called into question (even by its second author) and will likely be retracted by the journal.

We were amazed and impressed to learn today that statistician Andrew Gelman had a sense that something was up with the article soon after it was published. In a December comment in the Washington Post, Gelman was flabbergasted by the size of the claimed result:

What stunned me about these results was not just the effect itself—although I agree that it’s interesting in any case—but the size of the observed differences. They’re huge: an immediate effect of 0.4 on a five-point scale and, after nine months, an effect of 0.8.

A difference of 0.8 on a five-point scale . . . wow! You rarely see this sort of thing. Just do the math. On a 1-5 scale, the maximum theoretically possible change would be 4. But, considering that lots of people are already at “4” or “5” on the scale, it’s hard to imagine an average change of more than 2. And that would be massive. So we’re talking about a causal effect that’s a full 40% of what is pretty much the maximum change imaginable. Wow, indeed.

and

And this got me wondering, how could this happen? After all, it’s hard to change people’s opinions, even if you try really hard. And then these canvassers were getting such amazing results, just by telling a personal story?

and

I say all this not to “debunk” or dismiss LaCour and Green’s work: I think their experiment is really cool, and it’s amazing they found such strong and consistent effects. What I’m trying to do here is understand these findings in light of all the other things we know about public opinion.

That said, Gelman didn’t cry foul. He accepted the result as real and tried to come up with reasons why it might have happened. But he sensed something was unusual, even back in December, and we’re quite impressed by that.

CROWDSOURCING AND ONLINE BEHAVIORAL EXPERIMENTS 2015, PORTLAND

We are pleased to announce the accepted presentations for COBE 2015 (the workshop on Crowdsourcing and Online Behavioral Experiments at the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation). Thanks to all who contributed!

COBE INFORMATION
Date: June 16, 2015. 9 AM – 11:15 AM.
Location: Portland, OR. A workshop before the 16th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce: http://www.sigecom.org/ec15/ which takes place June 15-19, 2015.

Topics of Interest:

• Crowdsourcing
• Online behavioral experiments
• Online field experiments
• Online natural or quasi-experiments
• Online surveys
• Human Computation

Program Committee:

• Andrew Mao, Harvard University
• Akitaka Matsuo, Oxford University
• David Reiley, Pandora
• Eric Johnson, Columbia Business School
• Gabriele Paolacci, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Jenn Wortman Vaughan, Microsoft Research
• Lydia Chilton, University of Washington
• Sam Gosling, University of Texas, Austin
• Sean Taylor, Facebook
• Sven Seuken, University of Zurich
• Tara Mcallister Byun, New York University
• Ulf-Dietrich Reips, University of Konstanz

Cocktails: As always, you are welcome to enjoy cocktails at the bar with us after COBE in the evening. It’s a tradition!

See you at COBE!
Siddharth Suri, Microsoft Research NYC
Winter A. Mason, Facebook
Daniel G. Goldstein, Microsoft Research NYC

SOCIETY FOR JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING 2015 DEADLINE JUNE 20

The Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM) invites abstracts for oral presentations and posters on any interesting topic related to judgment and decision making. Completed manuscripts are not required.

LOCATION, DATES, AND PROGRAM

SJDM’s annual conference will be held in Chicago, Illinois, November 20-23, 2015. The conference will take place at the Hilton Chicago. Plenary events will include a keynote talk on Sunday, November 22nd delivered by Max Bazerman and an interview with Danny Kahneman on Saturday, November 21st conducted by Leif Nelson.

SUBMISSIONS

The deadline for submissions is June 20, 2015, end of the day. Submissions for symposia, oral presentations, and posters should be made through the SJDM website at http://www.sjdm.org/abstract-review/htdocs Technical questions can be addressed to the webmaster, Jon Baron, at webmaster at sjdm.org. All other questions can be addressed to the program chair, Katherine Milkman, at kmilkman at wharton.upenn.edu.

ELIGIBILITY

At least one author of each presentation must be a member of SJDM. Joining at the time of submission will satisfy this requirement. You may join SJDM at http://www.sjdm.org/join.html. An individual may give only one talk and present only one poster, but may be a co-author on multiple talks and/or posters. Please note that both the membership rule and the one-talk/one-poster rule will be strictly enforced.

NOTE FOR NON-US CITIZENS REQUIRING VISAS

Travelers from certain countries may need extra lead time to obtain travel documents. Although we are unable to accept talks early, we can provide notification of an “accepted presentation.” This means that you would at least be guaranteed a poster. We can do this because posters are typically evaluated only for content and most are accepted. If you submit a talk, you will receive a notice of an accepted presentation immediately, and a decision on your talk at the usual time. To take advantage of this option, you should still submit through the regular process, and also send a request to the program chair, Katherine Milkman, at kmilkman at wharton.upenn.edu.

AWARDS

The Best Student Poster Award is given for the best poster presentation whose first author is a student member of SJDM.

The Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award is intended to encourage outstanding work by new researchers. Applications are due June 30, 2015. Further details are available at http://www.sjdm.org/awards/einhorn.html. Questions can be directed to Neil Stewart, neil.stewart at warwick.ac.uk.

The Jane Beattie Memorial Fund subsidizes travel to North America for a foreign scholar in pursuits related to judgment and decision research, including attendance at the annual SJDM meeting. Further details will be available at http://www.sjdm.org/awards/beattie.html.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Katherine Milkman (Chair), Jack Soll, Nina Mazar, Suzanne Shu, Katherine Burson, Anuj Shah, Ana Franco-Watkins, Meng Li, and Mare Appleby (conference coordinator)

HILLEL EINHORN NEW INVESTIGATOR AWARD

The Society for Judgment and Decision Making is inviting submissions for the Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award. The purpose of this award is to encourage outstanding work by new researchers. Individuals are eligible if they have not yet completed their Ph.D. or if they have completed their Ph.D. within the last five years (on or after July 1, 2010). To be considered for the award, please submit a journal-style manuscript on any topic related to judgment and decision making.

In the case of co-authored papers, if the authors are all new investigators they can be considered jointly; otherwise, the new investigator(s) must be the primary author(s) and should be the primary source of ideas. Submissions in dissertation format will not be considered, but articles based on a dissertation are encouraged. Both reprints of published articles and manuscripts that have not yet been published are acceptable.

Submissions will be judged by a committee appointed by the Society. To be considered, submissions must be received by 30 June, 2015. The committee will announce the results to the participants by 15 October 2015. The award will be announced and presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. The winner will be invited to give a presentation at that meeting. If the winner cannot obtain full funding from his/her own institution to attend the meeting, an application may be made to the Society for supplemental travel needs. This notice is here:

http://www.sjdm.org/awards/einhorn.html

with a link to the submission system here:

http://www.sjdm.org/awards/einhorn.upload.html

HOW RARE ARE STREAKS?

The New York Mets recently won 11 games in a row, which got a lot of attention.

How likely is it that a given baseball team will win 11 games in a row by chance, if its probability of winning a single game is 50%?

The plot below shows that if a baseball team plays 100 seasons of 162 games, they’ll have an streak of 11 wins in a row about 7 to 8 times a century (about every 13 years on average). If they’re a really good team that wins 60% of the time in the long run, they’ll have an 11 game winning streak 55 times per century (about every 2 years).

Streaks aren’t weird, they’re expected. The graph up top shows that for a team that wins 50% of the time, the most likely outcome is that they’ll have a six game winning streak in a typical 162 game season. There’s an 8% chance their longest streak in a season will be 10 wins or more.

For the gifted team that wins 60% of the time, an eight game winning streak is the most likely outcome in a season, and there’s a 32% chance they’ll have a streak of 10 wins or more.

Fans of R and ggplot2 can reproduce the plots with the code below.

DEADLINE JUNE 7, 2015

The Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research is happy to announce the 14th TIBER Symposium on Psychology and Economics, to be held on August 27, 2015 at Tilburg University.

The goal of this series of symposia is to establish contact and discussion between Economists, Psychologists, Marketing researchers and others who work on Behavioral Decision Making, either in individual or interdependent settings. We look for empirical contributions from diverse fields, such as Individual Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, Bargaining, Social Dilemmas, Experimental Games, Emotions, Fairness and Justice, Rational Choice, and related subjects.

The symposium consists of two keynotes, a number of parallel sessions with presentations of 20 minutes, and a poster session. We are proud to have Maya Bar-Hillel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (http://psychology.huji.ac.il/en/?cmd=Faculty.125&act=read&id=32) and Armin Falk of the University of Bonn (http://www.cens.uni-bonn.de/team/board/armin-falk) as this year’s keynote speakers.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

If you would like to contribute by presenting your research, we invite you to submit an abstract of max. 250 words. On the basis of these abstracts we will select presenters for the parallel sessions and the poster session. Please keep in mind the following dates:

June 7 Deadline for submission of abstracts
June 15 Selection of speakers
August 27 Symposium at Tilburg University

Submit your abstract and find more information about the symposium on our website: http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/tiber14/

If you have any questions regarding the symposium, feel free to contact Arnoud Plantinga (a.plantinga@tilburguniversity.edu).

GET PAID TO THINK FOR AN ACADEMIC YEAR WHILE ENJOYING SUBSIDIZED HOUSING IN NYC

Visiting Scholar Program at the Russell Sage Foundation

The RSF Visiting Scholar Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for select scholars in the social, economic and behavioral sciences to pursue their research and writing at the Foundation’s New York headquarters. The Foundation annually awards up to 17 residential fellowships to select scholars in the social sciences who are at least several years beyond the Ph.D. Visiting Scholar positions begin September 1st and run through June 30th.

Scholars are provided with an office at the Foundation and supplemental salary support of up to 50 percent of their academic year salary (up to a maximum of $110,000). Scholars who reside outside the greater New York City area are also provided with a partially-subsidized apartment near the Foundation.

Applications for the 2016-2017 RSF Visiting Scholar Fellowship are due by June 30, 2015. A number of changes to the program have recently occurred, such as allowing prior scholars to return for a second visit. More detailed information on the program, along with links to the application portal, eligibility requirements and guidelines, and frequently asked questions can be found here (http://www.russellsage.org/how-to-apply#scholars). Questions about the program can be directed to Senior Program Officer James Wilson (james at rsage.org).

OR IN A CUBE-SHAPED BUILDING THAT IS 5 CROSSTOWN BLOCKS PER SIDE

We at Decision Science News like putting things into perspective. This is why we bothered putting the size of countries into perspective by comparing them to US states. (Stay tuned for our next post on this topic in which we match states to countries on the basis of both area and population. Who doesn’t want to know things like “Israel is about as big as New Jersey in both size and population”?)

Anyway, we were reading the Internet, as we sometimes do, when we came across the finding (published here and promoted here) that you could fit every person on the earth within the city limits of New York City.

And that’s assuming a flat NYC with no buildings. Considering that much of NYC is built up, you could fit them into even less space by using the advanced technology of multi-story buildings. In fact, you’ll see at the original post that everybody in the world could fit in a cube-shaped building that is just 5 crosstown blocks per side. That is, in a building that would easily fit in Manhattan, like this:

Image credit: WaitButWhy.com

These calcs depend on the assumption that you can fit 10 people into a square meter, which was counterintuitive to us. But take this into account:

• You may be thinking of a square yard, but a square meter is bigger. 20% bigger actually.
• Much of the world is kids, and the post teaches us that you can pack 22 kids into a square meter.
• You can fit 9 grownups into a square meter.

Given all this, 10 per square meter is totes reasonable, as is the assumption that the whole world would fit in the borders of New York City.

Image credit:http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/03/7-3-billion-people-one-building.html, which is also the site that figured this all out in the first place.

COBE 2015. CALL FOR PAPERS. SUBMISSION DEADLINE APRIL 30, 2015

Official COBE website

Overview

The World Wide Web has resulted in new and unanticipated avenues for conducting large-scale behavioral experiments. Crowdsourcing sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk, and oDesk have given researchers access to a large participant pool that operates around the world and around the clock. As a result, behavioral researchers in academia have turned to crowdsourcing sites in large numbers. Moreover, websites like eBay, Yelp and Reddit have become places where researchers can conduct field experiments. Companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Yahoo! conduct hundreds of randomized experiments on a daily basis. We may be reaching a point where most behavioral experiments will be done online.

The main purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers conducting behavioral experiments online to share new results, methods and best practices.

Basic Information

• Submission Deadline: April 30, 2015
• Notification Date: May 15, 2015
• Workshop Date: June 16, 2015. 9 AM – 11:15 AM.
• Cocktails: At the Bar
• Location: Portland, OR. A workshop before the 16th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce: http://www.sigecom.org/ec15/ which takes place June 15-19, 2015. The COBE workshop is the 16th.

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest for the workshop include but are not limited to:

• Crowdsourcing
• Online behavioral experiments
• Online field experiments
• Online natural or quasi-experiments
• Online surveys
• Human Computation

Paper Submission

Submit papers electronically by visiting https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cobe2015, logging in or creating an account, and clicking New Submission at the top left.

Submissions are non-archival, meaning contributors are free to publish their results subsequently in archival journals or conferences. There will be no published proceedings. Submissions should be 1-2 pages including references. Accepted papers will be presented as talks of 18 minutes in length.

Organizing Committee

• Siddharth Suri, Microsoft Research NYC
• Winter A. Mason, Facebook
• Daniel G. Goldstein, Microsoft Research NYC & London Business School

Program Committee

• Andrew Mao, Harvard University
• Andrew Stephen, University of Pittsburgh, Katz Graduate School of Business
• Akitaka Matsuo, Oxford University
• David Reiley, Pandora
• Eric Johnson, Columbia University Graduate School of  Business
• Edith Law, Harvard University
• Gabriele Paolacci, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Jenn Wortman Vaughan, Microsoft Research
• Lydia Chilton, University of Washington
• Sam Gosling, University of Texas, Austin
• Sean Taylor, Facebook
• Sven Seuken, University of Zurich
• Tara Mcallister Byun, New York University
• Ulf-Dietrich Reips, University of Konstanz

ABSTRACT DEADLINE MAY 22, 2015

What: 37th Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making
Where: St. Louis, MO
Hotel: Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch
When: Oct 18-21, 2015
Abstract Submission Deadline: May 22, 2015
Conference Website
Abstract Submission

The Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) is accepting abstracts for its 37th Annual North American Meeting: Implementation. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) define Implementation Science as “the study of methods to promote the integration of research findings and evidence into healthcare policy and practice.” SMDM is uniquely positioned to bring experts from a broad range of health science disciplines together to explore implementation and exchange ideas on how to improve the translation of research findings into better bedside care and health care utilization.

SMDM is interested in a broad approach to the study of medical decision making, including (but not limited to) psychology and behavioral economics. Research on healthcare implementation is particularly encouraged, but not required. The meeting will be held October 18-21 in St. Louis Missouri. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday, May 22nd, 2015.

DO BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE IN THE US GOVERNMENT

We received this from our friends at the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team
– Your DSN Editor

We are excited to announce that the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) is currently seeking exceptionally qualified individuals to serve as Fellows and Associates.

SBST works across the federal government to apply findings and methods from the social and behavioral sciences to help the policies, programs, and operations of government better serve the nation. SBST has partnered with federal agencies to design and test the impact of behaviorally-informed interventions within programs and policies using rapid, rigorous, and low-cost methods.

See below for further details on the team (also here for blog about our work), responsibilities and qualifications of Associates and Fellows, and details on how to apply for this unique opportunity. The deadline to submit an application is 11:59 PM on Sunday, April 12, 2015.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to sbst@gsa.gov with any questions.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Agency: General Services Administration (GSA)
Office: Office of Evaluation Sciences
Deadline: 11:59 PM Sunday, April 12 2015

Overview:
The White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) is seeking Fellows and Associates beginning in September 2015. Fellows and Associates translate insights from the social and behavioral sciences into concrete recommendations for how to improve federal programs, policies, and operations, and work closely with agency partners to structure and implement rigorous experimental trials capable of testing the relative efficiency and efficacy of proposed interventions. Fellows are typically researchers with a PhD in a social or behavioral science field (e.g., economics, psychology, political science, statistics, sociology, public policy, etc…) on leave from positions at universities, government agencies, or other research organizations. Associates are generally pursuing a PhD in asocial and behavioral sciences field or have a Master’s Degree plus two or more years of relevant experience.

Job Summary:
SBST works across the federal government to apply findings and methods from the social and behavioral sciences to help the policies, programs, and operations of government better serve the nation. In its opening year, SBST has partnered with over a dozen federal agencies to design and test the impact of behaviorally-informed interventions within programs and policies using rapid, rigorous, and low-cost methods. Fellows and Associates must possess a unique set of technical and professional skills. This includes knowledge of at least one field within the social and behavioral sciences, the ability to creatively apply research knowledge within the federal government setting, the ability to manage the day-to-day operations of a field trial, and exceptional communication and interpersonal skills. The sought Fellow is an emerging or leading expert on leave from a university or other research appointment; the Associate is an exceptionally promising graduate student or researcher at a more junior stage of his or her career. All team members serve as federal employees, with a central division based at the General Services Administration (GSA). This is a one-year position beginning in early September 2015, with the possibility of renewal. The team is based in the GSA building at 1800F Street N.W. in D.C. The GSA has been repeatedly rated as one of the “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” by the Partnership for Public Service . Compensation for Fellows and Associates is determined based on qualifications and experience.

Application Instructions:
Email C.V., two references, and a relevant writing sample to sbst@gsa.gov, with “SBST [Fellow / Associate] Application” in the subject line. Please include a 1-page cover letter introducing yourself and explaining your interest in being a Fellow or Associate.

The deadline to submit is 11:59 PM Sunday, April 12, although applications may be reviewed on a rolling basis. Finalists will be invited to an interview process that will include a writing exercise and up to two stages of interviews.

The following duties and qualifications apply to both Fellow and Associate roles; the next page provides profiles distinguishing the two roles.

Primary duties of Fellows and Associates :

• Creatively translate insights from the social and behavioral sciences into concrete recommendations for how to improve federal programs, policies and operations
• Work closely with agency partners to structure and implement rigorous experimental trials capable of testing the relative efficiency and efficacy of proposed interventions
• Communicate regularly with agency partners and any outside collaborators in order to: ensure the rationale behind intervention ideas and trial design are clearly understood and meet agency goals; ensure that field experiments are implemented as planned; share updates on trial status; and discuss the implications of results
• Perform data analyses and interpretation
• Translate findings into project reports and policy memos for academic, agency, and public audiences
• Assist, as needed, on additional projects being managed by other SBST members
• Attend weekly SBST meetings, provide updates on project status and be generally available to collaborate on and contribute to internal tasks
• Attend and potentially present at conferences and workshops

Required qualifications of Fellows and Associates:

• General knowledge of applied behavioral sciences and specialized knowledge of at least one domain of a study within the social and behavioral sciences
• Ability to think creatively about how insights from the social and behavioral sciences can be translated into concrete interventions that are practically feasible within specific federal programs, policies or organizations
• Statistical competency in at least one programming language (e.g., R, Stata, Matlab, SAS, etc…)
• Ability to effectively explain technical concepts to a broad range of audiences, orally and in writing
• Strong writing skills, including under tight deadlines
• Excellent management and organizational skills
• Flexibility, self-motivation, and the ability to manage multiple tasks efficiently as a team player
• Curiosity and willingness to learn about federal agencies and the unique practical and regulatory constraints

Preferred qualifications include:

• Experience conducting randomized controlled trials in field settings
• Experience working with the federal, municipal, state, or city governments
• Advanced statistical skills, including experience handling large administrative data sets

Details for Fellow Applicants:
Fellows are typically researchers with a PhD on leave from positions at universities, government agencies, or research organizations. Fellows will be a lead investigator on complex experimental trials and responsible for the identification, design, execution and ongoing management of studies.

Additional qualifications:

• PhD in related field, plus one or more years relevant work experience, or a Master’s Degree plus five or more years of relevant experience
• Two or more years of experience designing, implementing and analyzing experiments (and preferably four or more years specifically conducting randomized controlled trials in field settings)

Additional duties:

• Take an active role in identifying opportunities for the team to support agencies of government
• Drive the team’s project efforts from initial conversations through experiment design, field testing, data analysis, evaluation and communication of results
• Ultimately accountable for the operations of select field experiments
• Represent the team in a more formal capacity at conferences, events and meetings

Details for Associate Applicants:
Associates have a Master’s Degree plus two or more years of relevant experience, or are at mid to final stages of a PhD program in a relevant course of study. these team members play a supportive role to Fellow, providing technical contributions and expertise to studies and operational oversight to projects and components of studies.

Additional qualifications:

• Graduate coursework in pursuit of a PhD, or a Master’s Degree plus two or more years of relevant experience
• Experience designing, implementing and analyzing experiments (and preferably conducting randomized controlled trials in field settings)

Additional duties:

• Assist in the management and operations of select field experiments
• Assist with data analyses and interpretation
• Assist in the organization of workshops and events