Daniel Bartels | University of Chicago (original) (raw)

Books by Daniel Bartels

The Psychology of Thinking about the Future, 2018

Many decisions require making tradeoffs between the present and the future. Although a variety of... more Many decisions require making tradeoffs between the present and the future. Although a variety of perspectives have been applied to study these intertemporal trade-offs, in this chapter we will focus on research that examines how thoughts about one's future self affect decisions with delayed consequences. To do so, we will discuss three theoretical perspectives on the future self: the future self as another, continuity between selves, and failures of imagination. Throughout, we examine the myriad considerations that influence decisions made on behalf of the future self in many domains (including finance, health, ethical decision-making, and child development) as well as interventions that have been found to change the way that people think about the future self and potentially promote more prudent behavior. We close by proposing several questions for future research.

Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change, 2020

Although previous research has suggested that one's personal identity is maintained via the stabi... more Although previous research has suggested that one's personal identity is maintained via the stability of certain essential features (such as personality traits, memories, or moral qualities), the current framework proposes that people hold a dynamic representation of their identity that includes theories about their own development over time. In this chapter, we discuss two types of theories people hold about their identity, and we suggest that changes that are inconsistent with these theories are perceived as disruptive to identity. First, people have causal theories about how features of identity are interrelated-beliefs about which features were caused by or the cause of other features. Changes in more causally central features-those involved in a greater number of cause-effect relationships-are seen as more disruptive to the overall causal theory and thus, are more disruptive to continuity of identity. Second, people also hold expectations and desires about how their personal qualities will change in the future. Because people generally expect improvements, positive changes are seen as identity-consistent, whereas negative changes (especially to central features) are seen as disruptive to identity. Overall, we conclude that since the self-concept does not seem to be defined by a static list of personal features, identity continuity is most preserved when changes in features are consistent with (rather than conflicting with) one's own causal and developmental theories of the self.

1. Causal Models: The Representational Infrastructure for Moral Judgment (Steven A. Sloman, Phil... more 1. Causal Models: The Representational Infrastructure for Moral Judgment
(Steven A. Sloman, Philip Fernbach, & Scott Ewing—Brown University)
2. Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence: A Formal Model of Unconscious Moral and Legal Knowledge
(John Mikhail—Georgetown University)
3. Law, Psychology & Morality
(Kenworthey Bilz & Janice Nadler—Northwestern University)
4. Protected Values and Omission Bias as Deontological Judgments
(Jonathan Baron & Ilana Ritov—University of Pennsylvania & Hebrew University of
Jerusalem)
5. Attending to Moral Values
(Rumen Iliev, Sonya Sachdeva, Daniel M. Bartels, Craig M. Joseph, Satoru Suzuki, &
Douglas L. Medin—Northwestern University & University of Chicago)
6. Instrumental Reasoning Over Sacred Values: An Indonesian Case Study
(Jeremy Ginges & Scott Atran—New School for Social Research & University of Michigan)
7. Development and Dual Processes in Moral Reasoning: A Fuzzy-Trace Theory Approach)
(Valerie F. Reyna & Wanda Casillas—Cornell University
8. Moral Identity, Moral Functioning, and the Development of Moral Character
(Daniel Lapsley & Darcia Narvaez—University of Notre Dame)
9. “Fools rush in”: A JDM Perspective On The Role Of Emotions In Decisions, Moral And Otherwise.
(Terry Connolly & David Hardman—University of Arizona & London Metropolitan
University)
10. Motivated Moral Reasoning
(Peter Ditto, David Pizarro, & David Tannenbaum—University of California-Irvine &
Cornell University)
11. In the Mind of the Perceiver: Psychological Implications of Moral Conviction
(Christopher W. Baumann & Linda J. Skitka—University of Washington & University of
Illinois-Chicago)

Papers by Daniel Bartels

Cognition, 2020

People often make tradeoffs between current and future benefits. Some research frameworks suggest... more People often make tradeoffs between current and future benefits. Some research frameworks suggest that people treat the future self as if it were another person, subordinating future needs to current ones just as they might subordinate others' needs to their own. Although people make similar choices for future selves and others in some contexts, it remains unclear whether these behaviors are governed by the same decision policies. So, we identify and compare the unique influence of four relevant factors (need, deservingness, liking, and similarity) on monetary decisions in both the interpersonal and intrapersonal domains. Do people treat the future self and others similarly? Yes and no. Yes, because the influence of these factors on allocations is similar for both types of targets. No, because monetary allocations to the future self were consistently higher than allocations to others. Although the future self is treated like others in some ways, important differences remain that are not fully captured by this analogy.

Psychological Bulletin, 2020

To what extent are research results influenced by subjective decisions that scientists make as th... more To what extent are research results influenced by subjective decisions that scientists make as they design studies? Fifteen research teams independently designed studies to answer five original research questions related to moral judgments, negotiations, and implicit cognition. Participants from two separate large samples (total N > 15,000) were then randomly assigned to complete one version of each study. Effect sizes varied dramatically across different sets of materials designed to test the same hypothesis: materials from different teams rendered statistically significant effects in opposite directions for four out of five hypotheses, with the narrowest range in estimates being d = -0.37 to +0.26. Meta-analysis and a Bayesian perspective on the results revealed overall support for two hypotheses, and a lack of support for three hypotheses. Overall, practically none of the variability in effect sizes was attributable to the skill of the research team in designing materials, while considerable variability was attributable to the hypothesis being tested. In a forecasting survey, predictions of other scientists were significantly correlated with study results, both across and within hypotheses. Crowdsourced testing of research hypotheses helps reveal the true consistency of empirical support for a scientific claim.

Framing a contract's cost as a series of payments over time structures how people mentally accoun... more Framing a contract's cost as a series of payments over time structures how people mentally account for the contract's benefits. For example, when people are asked to donate to a charity once a year (aggregate pricing), they imagine the benefits they will feel from a single, large donation. In contrast, if the charity frames its request in terms of the equivalent daily donation (periodic pricing), people consider the benefits from making many smaller donations, which is often a more enticing prospect than a single gift. Eight lab experiments and a field test examine how periodic pricing influences purchase intentions. Periodic prices can increase perceived benefits, particularly when people value the first few units of a product each more than additional units of consumption. More frequent payments can help people appreciate recurring pleasures and increase the likelihood of purchasing.

We propose that methods from the study of category-based induction can be used to test the accura... more We propose that methods from the study of category-based induction can be used to test the accuracy of theories of moral judgment. We had participants rate the likelihood that a person would engage in a variety of actions, given information about a previous behavior. From these likelihood ratings, we extracted a hierarchical, taxonomic model of how moral violations relate to each other (Study 1). We then tested the descriptive adequacy of this model against an alternative model inspired by Moral Foundations Theory, using classic tasks from induction research (Studies 2a and 2b), and using a measure of confirmation, which accounts for the baseline frequency of these violations (Study 3). Lastly, we conducted focused tests of combinations of violations where the models make differing predictions (Study 4). This research provides new insight into how people represent moral concepts, connecting classic methods from cognitive science with contemporary themes in moral psychology.

The use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) elicits widespread normative opposition, yet little... more The use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) elicits widespread normative opposition, yet little research has investigated what underlies these judgments. We examine this question comprehensively, across 13 studies. We first test the hypothesis that opposition to PED use cannot be fully accounted for by considerations of fairness. We then test the influence of 10 other potential drivers of opposition in an exploratory manner. We find that health risks for the user and rules and laws prohibiting use of anabolic steroids reliably affect normative judgments. Next, we test whether these patterns generalize to a different PED—cognitive-enhancement drugs. Finally, we sketch a framework for understanding these results, borrowing from Social Domain Theory (e.g., Turiel, 1983). We argue that PED use exemplifies a class of violations with properties of moral, conventional, and prudential offenses. This research sheds light on a widespread, but understudied, normative judgment, and illustrates the utility of exploratory methods.

Five studies explore how anticipating different types of personal change affects people's percept... more Five studies explore how anticipating different types of personal change affects people's perceptions of their own self-continuity. The studies find that improvements are seen as less disruptive to personal continuity than worsening or unspecified change, although this difference varies in magnitude based on the type of feature being considered. Also, people's expectations and desires matter. For example, a negative change is highly disruptive to perceived continuity when people expect improvement and less disruptive when people expect to worsen. The finding that some types of change are consistent with perceptions of self-continuity suggests that the self-concept may include beliefs about personal development.

Personal identity is an important determinant of behavior, yet how people mentally represent thei... more Personal identity is an important determinant of behavior, yet how people mentally represent their self-concepts and their concepts of other people is not well understood. In the current studies, we examined the age-old question of what makes people who they are. We propose a novel approach to identity that suggests that the answer lies in people’s beliefs about how the features of identity (e.g., memories, moral qualities, personality traits) are causally related to each other. We examined the impact of the causal centrality of a feature, a key determinant of the extent to which a feature defines a concept, on judgments of identity continuity. We found support for this approach in three experiments using both measured and manipulated causal centrality. For judgments both of one’s self and of others, we found that some features are perceived to be more causally central than others and that changes in such causally central features are believed to be more disruptive to identity.

Using capture-recapture analysis we estimate the effective size of the active Amazon Mechanical T... more Using capture-recapture analysis we estimate the effective size of the active Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) population
that a typical laboratory can access to be about 7,300 workers. We also estimate that the time taken for half of the workers to
leave the MTurk pool and be replaced is about 7 months. Each laboratory has its own population pool which overlaps, often
extensively, with the hundreds of other laboratories using MTurk. Our estimate is based on a sample of 114,460 completed sessions from 33,408 unique participants and 689 sessions across seven laboratories in the US, Europe, and Australia from January 2012 to March 2015.

This article emphasizes the role of categorization in mental accounting and proposes that once a ... more This article emphasizes the role of categorization in mental accounting and proposes that once a mental account is established, purchases that are highly congruent with the purpose of the mental account (i.e., typical category members) will be more preferred in selection decisions compared to purchases that are less congruent (i.e., atypical category members). This hypothesis is tested in the context of gift cards. Six studies find that people shopping with a retailer-specific gift card—and so, the authors argue, possessing a retailer-specific mental account— express an increased preference for products more typical of the retailer compared to those shopping with more fungible currency. This pattern is found to occur for both well-known retailers, where people already possess product-typicality knowledge, and fictional retailers, where product-typicality cues are provided. An alternative account based on semantic priming is not supported by these data. These results both broaden the contemporary understanding of how mental accounting influences preferences and provide retailers deeper insight into their customers' decision processes.

Sacrificial dilemmas, especially trolley problems, have rapidly become the most recognizable scie... more Sacrificial dilemmas, especially trolley problems, have rapidly become the most recognizable scientific exemplars of moral situations; they are now a familiar part of the psychological literature and are featured prominently in textbooks and the popular press. We are concerned that studies of sacrificial dilemmas may lack experimental, mundane, and psychological realism and therefore suffer from low external validity. Our apprehensions stem from three observations about trolley problems and other similar sacrificial dilemmas: (i) they are amusing rather than sobering, (ii) they are unrealistic and unrepresentative of the moral situations people encounter in the real world, and (iii) they do not elicit the same psychological processes as other moral situations. We believe it would be prudent to use more externally valid stimuli when testing descriptive theories that aim to provide comprehensive accounts of moral judgment and behavior.

This paper examines people’s reasoning about identity continuity (i.e., how people decide that a ... more This paper examines people’s reasoning about identity continuity (i.e., how people decide that a particular object is the same object over time) and its relation to previous research on how people value one-of-a-kind artifacts, such as artwork. We propose that judgments about the continuity of artworks are related to judgments about the continuity of individual persons because art objects are seen as physical extensions of their creators. We report a reanalysis of previous data and the results of two new empirical studies that test this hypothesis. The first study demonstrates that the mere categorization of an object as ‘art’ versus ‘a tool’ changes people’s intuitions about the persistence of those objects over time. In a second study, we examine some conditions that may lead artworks to be thought of as different from other artifacts. These observations inform both current understanding of what makes some objects one-of-a-kind as well as broader questions regarding the nature of people’s intuitive theories for tracking the persistence of human agents.

The Psychology of Thinking about the Future, 2018

Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change, 2020

Cognition, 2020

Psychological Bulletin, 2020

We welcome and appreciate the insights and perspectives provided by Schwartz (2010, this issue), ... more We welcome and appreciate the insights and perspectives provided by Schwartz (2010, this issue), Tetlock and Mitchell (2010, this issue), and Bazerman and Greene (2010, this issue). Our thinking has benefited considerably from their responses, and we appreciate the opportunity to continue the discussion. In our reply, we address issues concerning the scope of moral rules and of cost-benefit analysis (CBA), including their relation to other decision modes. We then revisit the issue of closed-world assumptions (CWAs) and the question of how learning processes may operate for different decision modes.

… on Psychological Science, Jan 1, 2010

There has been a recent upsurge of research on moral judgment and decision making. One important ... more There has been a recent upsurge of research on moral judgment and decision making. One important issue with this body of work concerns the relative advantages of calculating costs and benefits versus adherence to moral rules. The general tenor of recent research suggests that adherence to moral rules is associated with systematic biases and that systematic cost-benefit analysis is a normatively superior decision strategy. This article queries both the merits of cost-benefit analyses and the shortcomings of moral rules. We argue that outside the very narrow domain in which consequences can be unambiguously anticipated, it is not at all clear that calculation processes optimize outcomes. In addition, there are good reasons to believe that following moral rules can lead to superior consequences in certain contexts. More generally, different modes of decision making can be seen as adaptations to particular environments.

The crime of blackmail has risen to national media attention because of the David Letterman case,... more The crime of blackmail has risen to national media attention because of the David Letterman case, but this wonderfully curious offense has long been the favorite of clever criminal law theorists. It criminalizes the threat to do something that would not be criminal if one did it. There exists a rich literature on the issue, with many prominent legal scholars offering their accounts. Each theorist has his own explanation as to why the blackmail offense exists. Most theories seek to justify the position that blackmail is a moral wrong and claim to offer an account that reflects widely shared moral intuitions. But the theories make widely varying assertions about what those shared intuitions are, while also lacking any evidence to support the assertions.
This Article summarizes the results of an empirical study designed to test the competing theories of blackmail to see which best accords with prevailing sentiment. Using a variety of scenarios designed to isolate and test the various criteria different theorists have put forth as “the” key to blackmail, this study reveals which (if any) of the various theories of blackmail proposed to date truly reflects laypeople’s moral judgment.
Blackmail is not only a common subject of scholarly theorizing but also a common object of criminal prohibition. Every American jurisdiction criminalizes blackmail, although there is considerable variation in its formulation. The Article reviews the American statutes and describes the three general approaches these provisions reflect. The empirical study of lay intuitions also allows an assessment of which of these statutory approaches (if any) captures the community’s views, thereby illuminating the extent to which existing law generates results that resonate with, or deviate from, popular moral sentiment.
The analyses provide an opportunity to critique the existing theories of blackmail and to suggest a refined theory that best expresses lay intuitions. The present project also reveals the substantial conflict between community views and much existing legislation, indicating recommendations for legislative reform. Finally, the Article suggests lessons that such studies and their analyses offer for criminal law and theory.