About time
On Friday November 28th Simen Bø will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
We think a lot about the future, but we do not always view it accurately. Sometimes we do not know how we will behave, how to prepare for what will come, or how to make good long-term choices. Through three empirical articles based on between-subjects experiments (total N = 8,388), this thesis contributes to understanding such shortcomings in thinking about the future.
The first article replicates and extends prior research on the “moral forecasting error” – the tendency for people to act more morally than they predict. Participants were randomly assigned to either complete a task where they could cheat or predict whether they would cheat on the same task. The candidate replicated the moral forecasting error, showing that actors cheated much less than forecasters predicted they themselves would cheat. Extending prior research, they also found that participants overestimated how much others would cheat.
The second article builds on research showing that people are optimistic about the future to show that they are also optimistic planners:
They plan more for best-case than worst-case scenarios, both for themselves and for others. This could be a robust bias in how people prepare for the future, as they found the same pattern with participants from two populations with starkly different future prospects: U.S. adults and Tanzanian adolescents.
The third article shows that sustainable behavior is influenced by whether incentives for such behavior are received immediately or in the future. In the experiment, participants allocated $10 between themselves and a top-rated climate organization. They donated more when the donation was transferred right away and the remaining personal reward was paid out with a 4-month delay. The intervention worked regardless of how much people believed in climate change and whether they were politically left-leaning or right-leaning.
Theme for trial lecture
TBA
Trial lecture and defence:
Aud C
Supervisors:
Professor Hallgeir Sjåstad (main supervisor), Department of Strategy and Management
Professor Helge Thorbjørnsen, Department of Strategy and Management
Committee:
Associate Professor Alexander Madsen Sandvik (leader), Department of Strategy and Management
Associate Professor Christina Gravert, Københavns Universitet
Associate Professor Erik Løhre, BI