The EP experiments don't seem that convincing. Can't you make the same arguments against the EP experiments that many economists make against the work of Kahneman/Tversky --that there isn't enough at stake for the individual to make a "good" decision. It seems silly to show people pictures and ask them who'd they'd like to spend their life with or have a fling with. Would the test subject care about putting any effort into making their decesion in such an artificial setting?
Daljit Dhadwal William Dickens wrote: >Today's EP practitioners use their explanations to generate predictions for laboratory behavior of humans today and then test those predictions. They are sometimes quite startling. > Perhaps the best example is the many many experiments that show that an elementary logic problem can be posed in dozens of different more and less familiar ways and most people will get it wrong. But pose the problem in a form in which it involves identifying cheating on social exchange, even if the setting is very unfamiliar, and almost everybody gets it right. This pattern was a prediction of EP theory of social exchange. > In other examples, women have been asked in laboratories to select the pictures of men they find most appealing for short affairs and for long term relationships. There is a very strong tendency for them to choose men with physical characteristics typical of those with higher testosterone levels for affairs than for long term relationships. Also, the tendency to choose higher testosterone goes up when women are ovulating. (Both EP predictions.) > - - Bill Dickens (DC based) > > William T. Dickens > The Brookings Institution > 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW > Washington, DC 20036 > Phone: (202) 797-6113 > FAX: (202) 797-6181 > E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > AOL IM: wtdickens >
