Kriti Jain

Unpacking the Future: A Nudge Toward Wider Subjective Confidence Intervals

Subjective probabilistic judgments in forecasting are inevitable in many real-life domains. A common way to obtain such judgments is to assess fractiles or confidence intervals. However, these judgments tend to be systematically overconfident. Further, it has proved particularly difficult to debias such forecasts and improve the calibration. This paper proposes a simple process that systematically leads to wider confidence intervals, thus reducing overconfidence. With a series of experiments, including with professionals, we show that unpacking the distal future into intermediate more proximal futures systematically improves calibration. We refer to this phenomenon as the time unpacking effect, find it is robust to different elicitation formats, and address the possible reasons behind it. We further show that this results in better overall forecasting performance when improved calibration is traded off against less sharpness, and that substantive benefits can be obtained even from just one level of time unpacking. This paper was accepted by Teck Ho, decision analysis.

Do Maximizers Predict Better than Satisficers

We examined the relationship between maximizing (i.e. seeking the best) versus satisficing (i.e.seeking the good enough) tendencies and forecasting ability in a real-world prediction task: forecasting the outcomes of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. In Studies 1 and 2, participants gave probabilistic forecasts for the outcomes of the tournament, and also completed a measure of maximizing tendencies. We found that although maximizers expected themselves to outperform others much more than satisficers, they actually forecasted more poorly. Hence, on net, they were more overconfident. The differences in forecasting abilities seem to be driven by the maximizers’ tendency to give more variable probability estimates. In Study 3, participants played a betting task where they could select between safe and uncertain gambles linked to World Cup outcomes. Again, maximizers did more poorly and earned less, because of a higher variance in their responses. This research contributes to the growing literature on maximizing tendencies by expanding the range of objective outcomes over which maximizing has an influence, and further showing that there may be substantial upside to being a satisficer.

Diurnal Preference Predicts Phase Differences in Expression of Human Peripheral Circadian Clock Genes

Background: Circadian rhythms play an integral role in human behavior, physiology and health. Individual differences in daily rhythms (chronotypes) can affect individual sleep-wake cycles, activity patterns and behavioral choices. Diurnal preference, the tendency towards morningness or eveningness among individuals, has been associated with interpersonal variation in circadian clock-related output measures, including body temperature, melatonin levels and clock gene mRNA in blood, oral mucosa, and dermal fibroblast cell cultures. Methods: Here we report gene expression data from two principal clock genes sampled from hair follicle cells, a peripheral circadian clock. Hair follicle cells from fourteen individuals of extreme morning or evening chronotype were sampled at three time points. RNA was extracted and quantitative PCR assays were used to measure mRNA expression patterns of two clock genes, Per3 and Nr1d2. Results: We found significant differences in clock gene expression over time between chronotype groups, independent of gender or age of participants. Extreme evening chronotypes have a delay in phase of circadian clock gene oscillation relative to extreme morning types. Variation in the molecular clockwork of chronotype groups represents nearly three-hour phase differences (Per3: 2.61 hours; Nr1d2: 3.08 hours, both: 2.86) in circadian oscillations of these clock genes. Conclusions: The measurement of gene expression from hair follicles at three time points allows for a direct, efficient method of estimating phase shifts of a peripheral circadian clock in real-life conditions. The robust phase differences in temporal expression of clock genes associated with diurnal preferences provide the framework for further studies of the molecular mechanisms and gene-by-environment interactions underlying chronotype-specific behavioral phenomena, including social jetlag.

Molecular insights into chronotype and time-of-day effects on decision-making

Recent reports highlight that human decision-making is influenced by the time of day and whether one is a morning or evening person (i.e., chronotype). Here, we test whether these behavioral effects are associated with endogenous biological rhythms. We asked participants to complete two well-established decision-making tasks in the morning or evening: the matrix task (an ethical decision task) and the balloon analog risk task (BART; a risk-taking task), and we measured their chronotype in two ways. First, participants completed a self-report measure, the Horne-Östberg Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ). Second, we measured the expression of two circadian clock-regulated genes—Per3 and Nr1d2—from peripheral clock cells in participants’ hair follicle samples. Using a cosinor model, we estimated the phase of the peripheral clock and assigned RNA chronotypes to participants with advanced (larks) or delayed (owls) phases. The behavioral data were analyzed independently for self-reported (MEQ) and RNA-based chronotypes. We find that significant chronotype and/or time-of-day effects between larks and owls in decision-making tasks occur only in RNA-based chronotypes. Our results provide evidence that time-of-day effects on decision-making can be explained by phase differences in oscillating clock genes and suggest that variation in the molecular clockwork may influence inter-individual differences in decision-making behavior.

Depression and Forecast Accuracy: Evidence from the 2010 FIFA World Cup

Before and during the 2010 Soccer World Cup, participants made probabilistic forecasts of the outcomes of the tournament. We examine the relationship between their depression levels and their performance at this forecasting task. Across two different waves of predictions and with multiple measures and components of prediction accuracy, we find that depressed forecasters were less accurate. The poorer accuracy amongst the more depressed forecasters was primarily driven by a neglect of base rate probabilities: the depressed participants assigned probabilities that departed from the base rates more substantially, particularly for low base rate events. Given the high incidence of depression in the workforce, the importance of judgmental probabilistic forecasting in many settings, and the fact that we may be the first to look at the depression-accuracy relationship using a real-world prediction task involving exogenous uncertainty, these findings may have important implications for both theory and practice.

Diverse Personalities Make for Wiser Crowds: How Personality can Affect the Accuracy of Aggregated Judgments

One of the biggest sources of diversity in the way people experience, interpret and react to the world is their personality. A substantial literature has concluded that much of the observed variability in personality can be captured by five broad factors (Digman, 1997, which are now often referred to as the Big Five. Since people with different personality types tend to process information differently (Humphreys & Revelle, 1984), we hypothesized that aggregating the judgments of pairs of individuals on the basis of the diversity of their personality profiles would affect the accuracy of the aggregate judgments. Specifically, if members of high (personality) diversity pairs tend to rely on more diverse sets of information when forming their judgments (compared to low diversity pairs), then one should find that their aggregate judgments are more accurate than the aggregate judgments of low diversity pairs.

Machiavellianism and Overconfidence

We examine the relationship between Machiavellianism and overconfidence. Participants were invited to take part in a real-world prediction task: forecasting the outcomes of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. In Studies 1 and 2, participants gave probabilistic forecasts for the outcomes of the tournament, completed a measure of Machiavellianism, and also estimated their relative performance. We found that Machiavellians expected themselves to outperform others to a greater extent than non-Machiavellians. However, they actually performed worse. In Study 3, participants played a betting task. Again, we found that Machiavellians tended to earn less. Further, across all three studies, Machiavellians tended to use probabilities that deviated more extremely from the base-rates. Hence, by all measures, they were more overconfident. This research contributes to the link of one of the constituents of the “dark triad” with overconfidence.