Newsletters 2020

09/10 - Michaelmas 2020

Dear all,

We are back with our newsletter – Michaelmas 2020. We have lots of great events lined up for you this term and beyond so get ready to do some experimental social science!

CESS Virtual Lab

In response to the new challenges presented to researchers by COVID-19, CESS has developed a new initiative focused on creating a way for researchers to conduct laboratory experiments in a virtual environment. We now offer a range of options in how we can assist researchers in moving their experimental designs to an online environment. Depending on the needs of the individual researcher and project, we are able to:

  • Consult on the successful implementation of laboratory experiments in a virtual environment. Translate any or all of an experimental protocol into an online program using oTree.
  • This includes the development of specialized features such as real-time chat between experimenters and participants to mirror integral aspects of the laboratory in an online environment.
  • Rollout and monitor experimental sessions using either our own or researcher’s subject pools.
  • Handle payment of subjects for participation in online experiments.

For more information, please visit https://cess-nuffield.nuff.ox.ac.uk/virtual-lab/
 

 

Chat between experimenter and participants

Researcher Spotlight

The Centre prides itself on its ability to facilitate experimental social science research for academics around the world. This year has posed unique and unexpected challenges for experimentalists but CESS has worked tirelessly to ensure that experiments can still be conducted. We are excited to share just a few examples of the researchers who partnered with CESS to run their experiments through the CESS virtual laboratory.

 

Dr. Christopher Candreva

Dr. Christopher Candreva

Christopher Candreva is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Texas, Arlington. Chris received his PhD from the University of Arizona in August of 2019. His primary area of research is Experimental Economics with a focus on Experimental Methodology. In his free time Chris enjoys playing strategy games, especially competitive Magic: The Gathering where he is a Grand Prix Champion, and lavishing his cat with attention.

“Multi-Media Learning and Experimental Economics Instructions”

Past studies have shown that in many economics’ experiments, subjects have difficulty understanding the experimental environment. Previous studies have included additional information in the instructions to try to improve subject understanding. This study focuses on instruction quality instead of instruction content to try to improve subject understanding. This improvement in instruction quality comes from techniques used in the Multi-Media Learning literature in psychology. These techniques have been shown to increase student understanding from Multi-Media presentations. Two sets of instructions were written for the BDM mechanism with induced valuations based on a survey of instructions from the literature. One tried to be as true to the original instructions as possible, with adjustments made due to differences in experimental design. The other was written using techniques from the Multi-Media Learning literature. Subjects were presented with one of these two instructions and then participated in 10 rounds of a BDM market. No significant differences in behavior were found between subjects that received the two different instructions.

CESS Preferences Panel (CPP)

CESS is excited to announce the development of a new initiative with our multinational online subject pool. In the fall of 2020, we plan to start a longitudinal survey measuring the stability of behavioral preferences over time. If you are interested in receiving more information about this new research venture, please contact us at cess@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.

CESS is excited to announce the return of our colloquium series in Michaelmas 2020. The colloquium series is dedicated to providing experimentalists with an opportunity to present their experimental designs and/or preliminary results for feedback from researchers across a wide array of disciplines. Participation and attendance is open to all students and faculty.

Typically, the colloquia are held on Tuesdays from 14:00-15:00. If you are interested in presenting your work, please contact noah.bacine@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.

In light of COVID-19, this term’s colloquia will be presented via Zoom app. Individuals interested in attending a talk should signup via the upcoming events page on our website (https://cess-nuffield.nuff.ox.ac.uk/upcoming-events/).  When you access the upcoming events page or the abstract for an individual talk, there will be a button that brings you to a short form to signup to receive the link to attend the talk. If you experience any difficulty signing up for a talk via our website, you may also contact noah.bacine@nuffield.ox.ac.uk with the title of the colloquium you wish to attend.

Upcoming colloquia

 
13th October – 2pm

Itzhak Rasooly

Department of Economics
University of Oxford

“Going, Going, Wrong: a Test of the Level-K (and Cognitive Hierarchy) Models of Bidding Behaviour”

 
20th October – 2pm

Daniel McArthur

Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Oxford

“Kicking Down: How Status Threat Shapes Exclusionary Attitudes Towards Disadvantaged Groups”

 
27th October – 2pm

Ilse Pit

Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology
University of Oxford

“Norm Violations in Intergroup Cooperation”

 
10th November – 2pm

Manuel Hoffman

Princeton University

“Encouraging Fathers to Vaccinate Children through Competition”

 
17th November – 2pm

Marta Antonetti

Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Oxford

“Will She Run? A Conjoint Experiment Investigating the Effect of Recruitment Leaflets on Women’s Political Ambition”

 
1st December – 2pm

Noah Bacine

University of Oxford

“Do Old Dogs Learn New Tricks? Development and Implementation of the CESS Preferences Panel (CPP)

New CESS Team member

 

Tommaso Batistoni

Postdoctoral Researcher and Lead Programmer

Tommaso is a postdoctoral researcher. His research explores (i) the role of reputation in the production of large scale public goods and (ii) the dynamic of contributions in non-linear social dilemmas. He uses empirical tools (e.g. economic experiments) and mathematical modeling.

Comparative Time-Sharing Experiments (CTSE)

The Centre is always looking to expand the ways in which we get students involved in behavioral social science.  In early 2019, CESS piloted a new initiative designed to allow students without funding to run a robust online experiment. Participants in the Comparative Time Sharing Experiment (CTSE) submitted a short, 5-10 minute experiment to be run in tangent with the other selected experiments.  CESS, in turn, provided a sample of participants from each of our regional locations to produce a multinational sample of results for each participant. Due to the success of the pilot, CESS initiated its second CTSE in the fall of 2019. However, due to COVID-19, CESS has postponed the running of the experiments designed for the second iteration.

Instead, CESS has decided to reopen the application process and expand the number of individuals included in the second iteration of the CTSE.  Students or faculty who may know of students who may be interested in such an opportunity should visit our website for more information about eligibility and deadlines.

For more information, please visit https://cess-nuffield.nuff.ox.ac.uk/ctse.

03/03 - Colloquium by Noah Bacine

Colloquium

Noah Bacine

University of Oxford

Wednesday, 4th March @ 2:00 PM
“To Oppress or not to Oppress: What Makes Good People do Bad”
Oppression is defined as prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority. We propose to study the conditions under which one group will oppress another. To do so, we systematically vary factors related to group identity, environment and incentives to deepen our understanding of the factors underlying and supporting the oppression of one group by…
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24/02 - Seminar by Pia Raffler & Colloquium by Peiran Jiao

Seminar

Pia Raffler

Harvard University

Tuesday, 25th February @ 12:30 PM
“Political Oversight of the Bureaucracy: Implications for Democratization in Hybrid Regimes”
Recognizing that poor governance hinders human and economic development, a growing literature studies accountability of politicians to voters. This talk instead considers accountability relationships within governments—the ability of politicians to implement policies by holding bureaucrats responsible for their actions, and the implications for…
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Colloquium

Peiran Jiao

Maastricht University

(with James Best and Daniel Quigley)

Wednesday, 26th February @ 2:00 PM
“History, Efficiency and Implementation: An Experiment”
In standard repeated games settings predictions are difficult due to the existence of folk-theorems. At the same time repeated interactions frequently take place in environments where a third party controls what historical data can be observed about past behaviour. Theoretical results in Best and Quigley (2020) suggest that control over historical data allows…
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Visiting Scholar

Elizabeth Dekeyser

Research Fellow
Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse

The Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) is pleased to announce the appointment of Elizabeth Dekeyser as visiting scholar during this week.

Elizabeth is a social scientist who uses ethnographic and computational methods to examine how politics influence identity, with a particular focus on questions surrounding Islam and immigration.

She recently completed her PhD in Political Science and Statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs, and has been funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, the United States Institute of Peace, and MIT’s Center for International Studies.

14/02 - Colloquium by David Rueda

Colloquium

David Rueda

University of Oxford

Wednesday, 19th February @ 2:00 PM
“Fairness, Risk and the Welfare State”
A growing literature shows that most people are willing to accept income differences that are based on effort and choice, but reject inequalities that are the outcome of luck and circumstances. Welfare states follow different logics in their response to these fairness considerations. Our proposed research provides theoretical arguments and experimental analyses that…
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08/02 - Seminar by Michela Coppede & Colloquium by Marta Golin

Seminar

Michela Redoano Coppede

University of Warwick

Tuesday, 11th February @ 12:30 PM
“Social Capital, Culture and Government Performance”
This paper makes three contributions in understanding the link between social capital and economic performances.  First, it conducts a deeper investigation into how the social capital channel might work by conducting a large-scale on-line experiment involving 1,500 individuals from three of the largest cities in Italy, Rome, Milan, and Turin. Second, it…
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Colloquium

Marta Golin

University of Oxford

Wednesday, 12th February @ 2:00 PM
“Mobile Phone Usage and Wellbeing”
Mobile devices have worked their way into the daily life of adolescents and adults alike. Mobile applications, and in particular social media applications, are increasingly popular, especially among the population of young adults: in the UK on average, 16-24-year-olds spent 2h26 per day using social media in 2016. Recent evidence from both the economics and…
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24/01 - Seminar by Horacio Larreguy & Colloquium by Betram Vidgen

Seminar

Horacio Larreguy

Harvard University

Tuesday, 28th January @ 12:30 PM
“Who Debates, Wins? At-Scale Experimental Evidence on Debate Participation in a Liberian Election”
We examine how candidate selection into the supply of policy information determines its electoral effects. In a nationwide debate initiative designed to solicit and rebroadcast policy promises from Liberian legislative candidates, we randomized the encouragement of debate participation across districts. The intervention substantially increased the debate participation of…
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Colloquium

Betram Vidgen

Alan Turing Institute

Wednesday, 29th January @ 2:00 PM
“Understanding Perceptions of Online Hate: Targets, Context and Subjectivity”
Hateful online content is a growing concern of Government, academia and commercial platforms. It inflicts harm on targeted users and their communities, creates and exacerbates divisions across society, and toxifies public discourse. Developing accurate tools to automatically detect online hate is a crucial step in monitoring, analysing and tackling it. This, in…
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22/01 - Hilary 2020

Dear all,

Welcome back to Hilary 2020. We have lots of great events lined up for you this term and beyond so get ready to do some experimental social science!

Seminars & Colloquia

 
Colloquium

Jane Conway

Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

 

22nd January @ 2:00 PM

Understanding Individual Differences in Theory of Mind Using the ‘Mind-space’ Framework

 
Seminar (joint with Oxford’s Dept. of Economics)

Horacio Larreguy

Harvard University

 

28th January @ 12:30 PM

“Who Debates, Wins? At-Scale Experimental Evidence on Debate Participation in a Liberian Election”

 
Colloquium

Betram Vidgen

Alan Turing Institute

 

29th January @ 2:00 PM

“Understanding Perceptions of Online Hate: Targets, Context and Subjectivity”

 
Seminar

Michela Redoano Coppede

University of Warwick

 

11th February @ 12:30 PM

“Social Capital, Culture and Government Performance”

 
Colloquium

Marta Golin

University of Oxford

 

12th February @ 2:00 PM

Mobile Phone Usage and Wellbeing

 

Seminar (joint with Oxford’s Dept. of Politics and International Relations)

Pia Raffler

Harvard University

 

25th February @ 12:30 PM

TBA

 
Colloquium

Peiran Jiao

Maastricht University

 

26th February @ 2:00 PM

Categorical Learning and Investor Attention

 

Colloquium

Noah Bacine

University of Oxford

 

4th March @ 2:00 PM

Forced Identity: the Role of Punishment in Group Behavior

New CESS Team member

 

Roberto Cerina

Experimental Data Scientist

Roberto has joined CESS to work on the Multiple Regression Post-stratification MRP) projects, which aim to develop methods that can be incorporated into the design and implementation of experiments.

New Visiting Scholars

 

Michela Redoano Coppede

Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Warwick
 

Carl-Georg Christoph Luft

Doctoral Researcher in Behavioral Insurance and Economics, University of the German Federal Armed Forces
 

Karine Van der Straeten

CNRS Senior Research Fellow, Toulouse School of Economics & Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

 

The Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Sciences of the University of Oxford (CESS) is pleased to announce the Seventh International Meeting on Experimental and Behavioral Social Sciences (IMEBESS) at the University of Lyon, Lyon, France, on 28-30 May 2020.

IMEBESS intends to bring together researchers in all areas of the social sciences who are interested in experimental methods. We believe that behavioural economics is increasingly informed by a very diverse range of research traditions. Hence, we are particularly interested in the participation of all social science disciplines with an interest in experimental and behavioural research, including anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology.

Call for papers is now open! Submission deadline is February 28th, 2020.

More info at the conference website: http://imebess.org

Introduction to Experiments

The 2020 CESS Experiments Summer School will take place from 22 June to 3 July. The Summer School provides students with a thorough introduction to experimental methods. Instructors from CESS and beyond will cover different modules and two exceptional lecturers with varied research backgrounds will give talks on topics related to social science experiments. Students will have the opportunity to work with the popular experiment programming software oTree, and present their own work for discussion and feedback.

More details will be available on our website shortly.

Comparative Time-Sharing Experiments (CTSE)

We are very pleased to announce the launch of Comparative Time-Sharing Experiments (CTSE). CTSE is intended to offer access to the four principal student and non-student online subject pools of the Centre of Experimental Social Sciences (CESS), Nuffield College located in the UK, Chile, India and China, to researchers free of charge. CTSE will thus allow graduate students of the University of Oxford and CESS to conduct subsidised experiments in China, Chile, and India.The submission deadline of 31st Jan 2020 is fast approaching!

Find more information about CTSE here: https://cess-nuffield.nuff.ox.ac.uk/ctse/

Vacancies

CESS Nuffield

 
We seek to appoint a skilled programmer who will undertake and oversee programming and manage the operations of the CESS behavioural labs and its online virtual experiments. Application deadline: Thursday 30 January 2020.
 
Do you have strong interpersonal skills? Are you comfortable and friendly in talking with strangers? These are some of the required skills for Lab Assistants we are looking for to join our lab team.

CESS Santiago

 
The Nuffield College Santiago Chile Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) and the Department of Economics at Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH) seek to appoint a full-time faculty positions at the rank of assistant or associate professor. Application deadline: Friday 31 January 2020.