Mindfulness and Economic Decision-Making

Last registered on June 10, 2019

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Mindfulness and Economic Decision-Making

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0004257

Initial registration date

May 30, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

June 10, 2019, 7:16 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Daniel Sgroi

Affiliation

University of Warwick

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Shi Zhuo

PI Affiliation

University fo Warwick

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Anthony Tuckwell

PI Affiliation

University of Warwick

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Elliot Ash

PI Affiliation

ETH Zurich

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2019-06-03

End date

2019-08-05

Keywords

Health, Other, Welfare

Additional Keywords

decision-making, mindfulness

JEL code(s)

D91, I31, C93, C91, C92

Secondary IDs

Abstract

We develop an experiment designed to shed light on the role of meditation in influencing the role of four behavioural biases often studied in economics: identity priming; self-control problems; heuristic biases; and egocentric biases (distorted beliefs about self/others). However, different types of meditation may affect behaviour in different ways through a differential impact on issues like attention; body awareness; emotion regulation; and self-perspective. We formulated an RCT design with interventions that target these biases, with a particular focus on attention and self-perspective. Our RCT design will make use of two treatments (sessions that promote mindfulness) and an active control (sessions devoted to general stress management) to analyse the differential effects of attention/insight meditations on the four domains of decision-making (measured using experimental methods in seperate laboratory sessions).

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Ash, Elliot et al. 2019. "Mindfulness and Economic Decision-Making." AEA RCT Registry. June 10. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4257-1.0

Former Citation

Ash, Elliot et al. 2019. "Mindfulness and Economic Decision-Making." AEA RCT Registry. June 10. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4257/history/47807

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We will recruit from general public and students, advertising courses for stress reduction. Some will be randmoized to sessions that focus on mindfulness, others to sessions that focus on more general stress-reduction methods. They will all also undertake tasks in the laboratory designed to allow us to measure the key outcome variables and various useful controls.

Intervention Start Date

2019-06-03

Intervention End Date

2019-08-05

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Lying-aversion, system 1 bias, trust and reciprocity, ego utility (overconfidence, my-side bias), identity, time preference and risk preference.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Lying-aversion: Number of people reporting 3 or more heads out of 5 coin flips in the truth-telling task
System 1 bias: Number of correct answers to a set of heuristic bias questions; difference in responses to framing and anchoring
Trust and reciprocity: Number of people who choose to trust in the trust game; Amount returned by trustees in trust game
Ego utility (Overconfidence, My-side bias): Average estimated ability in logic puzzle task after voluntary stopping of practice; success rate among those who choose the logic puzzle task; difference in self-estimated and actual performance in the logic puzzle task; bias in argument evaluation towards own favoured statement
Identity: bias in allocation of tokens for strangers towards own gender
Time preference: preferred amount in 1 week compared to today, and in 5 weeks compared to in 4 weeks
Risk preference: response to the DOSPERT scale (Blais, A. R., & Weber, E. U. (2006). A domain-specific risk-taking (DOSPERT) scale for adult populations.)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Motivation(cost) of effort, strategic writing, sunk-cost bias, endowment effect, loss aversion, negative reciprocity and preferences for redistribution.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Motivation(cost) of effort: Number of points gained in real effort task
Strategic writing: Difference in percentage of trustor trusting when receiving a message from trustee with or without knowing the message would be sent to trustor
Sunk-cost bias: Number of people who choose to switch to a dominant lottery after wining the dominated lottery via real effort task
Endowment effect: Number of people who choose to exchange lottery ticket for extra payment after randomly assigned a lottery ticket
Loss aversion: Number of people who prefer lottery with positive but small expected value to 0
Negative reciprocity: Responses to hypothetical questions
Preferences for redistribution: Chosen distribution of tax burden among different income percentiles

Experimental Design

Subjects are randomized into the mindfulness (treatment) and stress-reduction (control) sessions. They receive 4 sessions covering various techniques linked to mindfulness (treatment) or general stress-reduction (control) as well as a number of laboratory-based tests designed to allow us to measure the various primary and secondary outcomes before and after the treatment/control sessions.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomisation by a computer

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

30 individuals

Sample size: planned number of observations

30 individuals

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

15 individuals in active control, 15 individuals in treatment

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Using the results of the Probabilistic Reasoning subset (main reference for the system 1 bias questions) in Stanovich, West and Toplak (2016) as the outcome of control group (mean 11.2, SD 3.6), with power = 0.8, alpha=0.05 (adjusting for multiple testing), MDE is 5.163 (=a 46% increase) Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Toplak, M. E. (2016). The rationality quotient: Toward a test of rational thinking. MIT Press.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB