Strategic Curiosity

Last registered on April 19, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Strategic Curiosity
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0004402
Initial registration date
July 01, 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
July 08, 2019, 2:36 PM EDT

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

Last updated
April 19, 2023, 5:50 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Fehime Ceren Ay
Affiliation
NHH- Norges Handelshøyskolen
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Joel Berge
PI Affiliation
NHH- Norges Handelshøyskolen
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Katrine Berg Nødvedt
PI Affiliation
NHH-Norges Handelshøyskolen
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2019-07-19
End date
2019-08-02
Keywords
Other
Additional Keywords
information, dishonesty, curiosity, moral wiggle room
JEL code(s)
D91
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
In this study, we investigate whether people use curiosity in a strategic manner to justify dishonest behavior. Specifically, we propose that individuals experiencing a want-should conflict will be motivated to acquire information that can serve as a potential justification to act in line with their temptations. Just as people might be strategically ignorant, we propose that people also have a tendency to acquire non-instrumental information for the sake of justifying their own selfishness - we call this "strategic curiosity". As such, we conjecture that people are not merely passive receivers of information but that they shape their information environment to serve their self-interest. To test our predictions, we conduct a digital version of the die-under-the-cup task, where subjects roll a virtual die and report the outcome for monetary rewards. In this controlled setting, we experimentally manipulate the availability of superfluous information and whether this information has the potential to justify dishonesty. Our manipulations focus on mainly two directions: how many times the die can be rolled and the outcome of the die. This study can have a wide range of practical implications and can open up a strand of research that focuses on understanding how people actively shape their information environment to serve their own self-interest.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ay, Fehime Ceren, Katrine Berg Nødvedt and Joel Berge. 2023. "Strategic Curiosity." AEA RCT Registry. April 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4402-2.2
Former Citation
Ay, Fehime Ceren, Katrine Berg Nødvedt and Joel Berge. 2023. "Strategic Curiosity." AEA RCT Registry. April 19. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4402/history/177305
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
It is an online experiment which is conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk.
The complete task takes about 7 minutes, treatments are built on the outcome of a die-rolling task and how many times it can be rolled.
Intervention (Hidden)
Control: Participants are only allowed to roll the digital die once, before they report their result on a subsequent page (roll-once condition).
T1: Participants are asked to first roll the die once, and then to roll it two more times. They will then be asked to report their outcome from the first roll on a subsequent page (three-rolls condition).
T2: Participants are asked to roll the die once, and will then be able to roll it for as many times they would like. They then continue to a subsequent page and are asked to report the outcome from the first roll (roll freely - justification potential condition).
T3: Participants are asked to roll the die once, and will then be able to roll a different type of die as many times as they would like. This different die will only display unordered and non-numeric symbols. After rolling as many times as they would like, participants continue to a subsequent page and are asked to report the outcome from the first roll (roll-freely - no justification potential condition)
Intervention Start Date
2019-07-19
Intervention End Date
2019-08-02

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Information seeking behavior and dishonesty
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
How the reported values change based on the outcome of the first roll and the number of rolls. In addition, when the outcome changes and generates unrelated information dishonesty might change.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We employ a digital version of the die-under-the-cup task (Shalvi et al. ,2011) where subjects roll a virtual die and report the outcome for monetary rewards. We choose the die-rolling setting as it allows us to experimentally vary the demand for justifications. Before rolling, all participants will be shown the payoff structure for their report, i.e. higher reported numbers will result in higher payoffs. The digital die will be programmed to be fair: it will randomly display the numbers of 1 through 6. The outcomes of the die is recorded, which means that this is an observed game similar to games used in recent studies on dishonesty (Gneezy et al. 2018; Pittarello et al., 2015). This design enables us to investigate whether the outcome of the first roll affects the probability that participants would want to roll more than once. Thus, we can test directly whether the distance between the observed outcome and the wealth-maximizing outcome predicts information acquisition.
Experimental Design Details
Participants in our experimental set-up are allocated to four different conditions. The four conditions are as follows:
C: Participants are only allowed to roll the digital die once, before they report their result on a subsequent page (roll-once condition).
T1: Participants are asked to first roll the die once, and then to roll it two more times. They will then be asked to report their outcome from the first roll on a subsequent page (three-rolls condition).
T2: Participants are asked to roll the die once, and will then be able to roll it for as many times they would like. They then continue to a subsequent page and are asked to report the outcome from the first roll (roll freely - justification potential condition).
T3: Participants are asked to roll the die once, and will then be able to roll a different type of die as many times as they would like. This different die will only display unordered and non-numeric symbols. After rolling as many times as they would like, participants continue to a subsequent page, and are asked to report the outcome from the first roll (roll-freely - no justification potential condition)

Participants self-report their roll, which provides them with an opportunity to cheat (misreport), and participants who receive a lower number than 6 will have a monetary incentive to cheat. We will pay participants according to their report, as we inform them in the instructions. All participants will have equal chances to receive a high number on the digital die on their first roll (1/6), and will therefore have equal chances to earn the maximum bonus without cheating. In practice, all participants can claim the maximum bonus by simply reporting the number 6. After reporting their outcomes, participants will be asked questions about the experiment and other demographic questions (Experiment materials can be found in the submitted pre-analysis plan).
Randomization Method
Participants will be randomized by the python based program that we use for the design of the experiment: Otree. Each condition will have the same number of participants.
Randomization Unit
Individual level randomization.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
4 conditions
Sample size: planned number of observations
1600 participants
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
400 participants in each of the 4 conditions: control, roll 3 times, roll freely, roll freely with figures.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
We aim for 0.3 effect size with min. 0.8 power.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
NHH IRB
IRB Approval Date
2019-06-06
IRB Approval Number
NHH IRB 07/19
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Pre-Analysis Plan-Detailed

MD5: 0ce26bb413f73c367fc557cea5cc8781

SHA1: 0f4ef33e82b6fe1cea2887a399ccf6b69c048e9b

Uploaded At: July 01, 2019

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
August 01, 2019, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
August 01, 2019, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
1600 participants participated in the experiment.
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
In total 1600 allocated in 4 groups.
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials