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On the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements

A contemporary research agenda in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics aims to identify individual differences and (neuro)psychological correlates of rationality. This research has been widely received in important interdisciplinary and field outlets. However, the psychometric reliability of such...

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Autores principales: Nitsch, Felix J., Lüpken, Luca M., Lüschow, Nils, Kalenscher, Tobias
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9351500/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35881803
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2202070119
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author Nitsch, Felix J.
Lüpken, Luca M.
Lüschow, Nils
Kalenscher, Tobias
author_facet Nitsch, Felix J.
Lüpken, Luca M.
Lüschow, Nils
Kalenscher, Tobias
author_sort Nitsch, Felix J.
collection PubMed
description A contemporary research agenda in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics aims to identify individual differences and (neuro)psychological correlates of rationality. This research has been widely received in important interdisciplinary and field outlets. However, the psychometric reliability of such measurements of rationality has been presumed without enough methodological scrutiny. Drawing from multiple original and published datasets (in total over 1,600 participants), we unequivocally show that contemporary measurements of rationality have moderate to poor reliability according to common standards. Further analyses of the variance components, as well as a allowing participants to revise previous choices, suggest that this is driven by low between-subject variance rather than high measurement error. As has been argued previously for other behavioral measurements, this poses a challenge to the predominant correlational research designs and the search for sociodemographic or neural predictors. While our results draw a sobering picture of the prospects of contemporary measurements of rationality, they are not necessarily surprising from a theoretical perspective, which we outline in our discussion.
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spelling pubmed-93515002023-01-26 On the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements Nitsch, Felix J. Lüpken, Luca M. Lüschow, Nils Kalenscher, Tobias Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences A contemporary research agenda in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics aims to identify individual differences and (neuro)psychological correlates of rationality. This research has been widely received in important interdisciplinary and field outlets. However, the psychometric reliability of such measurements of rationality has been presumed without enough methodological scrutiny. Drawing from multiple original and published datasets (in total over 1,600 participants), we unequivocally show that contemporary measurements of rationality have moderate to poor reliability according to common standards. Further analyses of the variance components, as well as a allowing participants to revise previous choices, suggest that this is driven by low between-subject variance rather than high measurement error. As has been argued previously for other behavioral measurements, this poses a challenge to the predominant correlational research designs and the search for sociodemographic or neural predictors. While our results draw a sobering picture of the prospects of contemporary measurements of rationality, they are not necessarily surprising from a theoretical perspective, which we outline in our discussion. National Academy of Sciences 2022-07-26 2022-08-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9351500/ /pubmed/35881803 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2202070119 Text en Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Nitsch, Felix J.
Lüpken, Luca M.
Lüschow, Nils
Kalenscher, Tobias
On the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements
title On the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements
title_full On the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements
title_fullStr On the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements
title_full_unstemmed On the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements
title_short On the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements
title_sort on the reliability of individual economic rationality measurements
topic Social Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9351500/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35881803
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2202070119
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