Two hundred and thirty nine subjects were given a choice between a virtuous apple and a hedonistic chocolate bar.
This exemplifies a fallacy that is almost ubiquitous in psychological experiments, and runs right through this paper. The subjects were not offered a choice between a virtuous apple and a hedonistic chocolate bar. They were offered a choice between an apple and a chocolate bar (or of declining either). Personally, I eat about 10 to 20 times (by weight) as much apples as chocolate, because that it what it pleases me to do. Likewise, a choice between groceries and spa services is not a choice between restraint and indulgence. Besides which, any subject smart enough to look at what the offered transaction actually is (which surely includes everyone on LessWrong?) will have the sense to choose the voucher for something they would be spending money on anyway, making it exactly equivalent to being given that sum of money to direct in any they wish. (I see from the paper that they were not actually offered a voucher, but the chance to win one in a raffle. I suppose that keeps the experimental costs down. I wonder if any prizes were actually awarded?)
The fallacy being committed here is of attributing to a stimulus an imagined response of your subjects. To this way of thinking, apples are “virtuous”, chocolate is a “temptation”, and a spa session is a “luxury”. None of these things are true. How the subjects respond to these offers depends on their own purposes, whose existence experimental psychologists generally ignore. They prefer to imagine that they are reaching into the heads of people, tweaking knobs and reading dials. This is pseudoscience and superstition.
This exemplifies a fallacy that is almost ubiquitous in psychological experiments, and runs right through this paper. The subjects were not offered a choice between a virtuous apple and a hedonistic chocolate bar. They were offered a choice between an apple and a chocolate bar (or of declining either). Personally, I eat about 10 to 20 times (by weight) as much apples as chocolate, because that it what it pleases me to do. Likewise, a choice between groceries and spa services is not a choice between restraint and indulgence. Besides which, any subject smart enough to look at what the offered transaction actually is (which surely includes everyone on LessWrong?) will have the sense to choose the voucher for something they would be spending money on anyway, making it exactly equivalent to being given that sum of money to direct in any they wish. (I see from the paper that they were not actually offered a voucher, but the chance to win one in a raffle. I suppose that keeps the experimental costs down. I wonder if any prizes were actually awarded?)
The fallacy being committed here is of attributing to a stimulus an imagined response of your subjects. To this way of thinking, apples are “virtuous”, chocolate is a “temptation”, and a spa session is a “luxury”. None of these things are true. How the subjects respond to these offers depends on their own purposes, whose existence experimental psychologists generally ignore. They prefer to imagine that they are reaching into the heads of people, tweaking knobs and reading dials. This is pseudoscience and superstition.
Inevitably, the results are the usual statistical mush.