Erik Løhre

Psychologia Społeczna 19 p. 1-24 Doi: https://doi.org/10.32872/spb.12875

As the climate change crisis has become more evident, a growing number of businesses and organizations have gotten involved in sustainability efforts. But not all corporate sustainability efforts are applauded: sometimes the public accuses companies of greenwashing, i.e., overstating the extent to which the company is environmentally friendly. There is little research on the factors that influence perceived greenwashing amongst the public. Here, we report a replication and extension of one of the few studies of this topic, Experiment 2 in de Vries et al. (2015, https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1327). The original study found that people perceived more greenwashing when an oil company communicated an environmental motive for a sustainability investment (carbon capture and storage), as opposed to a profit motive, d = 0.98 [0.37, 1.59]. The present pre-registered replication (n = 516) did not find support for this effect, with very little difference in perceived greenwashing depending on communicated motive, d = -0.09 [-0.38, 0.21]. As extensions, we included a condition where a mixed motive (both environment and profits) was communicated, tested the effect using a different type of company than the original, included a measure of general attitudes to the company in addition to perceived greenwashing, and included measures of individual differences in attitudes towards corporate social responsibility and belief in climate change. The most noteworthy exploratory finding was that attitudes were more positive when an environmental or a mixed motive was communicated rather than a profit motive.

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP) p. 1-24 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218241255916

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218231204350

It is generally assumed that decision-makers appear more competent and trustworthy when exuding confidence in their choices. However, many decisions are by their nature uncertain. Is it possible for a decision-maker to admit uncertainty and still be trusted? We propose that the communicated type of uncertainty may matter. Internal uncertainty, which signals lack of knowledge or a low degree of belief, may be viewed more negatively than external uncertainty, which is associated with randomness and complexity. The results of a series of experiments suggested that people viewed leaders as more competent when they expressed uncertainty about a decision in external (“It is uncertain”) rather than internal terms (“I am uncertain”), overall effect size d = 0.45 [0.16, 0.74]. Paradoxically, when asked directly, participants expressed that leaders should be open about uncertainty rather than exuding confidence and downplaying uncertainty. A final study suggested that decision makers were more willing to reveal uncertainty about a choice to others when they perceived the uncertainty as more external and less internal and expected more positive and fewer negative consequences from expressing external rather than internal uncertainty.

Collabra: Psychology 8(1) p. 1-20 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.57704

People’s decisions depend on how situations are described or framed to them. But how do speakers frame outcomes to others? What factors predict whether a speaker chooses to frame an investment opportunity in terms of its chances of failure or success? Drawing on the appraisal tendency framework, we investigated whether emotions associated with uncertainty (worry) might increase speakers’ preference for negative framing, whereas emotions associated with certainty (anger) might increase speakers’ preference for positive framing. Across two well-powered preregistered studies (NTotal = 1,350), participants responded to measures of dispositional worry and anger and completed framing tasks in different contexts. We told participants that a job applicant/investment in a medical treatment had an estimated chance of failure vs success (e.g., 40% chance of failure and 60% chance of success) and asked them whether they would describe the predicted outcome to their manager in terms of chances of failure or chances of success. Overall, we found little evidence for our hypothesized influence of dispositional worry and anger on framing using our preregistered analysis. However, exploratory analyses revealed that the predicted associations appeared when participants perceived high levels of risk in the decision scenarios. A stronger effect on frame preference was found for risk perception and willingness to recommend a decision, indicating that frames reveal more about such idiosyncratic responses than about emotional traits. Preregistrations, data, code, and materials can be found at https://osf.io/3e98a/.

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 171 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2022.104166

Research on verbal probabilities and standard scales issued by national and international authorities suggest that only events with probabilities above 60% should be labelled “likely”. We find, however, that when people apply this term to continuous variables, like expected costs, it describes the most likely (modal) outcome or interval, regardless of actual probabilities, which may be quite small. This was demonstrated in six studies in which lay participants (N = 2,228) were shown probability distributions from various domains and asked to generate or to select “likely” outcome intervals. Despite having numeric and graphically displayed information available, participants judged central, low-probability segments as “likely” (as opposed to equal or larger segments in the tails) and subsequently overestimated the chances of these outcomes. We conclude that high-probability interpretations of “likely” are only valid for binary outcomes but not for distributions of graded variables or multiple outcomes.

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making p. 1-13 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2298

Recent research has shown that when people combine verbal probabilistic forecasts from two sources, they are not simply averaged but can reinforce each other; so when two advisors both said an event was “rather likely,” some listeners concluded that the event was “quite likely”. Conversely, when both said the event was “rather unlikely,” people concluded that it was “quite unlikely.” The present studies demonstrate that the direction of this effect is not evoked by high versus low probabilities, but by the directionality of verbal probability expressions. Some phrases are affirmative, directed towards occurrences (“there is a chance”), whereas others are negations, pointing to the possibility that the event might not occur (“it is not certain”). Two positive phrases are perceived to reinforce each other, even when they convey low probabilities, resulting in a higher combined probability estimate, whereas two negative phrases do the opposite, regardless of the probabilities they convey. We show that this effect occurs both for equal and unequal verbal phrases, regardless of the probability equivalents of the expressions. We also found a positive, but weaker, reinforcement effect of numerical probabilities

Weather, Climate, and Society 11(3) p. 565-575 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-18-0136.1

The use of interval forecasts allows climate scientists to issue predictions with high levels of certainty even for areas fraught with uncertainty, since wide intervals are objectively more likely to capture the truth than narrow intervals. However, wide intervals are also less informative about what the outcome will be than narrow intervals, implying a lack of knowledge or subjective uncertainty in the forecaster. In six experiments, we investigate how laypeople perceive the (un)certainty associated with wide and narrow interval forecasts, and find that the preference for accuracy (seeing wide intervals as ‘‘objectively’’ certain) versus informativeness (seeing wide intervals as indicating ‘‘subjective’’ uncertainty) is influenced by contextual cues (e.g., question formulation). Most important, we find that people more commonly and intuitively associate wide intervals with uncertainty than with certainty. Our research thus challenges the wisdom of using wide intervals to construct statements of high certainty in climate change reports.

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 32(5) p. 564-578 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2132

Agreements and disagreements between expert statements influence lay people's beliefs. But few studies have examined what is perceived as a disagreement. We report six experiments where people rated agreement between pairs of probabilistic statements about environmental events, attributed to two different experts or to the same expert at two different points in time. The statements differed in frame, by focusing on complementary outcomes (45% probability that smog will have negative health effects vs. 55% probability that it will not have such effects), in probability level (45% vs. 55% probability of negative effects), or in both respects. Opposite frames strengthened disagreement when combined with different probability levels. Approximate probabilities can be “framed” in yet another way by indicating reference values they are “over” or “under”. Statements that use different directional verbal terms (over vs. under 50%) indicated greater disagreement than statements with the same directional term but different probability levels (over 50% vs. over 70%). Framing and directional terms similarly affected consistency judgments when both statements were issued by the same expert at different occasions. The effect of framing on perceived agreement was significant for medium (10 and 20 percentage points) differences between probabilities, whereas the effect of directional term was stable for numerical differences up to 40 percentage points. To emphasize agreement between different estimates, they should be framed in the same way. To accentuate disagreements or changes of opinion, opposite framings should be used.

Thinking and Reasoning 23(4) p. 492-496 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2017.1314965

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 30(5) p. 1014-1026 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2021

Forecasts of future outcomes, such as the consequences of climate change, are given with different degrees of precision. Logically, more precise forecasts (e.g., a temperature increase of 3–4°) have a smaller probability of capturing the actual outcome than less precise forecasts (e.g., a temperature increase of 2–6°). Nevertheless, people often trust precise forecasts more than vague forecasts, perhaps because precision is associated with knowledge and expertise. In five experiments, we ask whether people expect highly confident forecasts to be associated with wider or narrower outcome ranges than less confident forecasts (Experiments 1, 2, and 5), and, conversely, whether they expect precise forecasts to be issued with higher or lower confidence than vague forecasts (Experiments 3 and 4). The results revealed two distinct ways of thinking about confidence intervals, labeled distributional (wide intervals seen as more probable than narrow intervals) and associative (wide intervals seen as more uncertain than narrow intervals). Distributional responses occurred somewhat more often in within-subjects designs, where wide and narrow prediction intervals and high and low probability estimates can be directly compared, whereas separate evaluations (in between-subjects design) suggested associative responses to be slightly more frequent. These findings are relevant for experts communicating forecasts through confidence intervals.

Thinking and Reasoning 22(4) p. 369-396 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2015.1069758

Current theories of probability recognize a distinction between external (un)certainty (frequentistic probabilities) and internal (un)certainty (degrees of belief). The present studies investigated this distinction in lay people’s judgments of probability statements formulated to suggest either an internal (“I am X% certain”) or an external (“It is X% certain” or “There is a X% probability”) interpretation. These subtle differences in wording influenced participants’ perceptions and endorsements of such statements, and their impressions of the speaker. External expressions were seen to signal more reliable task duration estimates, and a lower degree of external than internal certainty was deemed necessary to advise a course of action. In conversations about football, internal expressions were perceived as signaling more personal interest, and were expected to be on the average 10% higher than corresponding external probabilities. Finally, people who reported their outcome expectations for two major sports events let their degree of interest in these events influence their internal but not their external certainty. These results have implications for the communication of uncertainty and probability.

Journal of Systems and Software 116 p. 49-56 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2015.03.015

Impuls : Tidsskrift for psykologi 68(1) p. 33-42

Acta Psychologica 148 p. 63-73 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.01.005

Evaluation & Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2012), 16th International Conference on p. 216-222