Running head: PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 1
Status Quo or Change? The Influence of Creativity and Openness to Experience on the Status
Quo Bias and Information Sampling
Kyara Smit (551088)
Tilburg University
Supervised by A.K. Spälti. Department of social psychology, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences Date PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 2
Abstract
Limited research has been done on the influence of openness to experience and/or creativity in relation to information sampling and the status quo bias. Literature shows that the traits openness to experience and/or creativity might promote status quo rejecting behavior (Jost,
Nosek, & Gosling, 2008; McCrae, 1987). Therefore, it was hypothesized that highly open and/or creative people would prefer the alternative policy over the status quo policy and show information sampling behavior focused on the alternative policy.
The research consisted of 60 participants who were presented with a survey containing a decision board, a choice between an alternative and status quo, questions concerning the levels of openness and creativity of the participant, and questions testing the decision-making of the participant.
The results show that individuals scoring high on creativity read information of the alternative policy longer compared to those scoring low on creativity. The opposite effect was discovered for openness to experience. Furthermore, no effect was identified concerning openness to experience and/or creativity and the participant's interestedness in alternative policy. Lastly, both creativity and openness to experience individually fail to have an effect on policy preference. However, the participants with a high score on both openness to experience and creativity would likely prefer the alternative, while those with low creativity would likely prefer the status quo.
In conclusion, the research shows that openness to experience and creativity may influence sampling behavior and decision-making behavior regardless of the status quo bias.
Keywords: status quo bias, information sampling, openness to experience, creativity, decision-making.
PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 3
Status Quo or Change? The Influence of Creativity and Openness to Experience on the Status
Quo Bias and Information Sampling
On January 1st 2002 the Dutch Guilder was replaced by a new currency, namely the
Euro. The Guilder had been the currency of The Netherlands since medieval times. The decision to change the currency of The Netherlands did not happen overnight, and it took multiple years before the Dutch started paying with the Euro (“de invoering van de Euro” n.d.). In this example, the people made the decision to abandon the old for something new.
However, humans have the tendency to stick to the old, instead of choosing for the alternative. This tendency is referred to as the ‘status quo bias’. Especially, decisions made in real life are influenced by the status quo bias (Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988). Take for example the decision of the majority of people to work from nine to five from Monday to
Friday. Although working on other times and days might be more efficient and convenient, because of a decrease in traffic jams etc., the majority of the population remains working from nine till five from Monday to Friday. One possible explanation for this example might be the fact that this is how society has always functioned.
The status quo bias is also called the ‘existence bias’, which refers to “the tendency to assume that existing states of the world are good and right, to treat the ways things are as the way things ought to be” (Eidelman & Crandall, 2014, p 55). This shows that decisions are not made in a purely rational way as Savage’s (1972) rational choice model suggests. Savage
(1972) states that a person who has to make a decision under uncertain circumstances, does this by comparing assigned probabilities of possible outcomes to their expected values. One important assumption in the model is that the format in which the information is given should not influence the person’s decision. However, as much research has shown, a product or policy being labelled as ‘status quo’ will have an influence on a person’s decision (Gilliland, PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 4
Wood, & Schmitt, 1994; Moshnsky & Bar-Hillel, 2009). Generally, the status quo is preferred over the alternative.
The decision to stick to the status quo rather than choosing the alternative, for example, is likely influenced and based on a process called information sampling (Fiedler,
2008). For example, information sampling occurred in the process the Dutch went through when deciding whether to change the Guilder to the Euro. They weighed the pros and cons, considered different perspectives as well as their own, and observed other countries, and thought about their own opinions. In other words, the decision to change from the Guilder to
Euro was based on the gathering of information from different sources (Koopmans, 2015). In this information gathering process not all existing information can be accessed, simply because of human and physical limitations. Each person samples only information that appears most relevant to them. Furthermore, because of this they most likely also sample information that is biased to a certain degree.
Also, Kahneman et al. (1982; as cited in Fielder and Jusins, 2006) explain that people can only sample information in a bounded rational way. This means that the information sampling process takes place through mental shortcuts and biases. According to the authors, this is because of the constraints of the minds’ information processing power. Furthermore,
Newell and Simon (1972; as cited in Fielder and Jusins, 2006) explain that people have to rely on cognitive heuristics, while sampling information. An example of a heuristic is the
‘availability heuristic’. This refers to a person estimating the probability of an event happening based on the ease to which it comes to mind (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). The availability heuristic could also be seen to enforce and enhance the existence of the status quo bias, considering how the status quo is what people are exposed to the most. Therefore, the status quo could occur to the person easier than the alternative, leading to them overestimating the probability of the status quo happening relative to the alternative. Also, PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 5 the status quo bias could be considered a heuristic because of the simplification it gives to the decision-making process.
Furthermore, Willems (1998) shows that people rely on simplification mechanisms and shortcuts when sampling information under time pressure or when the information is complex. By using a decision board1 he showed that people sample information differently when the information is presented in a complex way. Also, the author found that subjects did not look at additional information presented on the decision board when under time pressure.
In his research it was shown that subjects started using compensating strategies when they were presented with time pressure and/or when the information presented was complex.
As described earlier, research has shown that different situational and cognitive factors can influence information sampling process and decision-making. Research has also shown that information sampling is not a completely rational process. However, not much research has been done to examine the possible effect of personal characteristics on the status quo bias and information sampling. Therefore, this research looks at the personality trait
‘openness to experience’ and/or a person’s level of ‘creativity’ in relation to the process of information sampling and the status quo bias.
First, the definitions of openness to experience and creativity will be presented to highlight their relation to information sampling and the status quo bias: Openness to experience is defined by McCrae (1993) as the following: “openness is seen in the breadth, depth, permeability of consciousness, and in the recurrent need to enlarge and examine experiences”. Freely interpreted, people with an open mind are more in need of examining already existing experiences and to enlarge their current set of experiences. This need to
1 A decision board is a tool to analyse sampling behaviour. In general, a decision board looks a bit like a memory board. Participants can via opening different boxes look at information. However, a decision board can also take different forms depending on what kind of sampling behaviour is desired to be analysed.
PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 6 enlarge experiences could indicate that open people are more interested in examining the alternative instead of the status quo. Furthermore, ‘creativity’ is defined as “the ability to produce work that is novel” (El-Murad & West, 2004). Creating something novel can only happen when you let go of the existing, which could indicate that creative individuals are more able to consider the alternative over the status quo. Moreover, George and Zhou (2001) also found a relation between creativity and openness to experience. They explain that openness to experience may serve to encourage creative behavior. This would further lead to more explorative behavior of the alternative, because both traits appear to enhance the interest of the new, as the definitions also point out.
In addition, research in political psychology has shown that open individuals have been linked to explorative and perhaps even status quo rejecting behavior. Roets, Cornelis, and Van Hiel (2014) explained that the personality trait ‘openness to experience’ has a positive relation with left-wing orientation in politics. Furthermore, they explain that openness correlated significantly with unconventional activism. Besides them, also Jost,
Nosek, and Gosling (2008) found that liberals score higher on the personality trait openness to experience in comparison to conservatives. They also found that liberals are characterized by challenging the supremacy of longstanding institutes, such as the church and monarchy.
They additionally found that conservatives who score lower on the personality trait openness to experience are supportive of the status quo. What is more, Brandt, Chambers, Crawfrod,
Wetherell and Reyna (2015) show that people who score higher on the personality trait openness to experience appear more tolerant of different worldviews. In comparison, those scoring lower on the openness trait appear less tolerant of different worldviews. Lastly, Feist and Brady (2004) also show that individuals scoring high on openness to experience enjoy the novel form of art that is ‘abstract art’ more than people scoring low on openness to experience. Moreover, the authors also found that individuals with attitudes more tolerant of PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 7 political liberalism and drug use preferred novel ‘abstract art’ the most. Since there is a link between liberals scoring higher on the openness trait and challenging the longstanding institutions, this could indicate a connection between open people being less influenced by the status quo bias and sample information differently in comparison to their less open counterparts.
As mentioned above, openness to experience and creativity appear to be strongly connected to each other. Even so, creativity and openness to experience also seem not to be exactly the same, and therefore some additional literature is presented below to explain the possible effect of creativity on behavior and thinking styles. First of all, McCrae (1987), explains that creative individuals think in a more divergent way and are more unconventional. Additionally, Gilhooly, Fioratou, Anthony, and Wynn (2007) show that creativity is characterized by a more divergent thinking style, while Sternberg (1999) explains in his work that creativity is the ability to create something novel. What is more,
McCrae (1987) also explains that closed and less creative individuals are more comfortable with the familiar and are thus less motivated to try new things in comparison to their more open and creative counterparts. Even though literature has revealed the possible relation between creativity, openness to experience, a possible decrease of influence of the status quo bias, and a possible difference in information sampling style, research on this topic is limited to none existing.
Nonetheless, the connection between left wing or liberals and ‘openness to experience’ has been acknowledged in political psychology, and is also linked to the difference in voting preferences and behavior. Therefore, knowledge of the possibility of a connection between the status quo bias, openness, creativity and information sampling styles may shed light on the politics of the past, as well as present a valuable tool to current politicians. Furthermore, the current ecological crisis makes that people have to change PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 8 rapidly and make decisions often not in coherence with the status quo. Knowledge of sampling behavior and decision-making processes in relation to creativity and openness to experience could be of great importance to assist the development of political policies that promote change.
Hypotheses and research question
In this research, I investigate whether people scoring high on the trait openness to experience and/or creativity are more divergent in their way of information sampling and thus more prone to choosing the alternative policy over the status quo policy in comparison to people scoring low on the trait openness to experience and/or creativity.
The findings of previous research led to the following hypotheses: First, people scoring high on openness to experience and/or creativity will less often prefer the status quo policy over the alternative policy, compared to people scoring low on these traits. Secondly, people scoring high on openness to experience and/or creativity will read information about the status quo in the boxes significantly shorter than the alternative information, compared to people scoring low on openness to experience and/or creativity. Thirdly, people scoring high on openness to experience and/or creativity will press less often on status quo information boxes than on the alternative information boxes, compared to people scoring low on openness to experience and/or creativity.
Current Studies
Before testing the hypotheses, a pilot was run. Among other things, the pilot tested the created decision board, the information given to the participants, and possible errors that could occur when running the survey. Using the information collected in the pilot study, I created an improved survey which I used to test my hypotheses. The improved survey contains the same (improved) decision board design as the pilot. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 9
In both studies, participants are presented with a scenario regarding a status quo and an alternative policy. The case study entails a current social welfare policy discussion in
Finland on either keeping a situation specific allowance or providing a basic income for everyone equally. The alternative policy ‘basic income’ is currently being tested in Finland, and provides all civilians a basic income, regardless if they work or not. The status quo policy is currently similar to the system used in the Netherlands and is based on situation specific allowances. Depending on their situation, e.g. people with children or the unemployed receive a certain amount of money from the government. The amount of money received is determined by the situation an individual is in.
The following assumption is made concerning why the Finnish policy was chosen as alternative policy and the Dutch policy as status quo policy: the participant’s knowledge concerning the Finnish policy is limited, in comparison of the Dutch policy, and probably equally limited per participant. This way participants do not already have fixed opinions concerning the Finnish policy being better or worse based on their pre knowledge, but mostly will create an opinion via the sampling of information or through the status quo bias. The participants are either, more or less, forced to sample information if they want to give a well thought out opinion or they would have to resort to their status quo bias. This in other words is important to make sure there is an influence of the status quo and alternative.
A decision board presents information on the two policies. The decision board also test the sampling behavior of the participants. The decision board design is used, because It provides the possibility to observe sampling behavior as is also shown by Willems (1998), who examined the influence of complexity and time pressure on information sampling behavior as motioned before.
Pilot Study PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 10
As mentioned above, openness to experience and/or creativity appears to have an influence on what kind of decisions people prefer and make. Therefore, to test the hypotheses, two distinct participant populations have been selected that have a higher and lower degrees of ‘openness to experience’ and/or creativity.
The first group consists of art students, who are considered to be more creative and open to experience. Silvia and Nusbaum (2012) found that students majoring in art score significantly higher on the personality trait openness to experience. Furthermore, they found that art students have a higher creative self-concept, preform more creative actions in a day and have more creative accomplishments than students from other majors. Also Vedel (2016) consistently found that art students score high on the personality trait of openness to experience. The second group, consists of law students who are considered less open to experience and/or creative. Rubinstein (2005) found that law students scored significantly lower on openness to experience than students of all other faculties.
The literature concerning law students’ openness to experience and creativity score, is however limited. Besides testing the survey, the pilot tests and compares the assumptions made concerning law and art student’s openness to experience and perceived creativity score.
If the pilot shows that art and law students differ significantly on openness to experience personality trait and perceived creativity, then these groups will also be used in the main study.
Method
Participants. Participants were recruited by distributing the questionnaire on
Facebook. The survey of the pilot was distributed on the 19th of September 2016. The distribution period was 20 days long. The total sample consisted of 17 Dutch participants (3 men, 14 women, Mage = 31.86 years, SDage= 0.42). The sample size varied per question, because of missing values. Three out of 17 participants study psychology. Only one PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 11 participant was attained from each of the following fields: Medicine, electioneering, human resource studies, physics, economics, economical psychology, and sustainability. Although the survey was also distributed on specific Facebook pages dedicated to art and law study societies, only one law and one art student participated in the survey. The remaining participants did not specify a study field.
A-priori power analysis. The desired sample size was 27. This sample size was determined considering a power of 80% with a one-sample t-test. The one-sample t-test was used to test questions concerning time and questions concerning understanding the guiding information presented in the decision board. The minimum requirement to execute the independent sample t-test was that 10 art students were obtained as well as 10 law students.
This minimum requirement was determined based on what would be a realistic amount of participants to obtain, that could give a limited insight into the possible difference between these two groups.
Materials and Procedure. An online Qualtrics survey containing a decision board and follow-up questions was used to obtain the information needed to test the hypotheses.
The language of the survey was Dutch. After starting the survey and accepting the informed consent, participants were guided to the next page, which provided a brief description of the two policies: the status quo and the alternative policy. The status quo policy was named
‘situatie specifieke’ and the alternative policy was named ‘basis toelagen’. After the participants had read the small explanation they were guided to the instructions on the decision board. The text also gave the participants information about time limitations when continuing to the decision board page. However, no specific time was mentioned in the text.
Decision board. The decision board consisted of 16 boxes. The instructions before the decision board explained the abbreviation of the two policies presented on the boxes. The abbreviation of ‘situatie specifieke’ was ‘ss’ and for ‘basis toelagen’ ‘bt’. For example, if a PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 12 participant would click a ‘ss’ box they would receive information about ‘situatie specifieke’.
Eight boxes were used for the ‘situatie specifieke’ and eight for ‘basis toelagen’. The ‘situatie speciefieke’ boxes were located on the left side of the page and the ‘basis toelagen’ boxes on the right side (appendix A). The information seen when clicking on the boxes was all positive. A list of the information can be found in the appendix B. The participants had 45 seconds to view as many boxes as they wanted and/or was possible. When a participant clicked on a box, he or she would be led to another page that contained the information under the box that was clicked. If a participant wanted to return to the boxes page, the participant had to click on the “back” button. The time would continue running when a participant visited the page with the information.
Questions testing the survey. After the decision board the participants were asked different questions, concerning testing the hypothesis, testing the survey, and general information of the participant.
Policy preference. First, participants were asked, which policy they would prefer and also why they would prefer that policy. Participants’ policy preference was measured on a
11-point scale from 0, indicating that they like the ‘situatie specifiek’ policy, to 10, indicating that they like ‘basis toelagen’ policy.
Information provided. Next, participant’s opinion about the amount of information given on the two policies was asked on a 11-point scale from 0 (enough information) to 10
(not enough information). If a participant did not consider the information to be enough, a follow-up question was asked. In the follow-up question they were asked to indicate if this opinion concerns both or just one policy. Another follow-up question gave the participant the opportunity to write down why he or she did not consider the information given to be sufficient. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 13
Control question information. The control question asked the participants if they considered the information given about the policies to be redundant. The participants could give their answer by answering yes, no, or there was exactly enough information. Also after this question, participants were asked if they could write down why they considered the information redundant.
Time questions. Participants were asked if they consider the time they had to be enough. Participants responded on a 11-point scale from 0 (enough time) to 10 (not enough time). Furthermore, the participants were asked if they had too much time. Participants’ opinion if they consider the time to be too much was asked on a 11-point scale from 0, indicating that they had too much time, to 10, indicating that they did not have too much time.
Guiding information. Participants’ opinion about the guiding information was asked.
The guiding information consisted of the abbreviations of the policies on the boxes and a name in the middle above the boxes indicating the policy again. Participants’ opinion of the guiding information was asked on a 11-point scale from 0 (insufficient information) to 10
(sufficient information).
Additional guiding information. Next the participant was asked what he or she would have liked to see added. The participants could do this by clicking on one of the given alternatives and/or writing down their own answer. The alternatives given are the following:
“information that indicates if the information under the boxes is either positive or negative”,
“that it is indicated on the boxes that the information under the boxes consist of something financial or social”, and “that the boxes are ranked with a number indicating how important a box is”.
Openness to experience. Participants filled in openness to experience questions retained from a validated questionnaire (α = .33; John & Srivastava, 1999). The openness to PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 14 experience questions consisted out of 10 statements to which a participant could indicate how much he or she agrees or disagrees with those statements. Examples of statements presented in the openness to experience scale are the following: ‘is inventive’, ‘prefers working in a routine’, and ‘is very curious’. Participants’ answer on the statements were asked on a 5-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). For the statements ‘has minimal artistic interests’ and ‘prefers working in a routine’ a reverse score was calculated.
Creativity. Participants’ perceived level of creativity was also asked. Participants’ perceived level of creativity was asked on a 11-point scale from 0 (very creative) to 10 (not creative at all).
Finally, participants were asked general questions about age, gender, nationality and if they had an idea what the research was about.
Results
Analytical approach. All analyses were conducted using the statistical platform
SPSS. Firstly, the results concerning testing the created survey will be discussed. Secondly, the analyses concerning the hypothesizes and then some additional exploratory analyses will be discussed.
The amount of law and art students was insufficient, so the following assumption could not be analyzed: the difference between law and art students’ openness to experience and creativity. Because the minimum requirement was not met, a multiple regression analyses was conducted on the whole sample using the participant’s openness to experience and creativity score as in-depended values to test how, and if this influences their way of sampling and/or their preference towards a policy.
Testing the questionnaire.
Time questions. Participant’s opinion of the two different questions concerning time were analyzed. Two one-sample t-tests were conducted to analyze if people considered the PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 15 time to be enough or too much. The test variable was set to five, which was the midpoint of the scale, meaning a person is neutral when choosing five. The participants indicated to not have enough time, M = 8.27, SD = 2.12, t (14) = 5.97, p < .001. Furthermore, the participants also indicated to not have too much time, M = 8.53, SD = 1.59, t (14) = 8.57, p <.001.
Additionally, 7 out of 17 participants explained via an open-ended comment to not have had enough time and that this influenced their decision-making ability.
Question about the guiding information. Participants’ opinion about the guiding information was analyzed. The test variable was five, which was also the midpoint of the scale, meaning a person is neutral when choosing five. Participants indicated that they did not consider the guiding information either too little or too much, M = 5.13, SD = 3.23, t (14) =
0.16, p = .875. Twelve participants responded to the next question: what kind of guiding information would like to see added? Six participants indicated that they mostly would like to have more guiding information concerning, if what is under the boxes is concerning for example financial, or social information.
Information about policies. A one-sample t-test was conducted to see if participants consider the information given under the boxes sufficient. Test value was five, which was the midpoint of the scale, meaning a person is neutral when choosing five. Participants did not consider the information to be either sufficient or insufficient, M = 4.13, SD = 2.94, t(15) = -
1.19, p= .253. Participants, however, did indicate the following in their written responses: two participants said that they consider the information given to be short and concise, however they also explained that the information given is not nuanced enough and lacking in depth. This is also the reason why these two participants had difficulties with their decision- making process as they expressed in their text. Furthermore, 5 out of 8 participants indicated that they considered the information given to be sufficient.
Hypothesis testing. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 16
Policy preferences. I first tested the hypothesis whether people scoring higher on openness to experience are more prone to choosing the alternative policy. This was analyzed with a linear regression model. Openness to experience only explained 1% of the variance in decisions about the policy, R2 = .01. Openness to experience did not influence the decision people took concerning the two policies, β = -0.10, t(14) = -0.36, p =.723. Secondly, the linear regression model was conducted to test if creativity2 has an influence on participants’ preferences concerning the policies. Creativity only explained 1.8% of the variance in decisions about the policy, R2= .01. Also this analyze did not show an effect, β = 0.13, t(14)
= 0.48, p = .637.
Arguments for choice policy Participants could give their reasons for the choice they made concerning the alternative or status quo via open-ended comments. Arguments for choosing the ‘basis toelagen’ were mostly based on a decrease of stress, equal changes regardless of your situation, and it is more fair. Arguments for choosing the ‘situatie specifieke’ were based mostly on the argument that people who have an income do not need more money, it is fairer, better motivation for people to look for work, and what people need depends on people’s situation and capacities. Five participants explained that they based their choice on the information that they had read. Two participants explained that their opinion was already fixed towards ‘situatie specifiek’ and that this was the reason for the choice they made. These participant also explained that they did not have enough time to look at all the information.
Status quo bias. The existence of the status quo bias was also analyzed. A one sample t-test was conducted with a test variable of five, which was the midpoint of the scale,
2 The distribution of the creativity question was also analyzed with a one-sample t-test with test value five, meaning a person is neutral when choosing five. Overall, people consider themselves creative, M = 3.47, SD = 2.56, t(14) = -2.32, p= .036.
PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 17 meaning a person is neutral when choosing five. The status quo bias did not seem to be present, M = 4.24, SD= 2.49, t(16) = -1.27, p = .223.
Amount of clicks/reading time and openness. Two regression analyses were conducted to see if participants scoring high on openness to experience would read information in the alternative boxes significantly longer and/or would click more often on information in the alternative boxes compared to participants scoring low on openness to experience. The regression analyses were conducted with depended variables being the proportion of time a participant had spent reading information of the alternative boxes and the proportion of clicks of a participant on the alternative boxes. Both regression analyses did not show an effect. Openness to experience only explained 0.3% of the variance of what boxes are being read longer, R2 = .003. Participants scoring high on openness to experience did not read information about the alternative boxes longer compared to participants scoring low on openness to experience, β= 0.05, t (14) = 0.19, p = .855. Openness to experience also only explained 0.2% of the variance of what boxes are being clicked, R2 = 0.002. Participants did also not click significantly more on alternative boxes when scoring high on openness to experience compared to participants scoring low on openness to experience, β = -0.04, t (14)
= -0.15, p = .882.
Amount of clicks/reading time and creativity. Two regression analyses were conducted to see if participants scoring high on self-perceived creativity read information in the alternative boxes longer and/or click more often on information in the alternative boxes compared to participants scoring low on creativity. The regression analyses were conducted with depended variables being the proportion of time a participant had spent reading information of the alternative boxes and the proportion of clicks of a participant on the alternative boxes. The independent variable was self-perceived creativity in both analyzes.
Both regression analyses did not show an effect. Creativity only explained 8.5% of the PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 18 variance of what boxes are being read longer, R2 = .085. Participants scoring high on creativity did not read information about the alternative boxes longer compared to participants scoring low creativity, β = 0.29, t (14) =1.10, p =.291. Creativity also only explained 10.4% of the variance of what boxes are being clicked, R2=0.10. Participants did also not click more on alternative boxes when scoring high on creativity compared to participants scoring low on creativity, β = -0.32, t (14) = 1.23, p=.242.
Additional exploratory analysis. Besides the above mentioned analyses, the following analysis was conducted.
Amount of boxes viewed. Only one of the participants was able to look at all the information. On average only 2.03 boxes were opened of the alternative policy and 3.7 boxes of the information of the status quo policy. When conducting an independent sample t-test this difference seems to be significant, t (16) = 2.20, p = .019.
Discussion
The main goal of the pilot was to test the questions and the decision board of the survey. Firstly, the results of the pilot study show that some adjustments have to be made to the decision board and the questions before this survey is used to conduct the main study.
Secondly, also some limitations of the survey were discovered.
Firstly, the results of the pilot give an indication that the time has to be adjusted in the main study. To the participants was only mentioned that they would be automatically sent to the next page when their time was up and that the time would continue also when they would be reading the information under the boxes. The amount of time was not mentioned in the explanatory text before the decision board, because this could influence the participants sampling behavior. This sampling behavior, however, had to be as natural as possible, because this would then also represent a more real live situation and thus the results would be more generalizable. This seemed to also have the desired effect the results indicate that PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 19 people sampled the information calmly and did not hast. However, participants clearly indicate that they consider the time to be too limited. This is also the reason for an increase of time in the main study. However, because of the small sample size the increase should not be too much. It could be that this sample had particularly slow readers, which resulted in the low amount of boxes opened and trouble with the amount of time. Furthermore, considering one participant was able to open 16 boxes, it could mean that too much increase in time enables too many people to open all the boxes, which would make the results harder to interpret. This is also why a small increase in time will minimalize a possible ceiling effect whereby all the participants can open all the boxes and make the results easiest to interpret without having to remove too many participants.
Furthermore, participants considered the guiding information to be sufficient.
However, some participants indicated that more guiding information is welcome. This indicates that some people did not understand which boxes they had to click to get the information from the policy they wanted to read. Nevertheless, only few participants indicated having had problems with the decision board specifically, besides not having had enough time to read the information. Furthermore, some participants sent feedback via e-mail explaining that the link leading to the survey did not work well on a mobile phone and some users also explained a small delay around the decision board part of the survey. Especially, the decision board section is difficult to fill in on a mobile phone. This will then also be better explained to the participants in the main study to prevent possible problems. Furthermore, the problems concerning the delay of the decision board in the survey will be resolved as well in the main study.
What is more, participants clicked on boxes of the status quo more often than on the alternative boxes. This may be a tendency towards the status quo bias. Nevertheless, the status quo boxes are presented on the left side of the screen and the natural reading pattern is PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 20 from left to right. This is why this difference in amount of boxes clicked could also be explain by the reading pattern, which in Western countries is from the left side of the page to the right side of the page. In the main study the location of the boxes of the two policies will be randomized to compensate for this possible bias. What is more, most participants considered the information given about the two policies to be sufficient. This is why the same information will be used in the main study.
The creativity question asked in the pilot also had a limitation. Participants indicated that they consider themselves creative. This could indicate that the question provokes a biased response. However, the sample was small and thus it could also be that the participants in this sample in general where more creative.
Furthermore, the sample size of the pilot was small. This makes the results less reliable and more difficult to interpret. Also, the amount of art and law students was not enough to test the assumptions suggested by the literature of the differences between these two groups. Therefore, in the main study, due to the difficulty recruiting art and law students, the hypotheses will be tested by using participants from different study fields, social economic status and age.
Last but not least, the Cronbach alpha of the openness to experience questionnaire was small, 0.33. A Cronbach alpha 0.70 would have been preferred. Nevertheless, as mentioned before the sample size was small and this could also cause the low Cronbach alpha. However, in the main study some extra attention should be given to the Cronbach alpha found.
Main Study
Method
Participants. The participants were recruited by distributing the survey on Facebook and by snowball sampling. The survey was distributed on the 30th of October. The PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 21 distribution period was 22 days long. The sample consisted out of 60 participants (27 men, 33 women, Mage = 43.88 years, SDage = 16.24). One participant is British all the other participants are Dutch. Two participants study law and four participants study art.
Psychology is studied by eight out of 60 participants. Two participants did not study at all, and all the other study directions vary from technical, chemical, economical, business, social, cultural, medical, administrative to sustainability. Five participants studied/study either at a university or more profession orientated school. Seven participants did not explain what they study.
A-priori power analysis. To test the hypothesis a regression analyses was conducted.
The a priori power test indicated a sample size of 89 participants, when conducting linear regression analyses with a power of 95%. When conducting this same linear regression with a power of 80% only 43 participants are required.
Materials and Procedure. On most levels, the main study is similar to the pilot.
Below, the differences are described.
Snowball sampling. The main study was also distributed through snowball sampling.
This was done by sending an e-mail to participants. Participants received an e-mail with instructions about how to participate in the survey. Furthermore, they also were asked, if they could forward this e-mail to their acquaintances, and how they should do this. A link was copy pasted into the e-mail through which participants could get access to the survey. Also, it was explained to the participants that they could best fill in the survey on their computer, because of the previously explained problems of filling in the survey on the phone.
Time. Since participants in the pilot indicated that they considered the time to be too short, the amount of time was changed in the main study. The time was increased by 5 seconds, from 45 to 50 seconds. This should give the participants a little bit more time to look into information. However, because of the small sample size the time was not increased with PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 22 a great margin. It is preferred that the amount of participants looking at all the information under the boxes is as limited as possible, as was also explained in the discussion of the pilot study.
Information text. The texts that explain the policies and the decision board have been made more understandable and concise. For example, important words had been made even more apparent, by writing them completely in capital letters. In the pilot, the text: the time will start running, was written as the following: the TIME starts running immediately.
However, in the main study, this text was written as the following: THE TIME STARTS
RUNNING IMMEDIATELY. This way it should be easier for people to understand that this is important information. Furthermore, some confusing information, which should have clarified the decision board part, was removed, because it repeated what had already been said.
Decision board. The alterations done to the decision board are minor. The ‘ss’ and
‘bt’ abbreviations on the boxes are changed to ‘SS’ and ‘BT’. This was done with the purpose to improve readability and understanding. Furthermore, the decision board was randomized in the main study. Participants either received a survey link that contains a board with the boxes of ‘ specifieke toelagen’, or the boxes of ‘basis toelagen’ on the left side of the screen.
This randomization is added to combat the possible reading bias. Last but not least, some alteration had been made to the Javascript3 used to create the decision board.
Questions removed. The questions concerning time, guiding information, and the information under the boxes have been removed in the main study.
Political ideology question. A question about political preference was added. This was added, because the participant’s political preference might have an influence on what
3 An error in the Javascript used in Qualtrics to create the decision board was fixed. This mistake lead to data that was incorrectly ordered. This was manually fixable while analyzing the data of the pilot.
PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 23 policy they would choose. Both of the policies are related to social and financial preferences.
A more left-side minded person might be more attracted to the ‘basis toelagen’, because of the social nature of the policy. This preference perhaps cannot be directly related to political preference, because this person’s creativity level and/or openness to experience level is higher than is measured in the sample on average. The political preference scale presents the participants with the following four items: “In general, where would you place yourself on this scale?”, “In terms of social policy, where would you place yourself on this scale?”, “In terms of economic policy, where do you place yourself on this scale?”, and “In terms of national security policy, where do you place yourself on this scale?”. Participants political preference was indicated on a 5-point scale from 1, indicating extremely left, to 5, indicating extremely right (α = .89).
Creativity question. The perceived creativity questions scoring was reversed in the main study, because this would make answering the question more intuitive. Participants’ perceived level of creativity was asked on a 11-point scale from 0, indicating that the participant does not consider him/herself creative at all, to 10, indicating that the participant considers him/herself very creative.
Openness to experience. The same openness to experience statements were used in the main study as were used in the pilot. (α = .77; John & Srivastava, 1999).
Results
Analytical approach. All analyses were conducted using the statistical platform
SPSS. Firstly, the analyses concerning the hypotheses will be discussed. Secondly, some additional exploratory analyses will be discussed. The British participant was also included in the sample, because she clearly showed her understanding of the Dutch language in her written response and Britain also does not have a basic allowance system.
Hypothesis testing. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 24
Policy preference and creativity/openness. To test whether openness and/or creativity had an main effect on the preferred policy a multiple regression4 analysis was conducted. The two main effects, creativity and openness together explained only 1% of the variance in decisions about the policy, R2 = .01. Openness to experience did not have an influence on participants’ policy preference, β = 0.13, t(59 )= 0.75, p = .455. Also, creativity did not have an influence on participants’ policy preference, β = -0.08, t(59) = -0.44, p = .665.
Written response policy preference. Almost all participants gave a written response to explain why they prefer either the status quo policy, or the alternative policy. One participant did not give an explanation. Furthermore, seven out of 59 participants gave a neutral response, meaning five, on the policy preference question. The main reason was, as explained by the participants in their written response, that they did not have enough time to open all the boxes, so they could not read all the information.
Participants preferring the status quo policy gave the following main reasons: the situation specific allowance is fairer; it will leave more money for the people in need. Some participants explain that they only read the information under these boxes, what informed the reason for their choice. Also participants stated that: the self-worth is increased with a specific allowance system, and that they already were familiar with this system and therefore preferred the specific allowance system.
Participants preferring the alternative policy gave the following reasons: “Everybody gets the same chances”, “people get more space to develop themselves in other ways than just making money”, “it is fairer”, “decreases chances of fraud”, and “decreases possible financial/working stress, which could lead to possible lower health cost”.
Status quo bias. The existence of the status quo bias was also analyzed. A one sample t-test was conducted with a test variable of five, which was the midpoint of the scale,
4 The VIF score was 1.78, so a linear multiple regression was possible. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 25 meaning a person is neutral when choosing five. The status quo bias did not appear to be present, M = 4.47, SD = 2.65, t (59) = -1.58, p = .119.
Information sampling time. I tested whether openness and/or creativity have an influence on peoples’ sampling behavior. First of all, does openness to experience and/or creativity influence the time people spent on the alternative boxes? A multiple regression5 analysis was conducted with the dependent variable being the proportion of time a participant spent on the alternative, and the independent variables being creativity and openness to experience. Perceived creativity and openness to experience explained 18.2% of the variance of time spent on boxes, R2 = .18. Participants scoring high on openness to experience seem to spent more time on the status quo boxes, β = -0.57, t (56) = -3.47, p = 0.001. Participants scoring high on creativity seem to spent more time on the alternative boxes, β = 0.38, t(56) =
2.31, p = .025.
Correlation time spend on alternative boxes and policy preference. The correlation between time spent on the alternative boxes and a preference for the alternative policy was analyzed. No correlation was found, r (59) = -.04, p =.787.
Information sampling clicks. I tested whether openness and/or creativity has an influence on peoples clicking behavior. A multiple regression6 analyzes was conducted with depended variable being the proportion of clicks of a participant on the alternative boxes and the independent variable being creativity and openness to experience. Openness to experience and perceived creativity explained 0.3% of the variance of boxes clicked, R2 = .003. The score on openness does not seem to have an influence on what boxes are clicked by the participants, β = -0.008, t (57) = -0.38, p = .706. Also the self-perceived creativity score does
5 The VIF score was 1.81, so a linear multiple regression analyses was possible. 6 The VIF score was 1.79, so a linear multiple regression analyses was possible. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 26 not seem to have an influence on what boxes are clicked by the participants, β = 0.03, t (57) =
0.42, p = .677.
Amount of boxes viewed. On average people clicked on 4.74 status quo policy boxes and 4.72 alternative policy boxes. There is no difference between boxes viewed of status quo policy and alternative policy, t(59) = 1, p = 1. Only one participant was able to open all 16 boxes.
Amount of boxes viewed status quo on left side of screen. When the status quo policy was presented on the left side of the screen the amount of boxes clicked of the status quo policy was more than the amount of boxes clicked of the alternative policy, t (59) = 2.15, p =
.035.
Amount of boxes viewed status quo on right side of screen. When the status quo policy was presented on the right side of the screen the amount of boxes clicked of the status quo policy was less than the amount of boxes clicked of the alternative policy, t (59) = -2.76, p =
.008.
Additional exploratory analyses. Continuing some more analyses have been conducted and will be discussed below.
Political ideology and policy preference7. A linear regression analysis was conducted to analyze the influence of political ideology on the preferred policy. A participant’s political ideology explained 4.8% of the variance of what policy is preferred, R2=0.04. Political ideology does not seem to have an influence on policy choice, β = -0.21, t(58) = -1.69, p =
.096.
Political ideology and boxes clicked8. Secondly, the possible connection between political ideology and participants clicking more often on boxes of the alternative policy was
7 Because of insignificant results concerning policy preference, creativity and openness to experience no analyzes is done in which there is controlled for political ideology. 8 Because of insignificant results concerning amount of boxes clicked, creativity, and openness to experience no analyzes is done in which there is controlled for political ideology. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 27 also analyzed. A linear regression analysis was conducted with as dependent variable being the proportion of clicks of a participant on the alternative boxes, and as independent variable political ideology. Political ideology did not explain the variance of what boxes are being clicked. Therefore, political ideology does not seem to have an effect on what boxes are clicked, β = -0.01, t(56) = -0.10, p= .919.
Political ideology and reading time. Also the possible connection between political ideology and time spent on the alternative boxes was analyzed. A linear regression analysis was conducted with as dependent value the proportion of time a participant had spent on the alternative, and as independent variable political ideology. Political ideology explains 1.3% of the variance of time spent on boxes, R2 = .013. Political ideology does not seem to have an influence on time spent reading alternative or status quo boxes, β = -0.12, t (55) = -0.85, p =
.397.
Control for political ideology and reading time. A multiple regression analysis was conducted with perceived creativity, political ideology and openness to experience. This was done to see whether the effect of openness and perceived creativity on the reading time, still exist when controlling for political ideology. Openness, perceived creativity and political ideology explain 14.1% of the variation of time spent reading the information below the boxes, R2 = .14. When scoring high on openness to experience, participants spent more time reading the status quo information, β = -0.52, t(55 ) = -2.78, p = .007. A high score on creativity does not influence time spent reading the alternative boxes when controlling for political ideology, β = -0.34, t(55 )= 1.90, p = .062. Political ideology does not have an effect on what boxes participants prefer to read longer, β = -0.01, t(55 ) = -0.07, p = .943.
Interaction openness and political ideology on policy preferences. Openness to experience and political ideology were weakly correlated, r(59) = -.39, p=.01. A multiple
PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 28 regression9 analysis was conducted with an interaction between political ideology and openness to experience. Political ideology, openness to experience and their interaction effect explained 7.3% of the variance what policy participants prefer, R2 = .073. There does not seem to be an interaction between political ideology and openness to experience, β = -0.16, t(58)= -1.19, p = .237.
Interaction creativity and openness on policy preferences. Openness to experience and creativity were moderately correlated, r(60) = 0.66, p= 0.01. A multiple regression10 analysis was conducted with an interaction between the openness to experience score and perceived creativity score. Perceived creativity, openness to experience and the interaction effect explained 13.9% of the variance what policy participants prefer, R2 = .14. The interaction between openness and perceived creativity was significant. Depending on the perceived creativity score openness to experience has an different influence on participants policy preference, β= 0.40, t(59) = 2.89, p = .005. Figure 1 shows the effect of openness to experience on preferred policy depending on the creativity score.
9 the VIF score was 1.06, so a multiple regression analyses was possible. 10 The VIF score was 1.26, so a multiple regression analyses was possible. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 29
10
9
8
7
6
5
4 Policy preferance Policy
3
2
1
0 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Openness to experience score
Low Mean High
Figure 1. The effect of openness to experience on policy preference when participants score high, average or low on perceived creativity. A high score on creativity means, one standard deviation above the average. A low score on creativity means, one standard deviation below the average. The maximum openness to experience score is 50. The minimum score is 10, however nobody received this score, which is also the reason why the starting value of the openness to experience scores is 20. Zero indicates liking of the status quo and 10 indicates liking of the alternative.
Discussion
The purpose of the main study was to research the hypotheses. Regardless of producing some promising results, the main study has some clear strengths and weaknesses.
First of all, the strengths will be discussed. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 30
Firstly, in spite of the low Cronbach alpha in the pilot study, the Cronbach alpha in the main study was large enough. Meaning that the openness to experience measurement is a reliable and valid measurement to measure this personality characteristic. Also, because the measurement is obtained from a valid questionnaire. What is more, the political ideology measurement showed a high Cronbach alpha.
In addition, perceived creativity and openness to experience are moderately correlated, which could indicate that perceived creativity actually also measures a person’s level of creativity. Furthermore, the moderate correlation also seems to be in line with what is suggested in the literature discussed in the introduction.
Furthermore, although the amount of participants is not large enough to obtain a power of 95%, it is great enough to obtain a power of 80%, which shows that the results could be considered plausible. Nevertheless, the amount of participants is still too limited to draw convincing conclusions. Especially, when conducting multiple regression analyzes and multiple regression analyzes with interactions, which require a much larger sample.
However, in spite of the found effects, the research also has some weaknesses. First of all, as also mentioned before, the sample size was small. As explained in the methods of the main study, to obtain a power of 95% a minimum sample of 89 participants was needed. This small sample size makes the results less reliable. Furthermore, some participants clearly indicated to still not have had enough time, and because of that they were not able to come to a decision. Five out of 60 participants indicated that they could not make a decision, because of not having had enough time. Some participants did make a decision, but also indicated time limitations.
Secondly, the perceived creativity question is still skewed. The majority of participants consider themselves creative and the question does not show a normal distribution. It could be that this question does not measure creativity, but another variable, PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 31 for example, self-esteem. What is more, it could be that the creativity question provokes a biased response, because of the way the question is formulated or represented. This reduces the reliability of the interpretation of the results.
Lastly, the decision board was, in spite of the modifications, still difficult for participants to work with, which resulted in quite many people starting the survey, but not finishing it. This results in a self-selected sample, which is less reliable and decreases the ecological validity and decreases the generalizability of the results.
General Discussion
In this research, I investigated the effect of people’s level of openness to experience and perceived creativity on their sampling and decision-making behavior when presented with a choice between a status quo and an alternative policy. It was hypothesized that participants would prefer the alternative policy over the status quo when scoring high on self- perceived creativity and/or openness to experience. Furthermore, people’s sampling behavior was hypothesized to be influenced by openness to experience and perceived creativity.
Specifically, it was assumed that people spend more time and click more often on alternative boxes when scoring high on perceived creativity and/or openness to experience.
The results show that openness to experience and perceived creativity do not have an influence on which policy is more preferred by the participants. Furthermore, participants’ sampling behavior does not seem to be influenced by openness to experience and perceived creativity, when looking at what boxes are being clicked. Nevertheless, openness to experience and perceived creativity do appear to have an influence on the sampling behavior when looking at the time participants spent reading the information under the boxes.
Especially, participants scoring high on creativity seem to spent more time on reading the alternative boxes. However, the results obtained through conducting exploratory analysis also show that when controlling for political ideology, the effect of self-perceived creativity on PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 32 the reading time of the alternative boxes disappears, when considering an alpha of 0.05.
Furthermore, the results also show that a high score on openness to experience results in an increase in reading time of the status quo policy information. In other words, the hypotheses regarding information-sampling time was only partly confirmed.
Firstly, no effect was found concerning people’s openness to experience score and perceived creativity score, and which policy participants prefer. Nevertheless, when analyzing the interaction effect, as an exploratory analysis between openness to experience and self-perceived creativity, it appeared that the preferred policy depends on the relation between the self-perceived creativity and openness to experience score. The higher a participants’ perceived creativity and openness score, the more a participant will prefer the alternative policy. However, a high score on openness to experience does not appear to have such an effect when the self-perceived creativity score is low. In this case, participants prefer the status quo policy. Also, a somewhat similar effect is visible when looking at the time participants spend on the alternative boxes. When scoring high on perceived creativity, participants spend more time reading the alternative information under the boxes, when not controlling for political ideology. However, when scoring high on openness to experience the opposite effect is found. No significant correlation was found between policy preference and time spent on the alternative boxes.
When resorting to the literature, this effect mentioned above could possibly be explained by looking into the definitions of openness to experience and creativity. Openness to experience is defined as: “openness is seen in the breadth, depth, permeability of consciousness, and in the recurrent need to enlarge and examine experiences” (McCrae,
1993). Furthermore, ‘creativity’ is defined as: “the ability to produce work that is novel” (El-
Murad & West, 2004). The definition of openness to experience gives the impression that people who are very open are more in need to examine either the old or the new, while the PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 33 definition of creativity clearly shows the need to produce something new. This could mean that creative people might also be more in need to examine the new compared to people scoring high on openness to experience. George and Zhou (2001) explained an interesting relation between openness to experience and creativity. These authors explain that openness to experience may serve to encourage creative behavior. When looking at Figure 1. it is clearly visible, that the higher a participant scores on perceived creativity and openness to experience, the more prone a participant is to prefer the alternative policy. Openness to experience in other words also seems to encourage and facilitate behavior that is orientated towards the new. Nevertheless, the literature does not explain the influence of the political ideology question on the disappearance of the effect of self-perceived creativity on reading time. The effect of political ideology on reading time was limited to non-existing.
Furthermore, the sample size was relatively small and a larger sample could result in a visible effect of self-perceived creativity on reading time. What is more, the self-perceived creativity question would still have an effect on reading time if an alpha of 0.10 would have been considered, which is however not the case in this research. In other words, even though the influence of political ideology on the effect of self-perceived creativity on reading time, this effect is so small that it could be considered irrelevant for now. In future research it should however surely be considered and investigated.
Even though an effect of openness to experience and creativity on the time spent reading was possibly found, no such effect was found for the boxes clicked. It may be that clicking behavior is more dependent on which policy was presented on the left side of the screen. This, so to speak ‘reading bias’, has been resolved in the main study by randomizing the policy presented on the left side of the screen. On average, participants were able to open
4.72 of the alternative policy boxes, and 4.74 of the status quo policy boxes. This shows that overall, the amount of boxes opened was quite equal and no ‘reading bias’ in the main study, PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 34 because of randomization. When not applying the randomization, an possible effect of the so- called ‘reading bias’ was found. In the pilot, the amount of boxes of the alternative policy opened was 2.03 boxes and 3.7 boxes of the status quo policy. The status quo policy was also presented on the left side of the screen in the pilot study. This shows that when there is no compensation for the ‘reading bias’ via randomizing, an effect in boxes opened could be obtained more easily. This effect, however, is not necessarily causally related to the level of openness to experience and/or perceived creativity. In spite of these assumed possible reasons, no clear explanation in the literature can be found for the possible non-existing effect between openness to experience and/or creativity and the clicking behavior. This means that more research is needed to give a good explanation of the existence or non-existence of an effect.
Also, the question concerning perceived creativity might be a relevant topic of discussion. The following question was asked to participants: How creative do you see yourself? It might be the case that not everybody perceives creativity in the same way and uses the same references to base their perception on. For instance, someone living in an environment with many very creative people might consider him/herself less creative than someone living in an environment that consists of less creative people. Also, it could be that this question actually tests somebody’s self-esteem and/or ability to self-reflect. Nonetheless, as George and Zhou (2001) explain in their research a correlation between openness to experience and creativity exists. This correlation was also moderately found in this research.
This could indicate that the creativity question does gives a somewhat good indication of somebody’s creativity level. In general, most of the results are in line with what can be found in literature. This means that the study in general supports literature finding’s and even enforces some of them. PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 35
In spite of the found effects, the research also has some weaknesses, as well as strengths and limitations. First of all, the sample size was small. As also explained in the discussion of the main study. Furthermore, some participants clearly indicated to still not have enough time and as such were not able to come to a decision. As Hausmann, and Läge
(2008) also explain in their research, a certain amount of information has to be obtained before a decision threshold can be reached. In other words, the time could have been so limited for some of the participants that they could not obtain enough information to come to a decision. A reasonable assumption could be that these participants could choose for the status quo policy, because of the assumed pre-knowledge these participants have of this status quo policy and the status quo bias. Even though some participants did also use this heuristic, the status quo bias was not present when analyzing this effect.
It can be concluded that the status quo policy and/or the information presented in the decision board did not provoke the status quo bias sufficiently. Although the sample size was small for some of the analyses, this does not count for the analysis used to analyze the presence of the status quo bias. When conducting a one sample t-test with a power of 95% only 45 participants are needed. Continuing, this non-existence of the status quo bias could also influence the results concerning the effects of perceived creativity and/or openness to experience on what policy people prefer. The main assumption in this research was that people in general prefer the status quo, and individuals who score high on openness to experience and/or creativity would prefer the alternative. This could indicate that the chosen policies did not present a strong status quo effect, which means that the presumed current and new policies are not perceived as such and thus choices for one or the other policy could be based on other reasons, such as for example political ideology because of the social and political nature of the policy. The alternative policy concerning basic allowances could be PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 36 more popular with people who are more left-sided concerning politics, and the opposite is also true.
To combat the possible influence of political ideology, a question with statements to see what participant’s political ideologies were included in the survey of the main study. The results show that political ideology does not influence either the way participants sample information or what policy is preferred. Nevertheless, political ideology does seem to influence the effect of self-perceived creativity on reading time of the alternative policy.
However, as explained before, the effect of political ideology is very small and not significant on the reading time. Furthermore, the sample size was also small and creativity could still show a significant effect on reading time of alternative information if the sample size would have been larger. These results might indicate that openness to experience and/or creativity probably had the most sizeable influence on the found effect, and that people did perceive the status quo policy as the current policy and the alternative policy as the new.
Continuing, besides the small sample size also other flaws are visible concerning the sample. The group of participants represent various fields of study and the average age was approximately 43. This is quite a high average, which also could explain the reported difficulties with the decision board. In general, older people might read slower and also might have more trouble with working with a computer (Czaja & Lee, 2007; Salthouse, 1996). The survey and decision board were improved using data from students ranging between 18-30 years of age. In spite of the adjustments made to the survey, after the pilot it could still be that these adjustments were not focused enough on a sample of older people. Furthermore, some self-selection could have occurred because of the lack of adjustments made. Participants, who have more troubles with computers might also not have participated in the research. Meaning that the sample mostly consists of people who are probably good with computers and higher educated, as is also visible from the fields and level of education obtained. Lower educated PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 37 people and younger people might sample information differently and also make different decisions. Also, because of the distribution style it could be that some participants filled in the survey twice, which might lead to less reliable results. This could have been resolved by adding a question asking if a participant had already filled in a similar survey before.
The research discussed in this paper shows that follow-up research is needed to obtain a better understanding and reliability of the topic studied. Also, some necessary adjustment to the survey would have to be made. Even though the information text of the two policies did present a label to the two policies, in follow-up research the clearer use of labelling might be required to prevent possible misinterpretation of the results because of a non-existing status quo bias (Gilliland, Wood, & Schmitt, 1994; Moshnsky & Bar-Hillel, 2009). In addition, to make sure that the creativity question actually measures creativity, a divergent thinking test can be used (Runco, 1993). As is explained also by Runco (1993) a divergent thinking test is designed to estimate creative potential. This would give a more valid measurement of the creativity score. The decision board can also be made more user-friendly. Participants reported to have difficulties with the decision board. This could be resolved by running more pilots focused on the board’s user-friendliness. This could result in a sample which varies more and is less influenced by computer capabilities. Furthermore, the sample size would then also have been bigger, which would result in more reliable results.
In spite of the improvements that are needed to obtain better and more reliable results in follow-up studies, the topic studied in this paper might already have some practical implications. The sampling behavior appears to be partly influenced by one’s openness to experience and creativity. This shows certain characteristics seem to promote interest in either examining information more thoroughly or examining especially new information more thoroughly. However, an individual’s level of openness to experience and creativity are quite static. Nevertheless, Friedman, Fishbach, Förster, and Werth (2003) show that priming PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 38 creativity is possible. These authors show that certain variation of perceptual stimuli may enhance creative thinking. They also show that some perceptual stimuli could diminish creativity. Problems concerning national, economic, and ecological policy making might be resolved better when creativity is primed and the alternative is more broadly considered, which can counterbalance the status quo bias. Nonetheless, no correlation was found concerning spending more time reading the alternative information and more preference for the alternative policy. Therefore, it can be concluded that despite the possible link between creative people examining the alternative information longer, that people do not also choose the alternative policy, even if the individual were primed with creativity.
However, the results of this paper show that a combination of a high score in openness to experience and creativity does increase the possibility of someone choosing the alternative policy instead of the status quo. Nevertheless, as explained before, one’s level of openness to experience is quite static. No literature writes about the possibility of increasing one’s openness. Nonetheless, the individual’s creativity level could possibly be influenced as shown by Friedman, et al (2003). It could be that, should the participants have had more time, the effect of creativity would be more present, because participants would have had more time to examine the alternative. As also was explained by Hausmann, and Läge (2008), that to make a decision a certain information threshold needs to be reached. This could then perhaps also lead to an increase of a preference for the alternative policy, which could also be an interesting topic to study in follow-up research.
In relation to the findings of this research, an interesting topic to examine in follow-up studies is the influence of age on information sampling behavior and the process of decision- making. It could be that elderly people are more fixed and influenced by the status quo than young people, despite their level of openness to experience and/or creativity level (Danigelis
& Cutler, 1991). What is more, other types of sampling behavior could be researched, such as PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 39 the sequence in which participants click the boxes to sample their information, and whether this is influenced by creativity and/or openness to experience. Also, the effect of time pressure might be an interesting topic to research. Lastly, the effect of priming creativity on decision-making and information sampling behavior might be an interesting topic to research as well.
Conclusion
Openness to experience and perceived creativity have an influence on people’s sampling and decision-making behavior. Openness to experience appears to encourage examining behavior of the status quo. Self-perceived creativity however appears to encourage examining behavior of the alternative. Depending on the creativity score, openness to experience influences people’s preferred policy differently. The more creative a person perceives him/herself to be, and the higher the score on openness to experience, the more the alternative policy is preferred. However, a combination of a low creativity score and a high openness score leads to the opposite, and shows preference of the status quo policy.
Nevertheless, future research should be conducted to see whether these effects are repeatable and to see if other influences (not) accounted for in this research might have contributed to the results found.
PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 40
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PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 43
Appendix A
Decision board
Figure A1. What a participant saw when being on the boxes page and when opening one of the boxes going to the information page of that specific box.
Figure A1. (continued) PERSONALITY, INFORMATION SAMPLING, STATUS QUO BIAS 44
Appendix B
Information
Table B1. The information presented under the boxes.
List of alternative policy information List of status quo policy information. It is fairer (everybody receives the same) People are stimulated to look for work. People with a more difficult start can financially The taxes are lower, because not everybody need to more easily build up their lives. received money.
A decrease in paper work (the request for child More money can be given to the people really in allowance, health allowance etc. does not have to be need. requested separately.) It is easier for people with a lower income to spend There is more stimulation to find a job that can more time with their family. actually support you financially.
Reduces stress to earn money and therefore increases You have to trust more on other people, so building mental health. up social relationships is easier. Less money will go to homeless shelters Employees and employers are more stimulated to do their best while working. More security to self-employed individuals. Financial successfulness is thanks to your own hard work.
Takes the stigma away from being supported by the People will be more careful with their money, government because you cannot find a job. because they do not get it just like that.