Florida State University Libraries 2016 On Inactivity in the Lab John Spaulding Jensenius III Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PUBLIC POLICY ON INACTIVITY IN THE LAB By JOHN S. JENSENIUS III A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Economics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 John S. Jensenius III defended this dissertation on March 29, 2016. The members of the supervisory committee were: R. Mark Isaac Professor Directing Dissertation Allen Blay University Representative David J. Cooper Committee Member Svetlana Pevnitskaya Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii Dedicated to my wife Emily. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to begin by thanking my advisor Dr. R. Mark Isaac, for his guidance and support over the course of this long journey. Mark’s patience and encouragement, especially since I began working many miles away, has been invaluable. I would also like to thank Dr. David Cooper, for inspiring me as a student, and taking me on as an undergraduate, and later graduate, research assistant. This is all your fault. I would like to thank Dr. Svetlana Pevnitskaya and Dr. Alan Blay for their comments and suggestions, both on this work and on future research that will expand upon it. I would like to thank the members, present and past, of XS/FS, the Experimental Social Sciences cluster at Florida State, for many years of discussions, feedback, guidance, and friendship. I would like to thank Dr. Akitaka Matsuo for his help learning R, and his guidance working with the data. Without his instruction and assistance, this document would have taken much longer to produce and would look uglier. I would like to thank the John and Hallie Quinn Foundation for their support of graduate students interested in the experimental social sciences, and in particular for providing partial funding of the research described in this dissertation. Lastly I would like to thank my family for their decades of support and encouragement. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ vii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... xi 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................1 2. LITERATURE REVIEW............................................................................................................3 2.1 Literature on Inactivity ........................................................................................................3 2.2 Literature on Boredom .........................................................................................................4 2.3 Experimental Examples of Inactivity...................................................................................5 3. BEHAVIORAL EFFECTS OF EXPERIMENTER-IMPOSED INACTIVITY.........................8 3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................8 3.2 Hypotheses ...........................................................................................................................8 3.3 Experimental Design ............................................................................................................9 3.4 Results ................................................................................................................................14 3.5 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................17 4. BEHAVIORAL EFFECTS OF PEER-IMPOSED INACTIVITY ...........................................31 4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................31 4.2 Hypotheses .........................................................................................................................31 4.3 Experimental Design ..........................................................................................................32 4.4 Results ................................................................................................................................36 4.5 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................39 5. PAID TO SIT: MEASURING THE VALUE OF INACTIVITY .............................................58 5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................58 5.2 Model and Hypotheses .......................................................................................................58 v 5.3 Experimental Design ..........................................................................................................58 5.4 Results ................................................................................................................................59 5.5 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................60 6. ALTERNATIVES TO INACTIVITY ......................................................................................64 6.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................64 6.2 Hypotheses .........................................................................................................................64 6.3 Experimental Design ..........................................................................................................64 6.4 Results ................................................................................................................................68 6.5 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................70 7. CONCLUDING REMARKS ....................................................................................................80 7.1 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................80 7.2 Further Research ................................................................................................................80 APPENDICES ...............................................................................................................................82 A. EXPERIMENTAL INSTRUCTIONS ......................................................................................82 A.1 Behavioral Effects of Experimenter Imposed Inactivity ...................................................82 A.2 Behavioral Effects of Peer Imposed Inactivity ..................................................................88 A.3 Alternatives to Inactivity....................................................................................................92 B. HUMAN SUBJECTS COMITTEE APPROVALS ..................................................................96 B.1 Behavioral Effects of Inactivity (Chapters 3, 4, and 5) .....................................................96 B.2 Alternatives to Inactivity (Chapter 6) ..............................................................................105 References ....................................................................................................................................111 Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................115 vi LIST OF TABLES 3.1 Gamble Choices .......................................................................................................................23 3.2 Sessions Summary – Experimenter Imposed Inactivity ..........................................................24 3.3 The Dictator Game: Distribution of Decisions ........................................................................24 3.4 The Dictator Game: Amount Kept, with Experimenter Imposed Inactivity (Between Subjects, Periods 2 and 4) .......................................................................................................................25 3.5 The Dictator Game: Amount Kept, with Experimenter Imposed Inactivity (Within Subjects, Periods 2 to 4) ..........................................................................................................................26 3.6 The Public Goods VCM: Distribution of Decisions ................................................................26 3.7 The Public Goods VCM: Amount in Individual Account, with Experimenter Imposed Inactivity (Between Subjects, Periods 2 and 4) .......................................................................27 3.8 The Public Goods VCM: Amount in Individual Account, with Experimenter Imposed Inactivity (Within Subjects, Periods 2 - 4) ...............................................................................28