Publications

Journal of Interactive Marketing

Human Is Gold: Why Premium Customers Hate Chatbots and What to Do About It

Aruna Divya Tatavarthy, Jareef Martuza & Helge Thorbjørnsen

Premium customers rate the same chatbot service worse than basic customers do.

High-tier (vs. basic) customers react more negatively to chatbot-delivered services, even when the objective service delivered is the same. Three preregistered experiments (N = 3,114 adults) point to uniqueness neglect and entitlement as explanations, and show three framing interventions that reduce this bias.

Beliefs and bias

PressNHH Bulletin

Journal of Business Research

The role of social norms in retirement saving: Evidence from two natural field experiments

Trond Døskeland, Jareef Martuza, Lars Jacob Tynes Pedersen, Francisco Santos, Hallgeir Sjåstad & Helge Thorbjørnsen

Telling people what most others do raised retirement saving more than telling them what experts advise.

Two large-scale field experiments with Norwegian bank customers (N = 455,509 and 224,000 adults) tested the effects of different norm messages on actual saving behavior. Information about what most other people do (descriptive norms) was more effective in increasing retirement savings than expert opinion on what one should do (injunctive norms).

Time

The Journal of Positive Psychology

Not too little and not too much? The relationships between spare time, spare money, and subjective well-being

Jareef Martuza, Micael Dahlen & Helge Thorbjørnsen

More spare money raises well-being up to a point, while a lot of spare time lowers it.

Surveys in the USA, the UK, and Germany (N = 1,288 adults) show that the relationship between spare money and well-being is positive until a certain point, after which it becomes non-significant. The relationship between spare time and well-being has an inverted U shape: well-being increases with spare time at low levels but decreases at high levels.

TimeWell-being

Nature Human Behaviour

Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content

Janis H. Zickfeld et al., including Jareef Martuza

The best of 21 honesty oaths nearly halved tax evasion, but neither experts nor laypeople could predict which oaths would work best.

In a megastudy (N = 21,506 adults), we tested 21 honesty oaths in a tax-evasion game. The best oath nearly halved tax evasion, but neither experts nor laypeople could predict which oaths would work best.

Right and wrong

Social Psychological and Personality Science

A Registered Report on Gender Bias in Interpersonal Dishonesty: Are Females and Males Cheated Differently?

Jareef Martuza

Women cheated other women 53.6% less than they cheated men.

Participants from nine countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States; N = 3,166 adults) could lie to increase their payoffs at the cost of another same-sex, opposite-sex, or unmentioned-sex participant, with zero risk of detection. Female decision-makers cheated female (vs. male) targets 53.6% less, while male decision-makers cheated male and female targets similarly.

Registered ReportRight and wrong

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Does Conceptual Abstraction Moderate Whether Past Moral Deeds Motivate Consistency or Compensatory Behavior? A Registered Replication and Extension of Conway and Peetz (2012)

Jareef Martuza & Olivia Kim

Recalling a past good deed made people more willing to help others, whether the deed was recent or long ago.

Conway and Peetz (2012) proposed that conceptual abstraction moderates whether past moral deeds lead to consistent or compensatory behavior. In a registered report (N = 5,091 adults), the hypothesized interaction was not replicated: recalling moral behavior led to higher prosocial intentions whether it was recalled from the recent or distant past. We found no evidence for compensatory moral behavior, only for positive moral consistency.

Registered ReportRight and wrongTime

Journal of Consumer Behaviour

Do honesty-nudges really work? A large-scale field experiment in an insurance context

Jareef Bin Martuza, Siv Rosendahl Skard, Lavrans Løvlie & Helge Thorbjørnsen

None of three honesty nudges reduced signs of fraud in 5,704 real insurance claims.

In a controlled field experiment with customers filing real insurance claims online (N = 5,704 adults), we tested three honesty-nudges: signing at the beginning, a descriptive social norm message, and a solidarity message. None of the nudges, standalone or combined, reduced signs of fraud.

Right and wrong