The rank principle in social and cognitive comparison : experimental data

For example, opinions about levels of immigration or taxation may be strongly Influenced by people's (often inaccurate) beliefs about levels in other European countries. The research is developing and testing a rank-based model of everyday judgement and decision-making. Attitudes are hypothesised to be influenced by the rank-ordered position of an option in a distiibution.

For example, most people overestimate the number of very wealthy people in the UK. We find that individuals' life satisfaction is influenced by where they believe themselves to rank in this assumed wage distribution, rather than by their actual wage. The project applies rank-based models to judgements about various socially and politically important quantities.<br><br>Data record consists of 4 data files in .xlsx format, one PDF documentation file containing the final report and a readme file for the data.

Data are presented in near-raw form. We have conducted a large number of laboratory-based experiments to test the predictions of the contextual model of judgement that formed the theoretical backbone of the project. Many of these laboratory experiments have been quite labour-intensive, involving individual subject testing.

For a number of the experiments involving economic behaviour (such as the effects of “anchors” on people’s estimates of how much they are willing to pay for products) we have gone beyond what is normal within experimental psychology and made use of incentive compatible methodologies of the type developed within behavioural economics. Detailed methods information is available in the cited publications.