Below are the projects and papers that I worked on during my graduate studies
at the University of Pennsylvania
When is Harming More Morally Acceptable?
The Influence of Social Approval on Moral Judgement of Harms
Context: Behavioral Science: Theory and Application of Experimental Methods
Authors: Alessandro Tacconelli, Karla Cecilia Terroba, Sara Lopez Marin, Kim Hang Nguyen, Sophie Bass, Uri Federman, Noah VanValkenburg
When confronted with different harms having the same consequences, people seem to prefer indirect over direct harms. Studies on the topic focused solely on individuals’ joint evaluation of those harms, omitting to collect data on personal preferences of each type of harm per se. To our knowledge, then, no information is provided by the existing literature as to the role that social justification could play in eliciting more (or less) favorable moral assessments. To address those gaps, we propose a 2 (direct vs indirect) x 2 (social justification present vs absent) experimental design. Across systematic variations of the type of harm considered and the employment of social justifications, we find that when evaluating direct and indirect harms in isolation (rather than jointly), individuals do not seem to prefer one type of harm over the other one. Conversely, the presence of justifying social factors, at least for a subset of situations, amplifies the moral acceptability of harmful conducts.
Learning:
The Endowment Effect across Cultures:
Are Bicultural Individuals Affected Differently Depending on Their Primed Identity?
Context: Judgments and Decisions
The endowment effect has been studied rigorously since 1980; however, until recently, there has been a scarcity of studies that have engaged with cultural approaches. Our goal is to fill this gap. By employing a bicultural sample of Asian American individuals, the study investigates whether the cultural priming will impact these individuals’ behaviors. The proposed study attempts to establish a cross-cultural understanding of the endowment effect and encourages future research to expand the literature by further investigating the influence of cultures on other topics in behavioral science.
Learning:
Reduce the Consumption of Plastic Cutlery in Food Delivery
Context: Public Policy
The City of Philadelphia aims to partner with Habit of Waste (HoW) to incorporate more changes in the food delivery applications to reduce the consumption of single-use plastic cutlery, besides the currently implemented default setting. The new intervention includes pop-up messages that leverage social proof, social identity, and feedback right before an app user places an order. This intervention is to overcome the barriers (present bias, construal-level problem, social influence) that the default setting alone cannot address and achieve more effective outcomes in reducing the consumption of single-use plastic cutlery. The paper also addresses the obstacles that restaurant employees are having in adapting to new movement, proposes solutions to tackle these obstacles, and provides strategies to convince restaurants to play a more active role in the shift to sustainable direction.
Learning: