Profiles
Dr Jan K. Woike
Lecturer in Psychology
School of Psychology (Faculty of Health)
Dr Jan K. Woike can be contacted through arrangement with our Press Office, to speak to the media on these areas of expertise.
- Psychology
- Cognitive psychology
- Economic psychology
- Decision-making
- Negotiation
- Experimental economics
- Experimental ethics
- Experimental philosophy
- Applied statistics
- Experimental methods
- Online research methods
- Psychometrics
Email publicrelations@plymouth.ac.uk to enquire.
Biography
Biography
Qualifications
Previous academic positions
- 2012-2020: Research Scientist --- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
- 2017-2018: Research Scientist --- German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, Germany
- 2007-2012: Research Scientist --- Department of Organizational Behavior, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
- Before 2007: positions at RUB, Bochum; University of Erfurt; Arizona State University, USA
Education
- PhD and diploma in psychology (RUB, Bochum, Germany)
- Studied psychology, philosophy, dramatic arts, and German language (RUB, Germany; Harvard University, USA)
- Drama instructor (Unna, Germany)
Roles on external bodies
Ad hoc reviewer
Academy of Management Discoveries; Economics and Philosophy; International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making; Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Journal of Business Research; Journal of Cognition; Journal of Cognitive Psychology; Journal of Economic Psychology; Journal of Education for Business; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition; Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; Journal of Management & Organization; Journal of Mathematical Psychology; MIT Sloan Management Review; Philosophical Psychology; Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology; Scientific Reports; Strategy Science
Review editor
Frontiers in Psychology
Academy of Management Discoveries; Economics and Philosophy; International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making; Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Journal of Business Research; Journal of Cognition; Journal of Cognitive Psychology; Journal of Economic Psychology; Journal of Education for Business; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition; Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; Journal of Management & Organization; Journal of Mathematical Psychology; MIT Sloan Management Review; Philosophical Psychology; Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology; Scientific Reports; Strategy Science
Review editor
Frontiers in Psychology
Key publications
(2020) 'Crowdsourcing hypothesis tests: Making transparent how design choices shape research results' Psychological Bulletin 146, (5) 451-479 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Putting your money where your self is: Connecting dimensions of closeness and theories of personal identity' PLOS ONE 15, (2) e0228271-e0228271 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Rivals without a cause? Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives' Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 33, (4) 523-537 , DOI Open access
(2022) 'The Transmission Game: Testing behavioral interventions in a pandemic-like simulation' Science Advances 8, (8) , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Genesis or Evolution of Gender Differences? Worldview-Based Dilemmas in The Processing of Scientific Information' Journal of Cognition 3, (1) , DOI Open access
Teaching
Teaching
Teaching interests
Judgment and decision making; Cognitive, social, and statistical heuristics
Gamification & Serious Games
Behavioral ethics; Behavioral economics
Bounded rationality; Organizational culture
Negotiation; Strategic interactions
Management Science; Business modelling
Research
Research
Research interests
- Simple heuristics and decision making: I study descriptive and normative properties of structurally simple human decision heuristics in individual and social settings; also comparing them to standard and advanced techniques in statistics and machine learning. I investigate information search and cue use in human decision making. To reach these goals, I utilize experiments, computer simulations, and mathematical analysis.
- Serious games: I develop serious games to explore decision making in simulated environments, including board-games.
- Behavioral ethics and moral psychology: I investigate the power of interventions and institutions in distributive justice, cooperation, punishment, and interpersonal commitments.
- Crowdsourced online research: I investigate the dynamics, possibilities, and problems of crowdsourced online research. This theme encompasses several subprojects and includes the qualitative and quantitative assessment of insufficient effort responding, and an analysis of professional participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk and comparable platforms. I also focus on questions of Big Data methods, Big Data Ethics and, in particular, Data Privacy for crowdsourced participants.
- Economic psychology and investment decisions: I study investment decisions and decision policies used by naive and professional investors, and explore economic interactions in incentivized experiments.
- Computer simulations: Using agent-based simulation methods and techniques from artificial life, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary computation, I study social interaction, decision making, and the performance of heuristics and strategies.
- Interdisciplinary projects: I transfer methodologies between disciplines and dovetail approaches originating in psychology, philosophy, machine learning, and economics.
Other research
Media mentions
- The Economist: https://www.economist.com/business/2020/02/27/when-rank-leads-to-rancour
- People Management: https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/voices/comment/why-ranking-staff-leads-to-destructive-competition
- IESE Insight: https://www.ieseinsight.com/doc.aspx?id=2143&idioma=2
Google scholar profile
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xTS1e48AAAAJ&hl=en
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xTS1e48AAAAJ&hl=en
Creative practice & artistic projects
German drama workshop (Arizona State University, 2003), playwright
Publications
Publications
Key publications
(2020) 'Crowdsourcing hypothesis tests: Making transparent how design choices shape research results' Psychological Bulletin 146, (5) 451-479 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Putting your money where your self is: Connecting dimensions of closeness and theories of personal identity' PLOS ONE 15, (2) e0228271-e0228271 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Rivals without a cause? Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives' Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 33, (4) 523-537 , DOI Open access
(2022) 'The Transmission Game: Testing behavioral interventions in a pandemic-like simulation' Science Advances 8, (8) , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Genesis or Evolution of Gender Differences? Worldview-Based Dilemmas in The Processing of Scientific Information' Journal of Cognition 3, (1) , DOI Open access
Key publications are highlighted
Journals
Articles
(2023) 'Cheating and the effect of promises in Indian and German children' Child Development , DOI Open access
(2023) 'Heterogeneity of Rules in Bayesian Reasoning: A Toolbox Analysis' Cognitive Psychology , DOI Open access
(2023) 'Promises on the go: A field study on keeping one's word' Frontiers in Psychology 14, , DOI Open access
(2022) 'Forecasting postoperative delirium in older adult patients with Fast-and-Frugal decision trees' Journal of Clinical Medicine 11, (19) , DOI Open access
(2022) 'Examining the generalizability of research findings from archival data' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, (30) , DOI Open access
(2022) 'The Transmission Game: Testing behavioral interventions in a pandemic-like simulation' Science Advances 8, (8) , DOI Open access
(2021) 'Age differences in deliberate ignorance' Psychology and Aging 36, (4) 407-414 , DOI Open access
(2021) 'Keeping them honest: Promises reduce cheating in adolescents' Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 34, (2) 183-198 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'A creative destruction approach to replication: Implicit work and sex morality across cultures' Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 93, , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Creative destruction in science' Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 161, 291-309 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Mental health and the wish to have a child: a longitudinal, cross-cultural comparison between Germany and China' Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology 1-13 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Crowdsourcing hypothesis tests: Making transparent how design choices shape research results' Psychological Bulletin 146, (5) 451-479 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Genesis or Evolution of Gender Differences? Worldview-Based Dilemmas in The Processing of Scientific Information' Journal of Cognition 3, (1) , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Putting your money where your self is: Connecting dimensions of closeness and theories of personal identity' PLOS ONE 15, (2) e0228271-e0228271 , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Rivals without a cause? Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives' Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 33, (4) 523-537 , DOI Open access
(2019) 'Upon Repeated Reflection: Consequences of Frequent Exposure to the Cognitive Reflection Test for Mechanical Turk Participants' Frontiers in Psychology 10, , DOI Open access
(2018) 'Social contact patterns can buffer costs of forgetting in the evolution of cooperation' Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 285, (1880) , DOI Open access
(2018) 'Competitive escalation and interventions' Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 31, (5) 695-714 , DOI Open access
(2017) 'Integrating and testing natural frequencies, naïve Bayes, and fast-and-frugal trees' Decision 4, (4) 234-260 , DOI Open access
(2017) 'FFTrees: A toolbox to create, visualize, and evaluate fast-and-frugal decision trees' Judgment and Decision Making 12, (4) 344-368 , DOI Open access
(2016) 'Description and experience: How experimental investors learn about booms and busts affects their financial risk taking' Cognition 157, 365-383 , DOI Open access
(2016) 'Disseminating Justified, Well-Designed, and Well-Executed Studies Despite Nonsignificant Tests' JAMA Psychiatry 73, (1) 88-88 , DOI
(2016) 'Framing the debate on human-like framing effects in bonobos and chimpanzees: a comment on Krupenye et al. (2015)' Biology Letters 12, 20150718-20150718 , DOI
(2015) 'Picking profitable investments: The success of equal weighting in simulated venture capitalist decision making' Journal of Business Research 68, (8) 1705-1716 , DOI Open access
(2015) 'Destructive Competition Despite of Compatible Goals: Social Feedback Shapes Conflict and Cooperation' Academy of Management Proceedings 2015, (1) 11933-11933 , DOI
(2013) 'Correlates of Diagnostic Accuracy in Patients with Nonspecific Complaints' Medical Decision Making 33, (4) 533-543 , DOI
(2013) 'How to prevent competitive escalation in the minimal dollar auction paradigm' Academy of Management Proceedings 2013, (1) 17517-17517 , DOI
(2013) 'Is there a Tradeoff between Social and Financial Performance? Beliefs and the ‘Holy Grail’' Academy of Management Proceedings 2013, (1) 17380-17380 , DOI
(2011) 'Are groups more likely to defer choice than their members?' Judgment and Decision Making 6, (3) 239-251 , DOI
(2008) 'Categorization with limited resources: A family of simple heuristics' Journal of Mathematical Psychology 52, (6) 352-361 , DOI
(2006) 'Introducing MASC: A Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition' Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 36, (5) 623-636 , DOI
(2002) 'Internet-Recruiting und-Assessment: Eine Chance, die Wirtschaftspsychologen nutzen sollten' Wirtschaftspsychologie 9, (1) 33-38
Chapters
(2019) 'Experiences and Descriptions of Financial Uncertainty: Are They Equivalent?' in Hertwig R; Pleskac TJ; Pachur T; the Center for Adaptive Rationality ARC Taming Uncertainty MIT Press 191-205
(2019) 'The Robust Beauty of Heuristics in Choice under Uncertainty' in Hertwig R; Pleskac TJ; Pachur T; the Center for Adaptive Rationality ARC Taming Uncertainty MIT Press 29-50
(2012) 'Social Learning: A Route to Good Cue Orders' Simple Heuristics in a Social World Oxford University Press 343-354 , DOI
(2011) 'Categorization with Limited Resources: A Family of Simple Heuristics' Heuristics Oxford University Press 319-331 , DOI
(2003) 'Screening' in Kubinger KD; Jäger RS Schlüsselbegriffe der psychologischen Diagnostik 375-377
(2003) 'Selektionsorientierte Diagnostik' in Kubinger KD; Jäger RS Schlüsselbegriffe der psychologischen Diagnostik 377-380
(2003) 'Testökonomie' in Kubinger KD; Jäger RS Schlüsselbegriffe der psychologischen Diagnostik 405-407
Conference Papers
(2019) 'Fast-and-frugal trees for decision-making' Decision Making Based on Data International Association for Statistical Education , DOI
(2013) 'When groups should not imitate their most successful members' 3795-3800
(2012) 'Estimating Quantities: Comparing Simple Heuristics and Machine Learning Algorithms' Springer Berlin Heidelberg 483-490 , DOI
(2009) 'Change processes in schools and the role of school leadership' American Educational Research Association Conference
Presentations and posters
Talks, presentations, and posters
'”Billions to Invest, They must have a Plan“: A Simulation of Venture Capitalist Decision Making, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, St. Louis, MO, USA, 2010'
'Approaching simple heuristics with computer simulations, TAPMI– Max Planck–Chinese Academy Winter School on Bounded Rationality 2020, Manipal, India'
'Burning money of identifiable others: the anti-social identifiable-victim effect, Economic Science Association International Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, 2014'
'Can promises reduce cheating in the absence of punishment? Economic Science Association (ESA) World Meeting, Berlin, Germany, 2018'
'Change Processes in Schools and the Role of School Leadership, European Conference on Educational Research 2008, Goeteborg, Sweden, 2008'
'Compare and compete: The influence of social feedback on group cooperation, European Academy of Management (EURAM): Manageable Cooperation?, Paris, France, 2016'
'Comparing estimation strategies in real-world environments, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Boston (MA), USA, 2009'
'Decision Making Behind the Veil of Ignorance: Distributive Justice in an Economic Group Experiment, Experiments in Economics, Experiments in Philosophy, XIV Summer School on Economics and Philosophy, San Sebastian, Spain, 2011'
'Destructive competition despite of compatible goals: Social feedback shapes conflict and cooperation in public-goods games, 16th International Conference on Social Dilemmas, Hong Kong, 2015'
'Destructive competition despite of compatible goals: Social feedback shapes conflict and cooperation, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Vancouver, Canada, 2015'
'Destructive competition in a social dilemma, The experimental approach to psychology (TeaP), Mannheim, Germany, 2012'
'Distributive Justice behind the veil: A study of social preferences under various degrees of ignorance, Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Budapest, Hungary, 2015'
'Distributive justice behind the veil: An experimental investigation of social distribution preferences under various degrees of ignorance, 16th International Conference on Social Dilemmas, Hong Kong, 2015'
'Do Groups Defer Choice More Than Their Members? Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making Conference 22, Rovereto, 2009'
'Do Groups Defer Choice More Than Their Members?, 1th Congress of the Swiss Psychological Society, Neuchâtel, 2009'
'Does vicarious learning help to escape the trap of competition in a social dilemma game? Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Barcelona, 2013'
'Escalation of Commitment Behavior during Dollar Auctions in Small Groups is Resistant to Debiasing Interventions, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Seattle, USA, 2011'
'Experiments with crowdsourced participants: Ethical slings and methodological arrows of research on MTurk, Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality, Berlin, Germany, 2019'
'FFT: An R package to create, visualize, and apply fast and frugal decision trees, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Boston, USA, 2016'
'FFTrees: An R package to create and profit from fast and frugal decision trees, Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Haifa, Israel, 2017'
'Heuristic Choice and the Structure of the Environment, Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Haifa, Israel, 2017'
'Heuristics as analysed by the ABC group, Workshop: “Reasoning and making decisions”, Ludwigsburg University of Education, 2014'
'How to achieve distributive justice in multiplayer sharing games: empirical tests for the ’veil of ignorance’, Economic Science Association International Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, 2014'
'How to deal with insufficient attention in online panels and laboratory research? Comparing the validity of established and novel measures. Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2019'
'How to prevent competitive escalation in the minimal dollar auction paradigm, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Orlando, USA 2013'
'How to prevent competitive escalation in the minimal dollar auction paradigm, Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Barcelona 2013'
'How to prevent competitive escalation: Goal setting, vicarious learning and the minimal dollar auction paradigm, Economic Science Association, Intenrational Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA 2014'
'Identifying Decision Strategies, XXIX. International Congress of Psychology, Berlin, 2008'
'It is about how and not only what investors learn, Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Budapest, Hungary, 2015'
'Keeping one's word is not the exception, it’s the rule. International Conference on Social Dilemmas, Sedona, Arizona, USA, 2019'
'Kind, selfish, competing, or confused? Unraveling contribution decisions in public good games, Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Barcelona, 2013'
'Learning to win by staying out of the game: How different types of experience affect competitive escalation, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Boston, USA, 2016'
'Making decisions with ethical implications, The experimental approach to psychology (TeaP), Mannheim, Germany, 2012'
'Problems of Policy Capturing: A Dim Light in a Big Black Box, Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making Conference 22, Rovereto, 2009'
'Problems of Policy Capturing: Shining a Dim Light into a Big Black Box, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France, 2009'
'Promises and dice: Do people keep their word rather than their money? Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Haifa, Israel, 2017'
'Promises and dice: Most people keep their word rather than their money, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Boston, USA, 2016'
'Promises and dice: Most people keep their word rather than their money, International Conference on Social Dilemmas, Taormina, Italy, 2017'
'Pyrrhic victories in collective action: relative comparisons trigger destructive competition in public-goods games, Economic Science Association International Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, 2014'
'Pyrrhic victories in public-goods games: when relative comparisons matter more than absolute payoffs, Decision Making Bristol 2014, Bristol, UK, 2014'
'Reverse engineering and its problems: Separating decision strategies based on their outcomes, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Chicago (IL), USA, 2008'
'Simulation Methods in Entrepreneurship, Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Oslo, Norway 2013'
'Social contact patterns can buffer costs of forgetting in the evolution of cooperation, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Vancouver, Canada, 2017'
'The ecological rationality of heuristics in decisions from experience, 48th Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Psychology, Newport Beach, CA, USA, 2015'
'The ecological rationality of simple heuristics in decisions from experience, ARC Retreat, Chorin, Germany, 2014'
'The ecological rationality of simple heuristics in decisions from experience, Fourth annual conference of the Priority Program “New Frameworks of Rationality” (SPP1516), Etelsen, Germany, 2015'
'The tragedy of common spite: A social dilemma without a conflict of interest, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, St. Louis (MO), USA, 2010'
'The Veil of Ignorance and Distributive Justice in a Multiplayer Sharing Game, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Seattle, USA, 2011'
'Trustworthy Doctors, Communication Tools, and Healthy Routines, Florida Board of Governors Meeting, Jacksonville, Florida, 2015'
'Venture Capital Decision Making, Faculty of Psychology, Basel, 2014'
'When copying hinders learning: Pitfalls of success-based group decision-making, Annual Meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Toronto, Canada 2013'
'Wie gut sind Entscheidungsheuristiken? Osterreichische Gesellschaft für Psychologie (OGP), Linz, Austria, 2018'
Other Publications
(2008) Die paradoxe Rationalität einfacher Heuristiken [The paradoxical rationality of simple heuristics] Phd Thesis - https://hss-opus.ub.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/opus4/frontdoor/index/index/year/2018/docId/1575.
Comparing estimation strategies in real-world environments.