Age differences in emotional responses to monetary losses and gains.

People of all ages face events that threaten their well-being, but theories of aging posit that older adults will cope better. In a gamble with randomly assigned losses (vs. gains), older adults reported relatively less negative and more positive emotions than younger adults, especially after losses (vs. gains). Avoiding preoccupation with negative thoughts was more likely among older (vs. younger) adults and was related to less negative emotions after losses (vs. gains). A focus on limited time was associated with more positive emotions across all participants. Our findings may inform interventions that aim to promote emotional well-being across all ages. (PsycINFO Database Record

Uncovering noisy social signals: Using optimization methods from experimental physics to study social phenomena.

Due to the ubiquitous presence of treatment heterogeneity, measurement error, and contextual confounders, numerous social phenomena are hard to study. Precise control of treatment variables and possible confounders is often key to the success of studies in the social sciences, yet often proves out of the realm of control of the experimenter. To amend this situation we propose a novel approach coined "lock-in feedback" which is based on a method that is routinely used in high-precision physics experiments to extract small signals out of a noisy environment. Here, we adapt the method to noisy social signals in multiple dimensions and evaluate it by studying an inherently noisy topic: the perception of (subjective) beauty. We show that the lock-in feedback approach allows one to select optimal treatment levels despite the presence of considerable noise. Furthermore, through the introduction of an external contextual shock we demonstrate that we can find relationships between noisy variables that were hitherto unknown. We therefore argue that lock-in methods may provide a valuable addition to the social scientist's experimental toolbox and we explicitly discuss a number of future applications.