Behavioral Insights From Causal Field Research

This symposium, “Behavioral Insights From Causal Field Research,” presents five papers that use causal research designs involving field experiments with rich organizational contexts (e.g., education, medical, crisis counseling). Causal field research can be viewed as the gold standard of research designs because it combines the traditional strength of laboratory experiments (i.e., internal validity / causal inference) and the traditional strength of field research (i.e., external validity / generalizability). First, Daniels and Kang examine how aversive factors, such as job difficulty, influence turnover (“quitting”) and disengagement (“quiet quitting”) using a five-year large-scale natural field experiment at a major nonprofit organization (the largest field experiment on worker engagement to date), where 14,383 workers were repeatedly and randomly assigned to do 1,976,649 harder (vs. easier) job tasks. They find that aversive factors (like job difficulty) may increase overall turnover among workers, but they can also increase engagement among those workers who choose to stay. Second, Brody, Dai, and Hershfield use a field experiment to examine how to deliver comparison information to 27,952 teachers (of 595,789 students) to influence their students’ goal pursuit. They examine how providing (vs. not providing) comparison information to teachers influences student performance and student engagement. Third, Phillips et al. examine how to make bone marrow donation requests to increase donations. They find that a values-affirmation intervention at the first decision point (registration) fosters higher commitment to the process of donating bone marrow. Fourth, Cervantez et al. examine the impact of providing summary statistics to decision-makers describing the fraction of valued opportunities they have recently provided to women (vs. men) and minorities (vs. non-minorities) to boost diversity. Fifth, across five field experiments (total N=866,104), Lasky-Fink and Rogers find that shortening messages written by professionals increases the likelihood that readers register for webinars, complete surveys, donate, and visit links. Overall, this symposium showcases field experiments that use causal research designs and provide behavioral insights that are both theoretically important and practically relevant. A natural field experiment on “quitting” vs. “quiet quitting” Author: David P. Daniels; NUS Business School Author: Polly Kang; INSEAD Delivering Comparison Information to Teachers Increases Goal Pursuit for Students: Field Experiment Author: Ilana Brody; UCLA Anderson School of Management Author: Hengchen Dai; UCLA Anderson School of Management Author: Hal Hershfield; UCLA Anderson School of Management A Field Experiment: Encouraging Bone Marrow Donation through Values Affirmation Author: L Taylor Phillips; NYU Stern Author: Sean Malahy; Paradigm Author: Eileen Y. Suh; Boston U. Questrom School of Business Author: Alana Conner; Google Author: Jennifer Eberhardt; Stanford U. Author: Hazel Markus; Stanford U. Author: Geoffrey Cohen; Stanford Field and lab experiments about diversity: Real-time feedback to boost representation Author: Jose Cervantez; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Author: Sophia Pink; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Author: Aneesh Rai; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Author: Linda Chang; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Author: Katherine Milkman; U. of Pennsylvania Writing More is Worse, Though We Predict the Opposite: Evidence from 5 Field Experiments Author: Jessica Lasky-Fink; Harvard Kennedy School Author: Todd Rogers; Harvard U.