The alleged privacy paradox states that individuals report high values for personal privacy, while at the same time they report behavior that contradicts a high privacy value. This is a misconception. Reported privacy behaviors are explained by asymmetric subjective beliefs. Beliefs may or may not be uncertain, and non-neutral attitudes towards uncertainty are not necessary to explain behavior. This research was conducted in three related parts. Part one presents an experiment in individual decision making under uncertainty. Ellsberg's canonical two-color choice problem was used to estimate attitudes towards uncertainty. Subjects believed bets on the color ball drawn from Ellsberg's ambiguous urn were equally likely to pay. Estimated attitudes towards uncertainty were insignificant. Subjective expected utility explained subjects' choices better than uncertainty aversion and the uncertain priors model. A second treatment tested Vernon Smith's conjecture that preferences in Ellsberg's problem would be unchanged when the ambiguous lottery is replaced by a compound objective lottery. The use of an objective compound lottery to induce uncertainty did not affect subjects' choices. The second part of this dissertation extended the concept of uncertainty to commodities where quality and accuracy of a quality report were potentially ambiguous. The uncertain priors model is naturally extended to allow for potentially different attitudes towards these two sources of uncertainty, quality and accuracy. As they relate to privacy, quality and accuracy of a quality report are seen as metaphors for online security and consumer trust in e-commerce, respectively. The results of parametric structural tests were mixed. Subjects made choices consistent with neutral attitudes towards uncertainty in both the quality and accuracy domains. However, allowing for uncertainty aversion in the quality domain and not the accuracy domain outperformed the alternative which only allowed for uncertainty aversion in the accuracy domain. Finally, part three integrated a public-goods game and punishment opportunities with the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism to elicit privacy values, replicating previously reported privacy behaviors. The procedures developed elicited punishment (consequence) beliefs and information confidentiality beliefs in the context of individual privacy decisions. Three contributions are made to the literature. First, by using cash rewards as a mechanism to map actions to consequences, the study eliminated hypothetical bias as a confounding behavioral factor which is pervasive in the privacy literature. Econometric results support the 'privacy paradox' at levels greater than 10 percent. Second, the roles of asymmetric beliefs and attitudes towards uncertainty were identified using parametric structural likelihood methods. Subjects were, in general, uncertainty neutral and believed 'bad' events were more likely to occur when their private information was not confidential. A third contribution is a partial test to determine which uncertain process, loss of privacy or the resolution of consequences, is of primary importance to individual decision-makers. Choices were consistent with uncertainty neutral preferences in both the privacy and consequences domains.

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Every day to we make decisions that require us to reconcile our desire to be satisfied immediately with our desire to improve upon our current situation, which often requires waiting. People tend to devalue future rewards as a function of the time they must wait receive them, a phenomenon known as a delay discounting. Nearly all species exhibit delay discounting, yet there is a striking level of inter-individual variability in discounting severity. In humans, discounting rate predicts a wide array of outcomes such as academic achievement, drug addiction, salary, and obesity. Such correlational relationships have led some to argue that discounting is a stable trait. Contrary to this perspective, several studies have shown that discounting rates may gradually decrease with age. There is also evidence that contextual factors can more immediately alter an individual's discounting rate. One such factor is how information is presented, or "framed". The way in which options are framed-even if they are logically equivalent-can influence choice. Framing a choice as a loss often leads to avoidance that option, i.e. to loss aversion. Delay discounting and susceptibility to loss framing have thus far only been studied in isolation, yet in day to day life we regularly must consider both temporal and loss information, particularly as we become older. This study seeks to the bridge delay discounting, framing, and normative aging literatures to examine (1) whether reframing choices can reduce delay discounting; (2) what factors drive individual differences in discounting and framing susceptibility; (3) to what extent these phenomena interact with age; and (4) a potential application of these findings in the context of Social Security claiming. / Psychology

This thesis is comprised of three parts. In the first part, we investigated zyklophin, a novel selective short-acting kappa opioid receptor (KOPR) antagonist, and its effects on scratching behaviors in Swiss-Webster mice. We investigated whether zyklophin was able to induce scratching in a dose-dependent fashion, and whether this scratching behavior could be blocked by pretreatment with nor-binaltorphimine (norBNI). We also used KOPR -/- mice to further clarify the role of the KOPR in this behavior. In the second part, we examined the role of the divergent amino acid at position 6.58 in the mu opioid receptor (MOPR) and the KOPR on the binding of beta-funaltrexamine ß-FNA). ß-FNA is an irreversible antagonist at the MOPR and a reversible agonist at the KOPR. Utilizing the recently published crystal structures of the MOPR and KOPR, we collaborated with Dr. Lei Shi, who employed molecular modeling to choose a residue in transmembrane helix 6 (TM6) to mutate at the same position in MOPR and KOPR. We then characterized the mutants by performing [3H]diprenorphine binding, competition binding by unlabeled β-FNA, irreversible ß-FNA binding and [35S]GTPγS binding. In the third part, we investigated the concept of functional selectivity, or ligand bias, at the KOPR. We studied 23 different KOPR agonists in vitro using [35S]GTPγS binding as a measure of G protein activation and the on-cell Western (OCW) as a measure of ß-arrestin-mediated receptor internalization at the human KOPR (hKOPR), and from the results, chose 13 ligands to study at the mouse KOPR (mKOPR). We then selected biased ligands from the in vitro mKOPR results and studied their effects on scratching behavior, inhibition of pain behaviors and dysphoria as measured by the conditioned place aversion (CPA) test. We predicted that the G biased ligand would produce analgesia and anti-scratching effects at lower doses than would produce aversion in the CPA test, since analgesia has been shown to be G protein mediated and CPA has been shown to be arrestin mediated. Our first set of studies revealed that zyklophin (0.1, 0.3 and 1 mg/kg, s.c., behind the neck), induced vigorous scratching in a dose-dependent manner. 0.3 mg/kg zyklophin induced 150 scratches over a 30 minute period. The scratching was not blocked by pretreatment with 20 mg/kg norBNI (i.p.) 18-20 hours before injection of 0.3 mg/kg zyklophin s.c. in the nape of the neck. The scratching also persisted in KOPR -/- mice, in which the absence of the KOPR was confirmed by [3H]U69,593 binding (2 nM). In our second set of studies, we mutated the lysine at position 303 in the MOPR to glutamic acid (K303E), and the glutamic acid at the equivalent position in the KOPR to lysine (E297K). We transfected these mutant receptors into mouse neuroblastoma (N2A) cells. We found that the mutations had no effect on [3H]diprenorphine binding affinity or competition binding with [3H]diprenorphine and β-FNA indicating a functional intact opioid receptor. The mutations also did not affect [35S]GTPγS binding EC50 or Emax values. The mutation K303E in the MOPR reduced irreversible binding by 2/3 compared to the wildtype MOPR. Finally, we found that there were several ligands that displayed bias at the hKOPR and the mKOPR. At the hKOPR, using dynorphin A as the reference ligand to calculate bias, ICI-199441 was the only G biased ligand, while enadoline, nalbuphine, pentazocine, salvinorin A, tifluadom and butorphanol were arrestin-biased. At the mKOPR, only salvinorin B methoxymethyl ether (MOM-SalB) was G-biased, and salvinorin B ethoxymethyl ether (EOM-SalB), ICI-199441, U50,488H, nalfurafine and 12-epi-salvinorin A (12epiSalA) were ß-arrestin-biased. Enadoline and salvinorin A were slightly arrestin biased with respect to dynorphin A. From the in vitro data at the mKOPR, we selected MOM-SalB as our G biased ligand, U50,488H as our arrestin biased ligand and additionally chose to investigate nalfurafine due to its use in clinical studies. We hypothesized that U50,488H and nalfurafine would produce aversion at lower doses than analgesia or anti-pruritic effects. We found that nalfurafine was the only ligand studied to have a separation between doses that produced analgesia and anti-scratching effects, with A50 values of 5.8 and 8 μg/kg, respectively, and only produced significant dysphoria at a dose of 20 μg/kg. U50,488H and MOM-SalB produced dysphoria at all doses tested (0.25-10 mg/kg and 0.01-0.3 mg/kg, respectively). U50,488H produced a dose-dependent analgesia and anti-scratching with A50 values of 0.58 mg/kg and 2.07 mg/kg, respectively. MOM-SalB was more potent than U50,488H in producing dose-dependent analgesia and anti-scratching, with A50 values of 0.017 mg/kg and 0.070 mg/kg, respectively. Therefore, we concluded that the in vitro bias is not able to accurately predict in vivo behaviors, and nalfurafine is the first selective full agonist at the KOPR to show ligand bias in vivo. / Pharmacology

Background: Generation Z is the first generation to grow up with the Internet as a part of their daily lives, shaping their investment behavior. They favor innovative investments, contrasting Generation X’s preference for stable portfolios. The younger generation displays irrational behavior, contributing to market volatility. Sweden is facing higher interest rates after a prolonged period of low rates. Despite rising interest rates, young shareholders are increasing.  Purpose: This study aims to explore how psychological biases affect investors’ trading activity and the impact of psychological biases on Generation Z and Generation X during elevated interest rates. It focuses on three behavioral biases: overconfidence, herd behavior, and loss aversion. With the growing involvement of young investors in the financial market, this study aims to provide insights for investors, decisionmakers, and other stakeholders to raise awareness of the effects of psychological biases in investment decisions. Method: This study used a quantitative strategy to apply a positivistic, deductive research approach. The data was collected through a survey where which 132 respondents participated. The empirical data was analyzed using simple linear regression, binary logistic regression, and Mann-Whitney U-test.  Conclusion: The results support some of the hypotheses. Results indicate a significant influence of overconfidence on investment behavior and that Generation Z showed larger tendencies of overconfidence than Generation X. Herd behavior affects investment behavior but no generational differences could be found. Additionally, Generation Z was less loss-averse compared to Generation X, although it does not impact investment behavior.