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Hunting for a Job: How Individual Differences in Foraging Strategies Influence the Length of Unemployment

University of Warsaw, gw{at}uw.edu.pl

Eugene Burnstein

University of Michigan

A model of individual difference in foraging is used to predict the speed with which unemployed Poles gain employment. Foraging theory assumes an evolved computational mechanism that produces a trade-off between search costs, the amount of preparation individuals foresee as required to achieve an outcome, and whether they deem the outcome worth pursuing. We argue that the expression of this mechanism varies over individuals (as well as situations, the traditional focus of foraging theory) and distinguish between two ideal-type foraging strategies based on the nature of the trade-off. One, called a point strategy, denotes individuals who are willing to incur significant search costs. They characteristically engage in meticulous planning and consider only a few options as worth pursing. The other, called an interval strategy, describes individuals who are typically averse to incurring search costs. They plan in a perfunctory manner and are willing to accept many options as ‘good enough’. Two hypotheses are tested: (i) Interval strategists find jobs more rapidly than point strategists. (ii) Women, because they incur greater search costs, find jobs less rapidly than men. In addition, we conjectured if women’s search costs are sufficiently greater, they may benefit more than men by adopting an interval strategy. Two studies, the first with a convenience sample and the second with a representative national sample, provide strong support for the first hypothesis, reasonable support for the second, and weaker support for our conjecture. A third study demonstrates that in evaluating the attractiveness of a job individuals weigh its features in a fashion consistent with their foraging strategy.

Key Words: foraging strategies • individual differences • Poland • unemployment

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