Fake news and post-truth pronouncements in general and in early human development. Victor Grech. Early Human Development, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2017.09.017
Highlights
• Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common.
• They are also being to science and to medicine.
• This editorial reviews this unsavoury trend.
• It also highlights recent debunking of fake truths in early human development.
• We, as scientists, must continue to uphold science's integrity and probity.
Abstract: Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common, and are unfortunately also progressively being applied to the sciences, including the medical sciences. This editorial briefly reviews this unsavoury trend and highlights recent debunking of fake truths in early human development. Science is arguably the last metanarrative with any significant cachet in the postmodern period. We, as scientists, must strive to ensure that our work is transparent and of the highest possible standard so as to continue to uphold science's integrity and probity.
Keywords: MeSH: Humans; Public opinion; Science; Social media
Check also: Polarized Mass or Polarized Few? Assessing the Parallel Rise of Survey
Nonresponse and Measures of Polarization. Amnon Cavari and Guy Freedman.
The Journal of Politics, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/03/polarized-mass-or-polarized-few.html
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Captive gorilla apparently trying to engage zoo visitors in a joint task of retrieving food with a stick
Luef, E. M., & Heschl, A. (2017). Triadic interactions with tools in a gorilla. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 4(2), 136–145. https://doi.org/10.12966/abc.01.05.2017
Abstract - Triadic interactions are an important developmental milestone for young human infants, ultimately enabling them to acquire language. When an infant and a caregiver share attention regarding an object, the label given to the object becomes linked with the object, hence referential communication is established through which infants learn to associate words with meanings. In fact, triadic interactions are considered so crucial to human language development that their phylogenetic origins have become the focus of investigation to study the evolutionary history of language. In this paper, we report a communicative instance of a captive zoo gorilla apparently trying to engage zoo visitors in a joint task of retrieving food. The gorilla seemed to initiate a series of combined triadic interactions with different tools used as pointing devices while attempting to recruit a human for help. Even though it is a single observation event, we argue that the gorilla possessed relevant knowledge about the various purposes for which a specific tool can be used and utilized sophisticated communicative means in her interaction with humans.
Keywords – Gorilla communication, Pointing gesture, Triadic reference, Shared attention, Social tool use, Flexible gesture-tool combinations
Abstract - Triadic interactions are an important developmental milestone for young human infants, ultimately enabling them to acquire language. When an infant and a caregiver share attention regarding an object, the label given to the object becomes linked with the object, hence referential communication is established through which infants learn to associate words with meanings. In fact, triadic interactions are considered so crucial to human language development that their phylogenetic origins have become the focus of investigation to study the evolutionary history of language. In this paper, we report a communicative instance of a captive zoo gorilla apparently trying to engage zoo visitors in a joint task of retrieving food. The gorilla seemed to initiate a series of combined triadic interactions with different tools used as pointing devices while attempting to recruit a human for help. Even though it is a single observation event, we argue that the gorilla possessed relevant knowledge about the various purposes for which a specific tool can be used and utilized sophisticated communicative means in her interaction with humans.
Keywords – Gorilla communication, Pointing gesture, Triadic reference, Shared attention, Social tool use, Flexible gesture-tool combinations
Saturday, September 23, 2017
The Stability of Implicit Racial Bias in Police Officers -- Policemen need to sleep better
The Stability of Implicit Racial Bias in Police Officers. Lois James. Police Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1177/1098611117732974
Abstract: Research on police officers has found that they tend to associate African Americans with threat. Little is known however about the stability of implicit racial bias in police officers, whose attitudes could be expected to fluctuate based on their day-to-day encounters or from internal stressors such as fatigue. To investigate, this study tested 80 police officers using the Weapons Implicit Association Test (IAT) on four separate occasions. Officers’ sleep was also monitored using wrist actigraphy. Officers’ IAT scores varied significantly across the testing days (f = 2.36; df = 1.468; p < .05), and differences in IAT scores were associated with officers’ sleep (f = 6.49; df = 1.468; p < .05). These findings indicate that implicit racial bias was not stable among officers, and that when officers slept less prior to testing they demonstrated stronger association between Black Americans and weapons. The implications of these findings within the current climate of police–citizen unrest are discussed.
Abstract: Research on police officers has found that they tend to associate African Americans with threat. Little is known however about the stability of implicit racial bias in police officers, whose attitudes could be expected to fluctuate based on their day-to-day encounters or from internal stressors such as fatigue. To investigate, this study tested 80 police officers using the Weapons Implicit Association Test (IAT) on four separate occasions. Officers’ sleep was also monitored using wrist actigraphy. Officers’ IAT scores varied significantly across the testing days (f = 2.36; df = 1.468; p < .05), and differences in IAT scores were associated with officers’ sleep (f = 6.49; df = 1.468; p < .05). These findings indicate that implicit racial bias was not stable among officers, and that when officers slept less prior to testing they demonstrated stronger association between Black Americans and weapons. The implications of these findings within the current climate of police–citizen unrest are discussed.
Doctors should be more sensitive to the limitations of the evidence, training them to do critical appraisal, & enhancing their communication skills
Ioannidis, J. P. A., Stuart, M. E., Brownlee, S. and Strite, S. A. (), How To Survive the Medical Misinformation Mess. Eur J Clin Invest. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/eci.12834
Abstract: Most physicians and other healthcare professionals are unaware of the pervasiveness of poor quality clinical evidence that contributes considerably to overuse, underuse, avoidable adverse events, missed opportunities for right care and wasted healthcare resources. The Medical Misinformation Mess comprises four key problems. First, much published medical research is not reliable or is of uncertain reliability, offers no benefit to patients, or is not useful to decision makers. Second, most healthcare professionals are not aware of this problem. Third, they also lack the skills necessary to evaluate the reliability and usefulness of medical evidence. Finally, patients and families frequently lack relevant, accurate medical evidence and skilled guidance at the time of medical decision-making. Increasing the reliability of available, published evidence may not be an imminently reachable goal. Therefore, efforts should focus on making healthcare professionals, more sensitive to the limitations of the evidence, training them to do critical appraisal, and enhancing their communication skills so that they can effectively summarize and discuss medical evidence with patients to improve decision-making. Similar efforts may need to target also patients, journalists, policy makers, the lay public and other healthcare stakeholders.
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In our encounters with students, clinicians, and others working in the healthcare industry (including academicians, researchers, editors, peer reviewers, pharmacists, regulators, politicians and employees of insurance companies, hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry and new technology companies), we have found a lack of the basic skills required for determining a study’s reliability and applicability. For example, in a pre-test administered to a sampling of more than 500 physicians, clinical pharmacists and other healthcare professionals attending evidence-based medicine (EBM) training programs in 2002 and 2003, 70 percent failed a simple 3-question critical appraisal training program test. The three pre-test questions were designed to determine if attendees could recognize the absence of a control group, understand the issue of overestimating benefit when provided with relative risk reduction information without absolute difference information, and determine whether an intention-to-treat analysis was performed. Surprisingly, among those who reported feeling confident to evaluate the medical literature, 72 percent failed the test, even with generous criteria for correct answers [25]. We have repeated the same pre-test with various groups each year with similar results.
Abstract: Most physicians and other healthcare professionals are unaware of the pervasiveness of poor quality clinical evidence that contributes considerably to overuse, underuse, avoidable adverse events, missed opportunities for right care and wasted healthcare resources. The Medical Misinformation Mess comprises four key problems. First, much published medical research is not reliable or is of uncertain reliability, offers no benefit to patients, or is not useful to decision makers. Second, most healthcare professionals are not aware of this problem. Third, they also lack the skills necessary to evaluate the reliability and usefulness of medical evidence. Finally, patients and families frequently lack relevant, accurate medical evidence and skilled guidance at the time of medical decision-making. Increasing the reliability of available, published evidence may not be an imminently reachable goal. Therefore, efforts should focus on making healthcare professionals, more sensitive to the limitations of the evidence, training them to do critical appraisal, and enhancing their communication skills so that they can effectively summarize and discuss medical evidence with patients to improve decision-making. Similar efforts may need to target also patients, journalists, policy makers, the lay public and other healthcare stakeholders.
---
In our encounters with students, clinicians, and others working in the healthcare industry (including academicians, researchers, editors, peer reviewers, pharmacists, regulators, politicians and employees of insurance companies, hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry and new technology companies), we have found a lack of the basic skills required for determining a study’s reliability and applicability. For example, in a pre-test administered to a sampling of more than 500 physicians, clinical pharmacists and other healthcare professionals attending evidence-based medicine (EBM) training programs in 2002 and 2003, 70 percent failed a simple 3-question critical appraisal training program test. The three pre-test questions were designed to determine if attendees could recognize the absence of a control group, understand the issue of overestimating benefit when provided with relative risk reduction information without absolute difference information, and determine whether an intention-to-treat analysis was performed. Surprisingly, among those who reported feeling confident to evaluate the medical literature, 72 percent failed the test, even with generous criteria for correct answers [25]. We have repeated the same pre-test with various groups each year with similar results.
Personality Change in the Preclinical Phase of Alzheimer Disease
Personality Change in the Preclinical Phase of Alzheimer Disease. Antonio Terracciano et al.
JAMA Psychiatry. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.2816.
Key Points
Question Do changes in personality traits occur before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or clinical dementia?
Findings In a cohort study that followed up 2046 older adults for as long as 36 years, no evidence of significant change in self-rated personality was found before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or clinical dementia.
Meaning No personality changes that could be characterized as an early sign of dementia were found.
Abstract
Importance Changes in behavior and personality are 1 criterion for the diagnosis of dementia. It is unclear, however, whether such changes begin before the clinical onset of the disease.
Objective To determine whether increases in neuroticism, declines in conscientiousness, and changes in other personality traits occur before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or dementia.
Design, Setting, and Participants A cohort of 2046 community-dwelling older adults who volunteered to participate in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging were included. The study examined personality and clinical assessments obtained between 1980 and July 13, 2016, from participants with no cognitive impairment at first assessment who were followed up for as long as 36 years (mean [SD], 12.05 [9.54] years). The self-report personality scales were not considered during consensus diagnostic conferences.
Main Outcomes and Measures Change in self-rated personality traits assessed in the preclinical phase of Alzheimer disease and other dementias with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, a 240-item questionnaire that assesses 30 facets, 6 for each of the 5 major dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
Results Of the 2046 participants, 931 [45.5%] were women; mean (SD) age at first assessment was 62.56 (14.63) years. During 24 569 person-years, mild cognitive impairment was diagnosed in 104 (5.1%) individuals, and all-cause dementia was diagnosed in 255 (12.5%) participants, including 194 (9.5%) with Alzheimer disease. Multilevel modeling that accounted for age, sex, race, and educational level found significant differences on the intercept of several traits: individuals who developed dementia scored higher on neuroticism (β = 2.83; 95% CI, 1.44 to 4.22; P < .001) and lower on conscientiousness (β = −3.34; 95% CI, −4.93 to −1.75; P < .001) and extraversion (β = −1.74; 95% CI, −3.23 to −0.25; P = .02). Change in personality (ie, slope), however, was not significantly different between the nonimpaired and the Alzheimer disease groups (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.00; 95% CI, −0.08 to 0.08; P = .91; conscientiousness: β = −0.06; 95% CI, −0.16 to 0.04; P = .24). Slopes for individuals who developed mild cognitive impairment (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.00; 95% CI, −0.12 to 0.12; P = .98; conscientiousness: β = −0.09; 95% CI, −0.23 to 0.05; P = .18) and all-cause dementia (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.02; 95% CI, −0.06 to 0.10; P = .49; conscientiousness: β = −0.08; 95% CI, −0.16 to 0.00; P = .07) were also similar to those for nonimpaired participants.
Conclusions and Relevance No evidence for preclinical change in personality before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or dementia was identified. These findings provide evidence against the reverse causality hypothesis and strengthen evidence for personality traits as a risk factor for dementia.
JAMA Psychiatry. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.2816.
Key Points
Question Do changes in personality traits occur before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or clinical dementia?
Findings In a cohort study that followed up 2046 older adults for as long as 36 years, no evidence of significant change in self-rated personality was found before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or clinical dementia.
Meaning No personality changes that could be characterized as an early sign of dementia were found.
Abstract
Importance Changes in behavior and personality are 1 criterion for the diagnosis of dementia. It is unclear, however, whether such changes begin before the clinical onset of the disease.
Objective To determine whether increases in neuroticism, declines in conscientiousness, and changes in other personality traits occur before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or dementia.
Design, Setting, and Participants A cohort of 2046 community-dwelling older adults who volunteered to participate in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging were included. The study examined personality and clinical assessments obtained between 1980 and July 13, 2016, from participants with no cognitive impairment at first assessment who were followed up for as long as 36 years (mean [SD], 12.05 [9.54] years). The self-report personality scales were not considered during consensus diagnostic conferences.
Main Outcomes and Measures Change in self-rated personality traits assessed in the preclinical phase of Alzheimer disease and other dementias with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, a 240-item questionnaire that assesses 30 facets, 6 for each of the 5 major dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
Results Of the 2046 participants, 931 [45.5%] were women; mean (SD) age at first assessment was 62.56 (14.63) years. During 24 569 person-years, mild cognitive impairment was diagnosed in 104 (5.1%) individuals, and all-cause dementia was diagnosed in 255 (12.5%) participants, including 194 (9.5%) with Alzheimer disease. Multilevel modeling that accounted for age, sex, race, and educational level found significant differences on the intercept of several traits: individuals who developed dementia scored higher on neuroticism (β = 2.83; 95% CI, 1.44 to 4.22; P < .001) and lower on conscientiousness (β = −3.34; 95% CI, −4.93 to −1.75; P < .001) and extraversion (β = −1.74; 95% CI, −3.23 to −0.25; P = .02). Change in personality (ie, slope), however, was not significantly different between the nonimpaired and the Alzheimer disease groups (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.00; 95% CI, −0.08 to 0.08; P = .91; conscientiousness: β = −0.06; 95% CI, −0.16 to 0.04; P = .24). Slopes for individuals who developed mild cognitive impairment (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.00; 95% CI, −0.12 to 0.12; P = .98; conscientiousness: β = −0.09; 95% CI, −0.23 to 0.05; P = .18) and all-cause dementia (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.02; 95% CI, −0.06 to 0.10; P = .49; conscientiousness: β = −0.08; 95% CI, −0.16 to 0.00; P = .07) were also similar to those for nonimpaired participants.
Conclusions and Relevance No evidence for preclinical change in personality before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or dementia was identified. These findings provide evidence against the reverse causality hypothesis and strengthen evidence for personality traits as a risk factor for dementia.
The Cognitive-Evolutionary Model of Surprise: A Review of the Evidence
Reisenzein, R., Horstmann, G. and Schützwohl, A. (2017), The Cognitive-Evolutionary Model of Surprise: A Review of the Evidence. Topics in Cogn Sci. doi:10.1111/tops.12292
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12292/full
Abstract: Research on surprise relevant to the cognitive-evolutionary model of surprise proposed by Meyer, Reisenzein, and Schützwohl (1997) is reviewed. The majority of the assumptions of the model are found empirically supported. Surprise is evoked by unexpected (schema-discrepant) events and its intensity is determined by the degree if schema-discrepancy, whereas the novelty and the valence of the eliciting events probably do not have an independent effect. Unexpected events cause an automatic interruption of ongoing mental processes that is followed by an attentional shift and attentional binding to the events, which is often followed by causal and other event analysis processes and by schema revision. The facial expression of surprise postulated by evolutionary emotion psychologists has been found to occur rarely in surprise, for as yet unknown reasons. A physiological orienting response marked by skin conductance increase, heart rate deceleration, and pupil dilation has been observed to occur regularly in the standard version of the repetition-change paradigm of surprise induction, but the specificity of these reactions as indicators of surprise is controversial. There is indirect evidence for the assumption that the feeling of surprise consists of the direct awareness of the schema-discrepancy signal, but this feeling, or at least the self-report of surprise, is also influenced by experienced interference. In contrast, facial feedback probably does contribute substantially to the feeling of surprise and the evidence for the hypothesis that surprise is affected by the difficulty of explaining an unexpected event is, in our view, inconclusive. Regardless of how the surprise feeling is constituted, there is evidence that it has both motivational and informational effects. Finally, the prediction failure implied by unexpected events sometimes causes a negative feeling, but there is no convincing evidence that this is always the case, and we argue that even if it were so, this would not be a sufficient reason for regarding this feeling as a component, rather than as an effect of surprise.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12292/full
Abstract: Research on surprise relevant to the cognitive-evolutionary model of surprise proposed by Meyer, Reisenzein, and Schützwohl (1997) is reviewed. The majority of the assumptions of the model are found empirically supported. Surprise is evoked by unexpected (schema-discrepant) events and its intensity is determined by the degree if schema-discrepancy, whereas the novelty and the valence of the eliciting events probably do not have an independent effect. Unexpected events cause an automatic interruption of ongoing mental processes that is followed by an attentional shift and attentional binding to the events, which is often followed by causal and other event analysis processes and by schema revision. The facial expression of surprise postulated by evolutionary emotion psychologists has been found to occur rarely in surprise, for as yet unknown reasons. A physiological orienting response marked by skin conductance increase, heart rate deceleration, and pupil dilation has been observed to occur regularly in the standard version of the repetition-change paradigm of surprise induction, but the specificity of these reactions as indicators of surprise is controversial. There is indirect evidence for the assumption that the feeling of surprise consists of the direct awareness of the schema-discrepancy signal, but this feeling, or at least the self-report of surprise, is also influenced by experienced interference. In contrast, facial feedback probably does contribute substantially to the feeling of surprise and the evidence for the hypothesis that surprise is affected by the difficulty of explaining an unexpected event is, in our view, inconclusive. Regardless of how the surprise feeling is constituted, there is evidence that it has both motivational and informational effects. Finally, the prediction failure implied by unexpected events sometimes causes a negative feeling, but there is no convincing evidence that this is always the case, and we argue that even if it were so, this would not be a sufficient reason for regarding this feeling as a component, rather than as an effect of surprise.
Understanding the 2016 US Presidential Polls: The Importance of Hidden Trump Supporters
Understanding the 2016 US Presidential Polls: The Importance of Hidden Trump Supporters. Peter Enns, Julius Lagodny and Jonathon Schuldt. Statistics, Politics and Policy, https://doi.org/10.1515/spp-2017-0003
Abstract: Following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 US presidential election, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced that “the polls clearly got it wrong” and noted that talk of a “crisis in polling” was already emerging. Although the national polls ended up being accurate, surveys just weeks before the election substantially over-stated Clinton’s lead and state polls showed systematic bias in favor of Clinton. Different explanations have been offered for these results, including non-response bias and late deciders. We argue, however, that these explanations cannot fully account for Trump’s underperformance in October surveys. Utilizing data from two national polls that we conducted in October of 2016 (n>2100 total) as well as 14 state-level polls from October, we find consistent evidence for the existence of “hidden” Trump supporters who were included in the surveys but did not openly express their intention to vote for Trump. Most notably, when we account for these hidden Trump supporters in our October survey data, both national and state-level analyses foreshadow Trump’s Election Day support. These results suggest that late-breaking campaign events may have had less influence than previously thought and the findings hold important implications for how scholars, media, and campaigns analyze future election surveys.
Check also: Social Desirability Bias and Polling Errors in the 2016 Presidential Election. Andy Brownback and Aaron Novotny. University of Arkansas Working Paper, July 2017, http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/social-desirability-bias-and-polling.html
Abstract: Following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 US presidential election, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced that “the polls clearly got it wrong” and noted that talk of a “crisis in polling” was already emerging. Although the national polls ended up being accurate, surveys just weeks before the election substantially over-stated Clinton’s lead and state polls showed systematic bias in favor of Clinton. Different explanations have been offered for these results, including non-response bias and late deciders. We argue, however, that these explanations cannot fully account for Trump’s underperformance in October surveys. Utilizing data from two national polls that we conducted in October of 2016 (n>2100 total) as well as 14 state-level polls from October, we find consistent evidence for the existence of “hidden” Trump supporters who were included in the surveys but did not openly express their intention to vote for Trump. Most notably, when we account for these hidden Trump supporters in our October survey data, both national and state-level analyses foreshadow Trump’s Election Day support. These results suggest that late-breaking campaign events may have had less influence than previously thought and the findings hold important implications for how scholars, media, and campaigns analyze future election surveys.
Check also: Social Desirability Bias and Polling Errors in the 2016 Presidential Election. Andy Brownback and Aaron Novotny. University of Arkansas Working Paper, July 2017, http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/social-desirability-bias-and-polling.html
The Foreign Investor Bias and Its Linguistic Origins
The Foreign Investor Bias and Its Linguistic Origins. Russell Lundholm, Nafis Rahman & Rafael Rogo. Management Science, https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2812
Abstract: We study how misaligned language between the investor and the firm contributes to the underweighting of foreign securities in an international portfolio. In particular, we document a significant U.S. institutional investor bias against firms located in Quebec relative to firms located in the rest of Canada (ROC). The differential bias is surprising given that (i) Quebec and the other Canadian provinces share the same nationality, federal law, stock exchange, and accounting standards; (ii) their regulatory filings are prepared in English and French; and (iii) U.S. institutional investors are sophisticated and located close to Quebec and the ROC. We also examine Quebec firms with different levels of French versus English online presences as well as those with CEOs who have U.S. work experience or board members or financial analysts who reside in the United States. We find that each factor affects the relative underweighting of investment in Quebec versus the ROC. Finally, we contrast the holdings of institutional investors located in the United Kingdom and France to bolster our conclusion that incongruent languages contribute to the underweighting of Quebec firms relative to firms in the ROC.
Keywords: home bias; investor bias; language; Quebec
My comment: In our search of homogeneity we can go so far as to avoid some business opportunities if we feel the other part will be too foreign for our tastes.
Abstract: We study how misaligned language between the investor and the firm contributes to the underweighting of foreign securities in an international portfolio. In particular, we document a significant U.S. institutional investor bias against firms located in Quebec relative to firms located in the rest of Canada (ROC). The differential bias is surprising given that (i) Quebec and the other Canadian provinces share the same nationality, federal law, stock exchange, and accounting standards; (ii) their regulatory filings are prepared in English and French; and (iii) U.S. institutional investors are sophisticated and located close to Quebec and the ROC. We also examine Quebec firms with different levels of French versus English online presences as well as those with CEOs who have U.S. work experience or board members or financial analysts who reside in the United States. We find that each factor affects the relative underweighting of investment in Quebec versus the ROC. Finally, we contrast the holdings of institutional investors located in the United Kingdom and France to bolster our conclusion that incongruent languages contribute to the underweighting of Quebec firms relative to firms in the ROC.
Keywords: home bias; investor bias; language; Quebec
My comment: In our search of homogeneity we can go so far as to avoid some business opportunities if we feel the other part will be too foreign for our tastes.
Altruists lie like the others unless lying hurts another party
Do the Altruists Lie Less? Rudolf Kerschbamer, Daniel Neururer, and Alexander Gruber. August 28, 2017. https://ideas.repec.org/p/inn/wpaper/2017-17.html
Abstract: Much is known about heterogeneity in social preferences and about heterogeneity in lying aversion -- but little is known about the relation between the two at the individual level. Are the altruists simply upright persons who do not only care about the well-being of others but also about honesty? And are the selfish those who lie whenever lying maximizes their material payoff? This paper addresses those questions in experiments that first elicit subjects.social preferences and then let them make decisions in an environment where lying increases the own material payo¤ and has either consequences for the payoffs of others or no consequences for others. We find that altruists lie less when lying hurts another party but we do not find any evidence in support of the hypothesis that altruists are more (or less) averse to lying than others in environments where lying has no effects on the payoffs of others
Abstract: Much is known about heterogeneity in social preferences and about heterogeneity in lying aversion -- but little is known about the relation between the two at the individual level. Are the altruists simply upright persons who do not only care about the well-being of others but also about honesty? And are the selfish those who lie whenever lying maximizes their material payoff? This paper addresses those questions in experiments that first elicit subjects.social preferences and then let them make decisions in an environment where lying increases the own material payo¤ and has either consequences for the payoffs of others or no consequences for others. We find that altruists lie less when lying hurts another party but we do not find any evidence in support of the hypothesis that altruists are more (or less) averse to lying than others in environments where lying has no effects on the payoffs of others
Friday, September 22, 2017
Mnemonic transmission, social contagion, and emergence of collective memory: Influence of emotional valence, group structure, and information distribution
Choi, H.-Y., Kensinger, E. A., & Rajaram, S. (2017). Mnemonic transmission, social contagion, and emergence of collective memory: Influence of emotional valence, group structure, and information distribution. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(9), 1247-1265.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000327
Abstract: Social transmission of memory and its consequence on collective memory have generated enduring interdisciplinary interest because of their widespread significance in interpersonal, sociocultural, and political arenas. We tested the influence of 3 key factors—emotional salience of information, group structure, and information distribution—on mnemonic transmission, social contagion, and collective memory. Participants individually studied emotionally salient (negative or positive) and nonemotional (neutral) picture–word pairs that were completely shared, partially shared, or unshared within participant triads, and then completed 3 consecutive recalls in 1 of 3 conditions: individual–individual–individual (control), collaborative–collaborative (identical group; insular structure)–individual, and collaborative–collaborative (reconfigured group; diverse structure)–individual. Collaboration enhanced negative memories especially in insular group structure and especially for shared information, and promoted collective forgetting of positive memories. Diverse group structure reduced this negativity effect. Unequally distributed information led to social contagion that creates false memories; diverse structure propagated a greater variety of false memories whereas insular structure promoted confidence in false recognition and false collective memory. A simultaneous assessment of network structure, information distribution, and emotional valence breaks new ground to specify how network structure shapes the spread of negative memories and false memories, and the emergence of collective memory.
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Check: Social contagion of memory. HENRY L. ROEDIGER III, MICHELLE L. MEADE, and ERIK T. BERGMAN. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2001, 8 (2), 365-371, https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03196174
Abstract: We report a new paradigm for studying false memories implanted by social influence, a process we call the social contagion of memory. A subject and confederate together saw six common household scenes (e.g., a kitchen) containing many objects, for either 15 or 60 sec. During a collaborative recall test, the 2 subjects each recalled six items from the scenes, but the confederate occasionally made mistakes by reporting items not from the scene. Some intrusions were highly consistent with the scene schema (e.g., a toaster) while others were less so (e.g., oven mitts). After a brief delay, the individual subject tried to recall as many items as possible from the six scenes. Recall of the erroneous items suggested by the confederate was greater than in a control condition (with no suggestion). Further, this social contagion effect was greater when the scenes were presented for less time (15 sec) and when the intruded item was more schema consistent (e.g., the toaster). As with other forms of social influence, false memories are contagious; one person’s memory can be infected by another person’s errors.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000327
Abstract: Social transmission of memory and its consequence on collective memory have generated enduring interdisciplinary interest because of their widespread significance in interpersonal, sociocultural, and political arenas. We tested the influence of 3 key factors—emotional salience of information, group structure, and information distribution—on mnemonic transmission, social contagion, and collective memory. Participants individually studied emotionally salient (negative or positive) and nonemotional (neutral) picture–word pairs that were completely shared, partially shared, or unshared within participant triads, and then completed 3 consecutive recalls in 1 of 3 conditions: individual–individual–individual (control), collaborative–collaborative (identical group; insular structure)–individual, and collaborative–collaborative (reconfigured group; diverse structure)–individual. Collaboration enhanced negative memories especially in insular group structure and especially for shared information, and promoted collective forgetting of positive memories. Diverse group structure reduced this negativity effect. Unequally distributed information led to social contagion that creates false memories; diverse structure propagated a greater variety of false memories whereas insular structure promoted confidence in false recognition and false collective memory. A simultaneous assessment of network structure, information distribution, and emotional valence breaks new ground to specify how network structure shapes the spread of negative memories and false memories, and the emergence of collective memory.
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Check: Social contagion of memory. HENRY L. ROEDIGER III, MICHELLE L. MEADE, and ERIK T. BERGMAN. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2001, 8 (2), 365-371, https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03196174
Abstract: We report a new paradigm for studying false memories implanted by social influence, a process we call the social contagion of memory. A subject and confederate together saw six common household scenes (e.g., a kitchen) containing many objects, for either 15 or 60 sec. During a collaborative recall test, the 2 subjects each recalled six items from the scenes, but the confederate occasionally made mistakes by reporting items not from the scene. Some intrusions were highly consistent with the scene schema (e.g., a toaster) while others were less so (e.g., oven mitts). After a brief delay, the individual subject tried to recall as many items as possible from the six scenes. Recall of the erroneous items suggested by the confederate was greater than in a control condition (with no suggestion). Further, this social contagion effect was greater when the scenes were presented for less time (15 sec) and when the intruded item was more schema consistent (e.g., the toaster). As with other forms of social influence, false memories are contagious; one person’s memory can be infected by another person’s errors.
Tattooed targets, especially women, were rated as stronger and more independent, but more negatively
Tattoo or taboo? Tattoo stigma and negative attitudes toward tattooed individuals. Kristin A Broussard & Helen C Harton. The Journal of Social Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2017.1373622
ABSTRACT: Tattoos are common in the United States; however, tattooed persons may be perceived as having more negative character and as more deviant than people without tattoos. College students (Study 1) and community members (Study 2) viewed images of men and women with tattoos or the same images with the tattoos digitally removed and rated the targets’ characteristics. Half of the participants viewed a target with a tattoo, and half viewed that target without it, allowing for both within- (participants all rated one male and one female target with a tattoo and another without) and between-participants (participants rated either the tattooed or non-tattooed version of a single target) comparisons. Tattooed targets, especially women, were rated as stronger and more independent, but more negatively on other character attributes than the same target images with the tattoos removed. The stigma associated with tattoos appears to still exist, despite the prevalence of tattoos in modern culture.
KEYWORDS: Tattoo, stigma, gender, stereotypes
---
Tattooed people also judge negatively other tattooed individuals, like the non-tattooed do.
ABSTRACT: Tattoos are common in the United States; however, tattooed persons may be perceived as having more negative character and as more deviant than people without tattoos. College students (Study 1) and community members (Study 2) viewed images of men and women with tattoos or the same images with the tattoos digitally removed and rated the targets’ characteristics. Half of the participants viewed a target with a tattoo, and half viewed that target without it, allowing for both within- (participants all rated one male and one female target with a tattoo and another without) and between-participants (participants rated either the tattooed or non-tattooed version of a single target) comparisons. Tattooed targets, especially women, were rated as stronger and more independent, but more negatively on other character attributes than the same target images with the tattoos removed. The stigma associated with tattoos appears to still exist, despite the prevalence of tattoos in modern culture.
KEYWORDS: Tattoo, stigma, gender, stereotypes
---
Tattooed people also judge negatively other tattooed individuals, like the non-tattooed do.
How many laypeople holding a popular opinion are needed to counter an expert opinion?
How many laypeople holding a popular opinion are needed to counter an expert opinion? Jos Hornikx, Adam J. L. Harris & Jordy Boekema. Thinking & Reasoning, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2017.1378721
Abstract: In everyday situations, people regularly receive information from large groups of (lay) people and from single experts. Although lay opinions and expert opinions have been studied extensively in isolation, the present study examined the relationship between the two by asking how many laypeople are needed to counter an expert opinion. A Bayesian formalisation allowed the prescription of this quantity. Participants were subsequently asked to assess how many laypeople are needed in different situations. The results demonstrate that people are sensitive to the relevant factors identified for determining how many lay opinions are required to counteract a single expert opinion. People's assessments were fairly good in line with Bayesian predictions.
KEYWORDS: Expert opinion, popular opinion, Bayesian argumentation
Abstract: In everyday situations, people regularly receive information from large groups of (lay) people and from single experts. Although lay opinions and expert opinions have been studied extensively in isolation, the present study examined the relationship between the two by asking how many laypeople are needed to counter an expert opinion. A Bayesian formalisation allowed the prescription of this quantity. Participants were subsequently asked to assess how many laypeople are needed in different situations. The results demonstrate that people are sensitive to the relevant factors identified for determining how many lay opinions are required to counteract a single expert opinion. People's assessments were fairly good in line with Bayesian predictions.
KEYWORDS: Expert opinion, popular opinion, Bayesian argumentation
Invasive interventions are associated with substantially large placebo effects
Route of Placebo Administration: Robust Placebo Effects in Laboratory and Clinical Settings. Tao Liu. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.09.018
Highlights
• Pivotal role of placebo administration in subsequent placebo responses.
• Robust placebo analgesia in the context of anticipating an upcoming pain.
• Enhanced placebo effects associated with invasive procedures
Abstract: Recent advances in laboratory and clinical research have greatly enhanced our understanding of placebo effects. However, little progress has been made in translational research that can well integrate these findings. This article examines pivotal role of placebo administration in subsequent placebo responses, providing a unified framework that accounts for robust placebo effects in both laboratory and clinical settings.
Keywords: placebo effects; placebo administration; route of administration; pain; pain anticipation; learning; conditioning; verbal suggestion; belief; reward expectation; appetitive motivation; emotion; anxiety; brain mechanisms; descending pain modulation; RCTs; invasive placebo; sham invasive procedure; acupuncture; clinical practice
Highlights
• Pivotal role of placebo administration in subsequent placebo responses.
• Robust placebo analgesia in the context of anticipating an upcoming pain.
• Enhanced placebo effects associated with invasive procedures
Abstract: Recent advances in laboratory and clinical research have greatly enhanced our understanding of placebo effects. However, little progress has been made in translational research that can well integrate these findings. This article examines pivotal role of placebo administration in subsequent placebo responses, providing a unified framework that accounts for robust placebo effects in both laboratory and clinical settings.
Keywords: placebo effects; placebo administration; route of administration; pain; pain anticipation; learning; conditioning; verbal suggestion; belief; reward expectation; appetitive motivation; emotion; anxiety; brain mechanisms; descending pain modulation; RCTs; invasive placebo; sham invasive procedure; acupuncture; clinical practice
Depression is not due to interaction of genetics and childhood trauma -- study of 5,765 subjects from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium
Does childhood trauma moderate polygenic risk for depression? A meta-analysis of 5,765 subjects from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Wouter J. Peyrot, et al. Biological Psychiatry, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.09.009
Abstract
Background: The heterogeneity of genetic effects on Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) may be partly attributable to moderation of genetic effects by environment, such as exposure to childhood trauma (CT). Indeed, previous findings in two independent cohorts showed evidence for interaction between polygenic risk scores (PRS) and CT, albeit in opposing directions. This study aims to meta-analyze MDD-PRSxCT interaction results across these two and other cohorts, while applying more accurate PRS based on a larger discovery sample.
Methods and Materials: Data were combined from 3,024 MDD cases and 2,741 controls from nine cohorts contributing to the MDD Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. MDD-PRS were based on a discovery sample of approximately 110,000 independent individuals. CT was assessed as exposure to sexual or physical abuse during childhood. In a subset of 1957 cases and 2002 controls, a more detailed 5-domain measure additionally included emotional abuse, physical neglect and emotional neglect.
Results: MDD was associated with the MDD-PRS (OR=1.24, p=3.6e-5, R2=1.18%) and with CT (OR=2.63, p=3.5e-18 and OR=2.62, p=1.4e-5 for the 2- and 5-domain measures respectively). No interaction was found between MDD-PRS and the 2-domain and 5-domain CT measure (OR=1.00, p=0.89 and OR=1.05, p=0.66).
Conclusions: No meta-analytic evidence for interaction between MDD-PRS and CT was found. This suggests that the previously reported interaction effects, although both statistically significant, can best be interpreted as chance findings. Further research is required, but this study suggests that the genetic heterogeneity of MDD is not attributable to genome-wide moderation of genetic effects by CT.
Abstract
Background: The heterogeneity of genetic effects on Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) may be partly attributable to moderation of genetic effects by environment, such as exposure to childhood trauma (CT). Indeed, previous findings in two independent cohorts showed evidence for interaction between polygenic risk scores (PRS) and CT, albeit in opposing directions. This study aims to meta-analyze MDD-PRSxCT interaction results across these two and other cohorts, while applying more accurate PRS based on a larger discovery sample.
Methods and Materials: Data were combined from 3,024 MDD cases and 2,741 controls from nine cohorts contributing to the MDD Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. MDD-PRS were based on a discovery sample of approximately 110,000 independent individuals. CT was assessed as exposure to sexual or physical abuse during childhood. In a subset of 1957 cases and 2002 controls, a more detailed 5-domain measure additionally included emotional abuse, physical neglect and emotional neglect.
Results: MDD was associated with the MDD-PRS (OR=1.24, p=3.6e-5, R2=1.18%) and with CT (OR=2.63, p=3.5e-18 and OR=2.62, p=1.4e-5 for the 2- and 5-domain measures respectively). No interaction was found between MDD-PRS and the 2-domain and 5-domain CT measure (OR=1.00, p=0.89 and OR=1.05, p=0.66).
Conclusions: No meta-analytic evidence for interaction between MDD-PRS and CT was found. This suggests that the previously reported interaction effects, although both statistically significant, can best be interpreted as chance findings. Further research is required, but this study suggests that the genetic heterogeneity of MDD is not attributable to genome-wide moderation of genetic effects by CT.
The Ugly Truth About Ourselves and Our Robot Creations: The Problem of Bias and Social Inequity
As a preventive measure against possible complains in the future about bias, I share this:
The Ugly Truth About Ourselves and Our Robot Creations: The Problem of Bias and Social Inequity. Ayanna Howard and Jason Borenstein. Science and Engineering Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9975-2
Abstract: Recently, there has been an upsurge of attention focused on bias and its impact on specialized artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Allegations of racism and sexism have permeated the conversation as stories surface about search engines delivering job postings for well-paying technical jobs to men and not women, or providing arrest mugshots when keywords such as “black teenagers” are entered. Learning algorithms are evolving; they are often created from parsing through large datasets of online information while having truth labels bestowed on them by crowd-sourced masses. These specialized AI algorithms have been liberated from the minds of researchers and startups, and released onto the public. Yet intelligent though they may be, these algorithms maintain some of the same biases that permeate society. They find patterns within datasets that reflect implicit biases and, in so doing, emphasize and reinforce these biases as global truth. This paper describes specific examples of how bias has infused itself into current AI and robotic systems, and how it may affect the future design of such systems. More specifically, we draw attention to how bias may affect the functioning of (1) a robot peacekeeper, (2) a self-driving car, and (3) a medical robot. We conclude with an overview of measures that could be taken to mitigate or halt bias from permeating robotic technology.
The Ugly Truth About Ourselves and Our Robot Creations: The Problem of Bias and Social Inequity. Ayanna Howard and Jason Borenstein. Science and Engineering Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9975-2
Abstract: Recently, there has been an upsurge of attention focused on bias and its impact on specialized artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Allegations of racism and sexism have permeated the conversation as stories surface about search engines delivering job postings for well-paying technical jobs to men and not women, or providing arrest mugshots when keywords such as “black teenagers” are entered. Learning algorithms are evolving; they are often created from parsing through large datasets of online information while having truth labels bestowed on them by crowd-sourced masses. These specialized AI algorithms have been liberated from the minds of researchers and startups, and released onto the public. Yet intelligent though they may be, these algorithms maintain some of the same biases that permeate society. They find patterns within datasets that reflect implicit biases and, in so doing, emphasize and reinforce these biases as global truth. This paper describes specific examples of how bias has infused itself into current AI and robotic systems, and how it may affect the future design of such systems. More specifically, we draw attention to how bias may affect the functioning of (1) a robot peacekeeper, (2) a self-driving car, and (3) a medical robot. We conclude with an overview of measures that could be taken to mitigate or halt bias from permeating robotic technology.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Revenue fell under receiverships: Can Europe Run Greece? Lessons from U.S. Fiscal Receiverships in Latin America, 1904-3
Maurer, Noel and Arroyo Abad, Leticia, Can Europe Run Greece? Lessons from U.S. Fiscal Receiverships in Latin America, 1904-31 (June 13, 2017). George Washington University Working Paper, June 2017. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3026330
Abstract: In 2012 and again in 2015, the German government proposed sending German administrators to manage Greece’s tax and privatization authorities. The idea was that shared governance would reduce corruption and root out inefficient practices. (In 2017 the Boston Globe proposed a similar arrangement for Haiti.) We test a version of shared governance using eight U.S. interventions between 1904 and 1931, under which American officials took over management of Latin American fiscal institutions. We develop a stylized model in which better monitoring by incorruptible managers does not lead to higher government revenues. Using a new panel of data on fiscal revenues and the volume and terms of trade, we find that revenue fell under receiverships. Our results hold under instrumental variables estimation and with counterfactual specifications using synthetic controls.
Abstract: In 2012 and again in 2015, the German government proposed sending German administrators to manage Greece’s tax and privatization authorities. The idea was that shared governance would reduce corruption and root out inefficient practices. (In 2017 the Boston Globe proposed a similar arrangement for Haiti.) We test a version of shared governance using eight U.S. interventions between 1904 and 1931, under which American officials took over management of Latin American fiscal institutions. We develop a stylized model in which better monitoring by incorruptible managers does not lead to higher government revenues. Using a new panel of data on fiscal revenues and the volume and terms of trade, we find that revenue fell under receiverships. Our results hold under instrumental variables estimation and with counterfactual specifications using synthetic controls.
Chimps do not “do what the others do” merely to fit in, nor suffer for attacks against non-group members
Do Chimpanzees Conform to Social Norms? Laura Schlingloff, and Richard Moore. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, Jul 2017. ISBN: 978-1138822887. DOI 10.4324/9781315742250.ch36
Many studies on social influences on human behavior – including the famous Asch conformity experiments (1951) – show that we change our behavior to fit in with the crowd. [...]
To investigate whether chimpanzees copy for affiliative reasons, van Leeuwen and colleagues tested whether they abandon individually learned information in favor of a majority strategy. They found that chimpanzees do not change a first-learned strategy to conform to a majority, although they will do so to gain higher rewards (van Leeuwen et al. 2013; see also Hrubesch, Preuschoft and van Schaik 2009; and van Leeuwen and Haun 2013). This suggests that chimpanzees are not motivated to “do what the others do” merely to fit in (Leeuwen and Haun 2013).
[...] In human communities, not only do individuals prefer to conform, they also uphold the principles of their group – for example, by punishing those who do not conform. In humans, third-party enforcement of arbitrary conventional norms emerges in children as young as three years (Schmidt, Rakoczy and Tomasello 2012). Humans are also willing to suffer costs in order to sanction norm violations, even if they themselves were not harmed by the violation (Fehr and Fischbacher 2004). Currently, there is no evidence that chimpanzees enforce social norms. While they punish those who harm them directly (Jensen, Call and Tomasello 2007), this is consistent with them punishing out of revenge, and not because they think group norms should be upheld. They do not seem to engage in ‘third-party punishment’. For example, Riedl and colleagues (2012) found that chimpanzees would not retaliate against a conspecific when a third party’s food was stolen.
[...]
Apes looked longer at videos of unfamiliar individuals committing infanticidal attacks than at control videos (e.g., of chimpanzees behaving aggressively towards adults). However – with the exception of one individual who performed threat displays towards the video screen – watching infanticide did not elicit negative emotional arousal. The authors interpret the findings as showing that while chimpanzees may recognize norm violations, these violations elicit strong emotional responses only when they affect group members.
Many studies on social influences on human behavior – including the famous Asch conformity experiments (1951) – show that we change our behavior to fit in with the crowd. [...]
To investigate whether chimpanzees copy for affiliative reasons, van Leeuwen and colleagues tested whether they abandon individually learned information in favor of a majority strategy. They found that chimpanzees do not change a first-learned strategy to conform to a majority, although they will do so to gain higher rewards (van Leeuwen et al. 2013; see also Hrubesch, Preuschoft and van Schaik 2009; and van Leeuwen and Haun 2013). This suggests that chimpanzees are not motivated to “do what the others do” merely to fit in (Leeuwen and Haun 2013).
[...] In human communities, not only do individuals prefer to conform, they also uphold the principles of their group – for example, by punishing those who do not conform. In humans, third-party enforcement of arbitrary conventional norms emerges in children as young as three years (Schmidt, Rakoczy and Tomasello 2012). Humans are also willing to suffer costs in order to sanction norm violations, even if they themselves were not harmed by the violation (Fehr and Fischbacher 2004). Currently, there is no evidence that chimpanzees enforce social norms. While they punish those who harm them directly (Jensen, Call and Tomasello 2007), this is consistent with them punishing out of revenge, and not because they think group norms should be upheld. They do not seem to engage in ‘third-party punishment’. For example, Riedl and colleagues (2012) found that chimpanzees would not retaliate against a conspecific when a third party’s food was stolen.
[...]
Apes looked longer at videos of unfamiliar individuals committing infanticidal attacks than at control videos (e.g., of chimpanzees behaving aggressively towards adults). However – with the exception of one individual who performed threat displays towards the video screen – watching infanticide did not elicit negative emotional arousal. The authors interpret the findings as showing that while chimpanzees may recognize norm violations, these violations elicit strong emotional responses only when they affect group members.
Genomic Imprinting Is Implicated in the Psychology of Music
Genomic Imprinting Is Implicated in the Psychology of Music. Samuel Mehr et al. Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617711456
Abstract: Why do people sing to babies? Human infants are relatively altricial and need their parents’ attention to survive. Infant-directed song may constitute a signal of that attention. In Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a rare disorder of genomic imprinting, genes from chromosome 15q11–q13 that are typically paternally expressed are unexpressed, which results in exaggeration of traits that reduce offspring’s investment demands on the mother. PWS may thus be associated with a distinctive musical phenotype. We report unusual responses to music in people with PWS. Subjects with PWS (N = 39) moved more during music listening, exhibited greater reductions in heart rate in response to music listening, and displayed a specific deficit in pitch-discrimination ability relative to typically developing adults and children (N = 589). Paternally expressed genes from 15q11–q13, which are unexpressed in PWS, may thus increase demands for music and enhance perceptual sensitivity to music. These results implicate genomic imprinting in the psychology of music, informing theories of music’s evolutionary history.
Abstract: Why do people sing to babies? Human infants are relatively altricial and need their parents’ attention to survive. Infant-directed song may constitute a signal of that attention. In Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a rare disorder of genomic imprinting, genes from chromosome 15q11–q13 that are typically paternally expressed are unexpressed, which results in exaggeration of traits that reduce offspring’s investment demands on the mother. PWS may thus be associated with a distinctive musical phenotype. We report unusual responses to music in people with PWS. Subjects with PWS (N = 39) moved more during music listening, exhibited greater reductions in heart rate in response to music listening, and displayed a specific deficit in pitch-discrimination ability relative to typically developing adults and children (N = 589). Paternally expressed genes from 15q11–q13, which are unexpressed in PWS, may thus increase demands for music and enhance perceptual sensitivity to music. These results implicate genomic imprinting in the psychology of music, informing theories of music’s evolutionary history.
LGB respondents are more liberal than heterosexuals on 99 percent of 199 attitudinal items
Schnabel, Landon. 2017. “Sexual Orientation and Social Attitudes”. SocArXiv. August 23. www.osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/73xsz
Abstract: Gender, race, and class strongly predict social attitudes and are at the core of social scientific theory and empirical analysis. Sexuality (i.e., same-sex behavior or LGB identity), however, is not as central a factor by which we conceptualize and systematize society. Using the General Social Survey, this study examines the effect of sexuality, gender, race, and education on 199 attitudinal items. Sexuality consistently and substantially predicts a broad range of attitudes. Measured by partnering behavior, sexuality significantly predicts attitudes on 137 items. On all 137 of these items, LGB respondents are more liberal than heterosexuals. Irrespective of significance, LGB respondents are more liberal than heterosexuals on 99 percent of 199 total items. These patterns are consistent with the underdog principle of marginalized identity and progressive values. Sexuality predicts attitudes at least as consistently as gender, race, and education. I argue that future work should pay more attention to sexuality as a core factor in social scientific theory and empirical analysis.
Abstract: Gender, race, and class strongly predict social attitudes and are at the core of social scientific theory and empirical analysis. Sexuality (i.e., same-sex behavior or LGB identity), however, is not as central a factor by which we conceptualize and systematize society. Using the General Social Survey, this study examines the effect of sexuality, gender, race, and education on 199 attitudinal items. Sexuality consistently and substantially predicts a broad range of attitudes. Measured by partnering behavior, sexuality significantly predicts attitudes on 137 items. On all 137 of these items, LGB respondents are more liberal than heterosexuals. Irrespective of significance, LGB respondents are more liberal than heterosexuals on 99 percent of 199 total items. These patterns are consistent with the underdog principle of marginalized identity and progressive values. Sexuality predicts attitudes at least as consistently as gender, race, and education. I argue that future work should pay more attention to sexuality as a core factor in social scientific theory and empirical analysis.
Introverts emerge less as leaders because they engage in higher levels of forecasted negative affect
The failure of introverts to emerge as leaders: The role of forecasted affect. Andrew Spark, Timothy Stansmore, and Peter O'Connor. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 121, January 15 2018, Pages 84–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.026
Highlights
• Introverts are less likely to emerge as leaders compared to extraverts.
• Forecasted affect is proposed to mediate this relationship.
• Forecasted positive affect has no mediation effect.
•
Forecasted negative affect fully mediates the relationship.
Abstract: Introverts are less likely to emerge as leaders than extraverts, however the existing literature provides little explanation as to why. To investigate the potential cause of this trait-based difference in emergent leadership, we measured trait extraversion in a sample of 184 business students and studied their leadership-related behavior in an unstructured group task. We drew from a model of forecasted affect to hypothesize that introverts would be less likely to emerge as leaders based on their belief that engaging in the necessary extraverted behavior would be unpleasant/unenjoyable (i.e. they would forecast higher levels of negative affect compared to extraverts). Consistent with this, we found that introverts were less likely to emerge as leaders, and that forecasted negative affect fully accounted for the relationship between extraversion and peer-rated emergent leadership. We therefore argue that introverts fail to emerge as leaders as often as extraverts because they engage in higher levels of forecasted negative affect and that these forecasts impede their emergent leadership potential.
Keywords: Extraversion; Introversion; Forecasted affect; Emergent leadership
Highlights
• Introverts are less likely to emerge as leaders compared to extraverts.
• Forecasted affect is proposed to mediate this relationship.
• Forecasted positive affect has no mediation effect.
•
Forecasted negative affect fully mediates the relationship.
Abstract: Introverts are less likely to emerge as leaders than extraverts, however the existing literature provides little explanation as to why. To investigate the potential cause of this trait-based difference in emergent leadership, we measured trait extraversion in a sample of 184 business students and studied their leadership-related behavior in an unstructured group task. We drew from a model of forecasted affect to hypothesize that introverts would be less likely to emerge as leaders based on their belief that engaging in the necessary extraverted behavior would be unpleasant/unenjoyable (i.e. they would forecast higher levels of negative affect compared to extraverts). Consistent with this, we found that introverts were less likely to emerge as leaders, and that forecasted negative affect fully accounted for the relationship between extraversion and peer-rated emergent leadership. We therefore argue that introverts fail to emerge as leaders as often as extraverts because they engage in higher levels of forecasted negative affect and that these forecasts impede their emergent leadership potential.
Keywords: Extraversion; Introversion; Forecasted affect; Emergent leadership
Disgust and Deontology: Trait Sensitivity to Contamination Promotes a Preference for Order, Hierarchy, and Rule-Based Moral Judgment
Disgust and Deontology: Trait Sensitivity to Contamination Promotes a Preference for Order, Hierarchy, and Rule-Based Moral Judgment. Jeffrey S. Robinson, Xiaowen Xu, and Jason E. Plaks. Social Psychological and Personality Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617732609
Abstract: Models of moral judgment have linked generalized emotionality with deontological moral judgment. The evidence, however, is mixed. Other research has linked the specific emotion of disgust with generalized moral condemnation. Here too, the evidence is mixed. We suggest that a synthesis of these two literatures points to one specific emotion (disgust) that reliably predicts one specific type of moral judgment (deontological). In all three studies, we found that trait disgust sensitivity predicted more extreme deontological judgment. In Study 3, with deontological endorsement and consequentialist endorsement operationalized as independent constructs, we found that disgust was positively associated with deontological endorsement but was unrelated to consequentialist endorsement. Across studies, the disgust–deontology link was mediated by individual difference variables related to preference for order (right-wing authoritarianism and intolerance for ambiguity). These data suggest a more precise model of emotion and moral judgment that identifies specific emotions, specific types of moral judgment, and specific motivational pathways.
Abstract: Models of moral judgment have linked generalized emotionality with deontological moral judgment. The evidence, however, is mixed. Other research has linked the specific emotion of disgust with generalized moral condemnation. Here too, the evidence is mixed. We suggest that a synthesis of these two literatures points to one specific emotion (disgust) that reliably predicts one specific type of moral judgment (deontological). In all three studies, we found that trait disgust sensitivity predicted more extreme deontological judgment. In Study 3, with deontological endorsement and consequentialist endorsement operationalized as independent constructs, we found that disgust was positively associated with deontological endorsement but was unrelated to consequentialist endorsement. Across studies, the disgust–deontology link was mediated by individual difference variables related to preference for order (right-wing authoritarianism and intolerance for ambiguity). These data suggest a more precise model of emotion and moral judgment that identifies specific emotions, specific types of moral judgment, and specific motivational pathways.
A Study of Political Candidacy Among Swedish Adoptees -- Strong transmission in candidacy status between rearing mothers and their daughter
It Runs in the Family: A Study of Political Candidacy Among Swedish Adoptees. Oskarsson, S., Dawes, C.T. & Lindgren, KO. Polit Behav (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-017-9429-1
Abstract: What motivates citizens to run for office? Recent work has shown that early life parental socialization is strongly associated with a desire to run for office. However, parents not only shape their children’s political environment, they also pass along their genes to those same children. A growing area of research has shown that individual differences in a wide range of political behaviors and attitudes are linked to genetic differences. As a result, genetic factors may confound the observed political similarities among parents and their children. This study analyzes Swedish register data containing information on all nominated and elected candidates in the ten parliamentary, county council, and municipal elections from 1982 to 2014 for a large sample of adoptees and their adoptive and biological parents. By studying the similarity in political ambition within both adoptive and biological families, our research design allows us to disentangle so-called “pre-birth” factors, such as genes and pre-natal environment, and “post-birth” factors like parental socialization. We find that the likelihood of standing as a political candidate is twice as high if one’s parent has been a candidate. We also find that the effects of pre-birth and post-birth factors are approximately equal in size. In addition, we test a number of potential pre- and post-birth transmission mechanisms. First, disconfirming our expectations, the pre-birth effects do not seem to be mediated by cognitive ability or leadership skills. Second, consistent with a role modeling mechanism, we find evidence of a strong transmission in candidacy status between rearing mothers and their daughters.
Abstract: What motivates citizens to run for office? Recent work has shown that early life parental socialization is strongly associated with a desire to run for office. However, parents not only shape their children’s political environment, they also pass along their genes to those same children. A growing area of research has shown that individual differences in a wide range of political behaviors and attitudes are linked to genetic differences. As a result, genetic factors may confound the observed political similarities among parents and their children. This study analyzes Swedish register data containing information on all nominated and elected candidates in the ten parliamentary, county council, and municipal elections from 1982 to 2014 for a large sample of adoptees and their adoptive and biological parents. By studying the similarity in political ambition within both adoptive and biological families, our research design allows us to disentangle so-called “pre-birth” factors, such as genes and pre-natal environment, and “post-birth” factors like parental socialization. We find that the likelihood of standing as a political candidate is twice as high if one’s parent has been a candidate. We also find that the effects of pre-birth and post-birth factors are approximately equal in size. In addition, we test a number of potential pre- and post-birth transmission mechanisms. First, disconfirming our expectations, the pre-birth effects do not seem to be mediated by cognitive ability or leadership skills. Second, consistent with a role modeling mechanism, we find evidence of a strong transmission in candidacy status between rearing mothers and their daughters.
Immobile Australia: Surnames Show Strong Status Persistence, 1870–2017
Immobile Australia: Surnames Show Strong Status Persistence, 1870–2017. Gregory Clark, Andrew Leigh, and Mike Pottenger. IZA DP No. 11021. http://legacy.iza.org/en/webcontent/publications/papers/viewAbstract?dp_id=11021
Abstract: The paper estimates long run social mobility in Australia 1870–2017 tracking the status of rare surnames. The status information includes occupations from electoral rolls 1903–1980, and records of degrees awarded by Melbourne and Sydney universities 1852–2017. Status persistence was strong throughout, with an intergenerational correlation of 0.7–0.8, and no change over time. Notwithstanding egalitarian norms, high immigration and a well-targeted social safety net, Australian long-run social mobility rates are low. Despite evidence on conventional measures that Australia has higher rates of social mobility than the UK or USA (Mendolia and Siminski, 2016), status persistence for surnames is as high as that in England or the USA. Mobility rates are also just as low if we look just at mobility within descendants of UK immigrants, so ethnic effects explain none of the immobility.
Abstract: The paper estimates long run social mobility in Australia 1870–2017 tracking the status of rare surnames. The status information includes occupations from electoral rolls 1903–1980, and records of degrees awarded by Melbourne and Sydney universities 1852–2017. Status persistence was strong throughout, with an intergenerational correlation of 0.7–0.8, and no change over time. Notwithstanding egalitarian norms, high immigration and a well-targeted social safety net, Australian long-run social mobility rates are low. Despite evidence on conventional measures that Australia has higher rates of social mobility than the UK or USA (Mendolia and Siminski, 2016), status persistence for surnames is as high as that in England or the USA. Mobility rates are also just as low if we look just at mobility within descendants of UK immigrants, so ethnic effects explain none of the immobility.
Women perceive men's limbal rings as a health cue when in mood for casual sex
Put a (limbal) ring on it: Women perceive men's limbal rings as a health cue in short-term mating domains. Mitch Brown and Donald F Sacco. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319321311_Put_a_limbal_ring_on_it_Women_perceive_men%27s_limbal_rings_as_a_health_cue_in_short-term_mating_domains
Abstract: Limbal rings are dark annuli encircling the iris that fluctuate in visibility based on health and age. Research also indicates their presence augments facial attractiveness. Given individuals’ prioritization of health cues in short-term mates, those with limbal rings may be implicated as ideal short-term mates. Three studies tested whether limbal rings serve as veridical health cues, specifically the extent to which this cue enhances a person’s value as a short-term mating partner. In Study 1, targets with limbal rings were rated as healthier, an effect that was stronger for female participants and male targets. In Study 2, temporally activated short-term mating motives led women to report a heightened preference for targets with limbal rings. In Study 3, women rated targets with limbal rings as more desirable short-term mates. Results provide evidence for limbal rings as veridical cues to health, particularly in relevant mating domains.
Abstract: Limbal rings are dark annuli encircling the iris that fluctuate in visibility based on health and age. Research also indicates their presence augments facial attractiveness. Given individuals’ prioritization of health cues in short-term mates, those with limbal rings may be implicated as ideal short-term mates. Three studies tested whether limbal rings serve as veridical health cues, specifically the extent to which this cue enhances a person’s value as a short-term mating partner. In Study 1, targets with limbal rings were rated as healthier, an effect that was stronger for female participants and male targets. In Study 2, temporally activated short-term mating motives led women to report a heightened preference for targets with limbal rings. In Study 3, women rated targets with limbal rings as more desirable short-term mates. Results provide evidence for limbal rings as veridical cues to health, particularly in relevant mating domains.
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Accurate Genomic Prediction Of Human Height -- "within a few cm of the prediction"
Accurate Genomic Prediction Of Human Height. Louis Lello, Steven G Avery, Laurent Tellier, Ana Vazquez, Gustavo de los Campos, and Stephen D. H. Hsu. BioRxiv, Sep 19 2017. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/190124
Abstract: We construct genomic predictors for heritable and extremely complex human quantitative traits (height, heel bone density, and educational attainment) using modern methods in high dimensional statistics (i.e., machine learning). Replication tests show that these predictors capture, respectively, ~40, 20, and 9 percent of total variance for the three traits. For example, predicted heights correlate ~0.65 with actual height; actual heights of most individuals in validation samples are within a few cm of the prediction. The variance captured for height is comparable to the estimated SNP heritability from GCTA (GREML) analysis, and seems to be close to its asymptotic value (i.e., as sample size goes to infinity), suggesting that we have captured most of the heritability for the SNPs used. Thus, our results resolve the common SNP portion of the "missing heritability" problem - i.e., the gap between prediction R-squared and SNP heritability. The ~20k activated SNPs in our height predictor reveal the genetic architecture of human height, at least for common SNPs. Our primary dataset is the UK Biobank cohort, comprised of almost 500k individual genotypes with multiple phenotypes. We also use other datasets and SNPs found in earlier GWAS for out-of-sample validation of our results.
Abstract: We construct genomic predictors for heritable and extremely complex human quantitative traits (height, heel bone density, and educational attainment) using modern methods in high dimensional statistics (i.e., machine learning). Replication tests show that these predictors capture, respectively, ~40, 20, and 9 percent of total variance for the three traits. For example, predicted heights correlate ~0.65 with actual height; actual heights of most individuals in validation samples are within a few cm of the prediction. The variance captured for height is comparable to the estimated SNP heritability from GCTA (GREML) analysis, and seems to be close to its asymptotic value (i.e., as sample size goes to infinity), suggesting that we have captured most of the heritability for the SNPs used. Thus, our results resolve the common SNP portion of the "missing heritability" problem - i.e., the gap between prediction R-squared and SNP heritability. The ~20k activated SNPs in our height predictor reveal the genetic architecture of human height, at least for common SNPs. Our primary dataset is the UK Biobank cohort, comprised of almost 500k individual genotypes with multiple phenotypes. We also use other datasets and SNPs found in earlier GWAS for out-of-sample validation of our results.
Psychological roadblocks to the adoption of self-driving vehicles
Psychological roadblocks to the adoption of self-driving vehicles. Azim Shariff, Jean-François Bonnefon & Iyad Rahwan. Nature Human Behaviour (2017), doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0202-6
Summary: Self-driving cars offer a bright future, but only if the public can overcome the psychological challenges that stand in the way of widespread adoption. We discuss three: ethical dilemmas, overreactions to accidents, and the opacity of the cars’ decision-making algorithms — and propose steps towards addressing them.
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Psychological roadblocks to the adoption of self-driving vehicles
Self-driving cars offer a bright future, but only if the public can overcome the psychological challenges that stand in the way of widespread adoption. We discuss three: ethical dilemmas, overreactions to accidents, and the opacity of the cars’ decision-making algorithms — and propose steps towards addressing them. Azim Shariff, Jean-François Bonnefon and Iyad Rahwan
The widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles promises to make us happier, safer and more efficient. Manufacturers are speeding past the remaining technical challenges to the cars’ readiness. But the biggest roadblocks standing in the path of mass adoption may be psychological, not technological; 78% of Americans report fearing riding in an autonomous vehicle, with only 19% indicating that they would trust the car1. Trust — the comfort in making oneself vulnerable to another entity in the pursuit of some benefit — has long been recognized as critical to the adoption of automation, and becomes even more important as both the complexity of automation and the vulnerability of the users increase2. For autonomous vehicles, which will need to navigate our complex urban environment with the power of life and death, trust will determine how widely the cars are adopted by consumers, and how tolerated they are by everyone else. Achieving the bright future promised by autonomous vehicles will require overcoming the psychological barriers to trust. Here we diagnose three factors underlying this resistance and offer a plan of action (see Table 1).
The dilemmas of autonomous ethics
The necessity for autonomous vehicles to make ethical decisions leads to a series of dilemmas for their designers, regulators and the public at large3. These begin with the need for an autonomous vehicle to decide how it will operate in situations where its actions could decrease the risk of harming its own passengers by increasing the risk to a potentially larger number of non-passengers (for example, pedestrians and other drivers). While these decisions will most often involve probabilistic trade-offs in small-risk manoeuvres, at its extreme the decision could involve an autonomous vehicle determining whether to harm its passenger to spare the lives of two or more pedestrians, or vice versa (Fig. 1).
In handling these situations, the cars may operate as utilitarians, minimizing total risk to people regardless of who they are, or as self-protective, placing extra weight on the safety of their own passengers. Human drivers make such decisions instinctively in a split second, and thus cannot be expected to abide by whatever ethical principle they formulated in the comfort of their armchair. But autonomous vehicle manufacturers have the luxury of moral deliberation — and thus the responsibility of that deliberation. The existence of this ethical dilemma in turn produces a social dilemma. People are inconsistent about what principles they want autonomous vehicles to follow. Individuals recognize the utilitarian approach to be the more ethical, and as citizens, want the cars to save the greater number. But as consumers, they want self-protective cars3. As a result, adopting either strategy brings its own risks for manufacturers — a selfprotective strategy risks public outrage, whereas a utilitarian strategy may scare consumers away.
Both the ethical and social dilemmas will need to be addressed to earn the trust of the public. And because it seems unlikely that regulators will adopt the strictest selfprotective solution — in which autonomous vehicles would never harm their passengers, however small the danger to passengers and large the risk to others — we will have to grapple with consumers’ fear that their car might someday decide to harm them. To overcome that fear, we need to make people feel both safe and virtuous about owning an autonomous vehicle. To make
Table 1 | A summary of the psychological challenges to autonomous vehicles, and suggested actions for overcoming them
Psychological challenge Suggested actions
The dilemmas of autonomous ethics. People are torn between how they want autonomous vehicles to ethically behave; they morally believe the vehicles should operate under utilitarian principles, but prefer to buy vehicles that prioritize their own lives as passengers. The idea of a car sacrificing its passengers deters people from purchasing an autonomous vehicle. Shift the discussion from the relative risk of injury to the absolute risk. Appeal to consumers’ desire for virtue signalling.
Risk heuristics and algorithmic aversion. The novelty and nature of autonomous vehicles will result in outsized reactions in the face of inevitable accidents. Such overreactions risk slowing or stalling the adoption of autonomous vehicles. Prepare the public for the inevitability of accidents.
Openly communicate algorithmic improvement.
Manage public overreaction with ‘fear placebos’ and information about actual risk levels. Asymmetric information and the theory of the machine mind. A lack of transparency into the underlying decision-making processes can make it difficult for people to predict the autonomous vehicles’ behaviour, diminishing trust.
Research the type of information required to form trustable mental models of autonomous vehicles.
to most effectively convey the absolute reduction in risk to passengers due to overall accident reduction, so that it is not irrationally overshadowed by a potentially small increase in relative risk that passengers face in relation to other road users. Communication about the overall safety benefits of autonomous vehicles could be further leveraged to appeal to potential consumers’ concerns about self-image and reputation. Virtue signalling is a powerful motivation for buying ethical products, but only when the ethicality is conspicuous4. Allowing the altruistic benefits of autonomous vehicles to reflect on the consumer can change the conversation about autonomous vehicle ethics and prove itself to be a marketing asset. The most relevant example of successful virtue consumerism is that of the Toyota Prius, a hybrid-electric automobile whose distinctive shape has allowed owners to signal their environmental commitment. However, whereas ‘green’ marketing can backfire for those politically unaligned with the environmental movement5, the package of virtues connected with autonomous vehicles — safety, but also reductions in traffic and parking congestion — contain uncontroversial values that allow consumers to advertise themselves as safe, smart and prosocial.
Risk heuristics and algorithm aversion
When the first traffic fatality involving Tesla’s Autopilot occurred in May 2016, it was covered by every major news organization — a feat unmatched by any of the other 40,200 US traffic fatalities that year. We can expect an even larger reaction the first time an autonomous vehicle kills a pedestrian, or kills a child, or two autonomous vehicles crash into each other. Outsized media coverage of crashes involving autonomous vehicles may feed and amplify people’s fears by tapping into the availability heuristic (risks are subjectively higher when they come to mind easily) and affective heuristic (risks are perceived to be higher when they evoke a vivid emotional reaction). As with airplane crashes, the more disproportionate — and disproportionately sensational — the coverage that autonomous vehicle accidents receive, the more exaggerated people will perceive the risk and dangers of these cars in comparison to those of traditional human-driven ones. Worse, for autonomous vehicles, these reactions may be compounded by algorithm aversion6, the tendency for people to more rapidly lose faith in an erring decision-making algorithm than in humans making comparable errors. These reactions could derail the adoption of autonomous vehicles through numerous paths; they could directly deter consumers, provoke politicians to enact suffocating restrictions, or create outsized liability issues — fuelled by court and jury overreactions — that compromise the financial feasibility of autonomous vehicles. Each path could slow or even stall widespread adoption.
Countering these powerful psychological effects may prove especially difficult. Nevertheless, there are opportunities. Autonomous vehicle spokespeople should prepare the public for the inevitability of accidents — not overpromising infallibility, but still emphasizing autonomous vehicles’ safety advantages over human drivers. One barrier that prevents people from adopting (superior) algorithms over human judgment is overconfidence in one’s own performance7 — something famously prevalent in driving. Manufacturers should also be open about algorithmic improvements. Autonomous vehicles are better portrayed as being perfected, not as being perfect. Politicians and regulators can also play a role in managing overreaction. Though human themselves, and ultimately answerable to the public, legislators should resist capitulating to the public’s fears of low-probability risks8. They should instead educate the public about the actual risks and, if moved to act, do so in a calculated way, perhaps by offering the public ‘fear placebos'8 — high-visibility, low-cost gestures that do the most to assuage the public’s fears without undermining the real benefits that autonomous vehicles might bring. Asymmetric information and the theory of the machine mind
The dubious reputation of the CIA is sometimes blamed on the asymmetry between the secrecy of their successes and the broad awareness of their failures. Autonomous vehicles will face a similar challenge. Passengers will be acutely aware of the cars’ rare failures — leading to the issues described above — but may be blissfully unaware of all the small successes and optimizations. This asymmetry of information is part of a larger psychological barrier to the trust in autonomous vehicles: the opacity to the decision-making occurring under the hood. If trust is characterized by the willingness to yield vulnerability to another entity, it is critical that people can comfortably predict and understand the behaviour of the other entity. Indeed, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation recently established the citizen’s “right to [...] obtain an explanation of the decision reached [...] and to challenge the decision” made by algorithms9. However, full transparency may be neither possible nor optimal. Autonomous vehicle intelligence is driven in part by Fig. 1 | A schematic example of the ethical trade-offs that autonomous vehicles will need to make between the lives of passengers and pedestrians3. The visual comes from the Moral Machine website (http://moralmachine.mit.edu), which we launched to collect large-scale data from the public. So far, we have collected over 30 million decisions from over 3 million people.
machine learning, in which computers learn increasingly sophisticated patterns without being explicitly taught. This leaves underlying decision-making processes opaque even to the programmer (let alone the passenger). But even if a detailed account of the computer’s decisions were available, it would only offer the end-user an incomprehensible deluge of information. The trend in many ‘lower stakes’ computer interfaces (for example, web browsers) has thus been in the opposite direction — hiding the complex decision-making of the machine to present a simple, minimalistic user experience. For autonomous vehicles, although some transparency can improve trust, too much transparency into the explanations for the car’s actions can overwhelm the passenger, thereby increasing anxiety10.
Thus, what is most important for generating trust and comfort is not full transparency but communication of the correct amount and type of information to allow people to develop mental models (an abstract representation of the entity’s perceptions and decision rules) of the cars5 — a sort of theory of the machine mind. There is already a robust literature investigating what information is most crucial to communicate; however, most of this research has been conducted on artificial intelligence in industrial, residential or software interface settings. Not all of it will be perfectly transferable to autonomous vehicles, so researchers need to investigate what information best fosters predictability, trust and comfort in this new and specific setting. Moreover, autonomous vehicles will need to communicate not just with their passengers, but with pedestrians, fellow drivers and the other stakeholders on the road. Currently, people decipher the intentions of other drivers through explicit signals (such as indicators, horns and gestures) and through assumptions based on the mental models formed of drivers (‘Why is she slowing down here?’ or ‘Why is he positioning himself like that?’). Everyone on the road will need to adjust their human models to those of autonomous vehicles, and the more research delineating what information people find crucial and comforting, the more seamless and less panicky this transition will be.
A new social contract
Automobiles began their transformational integration into our lives over a century ago. In this time, a system of laws regulating the behaviour of drivers and pedestrians, and the designs and practices of manufacturers, has been introduced and continuously refined. Today, the technologies that mediate these regulations, and the norms, fines and other punishments that enforce them, maintain just enough trust in the traffic system to keep it tolerable. Tomorrow, the integration of autonomous cars will be similarly transformational, but will occur over a much shorter timescale. In that time, we will need a new social contract that provides clear guidelines about who is responsible for different kinds of accidents, how monitoring and enforcement will be performed, and how trust among all stakeholders can be engendered. Many challenges remain — hacking, liability and labour displacement issues, most significantly — but this social contract will be bound as much by psychological realities as by technological and legal ones. We have identified several here, but more work remains. We believe it is morally imperative for behavioural scientists of all disciplines to weigh in on this contract. Every day the adoption of autonomous cars is delayed is another day that people will continue to lose their lives to the non-autonomous human drivers of yesterday.
Summary: Self-driving cars offer a bright future, but only if the public can overcome the psychological challenges that stand in the way of widespread adoption. We discuss three: ethical dilemmas, overreactions to accidents, and the opacity of the cars’ decision-making algorithms — and propose steps towards addressing them.
---
Psychological roadblocks to the adoption of self-driving vehicles
Self-driving cars offer a bright future, but only if the public can overcome the psychological challenges that stand in the way of widespread adoption. We discuss three: ethical dilemmas, overreactions to accidents, and the opacity of the cars’ decision-making algorithms — and propose steps towards addressing them. Azim Shariff, Jean-François Bonnefon and Iyad Rahwan
The widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles promises to make us happier, safer and more efficient. Manufacturers are speeding past the remaining technical challenges to the cars’ readiness. But the biggest roadblocks standing in the path of mass adoption may be psychological, not technological; 78% of Americans report fearing riding in an autonomous vehicle, with only 19% indicating that they would trust the car1. Trust — the comfort in making oneself vulnerable to another entity in the pursuit of some benefit — has long been recognized as critical to the adoption of automation, and becomes even more important as both the complexity of automation and the vulnerability of the users increase2. For autonomous vehicles, which will need to navigate our complex urban environment with the power of life and death, trust will determine how widely the cars are adopted by consumers, and how tolerated they are by everyone else. Achieving the bright future promised by autonomous vehicles will require overcoming the psychological barriers to trust. Here we diagnose three factors underlying this resistance and offer a plan of action (see Table 1).
The dilemmas of autonomous ethics
The necessity for autonomous vehicles to make ethical decisions leads to a series of dilemmas for their designers, regulators and the public at large3. These begin with the need for an autonomous vehicle to decide how it will operate in situations where its actions could decrease the risk of harming its own passengers by increasing the risk to a potentially larger number of non-passengers (for example, pedestrians and other drivers). While these decisions will most often involve probabilistic trade-offs in small-risk manoeuvres, at its extreme the decision could involve an autonomous vehicle determining whether to harm its passenger to spare the lives of two or more pedestrians, or vice versa (Fig. 1).
In handling these situations, the cars may operate as utilitarians, minimizing total risk to people regardless of who they are, or as self-protective, placing extra weight on the safety of their own passengers. Human drivers make such decisions instinctively in a split second, and thus cannot be expected to abide by whatever ethical principle they formulated in the comfort of their armchair. But autonomous vehicle manufacturers have the luxury of moral deliberation — and thus the responsibility of that deliberation. The existence of this ethical dilemma in turn produces a social dilemma. People are inconsistent about what principles they want autonomous vehicles to follow. Individuals recognize the utilitarian approach to be the more ethical, and as citizens, want the cars to save the greater number. But as consumers, they want self-protective cars3. As a result, adopting either strategy brings its own risks for manufacturers — a selfprotective strategy risks public outrage, whereas a utilitarian strategy may scare consumers away.
Both the ethical and social dilemmas will need to be addressed to earn the trust of the public. And because it seems unlikely that regulators will adopt the strictest selfprotective solution — in which autonomous vehicles would never harm their passengers, however small the danger to passengers and large the risk to others — we will have to grapple with consumers’ fear that their car might someday decide to harm them. To overcome that fear, we need to make people feel both safe and virtuous about owning an autonomous vehicle. To make
Table 1 | A summary of the psychological challenges to autonomous vehicles, and suggested actions for overcoming them
Psychological challenge Suggested actions
The dilemmas of autonomous ethics. People are torn between how they want autonomous vehicles to ethically behave; they morally believe the vehicles should operate under utilitarian principles, but prefer to buy vehicles that prioritize their own lives as passengers. The idea of a car sacrificing its passengers deters people from purchasing an autonomous vehicle. Shift the discussion from the relative risk of injury to the absolute risk. Appeal to consumers’ desire for virtue signalling.
Risk heuristics and algorithmic aversion. The novelty and nature of autonomous vehicles will result in outsized reactions in the face of inevitable accidents. Such overreactions risk slowing or stalling the adoption of autonomous vehicles. Prepare the public for the inevitability of accidents.
Openly communicate algorithmic improvement.
Manage public overreaction with ‘fear placebos’ and information about actual risk levels. Asymmetric information and the theory of the machine mind. A lack of transparency into the underlying decision-making processes can make it difficult for people to predict the autonomous vehicles’ behaviour, diminishing trust.
Research the type of information required to form trustable mental models of autonomous vehicles.
to most effectively convey the absolute reduction in risk to passengers due to overall accident reduction, so that it is not irrationally overshadowed by a potentially small increase in relative risk that passengers face in relation to other road users. Communication about the overall safety benefits of autonomous vehicles could be further leveraged to appeal to potential consumers’ concerns about self-image and reputation. Virtue signalling is a powerful motivation for buying ethical products, but only when the ethicality is conspicuous4. Allowing the altruistic benefits of autonomous vehicles to reflect on the consumer can change the conversation about autonomous vehicle ethics and prove itself to be a marketing asset. The most relevant example of successful virtue consumerism is that of the Toyota Prius, a hybrid-electric automobile whose distinctive shape has allowed owners to signal their environmental commitment. However, whereas ‘green’ marketing can backfire for those politically unaligned with the environmental movement5, the package of virtues connected with autonomous vehicles — safety, but also reductions in traffic and parking congestion — contain uncontroversial values that allow consumers to advertise themselves as safe, smart and prosocial.
Risk heuristics and algorithm aversion
When the first traffic fatality involving Tesla’s Autopilot occurred in May 2016, it was covered by every major news organization — a feat unmatched by any of the other 40,200 US traffic fatalities that year. We can expect an even larger reaction the first time an autonomous vehicle kills a pedestrian, or kills a child, or two autonomous vehicles crash into each other. Outsized media coverage of crashes involving autonomous vehicles may feed and amplify people’s fears by tapping into the availability heuristic (risks are subjectively higher when they come to mind easily) and affective heuristic (risks are perceived to be higher when they evoke a vivid emotional reaction). As with airplane crashes, the more disproportionate — and disproportionately sensational — the coverage that autonomous vehicle accidents receive, the more exaggerated people will perceive the risk and dangers of these cars in comparison to those of traditional human-driven ones. Worse, for autonomous vehicles, these reactions may be compounded by algorithm aversion6, the tendency for people to more rapidly lose faith in an erring decision-making algorithm than in humans making comparable errors. These reactions could derail the adoption of autonomous vehicles through numerous paths; they could directly deter consumers, provoke politicians to enact suffocating restrictions, or create outsized liability issues — fuelled by court and jury overreactions — that compromise the financial feasibility of autonomous vehicles. Each path could slow or even stall widespread adoption.
Countering these powerful psychological effects may prove especially difficult. Nevertheless, there are opportunities. Autonomous vehicle spokespeople should prepare the public for the inevitability of accidents — not overpromising infallibility, but still emphasizing autonomous vehicles’ safety advantages over human drivers. One barrier that prevents people from adopting (superior) algorithms over human judgment is overconfidence in one’s own performance7 — something famously prevalent in driving. Manufacturers should also be open about algorithmic improvements. Autonomous vehicles are better portrayed as being perfected, not as being perfect. Politicians and regulators can also play a role in managing overreaction. Though human themselves, and ultimately answerable to the public, legislators should resist capitulating to the public’s fears of low-probability risks8. They should instead educate the public about the actual risks and, if moved to act, do so in a calculated way, perhaps by offering the public ‘fear placebos'8 — high-visibility, low-cost gestures that do the most to assuage the public’s fears without undermining the real benefits that autonomous vehicles might bring. Asymmetric information and the theory of the machine mind
The dubious reputation of the CIA is sometimes blamed on the asymmetry between the secrecy of their successes and the broad awareness of their failures. Autonomous vehicles will face a similar challenge. Passengers will be acutely aware of the cars’ rare failures — leading to the issues described above — but may be blissfully unaware of all the small successes and optimizations. This asymmetry of information is part of a larger psychological barrier to the trust in autonomous vehicles: the opacity to the decision-making occurring under the hood. If trust is characterized by the willingness to yield vulnerability to another entity, it is critical that people can comfortably predict and understand the behaviour of the other entity. Indeed, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation recently established the citizen’s “right to [...] obtain an explanation of the decision reached [...] and to challenge the decision” made by algorithms9. However, full transparency may be neither possible nor optimal. Autonomous vehicle intelligence is driven in part by Fig. 1 | A schematic example of the ethical trade-offs that autonomous vehicles will need to make between the lives of passengers and pedestrians3. The visual comes from the Moral Machine website (http://moralmachine.mit.edu), which we launched to collect large-scale data from the public. So far, we have collected over 30 million decisions from over 3 million people.
machine learning, in which computers learn increasingly sophisticated patterns without being explicitly taught. This leaves underlying decision-making processes opaque even to the programmer (let alone the passenger). But even if a detailed account of the computer’s decisions were available, it would only offer the end-user an incomprehensible deluge of information. The trend in many ‘lower stakes’ computer interfaces (for example, web browsers) has thus been in the opposite direction — hiding the complex decision-making of the machine to present a simple, minimalistic user experience. For autonomous vehicles, although some transparency can improve trust, too much transparency into the explanations for the car’s actions can overwhelm the passenger, thereby increasing anxiety10.
Thus, what is most important for generating trust and comfort is not full transparency but communication of the correct amount and type of information to allow people to develop mental models (an abstract representation of the entity’s perceptions and decision rules) of the cars5 — a sort of theory of the machine mind. There is already a robust literature investigating what information is most crucial to communicate; however, most of this research has been conducted on artificial intelligence in industrial, residential or software interface settings. Not all of it will be perfectly transferable to autonomous vehicles, so researchers need to investigate what information best fosters predictability, trust and comfort in this new and specific setting. Moreover, autonomous vehicles will need to communicate not just with their passengers, but with pedestrians, fellow drivers and the other stakeholders on the road. Currently, people decipher the intentions of other drivers through explicit signals (such as indicators, horns and gestures) and through assumptions based on the mental models formed of drivers (‘Why is she slowing down here?’ or ‘Why is he positioning himself like that?’). Everyone on the road will need to adjust their human models to those of autonomous vehicles, and the more research delineating what information people find crucial and comforting, the more seamless and less panicky this transition will be.
A new social contract
Automobiles began their transformational integration into our lives over a century ago. In this time, a system of laws regulating the behaviour of drivers and pedestrians, and the designs and practices of manufacturers, has been introduced and continuously refined. Today, the technologies that mediate these regulations, and the norms, fines and other punishments that enforce them, maintain just enough trust in the traffic system to keep it tolerable. Tomorrow, the integration of autonomous cars will be similarly transformational, but will occur over a much shorter timescale. In that time, we will need a new social contract that provides clear guidelines about who is responsible for different kinds of accidents, how monitoring and enforcement will be performed, and how trust among all stakeholders can be engendered. Many challenges remain — hacking, liability and labour displacement issues, most significantly — but this social contract will be bound as much by psychological realities as by technological and legal ones. We have identified several here, but more work remains. We believe it is morally imperative for behavioural scientists of all disciplines to weigh in on this contract. Every day the adoption of autonomous cars is delayed is another day that people will continue to lose their lives to the non-autonomous human drivers of yesterday.
Prolonged transport and cannibalism of mummified infant remains by a Tonkean macaque mother
Prolonged transport and cannibalism of mummified infant remains by a Tonkean macaque mother. Arianna De Marco, Roberto Cozzolino, and Bernard Thierry. Primates. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-017-0633-8
Abstract: Observations of animals’ responses to dying or dead companions raise questions about their awareness of states of helplessness or death of other individuals. In this context, we report the case of a female Tonkean macaque (Macaca tonkeana) that transported the body of her dead infant for 25 days and cannibalized its mummified parts. The mother appeared agitated in the first 2 days after the birth. She then took care of her infant’s corpse, which progressively dried and became mummified. In a third stage, the mother continued to transport the corpse as it started disintegrating, and she gnawed and consumed some parts of the remains. Our observations suggest that mummification of the body favored persistence of maternal behaviors by preserving the body’s shape. The female gradually proceeded from strong attachment to the infant’s body to decreased attachment, then finally full abandonment of the remains.
Abstract: Observations of animals’ responses to dying or dead companions raise questions about their awareness of states of helplessness or death of other individuals. In this context, we report the case of a female Tonkean macaque (Macaca tonkeana) that transported the body of her dead infant for 25 days and cannibalized its mummified parts. The mother appeared agitated in the first 2 days after the birth. She then took care of her infant’s corpse, which progressively dried and became mummified. In a third stage, the mother continued to transport the corpse as it started disintegrating, and she gnawed and consumed some parts of the remains. Our observations suggest that mummification of the body favored persistence of maternal behaviors by preserving the body’s shape. The female gradually proceeded from strong attachment to the infant’s body to decreased attachment, then finally full abandonment of the remains.
Anticipated regret from erring after following advice is greater than anticipated regret from erring after ignoring advice
Tzini, K., and Jain, K. (2017) The Role of Anticipated Regret in Advice Taking. J. Behav. Decision Making, doi: 10.1002/bdm.2048.
Abstract: Across five studies, we demonstrate that anticipated future regret influences receptiveness to advice. While making a revision to one's own judgment based on advice, people can anticipate two kinds of future regret: (a) the regret of following non-beneficial advice and (b) the regret of ignoring beneficial advice. In studies 1a (scenario task) and 1b (judgment task), we find that anticipated regret from erring after following advice is greater than anticipated regret from erring after ignoring advice. Furthermore, receptiveness decreases as the difference between anticipated regret from following and from ignoring advice increases. In study 2, we demonstrate that perceived justifiability of one's own initial decision is greater than that of advice. This difference in perceived justifiability influences anticipated regret and that, in turn, influences receptiveness. In study 3, we investigate the effect of advisor's expertise on perceived justifiability, anticipated regret, and receptiveness. In study 4, we propose and test an intervention to improve receptiveness based on self-generation of advice justifications. Participants who were asked to self-generate justifications for the advice were more receptive to it. This effect was mediated by perceived justifiability and anticipated regret. These findings shed further light on what prevents people from being receptive to advice and how this can be improved.
Abstract: Across five studies, we demonstrate that anticipated future regret influences receptiveness to advice. While making a revision to one's own judgment based on advice, people can anticipate two kinds of future regret: (a) the regret of following non-beneficial advice and (b) the regret of ignoring beneficial advice. In studies 1a (scenario task) and 1b (judgment task), we find that anticipated regret from erring after following advice is greater than anticipated regret from erring after ignoring advice. Furthermore, receptiveness decreases as the difference between anticipated regret from following and from ignoring advice increases. In study 2, we demonstrate that perceived justifiability of one's own initial decision is greater than that of advice. This difference in perceived justifiability influences anticipated regret and that, in turn, influences receptiveness. In study 3, we investigate the effect of advisor's expertise on perceived justifiability, anticipated regret, and receptiveness. In study 4, we propose and test an intervention to improve receptiveness based on self-generation of advice justifications. Participants who were asked to self-generate justifications for the advice were more receptive to it. This effect was mediated by perceived justifiability and anticipated regret. These findings shed further light on what prevents people from being receptive to advice and how this can be improved.
Resource Allocation Decisions: When Do We Sacrifice Efficiency in the Name of Equity?
Resource Allocation Decisions: When Do We Sacrifice Efficiency in the Name of Equity? Tom Gordon-Hecke et al. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Fairness, Equity, and Justice, pp 93-105. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-58993-0_6
Abstract: Equity, or the idea that one should be compensated according to one’s respective contribution, is a fundamental principle for resource allocation. People tend to endorse equity in a wide range of contexts, from interpersonal relationships to public policy. However, at times, equity might come at the expense of efficiency. What do people do when they must waste resources to maintain equity? In this chapter, we adopt a behavioral perspective on such equity–efficiency trade-offs, reviewing the relevant findings from the social psychology, judgment and decision-making and behavioral economics literature. We show that whereas allocators will often choose to waste in the name of equity, this is not necessarily the case. We review various psychological aspects that affect the allocators’ decision.
Abstract: Equity, or the idea that one should be compensated according to one’s respective contribution, is a fundamental principle for resource allocation. People tend to endorse equity in a wide range of contexts, from interpersonal relationships to public policy. However, at times, equity might come at the expense of efficiency. What do people do when they must waste resources to maintain equity? In this chapter, we adopt a behavioral perspective on such equity–efficiency trade-offs, reviewing the relevant findings from the social psychology, judgment and decision-making and behavioral economics literature. We show that whereas allocators will often choose to waste in the name of equity, this is not necessarily the case. We review various psychological aspects that affect the allocators’ decision.
The Facial Width-to-Height Ratio Predicts Sex Drive, Sociosexuality, and Intended Infidelity
The Facial Width-to-Height Ratio Predicts Sex Drive, Sociosexuality, and Intended Infidelity. Steven Arnocky et al. Archives of Sexual Behavior, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-017-1070-x
Abstract: Previous research has linked the facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) to a host of psychological and behavioral characteristics, primarily in men. In two studies, we examined novel links between FWHR and sex drive. In Study 1, a sample of 145 undergraduate students revealed that FWHR positively predicted sex drive. There were no significant FWHR × sex interactions, suggesting that FWHR is linked to sexuality among both men and women. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings in a sample of 314 students collected from a different Canadian city, which again demonstrated links between the FWHR and sex drive (also in both men and women), as well as sociosexuality and intended infidelity (men only). Internal meta-analytic results confirm the link between FWHR and sex drive among both men and women. These results suggest that FWHR may be an important morphological index of human sexuality.
Abstract: Previous research has linked the facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) to a host of psychological and behavioral characteristics, primarily in men. In two studies, we examined novel links between FWHR and sex drive. In Study 1, a sample of 145 undergraduate students revealed that FWHR positively predicted sex drive. There were no significant FWHR × sex interactions, suggesting that FWHR is linked to sexuality among both men and women. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings in a sample of 314 students collected from a different Canadian city, which again demonstrated links between the FWHR and sex drive (also in both men and women), as well as sociosexuality and intended infidelity (men only). Internal meta-analytic results confirm the link between FWHR and sex drive among both men and women. These results suggest that FWHR may be an important morphological index of human sexuality.
Contrary to prediction, kids these days are better able to delay gratification than they were in the past
Kids These Days: 50 years of the Marshmallow task. Protzko. https://osf.io/j9tuz/
Abstract: Have children gotten worse at their ability to delay gratification? We analyze the past 50 years of data on the Marshmallow test of delay of gratification. Children must wait to get two preferred treats; if they cannot wait, they only get one. Duration for how long children can delay has been associated with a host of positive life outcomes. Here we provide the first evidence on whether children’s ability to delay gratification has truly been decreasing, as theories of technology or a culture of instant gratification have predicted. Before analyzing the data, we polled 260 experts in cognitive development, 84% of who believed kids these days are getting worse or are no different. Contrary to this prediction, kids these days are better able to delay gratification than they were in the past, corresponding to a fifth of a standard deviation increase in ability per decade.
Abstract: Have children gotten worse at their ability to delay gratification? We analyze the past 50 years of data on the Marshmallow test of delay of gratification. Children must wait to get two preferred treats; if they cannot wait, they only get one. Duration for how long children can delay has been associated with a host of positive life outcomes. Here we provide the first evidence on whether children’s ability to delay gratification has truly been decreasing, as theories of technology or a culture of instant gratification have predicted. Before analyzing the data, we polled 260 experts in cognitive development, 84% of who believed kids these days are getting worse or are no different. Contrary to this prediction, kids these days are better able to delay gratification than they were in the past, corresponding to a fifth of a standard deviation increase in ability per decade.
Belief in free will affects causal attributions when judging others’ behavior
Belief in free will affects causal attributions when judging others’ behavior. Oliver Genschow, Davide Rigoni, and Marcel Brass. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114 no. 38, 10071–10076, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1701916114
Significance: The question whether free will exists or not has been a matter of debate in philosophy for centuries. Recently, researchers claimed that free will is nothing more than a myth. Although the validity of this claim is debatable, it attracted much attention in the general public. This raises the crucial question whether it matters if people believe in free will or not. In six studies, we tested whether believing in free will is related to the correspondence bias—that is, people’s automatic tendency to overestimate the influence of internal as compared to external factors when interpreting others’ behavior. Overall, we demonstrate that believing in free will increases the correspondence bias and predicts prescribed punishment and reward behavior.
Abstract: Free will is a cornerstone of our society, and psychological research demonstrates that questioning its existence impacts social behavior. In six studies, we tested whether believing in free will is related to the correspondence bias, which reflects people’s automatic tendency to overestimate the influence of internal as compared to external factors when interpreting others’ behavior. All studies demonstrate a positive relationship between the strength of the belief in free will and the correspondence bias. Moreover, in two experimental studies, we showed that weakening participants’ belief in free will leads to a reduction of the correspondence bias. Finally, the last study demonstrates that believing in free will predicts prescribed punishment and reward behavior, and that this relation is mediated by the correspondence bias. Overall, these studies show that believing in free will impacts fundamental social-cognitive processes that are involved in the understanding of others’ behavior.
Significance: The question whether free will exists or not has been a matter of debate in philosophy for centuries. Recently, researchers claimed that free will is nothing more than a myth. Although the validity of this claim is debatable, it attracted much attention in the general public. This raises the crucial question whether it matters if people believe in free will or not. In six studies, we tested whether believing in free will is related to the correspondence bias—that is, people’s automatic tendency to overestimate the influence of internal as compared to external factors when interpreting others’ behavior. Overall, we demonstrate that believing in free will increases the correspondence bias and predicts prescribed punishment and reward behavior.
Abstract: Free will is a cornerstone of our society, and psychological research demonstrates that questioning its existence impacts social behavior. In six studies, we tested whether believing in free will is related to the correspondence bias, which reflects people’s automatic tendency to overestimate the influence of internal as compared to external factors when interpreting others’ behavior. All studies demonstrate a positive relationship between the strength of the belief in free will and the correspondence bias. Moreover, in two experimental studies, we showed that weakening participants’ belief in free will leads to a reduction of the correspondence bias. Finally, the last study demonstrates that believing in free will predicts prescribed punishment and reward behavior, and that this relation is mediated by the correspondence bias. Overall, these studies show that believing in free will impacts fundamental social-cognitive processes that are involved in the understanding of others’ behavior.
Maximizers maximize for both themselves and others, whereas satisficers satisfice for themselves but maximize for others
Do maximizers maximize for others? Self-other decision-making differences in maximizing and satisficing. Mo Luan , Lisha Fu , and Hong Li. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 121, 15 January 2018, Pages 52–56, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.009
Highlights
• Self-other decision-making differences between maximizers and satisficers exist.
• Maximizers maximize for both themselves and others.
• Satisficers satisfice for themselves but maximize for others.
Abstract: The current research provides initial evidence of self-other decision-making differences between maximizers and satisficers by focusing on how they make the tradeoff between the value and the effort an option requires when deciding for themselves and for others. Study 1 demonstrates that maximizers prefer a high-value but effort-consuming option both for themselves and for others, whereas satisficers prefer that option for others but not for themselves. Study 2 further shows that to attain high value with a choice, maximizers not only are willing to expend more effort themselves but also advise others to expend more effort; however, satisficers choose to expend less effort themselves but do not advise others to do so. In conclusion, the current research contributes to the relevant literature by demonstrating that maximizers maximize for both themselves and others, whereas satisficers satisfice for themselves but maximize for others.
Keywords: Self-other decision-making; Maximizing; Satisficing; Value; Effort
Highlights
• Self-other decision-making differences between maximizers and satisficers exist.
• Maximizers maximize for both themselves and others.
• Satisficers satisfice for themselves but maximize for others.
Abstract: The current research provides initial evidence of self-other decision-making differences between maximizers and satisficers by focusing on how they make the tradeoff between the value and the effort an option requires when deciding for themselves and for others. Study 1 demonstrates that maximizers prefer a high-value but effort-consuming option both for themselves and for others, whereas satisficers prefer that option for others but not for themselves. Study 2 further shows that to attain high value with a choice, maximizers not only are willing to expend more effort themselves but also advise others to expend more effort; however, satisficers choose to expend less effort themselves but do not advise others to do so. In conclusion, the current research contributes to the relevant literature by demonstrating that maximizers maximize for both themselves and others, whereas satisficers satisfice for themselves but maximize for others.
Keywords: Self-other decision-making; Maximizing; Satisficing; Value; Effort
Consumers in durable goods markets are rational and forward looking
Are consumers forward looking? Evidence from used iPhones. Kanis Saengchote & Voraprapa Nakavachara. Applied Economics Letters, Pages 1-5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2017.1380286
ABSTRACT: This study examines the impact of planned obsolescence – the introduction of new models to make existing models obsolete – on secondary markets for mobile phones. Using data of over 320,000 used iPhones listings on Thailand’s largest online marketplace, we document that iPhone prices decrease with age, around 2.8–3.2% for each passing month. We find no evidence that the price decline accelerates after launches of new models (i.e. obsolescence), lending support to the view that consumer in durable goods markets are rational and forward looking.
KEYWORDS: Durable goods, mobile phones, product obsolescence, forward-looking consumer
ABSTRACT: This study examines the impact of planned obsolescence – the introduction of new models to make existing models obsolete – on secondary markets for mobile phones. Using data of over 320,000 used iPhones listings on Thailand’s largest online marketplace, we document that iPhone prices decrease with age, around 2.8–3.2% for each passing month. We find no evidence that the price decline accelerates after launches of new models (i.e. obsolescence), lending support to the view that consumer in durable goods markets are rational and forward looking.
KEYWORDS: Durable goods, mobile phones, product obsolescence, forward-looking consumer
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Reasons Probably Won’t Change Your Mind: The Role of Reasons in Revising Moral Decisions
Stanley, M. L., Dougherty, A. M., Yang, B. W., Henne, P., & De Brigard, F. (2017). Reasons Probably Won’t Change Your Mind: The Role of Reasons in Revising Moral Decisions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000368
Abstract: Although many philosophers argue that making and revising moral decisions ought to be a matter of deliberating over reasons, the extent to which the consideration of reasons informs people’s moral decisions and prompts them to change their decisions remains unclear. Here, after making an initial decision in 2-option moral dilemmas, participants examined reasons for only the option initially chosen (affirming reasons), reasons for only the option not initially chosen (opposing reasons), or reasons for both options. Although participants were more likely to change their initial decisions when presented with only opposing reasons compared with only affirming reasons, these effect sizes were consistently small. After evaluating reasons, participants were significantly more likely not to change their initial decisions than to change them, regardless of the set of reasons they considered. The initial decision accounted for most of the variance in predicting the final decision, whereas the reasons evaluated accounted for a relatively small proportion of the variance in predicting the final decision. This resistance to changing moral decisions is at least partly attributable to a biased, motivated evaluation of the available reasons: participants rated the reasons supporting their initial decisions more favorably than the reasons opposing their initial decisions, regardless of the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. Overall, our results suggest that the consideration of reasons rarely induces people to change their initial decisions in moral dilemmas.
Check also: Deliberation increases the wisdom of crowds. Joaquin Navajas, Tamara Niella, Gerry Garbulsky, Bahador Bahrami, Mariano Sigman. ArXiv Mar 2017, https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00045
Abstract: Although many philosophers argue that making and revising moral decisions ought to be a matter of deliberating over reasons, the extent to which the consideration of reasons informs people’s moral decisions and prompts them to change their decisions remains unclear. Here, after making an initial decision in 2-option moral dilemmas, participants examined reasons for only the option initially chosen (affirming reasons), reasons for only the option not initially chosen (opposing reasons), or reasons for both options. Although participants were more likely to change their initial decisions when presented with only opposing reasons compared with only affirming reasons, these effect sizes were consistently small. After evaluating reasons, participants were significantly more likely not to change their initial decisions than to change them, regardless of the set of reasons they considered. The initial decision accounted for most of the variance in predicting the final decision, whereas the reasons evaluated accounted for a relatively small proportion of the variance in predicting the final decision. This resistance to changing moral decisions is at least partly attributable to a biased, motivated evaluation of the available reasons: participants rated the reasons supporting their initial decisions more favorably than the reasons opposing their initial decisions, regardless of the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. Overall, our results suggest that the consideration of reasons rarely induces people to change their initial decisions in moral dilemmas.
Check also: Deliberation increases the wisdom of crowds. Joaquin Navajas, Tamara Niella, Gerry Garbulsky, Bahador Bahrami, Mariano Sigman. ArXiv Mar 2017, https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00045
Mothers want extraversion over conscientiousness or intelligence for their children
Mothers want extraversion over conscientiousness or intelligence for their children. Rachel Latham & Sophie von Stumm. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 119, Dec 01 2017, Pages 262-265, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.07.037
Highlights
• We examined what traits mothers value as most important for their child to have.
• Mothers valued extraversion as most important for their child.
• Extraversion was preferred over intelligence and conscientiousness.
Abstract: Intelligence and conscientiousness are key predictors of all important life outcomes, such as socioeconomic success, marital status, health and longevity. It is unclear, however, if and to what extent lay people appreciate these dimensions of individual differences. Here, 142 mothers of 0–12 month old infants were asked to select from each of the Big Five personality traits the facets that they most liked their child to have. Afterwards, mothers rank-ordered the facets they had selected and ‘intelligence’ from most to least important for their child to have. Less than 10% of mothers rated intelligence and the conscientiousness facet as most important. By contrast, 51% rated the extraversion facet as most important, followed by 20% of mothers who favoured the agreeableness facet. Our results suggest that mothers preferred extraversion over intelligence and conscientiousness, despite their strong, empirically demonstrated predictive validity for important life outcomes.
Highlights
• We examined what traits mothers value as most important for their child to have.
• Mothers valued extraversion as most important for their child.
• Extraversion was preferred over intelligence and conscientiousness.
Abstract: Intelligence and conscientiousness are key predictors of all important life outcomes, such as socioeconomic success, marital status, health and longevity. It is unclear, however, if and to what extent lay people appreciate these dimensions of individual differences. Here, 142 mothers of 0–12 month old infants were asked to select from each of the Big Five personality traits the facets that they most liked their child to have. Afterwards, mothers rank-ordered the facets they had selected and ‘intelligence’ from most to least important for their child to have. Less than 10% of mothers rated intelligence and the conscientiousness facet as most important. By contrast, 51% rated the extraversion facet as most important, followed by 20% of mothers who favoured the agreeableness facet. Our results suggest that mothers preferred extraversion over intelligence and conscientiousness, despite their strong, empirically demonstrated predictive validity for important life outcomes.
Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C
Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C. Richard J. Millar et al. Nature Geoscience (2017), doi:10.1038/ngeo3031
Abstract: The Paris Agreement has opened debate on whether limiting warming to 1.5 °C is compatible with current emission pledges and warming of about 0.9 °C from the mid-nineteenth century to the present decade. We show that limiting cumulative post-2015 CO2 emissions to about 200 GtC would limit post-2015 warming to less than 0.6 °C in 66% of Earth system model members of the CMIP5 ensemble with no mitigation of other climate drivers, increasing to 240 GtC with ambitious non-CO2 mitigation. We combine a simple climate–carbon-cycle model with estimated ranges for key climate system properties from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Assuming emissions peak and decline to below current levels by 2030, and continue thereafter on a much steeper decline, which would be historically unprecedented but consistent with a standard ambitious mitigation scenario (RCP2.6), results in a likely range of peak warming of 1.2–2.0 °C above the mid-nineteenth century. If CO2 emissions are continuously adjusted over time to limit 2100 warming to 1.5 °C, with ambitious non-CO2 mitigation, net future cumulative CO2 emissions are unlikely to prove less than 250 GtC and unlikely greater than 540 GtC. Hence, limiting warming to 1.5 °C is not yet a geophysical impossibility, but is likely to require delivery on strengthened pledges for 2030 followed by challengingly deep and rapid mitigation. Strengthening near-term emissions reductions would hedge against a high climate response or subsequent reduction rates proving economically, technically or politically unfeasible.
Abstract: The Paris Agreement has opened debate on whether limiting warming to 1.5 °C is compatible with current emission pledges and warming of about 0.9 °C from the mid-nineteenth century to the present decade. We show that limiting cumulative post-2015 CO2 emissions to about 200 GtC would limit post-2015 warming to less than 0.6 °C in 66% of Earth system model members of the CMIP5 ensemble with no mitigation of other climate drivers, increasing to 240 GtC with ambitious non-CO2 mitigation. We combine a simple climate–carbon-cycle model with estimated ranges for key climate system properties from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Assuming emissions peak and decline to below current levels by 2030, and continue thereafter on a much steeper decline, which would be historically unprecedented but consistent with a standard ambitious mitigation scenario (RCP2.6), results in a likely range of peak warming of 1.2–2.0 °C above the mid-nineteenth century. If CO2 emissions are continuously adjusted over time to limit 2100 warming to 1.5 °C, with ambitious non-CO2 mitigation, net future cumulative CO2 emissions are unlikely to prove less than 250 GtC and unlikely greater than 540 GtC. Hence, limiting warming to 1.5 °C is not yet a geophysical impossibility, but is likely to require delivery on strengthened pledges for 2030 followed by challengingly deep and rapid mitigation. Strengthening near-term emissions reductions would hedge against a high climate response or subsequent reduction rates proving economically, technically or politically unfeasible.
“No one wants to be seen as someone who can’t afford to get online.”
Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein In a Wild Web. By PAUL MOZUR, MARK SCOTT and MIKE ISAAC. TNYT, Sept 17, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-government-regulations.html
Facebook expanded its efforts in [Kenya,] country of 48 million in 2014. It teamed up with Airtel Africa, a mobile operator, to roll out Facebook’s Free Basics — a no-fee version of the social network, with access to certain news, health, job and other services there and in more than 20 other countries worldwide. In Kenya, the average person has a budget of just 30 cents a day to spend on internet access.
Free Basics now lets Kenyans use Facebook and its Messenger service at no cost, as well as read news from a Kenyan newspaper and view information about public health programs. Joe Mucheru, Kenya’s tech minister, said it at least gives his countrymen a degree of internet access.
Still, Facebook’s plans have not always worked out. Many Kenyans with access to Free Basics rely on it only as a backup when their existing smartphone credit runs out.
“Free Basics? I don’t really use it that often,” said Victor Odinga, 27, an accountant in downtown Nairobi. “No one wants to be seen as someone who can’t afford to get online.”
Facebook expanded its efforts in [Kenya,] country of 48 million in 2014. It teamed up with Airtel Africa, a mobile operator, to roll out Facebook’s Free Basics — a no-fee version of the social network, with access to certain news, health, job and other services there and in more than 20 other countries worldwide. In Kenya, the average person has a budget of just 30 cents a day to spend on internet access.
Free Basics now lets Kenyans use Facebook and its Messenger service at no cost, as well as read news from a Kenyan newspaper and view information about public health programs. Joe Mucheru, Kenya’s tech minister, said it at least gives his countrymen a degree of internet access.
Still, Facebook’s plans have not always worked out. Many Kenyans with access to Free Basics rely on it only as a backup when their existing smartphone credit runs out.
“Free Basics? I don’t really use it that often,” said Victor Odinga, 27, an accountant in downtown Nairobi. “No one wants to be seen as someone who can’t afford to get online.”
Encouraging consumers to take photos of sentimental possessions before donating them increases donations
Karen Page Winterich, Rebecca Walker Reczek, and Julie R. Irwin (2017) Keeping the Memory but Not the Possession: Memory Preservation Mitigates Identity Loss from Product Disposition. Journal of Marketing: September 2017, Vol. 81, No. 5, pp. 104-120. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.16.0311
Abstract: Nonprofit firms' reliance on donations to build inventory distinguishes them from traditional retailers. This reliance on consumer donations means that these organizations face an inherently more volatile supply chain than retailers that source inventory from manufacturers. The authors propose that consumer reluctance to part with possessions with sentimental value causes a bottleneck in the donation process. The goal of this research is therefore to provide nonprofits with tools to increase donations of used goods and provide a theoretical link between the literature streams on prosocial behavior, disposition, memory, and identity. As such, the authors explore the effectiveness of memory preservation strategies (e.g., taking a photo of a good before donating it) in increasing donations to nonprofits. A field study using a donation drive demonstrates that encouraging consumers to take photos of sentimental possessions before donating them increases donations, and five laboratory experiments explicate this result by mapping the proposed psychological process behind the success of memory preservation techniques. Specifically, these techniques operate by ameliorating consumers' perceived identity loss when considering donation of sentimental goods.
Keywords: nonprofit marketing, donation, memory, identity, product disposition
Abstract: Nonprofit firms' reliance on donations to build inventory distinguishes them from traditional retailers. This reliance on consumer donations means that these organizations face an inherently more volatile supply chain than retailers that source inventory from manufacturers. The authors propose that consumer reluctance to part with possessions with sentimental value causes a bottleneck in the donation process. The goal of this research is therefore to provide nonprofits with tools to increase donations of used goods and provide a theoretical link between the literature streams on prosocial behavior, disposition, memory, and identity. As such, the authors explore the effectiveness of memory preservation strategies (e.g., taking a photo of a good before donating it) in increasing donations to nonprofits. A field study using a donation drive demonstrates that encouraging consumers to take photos of sentimental possessions before donating them increases donations, and five laboratory experiments explicate this result by mapping the proposed psychological process behind the success of memory preservation techniques. Specifically, these techniques operate by ameliorating consumers' perceived identity loss when considering donation of sentimental goods.
Keywords: nonprofit marketing, donation, memory, identity, product disposition
Propensity for self-employment and success increase with ability balance
All About Balance? A Test of the Jack-of-all-Trades Theory Using Military Enlistment Data. Lina Aldén, Mats Hammarstedt, and Emma Neuman. Labour Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2017.09.001
Highlights
• We test the Jack-of-all-trades theory using Swedish military enlistment data
• Ability balance is measured based on tests of cognitive and non-cognitive ability
• The unique data addresses the issue of endogeneity in skill balance
• We find that both propensity for self-employment and success increase with ability balance
• Policies for skill-building in many areas should encourage self-employment
Abstract: According to the Jack-of-all-trades theory, people with a balanced set of skills are more suitable for self-employment than are those without. In this paper we test this theory using Swedish Military Enlistment data. This data enables us to construct a measure of balance in abilities that, in comparison to measures used in previous research, is less contaminated by endogeneity problems. We find clear support for the Jack-of-all-trades theory, in the sense that the likelihood of being self-employed is higher for individuals whose skills are balanced. In addition, their earnings from self-employment tend to be higher.
Keywords: Ability balance; Cognitive and non-cognitive ability; Earnings; Jack-of-all-trades theory; Occupational choice; Self-employment
JEL-classification: J24; J31; L26
Highlights
• We test the Jack-of-all-trades theory using Swedish military enlistment data
• Ability balance is measured based on tests of cognitive and non-cognitive ability
• The unique data addresses the issue of endogeneity in skill balance
• We find that both propensity for self-employment and success increase with ability balance
• Policies for skill-building in many areas should encourage self-employment
Abstract: According to the Jack-of-all-trades theory, people with a balanced set of skills are more suitable for self-employment than are those without. In this paper we test this theory using Swedish Military Enlistment data. This data enables us to construct a measure of balance in abilities that, in comparison to measures used in previous research, is less contaminated by endogeneity problems. We find clear support for the Jack-of-all-trades theory, in the sense that the likelihood of being self-employed is higher for individuals whose skills are balanced. In addition, their earnings from self-employment tend to be higher.
Keywords: Ability balance; Cognitive and non-cognitive ability; Earnings; Jack-of-all-trades theory; Occupational choice; Self-employment
JEL-classification: J24; J31; L26
Monday, September 18, 2017
The Evolutionary Psychology of Envy and Jealousy
The Evolutionary Psychology of Envy and Jealousy. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Baland Jalal. Front. Psychol., 19 September 2017 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01619
Abstract: The old dogma has always been that the most complex aspects of human emotions are driven by culture; Germans and English are thought to be straight-laced whereas Italians and Indians are effusive. Yet in the last two decades there has been a growing realization that even though culture plays a major role in the final expression of human nature, there must be a basic scaffolding specified by genes. While this is recognized to be true for simple emotions like anger, fear, and joy, the relevance of evolutionary arguments for more complex nuances of emotion have been inadequately explored. In this paper, we consider envy or jealousy as an example; the feeling evoked when someone is better off than you. Our approach is broadly consistent with traditional evolutionary psychology (EP) approaches, but takes it further by exploring the complexity and functional logic of the emotion – and the precise social triggers that elicit them – by using deliberately farfetched, and contrived “thought experiments” that the subject is asked to participate in. When common sense (e.g., we should be jealous of Bill Gates – not of our slightly richer neighbor) appears to contradict observed behavior (i.e., we are more envious of our neighbor) the paradox can often be resolved by evolutionary considerations which predict the latter. Many – but not all – EP approaches fail because evolution and common sense do not make contradictory predictions. Finally, we briefly raise the possibility that gaining deeper insight into the evolutionary origins of certain undesirable emotions or behaviors can help shake them off, and may therefore have therapeutic utility. Such an approach would complement current therapies (such as cognitive behavior therapies, psychoanalysis, psychopharmacologies, and hypnotherapy), rather than negate them.
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(3) Let us say I were to prove by brain scans or some other reliable measure (e.g., mood/affect inventory) that (A) the Dalai Lama was vastly happier on some abstract, but very real, scale than (B) someone (say Hugh Heffner) who has limitless access to attractive women. Who are you more envious of?
Most men are more envious of the latter (9 out of 9 males we surveyed chose B). In other words, you are more jealous of what the other person has access to (in relation to what you desire), than of the final overall state of joy and happiness. This is true even though common sense might dictate the opposite. Put differently, evolution has programmed into you an emotion (jealousy) that is triggered by certain very specific “releasers” or social cues; it is largely insensitive to what the other person’s final state of happiness is. The final state of happiness is too abstract to have evolved as a trigger of envy or jealousy.
For similar reasons, if you are starving it makes more sense that you would be more jealous (at least temporarily) of someone enjoying a fine meal than someone having sex with a beautiful woman or man. If you are only slightly hungry, however, you might pick sex. This is because there is an unconscious metric in your brain that computes the probability of finding food in the near future vs. finding a nubile, available mate; and of the urgency of your need for food over the urgency of mating. If you are starving to death and have one last fling, you have only that single mating opportunity whereas if you eat and live you will have plenty of mating opportunities in the future.
Abstract: The old dogma has always been that the most complex aspects of human emotions are driven by culture; Germans and English are thought to be straight-laced whereas Italians and Indians are effusive. Yet in the last two decades there has been a growing realization that even though culture plays a major role in the final expression of human nature, there must be a basic scaffolding specified by genes. While this is recognized to be true for simple emotions like anger, fear, and joy, the relevance of evolutionary arguments for more complex nuances of emotion have been inadequately explored. In this paper, we consider envy or jealousy as an example; the feeling evoked when someone is better off than you. Our approach is broadly consistent with traditional evolutionary psychology (EP) approaches, but takes it further by exploring the complexity and functional logic of the emotion – and the precise social triggers that elicit them – by using deliberately farfetched, and contrived “thought experiments” that the subject is asked to participate in. When common sense (e.g., we should be jealous of Bill Gates – not of our slightly richer neighbor) appears to contradict observed behavior (i.e., we are more envious of our neighbor) the paradox can often be resolved by evolutionary considerations which predict the latter. Many – but not all – EP approaches fail because evolution and common sense do not make contradictory predictions. Finally, we briefly raise the possibility that gaining deeper insight into the evolutionary origins of certain undesirable emotions or behaviors can help shake them off, and may therefore have therapeutic utility. Such an approach would complement current therapies (such as cognitive behavior therapies, psychoanalysis, psychopharmacologies, and hypnotherapy), rather than negate them.
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(3) Let us say I were to prove by brain scans or some other reliable measure (e.g., mood/affect inventory) that (A) the Dalai Lama was vastly happier on some abstract, but very real, scale than (B) someone (say Hugh Heffner) who has limitless access to attractive women. Who are you more envious of?
Most men are more envious of the latter (9 out of 9 males we surveyed chose B). In other words, you are more jealous of what the other person has access to (in relation to what you desire), than of the final overall state of joy and happiness. This is true even though common sense might dictate the opposite. Put differently, evolution has programmed into you an emotion (jealousy) that is triggered by certain very specific “releasers” or social cues; it is largely insensitive to what the other person’s final state of happiness is. The final state of happiness is too abstract to have evolved as a trigger of envy or jealousy.
For similar reasons, if you are starving it makes more sense that you would be more jealous (at least temporarily) of someone enjoying a fine meal than someone having sex with a beautiful woman or man. If you are only slightly hungry, however, you might pick sex. This is because there is an unconscious metric in your brain that computes the probability of finding food in the near future vs. finding a nubile, available mate; and of the urgency of your need for food over the urgency of mating. If you are starving to death and have one last fling, you have only that single mating opportunity whereas if you eat and live you will have plenty of mating opportunities in the future.
Higher USA State Resident Neuroticism Is Associated With Lower State Volunteering Rates
Higher USA State Resident Neuroticism Is Associated With Lower State Volunteering Rates. Stewart McCann. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217724802
Abstract: Highly neurotic persons have dispositional characteristics that tend to precipitate social anxiety that discourages formal volunteering. With the 50 American states as analytical units, Study 1 found that state resident neuroticism correlated highly (r = -.55) with state volunteering rates and accounted for another 26.8% of the volunteering rate variance with selected state demographics controlled. Study 2 replicated Study 1 during another period and extended the association to college student, senior, secular, and religious volunteering rates. Study 3 showed state resident percentages engaged in other social behaviors involving more familiarity and fewer demands than formal volunteering related to state volunteering rates but not to neuroticism. In Study 4, state resident neuroticism largely accounted statistically for relations between state volunteering rates and state population density, collectivism, social capital, Republican preference, and well-being. This research is the first to show that state resident neuroticism is a potent predictor of state volunteering rates.
Abstract: Highly neurotic persons have dispositional characteristics that tend to precipitate social anxiety that discourages formal volunteering. With the 50 American states as analytical units, Study 1 found that state resident neuroticism correlated highly (r = -.55) with state volunteering rates and accounted for another 26.8% of the volunteering rate variance with selected state demographics controlled. Study 2 replicated Study 1 during another period and extended the association to college student, senior, secular, and religious volunteering rates. Study 3 showed state resident percentages engaged in other social behaviors involving more familiarity and fewer demands than formal volunteering related to state volunteering rates but not to neuroticism. In Study 4, state resident neuroticism largely accounted statistically for relations between state volunteering rates and state population density, collectivism, social capital, Republican preference, and well-being. This research is the first to show that state resident neuroticism is a potent predictor of state volunteering rates.
Outrage-inducing content appears to be more prevalent and potent online than offline
Moral outrage in the digital age. M. J. Crockett. Nature Human Behaviour (2017). doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0213-3
Moral outrage is a powerful emotion that motivates people to shame and punish wrongdoers. Moralistic punishment can be a force for good, increasing cooperation by holding bad actors accountable. But punishment also has a dark side — it can exacerbate social conflict by dehumanizing others and escalating into destructive feuds.
Moral outrage is at least as old as civilization itself, but civilization is rapidly changing in the face of new technologies. Worldwide, more than a billion people now spend at least an hour a day on social media, and moral outrage is all the rage online. In recent years, viral online shaming has cost
companies millions, candidates elections, and individuals their careers overnight.
As digital media infiltrates our social lives, it is crucial that we understand how this technology might transform the expression of moral outrage and its social consequences. Here, I describe a simple psychological framework for tackling this question (Fig. 1). Moral outrage is triggered by stimuli that call attention to moral norm violations. These stimuli evoke a range of emotional and behavioural responses that vary in their costs and constraints. Finally, expressing outrage leads to a variety of personal and social outcomes. This framework reveals that digital media may exacerbate the expression of moral outrage by inflating its triggering stimuli, reducing some of its costs and amplifying many of its personal benefits.
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If moral outrage is a fire, is the internet like gasoline? Technology companies have argued that their products provide neutral platforms for social behaviours but do not change those behaviours. This is an empirical question that behavioural scientists should address, because its answer has ethical and regulatory implications.
The framework proposed here offers a set of testable hypotheses about the impact of digital media on the expression of moral outrage and its social consequences. Digital media may promote the expression of moral outrage by magnifying its triggers, reducing its personal costs and amplifying its personal benefits. At the same time, online social networks may diminish the social benefits of outrage by reducing the likelihood that norm-enforcing messages reach their targets, and could even impose new social costs by increasing polarization.
Preliminary data support the framework’s predictions, showing that outrage-inducing content appears to be more prevalent and potent online than offline. Future studies should investigate the extent to which digital media platforms intensify moral emotions, promote habit formation, suppress productive social discourse, and change the nature of moral outrage itself. There are vast troves of data that are directly pertinent to these questions, but not all of it is publicly available. These data can and should be used to understand how new technologies might transform ancient social emotions from a force for collective good into a tool for collective self-destruction.
Moral outrage is a powerful emotion that motivates people to shame and punish wrongdoers. Moralistic punishment can be a force for good, increasing cooperation by holding bad actors accountable. But punishment also has a dark side — it can exacerbate social conflict by dehumanizing others and escalating into destructive feuds.
Moral outrage is at least as old as civilization itself, but civilization is rapidly changing in the face of new technologies. Worldwide, more than a billion people now spend at least an hour a day on social media, and moral outrage is all the rage online. In recent years, viral online shaming has cost
companies millions, candidates elections, and individuals their careers overnight.
As digital media infiltrates our social lives, it is crucial that we understand how this technology might transform the expression of moral outrage and its social consequences. Here, I describe a simple psychological framework for tackling this question (Fig. 1). Moral outrage is triggered by stimuli that call attention to moral norm violations. These stimuli evoke a range of emotional and behavioural responses that vary in their costs and constraints. Finally, expressing outrage leads to a variety of personal and social outcomes. This framework reveals that digital media may exacerbate the expression of moral outrage by inflating its triggering stimuli, reducing some of its costs and amplifying many of its personal benefits.
---
If moral outrage is a fire, is the internet like gasoline? Technology companies have argued that their products provide neutral platforms for social behaviours but do not change those behaviours. This is an empirical question that behavioural scientists should address, because its answer has ethical and regulatory implications.
The framework proposed here offers a set of testable hypotheses about the impact of digital media on the expression of moral outrage and its social consequences. Digital media may promote the expression of moral outrage by magnifying its triggers, reducing its personal costs and amplifying its personal benefits. At the same time, online social networks may diminish the social benefits of outrage by reducing the likelihood that norm-enforcing messages reach their targets, and could even impose new social costs by increasing polarization.
Preliminary data support the framework’s predictions, showing that outrage-inducing content appears to be more prevalent and potent online than offline. Future studies should investigate the extent to which digital media platforms intensify moral emotions, promote habit formation, suppress productive social discourse, and change the nature of moral outrage itself. There are vast troves of data that are directly pertinent to these questions, but not all of it is publicly available. These data can and should be used to understand how new technologies might transform ancient social emotions from a force for collective good into a tool for collective self-destruction.
Cognitive Resources in the Service of Identity Expression
An Expressive Utility Account of Partisan Cue Receptivity: Cognitive Resources in the Service of Identity Expression. Yphtach Lelkes, Ariel Malka, and Bert N. Bakker. https://www.dropbox.com/s/gbw56kdk8d0aoa1/expressivecues.pdf
Abstract: What motivates citizens to rely on partisan cues when forming political judgments? Extant literature offers two perspectives on this matter: an optimistic view that reliance on cues serves to enable adequate decision making when cognitive resources are low, and a pessimistic view that reliance on cues serves to channel cognitive resources to the goal of expressing valued political identities. In the present research we seek to further understanding of the relative importance of these two motives. We find that individuals low in cognitive resources are not more likely to follow partisan cues than are individuals high in cognitive resources. Furthermore, we find the highest level of cue receptivity is observed for those individuals who have both a strong social identification with their party and high cognitive resources. This suggests that partisan cue receptivity more often involves a harnessing of cognitive resources for the goal of identity expression.
Keywords: Partisan Cues, Social Identity, Cognitive Reflection, Motivated Reasoning
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This work complements and extends two recent projects on the role of reflection on political reasoning. First, Arceneaux and Vander Wielen (2017) argue that those who are the least likely to be affectively attached to issues or parties and the most likely to be reflective exhibit behavior most akin to democratic ideals. In particular, these low affect/high reflection citizens are less likely to conform to elite cues than those who are high in affect and low in reflection. This is because these citizens combine relative weak emotional attachments to party-consistent issue positions with a relatively strong tendency to engage in effortful reasoning that could override emotional intuitions. As our strength of party identity measures affective attachment to a party (Huddy et al., 2015), the present work investigates the effect of high affect/high reflection on political reasoning, and our results are in line with Arceneaux and Vander Wielen (2017) untested predictions which they suggest for future research. Specifically, strong cognitive resources combined with an emotional attachment to partisanship seems to lead to toeing the party line. Second, Groenendyk (2013) argues that cognitive resources are required to defend one’s partisan identity–one reason partisan identities may remain stable among those high in cognitive resources is because they are able to rationalize changing attitude structures. The present findings reinforce that perspective as well.
Abstract: What motivates citizens to rely on partisan cues when forming political judgments? Extant literature offers two perspectives on this matter: an optimistic view that reliance on cues serves to enable adequate decision making when cognitive resources are low, and a pessimistic view that reliance on cues serves to channel cognitive resources to the goal of expressing valued political identities. In the present research we seek to further understanding of the relative importance of these two motives. We find that individuals low in cognitive resources are not more likely to follow partisan cues than are individuals high in cognitive resources. Furthermore, we find the highest level of cue receptivity is observed for those individuals who have both a strong social identification with their party and high cognitive resources. This suggests that partisan cue receptivity more often involves a harnessing of cognitive resources for the goal of identity expression.
Keywords: Partisan Cues, Social Identity, Cognitive Reflection, Motivated Reasoning
---
This work complements and extends two recent projects on the role of reflection on political reasoning. First, Arceneaux and Vander Wielen (2017) argue that those who are the least likely to be affectively attached to issues or parties and the most likely to be reflective exhibit behavior most akin to democratic ideals. In particular, these low affect/high reflection citizens are less likely to conform to elite cues than those who are high in affect and low in reflection. This is because these citizens combine relative weak emotional attachments to party-consistent issue positions with a relatively strong tendency to engage in effortful reasoning that could override emotional intuitions. As our strength of party identity measures affective attachment to a party (Huddy et al., 2015), the present work investigates the effect of high affect/high reflection on political reasoning, and our results are in line with Arceneaux and Vander Wielen (2017) untested predictions which they suggest for future research. Specifically, strong cognitive resources combined with an emotional attachment to partisanship seems to lead to toeing the party line. Second, Groenendyk (2013) argues that cognitive resources are required to defend one’s partisan identity–one reason partisan identities may remain stable among those high in cognitive resources is because they are able to rationalize changing attitude structures. The present findings reinforce that perspective as well.
Sunday, September 17, 2017
How the Presence of Others Affects Desirability Judgments in Heterosexual and Homosexual Participants
Scofield, John E, Bogdan Kostic, and Erin M Buchanan. 2017. “How the Presence of Others Affects Desirability Judgments in Heterosexual and Homosexual Participants”. Open Science Framework. September 17. www.osf.io/ej5kh.
Abstract: Mate-choice copying is a mating strategy wherein females rely on contextual information to assist in securing accurate assessments of potential mates. Mate-choice copying has been extensively studied in non-human species and has begun to be examined in humans as well. Hill and Buss (2008) found evidence of opposing effects for men and women in desirability judgments based on the presence of other opposite-sex people. The current project successfully replicated Hill and Buss (2008), Experiment 1, finding support for the desirability enhancement effect and the desirability diminution effect. The current project also extended Hill and Buss, Experiment 1, to include homosexual participants. Homosexual men showed similar patterns as heterosexual women, and homosexual women showed similar patterns as heterosexual men, revealing differences across sexual orientation in human mate-choice copying.
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The purpose of the current project was to replicate Hill and Buss (2008), Experiment 1 and to extend their findings to include homosexual populations. Hill and Buss found opposing sex differences while investigating the presence of others on judgments of desirability. Hill and Buss found evidence for the desirability enhancement effect, in which females rated male targets surrounded by females as more desirable compared to those same males surrounded by other males. Desirability judgments had the opposite effect on male participants, known as the desirability diminution effect. Male participants rated target females as less desirable when surrounded by males, compared to when those same females were surrounded by other females.
Females were suggested to employ mate-choice copying mating tactics, such as social information provided in stimulus photographs when making mate assessments. In evolutionary theory, females may take into consideration the presence of other females, providing cues to the mate quality of males. Specifically, with females surrounding males, the mate quality of the male is assumed to be higher. Men were shown not to use typical mate-choice copying mating tactics. Males rated female targets surrounded by males as less desirable than when surrounded by other females or when alone. Males were suggested to assess potential mates with a probabilistic orientation, suggesting that the presence of other males in the scene hint at a decreased probability of gaining access to that mate, negatively influencing desirability judgments of that target female.
[...]
Results showed that homosexual male participants rated target males surrounded by females as more desirable compared to male targets surrounded by other males. Homosexual female participants, however, showed the opposite effect in that they rated target females less desirable when surrounded by males compared to when surrounded by females. This result is contrary to our predictions that heterosexual and homosexual judgments would both follow similar patterns, dictated per biological sex (regardless of sexual orientation). That is, homosexual and heterosexual men would both exhibit the desirability diminution effect, and both homosexual and heterosexual women would exhibit the desirability enhancement effect.
Abstract: Mate-choice copying is a mating strategy wherein females rely on contextual information to assist in securing accurate assessments of potential mates. Mate-choice copying has been extensively studied in non-human species and has begun to be examined in humans as well. Hill and Buss (2008) found evidence of opposing effects for men and women in desirability judgments based on the presence of other opposite-sex people. The current project successfully replicated Hill and Buss (2008), Experiment 1, finding support for the desirability enhancement effect and the desirability diminution effect. The current project also extended Hill and Buss, Experiment 1, to include homosexual participants. Homosexual men showed similar patterns as heterosexual women, and homosexual women showed similar patterns as heterosexual men, revealing differences across sexual orientation in human mate-choice copying.
---
The purpose of the current project was to replicate Hill and Buss (2008), Experiment 1 and to extend their findings to include homosexual populations. Hill and Buss found opposing sex differences while investigating the presence of others on judgments of desirability. Hill and Buss found evidence for the desirability enhancement effect, in which females rated male targets surrounded by females as more desirable compared to those same males surrounded by other males. Desirability judgments had the opposite effect on male participants, known as the desirability diminution effect. Male participants rated target females as less desirable when surrounded by males, compared to when those same females were surrounded by other females.
Females were suggested to employ mate-choice copying mating tactics, such as social information provided in stimulus photographs when making mate assessments. In evolutionary theory, females may take into consideration the presence of other females, providing cues to the mate quality of males. Specifically, with females surrounding males, the mate quality of the male is assumed to be higher. Men were shown not to use typical mate-choice copying mating tactics. Males rated female targets surrounded by males as less desirable than when surrounded by other females or when alone. Males were suggested to assess potential mates with a probabilistic orientation, suggesting that the presence of other males in the scene hint at a decreased probability of gaining access to that mate, negatively influencing desirability judgments of that target female.
[...]
Results showed that homosexual male participants rated target males surrounded by females as more desirable compared to male targets surrounded by other males. Homosexual female participants, however, showed the opposite effect in that they rated target females less desirable when surrounded by males compared to when surrounded by females. This result is contrary to our predictions that heterosexual and homosexual judgments would both follow similar patterns, dictated per biological sex (regardless of sexual orientation). That is, homosexual and heterosexual men would both exhibit the desirability diminution effect, and both homosexual and heterosexual women would exhibit the desirability enhancement effect.
Liberals and Conservatives Are Similarly Motivated to Deny Attitude-Inconsistent Science
Science Denial Across the Political Divide -- Liberals and Conservatives Are Similarly Motivated to Deny Attitude-Inconsistent Science. Anthony N. Washburn, Linda J. Skitka. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10.1177/1948550617731500
Abstract: We tested whether conservatives and liberals are similarly or differentially likely to deny scientific claims that conflict with their preferred conclusions. Participants were randomly assigned to read about a study with correct results that were either consistent or inconsistent with their attitude about one of several issues (e.g., carbon emissions). Participants were asked to interpret numerical results and decide what the study concluded. After being informed of the correct interpretation, participants rated how much they agreed with, found knowledgeable, and trusted the researchers’ correct interpretation. Both liberals and conservatives engaged in motivated interpretation of study results and denied the correct interpretation of those results when that interpretation conflicted with their attitudes. Our study suggests that the same motivational processes underlie differences in the political priorities of those on the left and the right.
Check also: Kahan, Dan M. and Peters, Ellen, Rumors of the 'Nonreplication' of the 'Motivated Numeracy Effect' are Greatly Exaggerated (August 26, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3026941
And: Biased Policy Professionals. Sheheryar Banuri, Stefan Dercon, and Varun Gauri. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8113. https://t.co/Jga1EUEkbF.
And: Dispelling the Myth: Training in Education or Neuroscience Decreases but Does Not Eliminate Beliefs in Neuromyths. Kelly Macdonald et al. Frontiers in Psychology, Aug 10 2017. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01314
And: Wisdom and how to cultivate it: Review of emerging evidence for a constructivist model of wise thinking. Igor Grossmann. European Psychologist, in press. Pre-print: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qkm6v/
Abstract: We tested whether conservatives and liberals are similarly or differentially likely to deny scientific claims that conflict with their preferred conclusions. Participants were randomly assigned to read about a study with correct results that were either consistent or inconsistent with their attitude about one of several issues (e.g., carbon emissions). Participants were asked to interpret numerical results and decide what the study concluded. After being informed of the correct interpretation, participants rated how much they agreed with, found knowledgeable, and trusted the researchers’ correct interpretation. Both liberals and conservatives engaged in motivated interpretation of study results and denied the correct interpretation of those results when that interpretation conflicted with their attitudes. Our study suggests that the same motivational processes underlie differences in the political priorities of those on the left and the right.
Check also: Kahan, Dan M. and Peters, Ellen, Rumors of the 'Nonreplication' of the 'Motivated Numeracy Effect' are Greatly Exaggerated (August 26, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3026941
And: Biased Policy Professionals. Sheheryar Banuri, Stefan Dercon, and Varun Gauri. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8113. https://t.co/Jga1EUEkbF.
And: Dispelling the Myth: Training in Education or Neuroscience Decreases but Does Not Eliminate Beliefs in Neuromyths. Kelly Macdonald et al. Frontiers in Psychology, Aug 10 2017. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01314
And: Wisdom and how to cultivate it: Review of emerging evidence for a constructivist model of wise thinking. Igor Grossmann. European Psychologist, in press. Pre-print: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qkm6v/
Liberals Possess More National Consensus on Political Attitudes in the US
Liberals Possess More National Consensus on Political Attitudes in the United States -- An Examination Across 40 Years. Peter Ondish, Chadly Stern. Social Psychological and Personality Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617729410
Abstract: Do liberals or conservatives have more agreement in their political attitudes? Recent research indicates that conservatives may have more like-minded social groups than do liberals, but whether conservatives have more consensus on a broad, national level remains an open question. Using two nationally representative data sets (the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies), we examined the attitudes of over 80,000 people on more than 400 political issues (e.g., attitudes toward welfare, gun control, same-sex marriage) across approximately 40 years. In both data sets, we found that liberals possessed a larger degree of agreement in their political attitudes than did conservatives. Additionally, both liberals and conservatives possessed more consensus than did political moderates. These results indicate that social–cognitive motivations for building similarity and consensus within one’s self-created social groups may also yield less consensus on a broad, national level. We discuss implications for effective political mobilization and social change.
Abstract: Do liberals or conservatives have more agreement in their political attitudes? Recent research indicates that conservatives may have more like-minded social groups than do liberals, but whether conservatives have more consensus on a broad, national level remains an open question. Using two nationally representative data sets (the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies), we examined the attitudes of over 80,000 people on more than 400 political issues (e.g., attitudes toward welfare, gun control, same-sex marriage) across approximately 40 years. In both data sets, we found that liberals possessed a larger degree of agreement in their political attitudes than did conservatives. Additionally, both liberals and conservatives possessed more consensus than did political moderates. These results indicate that social–cognitive motivations for building similarity and consensus within one’s self-created social groups may also yield less consensus on a broad, national level. We discuss implications for effective political mobilization and social change.
“All my life I have been told that capitalism, particularly the American type, was bad,” Mr. Gujanicic, 63, said
As China Moves In, Serbia Reaps Benefits, With Strings Attached. By BARBARA SURK. The New York Times, Sep 09, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/world/europe/china-serbia-european-union.html
"
Mileta Gujanicic, a steelworker and union leader, is one of those who hope China fulfills its vision for the Smederevo mill: He has worked there for 40 years and says he got used to the ways of the Americans, whom he called “the aristocracy of the industrial world.”
“All my life I have been told that capitalism, particularly the American type, was bad,” Mr. Gujanicic, 63, said. “But we workers have been valued, well paid and respected when the Americans ran this place.”
The Chinese approach to running the mill, he said, is sharply different. So far, the new owners have maintained their pledge to retain jobs. But none of the promises Mr. Xi made during his visit have been kept.
Workers’ contracts are veiled in secrecy, safety standards have fallen, maintenance is at the bare minimum, and contact between the owners and the employees does not exist, he said. The erosion of workers’ rights and the employers’ disregard of labor laws are troubling, he said.
"
My comment: Mr Gujanicic, 63, was a Communist some time, but changed his opinion. What do you think, that he is being (more or less) objective, or that he has idealized his American bosses?
"
Mileta Gujanicic, a steelworker and union leader, is one of those who hope China fulfills its vision for the Smederevo mill: He has worked there for 40 years and says he got used to the ways of the Americans, whom he called “the aristocracy of the industrial world.”
“All my life I have been told that capitalism, particularly the American type, was bad,” Mr. Gujanicic, 63, said. “But we workers have been valued, well paid and respected when the Americans ran this place.”
The Chinese approach to running the mill, he said, is sharply different. So far, the new owners have maintained their pledge to retain jobs. But none of the promises Mr. Xi made during his visit have been kept.
Workers’ contracts are veiled in secrecy, safety standards have fallen, maintenance is at the bare minimum, and contact between the owners and the employees does not exist, he said. The erosion of workers’ rights and the employers’ disregard of labor laws are troubling, he said.
"
My comment: Mr Gujanicic, 63, was a Communist some time, but changed his opinion. What do you think, that he is being (more or less) objective, or that he has idealized his American bosses?
Research: The readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time
Research: The readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time. Pontus Plavén-Sigray et al. eLife 2017;6:e27725. https://elifesciences.org/articles/27725
Abstract: Clarity and accuracy of reporting are fundamental to the scientific process. Readability formulas can estimate how difficult a text is to read. Here, in a corpus consisting of 709,577 abstracts published between 1881 and 2015 from 123 scientific journals, we show that the readability of science is steadily decreasing. Our analyses show that this trend is indicative of a growing use of general scientific jargon. These results are concerning for scientists and for the wider public, as they impact both the reproducibility and accessibility of research findings.
My comment: Why is this so? Is there a part of snob behavior? A way to separate oneself from the great unwashed?
Abstract: Clarity and accuracy of reporting are fundamental to the scientific process. Readability formulas can estimate how difficult a text is to read. Here, in a corpus consisting of 709,577 abstracts published between 1881 and 2015 from 123 scientific journals, we show that the readability of science is steadily decreasing. Our analyses show that this trend is indicative of a growing use of general scientific jargon. These results are concerning for scientists and for the wider public, as they impact both the reproducibility and accessibility of research findings.
My comment: Why is this so? Is there a part of snob behavior? A way to separate oneself from the great unwashed?
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