A posteriori information effects on culpability judgments from a cross-cultural perspective

A posteriori information about the moral attributes of the victim of a crime can affect an observer's judgment on the culpability of the actor of the crime so that negative moral attributes of the victim will lead to a lower judgment of culpability. The authors found this effect of a posteriori information among 118 American and 123 Chinese participants, but the underlying mechanisms were different between the two cultural groups. The Americans considered the psychological state of the actor during the crime, whereas the Chinese considered the morality of the actor during the crime. The authors discussed these results in light of the respondents' implicit theories of morality.     

Visual judgments of kinship: an alternative perspective

Following other researchers, we investigated the premise that visual judgment of kinship might be modelled as a signal-detection task, strictly related to similar facial features. We measured subjects' response times to face-pair stimuli while they performed visual judgments of kinship, similarity, or dissimilarity, and examined some priming effects involved. Our results show that kinship judgment takes longer on average than either similarity or dissimilarity judgment-which is compatible with existing models, yet might also suggest that kinship judgments are of a more complex character. In our priming study we observed selective suppression/enhancement of the efficacy of dissimilarity judgments whenever they followed similarity and kinship judgments. This finding confounds the notion, inherent in previous models, of resemblance cues signalling for kinship, since similarity and dissimilarity cannot be considered just as opposite concepts, and observed priming effects need to be explicitly modelled, including dissimilarity cues. To model kinship judgments across faces that are perceived as dissimilar, a new framework may be required, perhaps accepting the perspective of a task-driven use of the visual cues, modulated by experience and cultural conditioning.     

Low accuracy in judgments of others' psychological well-being as seen from a phenomenological perspective

The generally low degree of agreement between self-ratings on personality traits and ratings by others may be interpreted from the viewpoint that self-reports reflect people's experience of themselves but not necessarily their behaviors. A detailed analysis of self and other ratings on subjective well-being as a central dimension of human experience is consistent with this phenomenological view. Ratings of well-being were not significantly correlated with rated behaviors either in self-ratings or in ratings by others. Screening subjects in terms of avowed consistency and observability on a trait did not improve self-other agreement for well-being, nor did it replicate the individual trait effects reported by Kenrick and Stringfield (1980). Judgments by others were found to have poor interjudge reliability and to reflect biases associated with projection of own well-being and a halo effect organized around the subject's perceived friendliness or likability. It was demonstrated that pooling the judgments of several observers should not and does not lead to accurate prediction of the phenomenal personality, and that accuracy may generally depend on the level of self-disclosure.     

Disentangling similarity judgments from pragmatic judgments: Response to Sloutsky and Fisher (2012)

Sloutsky and Fisher (2012) attempt to reframe the results presented in Noles and Gelman (2012) as a pure replication of their original work validating the similarity, induction, naming, and categorization (SINC) model. However, their critique fails to engage with the central findings reported in Noles and Gelman, and their reanalysis fails to examine the key comparison of theoretical interest. In addition to responding to the points raised in Sloutsky and Fisher's (2012) critique, we elaborate on the pragmatic factors and methodological flaws present in Sloutsky and Fisher (2004) that biased children's similarity judgments. Our careful replication of that study suggests that, rather than measuring the influence of labels on judgments of perceptual similarity, the original design measured sensitivity to the pragmatics of task demands. Together, the results reported in Noles and Gelman and the methodological problems highlighted here represent a serious challenge to the validity of the SINC model specifically and the words-as-features view more generally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Time pressure and the application of decision rules: Choices and judgments among multiattribute alternatives

The effects of time pressure on decisions and judgments were studied and related to the use of different decision rules in a multiattribute decision task. The decision alternatives were students described by their high school grades in Swedish, Psychology and Natural Science. The subjects were asked to choose the student they thought would be most able to follow a university program and graduate as a school psychologist. On the basis of earlier findings using the same kind of decision task (Svenson et al., 1990) it was hypothesised that subjects under time pressure would prefer candidates having the maximum grade across all attributes to a greater extent than subjects under no time pressure. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that subjects under time pressure would also focus more on the most important attribute and choose the alternatives being best on that attribute. The results supported these hypotheses.     

Responsibility judgments and responses to people living with AIDS in China: testing an attributional perspective

With one in five individuals in the world living in China, there is an urgent need for HIV prevention and understanding HIV/AIDS stigma in China. This study applies an attributional analysis to Chinese students' responses to AIDS, examining effects of attributions of causal controllability for HIV infection on reactions to people living with HIV/AIDS. Students (n = 309) read one of two scenarios describing an AIDS patient and manipulating controllability of AIDS onset. Controllability of AIDS onset contributed to responsibility judgments, less positive affect, and lower desires to personally interact with the patient. Responsibility judgments predicted interaction wishes directly and indirectly through positive affect. Results provide support for Weiner's interpersonal attributional model. Implications for responses to AIDS in China are discussed.     

Extent,multiplying, and proportionality rules in children's judgments of area

The study examined children's use of multiplying and proportionality rules in judgments of area. In two experiments children judged the area of rectangles. Seven-year-olds used linear extent as an index of area. Eight- and nine-year-olds replaced the extent rule with the height × width rule. In a third experiment 8-through 11-year-olds were presented with a rectangle and a horizontal line representing the width of a second rectangle. Children were asked to indicate the height that would make the second rectangle equal in area to the first. The correct response was proportional to the product of the ratio of the widths of the two rectangles and the height of the first rectangle. Graphical and statistical analyses indicated that children applied the ratio rule to these judgments. The implications for Piaget's theory of cognitive development were discussed.     

Perceptual plane geometry: collinearity judgments probe the perceived orientation of an angle's sides

The task was to position a dot to lie one line length beyond the vertex of an angle by mentally extending one line segment forming the angle (and later the other line segment). Eight angles, variously oriented, provided judgmental errors attributable to the size of the subtended angle and line orientation. Collinearity errors are consistent with the hypothesis that the sizes of all subtended angles are underestimated. Horizontal-vertical assimilation describes the line-orientation effect. The largest error component is associated with the interaction of the two independent variables. Judgmental errors were modeled by a set of theoretically meaningful additive terms. Modeling was facilitated by symmetry assumptions (associated with odd and even mathematical functions) about the absolute magnitude and sign of judgmental errors that lead to the comparison of judgments derived from "interesting pairs" of stimuli.     

Children's judgments of relative number by one-to-one correspondence: A planning perspective

Factors influencing the use of a plan to judge the relative number of two sets by one-to-one correspondence were studied in three experiments with 4- and 5-year-old children. The plan used by a child was assessed by the pattern of responses shown over a series of different types of problems in which sets were arranged in parallel rows. One-to-one plans were used by children only when perceptual support was present that facilitated the pairing of elements. When the support consisted of lines that connected the elements in pairs, one-to-one plans were used spontaneously by nearly all children. When the support consisted of enclosing pairs of elements in the windows of a grid, one-to-one plans were not used initially but were adopted after the children had received experience in pairing the elements. The results were interpreted as indicating (a) that most children have one-to-one plans in long-term memory by 4 years of age and (b) that young children fail to use one-to-one plans in some situations either because they fail to retrieve them from memory or because they reject them as unworkable.     

The memorizing effort heuristic in judgments of learning: A developmental perspective

Recent work on adult metacognition indicates that although metacognitive monitoring often guides control operations, sometimes it follows control operations and is based on the feedback from them. Consistent with this view, in self-paced learning, judgments of learning (JOLs) made at the end of each study trial decreased with the amount of time spent studying the item, suggesting that JOLs are based on the memorizing effort heuristic that easily learned items are more likely to be remembered. Study 1 extended investigation to primary school children. Whereas for third to sixth graders (9- to 12-year-olds) JOLs decreased with increasing study time (ST), no such relationship was found for first and second graders (7- and 8-year-olds). For both age groups, however, recall decreased with ST, supporting the validity of the memorizing effort heuristic. Self-reports (Study 2) disclosed the belief that recall should tend to increase with ST. The results bring to the fore the importance of mnemonic cues that shape metacognitive feelings even among primary school children. These cues lie in the very feedback that learners gain on-line from task performance rather than in metacognitive knowledge, and their use may also contribute to increased monitoring accuracy with age.     

Interrelation of the effects of binocular disparity and perspective cues on judgments of depth and height

The effects of binocular disparity (aniseikonia) and perspective cues operating together on judgments of depth and height were studied, both when these stimulus variables operated in the same direction and when they were in conflict. Both depth cues were effective upon the perception of depth and height. The effects of binocular disparity and perspective cues upon perceived depth were found to be additive. The effects of these depth cues upon perceived height showed some interaction in the sense that, operating together, the effect of the perspective cue was stronger than the separate effect of the perspective cue, both when binocular disparity and perspective cues operated in the same direction and when they were in conflict. This interactive effect increased with increasing strength of the perspective cues. The size-distance invariance hypothesis was confirmed under the present experimental conditions. By a causal analysis of inference, this invariant relation could be explained in the following way: both the perceived depth and the perceived height of the sides of the patterns were directly determined by binocular disparity and perspective cues, but the perceived height was also indirectly determined through change of perceived depth. A direct causal relation between perceived depth and perceived height was found.     

A priori judgments and the argument from design

Conclusions At the outset of this discussion, I undertook to present an argument from design which would follow Swinburne's example in making use of a priori judgments, while avoiding some of the objections which have been posed in response to his treatment of these issues. So we need to ask: how does this approach to the question of design compare with Swinburne's?Swinburne argues that a chaotic world is a priori more likely than an ordered world: this consideration provides one central reason, on his account, for giving an explanation of some sort for the world's regularity. The other central argument he advances for this claim is the argument from analogy (in terms of the coins) which we noted earlier. The approach I have taken offers an alternative route to this same conclusion. In particular, it substitutes the simpler a priori judgments recorded in (i) and (ii) for the rather difficult and contentious claim that chaos is a priori more likely than order. In place of this claim, I have offered the judgment that order, or recurrence, is more likely given the activity of a common source or common kind of source than otherwise: this proposal does not commit us to a view either way on the question of whether order is a priori likely per se. Moreover, in place of Swinburne's analogical argument, I have offered an a priori approach, with the advantages I have noted.Given that recurrence is to be explained, we might ask: why offer an explanation in terms of design? On this point, Swinburne argues, for instance, that no other explanation of temporal regularity is even possible a priori. Again, the a priori principles which I have used, in (iv) and (v), may be less ambitious, but at the same time more persuasive. In support of this same idea, Swinburne also cites various ideas to do with the predictive power of the idea of design. I have tried to bring out the role of this sort of consideration in terms of my principle (v). Principle (iv) has no place in Swinburne's account, in view of his reliance on the principle of simplicity as a measure of prior probability.Lastly, we may ask: if we are to cite a designer, are there reasons for attributing to this agent more powers than are needed for the production of the effect to be explained? On this point, Swinburne cites the principle of simplicity. Again, my approach avoids what has proved to be a relatively controversial judgment about the nature of a priori probabilities, offering in place of the principle of simplicity the less ambitious principle recorded in (iii). At this point, I have moreover inverted the logical sequence of Swinburne's argument: it seems to me that, in the ways I have indicated, it is helpful to consider the extent of the powers of the source of recurrence before addressing the question of design.In these various ways, I hope I have made good my undertaking to present an argument which avoids some of the controversy surrounding the particular measures of a priori probability which figure in Swinburne's argument. Moreover, I hope that this approach provides an indication of how a priori judgments may function in a relatively unproblematic way within an argument from design, in so far as (i)–(v) are all rather modest proposals. In sum, the argument I have presented is distinguished by its explicit use of the a priori judgments recorded in (i)–(v), by its attempt to buttress in this fashion analogical forms of argument, and by the logical role it gives to the idea that the source of regularity possesses more powers than are required for the production of this effect.Lastly, we might ask: how persuasive is this argument? Of course, the cogency of the idea of design depends upon the balance of debate in other areas of the philosophy of religion, especially upon our ability to provide some account of the existence of evil. In this paper, I have been concerned to argue simply that recurrence by kind provides evidence for design: I have not addressed the question of whether other features of the world provide good evidence against the idea of (benevolent) design. However, if we confine our attention to this one phenomenon, there is it seems to me good evidence for the idea of design, (i) and (ii) suggest that recurrence surely calls for some explanation; (iii), together with the existence in nature of statistical irregularities, suggests that whatever provides this explanation could have brought about other effects besides; and design seems the only clear explanation of why this effect should have been brought about, if (as I have argued) analogies drawn from vegetable and animal reproduction fail, and if we cannot explain the effect satisfactorily by reference to the conditions of observation. Moreover, I have argued that there are reasons for supposing that the probability a priori of design is relatively high in relation to the probability a priori of any rival hypothesis of equivalent predictive power. In brief, this is because the design hypothesis (unlike the hypothesis of theism) can cite an agent of relatively indeterminate power in order to account for the phenomenon to be explained. In this regard, it is less precisely defined than any rival hypothesis of equivalent predictive power. If all of this is so, then as philosophers from early times have supposed, temporal regularity provides the basis for a powerful argument in favour of design. It remains true, of course, that its import can be judged in full only when we have taken into account the relevance of other phenomena, many of which are apparently less favourable to the idea of design.     

Personality disorder diagnostic thresholds correspond to different levels of latent pathology

To meet a diagnosis for a particular personality disorder (PD), among other requirements, a person must exhibit a specified minimum number of the features outlined for that PD, otherwise referred to as the diagnostic threshold. Despite many years of research on the DSM PDs, there is little empirical basis for the chosen thresholds. The present study used mechanisms of item response theory (IRT) to link the diagnostic thresholds of six PDs to their corresponding level of latent PD pathology. Consistent with our hypothesis, analyses of the data from 41,227 participants revealed that PD diagnostic thresholds corresponded to a wide range of latent pathology. For example, the diagnostic threshold for schizoid PD corresponded to 1.54 SDs of pathology whereas the threshold for dependent PD corresponded to 2.72 SDs of pathology. The current analyses have demonstrated for the first time that the latent pathology associated with each PD threshold varies widely, and thus has quantified what others accurately have speculated. Implications and considerations for the future directions of PD classification are discussed.     

Perceptual judgments with discrepant information from audition. and proprioception

Fifteen blindfoleded Ss judged the spatial- orientation of a bar. which rotated in the horizontal plane, by using proprioceptive and/or auditory information. Judgments were made when information from the two modalities was made to yield the same or conflicting spatial orientations of the bar. Both modalities were Individually capable of providing equally accurate judgments, yet, when an auditory-proprioceptive discrepancy was introduced, auditory judgments were strongly biased by proprioceptive input. Proprioceptive judgments were only minimally influenced by conflicting auditory information.     

An examination of within-person variance in contextual display rules and deviation from display rules

Contextual display rules refer to perceptions of the particular emotions that should be displayed in a specific set of circumstances. As such, it is important to examine within-person variance in such perceptions within the dynamic context of real-life organizations. To this end, experience sampling methodology was used to highlight within-person variance in display rules and examine event-level predictors of these contextual display rules. Thirty-nine university staff members were surveyed four times per day about their most recent interaction. Employee momentary affect (pleasantness and activation) and relationship with the interaction target (solidarity and relative power) were examined as predictors of both contextual display rule perceptions and deviation from those display rules. Pleasantness of affect related positively to the level of expression allowed by the display rule, whereas activation of affect and target solidarity related positively to deviation from display rules. Complex interactions were also found between the predictors, further highlighting the complexity of the emotional labour process.