Inferring causal networks from observations and interventions

Information about the structure of a causal system can come in the form of observational data—random samples of the system's autonomous behavior—or interventional data—samples conditioned on the particular values of one or more variables that have been experimentally manipulated. Here we study people's ability to infer causal structure from both observation and intervention, and to choose informative interventions on the basis of observational data. In three causal inference tasks, participants were to some degree capable of distinguishing between competing causal hypotheses on the basis of purely observational data. Performance improved substantially when participants were allowed to observe the effects of interventions that they performed on the systems. We develop computational models of how people infer causal structure from data and how they plan intervention experiments, based on the representational framework of causal graphical models and the inferential principles of optimal Bayesian decision‐making and maximizing expected information gain. These analyses suggest that people can make rational causal inferences, subject to psychologically reasonable representational assumptions and computationally reasonable processing constraints.     

President Bush's false [flashbulb] memory of 9/11/01

Many people claim to remember how they heard about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—including George W. Bush, the President of the United States at the time. On at least three occasions, the President was asked how he heard the news of the attacks. His answers contained substantial inconsistencies and provide a near‐perfect example of a false flashbulb memory. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The comparative mind-set: from animal comparisons to increased purchase intentions

Stimulating people to state a preference for one of two commercial products can increase their willingness to purchase not only one of these products, but also other products in a totally unrelated domain. However, willingness to make a purchase in a given domain (e.g., computers) can also be increased by asking individuals (a) to indicate which of two stimuli in a different domain (e.g., vacation packages) they dislike more, (b) to compare the relative attractiveness of wild animals, (c) to compare the animals with respect to physical attributes, and (d) to estimate how similar one object is to another. Moreover, the effects generalize to decisions about dating partners, as well as consumer products. In short, making any type of comparative judgment appears likely to give rise to a comparative-judgment mind-set and, therefore, to influence decisions in subsequent situations.     

Your Data are (Not) My Data: The Role of Social Value Orientation in Sharing Data About Others

The personal data consumers share with companies on a daily basis often also involves other people. However, prior research has focused almost exclusively on how consumers make decisions about their own data. In this research, we explore how consumers’ social value orientation impacts their decisions regarding data about others. In contrast to the notion of proselfs as “selfish” decision-makers, across four studies we find that proselfs are less likely than prosocials to share data about others with third parties. We show that this effect arises because proselfs feel less ownership over data they hold about others than prosocials, which in turn reduces their willingness to share it. Overall, this work contributes to literature on social value orientation as well as privacy decision-making and helps marketers and policy makers in designing interdependent privacy choice contexts.     

Cognitive-Perceptual Theory and the Projective Use of Autobiographical Memory

Most clinicians know little about the operation of autobiographical memory. Yet as assessment people, clinicians are frequently called upon to make important decisions about the individuals they evaluate. It is not surprising that clinicians are ignorant regarding many aspects of autobiographical memory because most have not been trained to understand how autobiographical memory functions. This article focuses on a vital domain of autobiographical memories—early memories—and discusses from a clinical perspective the purpose, function, and organization of autobiographical memory as seen by cognitive-perceptual theory.     

Temporal discounting for monetary and close relationship outcomes

The present study extended research on intertemporal choice—in which individuals choose between outcomes that may be received immediately or after a delay—to close relationships. In Experiment 1, New Zealand university students aged 18 to 25 made decisions about hypothetical monetary and relationship outcomes, and in Experiment 2, about relationship outcomes which emphasized companionate or sexual aspects (Ns = 64). Both experiments found effects of delay and magnitude on temporal discounting rates, and domain independence for choices about close relationships, similar to previous studies with monetary outcomes. There were no significant gender differences. Overall, results suggest that people make intertemporal choices about relationships according to a similar process used to make decisions involving other types of outcomes.     

Pogge on global poverty

Thomas Pogge has recently defended additional ways in which to eradicate poverty from the developing world. In this article, Pogge's argument is discussed. First the premises on which Pogge relies are summarized and the logic of ‘international borrowing privilege’ introduced. Then it is argued that Pogge's solutions to the poverty problem would face similar difficulties to many other solutions—that is, in order to work properly they all must gain extensive international support and political willingness, which they will not easily obtain. The final section looks at how the solutions might gain more support and why people tend to resist new suggestions.     

Self-Other Discrepancies in Waiting Time Decisions

Both anecdotal evidence and recently reported research suggest that people are risk-averse when faced with waiting time decisions. Four studies investigate whether there is a self-other discrepancy in how people make waiting time decisions themselves and how they predict others will make similar decisions. People are found to believe that others have valuations of time similar to their own. However, when faced with alternatives that involve risk in the duration of the wait, the results point to a self-other discrepancy, in that people report greater risk-aversion themselves than they think others would. Further, when faced with waiting time gains, people are themselves more risk-averse than they think others would be. Conversely, when faced with waiting time losses, people are themselves more risk-seeking than they think others would be. Overall, the results are consistent with the recently proposed risk-as-feelings hypothesis.     

The impact of pretrauma analogue GAD and posttraumatic emotional reactivity following exposure to the September 11 terrorist attacks: a longitudinal study

The relation between analogue generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) assessed the day before the events of September 11, 2001 (9/11) and long-term outcome was examined in 44 young adults who were directly exposed the following day to the terrorist attacks in New York City. After controlling for high exposure to the attacks, preattack analogue GAD was associated with greater social and work disability, loss of psychosocial resources, anxiety and mood symptoms, and worry, but not symptoms of posttraumatic stress, assessed 12 months after 9/11. Fear and avoidance of emotions assessed 4 months after 9/11 statistically mediated the relation between preattack analogue GAD and social and work disability, loss of psychosocial support, mood and anxiety symptoms, and worry at 12-month follow-up. Avoidance of emotions 4 months after 9/11 also mediated the relation between preattack analogue GAD and posttraumatic stress symptoms 12 months after 9/11.     

Standing Out From the Crowd: How Comparison to Prototypes Can Decrease Health-Risk Behavior in Young Adults

This research tested whether social comparison can encourage adolescents to make less risky health decisions. Two studies demonstrated that when young adults compare themselves with drinkers, they become less willing to drink if they perceive dissimilarity between themselves and those drinkers. When participants in Study 1 compared with someone who drinks regularly, their perceived similarity to prototypical drinkers was positively related to their willingness to drink. In Study 2, participants identified or contrasted themselves with prototypical drinkers; those encouraged to contrast who also felt less similar to the prototype reported less willingness to drink. These studies support the prototype/willingness model's assumption that prototypes affect willingness to drink through social comparison.     

Intuitive Political Theory: People's Judgments About How Groups Should Decide

Societies must make collective decisions even when citizens disagree, and they use many different political processes to do so. But how do people choose one way to make a group decision over another? We propose that the human mind contains an intuitive political theory about how to make collective decisions, analogous to people's intuitive theories about language, physics, number, minds, and morality. We outline a simple method for studying people's intuitive political theory using scenarios about group decisions, and we begin to apply this approach in three experiments. Participants read scenarios in which individuals in a group have conflicting information (Experiment 1), conflicting interests (Experiment 2), and conflicting interests between a majority and a vulnerable minority who have more at stake (Experiment 3). Participants judged whether the group should decide by voting, consensus, leadership, or chance. Overall, we find that participants prefer majority‐rule voting over consensus, leadership, and chance when a group has conflicting interests or information. However, participants' support for voting is considerably diminished when the group includes a vulnerable minority. Hence, participants showed an intuitive understanding of Madison's concerns about tyranny of the majority.     

Thinking about Others versus Another: Three Reasons Judgments about Collectives and Individuals Differ

In this article, we review evidence that people are more positive in assessments of specific individuals than they are about collectives of others, even when people have essentially no information about the individual or collective they are judging. We offer three explanations for this difference. First, evaluative “attacks” on individuals are more aversive than similar attacks on collectives. Second, to encourage or smooth interaction, people sometimes “assume the best” about individuals until proven wrong. Social interaction occurs between specific individuals, so such optimism does not extend to people in general. Third, in making judgments of individuals versus collectives, people naturally focus on different types of information. For an individual, people spontaneously consider influences that operate inside an individual (e.g., one's will, one's moral conscience). But for collectives, people instead contemplate influences that operate at a social level (e.g., social influence, social norms). We explore how these three proposals help predict when judgments of individuals and collectives do or do not differ.     

Nameless + harmless = blameless: When seemingly irrelevant factors influence judgment of (un)ethical behavior

People often make judgments about the ethicality of others’ behaviors and then decide how harshly to punish such behaviors. When they make these judgments and decisions, sometimes the victims of the unethical behavior are identifiable, and sometimes they are not. In addition, in our uncertain world, sometimes an unethical action causes harm, and sometimes it does not. We argue that a rational assessment of ethicality should not depend on the identifiability of the victim of wrongdoing or the actual harm caused if the judge and the decision maker have the same information. Yet in five laboratory studies, we show that these factors have a systematic effect on how people judge the ethicality of the perpetrator of an unethical action. Our studies show that people judge behavior as more unethical when: (1) identifiable vs. unidentifiable victims are involved and (2) the behavior leads to a negative rather than a positive outcome. We also find that people’s willingness to punish wrongdoers is consistent with their judgments, and we offer preliminary evidence on how to reduce these biases.     

Quasi-realism and fundamental moral error1

A common first reaction to expressivist and quasi-realist theories is the thought that, if these theories are right, there's some objectionable sense in which we can't be wrong about morality. This worry turns out to be surprisingly difficult to make stick—an account of moral error as instability under improving changes provides the quasi-realist with the resources to explain many of our concerns about moral error. The story breaks down, though, in the case of fundamental moral error. This is where the initial worry finally sticks—quasi-realism tells me that I can't be fundamentally wrong about morality, though others can.     

The Wisdom of Individuals: Exploring People's Knowledge About Everyday Events Using Iterated Learning

Determining the knowledge that guides human judgments is fundamental to understanding how people reason, make decisions, and form predictions. We use an experimental procedure called 'iterated learning,' in which the responses that people give on one trial are used to generate the data they see on the next, to pinpoint the knowledge that informs people's predictions about everyday events (e.g., predicting the total box office gross of a movie from its current take). In particular, we use this method to discriminate between two models of human judgments: a simple Bayesian model ( Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006 ) and a recently proposed alternative model that assumes people store only a few instances of each type of event in memory (Min K ; Mozer, Pashler, & Homaei, 2008 ). Although testing these models using standard experimental procedures is difficult due to differences in the number of free parameters and the need to make assumptions about the knowledge of individual learners, we show that the two models make very different predictions about the outcome of iterated learning. The results of an experiment using this methodology provide a rich picture of how much people know about the distributions of everyday quantities, and they are inconsistent with the predictions of the Min K model. The results suggest that accurate predictions about everyday events reflect relatively sophisticated knowledge on the part of individuals.     

Effects of perceived scrutiny on participant memory for social interactions

It is well known that passive audiences can impair performance on all but the simplest of tasks. The present research asked whether audience impairment effects occur as well when performers do not know, but only imagine that they are being watched, when performers are interacting with rather than merely being observed by the “audience,” and when the performance in question is one to which the audience has no access—namely, the encoding of information exchanged in a dyadic interaction. The hypothesis was that worry about being evaluated interferes with effective information processing, but only for time periods during which one of two interactants entertains distracting thoughts about the other person's possible scrutiny. To model this situation, pairs of unacquainted university students were asked to exchange opinions over a “TV phone.” On some trials one subject's image appeared on both monitors, on some trials the other subject's image appeared on both monitors, and on some trials both monitors were blank. In subsequent unanticipated recognition memory tests, participants remembered fewer of the opinions expressed during time periods when their own image was shown. This occurred even when nothing about participants' overt behavior affected the memory of observers, even when the TV images were supposedly incidental to the task, and even when the periods of scrutiny occurred at random 15-sec intervals, but the effect was limited to subjects who worry about the impression they make, and to time periods when their image was available to the other participants (not just to themselves).     

Psychological models of professional decision making

People are often expected to make decisions based on allof the relevant information, weighted and combined appropriately. Under manyconditions, however, people use heuristic strategies that depart from thisideal. I tested the ability of two models to predict bail decisions made byjudges in two courts. In both courts, a simple heuristic proved to be abetter predictor of judicial decisions than a more complex model thatinstantiated the principles of due process. Specifically, judges were"passing the buck" because they relied on decisions madeby the police, prosecution, and previous bench. Problematically, theseearlier decisions were not significantly related to case characteristics.These findings have implications for the types of models researchers use tocapture professional decision-making policies.     

Willingness to fake: Examining the impact of competitive climate and hiring situations

Applicants may be willing to fake in job interviews with the aim of creating a positive impression. In two vignette‐based experiments, we examined if a competitive—versus noncompetitive—climate (Study 1) and hiring situation (Study 2) increased participants' willingness to fake. We also examined if Honesty–Humility and Competitive Worldviews moderated the relation between willingness to fake and how competitive participants believed they must be in order to secure the job. Results demonstrated that a competitive climate and hiring situation increased willingness to fake. Honesty–Humility and Competitive Worldviews were related to willingness to fake, but these relations did not change substantially at different levels of perceived need for competitiveness. Overall, results lend some theoretical support to propositions about applicant faking.     

Selective exposure and decision framing: The impact of gain and loss framing on confirmatory information search after decisions

When people make decisions, they often prefer to receive information that supports rather than conflicts with their decision. To date, this effect has mainly been investigated in the context of decisions about gains, whereas decisions about losses have received less attention. Based on Prospect Theory, we expected information search to be differently affected by whether people previously have decided about gains or losses. Three studies have revealed that selectivity of information search is stronger after gain-framed rather than after loss-framed decision problems. An investigation of the underlying psychological processes revealed that gain decisions are made with increased subjective decision certainty (i.e. they are easier and less effortful to make), which in turn systematically increases confirmatory information search.     

Consumer decisions in relationships

Most research on consumer choice assumes that decisions are usually made by individuals, and that these decisions are based on an individual's personal attitudes, beliefs, and preferences. Yet, much consumer behavior—from joint decisions to individual choices—is directly or indirectly shaped by people with whom we have some relationship. In this target article, we examine how each member in a relationship can affect how consumer decisions are made. After reviewing foundational work in the area, we introduce a powerful and statistically sophisticated methodology to study decisions within relationships—a dyadic framework of decision-making. We then discuss how the study of consumer decisions in relationships can be informed by different theories in the relationships field, including attachment, interdependence, social power, communal/exchange orientations, relationship norms, and evolutionary principles. By building on the seminal foundations of prior joint-decision making research with theories and methods from contemporary relationship science, we hope to facilitate the integration of the consumer and relationships literature to better understand and generate novel hypotheses about consumer decisions in relationships.