Internet Safety and the Silver Surfer: The Relationship Between Gist Reasoning and Adults' Risky Online Behavior

Currently, fewer older adults are online compared with younger generations. However, with many new initiatives aiming to significantly increase the number of older internet users, they will increasingly be exposed to potential victimisation from internet fraud, a fundamental issue affecting all adult internet users. Despite this, little research has examined online risk‐taking across the adult lifespan or adults' reasoning about risky online behaviors. Using fuzzy trace theory, we investigated adults' online risk‐taking behavior and intentions, and whether these behaviors were related to different ways of reasoning about risk, namely, gist reasoning (using qualitative, intuitive knowledge) and verbatim reasoning (using quantitative, specific knowledge). Participants (326 adults, 18–79 years old, M_age = 49.54 years) reported their past risk‐taking behavior, future online risk intentions, gist and verbatim reasoning about online risk, sensation seeking, and time spent online. Age was negatively correlated with past risk‐taking, time online, future risk intentions, and sensation seeking. However, time spent online was positively related to future risk intentions, suggesting that spending more time using the internet could lead individuals to take more risks. Increased verbatim reasoning predicted increased intentions to take online risks, while gist reasoning predicted reduced intentions to take risks online. Our findings extend online risk research applying fuzzy trace theory to adolescents and young adults and suggest that online safety training incorporating gist‐based reasoning strategies could benefit all adults and, in particular, older generations. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intentions to report concussion symptoms in nonprofessional athletes: A fuzzy‐trace theory approach

Reducing concussion risks in athletes depends on self‐reporting. Often, athletes decide whether to report concussions or continue playing and risk serious health consequences. Fuzzy‐trace theory (FTT) predicts that reliance on gisty, categorical representations of risky decisions, not amounts of risk/reward, encourages risk avoidance and application of bottom‐line values, or gist principles, thus promoting healthy decisions. Applying FTT, we test whether intentions to report are predicted by gist‐based thinking about risks and values. High school and college students (N = 1,366) were assessed for concussion knowledge, social pressures to not report (by coaches/parents/teammates), categorical gist‐based thinking, endorsement of gist principles expressing values, and intentions to report. As expected, the older group scored higher on gist measures. For young adults, categorical thinking, and gist principles predicted intentions, controlling for sex, knowledge, and social pressures. For adolescents, categorical thinking again predicted intentions. For both age groups, adding FTT's predictors accounted for significantly more variance than baseline models.     

Tell Me What I Wanted to Hear: Confirmation Effect in Lay Evaluations of Financial Expert Authority

In real life, people engage in interactive decision processes by consulting with experts. However, before taking advice, they must recognise the authority of an expert to assess the quality of the advice. The main goal of this research was to investigate how the confirmation effect affects lay evaluations of the epistemic authority of financial experts. Experiment 1 showed that lay people tend to ascribe greater epistemic authority to those experts whose advice confirms people's opinions, both measured and manipulated. Experiment 2 revealed that when participants' own opinions are not salient, people tend to evaluate experts' authority as higher when their advice confirms social norms. In Experiment 3 we jointly investigated the effects of participants' own opinions and social norms on the evaluations of authority. When both sources of expertise were made salient, decision‐makers favoured advice confirming their own beliefs and used it to evaluate experts' authority. Three interpretations of the role confirmation plays in the experts' authority evaluations are proposed: (1) self‐defensive strategies; (2) processing fluency; and (3) psychological consequences of naïve realism. The paper discusses practical implications of the results. We propose that increasing consumers' knowledge about biases might protect their evaluations of financial advice from being susceptible to the confirmation effect.     

Mental health correlates of HIV risk behaviour and STIs/HIV infection among university students from 22 low,middle and high income countries

The aim of this study was to determine mental health correlates of HIV risk behaviour and self-reported STIs/HIV infection among university students in 22 low, middle and high income countries. Data on mental health and HIV risk were collected from 16 567 undergraduate university students (mean age 20.9, SD = 2.9) from 23 universities in 22 countries across Asia, Africa and the Americas. Results indicate that overall 16.8% of the students had two or more sexual partners in the past 12 months, and among the sexually active, 73.7% had inconsistently used a condom in the past three months with their primary sexual partner, 3.2% had ever been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection (STI) and 0.6% had been diagnosed with HIV. In multivariate logistic regression poorer mental health and child abuse (physical and sexual) were associated with HIV risk behaviour, and child abuse (physical and sexual) was associated with STI and HIV positive diagnoses.     

Physician decision making and cardiac risk: effects of knowledge, risk perception, risk tolerance, and fuzzy processing

Despite training, professionals sometimes make serious errors in risky decision making. The authors investigated judgments and decisions for 9 hypothetical patients at 3 levels of cardiac risk, comparing student and physician groups varying in domain-specific knowledge. Decisions were examined regarding whether they deviated from guidelines, how risk perceptions and risk tolerances determined decisions, and how the latter differed for knowledge groups. More knowledgeable professionals were better at discriminating levels of risk according to external correspondence criteria but committed similar errors in disjunctive probability judgments, violating internal coherence criteria. Also, higher knowledge groups relied on fewer dimensions of information than did lower knowledge groups. Consistent with fuzzy-trace theory, experts achieved better discrimination by processing less information and made sharper all-or-none distinctions among decision categories.     

Bartlett's schema theory: The unreplicated “portrait d'homme” series from 1932

In 1932, Frederic Bartlett laid the foundation for the later schema theory. His key assumption of previous knowledge affecting the processing of new stimuli was illustrated in the famous “portrait d'homme” series. Sequenced reproductions of ambiguous stimuli showed progressive object-likeness. As Bartlett pointed out, activation of specific schemata, for instance “the face schema”, biases memory retrieval towards such schemata. In five experiments (Experiment 1, n?=?53; Experiment 2, n?=?177; Experiment 3, n?=?36; Experiment 4, n?=?6; Experiment 5, n?=?2), we tested several factors potentially influencing retrieval biases—for example, by varying the general procedure of reproduction (repeated vs. serial) and by omitting versus providing visual or semantic cues for activating face schemata. Participants inspected face-like stimuli with the caption “portrait of the human” and reproduced them repeatedly under specific conditions. None of the experiments revealed a systematic tendency towards Bartlett's described case, even when the participants were explicitly instructed to draw “a face” like the previously inspected one. In one of the “serial reproduction” experiments, we even obtained contrary effects with decreasing face-likeness over the reproduction generations. A close analysis of the original findings raises questions about the replicability of Bartlett's findings, qualifying the “portrait d'homme” series more or less as an illustrative example of the main idea of reconstructive memory.     

Condoms,Sex, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Exploring Sexual Health Issues Among Asian-Indian College Students

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) continue to pose a serious risk to college students in the US. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the highest rates of STIs are among college students and adolescents. Specifically regarding Asian-Indian students, more research is needed to thoroughly understand the knowledge, attitudes and sexual behaviors of this population. A comprehensive review of the literature found a paucity of studies involving Asian-Indian involvement in sexual activity. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to fill gaps in the research. The present study examined Asian-Indian college students’ involvement in sexual behaviors, overall STI knowledge, condom use rate, perceived benefits and barriers to condom use, and history of STIs and STI testing. A five page survey was completed by 122 Asian-Indian college students. Results indicated that overall STI knowledge was low. Females, students who perceived fewer barriers to condom use and students who had lived in the US for at least 3 years held significantly higher STI knowledge levels than their counterparts. Such findings could be used by community and university-based health educators to more effectively serve the needs of Asian-Indian students.     

Knowing Who Knows: Laypersons' Capabilities to Judge Experts' Pertinence for Science Topics

Because modern societies are built on elaborate divisions of cognitive labor, individuals remain laypersons in most knowledge domains. Hence, they have to rely on others' expertise when deciding on many science‐related issues in private and public life. Even children already locate and discern expertise in the minds of others (e.g., Danovitch & Keil, 2004). This study examines how far university students accurately judge experts' pertinence for science topics even when they lack proficient knowledge of the domain. Participants judged the pertinence of experts from diverse disciplines based on the experts' assumed contributions to texts adapted from original articles from Science and Nature. Subjective pertinence judgments were calibrated by comparing them with bibliometrics of the original articles. Furthermore, participants' general science knowledge was controlled. Results showed that participants made well‐calibrated pertinence judgments regardless of their level of general science knowledge.     

Why are negative behaviours likely to be immediately invoked traits? The effects of valence and frequency on spontaneous trait inferences

People make trait inferences immediately when observing others’ behaviours. Previous studies reported that this spontaneous trait inference (STI) occurs more strongly from negative behaviours than from positive behaviours. However, what is responsible for this negativity bias in STI is unclear. In this study, two experiments investigated the effects of valence (an event's affective positivity or negativity) and frequency (how frequently the behaviour is observed in everyday life) on the occurrence of STI using an adapted version of a savings‐in‐relearning paradigm. Experiment 1 revealed that only valence affected the frequent occurrence of STI. In addition, the instructions to suppress impression formation or to focus attention on an actor's face made no difference to the results. In Experiment 2, the negativity bias in STIs was shown a week after exposure to the behavioural stimuli. These results suggest that the negativity bias in STIs occurs robustly, and the negative valence of observed behaviour is mostly responsible for the negativity bias in STI. The importance of immediate categorization of negative stimuli is discussed in terms of ecological priority.     

A construal level approach to understanding interpersonal processes

Construal level theory proposes that viewing events and objects from a distance (whether physical or psychological) leads individuals to construe them in more abstract, higher‐level ways. At high‐level construal, individuals focus on the overall gist or bigger picture, rather than on situationally‐dependent, concrete details. What patterns then emerge in how construal level relates to interpersonal processes? We find that an individual's construal level has implications for both (a) perceptions of others and (b) social influence. Specifically, our review suggests that high‐level (relative to low‐level) construal is related to greater holistic processing of the self and others by discussing literature linking construal level to person‐perception biases such as the fundamental attribution error and correspondence bias, as well as research on how construal level relates to stereotyping and prejudice. We further review a broad array of research examining social influence relating to self‐relevant feedback, the influence of aggregate versus anecdotal information, and the impact of abstract versus concrete language. We propose future avenues for CLT research relating to person‐perception biases, romantic relationships, stereotyping and prejudice, and the strategic use of construal level in the pursuit of specific interpersonal goals.     

Risk drinking and contraception effectiveness among college women

Risk drinking, especially binge drinking, and unprotected sex may co-occur in college women and increase the risks of STI exposure and pregnancy, but the relationships among these behaviors are incompletely understood. A survey was administered to 2012 women of ages 18–24 enrolled in a public urban university. One-quarter of the college women (23%) drank eight or more drinks per week on average, and 63% binged in the past 90 days, with 64% meeting criteria for risk drinking. Nearly all sexually active women used some form of contraception (94%), but 18% used their method ineffectively and were potentially at risk for pregnancy. Forty-four percent were potentially at risk for STIs due to ineffective or absent condom usage. Ineffective contraception odds were increased by the use of barrier methods of contraception, reliance on a partner's decision to use contraception, and risk drinking, but were decreased by the use of barrier with hormonal contraception, being White, and later age to initiate contraception. In contrast, ineffective condom use was increased by reliance on a partner's decision to use condoms, the use of condoms for STI prevention only, and by risk drinking. Thirteen percent of university women were risk drinkers and using ineffective contraception, and 31% were risk drinkers and failing to use condoms consistently. Risk drinking is related to ineffective contraception and condom use. Colleges should promote effective contraception and condom use for STI prevention and consider coordinating their programs to reduce drinking with programs for reproductive health. Emphasizing the use of condoms for both pregnancy prevention and STI prevention may maximize women's interest in using them.     

Pauses in elementary school children's verbatim and gist free recall of a story

The aim of the research was to explore the function of pauses in children's oral verbatim and gist-based free recall, assuming that pauses indicate cognitive processing. The main question guiding this research was whether verbatim and gist recall constituted two different ways of cognitive processing associated with different time patterns of speech. Elementary school children (n = 180) between the ages of 8 and 10 years heard a story and were then instructed to either retell the story verbatim or retell its gist. They orally recalled the story for the first time immediately after hearing the story and again 1 week later. The results confirmed the main hypothesis of independence of verbatim and gist traces in that mean pause lengths were longer when verbatim retrieval was asked for as compared to gist retrieval. High correct gist recall was characterized by more and shorter pauses, indicating fluent retrieval.     

Psychological and socio-demographic variables associated with sexual risk behavior for sexually transmitted infections/HIV

New diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV are rising in the adult population. The main objective of this study was to analyze whether knowledge of STIs/HIV, worry about STIs/HIV and pregnancy, and self-efficacy to refuse sex are predictors of sexual risk behaviors among Spanish young and adults. The study sample was composed of 1,106 young and adults of both sexes aged between 17 and 55 years. Results showed that being single, homosexual, having been tested for HIV, having previously contracted an STI, having a college education and earning a monthly income of €900 or more were the characteristics associated with higher scores in knowledge of STIs/HIV. Self-efficacy to refuse sex predicted most vaginal and anal sexual behaviors (i.e., age at vaginal and anal sex initiation and the number of couples that have remained vaginal sex). We also found that participants with greater knowledge of STIs/HIV reported older age at vaginal sex initiation and higher condom use in the first vaginal sexual contact. We consider that these findings can be useful for the development of STI/HIV prevention programs.     

A comparison of the risk‐taking behaviors of prisoners and non‐prisoners

Do prisoners and non‐prisoners differ in their risk‐taking behavior and the domains where they take risks? Surprisingly little psychological research has addressed these questions, despite the well‐established paradigms and extensive literature on risk taking among non‐prison populations. To fill this gap, we used the Domain‐Specific Risk‐Taking Scale to compare 75 male prisoners' and 75 male non‐prisoners' risk‐taking behavior, risk perception, and risk benefit in five domains (ethical, financial, health, recreational, and social). Our results show that prisoners and non‐prisoners did not differ in their risk‐taking behavior in the ethical, financial, recreational, or social domains. In the health domain, however, prisoners exhibited significantly higher risk‐taking tendencies. With regard to risk perception, prisoners perceived activities as significantly more risky than non‐prisoners, aside from the financial domain where non‐prisoners reported significantly higher risk perception. In all five domains, prisoners perceived risk‐taking activities as offering fewer benefits compared to the non‐prisoner sample. Our results also indicate that risk‐taking activities are better predicted by the expected benefits than by risk perception for both prisoners and non‐prisoners in the recreational, financial, and ethical domains. However, for prisoners, risk taking in the social domain increased with level of perceived benefit. In the health domain, prisoners' risk taking decreased with increasing level of perceived risk, whereas for non‐prisoners, perceived benefits, but not risk perception, predicted risk taking. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Semantic Coherence and Inconsistency in Estimating Conditional Probabilities

Two studies examined semantic coherence and internal inconsistency fallacies in conditional probability estimation. Problems reflected five distinct relationships between two sets: identical sets, mutually exclusive sets, subsets, overlapping sets, and independent sets (a special case of overlapping sets). Participants estimated P(A), P(B), P(A|B), and P(B|A). Inconsistency occurs when this constellation of estimates does not conform to Bayes' theorem. Semantic coherence occurs when this constellation of estimates is consistent with the depicted relationship among sets. Fuzzy‐trace theory predicts that people have difficulty with overlapping sets and subsets because they require class‐inclusion reasoning. On these problems, people are vulnerable to denominator neglect, the tendency to ignore relevant denominators, making the gist more difficult to discern. Independent sets are simplified by the gist understanding that P(A) provides no information about P(B), and thus, P(A|B) = P(A). The gist for identical sets is that P(A|B) = 1.0, and the gist of mutually exclusive sets is that P(A|B) = 0. In Study 1, identical, mutually exclusive, and independent sets yielded superior performance (in internal inconsistency and semantic coherence) than subsets and overlapping sets. For subsets and overlapping sets, interventions clarifying appropriate denominators generally improved semantic coherence and inconsistency, including teaching people to use Euler diagrams, 2 × 2 tables, or relative frequencies. In Study 2, with problems about breast cancer and BRCA mutations, there was a strong correlation between inconsistency in conditional probability estimation and conjunction fallacies of joint probability estimation, suggesting that similar fallacious reasoning processes produce these errors. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explaining contradictory relations between risk perception and risk taking

Different studies have documented opposite relations between perceived risk and behavior. The present study tested a theoretical explanation that reconciles these conflicting results. Adolescents (N= 596) completed alternative measures of risk perception that differed in cue specificity and response format. As predicted by fuzzy-trace theory, measures that emphasized verbatim retrieval and quantitative processing produced positive correlations between perceived risk and risky behavior; risk perceptions reflected the extent to which adolescents engaged in risky behavior. In contrast, measures that assessed global, gist-based judgments of risk produced negative correlations; higher risk perceptions were associated with less risk taking, a protective rather than reflective relation. Endorsement of simple values and principles provided the greatest protection against risk taking. Results support a dual-processes interpretation of the relation between risk perception and risk taking according to which observed relations depend on whether the cues in questions trigger verbatim or gist processing.     

Depth of processing and recall of threat material in fearful and nonfearful individuals

Abstract

Although many studies have examined the nature of memory distortions in anxious individuals, few have considered biases in specific memory processes, such as encoding or retrieval. To investigate whether the presentation of threat material facilitates encoding biases, spider fearful (n=63), blood fearful (n=73), and nonfearful (n=75) participants encoded spider related, blood related, and neutral words as a function of three levels of processing (i.e., structural, semantic, and self referent). Participants subsequently completed either a free recall or a recognition task. All participants demonstrated a partial depth of processing effect, such that they recalled more words encoded in the self referent condition than in the other two conditions, but groups did not differ in their recall of stimuli as a function of word type. Relative to participants in the other groups, spider fearful participants had fewer spider related intrusions in the recall condition, and they made fewer errors in responding to structural and semantic encoding questions when spider related words were presented. These results contribute to an increasingly large body of literature suggesting that anxious individuals are not characterized by a memory bias toward threat, and they raise the possibility that individuals with spider fears process threat-relevant information differently than individuals with blood fears.     

Nationwide survey of contraceptive and sexually transmitted infection knowledge,attitudes and skills of university students in Portugal

Sexually transmitted infections and (STIs) unintended pregnancies are contemporary public health concerns. Understanding factors (e.g. knowledge, attitudes and skills) influencing sexual behaviours of university students are critical to develop targeted and tailored risk-reduction interventions for this vulnerable population. Thus, the goals of this study were to describe sexual behaviours and analyze differences between genders for sexual behaviours; to identify whether differences exist between genders and age groups regarding knowledge, attitudes and skills concerning contraceptive methods and STIs, and to evaluate the association of knowledge with attitudes and skills with sexual behaviour among university students in Portugal. The sample included 3278 students. Results show that the majority were sexually active and use condoms and oral contraceptives. In general, university students have high knowledge, positive attitudes and skills about contraception and STIs. Gender analyses indicated that women had greater knowledge, and more favourable attitudes, and higher skills toward contraceptive and STI preventive behaviour College students, in particular, face new challenges in sexual health and would benefit from more comprehensive education aimed at promoting healthy decision-making about family planning and STI prevention.