Recognition is used as one cue among others in judgment and decision making

Three experiments with paired comparisons were conducted to test the non-compensatory character of the recognition heuristic (D. G. Goldstein & G. Gigerenzer, 2002) in judgment and decision making. Recognition and knowledge about the recognized alternative were manipulated. In Experiment 1, participants were presented pairs of animal names where the task was to select the animal with the larger population. In Experiment 2, participants chose the safer 1 out of 2 airlines, and 3 knowledge cues were varied simultaneously. Recognition effects were partly compensated by task-relevant knowledge. The compensatory effects were additive. Decisions were slower when recognition and knowledge were incongruent. In Experiment 3, compensatory effects of knowledge and recognition were found for the city-size task which had originally been used to demonstrate the non-compensatory character of the recognition heuristic. These results suggest that recognition information is not used in an all-or-none fashion but is integrated with other types of knowledge in judgment and decision making.     

Mentoring others: A dispositional and motivational approach

Dispositional and motivational variables related to the propensity to mentor others and to the provision of career and psychosocial mentoring were examined. Results indicated that prosocial personality variables (other-oriented empathy, helpfulness) related to willingness to mentor others and also accounted for unique variance beyond variables associated with life and career stages. Other-oriented empathy related to actual experience as a mentor. Results also indicated that motives for mentoring others differentially related to psychosocial and career mentoring.     

Blaming the victim: When disease-prevention programs misfire

This study sought to determine whether or not a disease prevention program might have anegative impact on attitudes towards disease victims. Knowledge of, and attitudes towards AIDS and several other serious diseases were assessed before and after college students viewed a filmed educational program on AIDS. Results showed that, compared to a control group, participants who had seen the AIDS film reported significantlygreater fear and dislike of a hypothetical AIDS patient. The film also significantly enhanced participants’ perceptions that AIDS is a preventable disease. Results are discussed in terms of the possibility that health-education programs emphasizing preventability may inadvertently increase peoples’ tendency to blame the victim. Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Society, Dallas, Texas, June 1990.     

When overconfidence is revealed to others: Testing the status-enhancement theory of overconfidence

The status-enhancement theory of overconfidence proposes that overconfidence pervades self-judgment because it helps people attain higher social status. Prior work has found that highly confident individuals attained higher status regardless of whether their confidence was justified by actual ability ( Anderson, Brion, Moore, & Kennedy, 2012). However, those initial findings were observed in contexts where individuals’ actual abilities were unlikely to be discovered by others. What happens to overconfident individuals when others learn how good they truly are at the task? If those individuals are penalized with status demotions, then the status costs might outweigh the status benefits of overconfidence – thereby casting doubt on the benefits of overconfidence. In three studies, we found that group members did not react negatively to individuals revealed as overconfident, and in fact still viewed them positively. Therefore, the status benefits of overconfidence outweighed any possible status costs, lending further support to the status-enhancement theory.     

Watching Eyes effects: When others meet the self

The perception of direct gaze—that is, of another individual’s gaze directed at the observer—is known to influence a wide range of cognitive processes and behaviors. We present a new theoretical proposal to provide a unified account of these effects. We argue that direct gaze first captures the beholder’s attention and then triggers self-referential processing, i.e., a heightened processing of stimuli in relation with the self. Self-referential processing modulates incoming information processing and leads to the Watching Eyes effects, which we classify into four main categories: the enhancement of self-awareness, memory effects, the activation of pro-social behavior, and positive appraisals of others. We advance that the belief to be the object of another’s attention is embedded in direct gaze perception and gives direct gaze its self-referential power. Finally, we stress that the Watching Eyes effects reflect a positive impact on human cognition; therefore, they may have a therapeutic potential, which future research should delineate.     

When Empathy is Not Enough: a Reflection on the Self-Experience of Black Boys in Public Spaces

This project explores the self-experiences of Black boys in public spaces, primarily in Chicago. Given the plethora of negative media attention placed on violence in the city and on violent encounters with law enforcement, this project asks how Black boys can experience themselves in a life-giving way when so many negative images and stereotypes denigrate their humanity. The author introduces the concepts of group-level racial delusion and demonic transference. The former term suggests a psychological split occurring at the societal level that historically has allowed emotional and physical violence to be disproportionately and callously inflicted on Black boys in public spaces, which society has internalized as normative while simultaneously extolling democratic and Christian values central to Western identity formation. The latter term suggests the interpersonal or group transference that occurs just prior to the infliction of emotional or physical harm on Black boys—a transference that is propped up by abject images and stereotypes of Black males. The article concludes first with reflections on a qualitative interview conducted with two groups of Black boys in Chicago pertaining to their self-experiences in public spaces and then with thoughts on future work.     

Evaluating the loved one: The motivational congruency factor1

As a test of the general hypothesis that the enduring motivations of the individual significantly influence the kind of evaluations he makes of the abilities and attributes of others in a direction congruent with the quality and magnitude of such needs, the evaluative responses of 120 persons constituting 60 engaged dyads were secured, and their needs measured by a modified version of the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule It was predicted that high levels of the needs for affiliation, nurturance, deference, intraception, dominance, succorance, and abasement would influence subjects to rate their partners more highly than persons with lesser magnitudes of these motivations, and that subjects scoring high on the needs for autonomy and aggression would tend to evaluate their loved ones less positively than subjects scoring low on these variables Comparisons in terms of difference scores of high- and low-scoring groups of subjects on each of the 9 motivational characteristics resulted in confirmation of predictions at usually high levels of significance in 15 of the 18 cases. The three comparisons failing to reach the conventional level of significance nevertheless revealed differences which were also in the predicted direction. The findings are interpreted as quite clearly supporting the hypothesized influence of particular motivations in interpersonal evaluations, an effect which has been referred to as the factor of motivational congruency.     

Supportive and unsupportive responses of others to rape victims: Effects on concurrent victim adjustment

Evaluated the impact that actions of significant others have on adjustment following rape. Significant other behavior is conceptualized as having two dimensions--supportive behavior and unsupportive behavior--and each dimension was measured using multiple items. Unsupportive behavior, but not supportive behavior, was found to bear a significant association to victim adjustment. Implications for those who work with victims are discussed.     

Knowing too much: using private knowledge to predict how one is viewed by others

People have more information about themselves than others do, and this fundamental asymmetry can help to explain why individuals have difficulty accurately intuiting how they appear to other people. Determining how one appears to observers requires one to utilize public information that is available to observers, but to disregard private information that they do not possess. We report a series of experiments, however, showing that people utilize privately known information about their own past performance (Experiments 1 and 2), the performance of other people (Experiment 3), and imaginary performance (Experiment 4) when intuiting how they are viewed by others. This tendency can help explain why people's beliefs about how they are judged by others often diverge from how they are actually judged.     

Empathy development from 8 to 16 months: early signs of concern for others

The study examined the responses of typically developing infants to the distress of another, prior to and following the transition to the second year. Infants’ responses to maternal simulations of distress and to a peer distress videotape were observed from 8 to 16 months, using an accelerated longitudinal design (overall n = 37). Modest levels of affective and cognitive empathy for another in distress were already evident before the second year, and increased gradually (and not always significantly) across the transition to the second year. Prosocial behavior was rare in the first year and increased substantially during the second year. Self-distress reactions were rare overall. Individual differences in cognitive and affective empathy assessed in the first year, particularly at 10-months, predicted the levels of prosocial behavior observed in the second year. No gender differences were found. Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Romantic Attachment,Empathy, and the Broader Autism Phenotype among College Students

Recent research suggests that mild autistic-like characteristics can be measured among relatives of individuals with autism and in the general population. These characteristics have been referred to as the broader autism phenotype (BAP), and include pragmatic language difficulties, aloofness, and rigidity. Evidence is growing to suggest that individuals with BAP encounter difficulties in their social interactions. Recent work demonstrates that college students scoring high on the BAP report more loneliness (Jobe & Williams White, 2007) and more interpersonal problems (Wainer, Ingersoll, & Hopwood, 2012). Because intimate relationships are important in development and are very salient in emerging adulthood, the authors examined the relation of the BAP to romantic attachment and empathy among young adults. Higher BAP scores were associated with lower empathy and higher attachment anxiety and avoidance. Specifically, pragmatic language difficulties were related to higher rates of avoidant attachment and this relationship was mediated by empathy. In contrast, pragmatic language deficits were directly related to anxious attachment.     

The object of my protection: Shielding fundamental motives from the implicit motivational influence of others

Goal shielding theory suggests that one's focal pursuits automatically inhibit the activation of interfering goals (Shah, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2002); however, it is not entirely clear how individuals come to identify what constitutes “interfering”. Three studies examine how this identification process may be guided by fundamental social motives that individuals possess, particularly in social situations wherein goals are primed through mere exposure to others' goal-directed behavior (“goal contagion”, Aarts, Gollwitzer, & Hassin, 2004). Participants' fundamental motives for positive self-regard (Study 1), autonomy (Study 2), and distinctiveness (Study 3) were either manipulated or measured and participants read scenarios that manipulated the goal-directed behavior of a target other. Results indicated that participants inhibited the activation of goals being primed by others when the implicit influence interfered with their fundamental motives in some way. These findings suggest that fundamental motives can guide whether individuals will catch goals from others or shield themselves from such influences.     

Quantity versus uncertainty: When winning one prize is better than winning two

We predicted that a state of uncertainty would prolong a positive mood, but that people would not anticipate this when making affective forecasts. In Study 1, participants learned that they had won one prize (certain condition), two prizes (two-gift condition), or one of two prizes (uncertain condition). People in the uncertain condition were in a positive mood longer than people in the other two conditions. In Study 2, forecaster participants underestimated the benefits of uncertainty and overestimated the benefits of quantity (getting two gifts instead of one). Under some circumstances, and contrary to people’s predictions, uncertainty can prolong positive mood, and winning one prize under a state of uncertainty can bring more short-term pleasure than winning two prizes.     

When people want what others have: the impulsive side of envious desire

Envy is the unpleasant emotion that can arise when people are exposed to others with superior possessions. Common wisdom and scholarly opinion suggest that when people experience envy they may be motivated to obtain the others' superior possession. Despite the vast interpersonal, societal, and economical consequences attributed to this potential aspect of envious responding, experimental demonstrations of the affective and behavioral consequences of envy-inducing situations are scarce. We propose that social comparisons with better-off others trigger an impulsive envious response that entails a behavioral tendency to strive for their superior good. However, given that the experience of envy is painful, self-threatening, and met with social disapproval, people typically attempt to control their envious reactions. Doing so requires self-control capacities, so that envious reactions may only become apparent if self-control is taxed. In line with these predictions, four experiments show that only when self-control resources are taxed, upward comparisons elicit envy paired with an increased willingness to pay for, to spontaneously purchase and to impulsively approach the superior good.     

When negative affect drives attentional control: The role of motivational orientation

According to recent theorizing, cognitive control and affective processing are closely linked. Specifically, it has been suggested that negative affect acts as a driving force for attentional adjustment. Empirical support comes from a study by van Steenbergen et al. (Psychol Sci 20:1473–1477, 2009) demonstrating that negative stimuli increase the congruence sequence effect (CSE), a behavioural marker that indexes attentional adjustment. In this research, we provide a theoretical analysis that identifies motivational orientation (approach vs. avoidance) as a potential moderator. To test this, we replicated the study by van Steenbergen et al. (2009) and additionally manipulated the motivational orientation of participants. Participants either gained extra money after task completion (gain-focused group) or lost money after task completion (loss-focused group). Results showed that negative stimuli boost attentional adjustment, but only in the loss-focused group. This finding highlights the role of motivation for recent theorizing on emotion-driven control.

     

Testing the relationships among negotiators’ motivational orientations, strategy choices, and outcomes

Previous research has established two-way relationships among negotiators’ motivational orientations, strategy choices, and outcomes. This article focuses on the less often investigated three-way relationship among these variables. A log-linear analysis demonstrated that in individualistically oriented dyads, low joint gain was associated with high levels of substantiation, demand, and proposal modifications. Joint gain improved when negotiators made multi-issue offers, used positional arguing, and introduced non-reciprocal sequences based on priority information. In cooperatively oriented dyads, high levels of priority information, process management, and reciprocal sequences characterized optimum outcomes. We conclude that optimum outcomes result from (a) multi-issue offers and indirect information under an individualistic orientation and (b) reciprocity and direct information under a cooperative orientation.     

Social cognition is not reducible to theory of mind: When children use deontic rules to predict the behaviour of others

The objective of this paper is to discuss whether children have a capacity for deontic reasoning that is irreducible to mentalizing. The results of two experiments point to the existence of such non‐mentalistic understanding and prediction of the behaviour of others. In Study 1, young children (3‐ and 4‐year‐olds) were told different versions of classic false‐belief tasks, some of which were modified by the introduction of a rule or a regularity. When the task (a standard change of location task) included a rule, the performance of 3‐year‐olds, who fail traditional false‐belief tasks, significantly improved. In Study 2, 3‐year‐olds proved to be able to infer a rule from a social situation and to use it in order to predict the behaviour of a character involved in a modified version of the false‐belief task. These studies suggest that rules play a central role in the social cognition of young children and that deontic reasoning might not necessarily involve mind reading.     

The effect of shame on anger at others: awareness of the emotion-causing events matters

Numerous studies have found that shame increases individuals’ anger at others. However, according to recent theories about the social function of shame and anger at others, it is possible that shame controls individuals’ anger at others in specific conditions. We replicated previous findings that shame increased individuals’ anger at others’ unfairness, when others were not aware of the individual’s experience of shameful events. We also found for the first time that shame controlled or even decreased individuals’ anger at others’ unfairness, when others were aware of the individual’s experience of shameful events. The results were consistent when shame was induced by either a recall paradigm or an imagination paradigm, and in either the ultimatum game or the dictator game. This suggests that shame strategically controls individuals’ anger at others to demonstrate that they are willing to benefit others, when facing the risk of social exclusion. Our findings highlight the interpersonal function of shame and deepen the understanding of the relationship between shame and anger at others.     

作为政治实践的“同情”:同情、审议民主与社会结构

在关于审议民主的讨论中,情感被认为:有损于认知,影响人们的判断;是主观的、个体的,难以形成普遍性的道德规范;会阻碍共识的达成。但关于情感的新的理解,为我们重新看待情感在政治生活中的意义提供了契机。本文关注的是同情在审议民主中的意义,在现有研究的基础上,将同情视为一个过程和一种实践,而不仅仅是一种心理机制。同情能够影响个体的判断,是健全理性的必要构成部分。情感有助于"角色承担",形成普遍化的立场和规范。同情也为我们重新设想"多元公众"提供了视角。但不平等的社会结构、距离、心理机制等因素都有可能阻碍同情的发生。"他者"的问题是政治实践所处理的重要议题。随着"他者"问题的凸显,作为政治实践的同情在未来的政治生活中将会扮演更为重要的角色。     

When one cue is not enough: Combining fast and frugal heuristics with compound cue processing

One-reason decision-making heuristics as proposed by Gigerenzer, Todd, and the ABC Research Group (1999) Gigerenzer, G. and Todd, P. M. 1999. “Fast and frugal heuristics: The adaptive toolbox”. In Simple heuristics that make us smart, Edited by: Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M. and the ABC Research Group. 3–34. New York: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar] have been shown to perform accurately. However, such strategies cannot deal with compound cues. We propose the Take The Best Configural Cue (TTB-Configural) as a fast and frugal heuristic that processes compound cues. In a series of three experiments, we analysed whether participants used this heuristic when making cue-based inferences on which of two alternatives had a higher criterion value. In two of the experiments, two cues were amalgamated into a valid compound cue by applying the AND or the OR logical rule, respectively. In the third experiment, there was no valid compound cue. Within each experiment, we also manipulated causal mental models through instructions. In the configural causal model, cues were said to act through the same causal mechanism. In the elemental causal model, cues were said to act through different causal mechanisms. In the neutral causal model, the causal mechanism was not specified. When a highly valid compound existed, and participants had a configural causal model, for the majority of them the strategy that could best account for their choices was TTB-Configural. Otherwise, the strategy that best predicted their choices was the Take The Best (TTB) heuristic.