Personality accounts for stable preferences and expectations across a range of simple games

Behaviour on even simple experimental games shows considerable individual differences, but previous attempts to link these preferences to stable personality traits have had mixed results. Here we address three limitations of earlier studies, namely: (1) uncertainties concerning the reliability of preferences; (2) use of personality instruments with limited cross-study comparability; and (3) confounds where more than one psychological motive can lead to a particular choice. Sixty-seven participants completed 12 distinct real-money games twice over a two-week interval along with 6 measures concerning their expectations about other players’ choices. Personality was measured using the full NEO-PI-R. Choices were highly stable across time (r = .84). Moreover, choices on the 12 games and 6 expectations reflected a single underlying dimension of “prosocial orientation”, measuring concern for the payoffs received by other players. Scores on the prosocial orientation dimension were related to personality, with openness, (low) neuroticism, and (low) extraversion retained as significant predictors.     

Determining Factors in Choice of Arcade Games and their Consequences upon Young Male Players

Two experiments, one conducted with male university students and the other with male high school and junior high school students, investigated (a) determinants of preferences for driving-type games widely available in public game arcades, and (b) the effects of extended play upon mood and motivation to continue playing. Four games were investigated: these were Death Race and Demolition Derby , which simulate violent, antisocial driving behavior; and Night Driver and Le Mans , which simulate skilled prosocial driving behavior. Preference for arcade games simulating aggressive behavior was found to be independent of personality and mood. However, preferences were closely related to the performers' c]apabilities. Players who exhibited higher levels of skill preferred the more skilldemanding games and those who showed less skill preferred aggression games, suggesting the operation of competency motivation in that the players preferred games appropriate to their level of skill. Subjects reported that the games were exciting, but extended play produced discomfort or an increase in negatively toned moods (fatigue, anxiety, and depression) and a decrease in positively toned moods (social affection, surgency, skepticism, concentration and vigor). However, these effects were not found to be a function of the anti- or prosocial content in the specific games studied and may well be effects accompanying activities that are subjectively fatiguing.     

A Social Dilemma Analysis of Commuting Preferences: The Roles of Social Value Orientation and Trust1

The current research advances a social dilemma analysis of commuting, examining the roles of preexisting personality differences in social value orientation (i.e., prosocial vs. proself orientation) and trust (i.e., a general belief in the honesty and cooperative intentions of others) in determining preferences for collectively desirable commuting options: preferences for commuting by public transportation (Study 1) and carpooling (Study 2). Consistent with predictions, both studies revealed that, relative to p of prosocials, preferences of proselfs were more strongly associated with beliefs about the relative efficiency of cars (i.e., an outcome affecting personal well-being). Also, greater preferences for collectively desirable actions were observed among prosocials with high trust—relative to prosocials with low trust and proselfs with high or low trust—providing support for the claim that 2 conditions (i.e., prosocial goals and trust in others) must be met to obtain collectively desirable commuting preferences.     

Asymmetric dominance and phantom decoy effects in games

In individual choices between alternatives x and y, the availability of a third alternative z, judged inferior to x but not to y, tends to increase preferences for x. Two experiments investigated corresponding strategic asymmetric dominance effects in games. In Experiment 1, 72 players chose strategies in six symmetric 3 × 3 games, each having one strategy dominating just one other, or in reduced 2 × 2 games constructed by deleting the dominated strategies. Asymmetrically dominated strategies, even when unavailable (phantom decoy), increased choices of the strategies that dominated them and bolstered decision confidence. In Experiment 2, 81 participants played 12 similar but asymmetric games with or without dominated strategies, and similar asymmetric dominance, phantom decoy, and confidence effects were found.     

亲社会视频游戏对玩家人性化知觉水平的影响

为了探讨亲社会视频游戏对玩家人性化知觉的影响, 研究以大学生为被试, 通过两个实验, 分别采用自陈报告法和单类别内隐联想测验技术考察了亲社会视频游戏对玩家自我及他人外显及内隐人性化知觉的影响。结果发现:(1)相对于中性游戏, 不论是普遍人性, 还是独特人性, 亲社会视频游戏均可提高玩家对自我及他人外显的人性化知觉水平;(2)相对于中性游戏, 亲社会游戏可显著提高玩家对自我及他人独特人性的内隐知觉水平, 也可提升对自我普遍人性的内隐知觉水平, 但对他人普遍人性的内隐知觉的效应不明确。这些结果表明, 亲社会视频游戏对于提升玩家对自我和他人的人性化知觉水平具有重要作用。     

Behavioural Consistency Within the Prisoner's Dilemma Game: The Role of Personality and Situation

Mixed‐motive games represent situations that confront people with a conflict between cooperative and non‐cooperative alternatives. Despite this common basis, recent research has shown that the consistency of people's choices across different mixed‐motive games is rather low. The present research examined behavioural consistency within the same mixed‐motive game, by presenting participants with a series of one‐shot Prisoner's Dilemma Games. Across this set of games, payoffs were manipulated in order to intensify or weaken the conflict between self and the other party while maintaining the game's underlying structure. Our findings indicate that significant differences in choice behaviour are observed as a function of both situational (i.e. manipulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game's payoff structure) and personality differences (i.e. individual differences in personality and motivational traits). Moreover, our included situational variables and personality features did not interact with each other and were about equally impactful in shaping cooperation. Crucially, however, despite the significant behavioural differences across game variants, considerable consistency in choices was found as well, which suggests that the game's motivational basis reliably impacts choice behaviour in spite of situational and personality variations. We discuss implications for theorizing on mixed‐motive situations and elaborate on the question how cooperation can be promoted. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

应激环境下亲社会性的增加：来自不同类型的亲社会偏好的研究证据

人们面临对生理或者心理产生威胁的应激事件时并不一定表现出敌意和攻击,也可能表现出更强的亲社会性。研究发现,基于利他动机、规则动机、策略性动机的或者基于自我报告的亲社会偏好在应激环境下都可能增强,这可能和应激环境下直觉增强、共情提升和亲社会行为有助于改善负面情绪方面的机制有关。未来研究可以从应激的性质、诱发方式、影响机制、个体差异和发展特征等方面去理解应激增加亲社会性的条件,从而提高群体韧性。     

The lone gamer: Social exclusion predicts violent video game preferences and fuels aggressive inclinations in adolescent players

Violent video game playing has been linked to a wide range of negative outcomes, especially in adolescents. In the present research, we focused on a potential determinant of adolescents’ willingness to play violent video games: social exclusion. We also tested whether exclusion can predict increased aggressiveness following violent video game playing. In two experiments, we predicted that exclusion could increase adolescents’ preferences for violent video games and interact with violent game playing fostering adolescents’ aggressive inclinations. In Study 1, 121 adolescents (aged 10–18 years) were randomly assigned to a manipulation of social exclusion. Then, they evaluated the violent content of nine different video games (violent, nonviolent, or prosocial) and reported their willingness to play each presented video game. The results showed that excluded participants expressed a greater willingness to play violent games than nonviolent or prosocial games. No such effect was found for included participants. In Study 2, both inclusionary status and video game contents were manipulated. After a manipulation of inclusionary status, 113 adolescents (aged 11–16 years) were randomly assigned to play either a violent or a nonviolent video game. Then, they were given an opportunity to express their aggressive inclinations toward the excluders. Results showed that excluded participants who played a violent game displayed the highest level of aggressive inclinations than participants who were assigned to the other experimental conditions. Overall, these findings suggest that exclusion increases preferences for violent games and that the combination of exclusion and violent game playing fuels aggressive inclinations.

     

Prosociality and morality through the lens of personality psychology

Prosociality and morality are critical to the functioning and flourishing of society. There is, however, great variation in the degree to which individuals help or hinder one another, or adhere to ethical standards of “rightness.” One way to understand this variation is by drawing on theories and models within personality psychology, which may illuminate the basic individual characteristics that drive a wide range of other-regarding tendencies. In this review, we provide a snapshot of three research strands addressing these themes. The first concerns how personality traits map onto prosocial preferences for fairness and cooperation, as studied using classic social decision-making tasks called economic games. The second concerns the robust associations between personality traits and indicators of inter-group prejudice (e.g., authoritarian ideology). The third concerns the emerging concept of moral exceptionality, and the personality traits that may characterise individuals at the forefront of moral progress. These examples demonstrate the core role that personality psychology is playing in the study of prosocial and moral behaviour, as well as the critical mass emerging in the Australian context around these themes.     

Behavioural consequences of regret and disappointment in social bargaining games

Previous research on the role of negative emotions in social bargaining games has focused primarily on social emotions such as anger and guilt. In this article, we provide a test for behavioural differences between two prototypical decision-related negative emotions-regret and disappointment-in one-shot social dilemma games. Three experiments with two different emotion-induction procedures (autobiographical recall and imagined scenarios) and two different games (the ultimatum game and the 10-coin give-some game) revealed that regret increased prosocial behaviour, whereas disappointment decreased prosocial behaviour. These results extend previous findings concerning differences between regret and disappointment to interdependent (social) situations.     

Adolescents' music preferences and personality characteristics

The present paper examined the structure of Dutch adolescents' music preferences, the stability of music preferences and the relations between Big‐Five personality characteristics and (changes in) music preferences. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of music‐preference data from 2334 adolescents aged 12–19 revealed four clearly interpretable music‐preference dimensions: Rock, Elite, Urban and Pop/Dance. One thousand and forty‐four randomly selected adolescents from the original sample filled out questionnaires on music preferences and personality at three follow‐up measurements. In addition to being relatively stable over 1, 2 and 3‐year intervals, music preferences were found to be consistently related to personality characteristics, generally confirming prior research in the United States. Personality characteristics were also found to predict changes in music preferences over a 3‐year interval. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Careers,contingencies, and locus of control among White college women

This study examined social-psychological antecedents of the sex type of occupational preferences and expectations of White college women. High sex-role contingency orientation (SRCO)—attitudes and explanations for occupational choices which reflect a primary and explicit concern with marriage and family—was associated with expectations and preferences for occupations in which females predominate and with the tendency to have more traditionally feminine expectations than preferences.SRCO was significantly related to locus of control (I-E) with women high or intermediate in SRCO being primarily internal or external; women with low SRCO being primarily intermediate in I-E.This study was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the Graduate Research Council of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.     

Agreeableness, empathy, and helping: a person x situation perspective

This research program explored links among prosocial motives, empathy, and helping behavior. Preliminary work found significant relations among components of self-reported empathy and personality (N = 223). In Study 1, the authors examined the generality of prosocial behavior across situations and group memberships of victims (N = 622). In Study 2, empathic focus and the victim's outgroup status were experimentally manipulated (N = 87). Study 3 (N = 245) replicated and extended Study 2 by collecting measures of prosocial emotions before helping. In Study 4 (N = 244), empathic focus and cost of helping as predictors of helping behavior were experimentally manipulated. Overall, prosocial motivation is linked to (a) Agreeableness as a dimension of personality, (b) proximal prosocial cognition and motives, and (c) helping behavior across a range of situations and victims. In persons low in prosocial motivation, when costs of helping are high, efforts to induce empathy situationally can undermine prosocial behavior.     

Let your preference be your guide? Preferences and choices are more tightly linked for North Americans than for Indians

Using experimental paradigms from economics and social psychology, the authors examined the cross-cultural applicability of 3 widely held assumptions about preference and choice: People (a) recruit or construct preferences to make choices; (b) choose according to their preferences; and (c) are motivated to express their preferences in their choices. In 6 studies, they compared how middle-class North American and Indian participants choose among consumer products. Participants in both contexts construct nonrandom preferences at similar speeds. Those in Indian contexts, however, are slower to make choices, less likely to choose according to their personal preferences, and less motivated to express their preferences in their choices. The authors infer that the strong link between preferences and choices observed among North Americans is not a universal feature of human nature. Instead, this link reflects the disjoint model of agency, which prescribes that people should choose freely on the basis of their preferences. In contrast, Indian contexts reflect and promote a conjoint model of agency, according to which agency is responsive to the desires and expectations of important others and may require restraining one's preferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

The development of social value orientation across different contexts

This study aimed to explore Chinese children's social value orientation across different ages and contexts. Revised decomposed games were used to measure the social value orientation of 9‐, 11‐, and 14‐year‐old children and college students as an adult group. About half of them were assigned to the hypothetical context of “equal payment group,” providing equal compensation for participation in the study, and the others to the “real payment group,” who got payment according to their own choices in the games. Results showed that 9‐ and 11‐year‐old children's choices differed between the two contexts: They made more prosocial choices in the hypothetical context, and more competitive choices in the “real payment” context. The 14‐year‐olds’ and adults’ choices were not significantly different in the two contexts. These results may imply that by 14 years of age, children have stable social value orientation, and their behavior reflects this value.     

Loss context enhances preferences for generosity but reduces preferences for honesty: Evidence from a combined behavioural-computational approach

The current literature has revealed mixed evidence on whether loss (vs. gain) context promotes or curtails human prosociality. The current study (N=96) aimed to address this issue by examining whether gain/loss context has distinct effects on different prosocial preferences combining computational modelling with Dictator Game and Message Game. These interactive games allow for dissociating preferences for generosity and honesty, which have been respectively associated with intuitive and deliberative systems. Our behavioural and computational modelling results indicate that loss context enhances concerns for generosity but reduces concerns for honesty. These findings support an account under the framework of dual process model asserting that loss facilitates intuitive responses during social decision-making, regardless of whether they are prosocial or proself. The current findings reconcile previous debates on the relationship between loss-gain context and human prosociality and shed light on the design of institutions to promote human prosocial behaviours.     

非暴力视频游戏中竞争情境对玩家合作倾向和攻击倾向的影响

使用中性视频游戏和亲社会视频游戏，采用单次双人给予倾向困境任务和辣酱范式分别测量被试的合作倾向和攻击倾向，旨在探究竞争性视频游戏情境对玩家合作倾向和攻击倾向的影响。结果发现：（1）在对合作倾向的影响上，无论是玩中性视频游戏还是亲社会视频游戏，竞争情境相比单人情境均能显著降低玩家的合作倾向；（2）在对攻击倾向的影响上，玩中性视频游戏，竞争情境相比单人情境能显著提高玩家的攻击倾向；但玩亲社会视频游戏，竞争情境与单人情境对玩家攻击倾向的影响差异不显著。本研究表明，游戏情境是影响玩家行为倾向的重要因素之一，在非暴力视频游戏中竞争情境对玩家行为倾向会产生消极影响，亲社会视频游戏在一定程度上能抑制竞争情境的消极效应。     

The Effects of Prosocial and Aggressive Videogames on Children's Donating and Helping

We investigated the effects of a prosocial and an aggressive videogame on children's prosocial behavior. Third-, fourth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade boys and girls (N = 160) were randomly assigned to either a control condition or one of four treatment conditions. In two of the treatment conditions, children played a videogame with prosocial content either singly or cooperatively with another child. In the other two conditions, children played an aggressive videogame either singly or competitively. Subsequent levels of donating and helping were measured. A three-way analysis of variance indicated that older students donated significantly more than did younger students. Children who played either of the aggressive videogames donated significantly less than did those who played prosocial games by themselves. No significant effects were found for helping. Playing the prosocial videogame did not increase prosocial responding, but playing the aggressive videogame tended to suppress this behavior. The failure of the prosocial game to accelerate prosocial responding might be due to the relatively brief treatments used in this study and/or to the particular prosocial videogame utilized.     

基于父母知觉的儿童人格结构及其发展的研究

该研究在家庭访谈的基础上编制了３,６,９,１２岁年龄组的人格问卷,并对北京和福州的７７７名３至１２岁儿童人格特点进行了调查。结果表明,这四份问卷均具有较好的信度和效度,对四份问卷在四个年龄组儿童的测查结果分析进行因素分析（主成分分析,ＰＣＡ）后发现,３至１２岁年龄组儿童的主要人格维度为：“智力”,“认真性”,“宜人性”,“外倾性”,“情绪”和“认真性”,“情绪稳定性”在我国儿童人格维度中不是一个比