Group vs Individual Performance in Mixed-Motive Situations: Exploring an Inconsistency

Previous research has shown that groups, as compared to individuals, perform better on integrative bargaining tasks (Thompson, Peterson, & Brodt, 1996), but worse on dilemma tasks (i.e., the “discontinuity effect”; Schopler & Insko, 1992). After reaching agreement on either a cooperative or a competitive integrative bargaining task in one of three formats (three-person group vs three-person group, three-person group vs a single individual, and individual vs individual), participants were given the opportunity to either keep the agreement or defect within a prisoner's dilemma payoff structure. Groups earned more points than individuals in the bargaining task, but continued to show the discontinuity effect even in the cooperative condition. Results are interpreted in terms of shared motives for group defection, which differed depending on whether the opponent was an individual or a group.     

The paradox of moral focus

When we evaluate moral agents, we consider many factors, including whether the agent acted freely, or under duress or coercion. In turn, moral evaluations have been shown to influence our (non-moral) evaluations of these same factors. For example, when we judge an agent to have acted immorally, we are subsequently more likely to judge the agent to have acted freely, not under force. Here, we investigate the cognitive signatures of this effect in interpersonal situations, in which one agent (“forcer”) forces another agent (“forcee”) to act either immorally or morally. The structure of this relationship allowed us to ask questions about both the “forcer” and the “forcee.” Paradoxically, participants judged that the “forcer” forced the “forcee” to act immorally (i.e. X forced Y), but that the “forcee” was not forced to act immorally (i.e. Y was not forced by X). This pattern obtained only for human agents who acted intentionally. Directly changing participants’ focus from one agent to another (forcer versus forcee) also changed the target of moral evaluation and therefore force attributions. The full pattern of judgments may provide a window into motivated moral reasoning and focusing bias more generally; participants may have been motivated to attribute greater force to the immoral forcer and greater freedom to the immoral forcee.     

Remembering Friends as Not So Friendly in Competitive and Bargaining Social Interactions

From children's schoolyard play to executives' boardroom negotiations, competitive and bargaining interactions are common to everyday life. Sometimes, the interacting parties are socially close and sometimes not. In this research, we examine how friendship influences memory for actions in such interactions. Dyads consisting of either friends or strangers played a competitive card game (Study 1) or the ultimatum game (Studies 2 and 4) and then recalled the interaction. We find that participants remembered friends' play as more competitive (Study 1) and less generous (Studies 2 and 4) than strangers' play, even when friends' actual play was more generous than that of strangers (Studies 2 and 4). Friendship did not affect recall for one's own play. In a workplace setting, Study 3 reveals people expect more of work colleagues who are friends than of work colleagues who are acquaintances. Study 4 tests our complete model and shows that people expect more of friends than of strangers and that this difference in expectations explains the less favorable memory for friend's actions. Our findings are consistent with a negative disconfirmation account whereby people expect their friends to be less competitive and more generous, and when these expectations are violated, people remember friends' actions more negatively than they actually were. Much research shows positive effects of friendship norms on actual behavior. We demonstrate a negative effect on people's memory of friends' behavior in competitive and bargaining social interactions. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eye movement suppression interferes with construction of object-centered spatial reference frames in working memory

The brain’s frontal eye fields (FEF), responsible for eye movement control, are known to be involved in spatial working memory (WM).In a previous fMRI experiment (Wallentin, Roepstorff & Burgess, Neuropsychologia, 2008) it was found that FEF activation was primarily related to the formation of an object-centered, rather than egocentric, spatial reference frame. In this behavioral experiment we wanted to demonstrate a causal relationship between eye movement control and manipulation of spatial reference frames. Sixty-two participants recalled either spatial (“Was X in front of Y?”) or non-spatial (“Was X darker than Y?”) relations in a previously shown image containing two to four objects, each with an intrinsic orientation and unique luminance. During half of all recall trials a moving visual stimulus was presented, which participants had to ignore, thus suppressing eye movement. Response times were significantly slower for spatial relations with distraction while there was no effect on non-spatial relations. There was no effect on accuracy, i.e. WM maintenance. This is consistent with the hypothesis that in spatial representations the FEFs are involved in WM content manipulation, such as establishing an object-centered spatial frame of reference.     

Ginzberg's theory of occupational choice: A reanalysis of increasing realism

A causal model of indicators was derived from Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Axelrad, and Herma's developmental framework of occupational choice. This theoretical perspective suggests that high school age adolescents' “fantasy” choices are diverted into more “realistic” anticipations mainly through awareness of the work world and work roles and perceived “reality factors” (perceived goal-blocks) which function to inhibit the maintenance of such “fantasy” desires. Panel data from a three-state sample of nonmetropolitan Southern males interviewed while in the tenth-grade in 1966 and reinterviewed in 1968 were examined using path analytic models. Findings suggest that “realistic” choices (expectations) demonstrate an increasing dissociation from earlier “fantasy” choices (aspirations) primarily through the formation of perceived “reality factors.” An alternative model which incorporates race as a predetermined variable seems to indicate that racial differences in occupational knowledge affect the formation of perceived “reality factors” which are significant mediators of social origin for high school seniors' occupational expectations. While race affects occupational knowledge directly, most of the causal effects of race on 1968 expectations are actually due to the association of race with SES. Areas of other research are specified.     

The effects of commitment to threats and promises upon bargaining behaviour and outcomes

The course of bargaining is determined in part by interdependent individuals exchanging messages so as to influence other's behaviour, and thereby to increase the likelihood of achieving outcomes consistent with their own goals. The communication of threats and promises are two major message strategies that are employed to influence the behaviour of others in a bargaining relationship. The present study examines the effects of players' level of commitment to these forms of message strategies upon behaviour in a duopoly bargaining task. Past research has oprationalized commitment in terms of the consistency with which an individual has followed through on threats or promises in the past. In the present research, Becker's (1960) concept of a side-bet is employed to provide an alternative means for defining and manipulating commitment. A side-bet obtains when either a threatener or a promiser posts a valued resource, say a bond, which they forfeit if they do not follow through on their stated threat or promise. The main expectations of the present study were that increased commitment to threat meassages would lead to more competitive behaviour and outcomes within a duopoly bargaining task, whereas increased commitment to promise messages would produce more cooperative behaviour and outcomes. Partial support for these major expectations, as well as confirmation of a number of secondary expectations, was obtained.     

Assessment of the learning curve from the California Verbal Learning Test—Children's Version with the first-order system transfer function

A mathematical model is proposed to measure the learning curve in the California Verbal Learning Test–Children's Version. The model is based on the first-order system transfer function in the form Y = B3*exp[-B2*(X-1)]+B4*{1-exp[-B2*(X-1)]}, where X is the trial number, Y is the number of recalled correct words, B2 is the learning rate, B3 is interpreted as readiness to learn and B4 as the ability to learn. Children's readiness to learn and ability to learn were lower than adults. Modeling revealed that girls had greater readiness to learn and ability to learn than boys.     

Updating the Baldwin effect : The biological levels behind Piaget's new theory

In 1964, Conrad Waddington (1905–1975) presented a paper in Geneva that led to an internal reassessment of the biological underpinnings of Jean Piaget's (1896–1980) theory. This in turn resulted in an overhaul of the theoretical framework upon which his stage theory of child development had been based, including his appeals to James Mark Baldwin's (1861–1934) “circular reaction.” In addition to leading to the emergence of what has elsewhere been called “Piaget's new theory,” this renovation also resulted in the update of the famous “Baldwin Effect.” Because aspects of the subsequent framework are of contemporary significance, this essay will review some of the work leading up to those updates. In reaching behind the translations to trace the sources of the arguments to which Piaget appealed, the resulting examination fills some of the gaps found in the secondary literature without quibbling over the “correct” English interpretation of translated French terms. We also go beyond how Piaget's writings have been understood in English and extract some useful additional ideas from his sources, including how to conceive of the social context in which development takes place. We see as a result how Waddington and his colleagues, including Paul Weiss (1898–1989), provided a constructive “existence proof” for the formal hierarchy of levels that Piaget had come to by other means.     

The perceptual push: The interplay of implicit cues and explicit situational construals on behavioral intentions in the Prisoner’s Dilemma

Although it is clear that nonconscious primes can affect behavioral decisions, the extent to which the prime-to-behavior link is mediated by intervening interpretative processes is still unknown. The present research examined the mediational role of “situational construals” by assessing the effects of cooperative versus competitive primes on participants’ construals of, and responses to, the prisoner’s dilemma. As predicted, this priming manipulation influenced participants’ construals of the game (assessed by the participants’ ratings of the appropriateness of different “names for the game” and their estimates of how random others would play), and their own expressed willingness to cooperate versus defect. Most crucially, a mediational analysis and a manipulation of the order in which these dependent variables were measured established that the prime-to-behavior link can be strengthened by an intervening task calling for explicit construal of the situation. The interplay of situational construal and implicit primes in producing deliberative behavior is discussed.     

Nonmaternal care hours and temperament predict infants’ proximity-seeking behavior and attachment subgroups

Using the NICHD Early Childcare dataset (N = 1281), this study examined whether infant temperament and the amount of time infants spend in nonmaternal care independently predict (1) the likelihood that they seek comfort from their mother when needed and (2) placement in a particular subgroup of infant-mother attachment patterns. Mothers reported the number of hours their infant spent in nonmaternal care each month and their infant's difficulty adapting to novel stimuli at 6 months. The degree to which 15-month-old infants seek comfort from their mother during reunion episodes in the Strange Situation was observed using two behavioral scales (“proximity seeking” and “contact maintaining”). Their average score forms the outcome variable of “proximity-seeking behavior.” The other outcome variables were the subgroups of infant-mother attachment patterns: two subgroups for insecure babies (resistant and avoidant) and four subgroups for secure babies (B1, B2, B3, and B4). Easy adaptability to novel stimuli and long hours of nonmaternal care independently predicted a low level of proximity-seeking behavior. These predictors also increased the likelihood of an insecure infant being classified as avoidant (vs. resistant). A secure infant with these same predictors was most likely to be classified as B1, followed by B2, and then B3, with B4 being the least likely classification. Although previous studies using the NICHD dataset found that hours of nonmaternal care had no main effect on infants’ attachment security (vs. insecurity), this study demonstrates that hours of nonmaternal care predict the subcategories of infant-mother attachment.     

Factors affecting the magnitude of subjective utility parameters in a tacit bargaining game

Eighty male and female high school students played a modified version of the Siegel and Fouraker (1960) bilateral monopoly game, designed to assess the effects of two variables upon the development of aspiration level (AL), comparison level (CL), and comparison level for alternatives (CL_nlt), and the interrelationships among these three subjective-utility parameters. Magnitude of: (a) the offers made by a programmed bargaining opponent (high vs low), and (b) the alternative to the bargaining relationship (high vs low) was varied in a 2 × 2 design. Subjects receiving high offers bargained tougher, rated themselves as more satisfied with their outcomes and, in support of the hypothesis, set their AL, CL, and CL_alt estimates higher than those receiving low offers. Contrary to expectation, however, AL, CL, and CL_alt were set highest by subjects in the “high offer-low alternative” condition. When subjects' three subjective-utility estimates were considered in relation to one another, all condition differences disappeared. These latter findings were interpreted using notions drawn from Upshaw's (1969) variable perspective theory of judgment.     

Observed actions affect body-specific associations between space and valence

Right-handers tend to associate “good” with the right side of space and “bad” with the left. This implicit association appears to arise from the way people perform actions, more or less fluently, with their right and left hands. Here we tested whether observing manual actions performed with greater or lesser fluency can affect observers' space–valence associations. In two experiments, we assigned one participant (the actor) to perform a bimanual fine motor task while another participant (the observer) watched. Actors were assigned to wear a ski glove on either the right or left hand, which made performing the actions on this side of space disfluent. In Experiment 1, observers stood behind the actors, sharing their spatial perspective. After motor training, both actors and observers tended to associate “good” with the side of the actors' free hand and “bad” with the side of the gloved hand. To determine whether observers' space–valence associations were computed from their own perspectives or the actors', in Experiment 2 we asked the observer to stand face-to-face with the actor, reversing their spatial perspectives. After motor training, both actors and observers associated “good” with the side of space where disfluent actions had occurred from their own egocentric spatial perspectives; if “good” was associated with the actor's right-hand side it was likely to be associated with the observer's left-hand side. Results show that vicarious experiences of motor fluency can shape valence judgments, and that observers spontaneously encode the locations of fluent and disfluent actions in egocentric spatial coordinates.     

The meaning of “significance” for different types of research [translated and annotated by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers,Denny Borsboom,Josine Verhagen,Rogier Kievit,Marjan Bakker,Angelique Cramer,Dora Matzke,Don Mellenbergh,and Han L. J. van der Maas]

Adrianus Dingeman de Groot (1914–2006) was one of the most influential Dutch psychologists. He became famous for his work “Thought and Choice in Chess”, but his main contribution was methodological — De Groot co-founded the Department of Psychological Methods at the University of Amsterdam (together with R. F. van Naerssen), founded one of the leading testing and assessment companies (CITO), and wrote the monograph “Methodology” that centers on the empirical-scientific cycle: observation–induction–deduction–testing–evaluation. Here we translate one of De Groot's early articles, published in 1956 in the Dutch journal Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie en Haar Grensgebieden. This article is more topical now than it was almost 60 years ago. De Groot stresses the difference between exploratory and confirmatory (“hypothesis testing”) research and argues that statistical inference is only sensible for the latter: “One ‘is allowed’ to apply statistical tests in exploratory research, just as long as one realizes that they do not have evidential impact”. De Groot may have also been one of the first psychologists to argue explicitly for preregistration of experiments and the associated plan of statistical analysis. The appendix provides annotations that connect De Groot's arguments to the current-day debate on transparency and reproducibility in psychological science.     

Spatial cueing in time–space synesthetes: An event-related brain potential study

Some people report that they consistently and involuntarily associate time events, such as months of the year, with specific spatial locations; a condition referred to as time–space synesthesia. The present study investigated the manner in which such synesthetic time–space associations affect visuo-spatial attention via an endogenous cuing paradigm. Reaction times and ERPs were recorded as 12 time–space synesthetes and 12 control participants did a peripheral target detection task, cued by three different types of centrally presented cues: arrows pointing left or right, direction words “left” or “right”, and month names associated with either the left or the right side of the synesthete’s mental calendar (e.g., “October” or “May”). Cues were followed by probes on the left or right side of the screen, and participants responded to the probes with button presses. Behavioral and ERP data suggested that for synesthetes, month words functioned more effectively as cues to direct attention in space. In synesthetes but not controls, a comparison of ERPs to probes cued by months revealed effects of cue validity on the P3b component peaking 370 ms post-onset and on the subsequent positive slow wave (pSW) observed 600–900 ms post-onset (both larger for invalid probes). No effects of cue validity were observed on early visual potentials (N1) for probes cued by months. The findings suggest that in these time–space synesthetes cue validity influenced post-perceptual processes, such as stimulus evaluation and categorization, with no evidence for enhanced visual processing.     

Acquired equivalence between stimuli trained in the same context

The role of context was examined in human acquired equivalence. Participants were trained on two conditional discriminations. In the first conditional discrimination, if sample A1 was presented, choice of comparison B1, but not B2, was correct, and if sample A2 was presented, choice of comparison B2, but not B1, was correct. In the second conditional discrimination, if sample X1 was presented, choice of comparison Y1, but not Y2, was correct, and if sample X2 was presented, choice of comparison Y2, but not Y1, was correct. In each conditional discrimination, one of the conditional relations was trained in context 1 (e.g., A1 → B1 and X1 → Y1) and the other was trained in context 2 (i.e., A2 → B2 and X2 → Y2). On test trials, when conditional stimuli from the two conditional discriminations were interchanged (e.g., sample A1 was presented with comparisons Y1 and Y2) and were presented in a neutral context, positive transfer resulted. That is, in the absence of the training context, stimuli that shared a common context on different trials in training came to be treated as equivalent.     

Perspective et actualité de Pierre Janet sur les possessions et les extases mystiques

Pierre Janet (1859–1947), a professor of psychology at the collège de France (1901–1934) and the founder of the French Psychological Society in 1901, took interest in the psychology of religion very young and then all along his career. At age 15, a painful crisis of doubts changes him: he becomes atheistic and above all, gains a passion for the psychology of belief (Prévost, 1973). After his “aggregation” degree, he starts examining and curing people with mental diseases at the hospital in Le Havre. Within six years, his works would build the reference synthesis on the “dissociation of the personality”. But the dissociation process is tightly bounded to the properties of belief (L’automatisme psychologique, 1889). The presentation of his famous case “Achille” (1891–1898) possessed “by the devil” will stand for Janet as a textbook case about religious dissociation, and he will consider his successful treatment of this patient as a “modern exorcism” (Névroses et idées fixes, 1898). The famous mystic “Madeleine” who suffered from psychasthenia provided him the opportunity to precise the links between religious phenomena and the properties of belief. Madeleine's oscillations between torture, void and ecstasy, pertain to “tension” variations that directly impact her belief according to their stage – asseritive or reflected – on the Janetian hierarchy ( Janet, 1926–1928). In the second part of his life and career, where Janet takes time to think about his models and practice, he paints a large picture of the evolution of the “self” (L’Évolution psychologique de la personnalité, Janet, 1929) and extends his analysis to traditional cultures where the bounds of the self is more variable, the personality being able to include spirits within itself. The inclusion in the DSM III, of “dissociative troubles” in 1980, for its first atheoretic release, is visibly drawn upon Janet's English writings ( 0175, 0215 and 0070). Following this introduction, a great body of international studies took Janet's modelization and results into consideration (except in France). In 1994, the DSM-IV also adds the dissociative transe disorder category (DTD), which includes religious possession by demons or spirits: this leads to the development of international studies on the psychology of religion within a transcultural frame. After being forgotten for years, the experimental results of Pierre Janet currently undergo an important excavation thanks to recent psychological research, and prove their relevance to contribute to contemporary debates.     

Foucault on the Case: The Pastoral and Juridical Foundation of Medical Power

This paper employs Foucaults concept of governmentality to examine critically the efforts by medical humanists to reform the medical case. I argue that these reform efforts contribute to the individualizing dimensions of medical power through the development of a pastoral technique that medicine has taken over from religious authority. Clinical experiences at this NEH Institute also revealed a juridical dimension of the medical case that treats a patients statements as suspect and in need of corroboration by evidence provided by the patients body. The combination of these pastoral and juridical dimensions of the case contributes to the normalizing power of modern medicine, and medical humanists need to be aware of their own contribution to this form of power as they reform the case.     

Sick? Or slow? On the origins of intelligence as a psychological object

This paper examines the first moments of the emergence of “psychometrics” as a discipline, using a history of the Binet–Simon test (precursor to the Stanford–Binet) to engage the question of how intelligence became a “psychological object.” To begin to answer this, we used a previously-unexamined set of French texts to highlight the negotiations and collaborations that led Alfred Binet (1857–1911) to identify “mental testing” as a research area worth pursuing. This included a long-standing rivalry with Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909), who argued for decades that psychiatrists ought to be the professional arbiters of which children would be removed from the standard curriculum and referred to special education classes in asylums. In contrast, Binet sought to keep children in schools and conceived of a way for psychologists to do this. Supported by the Société libre de l'étude psychologique de l'enfant [Free society for the psychological study of the child], and by a number of collaborators and friends, he thus undertook to create a “metric” scale of intelligence—and the associated testing apparatus—to legitimize the role of psychologists in a to-that-point psychiatric domain: identifying and treating “the abnormal”. The result was a change in the earlier law requiring all healthy French children to attend school, between the ages of 6 and 13, to recognize instead that otherwise normal children sometimes need special help: they are “slow” (arriéré), but not “sick.” This conceptualization of intelligence was then carried forward, through the test's influence on Lewis Terman (1877–1956) and Lightner Witmer (1867–1956), to shape virtually all subsequent thinking about intelligence testing and its role in society.     

A developmental cross-sectioning of women's careers and marriage attitudes and life plans

A new cultural imperative, “marriage and a career,” is probably emerging. This conclusion is based on study of a random sample of 180 women (60 each) in junior high, high school, and college. Amazing consistency appeared in this cross-sectioning of women's attitudes toward Education, Occupation, Marriage, and life Plans. The cultural imperative “to marry” was present at age 12, but by adulthood, the biological surge for early marriage had been passed and/or fulfilled, and career emerged as part of a life pattern. As young women develop they become more liberal in their attitudes and desires about work, which can now be fulfilled because of the relaxing cultural interdiction against married women working.     

Psychological distance boosts value-behavior correspondence in ultimatum bargaining and integrative negotiation

The present research examined how construal level and social motivation interact in influencing individuals’ behavior in social decision making settings. Consistent with recent work on psychological distance and value-behavior correspondence (Eyal, Sagristano, Trope, Liberman, & Chaiken, 2009), it was predicted that under high construal level individuals’ behavior is based on the social motivation they endorsed, no matter whether pro-social or pro-self. Two experiments involving ultimatum game (Experiment 1) and face to face negotiation (Experiment 2) supported the “increased value-behavior correspondence” hypothesis by showing that pro-socials were more cooperative and pro-selves were more competitive under high rather than low construal level. Implications for research on social decision making and psychological distance are discussed.