The relationship between counterfactual thinking and emotional reactions to event outcomes: Does one account fit all?

By enabling a comparison between what is and what might have been, counterfactual thoughts amplify our emotional responses to bad outcomes. Well-known demonstrations such as the action effect (the tendency to attribute most regret to a character whose actions brought about a bad outcome) and the temporal order effect (the tendency to undo the last in a series of events leading up to a bad outcome) are often explained in this way. An important difference between these effects is that outcomes are due to decisions in the action effect, whereas in the temporal order effect outcomes are achieved by chance. In Experiment 1, we showed that imposing time pressure leads to a significant reduction in the action but not in the temporal order effect. In Experiment 2, we found that asking participants to evaluate the protagonists (“who ought to feel worse?”) led to a significant reduction in the temporal order but not in the action effect. The results suggest that the action and temporal order effects require different explanations and are consistent with other work that suggests that when decisions lead to bad outcomes a comparison of decision quality is an important determinant of the emotional response attributed to the protagonists. The stimulus materials used in our experiments may be downloaded from pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Flattery will get you somewhere,sometimes? The effect of flattery and hotel segments on a hotel guests' green behavior

Considering the importance of the hotel guests' behavioral support for the hotels' green corporate social responsibility (CSR), this research examined the persuasive power of flattery in promoting guests' green behaviors. Study 1 revealed that a flattery message significantly increased the hotel guests' towel reuse intentions during their stay and this effect was mediated by their perceptions of the hotel's CSR motives. Study 2 further showed that a feeling of guilt served as another key mediator in the relationship between a flattery message and the guests' responses (i.e., perceived CSR motives, hotel image, attitudes toward a hotel, towel reuse intentions), which was moderated by hotel segment (economy vs. mid-priced vs. luxury). This research provides meaningful insights into the understanding of the consumers' pro-environmental decisions in the service consumption context and explains the underlying cognitive process. Moreover, this research offers an empirical message strategy by hotel segments to effectively promote the hotel guests' green behavior and achieve successful marketing outcomes.     

Tuning the developing brain to emotional body expressions

Reading others' emotional body expressions is an essential social skill. Adults readily recognize emotions from body movements. However, it is unclear when in development infants become sensitive to bodily expressed emotions. We examined event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) in 4‐ and 8‐month‐old infants in response to point‐light displays (PLDs) of happy and fearful body expressions presented in two orientations (upright and inverted). The ERP results revealed that 8‐month‐olds but not 4‐month‐olds respond sensitively to the orientation and the emotion of the dynamic expressions. Specifically, 8‐month‐olds showed (i) an early (200–400 ms) orientation‐sensitive positivity over frontal and central electrodes, and (ii) a late (700–1100 ms) emotion‐sensitive positivity over temporal and parietal electrodes in the right hemisphere. These findings suggest that orientation‐sensitive and emotion‐sensitive brain processes, distinct in timing and topography, develop between 4 and 8 months of age.     

Changes in infants' ability to switch visual attention in the first three months of life.

The abilities of 1-month-old and 3-month-old infants to shift their gaze from a central target to a peripheral target were compared in four experiments. In experiment 1 targets matched in mean luminance to the background were presented to infants in the periphery at varying levels of contrast. The contrast thresholds for target detection were found to be significantly different for 1-month-olds compared with 3-month-olds. With targets set close to these contrast thresholds, correct refixations and the latency for shifting attention were examined in experiment 2. Two conditions were used: a peripheral target was presented against a homogeneous background (noncompetition); and in the second condition, the patterned target appeared at one of two lighter peripheral windows set against a darker background (competition). Although there was no difference between the two age groups in the latency for shifting visual attention, 1-month-olds were found to make more directional errors in the competition condition. The competition effect of two potential targets on latencies was examined in experiment 3. In the competition condition, two identical peripheral patterned targets were presented to the infants. The 3-month-olds refixated more quickly to one of the double targets in the competition condition than to a single peripheral target, whereas 1-month-olds were slowed down by a double target display. Finally, in experiment 4 the ability of the infants to process and disengage from a central stimulus and to refixate towards a similar peripheral target was examined. This type of competition disrupted both the direction of the first eye movement and the latency to shift attention in both age groups. However, the effect was significantly greater for the 1-month-olds. Taken together, the results of these experiments demonstrate the greater disruption of fixation-shift behaviour in 1-month-olds compared with 3-month-olds when competing visual stimuli are used. This developmental change is explained in terms of maturation of executive cortical orienting systems over the first months of life.     

Visual attention and action: How cueing,direct mapping,and social interactions drive orienting

Despite considerable interest in both action perception and social attention over the last 2 decades, there has been surprisingly little investigation concerning how the manual actions of other humans orient visual attention. The present review draws together studies that have measured the orienting of attention, following observation of another’s goal-directed action. Our review proposes that, in line with the literature on eye gaze, action is a particularly strong orienting cue for the visual system. However, we additionally suggest that action may orient visual attention using mechanisms, which gaze direction does not (i.e., neural direct mapping and corepresentation). Finally, we review the implications of these gaze-independent mechanisms for the study of attention to action. We suggest that our understanding of attention to action may benefit from being studied in the context of joint action paradigms, where the role of higher level action goals and social factors can be investigated.     

Grounds and limits: Reichenbach and foundationalist epistemology

From 1929 onwards, C. I. Lewis defended the foundationalist claim that judgements of the form ‘x is probable’ only make sense if one assumes there to be a ground y that is certain (where x and y may be beliefs, propositions, or events). Without this assumption, Lewis argues, the probability of x could not be anything other than zero. Hans Reichenbach repeatedly contested Lewis’s idea, calling it “a remnant of rationalism”. The last move in this debate was a challenge by Lewis, defying Reichenbach to produce a regress of probability values that yields a number other than zero. Reichenbach never took up the challenge, but we will meet it on his behalf, as it were. By presenting a series converging to a limit, we demonstrate that x can have a definite and computable probability, even if its justification consists of an infinite number of steps. Next we show the invalidity of a recent riposte of foundationalists that this limit of the series can be the ground of justification. Finally we discuss the question where justification can come from if not from a ground.     

Is social inhibition of return due to action co-representation?

When two individuals alternate reaching responses to visual targets presented on a shared workspace, one individual is slower to respond to targets occupying the same position as their partner’s previous response. This phenomenon is thought to be due to processes that inhibit the initiation of a movement to a location recently acted upon. However, two distinct forms of the inhibition account have been posited, one based on inhibition of an action, the other based on inhibition of an action and location. Furthermore, an additional recent explanation suggests the phenomenon is due to mechanisms that give rise to action congruency effects. Thus the three different theories differ in the degree to which action co-representation plays a role in the effect. The aim of the present work was to examine these competing accounts. Three experiments demonstrated that when identical actions are made, the effect is modulated by the configuration of the visual stimuli acted upon and the perceptual demands of the task. In addition, when the co-actors perform different actions to the same target, the effect is still observed. These findings support the hypothesis that this particular joint action phenomenon is generated via social cues that induce location-based inhibition of return rather than being due to shared motor co-representations.     

Early Language Impairment and Young Adult Delinquent and Aggressive Behavior

Clinic and forensic studies have reported high rates of language impairments in conduct disordered and incarcerated youth. In community samples followed to early adolescence, speech and language impairments have been linked to attention deficits and internalizing problems, rather than conduct problems, delinquency, or aggression. This study examines the young adult antisocial outcomes of speech or language impaired children. Language impaired boys had higher levels of parent-rated delinquency symptoms by age 19 than boys without language impairment, controlled for verbal IQ and for demographic and family variables. Language impaired boys did not differ from controls in self-reported delinquency or aggression symptoms on a standardized checklist; however, language impaired boys reported higher rates of arrests and convictions than controls. Language impairment was not related to aggression or delinquency in girls. We examine alternate models of the interrelationships between language, academics, and behavior, at ages 5, 12, and 19.