It was intuitive,and it felt good: a daily diary study on how people feel when making decisions

ABSTRACT

In daily life, people make plenty of decisions, either intuitively or based on analysis. So far, research has examined when decision-making leads to correct or biased outcomes. In the present study, we adopted a different perspective and explored how decision-making is associated with how people feel. In an observational study, 134 healthy participants retrospectively reported on six evenings which decisions they had made during that day (total N?=?3,850 decisions). They were also asked to indicate how they had felt before/after each decision. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that (a) people reported having felt better prior to intuitive as compared to analytical decisions, (b) people reported having felt better after as compared to before the decision, and (c) this increase in positive feeling was more pronounced for intuitive decisions. The latter two associations were robust to statistically controlling for the life domain in which the decisions occurred, the decisions’ importance and ease, and daily mood. The retrospective design and the single-item measure of mood are among the limitations of this study. Altogether, the results are in line with the idea that making everyday life decisions intuitively makes people feel good.     

Different social motives in the gestural communication of chimpanzees and human children

Both chimpanzees and human infants use the pointing gesture with human adults, but it is not clear if they are doing so for the same social motives. In two studies, we presented chimpanzees and human 25-month-olds with the opportunity to point for a hidden tool (in the presence of a non-functional distractor). In one condition it was clear that the tool would be used to retrieve a reward for the pointing subject (so the pointing was selfish or 'for-me'), whereas in the other condition it was clear that the tool would be used to retrieve the reward for the experimenter (so the pointing was helpful or 'for-you'). The chimpanzees pointed reliably only when they themselves benefited, whereas the human children pointed reliably no matter who benefited. These results are interpreted as evidence for the especially cooperative nature of human communication.     

Is acoustic evaluation in a non-primate mammal,the tree shrew,affected by context?

Sound categorisation plays a crucial role for processing ecological and social stimuli in a species’ natural environment. To explore the discrimination and evaluation of sound stimuli in human babies and nonhuman primates, a reciprocal habituation-dishabituation paradigm has been successfully introduced into auditory research. We applied the reciprocal paradigm for the first time to a non-primate mammal, the tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri), to examine to what extent non-primate mammals share the ability to evaluate communication calls with primates. Playback stimuli were three types of communication calls, differing distinctively in context and acoustic structure, as well as two artificial control sounds, differing solely in frequency. We assessed the attention towards the playback stimuli by the latency to respond to the test stimulus. Subjects evaluated pairs of communication call types as well as the artificial playback stimuli. Attention towards the test stimuli differed significantly in strength for one pair of communication calls, with subjects dishabituating faster to one category than the other. The comparison of a second pair of communication calls did not show significant differences. Interestingly, subjects also evaluated the artificial control sounds. Findings are only partly in line with results on human and non-human primates. They provided first evidence that in non-primate mammals acoustic evaluation is not solely affected by the sound-associated context but is also linked to unusualness and acoustic cues, such as peak frequency.     

A Predicate Logical Extension of a Subintuitionistic Propositional Logic

We develop a predicate logical extension of a subintuitionistic propositional logic. Therefore a Hilbert type calculus and a Kripke type model are given. The propositional logic is formulated to axiomatize the idea of strategic weakening of Kripke's semantic for intuitionistic logic: dropping the semantical condition of heredity or persistence leads to a nonmonotonic model. On the syntactic side this leads to a certain restriction imposed on the deduction theorem. By means of a Henkin argument strong completeness is proved making use of predicate logical principles, which are only classically acceptable.     

Judgments of duration, figure-ground contrast, and size for words and nonwords

Does the word-superiority effect on letter discrimination result in a word-superiority effect on duration judgments? We examined this question in five experiments. In the first four experiments, we have demonstrated that (1) words shown for 32-80 msec were judged as presented longer than non-words shown for the same duration; (2) this word-superiority effect persists if the stimuli are shown for an objective duration of up to 250 msec; and (3) these effects can be extended to judgments of figure-ground contrast and letter size. These findings extend existing data on effects of processing fluency on perceptual judgments. In Experiment 5, we found that duration judgments were higher for words than for pronounceable nonwords, and duration judgments were higher for pronounceable non-words than for nonpronounceable nonwords. We discuss the implications of this finding for the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis.     

The rise and decline of prospective memory performance across the lifespan

In the present study, the trajectory of prospective memory across the lifespan was investigated in a total of 200 participants from five age groups (4- to 6-year-old children, 13- to 14-year-old adolescents, 19- to 26-year-old adults, 55- to 65-year-old adults, and 65- to 75-year-old adults). In an event-based prospective memory task the prospective and the retrospective components were assessed separately. For the prospective component, the results showed better performance for adolescents and young adults than for children and 65- to 75-year-old adults. In addition, participants belonging to the latter group were more likely to forget the retrospective component after having noticed the prospective memory targets. Overall, these results indicate that across the lifespan prospective memory performance follows a similar inverted u-shape function as is well known for retrospective episodic memory.     

Role of interstimulus and stimulus-hemisphere compatibility in the process of interhemispheric integration

Normal subjects had to name German compound nouns which were presented tachistoscopically. The compound nouns were displayed either unilaterally to the left or right visual field, or bilaterally with one element to the left and one to the right visual field. A distinction was made between the bilateral conditions as to whether the representation of the elements, printed and/or pictorial, included a high or low interstimulus and a high or low stimulus-hemisphere compatibility. Analysis indicated firstly a superiority of the left hemisphere for the naming of compound nouns in mixed print and pictorial representation. Secondly, the performance in the bilateral conditions was moderated by stimulus-hemisphere compatibility. In the process of interhemispheric integration stimulus-hemisphere compatibility proved more crucial than interstimulus compatibility. Analyses of errors further illustrated hemispheric behaviour.