COVID-19 and Religious Ethics

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID-19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.     

Image-size disparity reduces difference detection in face matching

Face matching is the act of deciding whether two facial images depict the same person or different people. The real-world face-matching task of checking photo IDs typically occurs under conditions of image-size disparity: A small picture is compared with a life-size face. We examined the effect of image-size disparity on face-matching accuracy. In three experiments, subjects were presented with pairs of equivalently or disparately sized images that depicted the same person or different people. Subjects made same/different judgments and, in two experiments, also reported confidence. Difference detection was significantly poorer given disparate (versus equivalent) image size. Confidence was significantly higher when responses were correct versus incorrect. These findings held whether viewing and decision time was unlimited or limited. Our results raise the practical concern that image-size disparity may undermine difference detection in ID checking, while also indicating that people have some insight into the accuracy of their face-matching judgments.     

How representations of number and numeracy predict decision paradoxes: A fuzzy-trace theory approach

Higher numeracy has been associated with decision biases in some numerical judgment-and-decision problems. According to fuzzy-trace theory, understanding such paradoxes involves broadening the concept of numeracy to include processing the gist of numbers—their categorical and ordinal relations—in addition to objective (verbatim) knowledge about numbers. We assess multiple representations of gist, as well as numeracy, and use them to better understand and predict systematic paradoxes in judgment and decision-making. In two samples (Ns = 978 and 957), we assessed categorical (some vs. none) and ordinal gist representations of numbers (higher vs. lower, as in relative magnitude judgment, estimation, approximation, and simple ratio comparison), objective numeracy, and a nonverbal, nonnumeric measure of fluid intelligence in predicting: (a) decision preferences exhibiting the Allais paradox and (b) attractiveness ratings of bets with and without a small loss in which the loss bet is rated higher than the objectively superior no-loss bet. Categorical and ordinal gist tasks predicted unique variance in paradoxical decisions and judgments, beyond objective numeracy and intelligence. Whereas objective numeracy predicted choosing or rating according to literal numerical superiority, appreciating the categorical and ordinal gist of numbers was pivotal in predicting paradoxes. These results bring important paradoxes under the same explanatory umbrella, which assumes three types of representations of numbers—categorical gist, ordinal gist, and objective (verbatim)—that vary in their strength across individuals.     

To Challenge the Morning Lark and the Night Owl: Using Smartphone Sensing Data to Investigate Day–Night Behaviour Patterns

For decades, day–night patterns in behaviour have been investigated by asking people about their sleep–wake timing, their diurnal activity patterns, and their sleep duration. We demonstrate that the increasing digitalization of lifestyle offers new possibilities for research to investigate day–night patterns and related traits with the help of behavioural data. Using smartphone sensing, we collected in vivo data from 597 participants across several weeks and extracted behavioural day–night pattern indicators. Using this data, we explored three popular research topics. First, we focused on individual differences in day–night patterns by investigating whether ‘morning larks’ and ‘night owls’ manifest in smartphone-sensed behavioural indicators. Second, we examined whether personality traits are related to day–night patterns. Finally, exploring social jetlag, we investigated whether traits and work weekly day–night behaviours influence day–night patterns on weekends. Our findings highlight that behavioural data play an essential role in understanding daily routines and their relations to personality traits. We discuss how psychological research can integrate new behavioural approaches to study personality.     

‘Personality in Its Natural Habitat’ Revisited: A Pooled,Multi-sample Examination of the Relationships Between the Big Five Personality Traits and Daily Behaviour and Language Use

Past research using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), an observational ambulatory assessment method for the real-world measurement of daily behaviour, has identified several behavioural manifestations of the Big Five domains in a small college sample (N = 96). With the use of a larger and more diverse sample of pooled data from N = 462 participants from a total of four community samples who wore the EAR from 2 to 6 days, the primary purpose of the present study was to obtain more precise and generalizable effect estimates of the Big Five–behaviour relationships and to re-examine the degree to which these relationships are gender specific. In an extension of the original article, the secondary purpose of the present study was to examine if the Big Five–behaviour relationships differed across two facets of each Big Five domain. Overall, while several of the behavioural manifestations of the Big Five were generally consistent with the trait definitions (replicating some findings from the original article), we found little evidence of gender differences (not replicating a basic finding from the original article). Unique to the present study, the Big Five–behaviour relationships were not always comparable across the two facets of each Big Five domain. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Semantic interference in the picture-word interference task: Is there a pre-lexical,conceptual contribution to the effect?

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Picture naming takes longer in the presence of a semantic-categorically related distractor word compared to an unrelated distractor word. This semantic...     

Talking Points: A Modulating Circle Increases Listening Effort Without Improving Speech Recognition in Young Adults

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Speech recognition is improved when the acoustic input is accompanied by visual cues provided by a talking face (Erber in Journal of Speech and Hearing Research,...     

Bullying in university between peers and by personnel: cultural variation in prevalence,forms, and gender differences in four countries

Social Psychology of Education - This study reports results from cross-cultural comparisons of (a) the frequency of university students’ experiences of bullying victimization and perpetration...     

Academic competence and affect self-concepts in elementary school students: Social and dimensional comparisons

Social Psychology of Education - Academic self-concepts are important correlates and predictors of successful scholastic learning. According to the internal/external frame of reference (I/E)...     

Post-event misinformation effects in a language-trained chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)

Animal Cognition - Errors of source monitoring are widespread human memory challenges, and our memories are subject to distortion upon the presentation of subsequent misinformation. Less is known...