Salience Not Status: How Category Labels Influence Feature Inference

Two main uses of categories are classification and feature inference, and category labels have been widely shown to play a dominant role in feature inference. However, the nature of this influence remains unclear, and we evaluate two contrasting hypotheses formalized as mathematical models: the label special‐mechanism hypothesis and the label super‐salience hypothesis. The special‐mechanism hypothesis is that category labels, unlike other features, trigger inference decision making in reference to the category prototypes. This results in a tendency for prototype‐compatible inferences because the labels trigger a special mechanism rather than because of any influences they have on similarity evaluation. The super‐salience hypothesis assumes that the large label influence is due to their high salience and corresponding impact on similarity without any need for a special mechanism. Application of the two models to a feature inference task based on a family resemblance category structure yields strong support for the label super‐salience hypothesis and in particular does not support the need for a special mechanism based on prototypes.     

Revoking a leader's “license to fail”: downgrading evaluations of prototypical in‐group leaders following an intergroup failure

Drawing on the social identity theory of leadership, we examined how leadership as an identity function alters perceptions and evaluations of in‐ and out‐group political leaders over time. Participants responded to two online questionnaires, before and after the 2012 U.S. Presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. We assessed respondents' strength of party identification, perceptions of each candidate's prototypicality, and evaluations of each candidate. Results supported the hypothesis: after his loss, Romney was presumably perceived as less prototypical of the Republican Party among strong identifiers, who symbolically revoked Romney's “license to fail.” Weakly identified Republicans were unaffected by his defeat, granting him a “license to fail.” Unexpectedly, Democrats and Republicans following his electoral success evaluated Obama more harshly.     

On experimental philosophy and the history of philosophy: a reply to Sorell

In this paper, we reply to Tom Sorell’s criticism of our engagement with the history of philosophy in our book, The Theory and Practice of Experimental Philosophy. We explain why our uses of the history of philosophy are not undermined by Sorell’s criticism and why our position is not threatened by the dilemma Sorell advances. We argue that Sorell has mischaracterized the dialectical context of our discussion of the history of philosophy and that he has mistakenly treated our use of the history of philosophy as univocal, when in fact we called on the history of philosophy in several different ways in our text.     

The X-claim argument against religious belief offers nothing new

Stephen Law has recently offered an argument against the rationality of certain religious beliefs that he calls the X-claim argument against religious beliefs (Law in Relig Stud, 2017,  https://doi.org/10.1017/s0034412526000330). The argument purports to show that it is irrational to believe in the existence of extraordinary beings associated with religions. However, the X-claim argument is beset by certain ambiguities that, once resolved, leave the argument undifferentiated from two other common objections to the rationality of religious belief: the objection from religious diversity and the objection from unreliable sources. And though the latter pose serious obstacles to the rationality of religious belief, the X-claim argument adds no further difficulty.     

Using a Computational Model to Understand Possible Sources of Skews in Distributions of Job Performance

The typical assumption that performance is distributed normally has come under question in recent years (e.g., O'Boyle & Aguinis, 2012). This paper uses a dynamic, computational model of performance‐as‐results to examine possible sources of such distributions. That is, building off the classic model of job performance (Campbell & Pritchard, 1976), components of a dynamic model are examined in 4 separate experiments using Monte Carlo simulations. The experiments indicate that positively skewed distributions can arise from pure luck, multiplicative combinations of factors where 1 of those factors has a zero origin, Matthew effects associated with learning, and feedback effects of performance on resource allocation policies by external agents. The results are discussed in terms of explanations for positively skewed performance distributions and the use and expansion of the computational model for examining dynamic performance more generally.     

Maximizing Scales Do Not Reliably Predict Maximizing Behavior in Decisions from Experience

In this paper, we explore the relationships between psychometric and behavioral measures of maximization in decisions from experience (DfE). In two experiments, we measured choice behavior in two experimental paradigms of DfE and self‐reported maximizing tendencies using three prominent scales of maximization. In the repeated consequentialist choice paradigm, participants made repeated choices between two unlabeled options and received consequential feedback on each trial. In the sampling paradigm, participants freely sampled from two options and received feedback on their sampling before making a single consequential choice. Individuals exhibited different degrees of maximizing behavior in both paradigms and across different payoff distributions, but none of the maximizing scales predicted this behavior. These results indicate that maximization scales address constructs that are different from the maximization behavior observed in DfE, and that these measures will need to be improved to reflect behavioral aspects of choice and search from experience. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.