When curiosity killed regret: Avoiding or seeking the unknown in decision-making under uncertainty

In two experimental studies we investigated how curiosity and regret aversion affect decision-making under uncertainty. Building on insights derived from information-gap theory [Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: a review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 75-98], we demonstrate that curiosity may overcome regret aversion. In Experiment 1, we concentrate on the reluctance to opt for alternatives with uncertain outcomes and demonstrate that curiosity about the uncertain outcomes may override regret aversion. In Experiment 2, we focus on reluctance to expose oneself to potential regret-inducing information and demonstrate that curiosity may overcome this reluctance.     

Retrospective construction of the judgement of free choice

The problem of free will lies at the heart of modern scientific studies of consciousness. Some authors propose that actions are unconsciously initiated and awareness of intention is referred retrospectively to the action after it has been performed [e.g. Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. (2005). On the inference of personal authorship: Enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness & Cognition, 14, 439-458]. This contrasts with the common impression that our intentions cause those actions. By combining a stop signal paradigm and an intentional action paradigm we show that participants sometimes indicate to have intentionally initiated an action while reaction time data strongly suggest that they in fact failed to stop the action. In a second experiment we demonstrate that the number of trials in which participants misattributed their awareness of intention varied with the intentional involvement during action planning. Our data support the retrospective account of intentional action. Furthermore, we introduce an experimental approach that objectifies introspective judgments of awareness of intention.     

New Directions in Measuring Reactive and Proactive Aggression: Validation of a Teacher Questionnaire

The well-known distinction between reactive and proactive aggression is theoretically important but empirically controversial. Recently, aggression researchers have argued that we should separate the form and function of aggression to make a clearer distinction between reactive and proactive aggression. This article describes the validation of a new teacher-report Instrument for Reactive and Proactive Aggression (IRPA) that assesses the form separate from the function of aggression. We demonstrated good discriminant, convergent, and construct validity of the IRPA in a sample of 427 children aged 10 to 13. Reactive and proactive functions of aggression were independent constructs (r = 0.03) which indicates excellent discriminant validity. Convergent validity was satisfactory; scores from the IRPA were moderately to highly related to scores from the widely used Teacher Rating Instrument, TRI (Dodge and Coie in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53:1146–1158, 1987). Additionally, reactive and proactive aggression showed unique correlations with most a priori hypothesized theoretically relevant variables, which indicates construct validity. (150 words)     

Take it or leave it for something better? Responses to fair offers in ultimatum bargaining

We investigated if responders accept a 50–50 split in a modified version of the ultimatum game, in which rejection yields a higher payoff (€7) than accepting the equal offer (€5). Therefore, the decision to accept the 50–50 split in this modified ultimatum game cannot be perceived as a self-interest act, as opposed to the standard game, in which acceptance may reflect resignation in the knowledge that the equal split is the best one can expect. A substantial proportion of responders accepts the equal split in this modified game (Study 1), which clearly establishes egalitarian preferences. Further studies show that the willingness to accept is not an artifact of indifference towards the extra payoff (Study 2), but reflects true concerns for proposers’ outcomes (Study 3).     

Listening to your heart. How interoception shapes emotion experience and intuitive decision making

Theories proposing that how one thinks and feels is influenced by feedback from the body remain controversial. A central but untested prediction of many of these proposals is that how well individuals can perceive subtle bodily changes (interoception) determines the strength of the relationship between bodily reactions and cognitive-affective processing. In Study 1, we demonstrated that the more accurately participants could track their heartbeat, the stronger the observed link between their heart rate reactions and their subjective arousal (but not valence) ratings of emotional images. In Study 2, we found that increasing interoception ability either helped or hindered adaptive intuitive decision making, depending on whether the anticipatory bodily signals generated favored advantageous or disadvantageous choices. These findings identify both the generation and the perception of bodily responses as pivotal sources of variability in emotion experience and intuition, and offer strong supporting evidence for bodily feedback theories, suggesting that cognitive-affective processing does in significant part relate to "following the heart."     

Repeated checking causes distrust in memory but not in attention and perception

Repeated checking to reduce memory distrust seems to be counterproductive: it increases memory distrust. Obsessive-compulsive (OC) patients tend to be uncertain about other cognitive domains as well, like attention and perception. In an experiment with 70 healthy participants, we tested whether perseverative checking induces distrust not only in memory, but also in attention and perception. Participants were administered a computer task in which they had to activate, deactivate, and check threat-irrelevant stimuli, and rate their confidence in memory, attention, and perception in a pre-test and post-test. In between these tests, the relevant checking group performed 20 checks of the same stimuli used in the pre- and post-test. The irrelevant checking group performed 20 checks of different stimuli. Although memory accuracy improved in both groups, repeated checking reduced confidence in memory, vividness, and detail in the relevant checking group, but not in the irrelevant checking group. A trend was found towards a decline in attentional confidence in the relevant checking group only. Perception was not affected by repetitive checking. A replication study revealed similar results of relevant checking on meta-memory, however, the trend for attentional distrust was not confirmed. The results suggest that perseveration may be domain specific, i.e., only the cognitive processes that are subject to perseveration are affected.     

Personality Traits as Potential Susceptibility Markers: Differential Susceptibility to Support Among Parents

In this study, we examined whether parents are differentially susceptible to support from their spouse and adolescent child depending on their personality traits, and whether differences in susceptibility to support among parents, in turn, are linked to the quality of support parents give to their children. Participants in this three‐wave longitudinal study were 288 two‐parent Dutch families with an adolescent child. Fathers were on average 43.9 years old (SD = 3.7 years), mothers were 41.7 years old (SD = 3.3 years), and adolescents (50% girls) were 14.5 years old (SD = 0.8 years). We found that the association between support from children toward their parents and subsequent support from parents toward their children was more pronounced for parents high on Openness, for better and for worse. Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability did not emerge as markers of differences in susceptibility. Also, parents did not differ in their susceptibility to support from their spouse, nor were differences in susceptibility found a year later when using data from a third wave. We found very modest support for differential susceptibility, only for Openness, and depending on the source of perceived support and on the timing of measurement.     

The self and others in the experience of pride

Pride is seen as both a self-conscious emotion as well as a social emotion. These categories are not mutually exclusive, but have brought forth different ideas about pride as either revolving around the self or as revolving around one’s relationship with others. Current measures of pride do not include intrapersonal elements of pride experiences. Social comparisons, which often cause experiences of pride, contain three elements: the self, the relationship between the self and another person, and the other person. From the literature on pride, we distilled three related elements; perceptions and feelings of self-inflation, other-distancing, and other-devaluation. In four studies, we explored whether these elements were present in pride experiences. We did so at an implicit (Experiment 1; N?=?218) and explicit level (Experiment 2; N?=?125), in an academic setting with in vivo (Experiment 3; N?=?203) and imagined pride experiences (Experiment 4; N?=?126). The data consistently revealed that the experience of pride is characterised by self-inflation, not by other-distancing nor other-devaluation.     

Examining reproducibility in psychology: A hybrid method for combining a statistically significant original study and a replication

The unrealistically high rate of positive results within psychology has increased the attention to replication research. However, researchers who conduct a replication and want to statistically combine the results of their replication with a statistically significant original study encounter problems when using traditional meta-analysis techniques. The original study’s effect size is most probably overestimated because it is statistically significant, and this bias is not taken into consideration in traditional meta-analysis. We have developed a hybrid method that does take the statistical significance of an original study into account and enables (a) accurate effect size estimation, (b) estimation of a confidence interval, and (c) testing of the null hypothesis of no effect. We analytically approximate the performance of the hybrid method and describe its statistical properties. By applying the hybrid method to data from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (Open Science Collaboration, 2015), we demonstrate that the conclusions based on the hybrid method are often in line with those of the replication, suggesting that many published psychological studies have smaller effect sizes than those reported in the original study, and that some effects may even be absent. We offer hands-on guidelines for how to statistically combine an original study and replication, and have developed a Web-based application (https://rvanaert.shinyapps.io/hybrid) for applying the hybrid method.