Mood effects on dominated choices: Positive mood induces departures from logical rules

In two studies, we investigated the role of mood states in dominated behavioral choices. Past research has shown that mood effects on judgment and decision‐making can be pervasive. Yet, the role of mood in dominated choices has so far been neglected. The present research represents a first empirical examination of mood effects on dominated choices. We measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2) mood states in participants who made a series of choices in a gambling game. In this choice task without trade‐offs, participants were provided with information about the outcomes and probabilities associated with each choice option. The strategy to maximize the expected mean outcome implied the application of a straightforward and logical rule: Always choose the dominant option with the highest expected value. It has been argued in the literature that mood should have little or no impact when preferences are clear or strong. Still, we expected that mood states would affect even these dominated choices, building on previous work that showed that positive mood states enhance flexibility, creativity, and explorative behavior. The results showed that decisions made in a happier mood were less often in accordance with the logical rule than decisions made in a sadder mood. To conclude, happier mood states are associated to a lesser extent with decisions in accordance with a rule‐based strategy that maximizes expected mean outcomes in dominated choices. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Positive emotional context eliminates the framing effect in decision-making

Dual-process theories have suggested that emotion plays a key role in the framing effect in decision-making. However, little is known about the potential impact of a specific positive or negative emotional context on this bias. We investigated this question with adult participants using an emotional priming paradigm. First, participants were presented with positive or negative affective pictures (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant photographs). Afterward, participants had to perform a financial decision-making task that was unrelated to the pictures previously presented. The results revealed that the presentation framed in terms of gain or loss no longer affected subjects' decision-making following specific exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, a positive emotional context did not globally influence risk-taking behavior but specifically decreased the risk propensity in the loss frame. This finding confirmed that a positive emotional context can reduce loss aversion, and it strongly reinforced the dual-process view that the framing effect stems from an affective heuristic belonging to intuitive System 1. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Kaiho Seiryō on ‘What it is to be a Human Being’

Kaiho Seiryō (1755–1817) is probably the first Japanese thinker to proclaim the contractual nature of human relationships. I examine in this paper the view of human beings that led him to this conclusion. Giving up previous definitions of humans, Seiryō focuses on the faculty of practical reason. While this leads him to recognize a hierarchy of humans, some having more humanity than others, it also allows him to develop the most modern understanding of social relationship available in his time. His radical reinterpretation of what it is to be a human being is all the more remarkable because it was done with the concepts and ideas provided by the Chinese Classics. Establishing new connections, giving new life to ideas that were never exploited, Seiryō showed it was possible to make sense of modernity without using foreign concepts.     

The effect of long-term working memory through personalization applied to free recall: Uncurbing the primacy-effect enthusiasm

In this study, a personalization method (Guida, Tardieu, & Nicolas, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21: 862–896 2009) was applied to a free-recall task. Fifteen pairs of words, composed of an object and a location, were presented to 93 participants, who had to mentally associate each pair and subsequently recall the objects. A 30-s delay was introduced on half of the trials, the presentation rate was manipulated (5 or 10 s per item), and verbal and visuospatial working memory tests were administered to test for their effects on the serial curve. Two groups were constituted: a personalized group, for whom the locations were well-known places on their university campus, and a nonpersonalized group, for whom the locations did not refer to known places. Since personalization putatively operationalizes long-term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, Psychological Review, 102: 211–245 1995)—namely, the capacity to store information reliably and rapidly in long-term memory—and if we take a dual-store approach to memory, the personalization advantage would be expected to be greater for pre-recency than for recency items. Overall, the results were compatible with long-term working memory theory. They contribute to validating the personalization method as a methodology to characterize the contribution of long-term memory storage to performance in working memory tasks.     

How Red,Blue, and Green are Affectively Judged

The present study aimed at examining how the colors red, blue, and green were affectively judged through three variables: dominance, arousal, and pleasure. All participants were exposed to red, blue, green, and white (control condition), which were created using the hue–saturation–value color model. Then, participants were invited to rate their perceptions using the self‐assessment manikin. Results showed that (a) red was strongly associated with dominance and arousal; (b) blue was moderately and slightly associated with dominance and arousal, respectively; (c) green was slightly associated with arousal; and (d) blue and green were slightly more pleasurable than red. These results provide initial insights into how people perceive colors through the notions of dominance, arousal, and pleasure. Important practical implications for the use of colors are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Food‐related risk‐reduction strategies: purchasing and consumption processes

Confronted with an alarming social discourse favouring the perception of food risk, modern consumers find themselves in a situation of psychological discomfort caused by consumption of foodstuffs coming from the agricultural and foodstuff industry. To eliminate this discomfort the consumer may change their purchasing and consumption habits (constraining hypothesis) or introduce some measures for the reduction of risk. The aim of this paper is to present a new classification of risk reducers taking into account the diversity of buying and consumption practices. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Holistic processing is tuned for in-group faces

Past research has found that mere in-group/out-group categorizations are sufficient to elicit biases in face memory. The current research yields novel evidence that mere social categorization is also sufficient to modulate processes underlying face perception, even for faces for which we have strong perceptual expertise: same-race (SR) faces. Using the composite face paradigm, we find that SR faces categorized as in-group members (i.e., fellow university students) are processed more holistically than are SR faces categorized as out-group members (i.e., students at another university). Hence, holding perceptual expertise with faces constant, categorizing an SR target as an out-group member debilitates the strong holistic processing typically observed for SR faces.     

Growth and Decline of Evangelicals,Fundamentalists, Pentecostals,and Charismatics in Switzerland 1970–2013

This article describes and explains patterns of growth and decline undergone by evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal/Charismatic (EFPC) denominations in Switzerland from 1970 to 2013. We combine data from different censuses, membership registers of denominations, and a National Congregation Study (NCS) to establish and explain patterns of growth and decline. Our main results are that (1) the overall EFPC milieu has grown since the 1970s; (2) the growth is predominantly caused by a rather strong increase in membership of Pentecostal/Charismatic denominations. In contrast, evangelical denominations are overall rather stable, while fundamentalists seem to be in decline; (3) EFPC growth is not related to deprivation orientation, strictness, or socialization efforts, but to recruitment focus and spontaneity of ritual. We discuss these findings in the light of different theories.     

Metacognition and low achievement in mathematics: The effect of training in the use of metacognitive skills to solve mathematical word problems

The central question underlying this study was whether metacognition training could enhance the two metacognition components—knowledge and skills—and the mathematical problem-solving capacities of normal children in grade 3. We also investigated whether metacognitive training had a differential effect according to the children's mathematics level. A total of 48 participants took part in this study, divided into an experimental and a control group, each subdivided into a lower and a normal achievers group. The training programme took an interactive approach in accordance with Schraw's (1998 Schraw, G. 1998. Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional Science, 26: 113–125. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) recommendation and was carried out over five training sessions. Results indicated that children in the training group had significantly higher post-test metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive skills, and mathematical problem-solving scores. In addition, metacognitive training was particularly beneficial to the low achievers. Thus metacognitive training enabled the low achievers to make progress and solve the same number of problems on the post-test as the normal achievers solved on the pre-test.     

Development of category formation for faces differing by age in 9‐ to 12‐month‐olds: An effect of experience with infant faces

We examined category formation for faces differing in age in 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds, and the influence of exposure to infant faces on such ability. Infants were familiarized with adult or infant faces, and then tested with a novel exemplar from the familiarized category paired with a novel exemplar from a novel category (Experiment 1). Both age groups formed discrete categories of adult and infant faces, but exposure to infant faces in everyday life did not modulate performance. The same task was conducted with child versus infant faces (Experiment 2). Whereas 9‐month‐olds preferred infant faces after familiarization with child faces, but not child faces after familiarization with infant faces, 12‐month‐olds formed discrete categories of child and infant faces. Moreover, more exposure to infant faces correlated with higher novel category preference scores when infants were familiarized with infant faces in 12‐month‐olds, but not 9‐month‐olds. The 9‐month‐old asymmetry did not reflect spontaneous preference for infant over child faces (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds can form age‐based categories of faces. The ability of 12‐month‐olds to form separate child and infant categories suggests that they have a more exclusive representation of face age, one that may be influenced by prior experience with infant faces.