Contributions of expected sensory and affective action effects to action selection and performance: Evidence from forced- and free-choice tasks

Whereas ideomotor approaches to action control emphasize the importance of sensory action effects for action selection, motivational approaches emphasize the role of affective action effects. We used a game-like experimental setup to directly compare the roles of sensory and affective action effects in selecting and performing reaching actions in forced- and free-choice tasks. The two kinds of action effects did not interact. Action selection and execution in the forced-choice task were strongly impacted by the spatial compatibility between actions and the expected sensory action effects, whereas the free-choice task was hardly affected. In contrast, action execution, but not selection, in both tasks was strongly impacted by the spatial compatibility between actions and highly valued action effects. This pattern suggests that sensory and affective action effects serve different purposes: The former seem to dominate rule-based action selection, whereas the latter might serve to reduce any remaining action uncertainty.     

Action tendencies and characteristics of environmental risks

It is assumed that the mental representation of the causal structure of environmental risks, i.e., the type of cause and the type of potential consequence, determines which sort of action tendencies are formed. We propose a model of risk evaluation that includes consequentialist and deontological judgments as well as specific emotions as mediators of action tendencies. Four hundred participants took part in an experiment which presented scenario information about environmental risks. The scenarios differed with respect to (a) causation (human vs. natural cause; single vs. aggregate causation), (b) consequence (harm to self vs. harm to other people vs. harm to nature), and (c) geographical distance (proximate vs. distant). Participants indicated how much they preferred each of 31 prospective behaviors. Factor analyses yielded five types of action tendencies: help, aggression, escape, political action, and self-focus. The causal structure of the risks was systematically related to action tendencies, e.g., environmental risks that are caused by humans, and in particular those caused by a single human agent, elicit aggressive action tendencies. The findings conform that the perceived causal structure of a specific risk determines whether the focus is upon consequentialist or deontological judgments, which, in turn, elicit specific types of action tendency, mediated by emotions.     

Sociomotor action control

Our actions affect the behavior of other people in predictable ways. In the present article, we describe a theoretical framework for action control in social contexts that we call sociomotor action control. This framework addresses how human agents plan and initiate movements that trigger responses from other people, and we propose that humans represent and control such actions literally in terms of the body movements they consistently evoke from observers. We review evidence for this approach and discuss commonalities and differences to related fields such as joint action, intention understanding, imitation, and interpersonal power. The sociomotor framework highlights a range of open questions pertaining to how representations of other persons’ actions are linked to one’s own motor activity, how specifically they contribute to action initiation, and how they affect the way we perceive the actions of others.     

Drogenkonsum und Strafrecht

Drug consumption is a criminogenic factor. Almost all unauthorized contacts with narcotic drugs are punishable by German law. Users and dealers tie up significant resources within the judiciary, which in turn often requires help from psycho-scientific experts. Aiming at those experts, this article imparts basic knowledge of the criminal law on narcotics. Furthermore, it is meant to outline the impact of drug consumption on the assessment of offenders’ criminal responsibility as well as on ordering measures for the prevention of crime and the reformation of offenders from the jurisdictional point of view. Moreover, the article discusses the legal consequences of driving under the influence of drugs. Additionally, requirements for expert opinions on the criminal responsibility of drug addicts are summarised.     

Active red sports car and relaxed purple–blue van: affective qualities predict color appropriateness for car types

Research suggests that color appropriateness differs as a function of object type. Thus, a color may be perceived as appropriate for one product and inappropriate for another product. We argue that perceived appropriateness depends upon the congruity of the affective qualities of a color with those of the product. This assumption was addressed in two studies in which participants assigned the best matching color out of 13 Munsell colors to each of seven car types. Additionally, affective qualities of both colors and car types were measured on semantic differential scales. The first study showed that color appropriateness varied according to car type. As predicted, the affective qualities of the assigned colors tended to be congruent with the affective qualities of the car types. Affective congruity along the potency dimension of the semantic differential was of particular importance in explaining assignments of colors to car types. The second study was a replication of the first study but with a different sample. The results confirmed what we found in the first study. An interesting difference was, however, that activity (not potency) turned out to be the most important dimension of the semantic differential in explaining assignments of colors to car types. Implications for product development and marketing practice are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Not Only the Miserable Receive Help: Empathy Promotes Prosocial Behaviour Toward the Happy

Two studies investigated how person- and situation-related information elicit empathy and subsequent prosocial behaviour. Results show that congruent information (for example, positive emotion after positive event) elicits more empathy than incongruent information (for example, negative emotion after positive event). The extent of prosocial behaviour was observed to be an additive effect of person- and situation-related information, with congruent negative information eliciting most prosocial behaviour (study 1). In addition to an observed direct effect of perceived negative affect, empathy partially mediated prosocial behaviour in response to perceived positive affect. Corroborating these results, study 2 indicates a full mediation effect of empathic responsiveness to happiness on prosocial responding. This suggests that two different mechanisms may trigger prosocial behaviour: a direct influence of perceived negative affect, and an empathy mediated influence of perceived positive affect.     

Deal und Fehlurteil

This article describes the function of criminal proceedings. On this basis it outlines the limits of a lawful settlement of the outcome of criminal proceedings between the court, the prosecution and the accused in contrast to an illegitimate deal. This allows the notion of a judicial error to be defined in this context. Building on this it is shown that deals in particular bear certain risks for a judicial error that can be averted by strictly observing the legal provisions for settlements.     

The being a patient effect: negative expectations based on group labeling and corresponding treatment affect patient performance

Patient studies provide insights into mechanisms underlying diseases and thus represent a cornerstone of clinical research. In this study, we report evidence that differences between patients and controls might partly be based on expectations generated by the patients’ knowledge of being invited and treated as a patient: the Being a Patient effect (BP effect). This finding extends previous neuropsychological reports on diagnosis threat. Participants with mild allergies were addressed either as patients or control subjects in a clinical study. We measured the impact of this group labeling and corresponding instructions on pain perception and cognitive performance. Our results provide evidence that the BP effect can indeed affect physiological and cognitive measures in clinical settings. Importantly, these effects can lead to systematic overestimation of genuine disease effects and should be taken into account when disease effects are investigated. Finally, we propose strategies to avoid or minimize this critical confound.     

Top-down versus bottom-up: when instructions overcome automatic retrieval

Research on human action has extensively covered controlled and automatic processes in the transformation of stimulus information into motor action, and how conflict between both types of processes is solved. However, the question of how automatic stimulus–response (S–R) translation per se depends on top-down control states remains unanswered. The present study addressed this issue by manipulating top-down control state (instructed S–R mapping) and automatic bottom-up processing (retrieval of S–R memory traces) independently from each other. Using a color/shape task-switching paradigm, we compared cross-talk triggered by distractor stimuli, for which the instructed S–R mapping and the S–R associations compiled at the beginning of the experiment matched, with the cross-talk triggered by distractor stimuli, for which (re-)instructed mapping and compiled S–R associations did not match. We show that the latter distractors do not yield any cross-talk in RTs and even reversed cross-talk in error rates, demonstrating that automatic S–R retrieval is modulated by top-down control states.