Inference in the Wild: A Framework for Human Situation Assessment and a Case Study of Air Combat

Situation awareness is a key construct in human factors and arises from a process of situation assessment (SA). SA comprises the perception of information, its integration with existing knowledge, the search for new information, and the prediction of the future state of the world, including the consequences of planned actions. Causal models implemented as Bayesian networks (BNs) are attractive for modeling all of these processes within a single, unified framework. We elicited declarative knowledge from two Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fighter pilots about the information sources used in the identification (ID) of airborne entities and the causal relationships between these sources. This knowledge was represented in a BN (the declarative model) that was evaluated against the performance of 19 RAAF fighter pilots in a low‐fidelity simulation. Pilot behavior was well predicted by a simple associative model (the behavioral model) with only three attributes of ID. Search for information by pilots was largely compensatory and was near‐optimal with respect to the behavioral model. The average revision of beliefs in response to evidence was close to Bayesian, but there was substantial variability. Together, these results demonstrate the value of BNs for modeling human SA.     

Personality and Everyday Functioning in Older Adults With and Without HIV

Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings - In a cross-sectional multi-method study of older adults living with and without HIV (n?=?202; 69.8% HIV seropositive), we tested...     

Using behavioral economics to optimize safer undergraduate late-night transportation

Many universities sponsor student-oriented transit services that could reduce alcohol-induced risks but only if services adequately anticipate and adapt to student needs. Human choice data offer an optimal foundation for planning and executing late-night transit services. In this simulated choice experiment, respondents opted to either (a) wait an escalating delay for a free university-sponsored “safe” option, (b) pay an escalating fee for an on-demand rideshare service, or (c) pick a free, immediately available “unsafe” option (e.g., ride with an alcohol-impaired driver). Behavioral-economic nonlinear models of averaged-choice data describe preference across arrangements. Best-fit metrics indicate adequate sensitivity to contextual factors (i.e., wait time, preceding late-night activity). At short delays, students preferred the free transit option. As delays extend beyond 30 min, most students preferred competing alternatives. These data depict a policy-relevant delay threshold to better safeguard undergraduate student safety.     

Exploring a patient's shift from relative silence to verbal expressiveness: Observations on an element of the analyst's participation

By tracing a portion of close process of a patient's shifts from a relatively silent and inhibited stance to one in which he is beginning to verbalize more about his experience and fantasy, I will illustrate some tensions between the analyst's role as facilitating expressiveness and as occupying a place in the patient's internalized world. Since the analyst's functions as facilitator and as internal object (often an obstacle to the patient's expressiveness) are sometimes in conflict with one another, it is important for the analyst to be able to work internally with this conflict as he works with his patient. Splitting processes between these two functions may provide the analyst with cues related to the patient's and the analyst's resistance to understanding the patient's communication of unconscious conflict and the patient's recruitment of the analyst into the patient's internalized world.     

Who expressed what emotion? Men grab anger,women grab happiness

When anger or happiness flashes on a face in the crowd, do we misperceive that emotion as belonging to someone else? Two studies found that misperception of apparent emotional expressions—“illusory conjunctions”—depended on the gender of the target: male faces tended to “grab” anger from neighboring faces, and female faces tended to grab happiness. Importantly, the evidence did not suggest that this effect was due to the general tendency to misperceive male or female faces as angry or happy, but instead indicated a more subtle interaction of expectations and early visual processes. This suggests a novel aspect of affordance-management in human perception, whereby cues to threat, when they appear, are attributed to those with the greatest capability of doing harm, whereas cues to friendship are attributed to those with the greatest likelihood of providing affiliation opportunities.     

System justifying functions of myths that exaggerate the emotional rewards of parenthood

Popular beliefs exaggerate the emotional rewards of caring for children. These beliefs may persist because they provide ideological legitimacy for policies that otherwise might appear to exploit parents' contributions to the public good. Studies 1a and 1b tested whether information suggesting that parents' labor is unjustly exploited by society motivates people to exaggerate the emotional rewards of parenthood. Study 2 manipulated participants' exposure to parenthood idealizing myths to test whether these myths reduce support for expanding government assistance to parents. Across these studies support was found for the hypothesis that exaggerating the emotional rewards of children functions to legitimize and maintain low public assistance to parents. Theoretical insights into system justifying ideologies and practical implications for social justice movements are discussed.     

When nasty breeds nice: Threats of violence amplify agreeableness at national, individual, and situational levels

Humans have perennially faced threats of violence from other humans and have developed functional strategies for surviving those threats. Five studies examined the relation between threats of violence and agreeableness at the level of nations, individuals, and situations. People living in countries with higher military spending (Study 1) and those who chronically perceive threats from others (Study 2) were more agreeable. However, this threat-linked agreeableness was selective (Studies 3-5). Participants primed with threat were more agreeable and willing to help familiar others but were less agreeable and willing to help unfamiliar others. Additionally, people from large families, for whom affiliation may be a salient response to threat, were more likely than people from small families to shift in agreeableness. Returning to the national level, military spending was associated with increased trust in ingroup members but decreased trust in outgroups. Together, these findings demonstrate that agreeableness is selectively modulated by threats of violence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).