The effect of consequential thinking on trust game behavior

Contrary to rational Expected Monetary Value (EMV) predictions that no money will be transferred in Trust Games, in experiments players make positive transfers. Theorists have proposed modifying the Sender's utility function while retaining utility‐maximization assumptions to account for this behavior. Such accounts assume that Senders can grasp the possible outcomes of their choices, their probabilities, and utilities. In reality, however, Senders' choices are unexpectedly complex, and the assumption that they approximate expected utility maximization is highly implausible. Instead, we suggest that Senders are guided by general propensities to trust others. Two experiments examine the effect of inducing consequential thought on Sender behavior. One induced consequential thought directly; the other did so indirectly. The amount sent was significantly reduced following either manipulation. This suggests that models of Sender behavior in Complex Trust Games should not assume that participants routinely engage in consequential thinking (CT) of the depth that would be required for utility maximization. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rethinking Regulatory Engagement Theory

We offer a constructive critique of Regulatory Engagement Theory (Higgins, E. T. (2006). Value from hedonic experience and engagement. Psychological Review, 113(3), 439–460.; Higgins, E. T., and Scholer, A. A. (2009). Engaging the consumer: The science and art of the value creation process. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(2).). After highlighting the major tenets of the theory and its main contributions, we identify some of its conceptual ambiguities. We then argue that the hedonic and intensity components of value may not be psychologically separable in that experiences acquire their hedonic quality through their intensity. We next discuss why the various determinants of strength of engagement proposed by the theory may not all operate through the same process. Even the regulatory fit phenomenon seems to involve more than one process. We conclude by suggesting that many strength-of-engagement effects may reflect feelings-as-information inferences consistent with the Generalized Affect-as-Information Model of judgment (GAIM; Pham, M. T. (2008). The lexicon and Grammar of Affect-as-Information: The GAIM. In M. Wanke (Ed.), Social psychology of consumer behavior. New York: Psychology Press.).     

Individual Differences in Learning Abilities Impact Structure Addition: Better Learners Create More Structured Languages

Over the last decade, iterated learning studies have provided compelling evidence for the claim that linguistic structure can emerge from non-structured input, through the process of transmission. However, it is unclear whether individuals differ in their tendency to add structure, an issue with implications for understanding who are the agents of change. Here, we identify and test two contrasting predictions: The first sees learning as a pre-requisite for structure addition, and predicts a positive correlation between learning accuracy and structure addition, whereas the second maintains that it is those learners who struggle with learning and reproducing their input who add structure to it. This prediction is hard to test in standard iterated learning paradigms since each learner is exposed to a different input, and since structure and accuracy are computed using the same test items. Here, we test these contrasting predictions in two experiments using a one-generation artificial language learning paradigm designed to provide independent measures of learning accuracy and structure addition. Adults (N = 48 in each study) were exposed to a semi-regular language (with probabilistic structure) and had to learn it: Learning was assessed using seen items, whereas structure addition was calculated over unseen items. In both studies, we find a strong positive correlation between individuals' ability to learn the language and their tendency to add structure to it: Better learners also produced more structured languages. These findings suggest a strong link between learning and generalization. We discuss the implications of these findings for iterated language models and theories of language change more generally.     

Reaching within video-capture virtual reality: using virtual reality as a motor control paradigm.

We have developed a virtual reality (VR) system that integrates a three-dimensional tracking device with a video-capture VR platform to record upper limb movements. The influence of target velocity on planning and execution of reaching movements was studied in five healthy subjects. Our initial results suggest that a target's velocity is considered when planning an interceptive action and that a hand reaching toward a moving virtual target is controlled in a similar way to how it is in the real visual environment.     

Lay Personality Theories in Interactive Decisions: Strongly Held,Weakly Supported

In interactive decisions, cues to what others will do are important in forming a strategy. Information about others' personalities appears to be potentially valuable for this purpose. We report a series of four studies examining how information about another actor's personality influences people's own choices in interactive decisions. The studies found widespread beliefs that others' personality characteristics are strongly predictive both of broad classes of decision behavior (competition/cooperation, risk‐seeking/risk‐aversion) (Study 1) and of specific choices (Study 2) in single‐agent settings. These beliefs extended to predicting others' choices in interactive decisions (Study 3) and to shaping the predictor's own decisions in interactive play in Chicken and Assurance games (Study 4). Overall, we found extensive evidence that laypeople believe that the personality traits we selected (angry‐hostility, anxiety, assertiveness, excitement‐seeking, and warmth) have substantial effects on behavior in interactive decisions and they act on those beliefs when making their own decisions. The empirical evidence supporting the predictive validity of these traits was, however, quite weak. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pedagogical cues encourage toddlers' transmission of recently demonstrated functions to unfamiliar adults

Young children use pedagogical cues as a signal that others' actions are social or cultural conventions. Here we show that children selectively transmit (enact in a new social situation) causal functions demonstrated pedagogically, even when they have learned and can produce alternative functions as well. Two‐year‐olds saw two novel toys, each with two functions. One experimenter demonstrated one function using pedagogical cues (eye contact and child‐directed speech) and a second experimenter demonstrated the alternative function using intentional actions towards the object, but without pedagogical cues. Children imitated both functions at equal rates initially, indicating equal causal learning from both types of demonstration. However, they were significantly more likely to enact the pedagogical function for a new adult not present during the initial demonstrations. These results indicate that pedagogical cues influence children's transmission of information, perhaps playing a role in the dissemination of cultural conventions from a young age.