The viability of crowdsourcing for survey research

Online contract labor portals (i.e., crowdsourcing) have recently emerged as attractive alternatives to university participant pools for the purposes of collecting survey data for behavioral research. However, prior research has not provided a thorough examination of crowdsourced data for organizational psychology research. We found that, as compared with a traditional university participant pool, crowdsourcing respondents were older, were more ethnically diverse, and had more work experience. Additionally, the reliability of the data from the crowdsourcing sample was as good as or better than the corresponding university sample. Moreover, measurement invariance generally held across these groups. We conclude that the use of these labor portals is an efficient and appropriate alternative to a university participant pool, despite small differences in personality and socially desirable responding across the samples. The risks and advantages of crowdsourcing are outlined, and an overview of practical and ethical guidelines is provided.     

Switch detection in preschoolers' cognitive flexibility

The current study addressed the role of switch detection in cognitive flexibility by testing the effect of transition cues (i.e., cues that directly signal the need to switch or maintain a given task goal) in a cued set-shifting paradigm at 5 years of age. Children performed better, especially on switch trials, when transition cues were combined with traditional task cues (i.e., cues that directly signal the relevant task on a given trial) relative to conditions without transition cues. This effect was not influenced by explicit knowledge of transition cues or transition cue transparency, suggesting that transition cues did not need to be semantically processed to be beneficial. These findings reveal that young children’s difficulties in set-shifting situations stem partially from failures to monitor for the need to switch.     

Culture and Probability Judgment Accuracy: The Influence of Holistic Reasoning

A well-established phenomenon in the judgment and decision-making tradition is the overconfidence one places in the amount of knowledge that one possesses. Overconfidence or probability judgment accuracy varies not only individually but also across cultures. However, research efforts to explain cross-cultural variations in the overconfidence phenomenon have seldom been made. In Study 1, the authors compared the probability judgment accuracy of U.S. Americans (N = 108) and Mexican participants (N = 100). In Study 2, they experimentally primed culture by randomly assigning English/Spanish bilingual Mexican Americans (N = 195) to response language. Results of both studies replicated the cross-cultural variation of probability judgment accuracy previously observed in other cultural groups. U.S. Americans displayed less overconfidence when compared to Mexicans. These results were then replicated in bilingual participants, when culture was experimentally manipulated with language priming. Holistic reasoning did not account for the cross-cultural variation of overconfidence. Suggestions for future studies are discussed.     

Reasoning About Social Choice Functions

We introduce a logic specifically designed to support reasoning about social choice functions. The logic includes operators to capture strategic ability, and operators to capture agent preferences. We establish a correspondence between formulae in the logic and properties of social choice functions, and show that the logic is expressively complete with respect to social choice functions, i.e., that every social choice function can be characterised as a formula of the logic. We prove that the logic is decidable, and give a complete axiomatization. To demonstrate the value of the logic, we show in particular how it can be applied to the problem of determining whether a social choice function is strategy-proof.     

Applying the Flanker Task to Political Psychology: A Research Note

One of the two stated objectives of the new “Research Note” section of Political Psychology is to present short reports that highlight novel methodological approaches. Toward that end, we call readers' attention to the “flanker task,” a research protocol widely employed in the study of the cognitive processes involved with detection, recognition, and distraction. The flanker task has increasingly been modified to study social traits, and we believe it has untapped value in the area of political psychology. Here we describe the flanker task—discussing its potential for political psychology—and illustrate this potential by presenting results from a study correlating political ideology to flanker effects.     

Sociodemographic risk and early environmental factors that contribute to resilience in executive control: A factor mixture model of 3-year-olds

Young children at sociodemographic risk generally demonstrate lower executive control (EC), although with substantial heterogeneity across children. Given this marked variability, there may be some at-risk children who display higher EC and may be buffered from or resilient to the effects of sociodemographic risk who can be studied to identify the contributory factors. In this study, factor mixture modelling was used to determine whether subgroups of 3-year-old children existed based on their observed performance on a battery of EC tasks. Results indicated 2 latent groups: One characterized by lower EC and the other by higher EC. Both sociodemographically at-risk and low-risk children were represented in each group, yielding 4 risk-status-by-EC groups, where at-risk higher EC children were termed the resilient group. Proximal household enrichment (e.g., exposure to learning materials, varied enriching experiences, academic and language stimulation, parental responsivity) distinguished the resilient group from lower performing children of similar risk status, whereas distal financial resources and proximal social network resources did not distinguish these two groups. Results suggest potential intervention targets to promote optimal EC development, particularly among children at risk.     

An Idiographic Examination of Day-to-Day Patterns of Substance Use Craving,Negative Affect,and Tobacco Use Among Young Adults in Recovery

Psychological constructs, such as negative affect and substance use cravings that closely predict relapse, show substantial intraindividual day-to-day variability. This intraindividual variability of relevant psychological states combined with the “one day at a time” nature of sustained abstinence warrant a day-to-day investigation of substance use recovery. This study examines day-to-day associations among substance use cravings, negative affect, and tobacco use among 30 college students in 12-step recovery from drug and alcohol addictions. To account for individual variability in day-to-day process, it applies an idiographic approach. The sample of 20 males and 10 females (mean age = 21) was drawn from members of a collegiate recovery community at a large university. Data were collected with end-of-day data collections taking place over an average of 26.7 days. First-order vector autoregression models were fit to each individual predicting daily levels of substance use cravings, negative affect, and tobacco use from the same 3 variables 1 day prior. Individual model results demonstrated substantial interindividual differences in intraindividual recovery process. Based on estimates from individual models, cluster analyses were used to group individuals into 2 homogeneous subgroups. Group comparisons demonstrate distinct patterns in the day-to-day associations among substance use cravings, negative affect, and tobacco use, suggesting the importance of idiographic approaches to recovery management and that the potential value of focusing on negative affect or tobacco use as prevention targets depends on idiosyncratic processes.