By any means necessary: the effects of regulatory focus and moral conviction on hostile and benevolent forms of collective action

In two studies, we investigate the effect of individuals' promotion and prevention focus on engagement in collective action. We show that responding to group-based disadvantage out of a sense of moral conviction motivates prevention-oriented- but not promotion-oriented- individuals to engage in collective action. Furthermore, holding such strong moral convictions about the fair treatment of their group causes the prevention-oriented to disregard societal rules against hostile forms of collective action (i.e., forms of action that are aimed at harming the interests of those held responsible for the group's disadvantage). Study 1 showed that prevention-oriented individuals, but not promotion-oriented individuals, with a strong moral conviction about the fair treatment of their group are willing to support both hostile and benevolent forms of collective action. Study 2 replicated this effect and showed that for prevention-oriented individuals but not for promotion-oriented individuals, holding a strong moral conviction about the fair treatment of the group overrides moral objections to hostile forms of collective action in the decision to support these forms of action.     

The developmental roots of the speed-accuracy trade-off

The speed of adult reaching movements is lawfully related to the distance of the reach and the size of the target. The authors had 7-, 9-, and 11-month-old infants reach for small and large targets to investigate a possible relation between the emergence of this speed-accuracy trade-off and the improvements in infants' ability to pick up tiny objects. By 7 months of age, infants slowed down their reaches for smaller objects. The authors concluded that it was not the ability to use a precision grip that facilitated the speed-accuracy trade-off but rather the other way around. The slowing down toward the end of the movement might set the conditions for the development of fine distal control of the hand.     

“Self‐promotion”: How regulatory focus affects the pursuit of self‐interest at the expense of the group

Self‐interested behavior may have positive consequences for individual group‐members, but also negatively affects the outcomes of the group when group‐level and individual‐level interests are misaligned. In two studies, we examined such self‐interested, group‐undermining behavior from the perspective of regulatory focus theory. We predicted that when individual and group interests are out of alignment, individuals under promotion focus would be more likely than individuals under prevention focus to pursue individual success at the expense of their group. Two studies provided support for this prediction. Promotion oriented individuals were more willing to act in their self‐interest (at the expense of their group) than individuals under prevention focus when self‐interested goals were not compatible with cooperation. No effect of regulatory focus on group loyalty was found when cooperation formed the only viable route to individual success. We discuss how these findings extend our understanding of the role of regulatory focus in social situations and of the practice of ensuring loyalty in contexts where individual and group goals are misaligned while cooperation is an important part of group success.     

Base on balls for the Chapman strategy: Reassessing Brouwer, Brenner, and Smeets (2002)

A true understanding of skilled behavior includes the identification of the information that underlies the perception?Caction cycle at work. Often, observers?? sensitivity to perceptual variables is established in laboratory-situated simulation-based psychophysical experiments. The observers?? sensitivity thus determined is then used to draw conclusions that will generalize the findings to natural behavior. Focusing on the example of running to catch fly balls, the present contribution takes the study of Brouwer, Brenner, and Smeets (Perception & Psychophysics 64:1160?C1168, 2002) to illustrate how common assumptions in the steps from psychophysical experiments to natural behavior can result in ungrounded conclusions. These authors built an argument to reject the use of the Chapman strategy of zeroing out optical acceleration. For this argument, they determined the sensitivity of the visual system to acceleration, assuming that acceleration is detected as a velocity ratio. Next, they showed that catchers started running earlier than could be expected on the basis of sensitivity thresholds for this velocity ratio, concluding that running initiation could not have been based on optical acceleration. In the present study, we argue that important assumptions in the Brouwer et al. (Perception & Psychophysics 64:1160?C1168, 2002) line of argument are incorrect. First, we show how the assumption of parabolic ball flight trajectories, although convenient, biased Brouwer et al.??s (Perception & Psychophysics 64:1160?C1168, 2002) conclusion. Next, we present an experiment revealing that observers do not base their judgments of acceleration on the velocity ratio. Thus, we demonstrate that Brouwer et al.??s (Perception & Psychophysics 64:1160?C1168, 2002) argument that optical acceleration cannot serve as the information for running to catch fly balls does not hold.     

The dynamics of coordinated reaching and grasping: Scanning prehension properly

Prehension is the act of coordinated reaching and grasping. S.A. Wallace, E. Stevenson, A. Spear, D.L. Weeks [Hum. Movement Sci. 13 (1994) 255–289] proposed to assess the stability of this coordination by scanning the dynamics of prehension. The scanning method proposed by these authors prompted participants to position their peak hand aperture at different locations along the trajectory. Comparing the actual performance with the required performance, Wallace and colleagues concluded that there was a single stable pattern of coordination, albeit different for each individual. Here, we show that the method developed by Wallace et al. (1994, loc. cit.), and later used by C. Button, S. Bennett, K. Davids [Hum. Movement Sci. 17 (1998) 801–820] was flawed. We propose two potential fixes to the method and report a replication of the original experiment. Interpretation of the data with a corrected scanning technique showed that the method does not seem to be able to result in an unambiguous and precise assessment of the locus of stability.     

A common first-order time-to-contact based control of hand-closure initiation in catching and grasping

To catch or grasp an object, the initiation of hand closure has to be coordinated with the relative movement between hand and object. In search of a common control of the initiation of hand closure for both tasks (van de Kamp, Bongers, & Zaal, 2010), the authors studied two tasks, catching while keeping the hand stationary and prehension. They showed that the initiation of hand closure could well be based on first-order time-to-contact in the prehension task but not in the catching task studied. The current study tested if the fact that the hand-object gap was closed at a linear rate made that the initiation of hand closure could not be explained on the basis of that same first-order time-to-contact in the catching task. In Experiment 1, the participants had to catch targets that approached at nonlinear rates while keeping the hand stationary. In Experiment 2, the participants were free to move their hand in catching the approaching objects, allowing the closure of the hand-object gap to occur at a nonlinear rate as it would in natural movements. The results showed that the first-order time-to-contact based control of the initiation of hand closure did apply in Experiment 2, whereas it did not in Experiment 1. It was concluded that constraining the catching task such that it became unfamiliar led to a hampered timing, thus obstructing the finding of the common control in the previous study, and in Experiment 1 of the current study.