Catching the liar as a matter of justice: Effects of belief in a just world on deception detection accuracy and the moderating role of mortality salience

Belief in a just world has been linked to high interpersonal trust and less suspicion of deception. We therefore predicted people with a strong dispositional belief in a just world to have low motivation to accurately detect deception. Accordingly, we hypothesized such a belief to be negatively related to accuracy in deception detection. Furthermore, research on Terror Management Theory has indicated that culturally shared values, such as justice, become more important after mortality salience. Thus, we assumed engaging in justice concerns after a death threat is especially relevant for people with a strong belief in a just world, and further, that accurate deception detection is a matter of justice. Based on this reasoning, we expected people with a strong belief in a just world to have an increased motivation to accurately detect deception after mortality salience. Consequently, we hypothesized dispositional differences in belief in a just world to be unrelated to accuracy in deception detection after mortality salience. In line with these predictions, our study revealed that participants with a strong (vs. weak) belief in a just world were worse in deception detection unless they had first been reminded of their mortality.     

Long-term focus and prosocial–antisocial tendencies interact to predict belief in just world

According to justice motive theory, individuals need to believe that the world is a just place where people generally get what they deserve (Lerner, 1977). Individuals are thought to need belief in a just world (BJW) in part because it gives them the confidence required to invest in long-term goals. However, BJW can only provide confidence that individuals will reap the rewards of their investments if they invest in their goals through prosocial means (e.g., Hafer, 2000). The current study provides evidence for this argument. Specifically, we examined individual differences in BJW, long-term goal focus, and prosocial–antisocial tendencies to test the hypothesis that higher long-term focus would be associated with higher BJW, but only amongst those who are also high in prosocial (low in antisocial) tendencies. This hypothesis was tested four times using four measures of prosocial–antisocial tendencies. Simple slopes analyses revealed the predicted pattern of results for three of the four measures. Our findings (a) provide novel support for the idea that BJW aids in the prosocial pursuit of long-term goals, and (b) have implications for individual variation in BJW.     

Development and Evaluation of the Belief Acceptance Scale

The Belief Acceptance Scale (BAS) is a nine question scale that was developed to evaluate how open and accepting an individual is to other people’s beliefs across interdependent life domains. The purposes of this article are to demonstrate the internal consistency of the BAS and examine the instrument’s substructure and to correlate the BAS with validated measures of religiosity and demographic data gathered from a web-based Survey of Spiritual Experiences. The BAS focuses on cultural beliefs instead of religious motivations and was designed to be administered to religious and non-religious individuals. Three domains of belief acceptance were tested: the internal or subjective openness to other beliefs (Psychological Domain), willingness to participate in other ideologies and rituals (Reciprocal Domain), and the willingness to date or marry outside one’s belief system or cultural background (Social Domain). Responses from 350 individuals were correlated and analysed to estimate the scale’s internal consistency and subscale structure. Analyses support the validity of the BAS scores in that they demonstrate expected correlations with demographic data and standardised measures of religiosity. The results show that the BAS is an internally consistent scale with a coherent substructure that adequately measures openness to other beliefs, ideologies and belief systems.     

Perceptual hysteresis as a marker of perceptual inflexibility in schizophrenia

People with schizophrenia are known to exhibit difficulties in the updating of their current belief states even in the light of disconfirmatory evidence. In the present study we tested the hypothesis that people with schizophrenia could also manifest perceptual inflexibility, or difficulties in the updating of their current sensory states. The presence of perceptual inflexibility might contribute both to the patients’ altered perception of reality and the formation of some delusions as well as to their social cognition deficits. Here, we addressed this issue with a protocol of auditory hysteresis, a direct measure of sensory persistence, on a population of stabilized antipsychotic-treated schizophrenia patients and a sample of control subjects. Trials consisted of emotional signals (i.e., screams) and neutral signals (i.e., spectrally-rotated versions of the emotional stimuli) progressively emerging from white noise – Ascending Sequences – or progressively fading away in white noise – Descending Sequences. Results showed that patients presented significantly stronger hysteresis effects than control subjects, as evidenced by a higher rate of perceptual reports in Descending Sequences. The present study thus provides direct evidence of perceptual inflexibility in schizophrenia.     

Do people automatically track others’ beliefs? Evidence from a continuous measure

Recent findings suggest that tracking others’ beliefs is not always effortful and slow, but may rely on a fast and implicit system. An untested prediction of the automatic belief tracking account is that own and others’ beliefs should be activated in parallel. We tested this prediction measuring continuous movement trajectories in a task that required deciding between two possible object locations. We independently manipulated whether participants’ belief about the object location was true or false and whether an onlooker’s belief about the object location was true or false. Manipulating whether or not the agent’s belief was ever task relevant allowed us to compare performance in an explicit and implicit version of the same task. Movement parameters revealed an influence of the onlooker’s irrelevant belief in the implicit version of the task. This provides evidence for parallel activation of own and others’ beliefs.     

Using forced choice to test belief bias in syllogistic reasoning

In deductive reasoning, believable conclusions are more likely to be accepted regardless of their validity. Although many theories argue that this belief bias reflects a change in the quality of reasoning, distinguishing qualitative changes from simple response biases can be difficult (Dube, Rotello, & Heit, 2010). We introduced a novel procedure that controls for response bias. In Experiments 1 and 2, the task required judging which of two simultaneously presented syllogisms was valid. Surprisingly, there was no evidence for belief bias with this forced choice procedure. In Experiment 3, the procedure was modified so that only one set of premises was viewable at a time. An effect of beliefs emerged: unbelievable conclusions were judged more accurately, supporting the claim that beliefs affect the quality of reasoning. Experiments 4 and 5 replicated and extended this finding, showing that the effect was mediated by individual differences in cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. Although the positive findings of Experiments 3–5 are most relevant to the debate about the mechanisms underlying belief bias, the null findings of Experiments 1 and 2 offer insight into how the presentation of an argument influences the manner in which people reason.     

Unfairness begets unfairness: Victim derogation bias in employee ratings

This research investigated criterion contamination in human resource evaluations, specifically victim derogation in which third parties (e.g., managers, co-workers) systematically undervalue the performance and potential of individuals who have previously suffered organizational injustices. A policy capturing design (Study 1) found that managers rated job applicants who had been treated unfairly by their previous employers as less suitable than fairly treated applicants, after objective performance information was controlled. In Study 2, the effect of unfair treatment on job applicant ratings was found to be moderated by managers’ just world beliefs, with applicant ratings reflecting more derogation among managers with higher (vs. lower) Belief in a Just World. In Study 3, the pattern of results from Study 2 was replicated in a performance evaluation context using peers as raters. Moreover, in Study 3 an intervention that activated raters’ moral identity was found to attenuate victim derogation bias.     

When psychology undermines beliefs

This paper attempts to specify the conditions under which a psychological explanation can undermine or debunk a set of beliefs. The focus will be on moral and religious beliefs, where a growing debate has emerged about the epistemic implications of cognitive science. Recent proposals by Joshua Greene and Paul Bloom will be taken as paradigmatic attempts to undermine beliefs with psychology. I will argue that a belief p may be undermined whenever: (i) p is evidentially based on an intuition which (ii) can be explained by a psychological mechanism that is (iii) unreliable for the task of believing p; and (iv) any other evidence for belief p is based on rationalization. I will also consider and defend two equally valid arguments for establishing unreliability: the redundancy argument and the argument from irrelevant factors. With this more specific understanding of debunking arguments, it is possible to develop new replies to some objections to psychological debunking arguments from both ethics and philosophy of religion.     

无辜受害事件对公正世界信念的威胁:观察者的角色偏倚

无辜受害者信息往往打破民众“好人有好报”的公正世界,而这种公正世界信念的威胁也因人而异。通过情绪Stroop效应验证这一心理现象,并探讨观察者与无辜受害者的群体归属以及观察者的不公正体验是否会影响公正世界信念威胁的程度。结果表明:(1)无论观察者是否与无辜受害者属于同一群体,或者观察者有无不公正体验,无辜受害者信息均会激活观察者的公正世界信念。(2)相比于外群体,当观察者与受害者属于同一群体类型(内群体)时,其公正世界信念的激活程度更强。(3)内群体观察者在有和无不公正体验的条件下,公正世界信念的威胁程度不存在显著差异。     

Philosophical foundations of partial belief models

This paper is an attempt to put forward a new kind of partial model for representing belief states. I first introduce some philosophical motivations for working with partial models. Then, I present the standard (total) model proposed by Hintikka, and the partial models studied by Humberstone and Holliday. I then show how to reduce Hintikka’s semantics in order to obtain a partial model which, however, differs from Humberstone’s and Holliday’s. The nature of such differences is assessed, and I provide motivations for using the newly proposed semantics rather than the existing ones. Finally, I review some promising philosophical applications of the ideas developed throughout the discussion.