Empathy and humanitarianism predict preferential moral responsiveness to in-groups and out-groups

ABSTRACT

The current research tests whether empathy—sharing others’ emotions—and humanitarianism—recognizing the moral worth of all people—each predict moral responsiveness toward others but in ways that favor in-groups and out-groups, respectively. In Studies 1 and 2, empathy and humanitarianism differentially predicted preferential moral concern for in-groups and out-groups. In Study 3, humanitarianism predicted lower in-group-targeted prosociality and greater out-group prosociality. In Study 4, empathy and humanitarianism predicted perceived moral obligation to in-groups and out-groups respectively. In Study 5, out-group obligation mediated between humanitarianism and allocations to out-group charities, and in-group obligation mediated between empathy and one of two in-group charities. In sum, empathy and humanitarianism are associated with preferential morality via group-based obligation, suggesting that morality could be extended by altering empathy, humanitarianism, or group processes.     

Thinking ahead or not? Natural aging and anticipation during reading

Despite growing evidence of young adults neurally pre-activating word features during sentence comprehension, less clear is the degree to which this generalizes to older adults. Using ERPs, we tested for linguistic prediction in younger and older readers by means of indefinite articles (a’s and an’s) preceding more and less probable noun continuations. Although both groups exhibited cloze probability-graded noun N400s, only the young showed significant article effects, indicating probabilistic sensitivity to the phonology of anticipated upcoming nouns. Additionally, both age groups exhibited prolonged increased frontal positivities to less probable nouns, although in older adults this effect was prominent only in a subset with high verbal fluency (VF). This ERP positivity to contextual constraint violations offers additional support for prediction in the young. For high VF older adults, the positivity may indicate they, too, engage in some form of linguistic pre-processing when implicitly cued, as may have occurred via the articles.     

We Are the World—and They Are Not: Prototypicality for the World Community,Legitimacy, and Responses to Global Inequality

The relation between developed and developing countries is characterized by inequalities that sometimes hinder actions against worldwide problems. The current research presents an intergroup approach, based on the ingroup projection model, towards an analysis of psychological processes that perpetuate global inequality on a social group level. Precisely, we argue that people from developed countries perceive their group as more prototypical for the world population than they perceive people from developing countries. These perceptions of ingroup prototypicality should in turn relate to legitimacy beliefs and predict unfavorable behavioral intentions towards developing countries. We present two studies that corroborate our hypotheses: In Study 1, participants from a developed country perceived their ingroup as more prototypical for the superordinate group (i.e., world population) than the outgroup (i.e., developing countries), which in turn was related to beliefs that global inequality is legitimate. This finding was replicated in Study 2, and the predicted effect of ingroup prototypicality on behavioral intentions was mediated by legitimacy beliefs. These findings demonstrate that intergroup processes can contribute to perpetuating global inequality.     

Systems Theory,Family Attachments and Processes of Triangulation: Does the Concept of Triangulation Offer a Useful Bridge?

This article reviews the usefulness of the systemic concept of triangulation as a bridge between systemic thinking and practice and attachment theory. Traditionally attachment theory has theorized and researched with dyads, parent‐child and adult romantic partners, whereas systemic theory has worked therapeutically with the triangle as the basic human relationship; that is, when any two people interact, their interactions are influenced by their respective relationships with the same third person. Here it is argued, for example, that a child's attachment representations are shaped not only by the relationship with each parent but with the relationship between them. Thus, the process of triangulation in intimate relationships is seen in this article to link attachment theory with systemic thinking, as systemic theory needs a theory of love and attachment theory needs to consider how intimate relationships are nested and interconnected in an attachment network.     

Attentional sensitization of unconscious visual processing: Top-down influences on masked priming

Classical theories of automaticity assume that automatic processes elicited by unconscious stimuli are autonomous and independent of higher-level cognitive influences. In contrast to these classical conceptions, we argue that automatic processing depends on attentional amplification of task-congruent processing pathways and propose an attentional sensitization model of unconscious visual processing: According to this model, unconscious visual processing is automatic in the sense that it is initiated without deliberate intention. However, unconscious visual processing is susceptible to attentional top-down control and is only elicited if the cognitive system is configured accordingly. In this article, we describe our attentional sensitization model and review recent evidence demonstrating attentional influences on subliminal priming, a prototypical example of an automatic process. We show that subliminal priming (a) depends on attentional resources, (b) is susceptible to stimulus expectations, (c) is influenced by action intentions, and (d) is modulated by task sets. These data suggest that attention enhances or attenuates unconscious visual processes in congruency with attentional task representations similar to conscious perception. We argue that seemingly paradoxical, hitherto unexplained findings regarding the automaticity of the underlying processes in many cognitive domains can be easily accommodated by our attentional sensitization model. We conclude this review with a discussion of future research questions regar-ding the nature of attentional control of unconscious visual processing.     

Dual identities in intergroup contact: Group status and size moderate the generalization of positive attitude change

To explore the effects of various categorization strategies on intergroup bias within and beyond a contact situation, two experiments were conducted involving groups of different size and/or status that worked together on a cooperative task. Three categorization strategies (decategorization, recategorization, and dual identity) were compared, and bias was measured through symbolic reward allocations to people who were and were not actually encountered. In Experiment 1 (N = 129), we varied group size (minority or majority) and found that it affected bias within the contact situation—minority groups were more biased than majority groups. All of the categorization strategies limited bias and they did so equally well. Outside the contact situation, however, only the recategorization and dual identity strategies limited bias. In Experiment 2 (N = 156), we varied both group status (low or high) and group size. Both of these variables affected bias within the contact situation—high status groups were more biased than low status groups, and minority groups were again more biased than majority groups. Once again, all three categorization strategies limited bias and they did so equally well. Outside the contact situation, however, an interaction among the independent variables was observed. For minority groups, only the dual identity strategy limited bias, but none of the categorization strategies limited bias for majority groups.     

5～9岁儿童对心理过程差异的理解

对心理过程差异的理解是学龄后儿童心理理论发展的一部分。本文主要探讨5-9岁儿童对心理过程差异的理解,即理解两个体在看到同样的物体时思维过程是否相同。采用“思想泡泡”的方法给5岁、7岁、9岁各20名儿童讲述故事,考察故事中人物背景知识的有无、对象的不同(自我-他人/他人-他人)及对象间关系的不同(朋友/陌生人)对儿童判断心理过程差异的影响。结果发现,有无背景信息对儿童理解心理过程差异有显著影响,而故事中对象不同及对象之间关系的不同对儿童理解心理过程差异无显著影响。同时还发现,随着年龄的增长,儿童逐渐意识到两个体的思维过程是不同的且能提供比较充分的解释,对心理过程差异的理解使学龄后儿童对个体独特性有更深的了解。     

Decision making in a dynamic situation: The effect of false alarms and time pressure

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of a priori probability of false alarms and time pressure on decision-making behaviour in a dynamic task environment. In order to assess whether strategy selection in a dynamic task environment would be adaptive, we modelled the task mathematically, and compared actual decision strategies to the optimal ones. In addition to the selected strategy, we also studied decision-making behaviour at a lower operational level, reflecting the amount of effort subjects are willing to spend on the decision process. Subjects were required to monitor the fitness level of a simulated athlete, who was running a race, and had to provide treatments whenever the athlete's fitness level suggested a real physiological problem. When a decline of the athlete's fitness was caused by a false alarm, a spontaneous recovery would occur after some time, without any need for intervention. Time pressure was manipulated by the rate at which the athlete's fitness level declined. Overall, subjects did not select the most efficient strategy: they dominantly selected information before applying an action, even though it would have been more profitable, and less effortful, just to apply actions. At the operational level, subjects appeared to invest less effort when the probability of false alarms increased and to invest more effort when time pressure increased. However, in contrast to the outcomes of our mathematical model, subjects adjusted the amount of intervention to the a priori probability of false alarms and not to time pressure. Together, the results indicate that the selection of a decision strategy in a dynamic task is less adaptive then is generally concluded from studies with static tasks.     

A Propositional Dynamic Logic with Qualitative Probabilities

This paper presents an -completeness theorem for a new propositional probabilistic logic, namely, the dynamic propositional logic of qualitative probabilities (D Q P), which has been introduced by the author as a dynamic extension of the logic of qualitative probabilities (Q P) introduced by Segerberg.