When Extremists Win: Cultural Transmission Via Iterated Learning When Populations Are Heterogeneous

How does the process of information transmission affect the cultural or linguistic products that emerge? This question is often studied experimentally and computationally via iterated learning, a procedure in which participants learn from previous participants in a chain. Iterated learning is a powerful tool because, when all participants share the same priors, the stationary distributions of the iterated learning chains reveal those priors. In many situations, however, it is unreasonable to assume that all participants share the same prior beliefs. We present four simulation studies and one experiment demonstrating that when the population of learners is heterogeneous, the behavior of an iterated learning chain can be unpredictable and is often systematically distorted by the learners with the most extreme biases. This results in group‐level outcomes that reflect neither the behavior of any individuals within the population nor the overall population average. We discuss implications for the use of iterated learning as a methodological tool as well as for the processes that might have shaped cultural and linguistic evolution in the real world.     

Biases and Heuristics in Decision Making and Their Impact on Autonomy

Cognitive scientists have identified a wide range of biases and heuristics in human decision making over the past few decades. Only recently have bioethicists begun to think seriously about the implications of these findings for topics such as agency, autonomy, and consent. This article aims to provide an overview of biases and heuristics that have been identified and a framework in which to think comprehensively about the impact of them on the exercise of autonomous decision making. I analyze the impact that these biases and heuristics have on the following dimensions of autonomy: understanding, intentionality, absence of alienating or controlling influence, and match between formally autonomous preferences or decisions and actual choices or actions.     

Maternal Acceptance: Its Contribution to Children's Favorable Perceptions of Discipline and Moral Identity

The authors examined the contribution of maternal acceptance or warmth to children's and adolescents’ perceptions of discipline and formation of moral identity. The sample consisted of 93 male and female students from Grades 5, 8, and 10 and their mothers. Students completed measures pertaining to perceived maternal discipline practices and acceptance-rejection, as well as moral identity. A subsample of mothers reported on their accepting or rejecting actions toward their children. Children were more likely to feel accepted, if their mothers used inductive discipline (vs. power assertion and love withdrawal). Perceived acceptance was also related to more favorable discipline evaluations in certain respects. Specifically, inductive discipline recipients who felt accepted also evaluated induction as appropriate and responded to it with positive and guilt-related emotions. Power assertion was evaluated as appropriate among those children who did feel accepted. Finally, among inductive discipline recipients, those who felt accepted also reported higher moral identity.     

The illusion of knowledge: When more information reduces accuracy and increases confidence

Intuition suggests that having more information can increase prediction accuracy of uncertain outcomes. In four experiments, we show that more knowledge can decrease accuracy and simultaneously increase prediction confidence. Participants were asked to predict basketball games sampled from a National Basketball Association season. All participants were provided with statistics (win record, halftime score), while half were additionally given the team names. Knowledge of names increased the confidence of basketball fans consistent with their belief that this knowledge improved their predictions. Contrary to this belief, it decreased the participants’ accuracy by reducing their reliance on statistical cues. One of the factors contributing to this underweighting of statistical cues was a bias to bet on more familiar teams against the statistical odds. Finally, in a real betting experiment, fans earned less money if they knew the team names while persisting in their belief that this knowledge improved their predictions.     

Do aggression and rule‐breaking have different interpersonal correlates? A study of antisocial behavior subtypes,negative affect,and hostile perceptions of others

There is mounting evidence that physical aggression and nonaggressive, rule‐breaking delinquency constitute two separable though correlated subtypes of antisocial behavior. Even so, it remains unclear whether these behavioral subtypes have meaningfully different interpersonal correlates, particularly as they are subsumed within the same broad domain of antisocial behavior. To evaluate this, we examined whether hostile perceptions of others (assessed via exposure to a series of neutral unknown faces) were linked to level and type of antisocial behavior aggression vs. rule‐breaking, and moreover, whether this association persisted even when also considering the common association with negative affect (as manipulated via written recollection of one's best and worst life experiences). Analyses revealed that aggression, but not rule‐breaking, was uniquely tied to hostile perceptions of others. Furthermore, this association persisted over and above the common association of both hostile perceptions and aggression with negative affect (at both trait and state levels). Such results provide additional support for clinically meaningful differences between the behavioral subtypes of aggression and nonaggressive rule‐breaking and for the independent role of hostile perceptions in aggressive behavior. Aggr. Behav. 35:453–461, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Better in the (near) future: Group-based differences in forecasting biases

Social identities are an important component of an individual’s self-concept. In the current research, we examine how identification with a group can lead to biased intergroup judgments similar to those made when evaluating the self, relative to others. We compared evaluations of in- and outgroups in order to examine differences in temporal perspective and optimistic evaluations. Our findings suggest that compared to an outgroup, ingroup members more strongly consider the future potential of their group, are more optimistic when considering future ingroup outcomes, and hold a more uniformly positive view of an ingroup’s future. Furthermore, we find that when evaluating ingroups, shifts in temporal perspectives are related to greater optimism. We conclude by discussing theoretical implications and future research related to temporal judgments and social groups.     

Why should we try to think like scientists? Scientific reasoning and susceptibility to epistemically suspect beliefs and cognitive biases

This paper examines whether scientific reasoning skills predict people's susceptibility to epistemically suspect beliefs and cognitive biases. We used the recently developed Scientific Reasoning Scale (SRS) because it measures the ability to read and evaluate scientific evidence. Alongside the SRS, 317 participants aged 18–30 years completed measures of thinking dispositions and cognitive ability to ascertain whether the SRS contributes specifically to susceptibility to epistemically suspect beliefs and cognitive biases. Scientific reasoning correlated positively with dispositions towards analytic thinking and cognitive ability and negatively with dogmatism, epistemically suspect beliefs, and susceptibility to cognitive biases. Most importantly, it emerged as a significant predictor, contributing to susceptibility to both cognitive biases and epistemically suspect beliefs over and above the other cognitive predictors. These results provide the first empirical evidence that scientific reasoning ability is an important factor in protecting against epistemically suspect beliefs and in aiding better decision making among the non-scientific population.     

Interpreting Silent Gesture: Cognitive Biases and Rational Inference in Emerging Language Systems

Natural languages make prolific use of conventional constituent‐ordering patterns to indicate “who did what to whom,” yet the mechanisms through which these regularities arise are not well understood. A series of recent experiments demonstrates that, when prompted to express meanings through silent gesture, people bypass native language conventions, revealing apparent biases underpinning word order usage, based on the semantic properties of the information to be conveyed. We extend the scope of these studies by focusing, experimentally and computationally, on the interpretation of silent gesture. We show cross‐linguistic experimental evidence that people use variability in constituent order as a cue to obtain different interpretations. To illuminate the computational principles that govern interpretation of non‐conventional communication, we derive a Bayesian model of interpretation via biased inductive inference and estimate these biases from the experimental data. Our analyses suggest people's interpretations balance the ambiguity that is characteristic of emerging language systems, with ordering preferences that are skewed and asymmetric, but defeasible.     

Understanding Beliefs

Beliefs are central to political psychology, but in many ways remain undertheorized. A good starting place for further thought is the typology of Smith, Bruner, and White that separates reality testing from the social and psychological functions of beliefs. The concept of beliefs has several connotations, some of which involve faith and emotions. It is often difficult to grasp others' beliefs, especially when they are foreign to us or morally repugnant. It is even more difficult to determine whether beliefs are powerful in the sense of determining behavior and autonomous in the sense of not being directly derivable from other factors. The Smith, Bruner, and White typology is useful here, helps us understand the operation of biases, and points to the multiple roles that beliefs play in people's lives, including managing trade-offs and generating what looks to others like hypocrisy.