The effect of distance-dependent construals on schema-driven impression formation

Two experiments examine how distance-dependent construal can affect trait aggregation in impression formation. We propose that, because higher- versus lower-level construals promote the tendency to impose schematic structure on information processing, higher-level construals should enhance schema-driven trait aggregation. We test this by examining a classic impression formation phenomenon: the primacy effect (Asch, 1946). Increasing temporal distance (Study 1a) and priming higher-level construals (Study 1b) led participants to form more favorable impressions of targets described initially as intelligent versus envious. Decreasing temporal distance and priming lower-level construals, in contrast, reversed the primacy effect. Thus, the distance of a target, with its associated construal, can impact the aggregation of traits and consequently impacts people's evaluations of others.     

When good evidence goes bad: the weak evidence effect in judgment and decision-making

An indispensable principle of rational thought is that positive evidence should increase belief. In this paper, we demonstrate that people routinely violate this principle when predicting an outcome from a weak cause. In Experiment 1 participants given weak positive evidence judged outcomes of public policy initiatives to be less likely than participants given no evidence, even though the evidence was separately judged to be supportive. Experiment 2 ruled out a pragmatic explanation of the result, that the weak evidence implies the absence of stronger evidence. In Experiment 3, weak positive evidence made people less likely to gamble on the outcome of the 2010 United States mid-term Congressional election. Experiments 4 and 5 replicated these findings with everyday causal scenarios. We argue that this “weak evidence effect” arises because people focus disproportionately on the mentioned weak cause and fail to think about alternative causes.     

Incidental anger and the desire to evaluate

Our results indicate that people experiencing incidental anger are more likely than people in neutral and other emotional states to prefer to perform evaluative tasks, even though their anger may bias the evaluations they make. Induced anger increased participants’ desire to evaluate others’ ideas (Experiment 1) and made the evaluations of those ideas more negative in valence (Experiment 2). Anger increased the appeal of evaluating ideas when evaluations were expected to be largely negative but not when evaluations were expected to be positive (Experiments 3 and 4). Mediation analyses revealed that this willingness to evaluate when angry stems from a belief that evaluating others can leave angry people in a positive mood. Because people are often free to decide when to perform the tasks required of them, this tendency may have implications for how and when ideas are evaluated.     

Demonstrating and eliminating the aggregation effect in physical skill tasks

Confidence judgments can be elicited in multiple ways. One of these procedures is to provide confidence judgments regarding each of a number of cases (individual judgments). A second procedure is to provide confidence judgments about a set of items (an aggregate judgment). Much research has demonstrated an aggregation effect—that individual judgments are more confident than aggregate judgments—within the cognitive knowledge domain. However, this effect has not previously been investigated with physical performance skill tasks. In three experiments, participants gave individual and aggregate judgments regarding the number of successful tosses they would make in either a ring toss, ping‐pong toss, or basketball toss task. In keeping with the aggregation effect, individual judgments were more confident than were aggregate judgments of success. Additionally, we eliminated the aggregation effect in Experiments 2 and 3 by employing a case‐specific base rate manipulation. Consistent with previous research with cognitive tasks, these results suggest that individual confidence judgments for physical skill tasks are determined primarily by characteristics associated with the individual case to be judged, whereas aggregate confidence judgments are determined by a more general evaluation of one's ability in the domain. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shoes as a source of first impressions

Surprisingly minimal appearance cues lead perceivers to accurately judge others’ personality, status, or politics. We investigated people’s precision in judging characteristics of an unknown person, based solely on the shoes he or she wears most often. Participants provided photographs of their shoes, and during a separate session completed self-report measures. Coders rated the shoes on various dimensions, and these ratings were found to correlate with the owners’ personal characteristics. A new group of participants accurately judged the age, gender, income, and attachment anxiety of shoe owners based solely on the pictures. Shoes can indeed be used to evaluate others, at least in some domains.     

Belief merging and the discursive dilemma: an argument-based account to paradoxes of judgment aggregation

The aggregation of individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective decision on the same propositions is called judgment aggregation. Literature in social choice and political theory has claimed that judgment aggregation raises serious concerns. For example, consider a set of premises and a conclusion where the latter is logically equivalent to the former. When majority voting is applied to some propositions (the premises) it may give a different outcome than majority voting applied to another set of propositions (the conclusion). This problem is known as the discursive dilemma (or paradox). The discursive dilemma is a serious problem since it is not clear whether a collective outcome exists in these cases, and if it does, what it is like. Moreover, the two suggested escape-routes from the paradox—the so-called premise-based procedure and the conclusion-based procedure—are not, as I will show, satisfactory methods for group decision-making. In this paper I introduce a new aggregation procedure inspired by an operator defined in artificial intelligence in order to merge belief bases. The result is that we do not need to worry about paradoxical outcomes, since these arise only when inconsistent collective judgments are not ruled out from the set of possible solutions.     

Teaching and Cultural Otherness

This work focuses on the relational dimension of the encounter between teacher and students meant as a structural element for teaching practice. By using theoretical group-analytical and anthropo-analytical coordinates, the authors psychodynamically problematize some relational conditions that may influence learning. This research concentrates on the circumstances that limit and allow the birth of a group arrangement capable to learn from experience, rather than on a perspective to teach-learn in a perfect agreement with planning. Intercultural education is pointed out and located as a horizon and ideal term to guide educational practice.     

The paradox of Alypius and the pursuit of unwanted information

Prior work has found that people occasionally seek useless information, a violation of strict rationality. The present work examined whether and why curiosity can also cause individuals to seek predictably harmful information. In four studies, participants were given the opportunity to gain knowledge of questionable personal value. In each case, participants focused on their curiosity about the information and underweighted its consequences. As a result, participants tended to seek knowledge that they themselves believed they would be better off without. Consistent with Loewenstein’s [Loewenstein, G. (1996). Out of control: Visceral influences on behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65, 272–292] analysis of visceral factors in decision making, these effects diminished with a time delay and when deciding whether to expose someone else to unpleasant information. These results shed light on a common yet paradoxical aspect of human behavior that presents a counterpoint to traditional hedonistic models of human motivation.     

Gettier made ESEE

Previous research in experimental philosophy has suggested that moral judgments can influence the ordinary application of a number of different concepts, including attributions of knowledge. But should epistemologists care? The present set of studies demonstrate that this basic effect can be extended to overturn intuitions in some of the most theoretically central thought experiments in contemporary epistemology: Gettier cases. Furthermore, experiment 3 shows that this effect is unlikely to be mediated by a simple desire to blame, suggesting that a correct psychological account of ordinary knowledge attribution may include moral judgment.