Evidence for a relationship between trait gratitude and prosocial behaviour

Prosocial behaviour towards unrelated others is communally beneficial but can be individually costly. The emotion of gratitude mitigates this cost by encouraging direct as well as “upstream” reciprocity, thereby facilitating cooperation. A widely used method for measuring trait gratitude is the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ6) [McCullough, M., Emmons, R., &; Tsang, J. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 112–127. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.1.112]. Here we undertake an assessment of the external validity of the GQ6 by examining its relationship with two incentivized economic games that serve as face valid indices of generosity and reciprocity. In two studies (total N?=?501) we find that trait gratitude as measured by the GQ6 predicts greater donations in a charity donation task as well as greater transfers and returns in an incentivized trust game. These results support the hypothesis that individuals with higher trait gratitude are more generous and trusting on average, and provide initial evidence as to the predictive validity of the GQ6.     

Behavioural Consistency Within the Prisoner's Dilemma Game: The Role of Personality and Situation

Mixed‐motive games represent situations that confront people with a conflict between cooperative and non‐cooperative alternatives. Despite this common basis, recent research has shown that the consistency of people's choices across different mixed‐motive games is rather low. The present research examined behavioural consistency within the same mixed‐motive game, by presenting participants with a series of one‐shot Prisoner's Dilemma Games. Across this set of games, payoffs were manipulated in order to intensify or weaken the conflict between self and the other party while maintaining the game's underlying structure. Our findings indicate that significant differences in choice behaviour are observed as a function of both situational (i.e. manipulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game's payoff structure) and personality differences (i.e. individual differences in personality and motivational traits). Moreover, our included situational variables and personality features did not interact with each other and were about equally impactful in shaping cooperation. Crucially, however, despite the significant behavioural differences across game variants, considerable consistency in choices was found as well, which suggests that the game's motivational basis reliably impacts choice behaviour in spite of situational and personality variations. We discuss implications for theorizing on mixed‐motive situations and elaborate on the question how cooperation can be promoted. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Counterfactual comparison modulates fairness consideration in the mini‐ultimatum game: An event‐related potentials study

Existing literature on the mini‐ultimatum game indicates that counterfactual comparison between chosen and unchosen alternatives is of great importance for individual's fairness consideration. However, it is still unclear how counterfactual comparison influences the electrophysiological responses to unfair chosen offers. In conjunction with event‐related potentials’ (ERPs) technique, the current study aimed to explore the issue by employing a modified version of the mini‐ultimatum game where a fixed set of two alternatives (unfair offer vs. fair alternative, unfair vs. hyperfair alternative, unfair offer vs. hyperunfair alternative) was presented before the chosen offer. The behavioral results showed that participants were more likely to accept unfair chosen offers when the unchosen alternative was hyperunfair than when the unchosen alternative was fair or hyperfair. The ERPs results showed that the feedback‐related negativity (FRN) elicited by unfair chosen offers was insensitive to the type of unchosen alternative when correcting for possible overlap with other components. In contrast, unfair chosen offers elicited larger P300 amplitudes when the unchosen alternative was hyperunfair than when the unchosen alternative was fair or hyperfair. These findings suggest that counterfactual comparison may take effect at later stages of fairness consideration as reflected by the P300.     

Influencing the occurrence of mind wandering while reading

The current concerns hypothesis suggests that directing attention towards unfulfilled plans of the individual prior to a task would result in more off-task thoughts (or mind wandering). In this experiment, participants were asked to read a scientific text and self-report instances of mind wandering by indicating when they were experiencing task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) or task-related interferences (TRIs). Prior to reading, participants in the individual plans experimental condition were asked to reflect upon their short-term plans by making a “to do” list while participants in a control condition were asked to make a list of the components of an automobile. In support of the current concerns hypothesis, directing attention towards the short-term plans resulted in significantly more TUTs, but not TRIs. Furthermore, participants in the individual plans condition had significantly lower scores on an assessment of reading comprehension, and this relationship was mediated by the frequency of TUTs.     

Children's Theory of Mind,Self‐Perceptions,and Peer Relations: A Longitudinal Study

This longitudinal study explored Theory of Mind (ToM), self‐perceptions, and teacher ratings of peer relations of 91 children (52 females, ages 6–8 years) drawn from two schools situated in a mainly Euro‐Canadian, middle socioeconomic status, semi‐rural central Canadian context. ToM, self‐perceptions, and teacher ratings of peer relations were assessed at Time 1 (T1, M = 6 y 2 m) and 2 years later at Time 2 (T2, M = 8 y 5 m). Findings showed that ToM scores and perceptions of global self‐worth and physical appearance significantly increased with time across both genders. Positive longitudinal associations were found between teacher ratings of sociable peer relations at T1 and children's T2 moral self‐perceptions. A positive longitudinal correlation was found between T1 ToM and T2 teacher ratings of anxious/fearful peer relations. Individual variation in ToM at age 6 predicted teacher ratings of anxious and fearful behaviours in 8 year olds. In contrast, teacher ratings at age 6 did not predict ToM ability in 8 year olds. Educational implications for social and emotional competencies are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are some video games associated with more life interference and psychopathology than others? Comparing massively multiplayer online role‐playing games with other forms of video game

Massively multiplayer online role‐playing games (MMORPGs) are a type of video game that is considered to have particular potential to be associated with life interference and psychopathology when played frequently and intensively. This study sought to compare players of MMORPGs with players of other types of video game in terms of problematic use, life interference, and levels of psychopathology. An international sample of 1,945 video game players completed a series of questionnaires online. While MMORPG players reported increased rates of problematic use and life interference compared with non‐MMORPG players, there were no differences in levels of psychopathology. Differences between MMORPG players and non‐MMORPG players appeared to be associated with the increased amounts of time that MMORPG players played for: The amount of time spent playing appeared to mediate the relationships between type of game played and each of the problematic use and life interference variables. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Individualistic attitudes toward attractive rewards in older people: An experimental study using ultimatum games

This study used an ultimatum game to test the hypothesis that older individuals make more selfish offers when bargaining for highly attractive rewards, regardless of the impacts of others' responses on reward size. Both older and younger individuals separately participated in the experiment and made offers as allocators. The effects of four factors (age, certainty of the allocators' own reward depending on the recipient's response, the recipient's response, and type of rewards to be shared) on participants' offers and expectations of recipients' replies were observed. Older participants demanded higher shares for themselves than younger participants, even under the low certainty condition in the highly attractive reward scenario. Particularly in this scenario, older participants increased their portions immediately after receiving rejections. Moreover, they consistently expected the recipients to accept their offers regardless of the proposed distribution amount or bargaining conditions. It was implied that the high attractiveness of the rewards made it difficult for older individuals to predict the recipient's view of their proposals and thus contributed to them making selfish proposals.     

Torture and judgments of guilt

Although torture can establish guilt through confession, how are judgments of guilt made when tortured suspects do not confess? We suggest that perceived guilt is based inappropriately upon how much pain suspects appear to suffer during torture. Two psychological theories provide competing predictions about the link between pain and perceived blame: cognitive dissonance, which links pain to blame, and moral typecasting, which links pain to innocence. We hypothesized that dissonance might characterize the relationship between torture and blame for those close to the torture, while moral typecasting might characterize this relationship for those more distant from it. Accordingly, this experiment placed participants into one of two different roles in which people may be exposed to torture. Participants in the proximal role of prison staffer saw suffering torture victims as relatively more guilty, while participants in the relatively distant role of a radio listener saw suffering victims as more innocent.     

Estimation and visualization of confusability matrices from adaptive measurement data

We present a simple but effective method based on Luce’s choice axiom [Luce, R.D. (1959). Individual choice behavior: A theoretical analysis. New York: John Wiley & Sons] for consistent estimation of the pairwise confusabilities of items in a multiple-choice recognition task with arbitrarily chosen choice-sets. The method combines the exact (non-asymptotic) Bayesian way of assessing uncertainty with the unbiasedness emphasized in the classical frequentist approach.We apply the method to data collected using an adaptive computer game designed for prevention of reading disability. A player’s estimated confusability of phonemes (or more accurately, phoneme-grapheme connections) and larger units of language is visualized in an easily understood way with color cues and explicit indication of the accuracy of the estimates. Visualization of learning-related changes in the player’s performance is considered.The empirical validity of the choice axiom is evaluated using the game data itself. The axiom appears to hold reasonably well although a small systematic violation is observable for the smallest choice-set sizes.     

A Bayesian-optimal principle for learner-friendly adaptation in learning games

Adaptive learning games should provide opportunities for the student to learn as well as motivate playing until goals have been reached. In this paper, we give a mathematically rigorous treatment of the problem in the framework of Bayesian decision theory. To quantify the opportunities for learning, we assume that the learning tasks that yield the most information about the current skills of the student, while being desirable for measurement in their own right, would also be among those that are efficient for learning. Indeed, optimization of the expected information gain appears to naturally avoid tasks that are exceedingly demanding or exceedingly easy as their results are predictable and thus uninformative. Still, tasks that are efficient for learning may be experienced as too challenging, and the resulting failures can lower motivation. Therefore, in addition to quantifying the expected informational benefit for learning of any prospective task to be presented next, we also model the expected motivational cost of its presentation, measured simply as the estimated probability of failure in our example model. We propose a “learner-friendly” adaptation algorithm that chooses the learning tasks by optimizing the expected benefit divided by the expected cost. We apply this algorithm to a Rasch-like student model implemented within a real-world application and present initial results of a pilot experiment.