Interpersonal effects of strategic and spontaneous guilt communication in trust games

A social partner’s emotions communicate important information about their motives and intentions. However, people may discount emotional information that they believe their partner has regulated with the strategic intention of exerting social influence. Across two studies, we investigated interpersonal effects of communicated guilt and perceived strategic regulation in trust games. Results showed that communicated guilt (but not interest) mitigated negative effects of trust violations on interpersonal judgements and behaviour. Further, perceived strategic regulation reduced guilt’s positive effects. These findings suggest that people take emotion-regulation motives into account when responding to emotion communication.     

Emotional processes in risky and multiattribute health decisions

Objective: Here, we develop an integrative account of the roles of emotion in decision-making. In Part I, we illustrate how emotional inputs into decisions may rely on physiological signals from emotions experienced while making the decision, and we review evidence suggesting that the failure to represent the emotional meaning of options can often reduce decision quality. We propose that health-related decrements in the ability to generate emotional reactions lead people to inaccurately represent emotional responses and compromise decisions, particularly about risk. Part II explores complex decisions in which choice options involve trade-offs between positive and negative attributes. We first review evidence showing that difficult trade-off decisions generate negative affect and physiological arousal. Next, we propose that medical decision-making will be linked to short- and long-term stress and health outcomes.

Conclusion: In sum, this article proposes and reviews initial evidence supporting the effective use and management of emotional inputs as important to both clinical and non-clinical populations. Our approach will contribute to the understanding of patient-centred emotional decision-making and will inform medical decision aids.     

情绪背景和社会预期对社会经济决策行为的影响

采用最后通牒博弈范式,探讨不同情绪背景对社会经济决策中社会预期效应的影响。以90名大学生为被试,利用不同效价的电影片段(正性、负性和中性)诱发相应的目标情绪。通过操作社会规范性信息启动被试对分配方案公平性的不同预期。结果发现:在负性和中性情绪背景下,高预期组更倾向于拒绝接受不公平分配。在正性情绪背景下,高预期组和低预期组面对不公平提议时的接受率没有显著差异。结果表明正性情绪背景使社会预期效应发生改变,回应者对分配方案的高预期不再对决策结果产生显著影响。     

The Effects of Note-Taking and Review on Sensemaking and Ethical Decision Making

The effectiveness of case-based learning in ethics education varies widely regarding how cases are presented. Case process instruction may impact case-based ethics education to promote sensemaking processes, ethical sensemaking strategy use, and ethical decision making (EDM) quality. This study examined two teaching techniques, notes and review, and participants completed note-taking and review activities examining a case-based scenario during an ethics education course. Results suggest that providing case notes in outline form improves sensemaking processes, strategy use, and EDM quality. In addition, combining processes of provided notes and passive review results in incremental, additive performance via certain ethical sensemaking strategies and EDM quality.     

Interests and Leadership among Adolescents

The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether there is a differential relationship in the socialization of children with respect to gender identification when responses of children were examined with respect to race and sex (N = 596 fifth and sixth grade boys and girls). Strong father preference was found to have no effect on the choice a boy will make when choosing between male and female peers, during preadolescence, while a strong mother preference by a girl is related to the sex of the peers she chooses. Preadolescent girls who identify with their mothers chose girls with whom to interact in a variety of activities more frequently than they chose boys. A greater proportion of girls preferred to engage in activities with their mothers than boys preferred to engage in activities with their fathers. No differences were observed between racial groups in terms of girls' choices involving peers. Black boys, however, preferred to engage in activities with opposite-sex rather than same-sex peers to a greater extent than white boys.     

A validation of a computerised task of risk-taking and moral decision-making and its association with sensation-seeking,impulsivity and sociomoral reasoning

The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the computer based application of the Secret Agent (SA) task of risk-taking and moral decision-making. The participants were 100 male patients in a maximum security hospital (50 with severe mental illness and 50 with personality disorder) and 50 community based healthy controls. All participants completed the SA task, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), and measures of IQ, antisocial personality traits, sensation-seeking, impulsivity and sociomoral reasoning. The SA risk-taking and moral decision-making scales had satisfactory levels of reliability (Cronbach’s alpha). Risk-taking correlated significantly with sensation-seeking across all three participant groups. In contrast, risk-taking only correlated with impulsivity among the severe mental illness group. Moral decision-making correlated with sociomoral reasoning among the personality disorder group. No correlation was found between the SA scores and the IGT score and the IGT did not correlate with sensation-seeking or impulsivity. IQ and antisocial personality traits did not correlate with the SA or IGT scales. The study highlights the importance of context, the nature of the risk-taking task, and ‘problem framing’ of the instructions in their relationship with individual differences.     

The effects of team strategic orientation on team process and information search

We tested the effects of team strategic orientation on team member perceptions, work strategy and information search. In Experiment 1, 80 teams worked on a hidden profile decision-making task. A defensive team strategic orientation increased members’ perceptions of the problem’s scope, leading to a more process-focused work strategy and broader information search compared to an offensive team strategic orientation. When teams needed critical information from the environment, defensive teams outperformed offensive teams; offensive teams performed better when critical information resided within the team. In Experiment 2, these findings were replicated with 92 teams performing a different decision task. When making a second decision, half of the teams were led to change their strategic orientation; teams shifting from offense to defense altered their information search behavior more readily than did teams shifting in the opposite direction, suggesting an asymmetric adaptation effect.     

真实火灾和模拟火灾情境下小鼠的逃生决策比较*

探讨并比较真实火灾和模拟火灾情境下小鼠是否采用直觉性逃生决策。研究包括一个预备训练和两个主实验。预备训练的目的：首先训练小鼠获得有关迷宫路线及出口的经验,然后再经过遗忘处理使它们遗忘相关经验。两个主实验均采用3(情境：真实火灾,模拟火灾,普通情境)×2(记忆：遗忘前和遗忘后)混合实验设计,因变量均为逃生决策。实验组被试为72只经过训练的小鼠,控制组为24只未经过训练的小鼠。通过考察小鼠在不同情境和不同记忆条件下的逃生时间和对逃生出口的选择探测并比较真实火灾和模拟火灾情境下小鼠的逃生决策差异。主要结果：(1)实验组在真实火灾情境下的逃生时间无论遗忘前后都明显比模拟火灾情境下短;(2)实验组在真实火灾和模拟火灾情境下的逃生时间都明显比控制组短;(3)当熟悉和陌生出口均开启同时熟悉出口处有烟雾条件下,真实火灾组在遗忘前后均倾向于选择熟悉出口逃生,其他两组则倾向于选择陌生出口离开。结论：真实火灾和模拟火灾情境下小鼠的逃生决策存在明显差异：真实火灾情境下受过训练的小鼠倾向于直觉性逃生决策;模拟火灾情境下受过训练的小鼠不倾向于直觉性逃生决策。     

What do people think about changes in health behaviors? Differential perceptions of consequences of increases and decreases in health behaviors

Most health decision-making models posit that cost-benefit analyses underlie decisions to make changes in health-related behavioral practices. In a series of studies, participants imagined either increasing or decreasing the frequency of a variety of health behaviors and estimated the consequences of those changes. In Studies 1 and 2, individuals consistently estimated that increasing a health behavior produced greater consequences than did decreasing the behavior by an equivalent amount. The results of Study 3 demonstrated that this effect is due to differences in how individuals judge the impact of health behavior changes which involve not engaging in the behavior at all versus other types of changes. Taken together, these findings suggest that perceptions of the outcomes afforded by health behavior changes depend on both the behavioral frequency and direction of changes in behavior an individual is considering. This asymmetry has the potential to help explain patterns of behavior in a range of important health domains and may impact the effectiveness of behavior change interventions.     

Predictors of interest in direct-to-consumer genetic testing

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing is an increasingly available option among individuals searching for information about their health risk factors and ancestry. This study is one of the first to examine predictors of interest in DTC genetic testing. Participants read one of the three types of information about DTC genetic testing (positive only, negative only or both) and reported perceptions of and intentions to pursue testing. The information which people read, their perceptions of the benefits of testing, their perceptions of the barriers to testing and anticipated regret predicted intentions to undergo testing. Interestingly, people who read both positive and negative information did not differ from people who read only negative information in their intentions to pursue testing. We discuss the implications of these findings for predicting interest in this relatively new type of genetic testing and for designing interventions to encourage (or discourage) testing.