Evidence for an encounter expectancy bias in fear of spiders

Whereas research has demonstrated that phobic or fearful individuals overestimate the likelihood of incurring aversive consequences from an encounter with feared stimuli, it has not yet been systematically investigated whether these individuals also overestimate the likelihood (i.e., the frequency) of such encounters. In the current study, spider-fearful and control participants were presented with background information that allowed them to estimate the overall likelihood that different kinds of animals (spiders, snakes, or birds) would be encountered. Spider-fearful participants systematically overestimated the likelihood of encountering a spider with respect to the likelihood of encountering a snake or a bird. No such expectancy bias was observed in control participants. The results thus strengthen our idea that there indeed exist two different types of expectancy bias in high fear and phobia that can be related to different components of the fear response. A conscientious distinction and examination of these two types of expectancy bias are of potential interest for therapeutic applications.     

真实和虚拟金钱奖赏影响风险决策行为*

在风险情境下人类如何决策是长久以来心理学和经济学研究中一个极具挑战性的核心问题。众多研究采用真实或虚拟金钱作为奖赏强化物来探索风险决策行为的过程和机制,但对金钱奖赏真实性如何影响决策了解很少。仿真气球冒险任务(BART：Balloon Analogue Risk Task)可以在实验室条件下有效评估个体在真实社会中的风险行为。本研究采用 BART任务,通过两个实验探讨和比较了真实与虚拟金钱奖赏对风险决策行为的影响。实验一的结果发现,与虚拟金钱奖赏相比,真实金钱奖赏情境下的风险决策更容易受上一次决策结果的影响,上一次决策失败会导致被试的风险偏好水平显著降低(平均吹气球的次数显著减少),同时决策失败(气球吹爆)次数也显著减少,提示真实金钱奖赏下有更强的反馈学习效应。实验二重复了实验一的结果,并进一步发现,虚拟金钱奖赏的幅度对被试的风险决策行为没有影响,而真实金钱奖赏的幅度能显著改变被试的风险决策行为,较大幅度的真实金钱奖赏可以显著降低被试的风险偏好水平,但这种奖赏幅度对风险偏好的调控效应只对感觉寻求水平低的被试有效,感觉寻求水平高的被试不受影响。这些发现表明真实与虚拟金钱奖赏对风险决策行为有不同的影响。我们的结果可以用风险决策的后悔理论或齐当别模型来解释。     

The positive effect of negative emotions in protracted conflict: The case of anger

Extant research has demonstrated the destructive role that anger plays in the context of intergroup conflict. Among other findings, it has been established that anger elevates public support for aggressive and violent actions towards the outgroup. This finding has been explained by the unique cognitive appraisals, emotional goal, and response tendencies associated with anger, typified by appraised relative strength and high control, motivation to correct perceived wrongdoings, and willingness to engage in risky behavior. In the current work we examine an innovative assumption, according to which the apparent destructive implications of anger are a result of situational range restriction—namely, that anger as a group emotion has been examined almost solely at the escalation stage of conflict. Instead, we propose that the same unique characteristics of anger can bring about constructive political attitudes and support for non-violent policies in the context of systematic efforts to de-escalate a protracted conflict.To test this hypothesis we conducted two studies in which we examined the relationship between anger and the willingness to engage in positive risk-taking and support non-violent policies in the context of political negotiations between adversaries. Results indicate a significant positive relationship, supporting the hypothesis that anger is not an exclusively militant emotion, and its effects are situationally dependent.     

Early adolescent health risk behaviors, conflict resolution strategies, and school climate

Drawing upon an ethnically and socio-economically diverse sample of 323 7th grade students from twelve urban schools within one school district, this mixed method study examined early adolescents' self-reported health risk behaviors as related to their conflict resolution strategies and their school's conflict resolution climate. Survey data suggested that early adolescents who reported using more cooperative and fewer aggressive conflict resolution strategies also reported to engage in fewer personal health risk behaviors. Reported engagement in fewer behavioral risks also was associated with attending schools with more supportive “conflict resolution climates.” Serial small group interviews in selected schools indicated that conflict resolution climate quality was associated with how well teachers were perceived to respond to students' conflicts and how they managed teacher–student conflicts. In addition, many students in less supportive climates exhibited cynical attitudes regarding the viability of the conflict resolution strategies promoted by schools and prevention programs.     

Dorsomedial pallium lesions impair taste aversion learning in goldfish

The present work shows that the dorsomedial telencephalic pallium of teleost fish, proposed as homologous to the amygdala of mammals, is involved in taste aversion learning (TAL). To analyze the behavioral properties of TAL in goldfish, in Experiment 1, we used a delayed procedure similar to that employed with mammals, which consists of the presentation of two flavors on different days, one followed by lithium chloride and the other by saline, both after a 10-min delay. The results showed that goldfish developed a strong aversion to the gustatory stimulus followed by visceral discomfort and that, as in mammals, this learning was rapidly acquired, highly flexible and maintained for a long time. Experiment 2 showed that dorsomedial pallium lesions and the ablation of the telencephalic lobes impaired the acquisition of taste aversion in goldfish, whereas damage to the dorsolateral pallium (hippocampus homologue) or cerebellar corpus did not produce significant changes in this learning. Experiment 3 showed that these TAL deficits were not due to a lesion-related disruption of taste discrimination; goldfish with telencephalon ablation were able to learn to distinguish between the two tested flavors in a differential conditioning procedure. These functional data demonstrate that the dorsomedial pallium in teleosts is, like the amygdala, an essential component of the telencephalon-dependent taste aversion memory system and provide further support concerning the homology between both structures.     

When fairness neither satisfies nor motivates: The role of risk aversion and uncertainty reduction in attenuating and reversing the fair process effect

It is widely acknowledged that procedural justice has many positive effects. However, some evidence suggests that procedural justice may not always have positive effects and may even have negative effects. We present three studies that vary in method and participant populations, including an archival study, a field study, and an experiment, using data provided by the general American population, Indian software engineers, and undergraduate students in the US. We demonstrate that key work-related variables such as people’s job satisfaction and performance depend on procedural justice, perceived uncertainty, and risk aversion such that risk seeking people react less positively and at times negatively to the same fair procedures that appeal to risk averse people. Our results suggest that one possible reason for these effects is that being treated fairly reduces people’s perception of uncertainty in the environment and while risk averse people find low uncertainty desirable and react positively to it, risk seeking people do not. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of procedural justice including the uncertainty management model of fairness, the fair process effect, and fairness heuristic theory.     

Loss aversion in the eye and in the heart: The autonomic nervous system's responses to losses

The common view in psychology and neuroscience is that losses loom larger than gains, leading to a negativity bias in behavioral responses and Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) activation. However, evidence has accumulated that in decisions under risk and uncertainty individuals often impart similar weights to negative and positive outcomes. We examine the role of the ANS in decisions under uncertainty, and its consistency with the behavioral responses. In three studies, we show that losses lead to heightened autonomic responses, compared to equivalent gains (as indicated by pupil dilation and increased heart rate) even in situations where the average decision maker exhibits no loss aversion. Moreover, in the studied tasks autonomic responses were not associated with risk taking propensities. These results are interpreted by the hypothesis that losses signal the subjective importance of global outcome patterns. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of involvement on the endowment effect: The moveable value function

The endowment effect is based on the loss aversion built into Prospect Theory's asymmetric value function. This paper posits that the level of consumer involvement with a decision is a moderator of the endowment effect. It is proposed that high involvement increases the slope differential between the loss and gain regions of the value function, enhancing loss aversion. The research further posits that higher involvement is accompanied by higher arousal and cognitive processing which produces stronger negativity in thoughts. The argument for these effects is discussed in the context of evolutionary theory. We conclude that consumers are more loss averse in high versus low involvement conditions.     

“The ball don't lie”: How inequity aversion can undermine performance

Previous research has found that people are often averse to inequity, even when it works to their own advantage. The present research extends previous demonstrations of inequity aversion by examining how it plays out in a real-world context in which self-interest motivations and competitive pressures are substantial. National Basketball Association games were examined and instances of obviously incorrect foul calls were identified. Players were found to make a substantially lower percentage of the foul shots they were awarded as a result of incorrect calls, indicating that they were troubled by the inequity. This drop-off in performance was only observed when the shooter's team was ahead, highlighting the trade-off between the two conflicting motives of self-interest (the desire to win) and inequity aversion.