Children's moral judgments of commission and omission based on their understanding of second‐order mental states1

Abstract: Children's moral judgments about acts of commission and omission with negative outcomes were studied based on their understanding of mental states. Children (N = 142) in the first, third, and fifth grades made judgments about four tasks composed of two levels of mental states (first‐order or second‐order) and two types of acts (commission or omission). The results showed that the 7‐year‐olds responded considering only first‐order mental states, but the 9‐ and 11‐year‐olds also used second‐order mental states in their judgments. Whether the acts were commission or omission did not make a difference. These results indicate that children can make moral judgments regarding acts of commission and omission based on an understanding of second‐order mental states by approximately the age of 9 years.     

Own-other differences in the realism of some metacognitive judgments

The present study investigated differences in judgments of one's own and others' knowledge (the own-other difference). Consistent with the below-average effect (e.g., Kruger, 1999), our main results showed that the participants gave lower knowledge ratings of their own extent of knowledge than of another person's extent of knowledge (Experiment 1). Furthermore, lower and more realistic judgments were found when the participants judged their own as compared with when judging another person's overall accuracy (frequency judgments) of answering knowledge questions correctly (Experiment 1 and 2). On the basis of these results it is argued that judgmental anchoring may be important also in the context of indirect comparisons, and that previous conclusions of cross-cultural psychology regarding the above-average effect may be oversimplified.     

FOK判断与可接近信息之间的关系

通过三个实验,用语义联想集大小不同的中文单字词研究了靶项目联想集的大小与FOK判断等级和准确性的关系。实验一通过两种不同联想集大小的靶子,比较外显的、提取出的信息和内隐的、语义网络中固有的被激活信息量对FOK判断等级和FOK判断准确性是否有不同的影响。实验二和实验三通过不同的靶子呈现时间和学习遍数,比较不同的识记强度对不同大小联想集的靶子的FOK判断等级和FOK判断准确性的影响。实验结果表明：FOK判断等级随外显的、提取出的信息总量的增多而增高,随内隐的、语义网络中固有的被激活信息量的增多而降低。FOK判断准确性随靶子本身的激活强度的增强而增高,随内隐的、语义网络中固有的被激活信息的激活强度的增强而降低,FOK判断准确性取决于这两种激活强度的综合作用。     

Definitions need to be precise and consistent: A reply to Haslam with suggestions for the future

In his reply to our critique of research on self-humanizing, Haslam claims that we used a narrow definition of self-humanizing that ignored the evidence from the correlational research he and his colleagues have done. We disagree. First, we relied upon a definition of self-humanizing based upon comparative judgments that Haslam and colleagues have consistently used. Second, we were well aware of the correlational research he and his colleagues have done. We simply did not think, and do not think, these correlations verified the existence of self-humanizing as defined. In his reply, Haslam offered a new definition of self-humanizing that defines self-humanizing in terms of correlations between comparative judgments and ratings of how much traits reflect human nature. Although we believe this change represents some progress, numerous issues in the study of self-humanizing remain to be resolved. We offer some suggestions for future research on this important topic.     

The Average Fuel‐Efficiency Fallacy: Overestimation of Average Fuel Efficiency and How It Can Lead to Biased Decisions

People falsely believe that equal increases in vehicles' fuel efficiency (e.g., miles per gallon (MPG)) will result in equal fuel savings. Whereas previous research on this “MPG illusion” has focused on people's biased choices of upgrading vehicle models, it has not examined a more common situation, namely, estimating a given vehicle's fuel efficiency based on the average of two efficiency values (e.g., in the city and on highways). In such situations, we find an additional bias in people's judgment and choice, the average fuel‐efficiency fallacy, in which people falsely believe that the combined fuel efficiency (e.g., of city and highway MPG) is a simple—instead of a harmonic—mean of the two values. Owing to the curvilinear relationship between fuel efficiency and fuel consumption, the combined fuel‐efficiency value would always be lower than the simple average, resulting in consistent overestimations of the actual fuel efficiency. In a series of studies, we demonstrate how this fallacy of overestimating combined fuel efficiency leads to suboptimal choices between vehicles. In addition, we find that the solution prescribed for the MPG illusion—using gallons per 100 miles—does reduce, but not eliminate, the average fuel‐efficiency fallacy, and that comprehension of the gallons per 100 miles measure is a precursory condition for this nudge to have any effect. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Everybody Will Win,and All Must Be Hired: Comparing Additivity Neglect with the Nonselective Superiority Bias

Two streams of research looking at referent‐dependent judgments from slightly different angles are subadditivity research and research on the nonselective superiority bias. Both biases violate basic formal constraints: the probabilities of a set of exclusive events cannot add up to more than 100%, and a set of attractive candidates cannot all be rated as superior to the group mean. We examine in three experiments how these two biases are related, by asking the same participants to perform both kinds of tasks on the same material. Both biases appear to be widespread, even for sets where all alternatives are presented together, but they differ in the way they are affected by response format and experimental setup. Thus, presenting participants with an unbiased set of ratings will reduce but not normalize their probability estimates of the same alternatives; while presenting them with an unbiased (additive) set of probabilities will make most alternatives appear inferior to the group mean, inverting the superiority bias. Self‐reports reveal that additivity neglect and the nonselective superiority bias can be based on two main response‐strategies: (i) considering each alternative independently or (ii) comparing alternatives, while neglecting their complementarity. In both cases, assessments will be the outcome of a compromise between the perceived “absolute” merits of each alternative, its standing relative to referents, and properties of the response scale. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Note on the rationality of rule-based versus exemplar-based processing in human judgment

This paper reports a study of the relationship between rule- versus exemplar-based processing and criteria for rationality of judgment. Participants made probability judgments in a classification task devised by S. W. Allen and L. R. Brooks (1991). In the exemplar condition, the miscalibration was accounted for by stochastic components of the judgment with a format-dependence effect, implying simultaneous over- and underconfidence depending on the response scale. In the rule condition, there was an overconfidence bias not accounted for by the stochastic components of judgment. In both conditions the participants were additive on average and reasonably transitive, but the larger stochastic component in the exemplar condition produced somewhat larger absolute deviations. The results suggest that exemplar processes are unbiased but more perturbed by stochastic components, while rule-based processes may be more prone to bias.     

Reconstructing Distances among Objects from Their Discriminability

We describe a principled way of imposing a metric representing dissimilarities on any discrete set of stimuli (symbols, handwritings, consumer products, X-ray films, etc.), given the probabilities with which they are discriminated from each other by a perceiving system, such as an organism, person, group of experts, neuronal structure, technical device, or even an abstract computational algorithm. In this procedure one does not have to assume that discrimination probabilities are monotonically related to distances, or that the distances belong to a predefined class of metrics, such as Minkowski. Discrimination probabilities do not have to be symmetric, the probability of discriminating an object from itself need not be a constant, and discrimination probabilities are allowed to be 0’s and 1’s. The only requirement that has to be satisfied is Regular Minimality, a principle we consider the defining property of discrimination: for ordered stimulus pairs (a,b), b is least frequently discriminated from a if and only if a is least frequently discriminated from b. Regular Minimality generalizes one of the weak consequences of the assumption that discrimination probabilities are monotonically related to distances: the probability of discriminating a from a should be less than that of discriminating a from any other object. This special form of Regular Minimality also underlies such traditional analyses of discrimination probabilities as Multidimensional Scaling and Cluster Analysis. This research was supported by the NSF grant SES 0318010 (E.D.), Humboldt Research Award (E.D.), Humboldt Foundation grant DEU/1038348 (H.C. & E.D.), and DFG grant Co 94/5 (H.C.).     

Judgments of Grammaticality of Japanese Sentences Violating the Principle of Full Interpretation

Two experiments investigated the linguistic intuition of Japanese speakers in which they judged the grammaticality of sentences violating Chomsky's principle of Full Interpretation. Experiment 1 used bitransitive sentences, which included an extra argument that assumed a role of either subjective, dative, or objective on the one hand and that specified semantically a preceding argument or stood in par with it on the other. Findings showed that the speakers judged ungrammatical sentences involving a dative or an objective extra argument as more grammatical than those involving a subjective extra argument. Ungrammatical sentences with an extra specified argument were judged more grammatical than those with an extra par argument when the extra argument was objective. Experiment 2 used sentences that included a verbal noun (VN) comprising a noun followed by a verb, shita (did). Ungrammatical VN sentences contained two arguments given the same objective marker. These sentences were judged to be highly grammatical despite the violation of the principle. Findings suggest that speakers' actual knowledge of language is not fully consistent with the knowledge they are alleged by Chomsky to possess, including the principle of Full Interpretation.