How social and non-social information influence classification decisions: A computational modelling approach

Social information such as observing others can improve performance in decision making. In particular, social information has been shown to be useful when finding the best solution on one’s own is difficult, costly, or dangerous. However, past research suggests that when making decisions people do not always consider other people’s behaviour when it is at odds with their own experiences. Furthermore, the cognitive processes guiding the integration of social information with individual experiences are still under debate. Here, we conducted two experiments to test whether information about other persons’ behaviour influenced people’s decisions in a classification task. Furthermore, we examined how social information is integrated with individual learning experiences by testing different computational models. Our results show that social information had a small but reliable influence on people’s classifications. The best computational model suggests that in categorization people first make up their own mind based on the non-social information, which is then updated by the social information.     

Discounting input from older adults: the role of age salience on partner age effects in the social contagion of memory

Three experiments examined the impact of partner age on the magnitude of socially suggested false memories. Young participants recalled household scenes in collaboration with an implied young or older adult partner who intentionally recalled false items. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with only the age of their partner (low age-salience context); in Experiment 2, participants were presented with the age of their partner along with a photograph and biographical information about their partner (high age-salience context); in Experiment 3, age salience was varied within the same experiment. Across experiments, participants in both the low age-salience and high age-salience contexts incorporated their partners’ misleading suggestions into their own subsequent recall and recognition reports, thus demonstrating social contagion with implied partners. Importantly, the effect of partner age differed across conditions. Participants in the high age-salience context were less likely to incorporate misleading suggestions from older adult partners than from young adult partners, but participants in the low age-salience context were equally likely to incorporate suggestions from young and older adult partners. Participants discount the memory of older adult partners only when age is highly salient.     

Social anxiety and post-event processing among African-American individuals

Background: Social anxiety is among the most prevalent psychiatric conditions, yet little attention has been paid to whether putative cognitive vulnerability factors related to social anxiety in predominantly White samples are related to social anxiety among historically underrepresented groups.

Design: We tested whether one such vulnerability factor, post-event processing (PEP; detailed review of social event that can increase state social anxiety) was related to social anxiety among African-American (AA; n?=?127) persons, who comprise one of the largest underrepresented racial groups in the U.S. Secondarily, we tested whether AA participants differed from non-Hispanic White participants (n?=?127) on PEP and social anxiety and whether race moderated the relation between PEP and social anxiety.

Method: Data were collected online among undergraduates.

Results: PEP was positively correlated with social anxiety among AA participants, even after controlling for depression and income, pr?=?.30, p?=?.001. AA and White participants did not differ on social anxiety or PEP, β?=??1.57, 95% CI: ?5.11, 1.96. The relation of PEP to social anxiety did not vary as a function of race, β?=?0.00, 95% CI: ?0.02, 0.02.

Conclusions: PEP may be an important cognitive vulnerability factor related to social anxiety among AA persons suffering from social anxiety.     

社会价值取向和反馈方式对公共物品困境中决策行为的影响

本研究通过模拟投资实验和问卷来探讨重复型公共物品困境中社会价值取向（SVO）与信息反馈方式对决策行为的影响。结果表明：(1)合作型SVO的个体比非合作型个体表现出更多的合作行为;(2)SVO与信息反馈方式的交互作用岁实验轮次越来越显著,非合作型的个体会受信息反馈方式的影响,而合作型个体则不易受反馈方式的影响;(3)与无反馈的条件相比,集体反馈倾向于促进个体的合作行为,个体反馈倾向于抑制合作行为,但反馈所造成的适应性改变使情况更为复杂。     

A comparison of types of support for lower-skill workers: Evidence for the importance of family supportive supervisors

The work–family literature to date does not offer a clear picture in terms of the relative importance of different types of supports for balancing work and family demands. Grounded in conservation or resources theory, we develop an integrative model relating multiple forms of social support, both formal (i.e., work–life benefit use) and informal (supervisor work–family support and family support) to work-interference-with-family and family-interference-with-work and task and contextual performance. We chose to focus our study on lower-skill workers because, despite being a relatively large segment of the workforce, these workers are relatively understudied in the work–family literature. Results revealed that supervisor support is a key form of support in this sample. Supervisor support had negative same domain (work-interference-with-family) and cross domain (family-interference-with-work) effects with work–family conflict, as well as positive relationships with task and contextual performance. Family support was negatively related to family-interference-with-work; whereas use of work–life benefits was not significantly related to either form of work–family conflict or any of the performance variables. The implications of our results for conservation of resources theory and practical implications to employers of lower-skill workers are discussed.     

Retrieval properties of negative vs. positive mental images and autobiographical memories in social anxiety: outcomes with a new measure

High (n = 41) and low (n = 39) socially anxious (SA) participants completed the Waterloo Images and Memories Interview (WIMI), a new assessment tool that measures the accessibility and properties of mental images and associated autobiographical memories that individuals may experience across both anxiety-provoking (negative) and non-anxiety-provoking (positive) social situations. Results indicated that both high and low SA individuals experience negative images and associated autobiographical memories in anxiety-provoking social situations, but the rates of endorsement of such images and memories among high SA participants were substantially lower than those reported in recent studies. Moreover, whereas low SA individuals were capable of accessing a relatively balanced array of both negative and positive self-representations that were rich in episodic detail, high SA individuals retrieved a higher, more unbalanced ratio of negative-to-positive images and memories, as well as impoverished positive images that were significantly degraded in episodic detail. Finally, negative images influenced the two groups differently, with high SA individuals experiencing more negative emotional and cognitive consequences associated with bringing such images to mind. These results are discussed in relation to theoretical models of learning and memory within the context of contemporary cognitive behavioral models of social anxiety.