Do egalitarians always help the disadvantaged more than the advantaged? Testing a value‐norm conflict hypothesis in Malaysia

Do egalitarians always express greater compassion toward the disadvantaged than toward the advantaged? A closer look at existing scholarship on the topic suggests that they likely do. Here, we investigated whether such tendency is also apparent within interdependent, high power distance cultures where the high‐status privilege prevails. Given the emphasis on harmony in social relations in interdependent cultures, we reasoned that egalitarians might experience a dissonance between their private equity values and a societal norm prescribing high‐status privilege, which we refer to as the value‐norm conflict. We therefore proposed and found evidence in Malaysia (N = 273) that egalitarians succumbed to the normative high‐status privilege in their culture: They displayed greater compassion towards higher than lower status victims, but only when the political cost of doing so was low. Interestingly, anti‐egalitarians displayed equitable levels of compassion for high‐ and low‐status victims, but only when the political cost for taking such action also was low. Hence, we show that even egalitarians can, at times, favor the privileged and that anti‐egalitarians can act equitably, so long as the political cost of doing so is trivial for them.     

源于“反常”终于“常理”的禀赋效应

如果忽略收入影响和交易成本, 愿意为一样物品支付的价格应等于愿意出售的价格。而塞勒教授却发现, 现实生活中有一些“反常”现象, 个体会对自己所拥有的物品赋予更高的价值, 造成“愿意支付价格”和“愿意出售价格”的不一致。塞勒利用预期理论中的损失厌恶对这些反常现象进行解释, 并将该现象称为禀赋效应(endowment effect)。此后, 众多研究者从不同角度对该效应进行了探索和论证。文章详细梳理了禀赋效应的多种解释机制, 包括损失厌恶、心理所有权理论、偏差的认知过程以及进化的观点等, 论证了禀赋效应符合“常理”的原因, 同时也探讨了禀赋效应在商业销售策略和政府拆迁政策等方面的应用前景。     

风险决策的概率权重偏差：心理机制与优化策略

概率权重偏差指人对事件发生的主观概率估计与客观概率的差异。它影响投资、投保、医患沟通等方面。“重结果轻概率”的非补偿性策略和参照点诱发的情绪波动会引发概率权重偏差; 改变“概率”的描述形式、“结果”的情绪体验、“损益”的参照点、风险的心理距离等可调整权重偏差、优化决策。未来需深究权重偏差的适用情境、机制关联及偏差辨别等问题。     

敌意解释偏向与攻击的关系

敌意解释偏向是一种认知加工偏向, 指个体将模棱两可信息以敌意的方式进行解释的倾向, 它会对个体的攻击行为产生影响。攻击也会影响个体的敌意解释偏向:作为一种人格特质, 高攻击性使个体更容易产生敌意解释偏向; 作为一种行为反应, 攻击对敌意解释偏向具有发展和强化作用。敌意解释偏向和攻击之间可能存在循环关系。两者关系会受到性别、年龄以及人格特点等因素影响。未来研究需要改进敌意解释偏向与攻击的测量工具, 使测量更为直接、客观; 拓展两者不同亚类之间的交互研究, 以全面系统地了解两者之间的关系; 深入探究情绪在敌意解释偏向与攻击行为关系中的作用; 整合信息加工过程, 探究它们的交互作用对攻击行为的影响等。     

神经科学偏见效应：可重复性及其心理机制的探索

神经科学的发展对其他学科以及社会产生了重要的影响。虽然神经科学方法与行为研究方法都是探索人类心理与行为的有效手段并各有所长, 但神经科学的研究结果却可能引起人们过度的解读和信任。研究者发现, 当某一结论使用神经科学结果作为证据时, 比使用行为科学结果或者心理生理学指标作为证据时更加让人信服, 即使神经科学结果与该结论之间毫无关系, 这种现象被称为神经科学偏见(neuroscience bias)。通过系统回顾近年来关于神经科学偏见的研究, 我们发现：(1)虽然神经科学偏见存在可重复性的争论, 但该效应确实存在; (2)神经科学偏见的产生可能是因为个体倾向于还原论的解释(即使用低层次、简单的机制来解释更高层次上的现象)及心理本质主义的影响(即人们认为心理与行为的本质是神经活动)。神经科学偏见反映了公众对科学结果解读的偏见, 未来研究需要探讨这种偏见的心理机制, 从而引导科学结果的正确解读和运用。     

学习能动性信念对初中生学习行为中情感预测偏差的影响

为考察初中生学习中是否存在情感预测偏差及学习能动性信念对情感预测偏差的影响,实验一首先考察初中生学习行为中是否存在情感预测偏差,实验二和实验三分别在实验室和真实情景中考察学习能动性信念对初中生学习行为情感预测偏差的影响。结果表明：（1）初中生学习行为中存在影响偏差,高估了积极和消极学习结果对情绪的影响。（2）学习能动性信念强的学生比学习能动性信念弱的学生对积极学习结果的情感预测偏差更小,对消极学习结果的情感预测偏差更大。     

Judging scandal: Standards or bias in politics

As the number of political scandals rises, we examined the circumstances that might influence how a politician would be judged as a result of a scandal. Specifically, we hypothesized that ingroup bias theory and shifting standards theory would produce different patterns of judgements. In two studies, we found support for the ingroup bias theory, such that participants rated the fictitious politician’s public approval and perceived character as higher if the politician was a member of their own political party (i.e. their ingroup) than if the politician was a member of the another political party (i.e. their outgroup). These results may explain, in part, why people may judge politicians involved in scandal more or less harshly depending on whether they are an ingroup member or outgroup member.     

Initial perceptions in negotiations: evaluation and response to ‘logrolling’ offers

In negotiations, where several issues are under consideration and parties have different priorities among these issues, integrative agreements can be reached through ‘logrolling’: concessions on low priority issues in exchange for gains on higher priority issues. The present research focuses on the potential role of initial offers in the development of integrative agreements. We show first, that in a simulated competitive market the specific composition of initial offers influences the final agreements, beyond the effect predicted by their overall value. In order to obtain some insight into the judgmental processes that might play a role, we explore the way in which inexperienced negotiators presented with a hypothetical negotiation context evaluate and respond to logrolling versus distributive initial offers. Three hypotheses were tested: logrolling offers convey an implicit message of cooperation, logrolling offers promote understanding of the mutual interest structure of the task, and, finally, logrolling offers establish within‐issue anchors. Results do not support the first two hypotheses: logrolling offers were not necessarily judged more attractive than distributive ones, and they did not seem to affect the deeply rooted fixed‐pie assumption. However, initial offers did establish within‐issue anchors: counter‐offers were affected by the specific composition of the initial offers beyond the effect of their overall value. This anchoring process resulted in logrolling offers yielding a higher profit for their initiator, as well as higher combined profits for both parties. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is this still called a dog? 18‐month‐olds' generalization of familiar labels to unusual objects

In two experiments the flexibility of 18‐month‐olds' extension of familiar object labels was investigated using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. The first experiment tested whether infants consider intact and incomplete objects as equally acceptable referents for familiar labels. Infants looked equally long at the intact and incomplete objects whether or not a label was presented. In the second experiment, infants were requested to find the referent of a target word among an incomplete target and an intact distracter or an intact target and an incomplete distracter. The incomplete objects were missing a large or small part. Infants looked longer at the incomplete target, even when large or small parts were deleted. Taken together, these findings suggest that infants do not hold a strong shape bias when generalizing familiar words. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Funding,objectivity and the socialization of medical research

There has been a sharp rise in private funding of medical research, especially in relation to patentable products. Several serious problems with this are described. A solution involving the elimination of patents and public funding administered through extended national health care systems is proposed. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.