The Influence of Temporal Orientation and Affective Frame on Use of Ethical Decision-Making Strategies

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed.     

Reasons and practical possibility

According to a common thesis about normative reasons for action, you have a reason to perform a given action only if you can act for that reason. This thesis has long had broad appeal and is intended to capture the practical character of practical reasons. I’ll call it the ‘Practicality Thesis’. Recently, however, various writers have developed subtly different objections to it, each designed to show that there can be actions you have a reason to perform even though you could not act for that reason – because, were you aware of the reason-giving facts in the ways needed to act for the reason, it would no longer be a reason for you to so act. This article defends the Practicality Thesis against such objections. It considers some extant defences but shows that these are inadequate. It then advances an alternative approach intended to counter any structurally similar objection.     

Worry about terror among young adults living in ongoing security uncertainty

The aim of the current study was to investigate worry about terror as a mediating variable, with the exogenous variables being media viewing, differentiation of self, and trait anxiety, and the endogenous variables being somatic symptoms and perceptions of security‐related stress. Participants were divided into two groups by age/academic level: 248 high school students and 191 university students. A pathway correlation model was used to investigate worry about terror as a mediating variable. The central finding was that worry about terror was a significant mediating variable in the relationship between the extent of media viewing following terror events and the level of perception of security‐related stress. That is, young people who said they worried a lot reported a high level of stress relating to the terror events they saw covered in the media. In addition, trait anxiety was found to have an effect on stress perception only via the level of worry about terror. This means that high levels of stress are not experienced by all highly trait‐anxious people, but only by those who suffer from higher levels of worry about terror.     

Boys’ and girls’ involvement in science learning and their self‐efficacy in Taiwan

This cross‐sectional study investigated the significant differences in students’ self‐efficacy and their involvement in learning science. Nine hundred and twenty‐two elementary school fifth graders, 499 junior high school eighth graders, and 1455 senior or vocational high school eleventh graders completed the students’ questionnaire. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and independent t‐tests compared the significant similarities and differences across school levels and genders. The initial findings were as follows: A sharp decline in boys’ and girls’ self‐efficacy scores from elementary to secondary school levels; boys have significantly higher self‐efficacy scores than girls at vocational and senior high school levels; students with more involvement in science learning presented significantly higher self‐efficacy scores than those with less involvement. The significant discrepancies in terms of gender and age in students’ self‐efficacy and involvement in learning science need to be addressed. Implications and limitations are provided.     

The response dynamics of preferential choice

The ubiquity of psychological process models requires an increased degree of sophistication in the methods and metrics that we use to evaluate them. We contribute to this venture by capitalizing on recent work in cognitive science analyzing response dynamics, which shows that the bearing information processing dynamics have on intended action is also revealed in the motor system. This decidedly “embodied” view suggests that researchers are missing out on potential dependent variables with which to evaluate their models—those associated with the motor response that produces a choice. The current work develops a method for collecting and analyzing such data in the domain of decision making. We first validate this method using widely normed stimuli from the International Affective Picture System (Experiment 1), and demonstrate that curvature in response trajectories provides a metric of the competition between choice options. We next extend the method to risky decision making (Experiment 2) and develop predictions for three popular classes of process model. The data provided by response dynamics demonstrate that choices contrary to the maxim of risk seeking in losses and risk aversion in gains may be the product of at least one “online” preference reversal, and can thus begin to discriminate amongst the candidate models. Finally, we incorporate attentional data collected via eye-tracking (Experiment 3) to develop a formal computational model of joint information sampling and preference accumulation. In sum, we validate response dynamics for use in preferential choice tasks and demonstrate the unique conclusions afforded by response dynamics over and above traditional methods.     

Between Minimal Self and Narrative Self: A Husserlian Analysis of Person

The distinction between minimal self and narrative self has gained ground in recent discussions of selfhood. In this article, this distinction is reassessed by analysing Zahavi and Gallagher’s account of selfhood and supplementing it with Husserl’s concept of person. I argue that Zahavi and Gallagher offer two compatible and complementary notions of self. Nevertheless, the relationship between minimal self and narrative self requires further clarification. Especially the embeddedness of self, the interplay between passivity and activity, and the problems of uniqueness and persistence are better understood with Husserl’s analysis of person and its central concepts of position-taking, habitualities, and overall style. The embeddedness of self is elucidated by outlining how person is related to its environment, to other people, and to its past. This relational notion of self is both passively constituted and actively shaped: person mediates between minimal self characterized by perspectival ownership and narrative self based on authorship.     

Memory for Frequency of Bizarre and Common Stimuli: Limitations of the Automaticity Hypothesis

In 2 experiments, the influence of intention to process frequency on accuracy of memory for frequency of bizarre and common sentences was investigated. The results from multiple regression analyses indicated that intentional processing increased the accuracy of frequency judgments when memory for frequency was tested after a 2-min (Experiment 1) and after a 48-hr (Experiment 2) retention interval. Furthermore, the results of Experiment 2 indicated that unintentional processors tended to overestimate frequencies of bizarre relative to common items after a delay. The implications of the results are discussed with regard to L. Hasher and R. T. Zacks's (1984) automaticity hypothesis, human performance, and the accuracy of judgments of frequency of occurrence of unusual events.     

Deciding the Fate of Others: The Cognitive Underpinnings of Racially Biased Juror Decision Making

In criminal law, jurors are supposed to ignore defendant race when considering factual matters of culpability. However, when judging the merits of a criminal case, jurors’ ability (or inability) to avoid bias may affect verdicts. Fact-based decision making expend cognitive resources, while heuristic-based decisions (e.g., using criminal stereotypes) conserve resources. Here, we investigated whether differences in cognitive resources and prejudice attitudes about Blacks influenced trial outcomes. We tested the impact of working memory capacity (WMC), cognitive load, prejudice, and target race (Black, White) on penalties ascribed to fictional criminal defendants in ambiguous-fact cases. Results showed that when “loaded,” prejudiced-low-WMC persons supported guilty verdicts with higher confidence more often for Black than White defendants. Conversely, regardless of WMC or prejudice attitude, participants penalized White defendants more often when not loaded. We suggest that cognitive resources and prejudice attitude influence fact-based decisions. Links to juror judgments and potential trial outcomes are discussed.