Experiencing Buddhist practices promotes nonbelievers’ preference for future rewards in intertemporal choices

Religious individuals often prefer future rewards more in intertemporal decision-making than nonreligious individuals, but the reasons behind this preference remain under-investigated. Focusing on decision-making in Buddhist culture, the current study aimed to examine three potential mechanisms: Buddhist practices, self-control and belief in future-oriented concepts. In five studies, we consistently found that nonbelievers’ preference ratings for Larger and Later (LL) options increased after visiting a temple (Study 1, n = 99) or participating in Buddha name chanting (Studies 2–5, n = 314). We also found in Studies 3 and 4 that this effect was mediated by the individual's level of self-control, but no evidence was found to support the mediation of belief in future-oriented concepts. These results contribute to the work attesting to the effect of religious practices on individuals (especially nonbelievers). They also provide a mechanism (self-control) for the positive correlation between individuals’ religiousness and preference for future rewards in intertemporal decision-making.     

A Leader Who Sees the World as I Do: Voters Prefer Candidates Whose Statements Reveal Matching Social-Psychological Attitudes

Politicians are increasingly able to communicate their values, attitudes, and concerns directly to voters. Yet little is known about which of these signals resonate with voters and why. We employ a discrete choice experiment to investigate whether and which social-psychological attitudes predict how adult British voters respond to corresponding attitudinal signals communicated by candidates in hypothetical social media posts. For all attitudes studied, covering social feelings (trust, collective nostalgia), social perceptions (nationalism, populist sentiment), and social commitments (national identification, authoritarianism, egalitarianism), we find that participants are much more likely to vote for candidates who signal proximity to their own attitudinal position and less likely for candidates who signal opposing views. The strongest effects were observed for national identification, authoritarianism, and egalitarianism, indicating the importance of commitment to a shared group and to particular principles for distributing power and resources within and between groups. We further demonstrate that social-psychological attitudes are not acting as mere proxies for participants' past votes or left–right ideology. Our results extend adaptive followership theory to incorporate preferences concerning intragroup coordination and intergroup hierarchy, while highlighting the social-psychological dynamics of political communication that may transcend the concerns of particular election cycles.     

Effects of consequences of advice on patterns of rule control and rule choice

Rules in the form of advice can inaccurately state the effects of recommended responses by overstating or understating size of the consequences. Three experiments investigated the effects of such inaccuracies on patterns of rule control and rule choice with female college students. In Experiment 1, signaled accurate, overstated, or understated rules specified that a given number of points would be earned by pressing a designated key. For some subjects, rules specified a number of points to be gained; for other subjects, rules specified a number of points to be lost from an amount given earlier. Point totals stated in the inaccurate rules averaged 25% more (overstated) or 25% less (understated) than those received. When subjects could choose either the response specified in the rule or an alternative response that produced an unpredictable number of points, they showed greater sensitivity to the inaccuracy of overstated rules than understated rules. In trials at the end of the experiment in which subjects could choose which rule to see, subjects did not always choose accurate rules and often chose inaccurate rules for which they had shown less sensitivity earlier. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern in which subjects could choose which type of rule to see on a greater number of trials. Some evidence suggested that subjects prefer an improvement from the outcomes promised to those later received. In Experiment 3, rules misstated by averages of 25% and 50% were compared. Evidence suggested that increasing the size of the misstatement reduced the discrimination of inaccurate rules from accurate ones.     

The autonomous chooser and ‘Reforms’ in education

In recent educational reforms in New Zealand, a central assumption has been the existence of a free and autonomous chooser acting as a consumer of education. The present paper examines and critiques this notion of autonomy, as developed within liberal theory. Both Foucault and Lyotard provide materials for this critique of such a self, a self independent of the laws and principles of a community.     

Commitment using punishment.

Experimental parameters were adjusted so that pigeons' pairwise choices among three alternatives reflected the following order of preference: (a) a smaller-sooner reinforcer, (b) a larger-later reinforcer, and (c) the smaller-sooner reinforcer followed by a punishment (consisting of an extended blackout period). After this order of preference was established, the pigeons were exposed to a two-link, concurrent-chain-like choice procedure. One terminal link consisted of a choice between the smaller-sooner and the larger-later reinforcer; the other terminal link was identical to the first except that the smaller-sooner reinforcer was followed by blackout punishment. The pigeons' preference (in their initial-link choice) for the terminal link with the punished smaller-sooner alternative increased as the delay between the initial and terminal links increased. By choosing this terminal link, the pigeons are said to have "committed" themselves to obtaining the larger-later reinforcer. However, unlike prior studies of commitment (e.g., Rachlin & Green, 1972), it was still possible after making the commitment for the pigeons to choose the smaller-sooner reinforcer and undergo the punishment. The pigeons did in fact occasionally make this highly deleterious choice.     

Response-dependent prechoice effects on foraging-related choice

Three experiments explored the influence of prechoice events on pigeons' preference. In two of three studies, a fixed-interval 200-second prechoice period preceded the initial links of a concurrent chain in which outcomes differed either (a) in terms of the delay to food or (b) in terms of amount of food and delay to food. In Experiment 3, the prechoice period preceded the initial links that provided a choice between a small single food presentation and two identical, more delayed food presentations. In all three cases, obtained choice proportions did not vary as a function of prechoice duration. These results suggest that a local-contextual view adequately describes the foraging context; they also have implications for the appropriate formulation of the delay-reduction theory of conditioned reinforcement and rate-maximizing views of optimal foraging theory.     

Separating The Effects Of Trial-specific And Average Sample-stimulus Duration In Delayed Matching To Sample In Pigeons

Pigeons were studied in two experiments employing delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) tasks in which the reduction in delay to reinforcement signaled by the onset of the sample stimulus was manipulated by varying sample-stimulus duration. In Experiment 1, the duration of the sample stimulus was either 5 s or 10 s for one sample stimulus and 10 s or 20 s for the other. Subjects matched more frequently when the sample duration was 10 s following the sample associated with the shorter average duration. This finding is analogous to the memory distribution effect found by Honig (1987) in a successive DMTS task that varied retention interval. In Experiment 2, sample duration was either 5 s or 15 s. In Phases 1 and 3 each sample duration was correlated with a particular sample color, and in Phase 2 sample duration and color were uncorrelated. When sample duration was 5 s, subjects matched more frequently when sample duration and color were correlated than when they were uncorrelated. Overall, subjects matched more frequently when sample duration and color were correlated. The data from both experiments support Wixted's (1989) model, which states that one determinant of choice in a DMTS task is the delay-reduction value of the sample stimulus.     

Differences in delay, not ratios, control choice in concurrent chains

In two experiments, pigeons were trained with concurrent-chains schedules, wherein responding to equal initial links measured preference between variable-interval terminal links. Absolute terminal-link duration was varied by keeping constant the difference between the terminal-link delays and forcing their ratio to change. Delay-reduction theory scales value relative to a common temporal context and requires that delay differences control choice. Thus, preference should remain invariant. Most competing accounts, including the matching law and a strong form of Weber's law, require that preference vary with the delay ratio. Experiment 1 employed standard concurrent chains, in which terminal-link position and color were confounded. Although average preference remained constant, individual preferences were highly variable and inconsistent, possibly due to carryover of position biases across conditions. In an attempt to reduce variability, Experiment 2 used a modified concurrent-chains procedure. Preference at different terminal-link durations was assessed simultaneously to prevent order effects, and terminal-link position was alternated randomly across trials to minimize the impact of position biases. In Experiment 2, both individual and mean preferences showed the constant-difference invariance. Overall, choice was controlled by terminal-link differences, not ratios.     

Antihypertensive treatment,compliance, and quality of life: Review of a little-understood relation

If patients notoriously violate treatment regimens known to effectively control hypertension, then there must be some subjective costs associated with adherence to these regimens. Generally speaking, there must be some reduction in quality of life associated with antihypertensive medication. Unfortunately the concept of quality of life, due to its lack of specificity, is of little help in further investigating the nature of these subjective costs. We developed a simple neuropsychophysiological model based on fundamental psychological and physiological processes: corticoinhibitory effects of phasic blood pressure elevation reduce the aversive or painful qualities of many stressors. This negative reinforcement increases the rate of the reinforced physiological behavior, i.e., phasic analgesic blood pressure increases. Such negatively reinforced operant behavior is known to be extremely resistant to extinction. Counter actions such as taking antihypertensive medication not only lead to reduced quality of life due to their cancellation of the analgesic effect of conditioned blood pressure increase, but also lead to some form of reluctance to comply with treatment. The model not only provides an innovative etiological path to the emergence of neurogenic essential hypertension, but also yields a highly specific and lean concept of quality of life. Furthermore, it supplies the health care community with a concise explanation for the well-known low compliance of patients with their antihypertensive regimens. In addition to its parsimony, the model fits well with various experimental findings and has been operationalized and tested empirically. Specific therapeutic implications can be derived.     

Assessing preference for reinforcers using demand curves, work-rate functions, and expansion paths

Much research has focused on the effects of environmental variability on foraging decisions. However, the general pattern of preference for variability in delay to reward and aversion to variability in amount of reward remains unexplained a either a mechanistic or a functional level. Starlings' preferences between a fixed and a variable option were studied in two treatments, A and D. The fixed option was the same in both treatments (20-s fixed-interval delay, five units food). In Treatment A the variable option gave two equiprobable amounts of food (20-s delay, three or seven units) and in D it gave two equiprobable delays to food (2.5-s or 60.5-s delays, five units). In both treatments the programmed ratio [amount/(intertrial interval+latency+delay)] in the fixed option equaled the arithmetic mean of the two possible ratios in the variable option (ITI = 40 s, latency = 1 s). The variable option was strongly preferred in Treatment D and was weakly avoided in Treatment A. These results are discussed in the light of two theoretical models, a form of constrained rate maximization and a version of scalar expectancy theory. The latter accommodates more of the data and is based on independently verifiable assumptions, including Weber's law.