Choice,Rating, and Ranking: Framing Effects with Different Response Modes

In a typical risky choice framing task, people have to choose among two options, which are either positively or negatively framed. Choices in the two framing conditions are then compared. However, different preferences between the conditions can be due to changes in the evaluation of the single constituent options or due to specific processes triggered by the choice task. In order to clarify the source of the framing effect, we investigate the effect with different response modes: choice, rating, and ranking. The rating and ranking findings indicate that what is commonly called a risky choice framing effect is actually a framing effect that changes the evaluation of only the riskless option, although there is little or no effect on the risky option. According to these findings, risky choice framing might be construed as a process of attribute framing, which is independent of risk preference in choice contexts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Curiosity as an Agent of Conscience

Public outcry against social outrages in our nation in the past few years have called for solutions that suggest that we as a nation believe that by strengthening the observational and punishing components of the superego of the American Psyche we can successfully overthrow our moral failings. By using data in regard to Adolph Eichman and other Nazis as clinical examples, it is suggested that the problem of our moral failings resides not in a deficient superego (a refluent moral agent) but in the insufficient development of conscience (a reflective consciousness). The roles that curiosity and impeded curiosity take in the development of morality are shown to be central to an understanding of how conscience differs from superego.     

Separating the wheat from the chaff: does discriminating between diagnostic and nondiagnostic information eliminate the dilution effect?

The dilution effect refers to the finding that judgments are often unduly influenced by nondiagnostic information, producing regressive judgment. Because the dilution effect is a problem in various domains, strategies to control the impact of nondiagnostic information were explored by drawing on a perceptual and a conversational account of the dilution effect. Three experiments (n = 259) demonstrate that explicit instructions to discriminate between diagnostic and nondiagnostic information did not reduce the dilution effect. Rather, consistent with a perceptual explanation but not consistent with a conversational explanation, the dilution effect disappeared only when participants engage in perceptual control, that is, when they actively remove nondiagnostic pieces of information before making a judgment. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moral Principles or Consumer Preferences? Alternative Framings of the Trolley Problem

We created paired moral dilemmas with minimal contrasts in wording, a research strategy that has been advocated as a way to empirically establish principles operative in a domain-specific moral psychology. However, the candidate "principles" we tested were not derived from work in moral philosophy, but rather from work in the areas of consumer choice and risk perception. Participants were paradoxically less likely to choose an action that sacrifices one life to save others when they were asked to provide more reasons for doing so (Experiment 1), and their willingness to sacrifice lives depended not only on how many lives would be saved, but on the number of lives at risk (Experiment 2). The latter effect was also found in a within-subjects design (Experiment 3). These findings suggest caution in the use of artificial dilemmas as a key testbed for revealing principled bases for moral judgment.     

KIERKEGAARD'S "NEW ARGUMENT" FOR IMMORTALITY

This essay examines texts from Kierkegaard's signed and pseudonymous authorship on immortality and the resurrection, challenging the received opinion that Kierkegaard's account of eternal life merely connotes a temporal, existential modality of experience as a present eternity. Kierkegaard's thoughts on immortality are more complicated than this reading allows. I demonstrate that Kierkegaard's ideas on the afterlife emerge out of a context in which the topic had been vigorously debated in both Germany and Denmark for more than a decade. In responding to these debates, Kierkegaard establishes a "new argument" for immortality that stands as a robust account of the Christian resurrection and highlights the power of a personal God at the center of life, death, and post-mortem existence.     

When is peer rejection justifiable? Children's understanding across two cultures

This study investigated how Korean (N = 397) and U.S. (N = 333) children and adolescents (10 and 13 years of age) evaluated personality (aggression, shyness) and group (gender, nationality) characteristics as a basis for peer rejection in three contexts (friendship rejection, group exclusion, victimization). Overall, peer rejection based on group membership was viewed as more unfair than peer rejection based on personality traits. Children viewed friendship rejection as more legitimate than group exclusion or victimization and used more personal choice reasoning for friendship rejection than for rejection in any other context. Although there were a few cultural differences, overall, the findings provided support for the cultural generalizability of social reasoning about peer rejection.     

Role of attention, memory, and covariation-detection processes in clinically significant eating-disorder symptoms

Cognitive theorists implicate a role for cognitive processing of shape- and weight-related information in the maintenance and potential etiology of eating disorders. The present study examines the role of women’s processing of information regarding other women’s body size and affect in eating disorder symptoms among young women. 253 female undergraduates completed attention, memory, and covariation-detection tasks that presented full-body photographs of young women, as well as an eating-disorder measure. High-Symptom women, relative to Medium- and Low-Symptom women, showed greater relative attention to body size than affect, better memory for body size and worse memory for affect, and enhanced sensitivity to the manipulated covariation between body size and affect. All participants perceived an illusory correlation between body size and affect. These findings suggest that cognitive theories may be extended usefully by considering processing of other-relevant and affective information, as well as the role of covariation-detection processes in eating disorders.     

A clean self can render harsh moral judgment

Physical cleanliness has many medical benefits, such as protection from the dangers of contagion. We explore a potential unintended consequence of cleanliness. Given the metaphorical association between physical cleanliness and moral purity (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006), we contend that a clean self may also be linked to a virtuous self. This enhanced moral self-perception can in turn license harsher moral judgment. Three experiments found that cleanliness, whether induced via physical cleansing or through a visualization task, licensed severe judgment on morally contested issues such as abortion and pornography. Further, we found that an inflated moral self mediated the relationship between cleanliness and moral judgment. These results provide unique insight to the social significance of cleanliness and may have important implications for discrimination and prejudice.     

Effects of escalated exposure to information on accuracy of personality judgment

In an investigation of the effects of increasing exposure to information on accuracy of personality trait judgments, judges rated a single target on three successive occasions, each of which involved the introduction of a novel piece of personal information. Varying the order in which types of information were presented allowed us to jointly examine the effects of information quality and quantity on accuracy in personality judgment. We found that (a) in general, more information led to higher accuracy, (b) some types of information led to greater gains in distinctive or normative accuracy, and (c) introduction of lower quality information did not negatively affect accuracy.