The role of the oath in credibility assessment

Based on the adaptive lie detector theory, this study is an examination of whether taking an oath, as context‐general information, increases the credibility of a suspect. The consistency of the testimonies of 6 eyewitnesses was manipulated so that it could be used as individuating information. There were 2 sets of testimonies: one that was consistent and one that was inconsistent. The results supported the adaptive lie detector theory. The participants judged those persons who took an oath to be more credible than those who did not, but this only happened in situations where the testimonies of the eyewitnesses were inconsistent. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings and future directions are then discussed.     

社会判断偏差的分化研究：人物因素的影响

实验采用投射的方法,利用图片和问题材料,考察了128名本科生对物、事、人的社会判断偏差的分化现象。实验结果表明：1）社会判断内在的宽大效应存在局限性,它是有条件限制的,受到所介入的人物因素的影响而出现分化现象;2）对物与事的评价中,突出了对性别判断标准的差异;3）在社会人的对比中,容貌、性别、背景在对同一事件的判断中发挥着重要作用,使社会判断出现偏差分化。     

Reading is believing: the truth effect and source credibility

Five experiments explored how source reliability influences people’s tendency to rate statements as more credible when they were encountered earlier (the truth effect). Undergraduates read statements from one reliable source and one unreliable source. Statements read multiple times were perceived as more valid and were more often correctly identified on a general knowledge test than statements read once or not at all. This occurred at varying retention intervals whether the statements originated from a reliable or unreliable source, when people had little memory for the statements themselves or their source, and when the discrediting information about the sources came either before or after reading the facts. While repetition aided recognition and source accuracy, both were unaffected by the reliability of the source. Consistent with the source monitoring framework, familiarity may create an illusion of truth for statements when people lack source-specifying cues, especially cues regarding the reliability of the source.     

Alternative Lens Model Equations for Dichotomous Judgments about Dichotomous Criteria

The Brunswik lens model typically represents a judge's accuracy using parameters derived from linear regression. This is not optimal if the judgment or the ecological criterion is dichotomous. Alternative approaches, modeling dichotomies using logistic regression, or linearizing judgments with confidence ratings, have not been compared with the same data. Four techniques for deriving lens model equation parameters were compared: (i) linear and (ii) logistic regression applied to dichotomous patient outcomes and judgments; (iii) linear regression with confidence‐adjusted judgments but dichotomous patient outcomes; and (iv) a hybrid with a linear model of the confidence‐adjusted judgments and a logistic model of the patient outcomes. Judgment accuracy (r_a) was slightly higher with confidence adjustment of the categorical judgments. The logistic lens model accounted for a higher proportion of r_a than the linear lens model; the confident‐linear and hybrid lens models were intermediate. For up to a quarter of participants, different methods identified different cues as most important. Display condition differences in achievement r_a and in lens model components are similar with all lens model methods. Each of the three alternative lens model equation methods improves on the linear lens model equation's decomposition of the accuracy of dichotomous judgments. Confidence adjustment improves achievement although it requires additional work from the subjects. The logistic lens model equation explains the highest proportion of achievement, but with a small stimulus set, it is more vulnerable to cue intercorrelations than either the linear or the confident linear lens model equation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Confidence and decision type under matched stimulus conditions: overconfidence in perceptual but not conceptual decisions

Within the domain of metacognition, there is disagreement whether different processes underlie evaluations of confidence in perceptual versus conceptual decisions. The relationship between confidence and accuracy for perceptual and conceptual decisions was compared using newly created stimuli that could be used to elicit either decision type. Based on theories of Brunswikian and Thurstonian uncertainties, significant underconfidence for perceptual decisions and overconfidence for conceptual decisions were predicted. Three within‐subjects experiments did not support this hypothesis. Participants showed significant overconfidence for perceptual decisions and no overconfidence for conceptual decisions. In addition, significant hard‐easy effects were consistently found for both decision types. Incorporating our findings with past results reveals that both over‐ and underconfidence are attainable on perceptual tasks. This conclusion, in addition to the common presence of hard‐easy effects and significant across‐task correlations in over/underconfidence, suggests that confidence judgments for the two decision types may depend on largely shared processes. Possible contributions to confidence and over/underconfidence are explored, focusing on response time factors and participants' knowledge bases. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interpersonal Judgments: Moral Responsibility and Blame

A deterministic perspective, believing choices are a function of hereditary and environmental factors, could theoretically impact perceived moral responsibility and lead to decreased blame in judging others. However, little consistent support has been found relating individual differences in deterministic attitudes to blame/tolerance for others. Perhaps, though, providing information regarding past background hardships affecting an individual's current lifestyle could potentially mediate harsh moralistic judgments of that individual. In the two studies reported here, we further explored the relation of free will/determinism scales to attitudes toward others as well as the effect of manipulating background information on the assignment of blame. As in previous research, little support was found for the relation of deterministic attitudes to tolerance toward others. However, judgments following manipulated information about hypothetical target persons supported the conclusion that target individuals are blamed less and given more sympathy if more information related to previous hardships is provided. In addition, in the second study perceived similarity to a target individual was associated with decreased blame/greater sympathy for a target with alcohol abuse problems.     

On the genesis of inflated (and deflated) judgments of responsibility

Prior research has found that people tend to overestimate their relative contribution to joint tasks [e.g., Ross, M., & Sicoly, F. (1979). Egocentric biases in availability and attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,37, 322–336]. The present research investigates one source of this bias, and in doing so, identifies an important moderator of the effect. Three studies demonstrate that when people estimate their relative contribution to collective endeavors they focus on their own contribution and give less consideration to the contribution of their collaborators. This can cause overestimation for tasks in which total contributions are plentiful, but underestimation for tasks in which total contributions are few—despite the fact that both tasks reflect positively on the person who performs them. These results extend Ross and Sicoly’s (1979) original analysis of bias in responsibility judgments, but also suggest that the tendency to overestimate one’s relative contribution to collaborations is not as ubiquitous as once thought.     

Extracting Low-Dimensional Psychological Representations from Convolutional Neural Networks

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are increasingly widely used in psychology and neuroscience to predict how human minds and brains respond to visual images. Typically, CNNs represent these images using thousands of features that are learned through extensive training on image datasets. This raises a question: How many of these features are really needed to model human behavior? Here, we attempt to estimate the number of dimensions in CNN representations that are required to capture human psychological representations in two ways: (1) directly, using human similarity judgments and (2) indirectly, in the context of categorization. In both cases, we find that low-dimensional projections of CNN representations are sufficient to predict human behavior. We show that these low-dimensional representations can be easily interpreted, providing further insight into how people represent visual information. A series of control studies indicate that these findings are not due to the size of the dataset we used and may be due to a high level of redundancy in the features appearing in CNN representations.