It's immoral,but I'd do it! Psychopathy traits affect decision‐making in sacrificial dilemmas and in everyday moral situations

This research investigated whether emotional hyporeactivity affects moral judgements and choices of action in sacrificial moral dilemmas and in everyday moral conflict situations in which harm to other's welfare is differentially involved. Twenty‐six participants with high trait psychopathy (HP) and 25 with low trait psychopathy (LP) were selected based on the primary psychopathy scale of the Levenson Self‐Report Psychopathy Scale. HP participants were more likely to sacrifice one person to save others in sacrificial dilemmas and to pursue a personal advantage in everyday moral situations entailing harm to another's good. While deciding in these situations, HP participants experienced lower unpleasantness as compared to LP participants. Conversely, no group differences emerged in choice of action and unpleasantness ratings for everyday moral situations that did not entail harm to others. Importantly, moral judgements did not differ in the two groups. These results suggest that high psychopathy trait affects choices of action in sacrificial dilemmas because of reduced emotional reactivity to harmful acts. The dissociation between choice of action and moral judgement suggests that the former is more closely related to emotional experience. Also, emotion seems to play a critical role in discriminating harmful from harmless acts and in driving decisions accordingly.     

Choice in quail neonates: the origins of generalized matching

Although newborns have surprised scientists with their learning skills, proficiency on concurrent schedules of reinforcement requires (in effect) the ability to integrate and compare behavior–consequence relations over time. Can very young animals obey the quantitative relation that applies to such repeated choices, the generalized matching law? The provenance of the skill is not well understood, and this study provides the first investigation of matching in neonates. Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) hatchlings pecked left and right targets on a touchscreen for heat delivery on a concurrent variable-interval reinforcement schedule. Within 5 days after hatching, the chicks showed sensitivity levels significantly greater than zero, but short of typical adult levels. However, stable sequential patterns emerged almost immediately, including a consistent choose-rich tendency after unreinforced responses, one that entails some degree of temporal integration. These exploratory data suggest that the basic ability to match develops quickly in this precocial species, but that more extensive experience may be required to achieve the higher sensitivities typically seen in adults.     

Counsellor conflict in managing the frame: Dilemmas and decisions

An essential feature of psychodynamic counselling is a secure frame for the work that holds boundaries as sacrosanct, both to ensure ethical practice and to provide a vehicle through which unconscious processes can be recognized and understood. Conscious or unconscious attacks on the frame are inevitable in any therapeutic relationship, and provide an opportunity for exploration and insight. However such incidents also have an impact on the therapist who must decide how to respond. In order to understand more about the therapist process when there is an attack on the frame, an investigation was carried out into ways in which psychodynamic counsellors manage the difficulties and dilemmas that arise as they try to hold a secure therapeutic frame. Ten counsellors were interviewed using a semi‐ structured interview format during which they were asked about an instance when the frame was challenged and the process by which it was resolved. The resulting dilemmas were categorized using grounded theory. Three categories of dilemmas emerged a) prior to making a decision about how to deal with it, b) after making a decision, and c), as a result of the outcome of the action taken. The nature of the dilemmas and the process of resolving them are reported and discussed.     

Undermining trust and cooperation: The paradox of sanctioning systems in social dilemmas

Sanctioning systems in social dilemmas are often meant to increase trust in others and to increase cooperation. We argue, however, that sanctioning systems may also give people the idea that others act in their own self-interest and undermine the belief that others are internally motivated to cooperate. We developed the “Removing The Sanction” paradigm and a new trust manipulation, and showed in three experiments that when there is a sanction on defection, trust in others being internally motivated to cooperate is undermined: Participants who had experienced the presence of a sanctioning system trusted fellow group members less than participants who had not. In a similar vein, the sanction undermined cooperation when trust was initially high. The implications of these paradoxical findings are discussed.     

A reinforcement learning approach to personalized learning recommendation systems

Personalized learning refers to instruction in which the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each learner. With the latest advances in information technology and data science, personalized learning is becoming possible for anyone with a personal computer, supported by a data-driven recommendation system that automatically schedules the learning sequence. The engine of such a recommendation system is a recommendation strategy that, based on data from other learners and the performance of the current learner, recommends suitable learning materials to optimize certain learning outcomes. A powerful engine achieves a balance between making the best possible recommendations based on the current knowledge and exploring new learning trajectories that may potentially pay off. Building such an engine is a challenging task. We formulate this problem within the Markov decision framework and propose a reinforcement learning approach to solving the problem.     

Hand Switching Costs are not Uniform Across Response Components

We investigated the extent to which a complex finger sequence impacts on hand switching costs in a sequential action. Response component latencies (premotor, motor, and movement) were compared in no-switch (same finger performed the action of pressing and reaching) and switch conditions (pressing with one finger and completing the reaching action with the homologous finger from the other hand). Results showed that the switch condition presented longer latency for premotor and movement components. For the motor component, however, switch condition was faster. This expands the previous literature investigating switching costs using simple finger movements in more complex tasks. A mechanical explanation of the interplay between response subcomponents is provided to explain the inversion of response pattern for the motor component.     

Future‐biased search: the quest for the ideal

Decision‐makers with ideal candidates already in mind often extend search beyond optimal endpoints when searching for the best option among a sequential list of alternatives. Extended search is investigated here using three laboratory experiments; individuals in these tasks exhibit future‐bias, delaying choice beyond normative benchmarks. Searchers' behavior is consistent with setting high thresholds based on a focal ideal outcome without full attention to its probability or the value of second‐best alternatives; the behavior is partially debiased by manipulating which outcomes are in the searchers' focal set. Documenting future‐bias in sequential search tasks offers new insights for understanding self‐control and intertemporal choice by providing a situation in which thresholds may be set too high and myopic behavior does not prevail. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

社会困境中同伴行为、合作信念对合作变化的影响

本研究采用连续式公共物品困境,考察不同类型的个体在同伴遵守和违反均等规范两种条件下合作的前后变化及其可能的机制。结果发现：（1）依据行为决策对被试进行的分类与其社会价值取向之间不存在相关;（2）一人违反均等条件下被试的合作水平高于多人违反均等条件下的合作水平;（3）高贡献者在前后两次互动中维持较高的合作水平和信念水平;（4）低贡献者第二次决策时比第一次决策时更合作,这可能是由于他们的合作信念提高。     

行政伦理困境与行政行为选择

行政责任的特点之一是其道德性 ,在行政行为选择中伦理动因占据着核心位置。行政伦理困境是行政行为选择中经常遇到的一种特殊情境 ,行政伦理困境与行政行为选择经常相伴而生 ,因此 ,谈及行政伦理困境必然涉及到行政行为选择。