When sentimental rules collide: "norms with feelings" in the dilemmatic context

According to a recently prominent account of moral judgment, genuine moral disapprobation is a product of two convergent vectors of normative influence: a strong negative affect that arises from the mere consideration of a given piece of human conduct and a (socially acquired) belief that this conduct is wrong (Nichols, 2002). The existing evidence in favor of this “norms with feelings” proposal is rather mixed, with no obvious route to an empirical resolution. To help shed further light on the situation, we test a previously unexamined prediction that this account logically yields in a novel dilemmatic context: when individuals are faced with a moral dilemma that pits two or more “affectively-charged” moral norms against each other, the norm underwritten by the strongest feeling ought to determine the content of dilemmatic resolution. Across three studies, we find evidence that directly challenges this prediction, offering support for a Kolhberg-style “rationalist” alternative instead. More specifically, we find that it is not the participants’ degree of norm-congruent emotion (whether situationally or dispositionally assessed) or its correlates, but rather their appraisal of the relative costs associated with various alternative courses of action that appears to be most predictive of how they resolve the experimentally induced moral conflict. We conclude by situating our studies within an overarching typology of moral encounters, which, we believe, can help guide future research as well as shed light on some current controversies within this literature.     

Event completion: event based inferences distort memory in a matter of seconds

We present novel evidence that implicit causal inferences distort memory for events only seconds after viewing. Adults watched videos of someone launching (or throwing) an object. However, the videos omitted the moment of contact (or release). Subjects falsely reported seeing the moment of contact when it was implied by subsequent footage but did not do so when the contact was not implied. Causal implications were disrupted either by replacing the resulting flight of the ball with irrelevant video or by scrambling event segments. Subjects in the different causal implication conditions did not differ on false alarms for other moments of the event, nor did they differ in general recognition accuracy. These results suggest that as people perceive events, they generate rapid conceptual interpretations that can have a powerful effect on how events are remembered.     

关于实验心理学中推理的现代心理测量方法(英文)

推理测验与推理实验不同。推理测验用来衡量智商;而推理实验则用来研究推理的心理过程。测验旨在找出能力的个体差异;而实验则意在突出所有个体的一般性心理过程。近年来,心理学中的推理已经发生了变化,我们在理论进化方面简要地总结了如下这些变化:关注点从推理任务中的反应过程变为个体对不同任务做反应时的差异和其中稳定的反应模式,开始考虑不同推理者的组织差异和数量差异(犹如不同游泳运动员的游泳动作和肌肉数量)。然而,这些理论创新必须有精确的建模技术的支持。我们将以条件推理材料为例,展示了现代心理测量方法可以帮我们解决理论创新中产生的三类主要的研究问题。     

Inferring hidden causal structure

We used a new method to assess how people can infer unobserved causal structure from patterns of observed events. Participants were taught to draw causal graphs, and then shown a pattern of associations and interventions on a novel causal system. Given minimal training and no feedback, participants in Experiment 1 used causal graph notation to spontaneously draw structures containing one observed cause, one unobserved common cause, and two unobserved independent causes, depending on the pattern of associations and interventions they saw. We replicated these findings with less-informative training (Experiments 2 and 3) and a new apparatus (Experiment 3) to show that the pattern of data leads to hidden causal inferences across a range of prior constraints on causal knowledge.     

Spatial and environmental consistency in serial sexual assault

This study examines the crime patterns of 76 New Zealand serial sexual offenders in order to determine the extent to which offenders display locational consistency in their choice of crime locations. More specifically, the hypothesis was that there would be intraseries consistency in the distances travelled (spatial consistency) and the characteristics of the crime sites selected (environmental consistency) by serial sexual offenders. For spatial consistency to be tested, the distances travelled from home to offend and the criminal range for each offence series were analysed. Support was found for spatial consistency, and, in line with much overseas research, it was also found that the offenders typically did not travel very far from home to offend (median distance of 3 km). The environmental consistency measure was made up of various physical, temporal, and contextual variables that described the environmental characteristics of an offence. As hypothesised, it was found that offenders displayed intraseries environmental consistency in offence site selection beyond the level of that expected by chance. The implications of this both for understanding offender spatial decision making and for geographical profiling are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

系列再生法:探讨刻板印象的新思路

系列再生法最早起源于Bartlett(1932)对记忆的研究。在信息传递过程中,该方法旨在寻找被试之间的信息如何传递和变形,其传播变形背后的意义和规律何在。目前应用该方法的最新研究围绕以记忆探测为出发点,寻求记忆链条的传播规律对刻板印象的解释,对该领域的研究起到了积极的推动作用。在评述了系列再生法的基本原理和具体实施方法后,分析了该方法在刻板印象研究中的最新研究证据和未来的应用与展望。     

相似性、相似性组合及元认知监控对问题类比推理的影响研究

以改编Holyoak等设计的“汇聚问题”为实验材料,同时自编元认知监控问卷测试被试的元认知监控水平,考察相似性的不同水平,源问题个数,两个源问题情境下源问题的组合方式以及被试的元认知监控水平对类比迁移的影响。结果表明,一个源问题呈现情境下,源、靶问题不同的相似性水平差异显著,表面相似性显著促进类比迁移;两个源问题呈现情境下,源问题的不同组合方式差异显著;无论是呈现一个源问题,还是呈现两个源问题,元认知监控差异均显著,类比迁移主要是控制性加工;源问题个数差异显著。     

5～9岁儿童在不同复杂性任务上类比推理的发展特点

采用经典的A:B:C:D范式,设计两类难度不同的图片任务,依据关系-表征复杂性模型从等级复杂性和水平复杂性角度分析任务难度.在此基础上,选取5～9岁115名儿童探讨两类任务上类比推理的特点和发展趋势.表明:(1)儿童类比推理呈现多样化特点,主要有:充分意义上掌握了类比推理、部分完成了类比推理、位置关系类比推理、不能类比推理和不确定情况类比推理,其中部分完成了类比推理是复杂任务上所特有的.(2)简单、复杂两类任务上,随着年龄增长,5-9岁儿童充分意义上掌握类比推理的人次比例不断上升,不能类比推理的人次比例不断下降.此外,复杂任务上,随年龄增长,部分完成类比任务的人次比例降低.结果表明,在简单任务上,前运算阶段儿童已具备了类比推理能力;但在复杂任务上,儿童到了具体运算阶段才具备类比推理能力.     

任务难度和反馈学习对儿童类比推理能力的影响

该研究采用情景类比任务,通过两个实验对180名小学生进行纸笔测验,探讨了任务难度对儿童类比推理能力的影响.结果发现:进行反馈学习以降低任务难度时,7～8岁儿童能完成更高年龄段儿童才能完成的任务;但增加任务难度,11岁以上儿童也表现出类比推理能力的弱化.结果提示,儿童是否能在类比推理任务中表现出相应的能力可能取决于任务难度,反馈学习可促进一定年龄段内儿童的类比推理能力发展.本结果为有机融合皮亚杰和Goswami等人的观点提供了有效的实验依据.     

莫扎特音乐对幼儿时空推理能力影响的研究

音乐对幼儿身心发展起重要的促进作用.利用实验法探讨莫扎特“D大调双钢琴奏鸣曲”(K.448)对幼儿时空推理能力的影响,并试图探究“莫扎特效应”产生的机制.采用相同唤醒度和情绪效价但不同结构化和周期性的三首音乐为刺激,共342名大班幼儿参与实验.结果显示:高度结构化、长时程周期性的莫扎特音乐K.448显著提高了女童时空推理能力,而在男童未发现此效应;而不具备高度结构化与周期性的科普兰“猫和老鼠”类似无声静息,对幼儿时空推理能力无显著影响.综上,产生“莫扎特效应”,音乐需具备长时程周期性和高度结构化特点,支持“直接启动说”理论.