Between you and me
Pronoun Use Reflects Standings in Social Hierarchies
Ewa Kacewicz et al.
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, March 2014, Pages 125-143
Abstract:
Five studies explored the ways relative rank is revealed among individuals in small groups through their natural use of pronouns. In Experiment 1, four-person groups worked on a decision-making task with randomly assigned leadership status. In Studies 2 and 3, two-person groups either worked on a task or chatted informally in a get-to-know-you session. Study 4 was a naturalistic study of incoming and outgoing e-mail of 9 participants who provided information on their correspondents’ relative status. The last study examined 40 letters written by soldiers in the regime of Saddam Hussein. Computerized text analyses across the five studies found that people with higher status consistently used fewer first-person singular, and more first-person plural and second-person singular pronouns. Natural language use during group interaction suggests that status is associated with attentional biases, such that higher rank is linked with other-focus whereas lower rank is linked with self-focus.
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An experimental demonstration of the effect of group size on cultural accumulation
Marius Kempe & Alex Mesoudi
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Cumulative culture is thought to have played a major role in hominin evolution, and so an understanding of the factors that affect cultural accumulation is important for understanding human evolution. Population size may be one such factor, with larger populations thought to be able to support more complex cultural traits. This hypothesis has been suggested by mathematical models and empirical studies of small-scale societies. However, to date there have been few experimental demonstrations of an effect of population size on cultural accumulation. Here we provide such a demonstration using a novel task, solving jigsaw puzzles. 80 participants divided into ten transmission chains solved puzzles in one of two conditions: one in which participants had access to one semi-completed puzzle from the previous generation, and the other in which participants simultaneously saw three semi-completed puzzles from the previous generation. As predicted, the mean number of pieces solved increased over time in the three-puzzle-per-generation condition, but not in the one-puzzle-per-generation condition. Thus, our experiment provides support for a hypothesized relationship between population size and cultural accumulation. In particular, our results suggest that the ability to simultaneously learn from multiple cultural models, and combine the knowledge of those multiple models, is most likely to allow larger groups to support more complex culture.
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Distinguishing the Role of Authority “In” and Authority “To”
Dan Silverman, Joel Slemrod & Neslihan Uler
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Authority, and the behavioral response to authority, is central to many important questions in public economics, but has received insufficient attention from economists. In particular, research has not differentiated between legitimate power and the presumption of expert knowledge, what we call authority “to” and authority “in.” In this paper we report on the results of a series of lab experiments designed to distinguish the effects of the two sources of authority on contributions to a public project. The results suggest that authority “to” and authority “in” interact in ways not heretofore understood. Penalizing non-social behavior without expert explanation does not increase voluntary contributions, nor does expert explanation without the threat of penalty, but together they induce more contributions than any other combination of policies. We interpret these findings to indicate that the reaction to an authority depends on whether that authority is perceived to be legitimate.
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Inferring Character From Faces: A Developmental Study
Emily Cogsdill et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Human adults attribute character traits to faces readily and with high consensus. In two experiments investigating the development of face-to-trait inference, adults and children ages 3 through 10 attributed trustworthiness, dominance, and competence to pairs of faces. In Experiment 1, the attributions of 3- to 4-year-olds converged with those of adults, and 5- to 6-year-olds’ attributions were at adult levels of consistency. Children ages 3 and above consistently attributed the basic mean/nice evaluation not only to faces varying in trustworthiness (Experiment 1) but also to faces varying in dominance and competence (Experiment 2). This research suggests that the predisposition to judge others using scant facial information appears in adultlike forms early in childhood and does not require prolonged social experience.
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The Echo Effect: The Power of Verbal Mimicry to Influence Prosocial Behavior
Wojciech Kulesza et al.
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, March 2014, Pages 183-201
Abstract:
Research on the chameleon effect has demonstrated that social benefits, such as liking, safety, rapport, affiliation, and cohesion can be evoked through nonverbal imitation (e.g., body language and mannerisms). Herein, we introduce the echo effect, a less researched phenomenon of verbal mimicry, in a real-world setting. Study participants, 330 currency exchange office customers, were assigned into one of three experimental and two control conditions. Careful attention to research design produced results that address issues raised in the mimicry literature and more clearly define the boundaries of verbal mimicry. The results demonstrate that while repetition of words is important in increasing an individual’s tendency to perform prosocial behaviors, the order in which they are repeated back is not; verbal mimicry is more powerful mechanism than dialogue; and, for nonmimicry control conditions, no response produces the same result as a brief response.
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Friend or Foe? Early Social Evaluation of Human Interactions
Marine Buon et al.
PLoS ONE, February 2014
Abstract:
We report evidence that 29-month-old toddlers and 10-month-old preverbal infants discriminate between two agents: a pro-social agent, who performs a positive (comforting) action on a human patient and a negative (harmful) action on an inanimate object, and an anti-social agent, who does the converse. The evidence shows that they prefer the former to the latter even though the agents perform the same bodily movements. Given that humans can cause physical harm to their conspecifics, we discuss this finding in light of the likely adaptive value of the ability to detect harmful human agents.
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Paolo Masella, Stephan Meier & Philipp Zahn
Games and Economic Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates in a principal-agent environment whether and how group membership influences the effectiveness of incentives and when incentives can have “hidden costs”, i.e., a detrimental effect. We show experimentally that in all interactions control mechanisms can have hidden costs for reasons specific to group membership. In within-group interactions control has detrimental effects because the agent does not expect to be controlled and reacts negatively when being controlled. In between-group interactions, agents perceive control more hostile once we condition on their beliefs about principals' behavior. Our finding contributes to the micro-foundation of psychological effects of incentives.
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Tom Froese & David Leavens
Frontiers in Psychology, February 2014
Abstract:
We argue that imitation is a learning response to unintelligible actions, especially to social conventions. Various strands of evidence are converging on this conclusion, but further progress has been hampered by an outdated theory of perceptual experience. Comparative psychology continues to be premised on the doctrine that humans and non-human primates only perceive others’ physical “surface behavior,” while mental states are perceptually inaccessible. However, a growing consensus in social cognition research accepts the direct perception hypothesis: primarily we see what others aim to do; we do not infer it from their motions. Indeed, physical details are overlooked – unless the action is unintelligible. On this basis we hypothesize that apes’ propensity to copy the goal of an action, rather than its precise means, is largely dependent on its perceived intelligibility. Conversely, children copy means more often than adults and apes because, uniquely, much adult human behavior is completely unintelligible to unenculturated observers due to the pervasiveness of arbitrary social conventions, as exemplified by customs, rituals, and languages. We expect the propensity to imitate to be inversely correlated with the familiarity of cultural practices, as indexed by age and/or socio-cultural competence. The direct perception hypothesis thereby helps to parsimoniously explain the most important findings of imitation research, including children’s over-imitation and other species-typical and age-related variations.
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G. Novembre, M. Zanon & G. Silani
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research has shown that experiencing events that represent a significant threat to social bonds activates a network of brain areas associated with the sensory-discriminative aspects of pain (Kross et al., 2011). In the present study we investigated whether the same brain areas are involved when witnessing social exclusion threats experienced by others. Using a within-subject design, we show that an ecologically valid experience of social exclusion recruits areas coding the somatosensory components of physical pain (posterior insular cortex, and secondary somatosensory cortex). Furthermore, we show that this pattern of activation not only holds for directly experienced social pain, but also during empathy for social pain. Finally, we report that subgenual cingulate cortex is the only brain area conjointly active during empathy for physical and social pain. This supports recent theories that affective processing and homeostatic regulation are at the core of empathic responses.
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Generalized Trust and Intelligence in the United States
Noah Carl & Francesco Billari
PLoS ONE, March 2014
Abstract:
Generalized trust refers to trust in other members of society; it may be distinguished from particularized trust, which corresponds to trust in the family and close friends. An extensive empirical literature has established that generalized trust is an important aspect of civic culture. It has been linked to a variety of positive outcomes at the individual level, such as entrepreneurship, volunteering, self-rated health, and happiness. However, two recent studies have found that it is highly correlated with intelligence, which raises the possibility that the other relationships in which it has been implicated may be spurious. Here we replicate the association between intelligence and generalized trust in a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. We also show that, after adjusting for intelligence, generalized trust continues to be strongly associated with both self-rated health and happiness. In the context of substantial variation across countries, these results bolster the view that generalized trust is a valuable social resource, not only for the individual but for the wider society as well.
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The Role of Subsidies in Coordination Games with Interconnected Risk
Min Gong et al.
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can subsidies promote Pareto-optimum coordination? We found that partially subsidizing the cooperative actions for two out of six players in a laboratory coordination game usually produced better coordination and higher total social welfare with both deterministic and stochastic payoffs. Not only were the subsidized players more likely to cooperate (choose the Pareto-optimum action), but the unsubsidized players increased their expectations on how likely others would cooperate, and they cooperated more frequently themselves. After removal of the subsidy, high levels of coordination continued in most groups with stochastic payoffs but declined in deterministic ones. This carry-over disparity between the deterministic and stochastic settings was consistent with the economic theories that agents were more likely to keep the status quo option under uncertainty than without uncertainty. Hence, players with stochastic payoffs were more likely to keep the high coordination level (status quo) brought by the subsidy in the previous subsidy session. A post-game survey also indicated that with stochastic payoffs, players focused on risk reduction. Temporary subsidies promoted lasting coordination because even after subsidy was removed, players still assumed that others players would prefer reduced risks from cooperation. With deterministic payoffs, however, the subsidy might crowd out other rationales for coordination, with many players indicating that the subsidy was the only reason for anyone to cooperate. Hence, the coordination level dropped when the subsidy was removed.
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Strategic Regulation of Mimicry Effects by Implementation Intentions
Frank Wieber, Peter Gollwitzer & Paschal Sheeran
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2014, Pages 31–39
Abstract:
Although mimicry generally facilitates social interaction, sometimes mimicry effects can hamper pursuit of focal goals. Two studies tested whether the self-regulation strategy of forming implementation intentions (i.e., planning in advance the when, where, and how of one’s goal striving) can be used to regulate mimicry effects. In Study 1, implementation intentions to be non-prejudiced ensured that mimicking increased attraction even for an unlikable person. In Study 2, implementation intentions to be thrifty reduced participants’ susceptibility to the persuasive effects of being mimicked. Mere goal intentions to be non-prejudiced and to be thrifty did not suffice to regulate mimicry effects. We conclude that the strategic automaticity accomplished by implementation intentions allows people to intentionally strengthen (Study 1) and weaken (Study 2) mimicry effects in line with their goals. Implications for the effective self-regulation of mimicry effects are discussed.
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Gender and Cooperation in Children: Experiments in Colombia and Sweden
Juan-Camilo Cárdenas et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2014
Abstract:
In this article we compare cooperation among Colombian and Swedish children aged 9–12. We illustrate the dynamics of the prisoner's dilemma in a new task that is easily understood by children and performed during a physical education class. We find no robust evidence of a difference in cooperation between Colombia and Sweden overall. However, Colombian girls cooperate less than Swedish girls. We also find indications that girls in Colombia are less cooperative than boys. Finally, there is also a tendency for children to be more cooperative with boys than with girls on average.
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Angela de Oliveira, Catherine Eckel & Rachel Croson
Economics Letters, May 2014, Pages 144–148
Abstract:
We conduct a field experiment with low-income subjects in Dallas, Texas. We examine voluntary, informal risk sharing using a visual representation of the solidarity game developed for low-literacy populations. We find substantially more ‘fixed gift to loser’ behavior and less ‘egotistical’ behavior than in previous studies. Individuals who display ‘egotistical’ behavior are more risk tolerant. The amount of the conditional gifts is positively related to age, income, and connection to the community. However, trust and empathy, which are commonly discussed as drivers for solidarity, are not significantly related to the amount given.