Impulse power
"Why should I care?" Challenging free will attenuates neural reaction to errors
Davide Rigoni, Gilles Pourtois & Marcel Brass
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Whether human beings have free will or not has been a philosophical question for centuries. The debate about free will has recently entered the public arena through mass media and newspaper articles commenting on scientific findings that leave little to no room for free will. Previous research has shown that encouraging such a deterministic perspective influences behavior, namely by promoting cursory and antisocial behavior. Here we propose that such behavioral changes may, at least partly, stem from a more basic neurocognitive process related to response monitoring, namely a reduced error detection mechanism. Our results show that the Error-Related Negativity, a neural marker of error detection, was reduced in individuals led to disbelieve in free will. This finding shows that reducing the belief in free will has a specific impact on error detection mechanisms. More generally, it suggests that abstract beliefs about intentional control can influence basic and automatic processes related to action control.
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Meredith Berry et al.
PLoS ONE, May 2014
Abstract:
The benefits of visual exposure to natural environments for human well-being in areas of stress reduction, mood improvement, and attention restoration are well documented, but the effects of natural environments on impulsive decision-making remain unknown. Impulsive decision-making in delay discounting offers generality, predictive validity, and insight into decision-making related to unhealthy behaviors. The present experiment evaluated differences in such decision-making in humans experiencing visual exposure to one of the following conditions: natural (e.g., mountains), built (e.g., buildings), or control (e.g., triangles) using a delay discounting task that required participants to choose between immediate and delayed hypothetical monetary outcomes. Participants viewed the images before and during the delay discounting task. Participants were less impulsive in the condition providing visual exposure to natural scenes compared to built and geometric scenes. Results suggest that exposure to natural environments results in decreased impulsive decision-making relative to built environments.
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"So Cute I Could Eat It Up": Priming Effects of Cute Products on Indulgent Consumption
Gergana Nenkov & Maura Scott
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the extent to which consumers engage in more indulgent consumption when they are exposed to whimsically cute products and explores the process by which such products affect indulgence. Prior research on kindchenschema (baby schema) has found that exposure to cute babies or baby animals leads to more careful behavior (see the study by Sherman, Haidt, and Coan), suggesting restraint. The present research uncovers the opposite: consumers become more indulgent in their behavior after exposure to whimsically cute products. Drawing from research on cognitive priming, kindchenschema, anthropomorphization, indulgence, and regulatory focus, this research posits that exposure to whimsically cute products primes mental representations of fun, increasing consumers' focus on approaching self-rewards and making consumers more likely to choose indulgent options. These effects do not emerge for kindchenschema cute stimuli, since they prime mental representations of vulnerability and caretaking. Four empirical studies provide evidence for the proposed effects and their underlying process.
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Nejat Anbarci, Jungmin Lee & Aydogan Ulker
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines line-call challenges by male and female professional tennis players in major tournaments around the world. In terms of utilization rates, we find that the genders behave similarly. Nevertheless, we do detect some intriguing gender differences in these challenges. First, male players' challenges are more likely to be provoked by those of their opponents. More importantly, at tiebreaks, females are more likely to reverse an umpire's unfavorable call, while males make relatively more unsuccessful challenges. Furthermore, we find that men are a lot more likely to make "embarrassing" line-call challenges at tiebreaks and offenses (i.e., when the shot lands at the opponent's side of the tennis court) than women. These significant gender differences suggest that women particularly diverge from men at crucial junctures of the match such as tiebreaks. Differences in factors such as risk aversion, overconfidence, pride, shame, and strategic signalling behavior might help us to explain these gender-difference findings in line call challenges.
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Attenuating depletion using goal priming
Darlene Walsh
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examines how goal priming can attenuate the depletion effect. Using different self-control goals (i.e., savings and healthy eating) and different measures of self-control ability (i.e., willingness to buy and actual consumption), this study reveals that when people were primed with cues related to a self-control goal and then depleted, the effect of depletion on a subsequent self-control task (related to the primed goal) became attenuated. Also, depleted people, relative to nondepleted people, reported a lower level of commitment to a self-control goal; however, when cues related to a self-control goal were primed, their level of goal commitment increased, weakening the depletion effect. This research clarifies questions related to the process underlying depletion, while highlighting the importance of goal commitment (a measure of motivation) in understanding depletion.
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Marco Del Giudice et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to recent theoretical models, autistic-like and schizotypal traits can be regarded as opposite sides of a single continuum of variation in personality and cognition, and may be diametrically associated with individual differences in life history strategies. Schizotypy is hypothesized to constitute a psychological phenotype oriented toward high mating effort and reduced parenting, consistent with a fast life history strategy; autistic-like traits are hypothesized to contribute to a slow strategy characterized by reduced mating effort and high parental investment. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that autistic-like and schizotypal traits would be diametrically associated with unrestricted sociosexuality, impulsivity, and sensation seeking (three key behavioral correlates of fast life history strategies in humans) in a sample of 152 young adults (18-38 years). The results were consistent with a diametrical autism-schizotypy axis of individual variation. In line with with our hypotheses, autism-schizotypy scores were uniquely associated with individual differences in impulsivity, sensation seeking, and sociosexual behavior, even after controlling for variation in Big Five personality traits. However, we found no significant associations with sociosexual attitude in the present sample. Our findings provide additional support for a life history model of autistic-like and schizotypal traits and demonstrate the heuristic value of this approach in the study of personality and psychopathology.
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When More Depletion Offsets the Ego Depletion Effect
Shanshan Xiao et al.
Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The ego depletion effect has been consistently replicated using the typical paradigm that consists of two consecutive tasks. However, striking contradiction exists in studies employing multiple tasks. The aim of the current study is to replicate previous studies following a similar procedure and design in a sample of participants from a non-western cultural background (Chinese), while strictly controlling other confounding factors, such as task duration. Results indicated that although ego depletion occurred after performing a single initial self-control task, engaging in multiple tasks did indeed offset the depletion effect. These findings are contrary to the resource-based view of ego depletion (i.e., the strength model) but more consistent with other theoretical frameworks, such as the cognitive control theory.
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Should Birds of a Feather Flock Together? Understanding Self-Control Decisions in Dyads
Hristina Dzhogleva & Cait Poynor Lamberton
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can we rely on our high self-control friends to help us make better joint spending and diet decisions? The current research reports seven studies showing that in joint decisions, homogeneous high self-control pairs make less indulgent choices than both homogeneous low self-control and mixed pairs. However, there is no difference in the self-regulatory patterns of the latter two dyad types: having one high self-control partner in a dyad does not lead to more restraint than having none. The authors argue that this pattern exists because higher self-control individuals tend to prioritize prorelationship behaviors over their personal preference for restraint. Therefore, they assent to the lower self-control partner's more indulgent preferences. Consistent with this explanation, results suggest that interventions that change individuals' prorelationship motivation can alter this pattern. Given the range of decisions consumers may make in couples or pairs, this research has implications for consumers, marketers, and public-policy makers.
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The relationship between puberty and risk taking in the real world and in the laboratory
A. Collado et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, October 2014, Pages 143-148
Abstract:
Adolescence is marked by the emergence and escalation of risk taking. Puberty has been long-implicated as constituting vulnerability for risk behavior during this developmental period. Sole reliance on self-reports of risk taking however poses limitations to understanding this complex relationship. There exist potential advantages of complementing self-reports by using the BART-Y laboratory task, a well-validated measure of adolescent risk taking. Toward this end, we examined the association between self-reported puberty and both self-reported and BART-Y risk taking in 231 adolescents. Results showed that pubertal status predicted risk taking using both methodologies above and beyond relevant demographic characteristics. Advantages of a multimodal assessment toward understanding the effects of puberty in adolescent risk taking are discussed and future research directions offered.
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The Quality of Adolescents' Peer Relationships Modulates Neural Sensitivity to Risk Taking
Eva Telzer et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Adolescents' peer culture plays a key role in the development and maintenance of risk taking behavior. Despite recent advances in developmental neuroscience suggesting that peers may increase neural sensitivity to rewards, we know relatively little about how the quality of peer relations impact adolescent risk taking. In the current two-year, three-wave longitudinal study, we examined how chronic levels of peer conflict relate to risk taking behaviorally and neurally, and whether this is modified by high quality peer relationships. Forty-six adolescents completed daily diaries assessing peer conflict across two years as well as a measure of peer support. During a functional brain scan, adolescents completed a risk taking task. Behaviorally, peer conflict was associated with greater risk taking behavior, especially for adolescents reporting low peer support. High levels of peer support buffered this association. At the neural level, peer conflict was associated with greater activation in the striatum and insula, especially among adolescents reporting low peer support, whereas this association was buffered for adolescents reporting high peer support. Results are consistent with the stress-buffering model of social relationships and underscore the importance of the quality of adolescents' peer relationships for their risk taking.
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Evolutionary pressures on primate intertemporal choice
Jeffrey Stevens
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 7 July 2014
Abstract:
From finding food to choosing mates, animals must make intertemporal choices that involve fitness benefits available at different times. Species vary dramatically in their willingness to wait for delayed rewards. Why does this variation across species exist? An adaptive approach to intertemporal choice suggests that time preferences should reflect the temporal problems faced in a species' environment. Here, I use phylogenetic regression to test whether allometric factors relating to body size, relative brain size and social group size predict how long 13 primate species will wait in laboratory intertemporal choice tasks. Controlling for phylogeny, a composite allometric factor that includes body mass, absolute brain size, lifespan and home range size predicted waiting times, but relative brain size and social group size did not. These findings support the notion that selective pressures have sculpted intertemporal choices to solve adaptive problems faced by animals. Collecting these types of data across a large number of species can provide key insights into the evolution of decision making and cognition.
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Wolff Schlotz, Keith Godfrey & David Phillips
PLoS ONE, May 2014
Objective: Individual differences in the temperamental dimension of effortful control are constitutionally based and have been associated with an adverse prenatal developmental environment, with structural brain alterations presenting a potential mechanism. We investigated this hypothesis for anatomically defined brain regions implicated in cognitive and inhibitory motor control.
Methods: Twenty-seven 15-16 year old participants with low, medium, or high fetal growth were selected from a longitudinal birth cohort to maximize variation and represent the full normal spectrum of fetal growth. Outcome measures were parent ratings of attention and inhibitory control, thickness and surface area of the orbitofrontal cortex (lateral (LOFC) and medial (MOFC)) and right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), and volumetric measures of the striatum and amygdala.
Results: Lower birth weight was associated with lower inhibitory control, smaller surface area of LOFC, MOFC and rIFG, lower caudate volume, and thicker MOFC. A mediation model found a significant indirect effect of birth weight on inhibitory control via caudate volume.
Conclusions: Our findings support a neuroanatomical mechanism underlying potential long-term consequences of an adverse fetal developmental environment for behavioral inhibitory control in adolescence and have implications for understanding putative prenatal developmental origins of externalizing behavioral problems and self-control.