The right call
Debunking the Myth of Value-Neutral Virginity: Toward Truth in Scientific Advertising
David Mandel & Philip Tetlock
Frontiers in Psychology, March 2016
Abstract:
The scientific community often portrays science as a value-neutral enterprise that crisply demarcates facts from personal value judgments. We argue that this depiction is unrealistic and important to correct because science serves an important knowledge generation function in all modern societies. Policymakers often turn to scientists for sound advice, and it is important for the wellbeing of societies that science delivers. Nevertheless, scientists are human beings and human beings find it difficult to separate the epistemic functions of their judgments (accuracy) from the social-economic functions (from career advancement to promoting moral-political causes that “feel self-evidently right”). Drawing on a pluralistic social functionalist framework that identifies five functionalist mindsets — people as intuitive scientists, economists, politicians, prosecutors, and theologians — we consider how these mindsets are likely to be expressed in the conduct of scientists. We also explore how the context of policymaker advising is likely to activate or de-activate scientists’ social functionalist mindsets. For instance, opportunities to advise policymakers can tempt scientists to promote their ideological beliefs and values, even if advising also brings with it additional accountability pressures. We end prescriptively with an appeal to scientists to be more circumspect in characterizing their objectivity and honesty and to reject idealized representations of scientific behavior that inaccurately portray scientists as value-neutral virgins.
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Complicating Decisions: The Work Ethic Heuristic and the Construction of Effortful Decisions
Rom Schrift, Ran Kivetz & Oded Netzer
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
The notion that effort and hard work yield desired outcomes is ingrained in many cultures and affects our thinking and behavior. However, could valuing effort complicate our lives? In the present article, the authors demonstrate that individuals with a stronger tendency to link effort with positive outcomes end up complicating what should be easy decisions. People distort their preferences and the information they search and recall in a manner that intensifies the choice conflict and decisional effort they experience before finalizing their choice. Six experiments identify the effort-outcome link as the underlying mechanism for such conflict-increasing behavior. Individuals with a stronger tendency to link effort with positive outcomes (e.g., individuals who subscribe to a Protestant Work Ethic) are shown to complicate decisions by: (a) distorting evaluations of alternatives (Study 1); (b) distorting information recalled about the alternatives (Studies 2a and 2b); and (3) distorting interpretations of information about the alternatives (Study 3). Further, individuals conduct a superfluous search for information and spend more time than needed on what should have been an easy decision (Studies 4a and 4b).
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Mitigating the Perception of Threat to Freedom through Abstraction and Distance
Sherri Jean Katz, Sahara Byrne & Alyssa Irene Kent
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study tested theoretical relationships between key concepts in psychological reactance theory and construal level theory. Through a 3 x 2 x 2 experiment (n = 155), we manipulate (1) how abstractly or concretely participants are processing a message, (2) the psychological distance to the message, and (3) whether or not the message restricts choice. Dependent measures include perceptions of threat to freedom and message effectiveness. Results show that increasing abstraction and/or distance can mitigate the perception of threat to freedom that is experienced when a message restricts choice. Furthermore, this process has a subsequent influence on message effectiveness. As the first study to consider the perception of threat to freedom in the context of construal level theory, this experiment furthers understanding of key theoretical relationships. Strategies for the design of successful persuasive messages are discussed.
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Viren Swami et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, September 2016, Pages 72–76
Abstract:
Psychological stress and anxiety may be antecedents of belief in conspiracy theories, but tests of this hypothesis are piecemeal. Here, we examined the relationships between stress, anxiety, and belief in conspiracy theories in a sample of 420 U.S. adults. Participants completed measures of belief in conspiracy theories, perceived stress, stressful life events, trait and state anxiety, episodic tension, and demographic information. Regression analysis indicated that more stressful life events and greater perceived stress predicted belief in conspiracy theories once effects of social status and age were accounted for (Adj. R2 = .09). State and trait anxiety and episodic tension were not significant predictors. These findings point to stress as a possible antecedent of belief in conspiracy theories.
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Marisabel Romero & Dipayan Biswas
Journal of Consumer Research, June 2016, Pages 103-112
Abstract
Would laterally displaying a healthy item to the left versus right of an unhealthy item influence choice and consumption? The results of seven studies demonstrate that displaying healthy items to the left (vs. right) of unhealthy items enhances preference for the healthy options. In addition, consumption volume of a healthy item (vis-à-vis an unhealthy item) is higher when it is placed to the left (vs. right) of the unhealthy item. We propose that a “healthy-left, unhealthy-right” (vs. healthy-right, unhealthy-left) lateral display pattern is congruent with consumers’ mental organization of food items varying in healthfulness, which enhances ease of processing and in turn enhances self-control, thereby leading to a relatively higher likelihood of choosing healthy options. While prior studies have examined the role of several factors in influencing choices between healthy and unhealthy options, the present research is the first to demonstrate the effects of lateral display positions of healthy/unhealthy options on choice and healthful consumption. The findings of our research have important implications for designing retail food displays and restaurant menus as well as for conducting research studies involving healthy and unhealthy food displays.
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Sanjiv Erat & Uri Gneezy
Experimental Economics, June 2016, Pages 269-280
Abstract:
We investigate whether piece-rate and competitive incentives affect creativity, and if so, how the incentive effect depends on the form of the incentives. We find that while both piece-rate and competitive incentives lead to greater effort relative to a base-line with no incentives, neither type of incentives improve creativity relative to the base-line. More interestingly, we find that competitive incentives are in fact counter-productive in that they reduce creativity relative to base-line condition. In line with previous literature, we find that competitive conditions affect men and women differently: whereas women perform worse under competition than the base-line condition, men do not.
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Do Professionals Get It Right? Limited Attention and Risk-taking Behaviour
Reto Foellmi, Stefan Legge & Lukas Schmid
Economic Journal, May 2016, Pages 724–755
Abstract:
Does information processing affect individual risk-taking behaviour? This article provides evidence that professional athletes suffer from a left-digit bias when dealing with signals about differences in performance. Using data from the highly competitive field of World Cup alpine skiing for the period of 1992–2014, we show that athletes misinterpret actual differences in race times by focusing on the leftmost digit, which results in increased risk-taking behaviour. For the estimation of causal effects, we exploit the fact that tiny time differences can be attributed to random shocks. We find no evidence that high-stakes situations or individual experience reduce the left-digit bias.
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Is Popular More Likeable? Choice Status by Intrinsic Appeal in an Experimental Music Market
Freda Lynn, Mark Walker & Colin Peterson
Social Psychology Quarterly, June 2016, Pages 168-180
Abstract:
There is widespread agreement from many areas of status research that evaluators’ judgments of performances can be distorted by the status of the performer. The question arises as to whether status distorts perceptions differently at different levels of performance quality. Using data from the Columbia Musiclab study, we conduct a large-scale test of whether the effect of popularity on private perceptions of likeability is contingent on songs’ intrinsic appeal. We discover that choice status (i.e., popularity) can boost perceptions of a song’s likeability but only for songs of lower quality. In effect, the likeability halo created by popularity is one mechanism for why it is that “bad” songs can sometimes become more successful than songs that are intrinsically more appealing. But this same mechanism does not explain why “good” songs sometimes turn into superstars. This study suggests that status theories be refined to consider heterogeneous effects.
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Smaller Crowds Outperform Larger Crowds and Individuals in Realistic Task Conditions
Mirta Galesic, Daniel Barkoczi & Konstantinos Katsikopoulo
Decision, forthcoming
Abstract:
Decisions about political, economic, legal, and health issues are often made by simple majority voting in groups that rarely exceed 30–40 members and are typically much smaller. Given that wisdom is usually attributed to large crowds, shouldn’t committees be larger? In many real-life situations, expert groups encounter a number of different tasks. Most are easy, with average individual accuracy being above chance, but some are surprisingly difficult, with most group members being wrong. Examples are elections with surprising outcomes, sudden turns in financial trends, or tricky knowledge questions. Most of the time, groups cannot predict in advance whether the next task will be easy or difficult. We show that under these circumstances moderately sized groups, whose members are selected randomly from a larger crowd, can achieve higher average accuracy across all tasks than either larger groups or individuals. This happens because an increase in group size can lead to a decrease in group accuracy for difficult tasks that is larger than the corresponding increase in accuracy for easy tasks. We derive this nonmonotonic relationship between group size and accuracy from the Condorcet jury theorem and use simulations and further analyses to show that it holds under a variety of assumptions. We further show that situations favoring moderately sized groups occur in a variety of real-life situations including political, medical, and financial decisions and general knowledge tests. These results have implications for the design of decision-making bodies at all levels of policy.
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Single dose testosterone administration reduces loss chasing in healthy females
Yin Wu et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, September 2016, Pages 54–57
Abstract:
Testosterone has been linked to modulation of impulsivity and risky choice, potentially mediated by changes in reward or punishment sensitivity. This study investigated the effect of testosterone on risk-taking and the adjustment of risk-taking on trials following a gain or a loss. Loss chasing is operationalized herein as the propensity to recover losses by increasing risky choice. Healthy female participants (n = 26) received a single-dose of 0.5 mg sublingual testosterone in a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design. At 240 minutes post-administration, participants performed a gambling task with a high and a low risk option. In the placebo condition, participants were more likely to choose the high risk option following losses compared to wins. This effect was abolished on the testosterone session. Ignoring prior outcomes, no overall changes in risk-taking were observed. Our data indicate that testosterone affects human decision-making via diminishing sensitivity to punishment.
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Martin Schweinsberg et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This crowdsourced project introduces a collaborative approach to improving the reproducibility of scientific research, in which findings are replicated in qualified independent laboratories before (rather than after) they are published. Our goal is to establish a non-adversarial replication process with highly informative final results. To illustrate the Pre-Publication Independent Replication (PPIR) approach, 25 research groups conducted replications of all ten moral judgment effects which the last author and his collaborators had “in the pipeline” as of August 2014. Six findings replicated according to all replication criteria, one finding replicated but with a significantly smaller effect size than the original, one finding replicated consistently in the original culture but not outside of it, and two findings failed to find support. In total, 40% of the original findings failed at least one major replication criterion. Potential ways to implement and incentivize pre-publication independent replication on a large scale are discussed.
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Machiavelli as a poker mate — A naturalistic behavioural study on strategic deception
Jussi Palomäki, Jeff Yan & Michael Laakasuo
Personality and Individual Differences, August 2016, Pages 266–271
Abstract:
Machiavellianism has been considered in the literature as the symbol for manipulative strategies in social conduct. However, it has been rarely studied via behavioural experiments outside the laboratory, in more naturalistic settings. We report the first behavioural study (N = 490) evaluating whether Machiavellian individuals, high Machs, deceive more than low Machs in online poker, where deception is ethically acceptable and strategically beneficial. Specifically, we evaluated Machiavellianism, bluffing patterns, and emotional sensitivity to getting “slow-played” (“stepping into a trap”). Bluffing was assessed by realistic poker tasks wherein participants made decisions to bluff or not, and sensitivity to slow-play by a self-report measure. We found that high Machs had higher average bluffsizes than low Machs (but not higher bluffing frequency) and were more distraught by getting slow-played. The Machiavellian sub-trait “desire for control” also positively predicted bluffing frequency. We show that online poker can be utilized to investigate the psychology of deception and Machiavellianism. The results also illustrate a conceptual link between unethical and ethical types of deception, as Machiavellianism is implicated in both.
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What Is Going On Around Here? Intolerance of Uncertainty Predicts Threat Generalization
Jayne Morriss, Birthe Macdonald & Carien van Reekum
PLoS ONE, May 2016
Abstract:
Attending to stimuli that share perceptual similarity to learned threats is an adaptive strategy. However, prolonged threat generalization to cues signalling safety is considered a core feature of pathological anxiety. One potential factor that may sustain over-generalization is sensitivity to future threat uncertainty. To assess the extent to which Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) predicts threat generalization, we recorded skin conductance in 54 healthy participants during an associative learning paradigm, where threat and safety cues varied in perceptual similarity. Lower IU was associated with stronger discrimination between threat and safety cues during acquisition and extinction. Higher IU, however, was associated with generalized responding to threat and safety cues during acquisition, and delayed discrimination between threat and safety cues during extinction. These results were specific to IU, over and above other measures of anxious disposition. These findings highlight: (1) a critical role of uncertainty-based mechanisms in threat generalization, and (2) IU as a potential risk factor for anxiety disorder development.