Warm and fuzzy
The Temperature Premium: Warm Temperatures Increase Product Valuation
Yonat Zwebner, Leonard Lee & Jacob Goldenberg
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
A series of five field and laboratory studies reveal a temperature-premium effect: warm temperatures increase individuals' valuation of products. We demonstrate the effect across a variety of products using different approaches to measure or manipulate physical warmth and different assessments of product valuation. The studies suggest that exposure to physical warmth activates the concept of emotional warmth, eliciting positive reactions and increasing product valuation. Further supporting the causal role of emotional warmth, and following prior research relating greater positive feelings to reduced distance, we find that warm temperatures also reduce individuals’ perceived distance from the target products.
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The Rise and Fall of Humor: Psychological Distance Modulates Humorous Responses to Tragedy
Peter McGraw, Lawrence Williams & Caleb Warren
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Humor is a ubiquitous experience that facilitates coping, social coordination, and well-being. We examine how humorous responses to a tragedy change over time by measuring reactions to jokes about Hurricane Sandy. Inconsistent with the belief that the passage of time monotonically increases humor, but consistent with the benign violation theory of humor, a longitudinal study reveals that humorous responses to Sandy’s destruction rose, peaked, and eventually fell over the course of 100 days. Time creates a comedic sweet spot that occurs when the psychological distance from a tragedy is large enough to buffer people from threat (creating a benign violation) but not so large that the event becomes a purely benign, nonthreatening situation. The finding can help psychologists understand how people cope and provide clues to what makes things funny and when they will be funny.
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The Ultra-Rare-Item Effect: Visual Search for Exceedingly Rare Items Is Highly Susceptible to Error
Stephen Mitroff & Adam Biggs
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Accuracy is paramount in radiology and security screening, yet many factors undermine success. Target prevalence is a particularly worrisome factor, as targets are rarely present (e.g., the cancer rate in mammography is ~0.5%), and low target prevalence has been linked to increased search errors. More troubling is the fact that specific target types can have extraordinarily low frequency rates (e.g., architectural distortions in mammography — a specific marker of potential cancer — appear in fewer than 0.05% of cases). By assessing search performance across millions of trials from the Airport Scanner smartphone application, we demonstrated that the detection of ultra-rare items was disturbingly poor. A logarithmic relationship between target detection and target frequency (adjusted R2 = .92) revealed that ultra-rare items had catastrophically low detection rates relative to targets with higher frequencies. Extraordinarily low search performance for these extraordinarily rare targets — what we term the ultra-rare-item effect — is troubling given that radiological and security-screening searches are primarily ultra-rare-item searches.
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Jeremy Wolfe et al.
Journal of Vision, December 2013
Abstract:
Many socially important search tasks are characterized by low target prevalence, meaning that targets are rarely encountered. For example, transportation security officers (TSOs) at airport checkpoints encounter very few actual threats in carry-on bags. In laboratory-based visual search experiments, low prevalence reduces the probability of detecting targets (Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner, 2005). In the lab, this “prevalence effect” is caused by changes in decision and response criteria (Wolfe & Van Wert, 2010) and can be mitigated by presenting a burst of high-prevalence search with feedback (Wolfe et al., 2007). The goal of this study was to see if these effects could be replicated in the field with TSOs. A total of 125 newly trained TSOs participated in one of two experiments as part of their final evaluation following training. They searched for threats in simulated bags across five blocks. The first three blocks were low prevalence (target prevalence ≤ .05) with no feedback; the fourth block was high prevalence (.50) with full feedback; and the final block was, again, low prevalence. We found that newly trained TSOs were better at detecting targets at high compared to low prevalence, replicating the prevalence effect. Furthermore, performance was better (and response criterion was more “liberal”) in the low-prevalence block that took place after the high-prevalence block than in the initial three low-prevalence blocks, suggesting that a burst of high-prevalence trials may help alleviate the prevalence effect in the field.
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Out of Mind, Out of Sight: Unexpected Scene Elements Frequently Go Unnoticed Until Primed
George Slavich & Philip Zimbardo
Current Psychology, December 2013, Pages 301-317
Abstract:
The human visual system employs a sophisticated set of strategies for scanning the environment and directing attention to stimuli that can be expected given the context and a person’s past experience. Although these strategies enable us to navigate a very complex physical and social environment, they can also cause highly salient, but unexpected stimuli to go completely unnoticed. To examine the generality of this phenomenon, we conducted eight studies that included 15 different experimental conditions and 1,577 participants in all. These studies revealed that a large majority of participants do not report having seen a woman in the center of an urban scene who was photographed in midair as she was committing suicide. Despite seeing the scene repeatedly, 46 % of all participants failed to report seeing a central figure and only 4.8 % reported seeing a falling person. Frequency of noticing the suicidal woman was highest for participants who read a narrative priming story that increased the extent to which she was schematically congruent with the scene. In contrast to this robust effect of inattentional blindness, a majority of participants reported seeing other peripheral objects in the visual scene that were equally difficult to detect, yet more consistent with the scene. Follow-up qualitative analyses revealed that participants reported seeing many elements that were not actually present, but which could have been expected given the overall context of the scene. Together, these findings demonstrate the robustness of inattentional blindness and highlight the specificity with which different visual primes may increase noticing behavior.
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Point-and-Shoot Memories: The Influence of Taking Photos on Memory for a Museum Tour
Linda Henkel
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies examined whether photographing objects impacts what is remembered about them. Participants were led on a guided tour of an art museum and were directed to observe some objects and to photograph others. Results showed a photo-taking-impairment effect: If participants took a photo of each object as a whole, they remembered fewer objects and remembered fewer details about the objects and the objects’ locations in the museum than if they instead only observed the objects and did not photograph them. However, when participants zoomed in to photograph a specific part of the object, their subsequent recognition and detail memory was not impaired, and, in fact, memory for features that were not zoomed in on was just as strong as memory for features that were zoomed in on. This finding highlights key differences between people’s memory and the camera’s “memory” and suggests that the additional attentional and cognitive processes engaged by this focused activity can eliminate the photo-taking-impairment effect.
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Trust as an alternative to risk
Eric Uslaner
Public Choice, December 2013, Pages 629-639
Abstract:
Many students of trust see it as a way to mitigate risk through the development of strong institutions that create trust. I offer an alternative view of trust, moralistic or generalized trust, that depends upon a psychological foundation of optimism and control. This form of trust, in contrast to arguments by Paldam and others, has “value” independent of experience. Using data from a survey of metropolitan Philadelphia in 1996, I show that if you believe that “most people can be trusted,” you are substantially more likely to see your neighborhood as safe at night even controlling for both the objective level of crime as well having been the victim of a crime, having had parents who were the victims of crime, watching local television news (which exposes people to violent events), where you live (central city and suburb), and gender. Trust thus “reduces” perceptions of risk independently of personal experience.
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Acceleration of image analyst training with transcranial direct current stimulation
Andy McKinley et al.
Behavioral Neuroscience, December 2013, Pages 936-946
Abstract:
Humans today are routinely and increasingly presented with vast quantities of data that challenge their capacity for efficient processing. To restore the balance between man and machine, it is worthwhile to explore new methods for enhancing or accelerating this capacity. This study was designed to investigate the efficacy of transcranial DC stimulation (tDCS) to reduce training time and increase proficiency in spatial recognition using a simulated synthetic aperture radar (SAR) task. Twenty-seven Air Force active duty members volunteered to participate in the study. Each participant was assigned to 1 of 3 stimulation groups and received two, 90-min training sessions on a target search and identification task using SAR imagery followed by a test. The tDCS anode was applied to site F10 according to the 10–20 electroencephalographic electrode convention while the cathode was placed on the contralateral bicep. Group 1 received anodal tDCS at 2 mA for 30 min in the first training session and sham tDCS in the second session. Group 2 received the stimulation conditions in the opposite order. Group 3 did not receive stimulation at all. Results showed that participants receiving training plus tDCS attained visual search accuracies ∼25% higher than those provided with sham stimulation or no stimulation. However, a corresponding performance improvement was not found in the first training session for the change detection portion of the task. This indicates that experience with the imagery is important in the tDCS-elicited performance improvements in change detection.
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The Eye Pupil Adjusts to Imaginary Light
Bruno Laeng & Unni Sulutvedt
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
If a mental image is a rerepresentation of a perception, then properties such as luminance or brightness should also be conjured up in the image. We monitored pupil diameters with an infrared eye tracker while participants first saw and then generated mental images of shapes that varied in luminance or complexity, while looking at an empty gray background. Participants also imagined familiar scenarios (e.g., a “sunny sky” or a “dark room”) while looking at the same neutral screen. In all experiments, participants’ eye pupils dilated or constricted, respectively, in response to dark and bright imagined objects and scenarios. Shape complexity increased mental effort and pupillary sizes independently of shapes’ luminance. Because the participants were unable to voluntarily constrict their eyes’ pupils, the observed pupillary adjustments to imaginary light present a strong case for accounts of mental imagery as a process based on brain states similar to those that arise during perception.
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When One Is Ostracized, Others Loom: Social Rejection Makes Other People Appear Closer
Shane Pitts, John Paul Wilson & Kurt Hugenberg
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social rejection causes a host of interpersonal consequences, including increases in reaffiliative behaviors. In two experiments, we show that reaffiliation motivation stemming from rejection biases perceptions of one’s distance from a social target, making others seem closer than they are. In Experiment 1, participants who had written about rejection underthrew a beanbag when the goal was to land it at the feet of a new interaction partner, relative to control participants. In Experiment 2, rejected participants provided written underestimates of the distance to a person relative to control participants, but only when the target was a real person, and not a life-sized cardboard simulation of a person. Thus, using multiple manipulations of social rejection, and multiple measures of distance perception, this research demonstrates that rejection can bias basic perceptual processes, making actual sources of reaffiliation (actual people), but not mere images of people, loom toward the self.
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Stranger Danger: Parenthood Increases the Envisioned Bodily Formidability of Menacing Men
Daniel Fessler et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Due to altriciality and the importance of embodied capital, children’s fitness is contingent on parental investment. Injury suffered by a parent therefore degrades the parent’s fitness both by constraining reproduction and by diminishing the fitness of existing offspring. Due to the latter added cost, compared to non-parents, parents should be more cautious in hazardous situations, including potentially agonistic interactions. Prior research indicates that relative formidability is conceptualized in terms of size and strength. As erroneous under-estimation of a foe’s formidability heightens the risk of injury, parents should therefore conceptualize a potential antagonist as larger, stronger, and of more sinister intent than should non-parents; secondarily, the presence of one’s vulnerable children should exacerbate this pattern. We tested these predictions in the U.S. using reactions to an evocative vignette, administered via the Internet (Study 1), and in-person assessments of the facial photograph of a purported criminal, collected on the streets of Southern California (Study 2). As predicted, parents envisioned a potential antagonist to be more formidable than did non-parents. Significant differences between parents with children and non-parents without children in the threat that the foe was thought to pose (Study 1) were fully mediated by increases in estimated physical formidability.
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Awe, Uncertainty, and Agency Detection
Piercarlo Valdesolo & Jesse Graham
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across five studies, we found that awe increases both supernatural belief (Studies 1, 2, and 5) and intentional-pattern perception (Studies 3 and 4) — two phenomena that have been linked to agency detection, or the tendency to interpret events as the consequence of intentional and purpose-driven agents. Effects were both directly and conceptually replicated, and mediational analyses revealed that these effects were driven by the influence of awe on tolerance for uncertainty. Experiences of awe decreased tolerance for uncertainty, which, in turn, increased the tendency to believe in nonhuman agents and to perceive human agency in random events.
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Does Everything Happen When You Are Young? Introducing the Youth Bias
Jonathan Koppel & Dorthe Berntsen
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The reminiscence bump refers to the disproportionate number of individuals' autobiographical memories which date from young adulthood. A similar bump is found in cultural life scripts: When people are asked to nominate and date major transitional events in a typical life course in their culture, a disproportionate number of the events cited are likewise expected to occur in young adulthood. Across two online studies, we tested whether these effects reflect a broader tendency to ascribe most important events to young adulthood. Specifically, we probed, in adult USA samples, for when individuals expect the most important public event of a typical person's life to take place. Although the occurrence of such public events should be randomly distributed across the lifespan, we found a bump in young adulthood. We found this bump in both subjective (Study 1; probing cultural expectations for the expected timing of the public event that a typical person considers to be the most important of their lifetime) and objective (Study 2; probing cultural expectations for the expected timing of the objectively most important public event of a typical person's lifetime) conditions. We term this set of cultural expectations the youth bias and discuss its implications for human cognition.
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Blue Light Stimulates Cognitive Brain Activity in Visually Blind Individuals
Gilles Vandewalle et al.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, December 2013, Pages 2072-2085
Abstract:
Light regulates multiple non-image-forming (or nonvisual) circadian, neuroendocrine, and neurobehavioral functions, via outputs from intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). Exposure to light directly enhances alertness and performance, so light is an important regulator of wakefulness and cognition. The roles of rods, cones, and ipRGCs in the impact of light on cognitive brain functions remain unclear, however. A small percentage of blind individuals retain non-image-forming photoreception and offer a unique opportunity to investigate light impacts in the absence of conscious vision, presumably through ipRGCs. Here, we show that three such patients were able to choose nonrandomly about the presence of light despite their complete lack of sight. Furthermore, 2 sec of blue light modified EEG activity when administered simultaneously to auditory stimulations. fMRI further showed that, during an auditory working memory task, less than a minute of blue light triggered the recruitment of supplemental prefrontal and thalamic brain regions involved in alertness and cognition regulation as well as key areas of the default mode network. These results, which have to be considered as a proof of concept, show that non-image-forming photoreception triggers some awareness for light and can have a more rapid impact on human cognition than previously understood, if brain processing is actively engaged. Furthermore, light stimulates higher cognitive brain activity, independently of vision, and engages supplemental brain areas to perform an ongoing cognitive process. To our knowledge, our results constitute the first indication that ipRGC signaling may rapidly affect fundamental cerebral organization, so that it could potentially participate to the regulation of numerous aspects of human brain function.
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Thyme to touch: Infants possess strategies that protect them from dangers posed by plants
Annie Wertz & Karen Wynn
Cognition, January 2014, Pages 44–49
Abstract:
Plants have been central to human life as sources of food and raw materials for artifact construction over evolutionary time. But plants also have chemical and physical defenses (such as harmful toxins and thorns) that provide protection from herbivores. The presence of these defenses has shaped the behavioral strategies of non-human animals. Here we report evidence that human infants possess strategies that would serve to protect them from dangers posed by plants. Across two experiments, infants as young as eight months exhibit greater reluctance to manually explore plants compared to other entities. These results expand the growing literature showing that infants are sensitive to certain ancestrally recurrent dangers, and provide a basis for further exploration.