-
Perspectives on Psychological Science :... Jan 2022Observed variability and complexity of judgments of "right" and "wrong" cannot be readily accounted for within extant approaches to understanding moral judgment. In...
Observed variability and complexity of judgments of "right" and "wrong" cannot be readily accounted for within extant approaches to understanding moral judgment. In response to this challenge, we present a novel perspective on categorization in moral judgment. Moral judgment as categorization (MJAC) incorporates principles of category formation research while addressing key challenges of existing approaches to moral judgment. People develop skills in making context-relevant categorizations. They learn that various objects (events, behaviors, people, etc.) can be categorized as morally right or wrong. Repetition and rehearsal result in reliable, habitualized categorizations. According to this skill-formation account of moral categorization, the learning and the habitualization of the forming of moral categories occur within goal-directed activity that is sensitive to various contextual influences. By allowing for the complexity of moral judgments, MJAC offers greater explanatory power than existing approaches while also providing opportunities for a diverse range of new research questions.
Topics: Humans; Judgment; Learning; Morals
PubMed: 34264152
DOI: 10.1177/1745691621990636 -
Neuroscience Letters Feb 2020Normative judgment is a key capacity for human social norm compliance. Previous studies have revealed that the right lateral prefrontal cortex (rLPFC) is closely related... (Review)
Review
Normative judgment is a key capacity for human social norm compliance. Previous studies have revealed that the right lateral prefrontal cortex (rLPFC) is closely related to social norm compliance and that it has proven stimulation effects on behavior in voluntary and sanction-induced norm compliance, but not normative judgments. Nearly all these studies have been based on sanction-induced coordination cooperation, and a number of them have found that rLPFC has no effect on normative judgment with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). However, no research study exists regarding the effects of the normative judgment in voluntary cooperation. In this study, we used a linear asymmetric public good game to investigate the role of normative judgment in voluntary cooperation with tDCS on rLPFC. Participants were engaged in anonymous social interactions and made decisions with real financial consequences after being randomly assigned to receive either anodal, cathodal, or sham stimulation of 15 min. Results suggest that compared with the sham group, anodal/cathodal tDCS influenced the behavior and normative judgment of participants in opposite directions. These outcomes provide a neural evidence for the rLPFC mechanism on normative judgment in voluntary cooperation.
Topics: Behavior; Decision Making; Humans; Judgment; Prefrontal Cortex; Social Norms; Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
PubMed: 29037793
DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2017.10.020 -
Cognition Jan 2023Recent studies have shown that the ability to process number in the face of conflicting dimensions of magnitude is a crucial aspect of numerosity judgments, relying in...
Recent studies have shown that the ability to process number in the face of conflicting dimensions of magnitude is a crucial aspect of numerosity judgments, relying in part on the inhibition of the non-numerical dimensions. Here we report, for the first time, that these inhibitory control processes are specific to the conflicting dimension of magnitude. Using a non-symbolic numerical comparison task adapted to a conflict adaptation paradigm on a group of 82 adults, we show that congruency effects between numerical and non-numerical information were reduced only when the conflicting dimension was the same in the preceding incongruent trial. Attention to number thus involves inhibitory control processes acting at a specific level of information. These results contribute to better characterize the domain general abilities involved in numerical cognition, and provide evidence for a specific interaction between numerosity perception and inhibitory control.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Inhibition, Psychological; Cognition; Judgment
PubMed: 36152391
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105285 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics May 2023Recall memory and sequential dependence threaten the independence of successive beauty ratings. Such independence is usually assumed when using repeated measures to...
Recall memory and sequential dependence threaten the independence of successive beauty ratings. Such independence is usually assumed when using repeated measures to estimate the intrinsic variance of a rating. We call "intrinsic" the variance of all possible responses that the participant could give on a trial. Variance arises within and across participants. In attributing the measured variance to sources, the first step is to assess how much is intrinsic. In seven experiments, we measure how much of the variability across beauty ratings can be attributed to recall memory and sequential dependence. With a set size of one, memory is a problem and contributes half the measured variance. However, we showed that for both beauty and ellipticity, with set size of nine or more, recall memory causes a mere 10% increase in the variance of repeated ratings. Moreover, we showed that as long as the stimuli are diverse (i.e., represent different object categories), sequential dependence does not affect the variance of beauty ratings. Lastly, the variance of beauty ratings increases in proportion to the 0.15 power of stimulus set size. We show that the beauty rating of a stimulus in a diverse set is affected by the stimulus set size and not the value of other stimuli. Overall, we conclude that the variance of repeated ratings is a good way to estimate the intrinsic variance of a beauty rating of a stimulus in a diverse set.
Topics: Humans; Judgment; Mental Recall; Research Design
PubMed: 36918510
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-023-02672-x -
Psychological Research Mar 2022Previous research has shown that null numerosity can be processed as a numerical entity that is represented together with non-null numerosities on the same magnitude...
Previous research has shown that null numerosity can be processed as a numerical entity that is represented together with non-null numerosities on the same magnitude system. The present study examined which conditions enable perceiving nonsymbolic (i.e., an empty set) and symbolic (i.e., 0) representations of null numerosity as a numerical entity, using distance and end effects. In Experiment 1, participants performed magnitude comparisons of notation homogeneous pairs (both numerosities appeared in nonsymbolic or symbolic format), as well as heterogeneous pairs (a nonsymbolic numerosity versus a symbolic one). Comparisons to 0 resulted in faster responses and an attenuated distance effect in all conditions, whereas comparisons to an empty set produced such effects only in the nonsymbolic and symbolic homogeneous conditions. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants performed same/different numerosity judgments with heterogeneous pairs. A distance effect emerged for "different" judgments of 0 and sets of 1 to 9 dots, but not for those with an empty set versus digits 1-9. These findings indicate that perceiving an empty set, but not 0, as a numerical entity is determined by notation homogeneity and task requirements.
Topics: Humans; Judgment
PubMed: 33843012
DOI: 10.1007/s00426-021-01515-4 -
Neuroreport Nov 2014Whenever we interact with others, we judge them and whenever we make such judgments, we compare them with ourselves, other people, or internalized standards. Countless... (Review)
Review
Whenever we interact with others, we judge them and whenever we make such judgments, we compare them with ourselves, other people, or internalized standards. Countless social psychological experiments have shown that comparative thinking plays a ubiquitous role in person perception and social cognition as a whole. The topic of social comparison has recently aroused the interest of social neuroscientists, who have begun to investigate its neural underpinnings. The present article provides an overview of these neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies. We discuss recent findings on the consequences of social comparison on the brain processing of outcomes and highlight the role of the brain's reward system. Moreover, we analyze the relationship between the brain networks involved in social comparisons and those active during other forms of cognitive and perceptual comparison. Finally, we discuss potential future questions that research on the neural correlates of social comparison could address.
Topics: Brain; Cognition; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Nerve Net; Reward; Social Perception
PubMed: 25191923
DOI: 10.1097/WNR.0000000000000255 -
Cognitive Science May 2022Mike accidentally knocked against a bottle. Seeing that the bottle was about to fall, Jack was just about to catch it when Peter accidentally knocked against him, making...
Mike accidentally knocked against a bottle. Seeing that the bottle was about to fall, Jack was just about to catch it when Peter accidentally knocked against him, making Jack unable to catch it. Jack did not grab the bottle, and it fell to the ground and spilled. In double-prevention cases like these, philosophers and nonphilosophers alike tend to judge that Mike knocking into the bottle caused the beer to spill and that Peter knocking into Jack did not cause the beer to spill. This difference in causal judgment is a difficult puzzle for counterfactual theories of causal judgment; if each event had not happened, the outcome would not have, yet there is a difference in people's causal judgments. In four experiments and three supplemental experiments, we confirm this difference in causal judgments. We also show that differences in people's counterfactual thinking can explain this difference in their causal judgments and that recent counterfactual models of causal judgment can account for these patterns. We discuss these results in relation to work on counterfactual thinking and causal modeling.
Topics: Causality; Humans; Judgment; Male
PubMed: 35488801
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13127 -
ELife May 2022Humans observe actions performed by others in many different visual and social settings. What features do we extract and attend when we view such complex scenes, and how...
Humans observe actions performed by others in many different visual and social settings. What features do we extract and attend when we view such complex scenes, and how are they processed in the brain? To answer these questions, we curated two large-scale sets of naturalistic videos of everyday actions and estimated their perceived similarity in two behavioral experiments. We normed and quantified a large range of visual, action-related, and social-affective features across the stimulus sets. Using a cross-validated variance partitioning analysis, we found that social-affective features predicted similarity judgments better than, and independently of, visual and action features in both behavioral experiments. Next, we conducted an electroencephalography experiment, which revealed a sustained correlation between neural responses to videos and their behavioral similarity. Visual, action, and social-affective features predicted neural patterns at early, intermediate, and late stages, respectively, during this behaviorally relevant time window. Together, these findings show that social-affective features are important for perceiving naturalistic actions and are extracted at the final stage of a temporal gradient in the brain.
Topics: Brain; Brain Mapping; Electroencephalography; Humans; Judgment; Photic Stimulation; Visual Perception
PubMed: 35608254
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.75027 -
Nature Communications Jul 2022Humans differ in their capability to judge choice accuracy via confidence judgments. Popular signal detection theoretic measures of metacognition, such as M-ratio, do...
Humans differ in their capability to judge choice accuracy via confidence judgments. Popular signal detection theoretic measures of metacognition, such as M-ratio, do not consider the dynamics of decision making. This can be problematic if response caution is shifted to alter the tradeoff between speed and accuracy. Such shifts could induce unaccounted-for sources of variation in the assessment of metacognition. Instead, evidence accumulation frameworks consider decision making, including the computation of confidence, as a dynamic process unfolding over time. Using simulations, we show a relation between response caution and M-ratio. We then show the same pattern in human participants explicitly instructed to focus on speed or accuracy. Finally, this association between M-ratio and response caution is also present across four datasets without any reference towards speed. In contrast, when data are analyzed with a dynamic measure of metacognition, v-ratio, there is no effect of speed-accuracy tradeoff.
Topics: Decision Making; Humans; Judgment; Metacognition
PubMed: 35864100
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31727-0 -
Experimental Psychology Mar 2019Recent studies have shown that preference judgments can vary considerably from one person to another and when these data are averaged the results can be misleading. In...
Recent studies have shown that preference judgments can vary considerably from one person to another and when these data are averaged the results can be misleading. In the current study, we examine individual differences in aesthetic preference for randomized visual patterns. In Experiment 1, we start with a structured checkerboard and progressively randomize its alternating black and white squares by 10% increments. In Experiment 2, we begin with a structured square array of vertical line segments and progressively randomize line orientation. In both experiments, there were strong differences in responding with most participants favoring either ordered or randomized versions. We found differences in Big-Five trait scores across these groupings. Individuals who scored high on extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness all preferred random patterns. Preference results for openness and neuroticism varied across the experiments. Explanations for predicted and obtained trait outcomes are provided.
Topics: Adult; Beauty; Female; Humans; Individuality; Judgment; Male; Personality; Young Adult
PubMed: 30895912
DOI: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000432