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Neuron May 2016In this issue of Neuron, Sanders et al. (2016) demonstrate that human confidence judgments seem to arise from computations compatible with statistical decision theory,... (Review)
Review
In this issue of Neuron, Sanders et al. (2016) demonstrate that human confidence judgments seem to arise from computations compatible with statistical decision theory, shining a new light on the old questions of how such judgments are formed.
Topics: Animals; Bayes Theorem; Decision Making; Humans; Judgment; Uncertainty
PubMed: 27151633
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2016.04.023 -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Apr 2020The theory of mental models postulates that conditionals and disjunctions refer to possibilities, real or counterfactual. Factual conditionals, for example, "If there's...
The theory of mental models postulates that conditionals and disjunctions refer to possibilities, real or counterfactual. Factual conditionals, for example, "If there's an apple, there's a pear," parallel counterfactual ones, for example, "If there had been an apple, there would have been a pear." A similar parallel underlies disjunctions. Individuals estimate the probabilities of conditionals by adjusting the probability of their -clauses according to the effects of their -clauses, and the probabilities of disjunctions by a rough average of the probabilities of their disjuncts. Hence, the theory predicts that estimates of the joint probabilities of these assertions with each of the four cases in their partitions will be grossly subadditive, summing to over 100%. Five experiments corroborated these predictions. Factual conditionals and disjunctions were judged true in the same cases as their counterfactual equivalents, and the sum of their joint probabilities with cases in the partition ranged from 240% to 270% (Experiments 1a, 1b). When participants were told these probabilities should not sum to more than 100%, estimates of the probability of , as the model theory predicts, were higher for factual than counterfactual conditionals, whereas estimates of the probability of had the opposite difference (Experiment 1c). Judgments of truth or falsity distinguished between conditionals that were certain and those that might have counterexamples (Experiment 2a), whereas judgments of the likelihood of truth reflected the probabilities of counterexamples (Experiment 2b). We discuss implications for alternative theories based on standard logic, suppositions, probabilistic logic, and causal Bayes networks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Adult; Humans; Judgment; Logic; Models, Psychological; Probability; Thinking
PubMed: 31647286
DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000756 -
Current Opinion in Psychology Feb 2022Visual information often quickly dominates people's judgments of others' competence and performance, including in the selection of leaders and decision makers. Reviewing... (Review)
Review
Visual information often quickly dominates people's judgments of others' competence and performance, including in the selection of leaders and decision makers. Reviewing recent research on static and dynamic visual cues, we discuss how people extrapolate judgments of competence and performance from visual information. We highlight how these two streams of research contribute to understanding performance perceptions and offer future avenues for research integrating the consideration of both static and dynamic visual cues.
Topics: Cues; Humans; Judgment
PubMed: 34419897
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.07.003 -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Jun 2015More and more we interact with other people across varying amounts of geographical distance. What shapes our categorization of a fixed amount of such distance as near or...
More and more we interact with other people across varying amounts of geographical distance. What shapes our categorization of a fixed amount of such distance as near or far? Building upon and expanding prior work on the association between spatial distance perception and reachability, we argue that people judge a given geographical distance as subjectively smaller when they can exert control across that distance. Studies 1-4 demonstrate this effect of control on spatial distance judgment in disparate contexts, including political, work, and family domains, and explore implications of such judgments for the downstream judgment of travel time to a location (Study 2). We do not find that one's desire for control moderates these effects (Study 4). Supporting a cognitive association argument, we find evidence that the association between control and distance is bidirectional, with subjective distance influencing perceived controllability (Study 5). Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Topics: Adult; Distance Perception; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Space Perception
PubMed: 25914997
DOI: 10.1037/xge0000066 -
PloS One 2021People make judgments of others based on appearance, and these inferences can affect social interactions. Although the importance of facial appearance in these judgments...
People make judgments of others based on appearance, and these inferences can affect social interactions. Although the importance of facial appearance in these judgments is well established, the impact of the body morphology remains unclear. Specifically, it is unknown whether experimentally varied body morphology has an impact on perception of threat in others. In two preregistered experiments (N = 250), participants made judgments of perceived threat of body stimuli of varying morphology, both in the absence (Experiment 1) and presence (Experiment 2) of facial information. Bodies were perceived as more threatening as they increased in mass with added musculature and portliness, and less threatening as they increased in emaciation. The impact of musculature endured even in the presence of faces, although faces contributed more to the overall threat judgment. The relative contributions of the faces and bodies seemed to be driven by discordance, such that threatening faces exerted the most influence when paired with non-threatening bodies, and vice versa. This suggests that the faces and bodies were not perceived as entirely independent and separate components. Overall, these findings suggest that body morphology plays an important role in perceived threat and may bias real-world judgments.
Topics: Adult; Face; Facial Expression; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Perception; Social Perception
PubMed: 33831099
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249782 -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Oct 2018In recent years, psychological models of perception have undergone reevaluation due to a broadening of focus toward understanding not only how observers perceive stimuli...
In recent years, psychological models of perception have undergone reevaluation due to a broadening of focus toward understanding not only how observers perceive stimuli but also how they subjectively evaluate stimuli. Here, we investigated the time course of such aesthetic evaluations using a gating paradigm. In a series of experiments, participants heard excerpts of classical, jazz, and electronica music. Excerpts were of different durations (250 ms, 500 ms, 750 ms, 1,000 ms, 2,000 ms, 10,000 ms) or note values (eighth note, quarter note, half note, dotted-half note, whole note, and entire 10,000 ms excerpt). After each excerpt, participants rated how much they liked the excerpt on a 9-point Likert scale. In Experiment 1, listeners made accurate aesthetic judgments within 750 ms for classical and jazz pieces, while electronic pieces were judged within 500 ms. When translated into note values (Experiment 2), electronica and jazz clips were judged more quickly than classical. In Experiment 3, we manipulated the familiarity of the musical excerpts. Unfamiliar clips were judged more quickly (500 ms) than familiar clips (750 ms), but there was overall higher accuracy for familiar pieces. Finally, we investigated listeners' aesthetic judgments continuously over the time course of more naturalistic (60 s) excerpts: Within 3 s, listeners' judgments differed between most- and least-liked pieces. We suggest that such rapid aesthetic judgments represent initial gut-level decisions that are made quickly, but that even these initial judgments are influenced by characteristics such as genre and familiarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Adult; Affect; Auditory Perception; Esthetics; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Music; Recognition, Psychology; Young Adult
PubMed: 30010370
DOI: 10.1037/xge0000474 -
Experimental Psychology Mar 2017Research on moral judgment often employs bipolar rating scales to assess whether the difference between two contrasted options is judged to be morally relevant. We give...
Research on moral judgment often employs bipolar rating scales to assess whether the difference between two contrasted options is judged to be morally relevant. We give an account of how different numbers of response options provided on such scales (odd vs. even) change the meaning of the test question by communicating different implicit presuppositions. We demonstrate experimentally that these changes can qualitatively affect the moral relevance judgments that subjects express in response to a given judgment problem. Several alternative explanations in terms of trivial measurement distortion are tested and refuted, and we present suggestive evidence as to what kind of factors might be prone to scale effects. The findings underscore that expressed moral judgments are constructed ad hoc and do not necessarily reflect the content of underlying stable moral commitments. We discuss implications for theories and methodology in moral psychology and in judgment and decision-making research more generally.
Topics: Decision Making; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Morals; Young Adult
PubMed: 28497721
DOI: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000341 -
Memory (Hove, England) Mar 2017Individuals exhibit hindsight bias when they are unable to recall their original responses to novel questions after correct answers are provided to them. Prior studies...
Individuals exhibit hindsight bias when they are unable to recall their original responses to novel questions after correct answers are provided to them. Prior studies have eliminated hindsight bias by modifying the conditions under which original judgments or correct answers are encoded. Here, we explored whether hindsight bias can be eliminated by manipulating the conditions that hold at retrieval. Our retrieval-based approach predicts that if the conditions at retrieval enable sufficient discrimination of memory representations of original judgments from memory representations of correct answers, then hindsight bias will be reduced or eliminated. Experiment 1 used the standard memory design to replicate the hindsight bias effect in middle-school students. Experiments 2 and 3 modified the retrieval phase of this design, instructing participants beforehand that they would be recalling both their original judgments and the correct answers. As predicted, this enabled participants to form compound retrieval cues that discriminated original judgment traces from correct answer traces, and eliminated hindsight bias. Experiment 4 found that when participants were not instructed beforehand that they would be making both recalls, they did not form discriminating retrieval cues, and hindsight bias returned. These experiments delineate the retrieval conditions that produce-and fail to produce-hindsight bias.
Topics: Adolescent; Child; Cognition; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Memory; Mental Recall; Models, Psychological; Neuropsychological Tests
PubMed: 27108926
DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2016.1176202 -
PloS One 2022The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of deliberative vs. intuitive thinking styles on forensic judgments of legal professionals. Two hypotheses...
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of deliberative vs. intuitive thinking styles on forensic judgments of legal professionals. Two hypotheses were tested: (a) that low deliberative thinking would be related to judgmental biases (b) that lawyers would report a greater tendency and preference toward deliberative thinking in comparison to students and make more rational judgments.
METHOD
Ninety-one lawyers and 120 undergraduate students, who served as controls, were asked to read a criminal case depicting sexual harassment (SH) and judge victim and offender blame, whether the case constitutes SH, and the damage for the victim.
RESULTS
Deliberative thinking of lawyers was higher than students, and higher than their intuitive thinking style, supporting the more rational blame attributions of the former. In addition, higher deliberative thinking was related to a stronger perception of the event as SH. Nevertheless, all the participants were more inclined to perceive the case as SH when the victim was a woman instead of a man.
CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that gender stereotypes and bias may persist despite high deliberative thinking and may even be manifested through deliberative thinking processes. Awareness of legal professionals of these biases as well as the development of more objective tools which will help make the judging process less subjective-will ensure more accurate assessment of victims, offenders, and cases.
Topics: Crime Victims; Female; Humans; Judgment; Lawyers; Male; Sexual Harassment; Social Perception; Students
PubMed: 35951515
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272606 -
Cognition Feb 2024Despite the importance of uncertainty in decision-making, few published studies have examined how individuals make moral judgments under uncertainty. Across four...
Despite the importance of uncertainty in decision-making, few published studies have examined how individuals make moral judgments under uncertainty. Across four experiments (N = 445), we examined whether a relatively small shift in probability affected participants' judgments of both moral acceptability and choice. Overall, reading dilemmas where the characters were either certain or likely to die, the probability of the sacrificed individual and the group at risk dying both had independent effects on participants' responses. That is, participants were more accepting of sacrificing the individual if they were not certain to die, but less accepting if the group was only likely to die when the individual was not sacrificed. Furthermore, a number of participants made acceptability ratings that did not match the action they endorsed, either finding the sacrificial decision more acceptable but refusing to make it, or choosing the sacrificial decision while viewing it as less acceptable. Many participants also stated that this was because they recognised a crucial difference between what they viewed as morally acceptable in a dilemma and what they were actually willing to do. Such mismatches may reflect the sensitivity and complexity of the moral principles that individuals employ during their moral decision-making.
Topics: Humans; Decision Making; Uncertainty; Judgment; Morals; Moral Obligations
PubMed: 38101081
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105692