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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 -
NeuroImage Apr 2022Believing as a fundamental mental process influences other cognitive/affective processes and behavior. However, it is unclear whether believing engages distinct...
Believing as a fundamental mental process influences other cognitive/affective processes and behavior. However, it is unclear whether believing engages distinct neurocognitive mechanisms in people with different cultural experiences. We addressed this issue by scanning Chinese and Danish adults using functional MRI during believing judgments on personality traits of oneself and a celebrity. Drift diffusion model analyses of behavioral performances revealed that speed/quality of information acquisition varied between believing judgments on positive and negative personality traits in Chinese but not in Danes. Chinese adopted a more conservative strategy of decision-making during celebrity- than self-believing judgments whereas an opposite pattern was observed in Danes. Non-decisional processes were longer for celebrity- than for self-believing in Danes but not in Chinese. Believing judgments activated the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in both cultural groups but elicited stronger left anterior insular and ventral frontal activations in Chinese. Greater mPFC activity in Chinese was associated with longer duration of non-decision processes during believing-judgments, which predicted slower retrieval of self-related information in a memory test. Greater mPFC activity in Danes, however, was associated with a less degree of adopting a conservative strategy during believing judgments, which predicted faster retrieval of self-related information. Our findings highlight different neurocognitive processes engaged in believing between individuals from East Asian and Western cultures.
Topics: Adult; Brain; China; Cross-Cultural Comparison; Culture; Decision Making; Denmark; Female; Humans; Judgment; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Personality
PubMed: 35093520
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.118954 -
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 -
PLoS Computational Biology Apr 2021In recent studies of humans estimating non-stationary probabilities, estimates appear to be unbiased on average, across the full range of probability values to be...
In recent studies of humans estimating non-stationary probabilities, estimates appear to be unbiased on average, across the full range of probability values to be estimated. This finding is surprising given that experiments measuring probability estimation in other contexts have often identified conservatism: individuals tend to overestimate low probability events and underestimate high probability events. In other contexts, repulsive biases have also been documented, with individuals producing judgments that tend toward extreme values instead. Using extensive data from a probability estimation task that produces unbiased performance on average, we find substantial biases at the individual level; we document the coexistence of both conservative and repulsive biases in the same experimental context. Individual biases persist despite extensive experience with the task, and are also correlated with other behavioral differences, such as individual variation in response speed and adjustment rates. We conclude that the rich computational demands of our task give rise to a variety of behavioral patterns, and that the apparent unbiasedness of the pooled data is an artifact of the aggregation of heterogeneous biases.
Topics: Bayes Theorem; Computer Simulation; Humans; Individuality; Judgment; Perception; Probability
PubMed: 33793574
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008871 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Apr 2019Humans face a fundamental challenge of how to balance selfish interests against moral considerations. Such trade-offs are implicit in moral decisions about what to do;...
Humans face a fundamental challenge of how to balance selfish interests against moral considerations. Such trade-offs are implicit in moral decisions about what to do; judgments of whether an action is morally right or wrong; and inferences about the moral character of others. To date, these three dimensions of moral cognition-decision-making, judgment, and inference-have been studied largely independently, using very different experimental paradigms. However, important aspects of moral cognition occur at the intersection of multiple dimensions; for instance, moral hypocrisy can be conceived as a disconnect between moral decisions and moral judgments. Here we describe the advantages of investigating these three dimensions of moral cognition within a single computational framework. A core component of this framework is harm aversion, a moral sentiment defined as a distaste for harming others. The framework integrates economic utility models of harm aversion with Bayesian reinforcement learning models describing beliefs about others' harm aversion. We show how this framework can provide novel insights into the mechanisms of moral decision-making, judgment, and inference.
Topics: Adult; Decision Making; Humans; Judgment; Models, Theoretical; Morals; Social Perception
PubMed: 31042018
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12382 -
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 -
Cognitive Processing May 2010What cognitive capabilities allow Homo sapiens to successfully bet on the stock market, to catch balls in baseball games, to accurately predict the outcomes of political... (Review)
Review
What cognitive capabilities allow Homo sapiens to successfully bet on the stock market, to catch balls in baseball games, to accurately predict the outcomes of political elections, or to correctly decide whether a patient needs to be allocated to the coronary care unit? It is a widespread belief in psychology and beyond that complex judgment tasks require complex solutions. Countering this common intuition, in this article, we argue that in an uncertain world actually the opposite is true: Humans do not need complex cognitive strategies to make good inferences, estimations, and other judgments; rather, it is the very simplicity and robustness of our cognitive repertoire that makes Homo sapiens a capable decision maker.
Topics: Choice Behavior; Cognition; Humans; Judgment; Uncertainty
PubMed: 19784854
DOI: 10.1007/s10339-009-0337-0 -
Brain and Cognition Jul 2021Evaluative judgment-i.e., assessing to what degree a stimulus is liked or disliked-is a fundamental aspect of cognition, facilitating comparison and choosing among...
Evaluative judgment-i.e., assessing to what degree a stimulus is liked or disliked-is a fundamental aspect of cognition, facilitating comparison and choosing among alternatives, deciding, and prioritizing actions. Neuroimaging studies have shown that evaluative judgment involves the projection of sensory information to the reward circuit. To investigate whether evaluative judgments are based on modality-specific or modality-general attributes, we compared the extent to which balance, contour, symmetry, and complexity affect liking responses in the auditory and visual modalities. We found no significant correlation for any of the four attributes across sensory modalities, except for contour. This suggests that evaluative judgments primarily rely on modality-specific sensory representations elaborated in the brain's sensory cortices and relayed to the reward circuit, rather than abstract modality-general representations. The individual traits art experience, openness to experience, and desire for aesthetics were associated with the extent to which design or compositional attributes influenced liking, but inconsistently across sensory modalities and attributes, also suggesting modality-specific influences.
Topics: Cognition; Emotions; Esthetics; Humans; Judgment
PubMed: 33887654
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2021.105729 -
Acta Psychologica Jun 2019Metamemory research makes extensive use of judgments, such as judgments of learning (JOLs). In a JOL, people predict their chance of remembering a recently studied item...
Metamemory research makes extensive use of judgments, such as judgments of learning (JOLs). In a JOL, people predict their chance of remembering a recently studied item in a memory test. There is a general agreement that JOLs rely on probabilistic cues that are combined in an inference process. Accuracy as measured by the gamma correlation between JOLs and actual performance is usually mediocre, suggesting limited metacognitive abilities. In judgment and decision-making research, Brunswik's lens model is often used to decompose judgmental accuracy: A matching index G measures how adequately people's cue weights match the optimal weights, two reliability indices assess the predictability of judgments and environment, respectively, and a nonlinear component measures systematic variance not captured by the cues. We employed the lens model equation for the first time to analyze four published and one new JOL data sets. There was considerable interindividual variance in metamemory monitoring. Although gamma was on average higher than the Pearson correlation, it still underestimated metacognitive ability in terms of matching (G). Also, the nonlinear component was considerably higher than in other judgment domains, pointing to substantial item-person-interactions that we interpret as idiosyncratic encoding strategies. An exploratory cluster analysis suggests different metacognitive strategies used by subgroups of participants. We suggest the lens model as a potentially promising tool in metacognition research.
Topics: Attention; Decision Making; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Mental Recall; Metacognition; Photic Stimulation; Random Allocation; Reproducibility of Results; Time Factors; Young Adult
PubMed: 31158737
DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.04.011 -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Jun 2022People rate and judge repeated information more true than novel information. This truth-by-repetition effect is of relevance for explaining belief in fake news,...
People rate and judge repeated information more true than novel information. This truth-by-repetition effect is of relevance for explaining belief in fake news, conspiracy theories, or misinformation effects. To ascertain whether increased motivation could reduce this effect, we tested the influence of monetary incentives on participants' truth judgments. We used a standard truth paradigm, consisting of a presentation and judgment phase with factually true and false information, and incentivized every truth judgment. Monetary incentives may influence truth judgments in two ways. First, participants may rely more on relevant knowledge, leading to better discrimination between true and false statements. Second, participants may rely less on repetition, leading to a lower bias to respond "true." We tested these predictions in a preregistered and high-powered experiment. However, incentives did not influence the percentage of "true" judgments or correct responses in general, despite participants' longer response times in the incentivized conditions and evidence for knowledge about the statements. Our findings show that even monetary consequences do not protect against the truth-by-repetition effect, further substantiating its robustness and relevance and highlighting its potential hazardous effects when used in purposeful misinformation.
Topics: Communication; Humans; Judgment; Knowledge; Motivation; Reaction Time
PubMed: 34918280
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-021-02046-0