Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Open Materials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Materials. Show all posts

Saturday, May 28, 2022

The “Equal-Opportunity Jerk” Defense: Rudeness Can Obfuscate Gender Bias

Belmi, P., Jun, S., & Adams, G. S. (2022). 
Psychological Science, 33(3), 397–411.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211040495

Abstract

To address sexism, people must first recognize it. In this research, we identified a barrier that makes sexism hard to recognize: rudeness toward men. We found that observers judge a sexist perpetrator as less sexist if he is rude toward men. This occurs because rudeness toward men creates the illusion of gender blindness. We documented this phenomenon in five preregistered studies consisting of online adult participants and adult students from professional schools (total N = 4,663). These attributions are problematic because sexism and rudeness are not mutually exclusive. Men who hold sexist beliefs about women can be—and often are—rude toward other men. These attributions also discourage observers from holding perpetrators accountable for gender bias. Thus, rudeness toward men gives sexist perpetrators plausible deniability. It protects them and prevents the first perceptual step necessary to address sexism.

Statement of Relevance

Sexism can be challenging to identify and eventually root out. However, we contend that even blatant forms of sexism are sometimes difficult to recognize. In this research, we demonstrated how rudeness can makes blatant forms of sexism harder to identify. We found that a man does not seem sexist if he treats everyone—both men and women—poorly. This is problematic because sexism and rudeness are not mutually exclusive.  Men who are sexist can be—and often are—rude toward other men. We found that rudeness obscures the recognition of sexism by creating the perception that the sexist perpetrator does not
notice or pay attention to gender when dealing with other people. This misleads observers into thinking that an intervention such as gender-bias training is less necessary. Rudeness can therefore protect sexist perpetrators, making their prejudice harder to recognize and correct.

From the Discussion

It has been noted that overtly discriminatory conduct—characterized by blatant antipathy, antiquated
beliefs about women, and endorsement of pejorative stereotypes—is becoming less common because of
sweeping changes in antidiscrimination laws, practices, and ideologies in the United States (Brief et al., 1997; Dovidio & Gaertner, 1998; Swim et al., 1995). However, blatant, unambiguous, and obvious forms of sexist conduct continue to exist in society (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1998) and within organizations in particular (e.g., Cortina, 2008). Our findings suggest that one reason for their persistence is that observers may not recognize that everyday acts of rudeness can serve as a convenient mask for bias against women (Cortina, 2008). This has an important practical implication: When a sexist manager is rude toward men, it may appear as though he is not sexist. Thus, women victimized by his behavior will have a more difficult time proving that he is sexist. Rudeness can therefore protect perpetrators.

Thursday, May 12, 2022

Human Vision Reconstructs Time to Satisfy Causal Constraints

Bechlivanidis, C., Buehner, M. J., et al.
(2022).
Psychological Science, 33(2), 224–235.

Abstract

The goal of perception is to infer the most plausible source of sensory stimulation. Unisensory perception of temporal order, however, appears to require no inference, because the order of events can be uniquely determined from the order in which sensory signals arrive. Here, we demonstrate a novel perceptual illusion that casts doubt on this intuition: In three experiments (N = 607), the experienced event timings were determined by causality in real time. Adult participants viewed a simple three-item sequence, ACB, which is typically remembered as ABC in line with principles of causality. When asked to indicate the time at which events B and C occurred, participants’ points of subjective simultaneity shifted so that the assumed cause B appeared earlier and the assumed effect C later, despite participants’ full attention and repeated viewings. This first demonstration of causality reversing perceived temporal order cannot be explained by postperceptual distortion, lapsed attention, or saccades.

Statement of Relevance

There are two sources of information on the temporal order of events: the order in which we experience them and their causal relationships, because causes precede their effects. Intuitively, direct experience of order is far more dependable than causal inference. Here, we showed participants events that looked like collisions, but the collided-on object started moving before the collision occurred. Surprisingly, participants indicated in real time that they saw events happening significantly earlier or later than they actually did, at timings compatible with causal interpretations (as if there were indeed a collision). This is evidence that perceived order is not the passive registration of the sequence of signals arriving at the observer but an active interpretation informed by rich assumptions.

General Discussion

Collectively, our findings constitute the first demonstration of a unisensory perceptual illusion of temporal order induced by causal impressions, indicating that the visual system generates the experienced order through a process of interpretation (Grush, 2016; Holcombe, 2015).  Participants were given precise instructions and sufficient time to repeatedly view the sequences, they attended to the critical events using the same modality, and they synchronized object motion with a nonlocalized flash.  We can thus confidently rule out alternative explanations based on inattentional blindness, multimodal integration, flash lag, and motion aftereffects. Because stimulus presentation was free and unconstrained relative to the time of saccades, our results cannot be accounted for by transient perisaccadic mislocalization, either (Kresevic et al., 2016; Morrone et al., 2005). Although in this case we examined the effect only with an adult population recruited from a crowdsourcing platform, previous research suggests that children as young as 4 years old are also susceptible to causal reordering, at least when asked to make post hoc reports (Tecwyn et al., 2020).  More research needs to be carried out to study the degree of perceptual shift and, more broadly, the generalizability of the current results.

Saturday, November 6, 2021

Generating Options and Choosing Between Them Depend on Distinct Forms of Value Representation

Morris, A., Phillips, J., Huang, K., & 
Cushman, F. (2021). 
Psychological Science. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211005702

Abstract

Humans have a remarkable capacity for flexible decision-making, deliberating among actions by modeling their likely outcomes. This capacity allows us to adapt to the specific features of diverse circumstances. In real-world decision-making, however, people face an important challenge: There are often an enormous number of possibilities to choose among, far too many for exhaustive consideration. There is a crucial, understudied prechoice step in which, among myriad possibilities, a few good candidates come quickly to mind. How do people accomplish this? We show across nine experiments (N = 3,972 U.S. residents) that people use computationally frugal cached value estimates to propose a few candidate actions on the basis of their success in past contexts (even when irrelevant for the current context). Deliberative planning is then deployed just within this set, allowing people to compute more accurate values on the basis of context-specific criteria. This hybrid architecture illuminates how typically valuable thoughts come quickly to mind during decision-making.

From the General Discussion

Salience effects, such as recency, frequency of consideration, and extremity, likely also contribute to consideration (Kahneman, 2003; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Our results supported at least one salience effect: In Studies 4 through 6, in addition to our primary effect of high cached value, options with more extreme cached values relative to the mean also tended to come to mind (see the checkmark shape in Fig. 3d). Salience effects such as this may have a functional basis, such as conserving scarce cognitive resources (Lieder et al., 2018). An ideal general theory would specify how these diverse factors—including many others, such as personality traits, social roles, and cultural norms (Smaldino & Richerson, 2012)—form a coherent, adaptive design for option generation.

A growing body of work suggests that value influences what comes to mind not only during decision-making but also in many other contexts, such as causal reasoning, moral judgment, and memory recall (Bear & Knobe, 2017; Braun et al., 2018; Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009; Mattar & Daw, 2018; Phillips et al., 2019). A key inquiry going forward will be the role of cached versus context-specific value estimation in these cases.