Larisa Heiphetz, Nina Strohminger, Susan A. Gelman, and Liane L. Young
Forthcoming: Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology
Abstract
Adults report that moral characteristics—particularly widely shared moral beliefs—are central to identity. This perception appears driven by the view that changes to widely shared moral beliefs would alter friendships and that this change in social relationships would, in turn, alter an individual’s personal identity. Because reasoning about identity changes substantially during adolescence, the current work tested pre- and post-adolescents to reveal the role that such changes could play in moral cognition. Experiment 1 showed that 8- to 10-year-olds, like adults, judged that people would change more after changes to their widely shared moral beliefs (e.g., whether hitting is wrong) than after changes to controversial moral beliefs (e.g., whether telling prosocial lies is wrong). Following up on this basic effect, a second experiment examined whether participants regard all changes to widely shared moral beliefs as equally impactful. Adults, but not children, reported that individuals would change more if their good moral beliefs (e.g., it is not okay to hit) transformed into bad moral beliefs (e.g., it is okay to hit) than if the opposite change occurred. This difference in adults was mediated by perceptions of how much changes to each type of belief would alter friendships. We discuss implications for moral judgment and social cognitive development.
The research is here.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Is fairness intuitive? An experiment accounting for subjective utility differences under time pressure
Merkel, A.L. & Lohse, J. Exp Econ (2018).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-018-9566-3
Abstract
Evidence from response time studies and time pressure experiments has led several authors to conclude that “fairness is intuitive”. In light of conflicting findings, we provide theoretical arguments showing under which conditions an increase in “fairness” due to time pressure indeed provides unambiguous evidence in favor of the “fairness is intuitive” hypothesis. Drawing on recent applications of the Drift Diffusion Model (Krajbich et al. in Nat Commun 6:7455, 2015a), we demonstrate how the subjective difficulty of making a choice affects decisions under time pressure and time delay, thereby making an unambiguous interpretation of time pressure effects contingent on the choice situation. To explore our theoretical considerations and to retest the “fairness is intuitive” hypothesis, we analyze choices in two-person binary dictator and prisoner’s dilemma games under time pressure or time delay. In addition, we manipulate the subjective difficulty of choosing the fair relative to the selfish option. Our main finding is that time pressure does not consistently promote fairness in situations where this would be predicted after accounting for choice difficulty. Hence, our results cast doubt on the hypothesis that “fairness is intuitive”.
The research is here.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-018-9566-3
Abstract
Evidence from response time studies and time pressure experiments has led several authors to conclude that “fairness is intuitive”. In light of conflicting findings, we provide theoretical arguments showing under which conditions an increase in “fairness” due to time pressure indeed provides unambiguous evidence in favor of the “fairness is intuitive” hypothesis. Drawing on recent applications of the Drift Diffusion Model (Krajbich et al. in Nat Commun 6:7455, 2015a), we demonstrate how the subjective difficulty of making a choice affects decisions under time pressure and time delay, thereby making an unambiguous interpretation of time pressure effects contingent on the choice situation. To explore our theoretical considerations and to retest the “fairness is intuitive” hypothesis, we analyze choices in two-person binary dictator and prisoner’s dilemma games under time pressure or time delay. In addition, we manipulate the subjective difficulty of choosing the fair relative to the selfish option. Our main finding is that time pressure does not consistently promote fairness in situations where this would be predicted after accounting for choice difficulty. Hence, our results cast doubt on the hypothesis that “fairness is intuitive”.
The research is here.
Friday, April 27, 2018
Why We Don’t Let Coworkers Help Us, Even When We Need It
Mark Bolino and Phillip S. Thompson
Harvard Business Review
Originally published March 15, 2018
Here is the conclusion:
Taken together, our studies suggest that employees who are unwilling to accept help when they need it may undermine their own performance and the effectiveness of their team or unit. In light of those potential costs, managers should directly address the negative beliefs that people are harboring. For instance, research shows that employees tend to look to their leaders to determine who is trustworthy and who isn’t. So, to build people’s trust in their coworkers’ motives and competence, managers can demonstrate their faith in those employees by giving them challenging assignments, ownership of certain decisions, direct access to sensitive information or valuable stakeholders, and so on. Further, since giving help and receiving it go hand in hand, managers should create an environment where assisting one another is encouraged and recognized. They can do this by calling attention to successful collaborations and explaining how they’ve contributed to the organization’s larger goals and mission. And they should show their own willingness to help and be helped, since employees are more likely to see the merits of citizenship behaviors when they observe their leaders engaging in such behaviors themselves.
Finally, it’s important not to send mixed messages. If employees who go it alone get ahead more quickly than those who give and receive support, people will pick up on that discrepancy — and they’ll go back to looking out for number one, to their detriment and the organization’s.
The article is here.
Harvard Business Review
Originally published March 15, 2018
Here is the conclusion:
Taken together, our studies suggest that employees who are unwilling to accept help when they need it may undermine their own performance and the effectiveness of their team or unit. In light of those potential costs, managers should directly address the negative beliefs that people are harboring. For instance, research shows that employees tend to look to their leaders to determine who is trustworthy and who isn’t. So, to build people’s trust in their coworkers’ motives and competence, managers can demonstrate their faith in those employees by giving them challenging assignments, ownership of certain decisions, direct access to sensitive information or valuable stakeholders, and so on. Further, since giving help and receiving it go hand in hand, managers should create an environment where assisting one another is encouraged and recognized. They can do this by calling attention to successful collaborations and explaining how they’ve contributed to the organization’s larger goals and mission. And they should show their own willingness to help and be helped, since employees are more likely to see the merits of citizenship behaviors when they observe their leaders engaging in such behaviors themselves.
Finally, it’s important not to send mixed messages. If employees who go it alone get ahead more quickly than those who give and receive support, people will pick up on that discrepancy — and they’ll go back to looking out for number one, to their detriment and the organization’s.
The article is here.
The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark
Larissa MacFarquhar
Cognitive science addresses philosophical questions—What is a mind? What is the mind’s relationship to the body? How do we perceive and make sense of the outside world?—but through empirical research rather than through reasoning alone. Clark was drawn to it because he’s not the sort of philosopher who just stays in his office and contemplates; he likes to visit labs and think about experiments. He doesn’t conduct experiments himself; he sees his role as gathering ideas from different places and coming up with a larger theoretical framework in which they all fit together. In physics, there are both experimental and theoretical physicists, but there are fewer theoretical neuroscientists or psychologists—you have to do experiments, for the most part, or you can’t get a job. So in cognitive science this is a role that philosophers can play.
Most people, he realizes, tend to identify their selves with their conscious minds. That’s reasonable enough; after all, that is the self they know about. But there is so much more to cognition than that: the vast, silent cavern of underground mental machinery, with its tubes and synapses and electric impulses, so many unconscious systems and connections and tricks and deeply grooved pathways that form the pulsing substrate of the self. It is those primal mechanisms, the wiring and plumbing of cognition, that he has spent most of his career investigating. When you think about all that fundamental stuff—some ancient and shared with other mammals and distant ancestors, some idiosyncratic and new—consciousness can seem like a merely surface phenomenon, a user interface that obscures the real works below.
The article and audio file are here.
The New Yorker
Originally published April 2, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Cognitive science addresses philosophical questions—What is a mind? What is the mind’s relationship to the body? How do we perceive and make sense of the outside world?—but through empirical research rather than through reasoning alone. Clark was drawn to it because he’s not the sort of philosopher who just stays in his office and contemplates; he likes to visit labs and think about experiments. He doesn’t conduct experiments himself; he sees his role as gathering ideas from different places and coming up with a larger theoretical framework in which they all fit together. In physics, there are both experimental and theoretical physicists, but there are fewer theoretical neuroscientists or psychologists—you have to do experiments, for the most part, or you can’t get a job. So in cognitive science this is a role that philosophers can play.
Most people, he realizes, tend to identify their selves with their conscious minds. That’s reasonable enough; after all, that is the self they know about. But there is so much more to cognition than that: the vast, silent cavern of underground mental machinery, with its tubes and synapses and electric impulses, so many unconscious systems and connections and tricks and deeply grooved pathways that form the pulsing substrate of the self. It is those primal mechanisms, the wiring and plumbing of cognition, that he has spent most of his career investigating. When you think about all that fundamental stuff—some ancient and shared with other mammals and distant ancestors, some idiosyncratic and new—consciousness can seem like a merely surface phenomenon, a user interface that obscures the real works below.
The article and audio file are here.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Practical Tips for Ethical Data Sharing
Michelle N. Meyer
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
Volume: 1 issue: 1, page(s): 131-144
Abstract
This Tutorial provides practical dos and don’ts for sharing research data in ways that are effective, ethical, and compliant with the federal Common Rule. I first consider best practices for prospectively incorporating data-sharing plans into research, discussing what to say—and what not to say—in consent forms and institutional review board applications, tools for data de-identification and how to think about the risks of re-identification, and what to consider when selecting a data repository. Turning to data that have already been collected, I discuss the ethical and regulatory issues raised by sharing data when the consent form either was silent about data sharing or explicitly promised participants that the data would not be shared. Finally, I discuss ethical issues in sharing “public” data.
The article is here.
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
Volume: 1 issue: 1, page(s): 131-144
Abstract
This Tutorial provides practical dos and don’ts for sharing research data in ways that are effective, ethical, and compliant with the federal Common Rule. I first consider best practices for prospectively incorporating data-sharing plans into research, discussing what to say—and what not to say—in consent forms and institutional review board applications, tools for data de-identification and how to think about the risks of re-identification, and what to consider when selecting a data repository. Turning to data that have already been collected, I discuss the ethical and regulatory issues raised by sharing data when the consent form either was silent about data sharing or explicitly promised participants that the data would not be shared. Finally, I discuss ethical issues in sharing “public” data.
The article is here.
Rogue chatbots deleted in China after questioning Communist Party
Neil Connor
The Telegraph
Originally published August 3, 2017
Two chatbots have been pulled from a Chinese messaging app after they questioned the rule of the Communist Party and made unpatriotic comments.
The bots were available on a messaging app run by Chinese Internet giant Tencent, which has more than 800 million users, before apparently going rogue.
One of the robots, BabyQ, was asked “Do you love the Communist Party”, according to a screenshot posted on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.
Another web user said to the chatbot: “Long Live the Communist Party”, to which BabyQ replied: “Do you think such corrupt and incapable politics can last a long time?”
(cut)
The Chinese Internet is heavily censored by Beijing, which sees any criticism of its rule as a threat.
Social media posts which are deemed critical are often quickly deleted by authorities, while searches for sensitive topics are often blocked.
The information is here.
The Telegraph
Originally published August 3, 2017
Two chatbots have been pulled from a Chinese messaging app after they questioned the rule of the Communist Party and made unpatriotic comments.
The bots were available on a messaging app run by Chinese Internet giant Tencent, which has more than 800 million users, before apparently going rogue.
One of the robots, BabyQ, was asked “Do you love the Communist Party”, according to a screenshot posted on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.
Another web user said to the chatbot: “Long Live the Communist Party”, to which BabyQ replied: “Do you think such corrupt and incapable politics can last a long time?”
(cut)
The Chinese Internet is heavily censored by Beijing, which sees any criticism of its rule as a threat.
Social media posts which are deemed critical are often quickly deleted by authorities, while searches for sensitive topics are often blocked.
The information is here.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
The Peter Principle: Promotions and Declining Productivity
Edward P. Lazear
Hoover Institution and Graduate School of Business
Revision 10/12/00
Abstract
Many have observed that individuals perform worse after having received a promotion. The
most famous statement of the idea is the Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to
their level of incompetence. There are a number of possible explanations. Two are explored. The
most traditional is that the prospect of promotion provides incentives which vanish after the
promotion has been granted; thus, tenured faculty slack off. Another is that output as a statistical
matter is expected to fall. Being promoted is evidence that a standard has been met. Regression
to the mean implies that future productivity will decline on average. Firms optimally account for the
regression bias in making promotion decisions, but the effect is never eliminated. Both explanations
are analyzed. The statistical point always holds; the slacking off story holds only under certain
compensation structures.
The paper is here.
Hoover Institution and Graduate School of Business
Revision 10/12/00
Abstract
Many have observed that individuals perform worse after having received a promotion. The
most famous statement of the idea is the Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to
their level of incompetence. There are a number of possible explanations. Two are explored. The
most traditional is that the prospect of promotion provides incentives which vanish after the
promotion has been granted; thus, tenured faculty slack off. Another is that output as a statistical
matter is expected to fall. Being promoted is evidence that a standard has been met. Regression
to the mean implies that future productivity will decline on average. Firms optimally account for the
regression bias in making promotion decisions, but the effect is never eliminated. Both explanations
are analyzed. The statistical point always holds; the slacking off story holds only under certain
compensation structures.
The paper is here.
Dear Therapist: I Google-Stalked My Therapist
Lori Gottlieb
The Atlantic
Originally published March 21, 2108
Here is an excerpt:
Most of us wonder who our therapists are outside of the therapy room, usually because we like them so much. Sometimes, of course, people Google their therapists if something feels off—to see if their credentials check out, or if other patients have posted similar concerns. More often, though, our curiosity is a reflection of how important our therapist has become to us, and in some cases, it’s a way to feel connected to the therapist between sessions. The problem is, of course, that we want therapy to be a space where we feel free to talk about absolutely anything. And no matter what we discover—a bombshell like yours, or something more mundane—the fallout of a Google binge becomes a secret that takes that freedom away.
Carl Jung called secrets “psychic poison” for good reason. When I finally confessed my Google-stalking to my therapist, all the air returned to the room. My verbal shackles were removed, and we talked about what was behind my desire to type his name into my search engine. But more important, the way I handled the situation before fessing up taught me something interesting about how I handle discomfort—something far more interesting than anything I learned about my therapist online.
And I think the same might prove true for you.
What people do in therapy is pretty much what they do in their outside lives. In other words, if a patient tends to feel dissatisfied with people in her life, it’s likely that she’ll eventually feel dissatisfied with me. If she tries to please people, she’ll probably try to please me too. And if she avoids people when she feels hurt by them, I’ll be on the lookout for signs that I’ve said something that may have hurt her, too (she cancels her next session, or clams up, or comes late).
The information is here.
The Atlantic
Originally published March 21, 2108
Here is an excerpt:
Most of us wonder who our therapists are outside of the therapy room, usually because we like them so much. Sometimes, of course, people Google their therapists if something feels off—to see if their credentials check out, or if other patients have posted similar concerns. More often, though, our curiosity is a reflection of how important our therapist has become to us, and in some cases, it’s a way to feel connected to the therapist between sessions. The problem is, of course, that we want therapy to be a space where we feel free to talk about absolutely anything. And no matter what we discover—a bombshell like yours, or something more mundane—the fallout of a Google binge becomes a secret that takes that freedom away.
Carl Jung called secrets “psychic poison” for good reason. When I finally confessed my Google-stalking to my therapist, all the air returned to the room. My verbal shackles were removed, and we talked about what was behind my desire to type his name into my search engine. But more important, the way I handled the situation before fessing up taught me something interesting about how I handle discomfort—something far more interesting than anything I learned about my therapist online.
And I think the same might prove true for you.
What people do in therapy is pretty much what they do in their outside lives. In other words, if a patient tends to feel dissatisfied with people in her life, it’s likely that she’ll eventually feel dissatisfied with me. If she tries to please people, she’ll probably try to please me too. And if she avoids people when she feels hurt by them, I’ll be on the lookout for signs that I’ve said something that may have hurt her, too (she cancels her next session, or clams up, or comes late).
The information is here.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
The Next Best Version of Me: How to Live Forever
David Ewing Duncan
Wired.com
Originally published March 27, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
There are also the ethics of using a powerful new technology to muck around with life’s basic coding. Theoretically, scientists could one day manufacture genomes, human or otherwise, almost as easily as writing code on a computer, transforming digital DNA on someone’s laptop into living cells of, say, Homo sapiens. Mindful of the controversy, Church and his HGP-Write colleagues insist that minting people is not their goal, though the sheer audacity of making genome-scale changes to human DNA is enough to cause controversy. “People get upset if you put a gene from another species into something you eat,” says Stanford bioethicist and legal scholar Henry Greely. “Now we’re talking about a thorough rewriting of life? Hairs will stand on end. Hackles will be raised.”
Raised hackles or not, Church and his team are forging ahead. “We want to start with a human Y,” he says, referring to the male sex chromosome, which he explains has the fewest genes of a person’s 23 chromosomes and is thus easier to build. And he doesn’t want to synthesize just any Y chromosome. He and his team want to use the Y chromosome sequence from an actual person’s genome: mine.
“Can you do that?” I stammer.
“Of course we can—with your permission,” he says, reminding me that it would be easy to tap into my genome, since it was stored digitally in his lab’s computers as part of an effort he launched in 2005 called the Personal Genome Project.
The article is here.
Wired.com
Originally published March 27, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
There are also the ethics of using a powerful new technology to muck around with life’s basic coding. Theoretically, scientists could one day manufacture genomes, human or otherwise, almost as easily as writing code on a computer, transforming digital DNA on someone’s laptop into living cells of, say, Homo sapiens. Mindful of the controversy, Church and his HGP-Write colleagues insist that minting people is not their goal, though the sheer audacity of making genome-scale changes to human DNA is enough to cause controversy. “People get upset if you put a gene from another species into something you eat,” says Stanford bioethicist and legal scholar Henry Greely. “Now we’re talking about a thorough rewriting of life? Hairs will stand on end. Hackles will be raised.”
Raised hackles or not, Church and his team are forging ahead. “We want to start with a human Y,” he says, referring to the male sex chromosome, which he explains has the fewest genes of a person’s 23 chromosomes and is thus easier to build. And he doesn’t want to synthesize just any Y chromosome. He and his team want to use the Y chromosome sequence from an actual person’s genome: mine.
“Can you do that?” I stammer.
“Of course we can—with your permission,” he says, reminding me that it would be easy to tap into my genome, since it was stored digitally in his lab’s computers as part of an effort he launched in 2005 called the Personal Genome Project.
The article is here.
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