Moral Perceptions of Advised Actions

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (8) ◽  
pp. 3904-3927 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas C. Coffman ◽  
Alexander Gotthard-Real
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Relational Contract ◽  
Suggestive Evidence ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

Can an organization avoid blame for an unpopular action when an adviser advises it to do it? We present experimental evidence suggesting this is the case—advice to be selfish substantially decreases punishment of being selfish. Further, this result is true despite advisers’ misaligned incentives, known to all: Through a relational contract incentive, advisers are motivated to tell the decision makers what they want to hear. Through incentivized elicitations, we find suggestive evidence that advice moves punishment by affecting beliefs of how necessary the selfish action was. In follow-up treatments, however, we show advice does not decrease punishment solely through a beliefs channel. Advice not only changes beliefs about what happened, but also the perceived morality of it. Finally, in treatments in which advisers are available, the data suggest selfish decision makers act more selfishly. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics.

Talking Behind Your Back: Communication and Team Cooperation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Abbink ◽  
Lu Dong ◽  
Lingbo Huang
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Team Communication ◽  
Team Cooperation ◽  
Profit Allocation ◽  
Asymmetric Communication ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

Communication is one of the most effective devices in promoting team cooperation. However, asymmetric communication sometimes breeds collusion and hurts team efficiency. Here, we present experimental evidence showing that excluding one member from team communication hurts team cooperation; the communicating partners collude in profit allocation against the excluded member, and the latter reacts by exerting less effort. Allowing the partners to reach out to the excluded member partially restores cooperation and fairness in profit allocation, but it does not stop the partners from talking behind that member’s back even when they could have talked publicly. The partners sometimes game the system by tricking the excluded member into contributing but then grabbing all profits for themselves. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

scholarly journals Development and preliminary evaluation of EMPOWER for surrogate decision-makers of critically ill patients

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Wendy G. Lichtenthal ◽  
Martin Viola ◽  
Madeline Rogers ◽  
Kailey E. Roberts ◽  
Lindsay Lief ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Critically Ill ◽  
Critically Ill Patients ◽  
Experiential Avoidance ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Post Intervention ◽  
Prolonged Grief ◽  
Surrogate Decision Makers ◽  
Surrogate Decision ◽  
Peritraumatic Distress

Abstract Objective The objectives of this study were to develop and refine EMPOWER (Enhancing and Mobilizing the POtential for Wellness and Resilience), a brief manualized cognitive-behavioral, acceptance-based intervention for surrogate decision-makers of critically ill patients and to evaluate its preliminary feasibility, acceptability, and promise in improving surrogates’ mental health and patient outcomes. Method Part 1 involved obtaining qualitative stakeholder feedback from 5 bereaved surrogates and 10 critical care and mental health clinicians. Stakeholders were provided with the manual and prompted for feedback on its content, format, and language. Feedback was organized and incorporated into the manual, which was then re-circulated until consensus. In Part 2, surrogates of critically ill patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) reporting moderate anxiety or close attachment were enrolled in an open trial of EMPOWER. Surrogates completed six, 15–20 min modules, totaling 1.5–2 h. Surrogates were administered measures of peritraumatic distress, experiential avoidance, prolonged grief, distress tolerance, anxiety, and depression at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at 1-month and 3-month follow-up assessments. Results Part 1 resulted in changes to the EMPOWER manual, including reducing jargon, improving navigability, making EMPOWER applicable for a range of illness scenarios, rearranging the modules, and adding further instructions and psychoeducation. Part 2 findings suggested that EMPOWER is feasible, with 100% of participants completing all modules. The acceptability of EMPOWER appeared strong, with high ratings of effectiveness and helpfulness (M = 8/10). Results showed immediate post-intervention improvements in anxiety (d = −0.41), peritraumatic distress (d = −0.24), and experiential avoidance (d = −0.23). At the 3-month follow-up assessments, surrogates exhibited improvements in prolonged grief symptoms (d = −0.94), depression (d = −0.23), anxiety (d = −0.29), and experiential avoidance (d = −0.30). Significance of results Preliminary data suggest that EMPOWER is feasible, acceptable, and associated with notable improvements in psychological symptoms among surrogates. Future research should examine EMPOWER with a larger sample in a randomized controlled trial.

Convergence and intonation: historical evidence from Buenos Aires Spanish

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA COLANTONI ◽  
JORGE GURLEKIAN
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Italian Immigration ◽  
Early Peak ◽  
Intonational Phrases ◽  
Pitch Accents ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

In this paper we present experimental evidence showing that Buenos Aires Spanish differs from other Spanish varieties in the realization of pre-nuclear pitch accents and in the final fall in broad focus declarative utterances. Whereas other Spanish varieties have been described consistently as showing late peak alignments, Buenos Aires Spanish displays early peak alignments. The alignment pattern found in Buenos Aires broad focus declarative utterances is not totally foreign to Spanish: it is attested in a quite different function, i.e. to signal contrastive focus. In addition, Buenos Aires Spanish also seems to differ from other Spanish varieties in the realization of the intonation contour in utterance-final intonational phrases, where a pronounced tendency for down-stepped peaks is observed. We argue that these patterns, which emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, and coincided with the peak of Italian immigration, are due to a combination of direct and indirect transfer from Italian. As a result, two intonational systems that were typologically similar before contact took place (Hualde, 2002) became more similar after contact, in what can be interpreted as a case of convergence.

scholarly journals Human Cooperation When Acting Through Autonomous Machines

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (9) ◽  
pp. 3482-3487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celso M. de Melo ◽  
Stacy Marsella ◽  
Jonathan Gratch
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Collective Interest ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
Cooperative Society ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Autonomous Machines ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

Recent times have seen an emergence of intelligent machines that act autonomously on our behalf, such as autonomous vehicles. Despite promises of increased efficiency, it is not clear whether this paradigm shift will change how we decide when our self-interest (e.g., comfort) is pitted against the collective interest (e.g., environment). Here we show that acting through machines changes the way people solve these social dilemmas and we present experimental evidence showing that participants program their autonomous vehicles to act more cooperatively than if they were driving themselves. We show that this happens because programming causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, leading to considerations of broader societal goals. We also show that the programmed behavior is influenced by past experience. Finally, we report evidence that the effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles. We discuss implications for designing autonomous machines that contribute to a more cooperative society.

Dark Soliton Formation for Light-Induced Waveguiding in Photorefractive inP:Fe

1997 ◽  
Vol 484 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Chauvet ◽  
S. A. Hawkins ◽  
G. J. Salamo ◽  
M. Segev ◽  
D. F. Bliss ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Steady State ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Dark Soliton ◽  
Screening Solitons ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

AbstractWe present experimental evidence for the observation of steady-state dark photorefractive screening solitons trapped in bulk InP:Fe.

Phonotactic c(l)ues to Bantu noun class disambiguation

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Braver ◽  
Wm. G. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
Noun Classes ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

AbstractWhile a number of phonologists assume that phonotactics can provide clues to abstract morphological information, this possibility has largely gone unconsidered in work on Bantu noun classes. We present experimental evidence from isiXhosa (a Bantu language of the Nguni family, from South Africa), showing that speakers make use of root phonotactics when assigning noun classes to nonce words. Nouns in Xhosa bear class-indicating prefixes, but some of these prefixes are homophonous – and therefore ambiguous. Our findings show that when speakers are presented with words that have prefixes ambiguous between two classes, phonotactic factors can condition them to treat the nouns as one class or the other. This suggests that noun class (and other abstract morphological information) is not only stored in the lexicon, but is also redundantly indicated by phonotactic clues.

Eustachian Tube Bypass: Experimental Evidence for Total Eustachian Tube Substitution

1978 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. ORL-498-ORL-505
Author(s):  
Abraham Lapidot ◽  
Dessaglegn Terrefe ◽  
Firooz Rezvani ◽  
Aubrey J. Hough
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Clinical Experience ◽  
Eustachian Tube ◽  
Middle Ear ◽  
Medical Literature ◽  
Severe Inflammation ◽  
Ascending Infection

Several preliminary reports have appeared in the medical literature in respect to eustachian tube substitution1–6 since Zollner7 first described his inability to open the obstructed eustachian tube. These procedures3,5,6 have the disadvantage that the distal end of the eustachian tube substitute is inaccessible by other than another operation. This paper is a follow-up report to our clinical experience.2 The purpose of the experiment was to determine whether the middle ear was ventilated by the tympano-oropharyngeal substitute eustachian tube and whether ascending infection occurred. Fourteen ears underwent eustachian tube substitution. The natural eustachian tubes of these ears were obliterated three to five months after eustachian tube substitution had been performed. The animals were killed three to four months after obliteration of the natural eustachian tubes. Studies of the decalcified sections showed an absence of infection in six of the ears, with mild to severe inflammation in the rest of the specimens.

scholarly journals Uncalculating cooperation is used to signal trustworthiness

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (31) ◽  
pp. 8658-8663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillian J. Jordan ◽  
Moshe Hoffman ◽  
Martin A. Nowak ◽  
David G. Rand
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence ◽  
Do So

Humans frequently cooperate without carefully weighing the costs and benefits. As a result, people may wind up cooperating when it is not worthwhile to do so. Why risk making costly mistakes? Here, we present experimental evidence that reputation concerns provide an answer: people cooperate in an uncalculating way to signal their trustworthiness to observers. We present two economic game experiments in which uncalculating versus calculating decision-making is operationalized by either a subject’s choice of whether to reveal the precise costs of cooperating (Exp. 1) or the time a subject spends considering these costs (Exp. 2). In both experiments, we find that participants are more likely to engage in uncalculating cooperation when their decision-making process is observable to others. Furthermore, we confirm that people who engage in uncalculating cooperation are perceived as, and actually are, more trustworthy than people who cooperate in a calculating way. Taken together, these data provide the first empirical evidence, to our knowledge, that uncalculating cooperation is used to signal trustworthiness, and is not merely an efficient decision-making strategy that reduces cognitive costs. Our results thus help to explain a range of puzzling behaviors, such as extreme altruism, the use of ethical principles, and romantic love.

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