Probabilistic harm does not increase selfish behavior in a bribe-taking laboratory task

Negative consequences of dishonest behavior prevent people from breaking rules for selfish gains. However, harm caused by many kinds of dishonest behavior is uncertain. In the present study, we let participants to break rules in a sorting task in order to increase their rewards while simultaneously harming a third party, simulating a bribe-taking. We varied the probability with which the harm occurred while keeping the expected size of harm constant across experimental conditions. We found that uncertainty of negative consequences of corrupt behavior had no effect on bribe-taking.

Individual cheating in the lab: a new measure and external validity

This paper investigates to what extent laboratory measures of cheating generalise to the field. To this purpose, we develop a lab measure that allows for individual-level observations of cheating whilst reducing the likelihood that participants feel observed. Decisions made in this laboratory task are then compared to individual choices taken in the field, where subjects can lie by misreporting their experimental earnings. We use two field variations that differ in the degree of anonymity of the field decision. According to our measure, no correlation of behaviour between the laboratory and the field is found. We then perform the same analysis using a lab measure that can only detect cheating at the aggregate level. In this case, we do find a weak correlation between the two environments. We discuss the significance and interpretation of these results.

Associations Between Psychopathic Traits and Laboratory-Based Aggression: Moderating Effects of Provocation and Distraction

There are two distinct combinations of psychopathic traits (primary and secondary) that have been proposed to be a function of unique cognitive-affective deficits. This study sought to use theories of psychopathy to understand the factors that exacerbate (i.e., provocation) and attenuate (i.e., distraction) aggression in individuals high in psychopathic traits in a controlled laboratory task. Male undergraduates, who scored across the range of primary and secondary psychopathic traits, completed the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP; Taylor, 1967 ) under conditions of low and high provocation. Participants were also randomly assigned to either a distraction condition, in which they completed a distracting concurrent task, or a control condition, in which no such task was completed. Inconsistent with our prediction, results showed that regardless of condition, primary psychopathic traits were positively related to laboratory aggression. Consistent with our hypothesis, a positive association between secondary psychopathic traits and laboratory physical aggression was observed following high provocation among nondistracted participants; this association was significantly reduced among distracted participants. These results clarify the factors that contribute to aggression for individuals high in psychopathic traits and may provide directions for future intervention development.

Sweet Revenge Feels Less Bitter: Spontaneous Affective Reactions After Revenge Taking

Previous studies suggested that people feel better after revenge taking, while other studies showed that they feel worse. The interpretation of this research is however ambiguous due to its extensive reliance on self-report measures. The present research examined spontaneous affective responses after retaliatory punishments in a laboratory task using an indirect measure of affect (affect misattribution procedure). Experiment 1 showed positive reactions after noise punishments of a provocateur compared to a control person, but only in revenge-seeking participants. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and revealed that punishing either individual led to less positive responses than not punishing anyone. It is suggested that revenge taking is associated with brief pleasurable responses that can ameliorate negative affective consequences of retaliatory action. Revenge is sweet because it makes one feel better about one’s punitive action.

Pre-training RNNs on ecologically relevant tasks explains sub-optimal behavioral reset

When faced with a new task, animals′ cognitive capabilities are determined both by individual experience and by structural priors evolved to leverage the statistics of natural environments. Rats can quickly learn to capitalize on the trial sequence correlations of two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) tasks after correct trials, but consistently deviate from optimal behavior after error trials, when they waive the accumulated evidence. To understand this outcome-dependent gating, we first show that Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) trained in the same 2AFC task outperform animals as they can readily learn to use previous trials′ information both after correct and error trials. We hypothesize that, while RNNs can optimize their behavior in the 2AFC task without a priori restrictions, rats′ strategy is constrained by a structural prior adapted to a natural environment in which rewarded and non-rewarded actions provide largely asymmetric information. When pre-training RNNs in a more ecological task with more than two possible choices, networks develop a strategy by which they gate off the across-trial evidence after errors, mimicking rats′ behavior. Our results suggest that the observed suboptimal behavior reflects the influence of a structural prior that, adaptive in a natural multi-choice environment, constrains performance in a 2AFC laboratory task.

What do laboratory-forgetting paradigms tell us about use-inspired forgetting?

Directed forgetting is a laboratory task in which subjects are told to remember some information and forget other information. In directed forgetting tasks, participants are able to exert intentional control over which information they retain in memory and which information they forget. Forgetting in this task appears to be mediated by intentional control of memory states in which executive control mechanisms suppress unwanted information. Recognition-induced forgetting is another laboratory task in which subjects forget information. Recognizing a target memory induces the forgetting of related items stored in memory. Rather than occurring due to volitional control, recognition-induced forgetting is an incidental by-product of activating items in memory. Here we asked whether intentional directed forgetting or unintentional recognition-induced forgetting is a more robust forgetting effect. While there was a correlation between forgetting effects when the same subjects did both tasks, the magnitude of recognition-induced forgetting was larger than the magnitude of directed forgetting. These results point to practical differences in forgetting outcomes between two commonly used laboratory-forgetting paradigms.

Two people, one graph: the effect of rotated viewpoints on accessibility of data visualizations

In co-located, multi-user settings such as multi-touch tables, user interfaces need to be accessible from multiple viewpoints. In this project, we investigated how this goal can be achieved for depictions of data in bar graphs. We designed a laboratory task in which participants answered simple questions based on information depicted in bar graphs presented from differently rotated points of view. As the dependent variable, we measured differences in response onsets relative to the standard viewpoint (i.e., upright graphs). In Experiment 1, we manipulated graph and label orientation independently of each other. We observed that rotations of the labels rather than rotations of the graph itself pose a challenge for accessing depicted information from rotated viewpoints. In Experiment 2, we studied whether replacing word labels with pictographs could overcome the detrimental effects of rotated labels. Rotated pictographs were less detrimental than rotated word labels, but performance was still worse than in the unrotated baseline condition. In Experiment 3, we studied whether color coding could overcome the detrimental effects of rotated labels. Indeed, for multicolored labels, the detrimental effect of label rotation was in the negligible range. We discuss the implications of our findings for the underlying psychological theory as well as for the design of depicted statistical information in multi-user settings.

Verbal Learning Mediates the Relationship Between Executive Functions and a Laboratory Task of Medication Management in HIV Disease

Objective Impairments in executive functions and learning are common in HIV disease and increase the risk of nonadherence to antiretroviral therapy. The mixed encoding/retrieval profile of HIV-associated deficits in learning and memory is largely driven by dysregulation of prefrontal systems and related executive dysfunction. This study tested the hypothesis that learning may be one pathway by which executive dysfunction disrupts medication management in people living with HIV (PLWH). Method A total of 195 PLWH completed a performance-based laboratory task of medication management capacity and clinical measures of executive functions, verbal learning and memory, and motor skills. Results Executive functions were significantly associated with verbal learning and medication management performance. In a model controlling for education, learning significantly mediated the relationship between executive functions and medication management, and this mediation was associated with a small effect size. In particular, executive dysfunction was associated with diminished use of higher-order learning strategies. Alternate models showed that executive functions did not mediate the relationship between learning and medication management nor did motor skills mediate the relationship between executive functions and medication management. Conclusions PLWH with executive dysfunction may demonstrate difficulty in learning new information, potentially due to ineffective strategy use, which may in turn put them at a higher risk for problems managing their medications in the laboratory. Future studies may wish to investigate whether compensatory neurocognitive training (e.g., using more effective learning strategies) may improve medication management among PLWH.

Using Students’ Concept-building Tendencies to Better Characterize Average-Performing Student Learning and Problem-Solving Approaches in General Chemistry

Students’ concept-building approaches (abstraction vs. exemplar), identified a priori with a cognitive-psychology laboratory task, have been extended to learning complex topics in general chemistry. Here, the effect concept-building approaches have on the problem-solving behaviors of average-achieving students was probed via think-aloud interviews.