Essays
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Against Game Theory - Lucas, Gale M.
People make choices. Often, the outcome depends on choices other people make. What mental steps do people go through when making such choices? Game theory, the most influential model of choice in economics and the social sciences, offers an answer, one based on games of strategy such as chess and checkers: the chooser considers the choices that others will make and makes a choice that will lead to a better outcome for the chooser, given all those choices by other people. It is universally established in the social sciences that classical game theory (even when heavily modified) is bad at predicting behavior. But instead of abandoning classical game theory, those in the social sciences have mounted a rescue operation under the name of “behavioral game theory.” Its main tool is to propose systematic deviations from the predictions of game theory, deviations that arise from character type, for example. Other deviations purportedly come from cognitive overload or limitations. The fundamental idea of behavioral game theory is that, if we know the deviations, then we can correct our predictions accordingly, and so get it right. There are two problems with this rescue operation, each of them is fatal. (i) For a chooser, contemplating the range of possible deviations, as there are many dozens, actually makes it exponentially harder to figure out a path to an outcome. This makes the theoretical models useless for modeling human thought or human behavior in general. (ii) Modeling deviations are helpful only if the deviations are consistent, so that scientists (and indeed decision makers) can make predictions about future choices on the basis of past choices. But the deviations are not consistent. In general, deviations from classical models are not consistent for any individual from one task to the next or between individuals for the same task. In addition, people's beliefs are in general not consistent with their choices. Accordingly, all hope is hollow that we can construct a general behavioral game theory. What can replace it? We survey some of the emerging candidates. -
Attention and Perception - Rensink, Ronald A.
This essay discusses several key issues concerning the study of attention and its relation to visual perception, with an emphasis on behavioral and experiential aspects. It begins with an overview of several classical works carried out in the latter half of the twentieth century, such as the development of early filter and spotlight models of attention. This is followed by a survey of subsequent research that extended or modified these results in significant ways. It includes work on various forms of induced blindness and on the capabilities of nonattentional processes. It also covers proposals about how a “just‐in‐time” allocation of attention can create the impression that we see our surroundings in coherent detail everywhere, as well as how the failure of such allocation can result in various perceptual deficits. The final section examines issues that have not received much consideration to date, but that may be important for new lines of research in the near future. These include the prospects for a better characterization of attention, the possibility of more systematic computational explanations, factors that may significantly modulate attentional operation, and the possibility of several kinds of visual attention and visual experience. -
Attitude: Construction versus Disposition - Lord, Charles G.
Although Charles Darwin conceptualized attitudes as things that organisms do, many psychologists and laypeople today make the fundamental attribution error of conceptualizing attitudes as dispositions people have that make them do what they do. Recent attitudes research, however, has begun to explore the basic process by which people construct attitudes—a process that operates in the same way when answering general attitude questions as for any other evaluative response to an attitude object. In the basic evaluation process, the evaluator activates associations to the attitude object, perceives the implications of those associations, and bases evaluative responses at least in part on those implications. Instead of trying to measure a relatively stable disposition that predicts future behavior, the emerging research investigates influences on which associations get activated (e.g., chance, recency, and priming) and influences on how the activated associations are perceived (including subjective ease, the perceived source, and their perceived relevance). Interestingly, the two steps in the basic evaluation process parallel the two strategies that people use when they try to change their own attitudes. Emerging research directions that were suggested by conceptualizing attitudes as things people do, not what they have, include understanding the effects of evaluation goals on activating and perceiving associations, assessing attitude accuracy according to how adaptive are the attitudes that people take, and applying network theory to the basic evaluation process. -
Behavioral Economics - Hochman, Guy
Standard economic models portray decision makers as perfectly rational agents who act selfishly to maximize their total earnings. In contrast, ample evidence in behavioral research suggests that people systematically deviate from the extreme rational assumption of such economic models. Behavioral economics is aimed at identifying the forces which shape the economic decisions that people make, in order to provide important insights of the human nature. This type of research often deals with questions such as how the presentation of information effect decision making, how different types and valances effect behavior, and what are the social, emotional, and situational factors that underlie economic decision making. This article describes foundational research in behavioral decision making and economics that lead to the emergence of behavioral economics; outline cutting‐edge research on applied behavioral economics, debiasing techniques, and neuroeconomics; and discusses key issues for future research, such as the use of field experiments and tailor‐made methodologies, and focusing on a more comprehensive approach. Our hope is that as behavioral economics advances it will examine not only the nature of the decisions people make but also their underlying cognitive processes. -
Choice Architecture - Camilleri, Adrian R.
“Choice architecture” is a metaphor capturing the idea that all choices occur within a structure of contextual and task features. These features in turn help to “construct” a person's choice. In this chapter, we summarize the academic literature on three types of choice architecture tools—defaults, information restructuring, and information feedback—and document some real‐world examples where these tools have been applied as successful “nudges.” We end the chapter with a discussion of some key challenges and opportunities associated with this new field—including the need for customized choice architecture and the political acceptability of the use of choice architecture—and highlight some avenues for future research. -
Coevolution of Decision‐Making and Social Environments - Bruch, Elizabeth
Social scientists have a longstanding theoretical interest in the relationship between individual behavior and social dynamics. A growing body of work demonstrates that, when human behavior is interdependent—that is, what one person does depends on the past, present, or anticipated future actions of others—there is not a simple or linear relationship between the choices of individuals and their collective consequences. Outside of the academy, policy makers are increasingly aware that well‐intentioned interventions can backfire if they fail to account for how people change their behavior in response to the intervention. This type of problem requires a systematic modeling approach. Our entry provides a brief introduction to a growing body of research that brings together two disparate literatures—studies of decision‐making and studies of the interplay between individuals' decisions and features of the social environment—through dynamic computational modeling. Cognitive scientists characterize human decision‐making under uncertainty using heuristics, rules‐of‐thumb that produce satisfactory choices quickly and with limited information. The heuristics we use and information samples we gather have profound consequences for the choices we make. At the same time, the social context defined by the choices of others feeds back to affect individual decision‐making. In recent years, there has been growing interest in methods such as agent‐based modeling and systems dynamics that can capture the dynamic interplay between individuals' choices and features of the environment. However, historically these approaches have not been grounded in cognitively plausible models of human behavior. We identify areas of high potential for future research, and lay out a preliminary framework to help guide understanding of the decision‐making process and its consequences in different social domains. -
Cognitive Processes Involved in Stereotyping - Fiske, Susan T.
Social psychologists have studied stereotypes since the start of the twentieth century. Investigation proceeded at first descriptively, then in a process‐oriented manner that evolved with the broader field into increasingly cognitive explanations, and now marrying those approaches to social neuroscience. The illustrative case is stereotype content, first studied in the 1930s, then dormant as more process‐oriented topics dominated, and recently revisited in several models including the stereotype content model reviewed here. Fundamental dimensions of social cognition, including stereotypes, depend on inferred intentions for good or ill (warmth) and ability to enact them (competence). These dimensions follow, respectively, from inferred cooperation/competition and from inferred societal status. In turn, the warmth‐by‐competence space predict emotional prejudices and discriminatory tendencies, as evidenced by laboratory experiments, social neuroscience, random sample surveys, and cross‐cultural comparison. -
Concepts and Semantic Memory - Malt, Barbara C.
Humans accumulate vast amounts of knowledge over the life span. Much work aimed at understanding this knowledge store has been called either concepts or semantic memory research. This essay reviews early research on the nature of concrete concepts (concepts of concrete objects) and their organization in memory. It then raises considerations of abstract and relational concepts and of how action affects representation and vice versa. Additional advances discussed come from statistically based views of semantics, connectionist modeling, and neuroscientific evidence, all showing how distributed sources of information can be integrated to create semantic or conceptual content. Cross‐cultural and cross‐linguistic evidence indicate, though, that models based on evidence from any one cultural or language group may not apply well to others. The essay concludes by arguing that key issues for future research include broadening the kinds of knowledge structures that are studied and clarifying how language and nonlinguistic representations are related. -
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope - Ledgerwood, Alison
Humans spend a large portion of their lives in pursuit of desired ends, from finding food and meeting deadlines to pursuing important career and relationship goals. The desired ends that people seek can vary in their proximity: For instance, food may be spatially close or distant; we might plan to meet a friend in the near or distant future. Thus, the ability to mentally support the pursuit of desired ends that are distant as well as close is essential for adaptive human functioning. This essay examines the basic mental processes that allow humans to contract and expand their regulatory scope in this functional way. A growing body of research suggests that different levels of psychological supports enable people to effectively pursue ends that can be closer or more distant. High‐level supports emphasize central and general aspects of an experience, and therefore tend to travel well—they can effectively guide action and interaction for the distant future, for remote locations, for unlikely scenarios, or with dissimilar others. Lower‐level supports emphasize specific, secondary, and unique aspects of an experience, and therefore support contractive scope—they help immerse people in the particular details of the current context to act effectively in the here and now. As the field moves forward, researchers are beginning to investigate how people expand and contract the scope of their social relationships in particular—an area of inquiry with important implications for understanding domains such as social communication and social learning that are central to human experience as social creatures. -
Cultural Differences in Emotions - De Leersnyder, Jozefien
Do emotions differ across cultures? This essay reviews the markedly different ways in which psychologists have approached this question in the past and discusses directions for the future. We first show how past research has often failed to find cultural differences in emotion by focusing on what emotions people from different cultures can have hypothetically, rather than investigating the emotions they actually have in daily life. Taking a sociocultural perspective, we demonstrate that cultural differences in people's actual emotional practices not only exist but are also meaningful and predictable: Accumulating evidence suggests that people experience more of those emotions that fit their culture's relationship goals and values. We review evidence for two mechanisms that may be behind these cultural differences in emotion—different situational ecologies and different tendencies to interpret (or appraise) emotional events. Finally, we discuss a road map for what lies ahead in the psychological study of cultural differences in emotion. We propose that future research will benefit from a dynamic approach to culture and emotion—an approach that explicitly captures how cultural differences in emotion emerge as a function of people's ongoing social interactions and relationships. -
Dissociation and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) - Huntjens, Rafaële J. C.
Dissociative experiences are thought to occur acutely (e.g., during or immediately following trauma) or chronically and are considered to reduce the subjective distress accompanying stressful events. Growing evidence is consistent with a model that distinguishes between two qualitatively different types of phenomena—“compartmentalization” and “detachment.” Compartmentalization involves a deficit in the ability to deliberately control processes or actions that would normally be amendable to such control (e.g., amnesia and dissociative identities). Detachment refers to an experienced state of disconnection from the self or the environment (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, and numbing). -
DNA Revolution and the Social and Behavioral Sciences - Trzaskowski, Maciej
A century of genetic research on the social and behavioral sciences has addressed the “how much” question, showing that genetic differences are important for nearly all traits. However, during the past few decades, research has moved beyond this rudimentary “how much” question to ask “how” questions about developmental change and continuity, about the relationship between traits, and about the interplay between genes (nature) and environment (nurture). We suggest that some of the most important and transformative findings in the social and behavioral sciences have come from this research. Moreover, the most revolutionary changes in genetic research are on their way with the rapid advances in DNA technology and methodology, which promise to transform the social and behavioral sciences. It is crucial that social and behavioral scientists stay on top of the DNA revolution. The purpose of our essay is to provide an overview of genetic research in the social and behavioral sciences. -
Effortful Control - Spinrad, Tracy L.
Effortful control, defined as the ability to voluntary inhibit a dominant response and to activate a subdominant response, is believed to play an important role in children's development. In this essay, we distinguish between effortful control and aspects of control that are involuntary (i.e., reactive). The development of effortful control is summarized, and research on its relations to children's positive social behaviors and maladjustment is reviewed. Key areas for future work are also discussed, with an emphasis on interventions designed to promote self‐regulation. -
Embodied Knowledge - Pecher, Diane
In theories of grounded cognition, mental representations (concepts) share processing mechanisms with systems for perception and action. In this view, mental representations are simulations of embodied experiences. This view is supported by empirical data showing that concepts, linguistic processing, and emotion processing interact with perception and action. Key issues for further research are the question how abstract concepts are grounded in sensory‐motor processing, how language and concepts are related, and the development of formal models. -
Emotion and Decision Making - Huntsinger, Jeff R.
The topic of emotion and decision making is an old one. Classic Western philosophical perspectives generally considered emotion a contaminating influence on cognition, one that needed to be suppressed, ignored, or ideally brought in line with reason. Recent psychological research shows that, contrary to such pessimistic perspectives, emotion plays a largely functional and adaptive role in regulating cognition and decision making. We first outline how affect regulates cognition using the affect‐as‐information account as a guiding framework. We next discuss foundational research on the role of emotion in regulating cognition and decision making consistent with this account. Finally, we end with a discussion of new research developments and open research questions. -
Emotion and Intergroup Relations - Mackie, Diane M.
When the social identities people develop as members of groups become salient, people perceive the world in terms of the costs and benefits to that salient group membership. This means that events that have no implications for the individual him or herself can be perceived as harmful, beneficial, offensive, complimentary, unfair, or just, for example, depending on the consequences those events have for the group. As a result, perceptions of intergroup events, anticipated intergroup interactions, or ongoing structural intergroup relations elicit group‐based emotions—emotions that individuals feel as members of their groups. These emotions influence individuals' perceptions, interpretations, and actions toward their ingroup, relevant outgroups, and any other objects and events that are relevant to group membership. Thus, emotions play a critical role in intergroup relations, energizing desires to cooperate or compete, to retaliate or make peace. Focusing on the role of such emotions has contributed to an understanding of the social nature of emotion, as well as to the antecedents of intergroup conflict and the necessary conditions for its resolution. That understanding will be promoted by further clarification of the nature of social identity, the process of identification, the anticipation of emotions in others, and the time course of emotions, both in general and in the context of group membership in particular. -
Emotion Regulation - Zarolia, Paree
Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which we influence which emotions we have, when we have them, how we experience them, and how we express them. The study of emotion regulation has become an increasingly popular and fruitful area of research in the past few decades. In the following chapter, we summarize past research, highlight current findings, and suggest some potential future directions for the study of emotion regulation. We review foundational research highlighting the process model of emotion regulation and research comparing distinct emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal and suppression. Then, we highlight new conceptualizations of emotion regulation that question the assumption that emotion regulation is inherently adaptive, that examine the effect of culture on emotion regulation, examine the contexts that lead to successful emotion regulation towards a variety of emotion goals. Finally we discuss promising future directions for the study of emotion regulation. -
Epistemological Linguistics - Greene, Rebecca D.
Numerous researchers are coming to appreciate the linguistic and interactional nature of content learning. At the same time, language‐centered educational standards are being implemented nationwide, and the federally protected but educationally struggling English Learner population is rapidly expanding (Migration Policy Institute, 2013). In response to these evolving circumstances, a new subdiscipline known as Epistemological Linguistics is emerging in which researchers are exploring the role of language in content learning. This field will also offer practitioners and policy makers recommendations based on up‐to‐date theory and ample, sound empirical evidence surrounding disciplinary learning. Epistemological linguistics is also taking advantage of the rapidly growing capacity of computers to facilitate and enhance, as well as collect and analyze data on, students' learning of language and content. -
Ethical Decision‐Making: Contemporary Research on the Role of the Self - Shu, Lisa L.
How do people decide when facing dilemmas that pit self‐interested gains against ethical values? We highlight two key principles from contemporary behavioral research: (i) people are more willing to act unethically when they can convince themselves that their behavior does not reflect poorly on their moral character and (ii) people tend to be content with an “ethical enough” self‐image. We examine how these principles shed light on the antecedents and consequences of ethical behavior, emphasizing situational determinants and psychological processes. We close by considering important questions that remain unanswered, and discuss how furthering our understanding the role of the self in ethical decision‐making can be used to nudge people toward more ethical behavior. -
Event Processing as an Executive Enterprise - Ross, Robbie A.
Actual experience as life unfolds tends to be an ebb and flow of dynamic, multimodal sensations, many of which are fleeting. Yet what is encoded, recalled, and talked about tends to be events—units of experience that are conceptualized as having both a beginning and an end. In this essay, we consider processing mechanisms that enable the extraction of event structure from the dynamically unfolding stream of experience. Two proposals emerge from our own and others' recent research on event processing: First, fluent detection of structure within activity streams appears to hinge on knowledge of the predictability relations within those streams. Second, skill at event processing seems to involve harnessing such knowledge of predictability relations to selectively direct attention to information‐rich portions of the activity stream. If this account is correct, individual differences in knowledge and executive skill should influence event‐processing fluency. As well, children's developmental progress in event processing should reveal the telltale impact of increasing knowledge and executive skill. Our hope is that research pursuing these ideas will ultimately make it possible to enhance event‐processing fluency for all, which in turn has the potential to facilitate memory, learning, and social interaction. -
Genetic Foundations of Attitude Formation - Kandler, Christian
Since the pioneering work of Eaves and Eysenck (1974) appeared in Nature some 40 years ago, psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and behavioral geneticists have investigated the effects of nature and nurture on the formation of social attitudes. It has consistently been found that manifestations of social attitudes (i.e., preferences, values, and beliefs pertaining to things such as politics, religion and the treatment of ingroups and outgroups) are genetically influenced. More recently, researchers have focused their efforts on the psychophysiological pathways between gene activity and attitudes. In particular, a broad body of research examines how personality traits may be a link between genetic factors and political orientations. The latter are typically treated as either a single left–right dimension or divided into two core aspects: resistance to change/authoritarian conservatism and acceptance of inequality/social dominance orientation. In this essay, we provide an overview of this research, present some findings from our recent international behavioral genetic study on the topic, and identify key issues for future research. We suggest that future studies treat attitude formation as a complex process in which genetic factors and the psychophysiological phenomena that stem from them are affected by the surrounding social environment and culture. Such research will require (i) international study designs capturing individual and cultural levels of variation and (ii) interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists and researchers in various fields of study such as genetics, psychology, sociology, political science, neuroscience, and human biology. -
Heuristic Decision Making - Carmines, Edward G.
The idea of decision‐making shortcuts, or heuristics, originated in psychological work explaining why individuals diverged from rational behavior. Political scientists have viewed shortcuts more positively. Applied to research on voter decision‐making processes, scholars have discovered the ubiquitous use of shortcuts by voters. These shortcuts are simplified decision‐making strategies that help voters compensate for a lack of detailed political knowledge about candidates and issues. Despite their widespread use, scholars continue to debate over whether these shortcuts are truly useful tools in helping citizens make good choices in the voting booth. Recent work has suggested that one fruitful way to resolve this debate is to consider the influence of political institutions and the ways in which they structure the decision environment. In this essay, we explore the psychological origins of heuristic research, its application to political science, and the ensuing debates over the efficacy of these shortcuts. We end with a discussion of recent research on institutions and the decision‐making environment, and how these factors might alter what scholars know about heuristic decision making. -
Heuristics: Tools for an Uncertain World - Neth, Hansjörg
We distinguish between situations of risk, where all options, consequences, and probabilities are known, and situations of uncertainty, where they are not. Probability theory and statistics are the best tools for deciding under risk but not under uncertainty, which characterizes most relevant problems that humans have to solve. Uncertainty requires simple heuristics that are robust rather than optimal. We propose to think of the mind as an adaptive toolbox and introduce the descriptive study of heuristics, their building blocks, and the core capacities they exploit. The question of which heuristic to select for which class of problems is the topic of the normative study of ecological rationality. We discuss earlier views on the nature of heuristics that maintained that heuristics are always less accurate because they ignore information and demand less effort. Contrary to this accuracy–effort trade‐off view, heuristics can lead to more accurate inferences—under uncertainty—than strategies that use more information and computation. The study of heuristics opens up a new perspective on the nature of both cognition and rationality. In a world of uncertainty, Homo sapiens might well be called Homo heuristicus. -
Holding On or Letting Go? Persistence and Disengagement in Goal Striving - Brandstätter, Veronika
Goals shape our personal identities, structure our everyday lives, regulate our behavior, and thus are in fact one of the most important sources of performance and well‐being. Successful goal striving unfolds between tenacious persistence on the one hand and timely disengagement on the other when a goal has become futile and too costly. Disengagement from goals is often difficult, however. Issues of unproductive persistence and (unsuccessful) goal disengagement have, for a long time, been addressed primarily in the realm of monetary decision‐making (escalation of commitment). In the more recent past, research on personal goals has devoted attention to issues of goal disengagement, doing so from two different research perspectives (individual differences approach, process‐oriented approach). This essay gives an overview of traditional and current research on goal disengagement with its practical implications for the individual but also on a societal level, and outlines promising lines of research addressing fundamental questions still unanswered. -
How Form Constrains Function in the Human Brain - Verstynen, Timothy D.
In neural systems, form and function are intimately linked; the communication dynamics across networked areas depends on the organization and integrity of the connections between them (i.e., axons and tracts). With the growth of diffusion‐weighted imaging (DWI) and fiber tractography tools over the past decade, it has become possible to visualize the physical architecture of the human brain at an unprecedented resolution. This information has provided the first glimpses into the component circuitry supporting cognition, presenting a unique opportunity for cognitive neuroscientists. For the first time we can visualize the connections in the living brain, allowing us to measure individual differences in anatomical connectivity, relate this connectivity to brain function, and gain insights into the link between white matter architecture and behavior. In many ways, this technology is still in its infancy and its full potential has not yet been realized. Here, I outline the importance of understanding neuroanatomical connectivity as a hard constraint on neural computation. Beginning with an overview of the typical patterns of connectivity seen in neural systems, I go on to show how current neuroimaging tools can visualize several different types of connectivity in the brain. By highlighting recent findings showing how neuroanatomical organization and brain function are related during cognitive tasks, I emphasize the utility that structural brain mapping approaches can have for the broader social and behavioral sciences.