Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-12-07
Abstract： Cooperation among strangers is a key feature of social capital which facilitates societies to effectively compete with other societies. Notably, cooperation among strangers does not remain permanent or stable within a society but can shift with changes in ecology and culture.
In the past few decades, China has experienced tremendous social changes, mainly manifested in rapid economic growth, rising urbanization level, more widespread higher education, and rapid development of the internet. Meanwhile, people’s residential mobility and social interaction scope has expanded. Acquaintance society has been shrinking while stranger society has been expanding. Interpersonal trust has declined and individualism has increased. However, little is known about whether cooperation (operationalized as cooperative behavior in social dilemmas) among strangers has shifted along with above societal changes within Chinese society. Thus, based on the history of experimental research on cooperation among young Chinese adults in situations involving conflicting interests (i.e., social dilemmas), this study meta-analyzed 254 studies conducted between 1999 and 2019 with 302 unique samples and effect sizes involving 29,249 participants to test for possible changes over time in cooperation among strangers.
We conducted meta-regression analyses applying a three-level mixed-effects meta-regression model and performed multiple imputation to handle missing data in our model. For all analyses, year of data collection was entered as the predictor, and the cooperation estimate as the outcome variable. In addition, we also simultaneously added the study characteristic variables (i.e., dilemma type, proportion of male participants, repetitions, group size, K index, communication, sanctions, and period of cooperation) as control variables to the meta-regression models to rule out the possibility that changes in cooperation are explained by study characteristics. Finally, we also calculated the magnitude of change in cooperation and reported the correlations between the sociocultural indicators and cooperation.
We found cooperation among strangers increased over time in Chinese society: The cooperation rate had increased from 0.33 in 1999 to 0.45 in 2019 after controlling for other variables. In addition, some societal indicators (e.g., societal wealth, urbanization level, higher education level, and internet penetration rate) measured 10 to 5 years prior to measures of cooperation were found to be positively associated with cooperation, suggesting that they may be potential societal underpinnings of increases in cooperation. The cooperative behavior among strangers in China and the United States shows a similar upward trend, but cooperation in Chinese society has a larger increase in a shorter period. These findings have important implications for boosting public confidence in solving present and future challenges.
Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Facial expressions are emotional signals conveyed through muscle movements, such as those in the eyes and mouth. Facial emotion recognition plays a crucial role in infant's social and communicative development. The development of basic facial expression recognition in infants is asynchronous: the recognition of positive expressions occurs earlier than that of negative expressions, and the development of emotion perception is earlier than emotion understanding.Infants recognize positive facial expressions earlier than negative ones. They can distinguish happy expressions when they are 2 months old, and negative expressions when they are 4-6 months old. Infant's ability to perceive emotions develops earlier than their ability to understand emotions. The 7-month-old infant has initially possessed the emotion perception ability. They can not only distinguish the basic facial expressions, but also form a classification perception and master the visual observation strategy similar to that of adults. The development of emotional understanding is relatively lagging behind, and 12-month-old infants cannot accurately understand the emotional meaning conveyed by different the negative valence expressions. Infants' basic facial expression recognition undergoes a shift from positive bias to negative bias. In the first half of infancy, infants show an attentional bias to happy expressions, and from 5 months onwards, infants show an attentional bias to fearful expressions. The development of infant's ability to recognize basic facial expression recognition reflects the process from the activation of basic emotions to the formation of emotional schemas. Basic expressions are a preset system that humans evolved to adapt to the environment, and infants are born with the innate ability to express and recognize them. Once basic emotions are activated by the environment, infants acquire corresponding recognition abilites. Emotional schemas are acquired through postnatal development, and are the result of the dynamic interaction process between emotions and cognition. Both individual cognitive development and environmental stimuli play important roles in the formation of emotional schemas. The experience-expectant mechanism in the human brain enables infants to recognize positive expressions earlier than negative expressions, which helps infants to receive more feedback from adults. From the second half of infancy, infants may develop an attentional bias towards negative expression, which can aid in their better understanding of others's feelings. There may also be a sensitive period during the second half of infancy for the development of the ability to recognize negative emotions. Moreover, the experience-dependent mechanism in the brain determines the plasticity of the brain's emotional neural network. The mother-infant relationship, family, social environment, race, and culture all can affect the development of an infant's ability to recognize facial expressions.
Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： During the development, the structure and functions of the visual system can be affected by visual experiences and environments. This is called visual plasticity which is most prominent during the critical period of development after birth. Although the structures and functions of neural circuits tend to be stable in adult visual cortex, mounting evidence has shown that adult visual cortex still retains a certain degree of plasticity, including ocular dominance plasticity. Ocular dominance in humans refers to a phenomenon that one eye is functionally superior to the other eye. A common method for measuring perceptual ocular dominance is the binocular rivalry task. The typical stimuli in this task are two spatially overlapped but incompatible images, with one presented to each eye. At any moment, observer is usually aware of only one of the images which remains visible for a while before being consciously replaced by the other one. The ratio of dominance duration for each eye in a binocular rivalry task can be used to quantitatively assess observer's ocular dominance.One of the most commonly used ways to modulate ocular dominance in adults is monocular deprivation, which shifts ocular dominance to the deprived eye through the temporary occlusion of one eye. In recent decades, researchers have extensively investigated the monocular deprivation effect and its underlying mechanism by constantly changing the way of monocular deprivation, such as depriving the energy information (e.g. contrast) or phase information (e.g. contour) of monocular images. A consistent finding is that the imbalance of visual input between two eyes, whether achieved through complete or partial deprivation of visual information to one eye, leads to a shift of ocular dominance towards the deprived eye. The shift of ocular dominance may reflect neural plasticity in the early stages of visual processing, which is closely related to the reduction of GABA inhibition in the primary visual cortex. Meanwhile, one suggested mechanism for monocular deprivation is homeostatic plasticity, an inherent mechanism that stabilizes neuronal activity and prevents the neuronal system from becoming hyperactive or hypoactive. In the context of short-term monocular deprivation, an imbalance in visual input between the two eyes may trigger a homeostatic upregulation of neural response in the deprived eye to maintain a balance of neural activity within the visual system. This can lead to a shift in ocular dominance towards the deprived eye following the monocular deprivation. More recently, it has been found that even in the absence of visual input deprivation, directing a greater amount of attention towards one eye can effectively induce an effect of ocular dominance shift. For example, a “dichoptic-backward-movie” adaptation paradigm was invented to study eye-based attention induced ocular dominance shift. The ocular dominance is biased in favor of the eye (unattended eye) that has viewed a backward movie for long during which time the opposite eye (attended eye) is presented with a regular movie. This phenomenon indicates that the neural mechanisms of short-term ocular dominance plasticity not only occur at the lower level of visual processing stage but also receive feedback regulations from higher cortical sites. Notably, the boost of the unattended eye was not observed when testing stimuli were binocularly compatible. Therefore, the attention-induced ocular dominance shift may not be explicable solely by means of the homeostatic plasticity mechanism, because the involvement of homeostasis is not specific to binocular rivalry. Given the crucial role of interocular competition in attention-induced ocular dominance shift, this effect is currently explained by the adaptation of ocular opponency neurons that represents interocular conflict by computing differences between the input signals from the two eyes. Despite significant advancements in the investigation of short-term ocular dominance plasticity, there are many promising research directions for future studies, especially those that may further our understanding of the complicated mechanisms for short-term ocular dominance plasticity. The article then ends with the outlook in this regard. Key words
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-04-06
Abstract：
Intergenerational dilemma refers to situations that involve conflicts between one’s current self-interest and the interest of others in the future. How people make decisions in such situations can affect other individuals, organizations, and even the welfare of all human beings. Compared to social dilemmas, intergenerational dilemmas are characterized by three unique features: power asymmetry, lack of direct reciprocity, and longer psychological distance. These features are the key reasons why the level of intergenerational cooperation tends to be low. Based on the three main factors—personality traits, decision contexts, and social norms—that influence intergenerational cooperation, we propose that intergenerational cooperation could be promoted by cultivating gratitude and prosocial traits, enhancing the reputational benefits of intergenerational cooperation, promoting affinity with future generations, and reducing perceived uncertainty of future outcomes. We suggest that future research should further examine the ecological validity of extant research paradigms and how reputation cues and sociocultural variables affect intergenerational cooperation, providing better support for making policies that promote intergenerational cooperation.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： While there has been much research concerning how adults understand the social power, recently researchers have been increasingly interested in how children conceptualize social power. Social power understanding is an important aspect of children’s social cognition, which can be reflected on the level of social dominance and social status. From early on, children can use different cues to judge social power, and based on these cues their cognition of social power are adaptive in evolutionary fitness. Meanwhile, children’s understanding of social power develops across the whole childhood. While younger children are more likely to acknowledge the way to get social power with dominance, older children prefer the way to get social power basing on prestige. Children’s cognition of social power can influence their selective trust, resource allocation, and prosocial behavior. Future research should consider the underlying mechanism of children’s social power cognition, and examine the processing mechanism of the relationship between children’s social power cognition and their social behavior. Moreover, cultural factor and early social interactive experience should be concerned to contribute to children’s cognition of social power.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： In this article, we reviewed the large body of research examining the impacts of social change on human psychology and culture. Our review revealed an increasing trend of individualism and, at the meantime, decreasing collectivism. This trend manifests on various societal and individual-level indicators, including relationship structures, first-person pronouns use, naming practices, value preferences, personality, sexual and religious attitudes, child-rearing goals and child development, cognitive styles and emotional experiences. Our review also demonstrated the complexities of cultural and psychological change, including the non-linearity of the change, endurance of traditional culture and emerging multi-cultural society. At the end, we pointed out some limitations of the existing research and highlighted some possible directions of future research.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The voluntary frontier settlement hypothesis proposed that voluntary frontier settlement leads to independent agency. The present work compared 538 college students from Shenzhen (an ongoing voluntary frontier settlement region) and Xiangfan. Controlling for resident status, the Singelis self-construal scale, the collectivist orientation scale, the triad task, the attribution task and loyalty/nepotism task were administered to examine the relationship between ongoing voluntary settlement and independent agency. As predicted, the results indicated that residents of Shenzhen scored higher in self-reported independent index, lower in self-reported collectivist orientation and holistic thinking, lower in rewarding honest friend and higher in punishing dishonest friend than those from Xiangfan. These findings indicate that Shenzhen as an ongoing voluntary frontier settlement is more independent than other regions of Mainland China such as Xiangfan. This implies that even in a generally interdependent culture in East Asia, ongoing voluntary frontier settlement leads to independent agency.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Immoral contagion refers to the process where a moral transgressor as a source of contagion directly or with the help of a morally neutral agent indirectly transfers the negative moral essence to a target, causing emotional, cognitive or physiological changes. The present review aims to, firstly, clarify the mental mechanism under immoral contagion -- disgust, on the basis of which the impact immoral contagion has on the field of moral psychology (moral emotion and moral cognition) is illustrated; then we expand the perspective to embodied cognition, organization and management as well as interpersonal interaction in order to explore the universal impact of immoral contagion on human society. Finally, future research is guided toward cross-cultural comparison, personal differences, the neural mechanism of dynamic process of contagion and positive moral contagion for a more thorough understanding of moral contagion.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Musical tension is the basis of musical listening. In this study, we calculated tension values based on Tonal Tension Model and conducted behavioral experiment to explore the influence of tonal structure on tension experience in sonata compositions by Mozart and Beethoven. The sonata form is composed of three parts: exposition, development and recapitulation. Our results revealed that both of the tension values and tension experience in development were higher than that in exposition and recapitulation, and higher in recapitulation than in exposition. This might be due to the differences of the distance and frequency on tonal modulations in the three parts. Our study investigated the influence of tonal structure on musical tension in large-scale music works, providing evidence and new perspectives for the study of musicology.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The perception of prosodic boundaries is critical to spoken language comprehension, and it has become a primary research topic among psychologists and psycholinguists in the past decade. Utterances are chunked into prosodic units of different strengths. The boundaries between prosodic units are mainly signaled by acoustic cues like pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. Previous cognitive, linguistic, developmental, and neuroimaging studies have significantly advanced our understanding of the processing of prosodic boundaries. We now know that listeners use a perceptual weighting strategy to process prosodic boundary cues, and there are specific brain mechanisms for prosodic boundary processing. The ability to processing prosodic boundaries steadily develops with age in young children and transfers to a second language, but it generally decreases with age in older adults. Future studies should expand the investigation of prosodic boundaries to more pragmatic genres and focus on revealing the cognitive mechanisms underlying prosodic boundary processing, the relationship between prosodic boundary and syntax processing, and the development of prosodic boundary perception in second language learners.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The optimization of effort investment, which minimizes the cost of effort and maximizes benefits, is a core issue in every field. “What factors influence how much effort we invest?” is gaining more and more attention. This study aims to review previous theoretical and empirical studies on effort. Based on the Paradox of Effort theory, this study expounds on the two sides of effort: inherent cost and potential value. Even though there are intrinsic costs associated with effort, the concept of effort solely in terms of costs is inadequate. The Paradox of Effort theory indicates that analyzing the value of effort at different time stages is more in line with daily activities. The key to effort-based decision-making is weighing the rewards and effort required to accomplish a goal. On this basis, we discussed the non-social and social factors and the neural mechanisms involved in effort investment according to the Expected Value of Control (EVC) theory. EVC theory discusses models of effort optimization in terms of conflict monitoring, cost-benefit integration of cognitive control, and implementation of control, emphasizing the role of integrating the expected value in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Both social and non-social factors have impacts on the adaptive control allocation during the integration, but few empirical studies have explored the two-level interaction. Therefore, we developed the topic of cost-benefit analysis in EVC theory and highlighted its application to motivational behavior in social circumstances, which is conducive to exploring the plasticity of social behavior. The cognitive and neural mechanisms of effort play an essential role in understanding the adaptive allocation of effort in social life and provide references for treating motivational disorders, shaping learned industriousness and prosocial behavior. Future research needs to explore the adaptive changes in the expected value of control during the dynamic process using methods of neurophysiology and combine computational modeling to complement and validate the EVC theory in social contexts.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： As a fundamental technique in natural language processing (NLP), word embedding quantifies a word as a low-dimensional, dense, and continuous numeric vector (i.e., word vector). This process is based on machine learning algorithms such as neural networks, through which semantic features of a word can be extracted automatically. There are two types of word embeddings: static and dynamic. Static word embeddings aggregate all contextual information of a word in an entire corpus into a fixed vectorized representation. The static word embeddings can be obtained by predicting the surrounding words given a word or vice versa (Word 2Vec and FastText) or by predicting the probability of co-occurrence of multiple words (GloVe) in large-scale text corpora. Dynamic or contextualized word embeddings, in contrast, derive a word vector based on a specific context, which can be generated through pre-trained language models such as ELMo, GPT, and BERT. Theoretically, the dimensions of a word vector reflect the pattern of how the word can be predicted in contexts; however, they also connote substantial semantic information of the word. Therefore, word embeddings can be used to analyze semantic meanings of text. In recent years, word embeddings have been increasingly applied to study human psychology. In doing this, word embeddings have been used in various ways, including the raw vectors of word embeddings, vector sums or differences, absolute or relative semantic similarity and distance. So far, the Word Embedding Association Test (WEAT) has received the most attention. Based on word embeddings, psychologists have explored a wide range of topics, including human semantic processing, cognitive judgment, divergent thinking, social biases and stereotypes, and sociocultural changes at the societal or population level. Particularly, the WEAT has been widely used to investigate attitudes, stereotypes, social biases, the relationship between culture and psychology, as well as their origin, development, and cross-temporal changes. As a novel methodology, word embeddings offer several unique advantages over traditional approaches in psychology, including lower research costs, higher sample representativeness, stronger objectivity of analysis, and more replicable results. Nonetheless, word embeddings also have limitations, such as their inability to capture deeper psychological processes, limited generalizability of conclusions, and dubious reliability and validity. Future research using word embeddings should address these limitations by (1) distinguishing between implicit and explicit components of social cognition, (2) training fine-grained word vectors in terms of time and region to facilitate cross-temporal and cross-cultural research, and (3) applying contextualized word embeddings and large pre-trained language models such as GPT and BERT. To enhance the application of word embeddings in psychological research, we have developed the R package “PsychWordVec”, an integrated word embedding toolkit for researchers to study human psychology in natural language.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Curiosity has a long history of research and rich definitions and classifications as a common mental state and personality trait. The division and coordination of multiple brain regions enable individuals to form a cognitive process of generating and evaluating prediction error, triggering and mediating curiosity, and producing surprise and new prediction error, so as to reduce the prediction error and information gap between internal states and external environment, and eliminate uncertainty. Curiosity has a significant role in improving cognitive function and maintaining mental and physical health during development. Future research can be further considered from a cross-species, interdisciplinary, and multi-domain perspective to promote the deepening of research topics, the development of research methods, and the application of research results in curiosity.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Empathy is our general ability to empathize with the emotional states of others. Studies have shown that empathy features automation and contextual dependence. However, the theoretical models and underlying neural mechanisms about empathy remain controversial. To meet real-world demands, researchers gradually shift their focus on the structure and function to the adjustability of empathy. Recently, it is indicated that the top-down psychological processes can play an important role in the adjustability of empathy, especially the goal of empathy and how to represent the value of the goal. A growing number of researchers recognize that empathy consists of three distinct but related processes (bottom-up emotional processes, top-down cognitive processes, and behavioral processes)：1) affective empathy/experience sharing: the degree to which the emotional state matches the state of another; 2) cognitive empathy/mentalization/emotion identification: the mentalizing ability to recognize the emotional states of others; 3) empathic concern: internal motivation to improve the state of others. In recent years, some researchers have proposed that the top-down psychological process is related to the regulation of empathy, especially the representation of goals and the value trade-off between different goals significantly affect the generation and regulation of empathy. The forms of goal representation include: 1) high- and low-level goal. On the one hand, to prevent lower-level outcomes such as physical and mental fatigue, people tend to avoid empathizing with others. On the other hand, people are more likely to empathize with others when they pursue higher-level goals and positive outcomes such as social prestige. 2) long- and short-term goal. If empathy is regarded as a decision-making process with the attribute of time, time influences the manifestation of individual empathy by influencing the value representation of the goal in empathy. 3) Assuming dimensions of social meaningfulness. When empathizing with others, people may have a tendency toward an imaginary dimension that is regarded as socially meaningful, on which they are more likely to consider higher-level, long-term goals (morality, responsibility and obligation, self-concept, etc.) when making decisions. From the perspective of motivation, empathic motivation is a goal-oriented internal force that drives people towards or away from social connections. The two main types of goal-oriented empathic motivation include the opposite types of empathic motivation: approach motivation (altruism) and the avoidance motivation (apathy). The researchers show that targeted interventions can change the preferences and degrees of empathy. To sum up,the adjustability of empathy is discussed from a top-down perspective and the plasticity of empathy is emphasized. Studying empathy from the perspective of goal and motivation is crucial to understand the internal construction mechanism and external manifestation of empathy. Given goal influences the internal construction and external manifestation of empathy, future research should investigate empathy adjustability from a top-down perspective. In particular, the representation of goals and the trade-off between costs and benefits in goal-oriented empathy.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： In real life, people occasionally perceive an object as something non-existent, called pareidolia. Among all forms of pareidolia, people are more likely to recognize a face from an object. Face pareidolia has been widely utilized in art, advertising, and design, but its occurrence mechanisms remain unclear. Previous studies have used various paradigms to explore the occurrence mechanisms of face pareidolia. According to the different paradigms used, the occurrence mechanisms of face pareidolia have been deeply discussed from top-down and bottom-up visual signal processing pathways. However, due to the variety of paradigms, face pareidolia occurrence mechanisms and potential applications are still in their infancy. There has been no systematic theoretical construction either. Based on the two visual processing pathways, we categorize two types of paradigms: the pareidolia monitoring paradigm (face pareidolia in a bottom-up pathway) and the pareidolia discrimination paradigm (face pareidolia in a top-down pathway). To provide future research insights, we summarize the two paradigms from three perspectives, including stimuli, experimental procedures, and measurements. In addition, according to the perceptual prediction model, there are similarities and differences in the occurrence mechanisms of the two paradigms. Both paradigms have analogy, association, and prediction processes. However, the pareidolia monitoring paradigm focuses on rapid prediction generation through a single analogy and association process. The pareidolia discrimination paradigm focuses on the subjective expectation codes feedback to the analogy association process and then affects the subsequent prediction. In addition, the applications of facial illusions in clinical diagnosis, product, and advertising packaging are also listed. First, children with autism are less likely to produce face pareidolia than normal children, but they are still able to have face pareidolia. Moreover, there are connections between visual illusions and visual hallucinations in clinical diagnosis. Pareidolia could be used as a measurement of subclinical hallucinations. In commercial applications, the prominence of pareidolia elements in paintings, architecture, and advertising can attract consumers’ attention and facilitate their emotional or trait attributions to objects and consumer behavior. Future studies are suggested to develop new paradigms to explore further the interaction between top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of face pareidolia.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The essence of public administration is public decision-making. Social license of public decision (SLPD) refers to the extent to which local people accept and support a public decision from government or public authorities. Lack of this license not only hinders the efficiency of government policy, but also affects the decision-making authority and long-term goals of society. Moreover, government transparency is regarded as an important factor to eliminate public decision-making dilemma and enhance administrative legitimacy both in value and democratic practices. This research explored the causal relationship between transparency of government decision-making (i.e., transparency in process and transparency in rational) and SLPD from the perspective of Behavioral Public Administration (BPA), which is a bridge linking Public Administration and Psychology. In other words, BPA is a new interdisciplinary sub-field of Public Administration from Psychology. The research of BPA mainly focuses on the process between government decision-making and citizen experience. In addition, based on the concept of bounded rationality and heuristic judgment as well as system justification theory, we built and tested the moderating roles of trust in government and outcome dependence between transparency of government decision-making and SLPD in two models. Outcome dependence is the extent to which someone is dependent on a powerful authority (i.e., the representative of a system) when that authority controls valued resources whose social and/or material outcome the person desires. This research includes three studies, two survey experiments (N = 354 + 354) and one field survey (N = 520). The studies were conducted in China. The results showed that: First, transparency of governmental decision-making positively influenced SLPD. That is, for both transparency in process and transparency in rationale of government decision-making, the higher the transparency is, the higher the SLPD is. Second, trust in government moderated the relationship between transparency in rational and SLPD. Specifically, the positive relationship between transparency in rational and SLPD gets weakened when the trust in government is higher. Third, outcome dependence moderated the relationship between transparency of governmental decision-making and SLPD. Specifically, the positive relationship between two types of transparency and SLPD gets weakened when the outcome dependence is higher. Therefore, “Transparency effects” of SLPD was proposed through the present research. In addition, “cautious indifference” was used to indicate the moderating role of trust in government, and “selective neglect” was used to indicate the moderating effect of outcome dependence. The theoretical contributions were embodied in three aspects: (1) defining a new concept (i.e., SLPD); (2) introducing a new perspective (i.e., BPA); (3) discovering a new mechanism (i.e., transparency effect and its moderators). Regarding the practical implications, this research could shed light on the transparency practice, and provides empirical evidence to government for further enhancing the legitimacy of public decisions.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Retro-cue effect (RCE) refers to the phenomenon that individuals can use retro-cues to improve their visual working memory (VWM) performance of target items after the disappearance of memory targets. To explain the mechanism of RCE in VWM, five different hypotheses have been proposed by previous studies: the hypothesis of enhancing target representations, the hypothesis of forgetting non-target representations, the hypothesis of preventing memory degradation, the hypothesis of preventing interference from probe array and the hypothesis of cognitive phase separation. Although RCE has been repeatedly observed in previous studies, the mechanism of RCE remains unclear. In this study, we conducted three experiments to test these hypotheses.In Experiment 1, participants were asked to memorize four colors in a recall task. They needed to recall the color of the target item when the probe array presented. There are three experimental conditions, the normal cue condition, the short interval no-cue condition, and the long interval no-cue condition. In the normal cue condition, a memory array (four colored squares) presented for 200 ms. Then, the memory array disappeared for 450 ms and a retro-cue presented, followed by a 900 ms blank. Then the probe array presented. In the short interval no-cue condition and long interval no-cue condition, no retro-cue presented after the memory array, but the probe array would present after the memory array disappeared for 450 ms (short interval no-cue condition) or 1400 ms (long interval no-cue condition). The design and procedure of Experiment 2 were similar to those of Experiment 1, except we used a grey-wheel cue condition and a colored-wheel cue condition to replace the long interval no-cue condition. These two new conditions were similar to the normal cue condition, except the retro-cue would appear with a distractor of a gray wheel (grey-wheel cue condition) or with a distractor of a colored wheel (colored-wheel cue condition). The design and procedure of Experiment 3 were similar to those of Experiment 2, except a long-grey-wheel short-cue condition and a long-grey-wheel long-cue condition were used to replace the normal cue condition and colored cue condition. In the long-grey-wheel short-cue condition, the retro-cue presented for 100 ms, but the grey wheel presented for 1000 ms. In the long-grey-wheel long-cue condition, the retro-cue and grey wheel presented for 1000 ms.The results of Experiment 1 showed that there was no significant difference in memory performance between the short interval no-cue condition and long interval no-cue condition, while the performance of the normal cue condition was better than that of short and long interval no-cue conditions. The results of Experiment 2 showed that participants obtained the RCE under the normal cue, the grey-wheel cue, and the colored-wheel cue conditions. However, the degrees of RCE obtained by these three conditions were different (normal cue > grey-wheel cue > colored-wheel cue). The results of Experiment 3 showed that participants obtained the RCE under the grey-wheel cue condition, the long-grey-wheel short-cue condition, and long-grey-wheel long-cue condition. The degree of RCE obtained by these three conditions was the same. The results of the present study supported the hypothesis of cognitive phase separation, which suggested that the retro-cue can separate the internal attention reallocation process and decision-making process, avoiding cognitive interference from the probe display. In addition, when the retro-cue was accompanied by the distractors, the type of distractors (rather than the presentation time) affected the degree of RCE. This study provides further evidence for the hypothesis of cognitive phase separation, which is crucial to solve the debate on the mechanism of RCE and to understand the relationship between attention and VWM.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： As an important cognitive bias, the framing effect shows that individuals' decision preferences are sensitive to the verbal description (i.e., frame) of options. The social framing effect could be distinguished from the non-social one according to whether the decision would influence others. The psychological mechanisms of the non-social framing effect (e.g., Gain/Loss framing effect) and that of the social one are essentially different. When making non-social decisions, frames affect people’s judgment of which option is more beneficial or less risky. When making social decisions, frames affect people’s preferences through the influence of other-regarding concerns and social norms.In the present study, a new paradigm was developed to induce the social framing effect. We asked participants to make a tradeoff between economic benefits and the feelings of others; when participants showed a stronger preference for income maximization, the probability for their partners to receive a painful electrical shock would increase proportionally. This decision was described as either a “harm” to, or simply “not helping” other persons in two frame conditions. 30 participants (age: 20.58 ± 1.91 years old) were enrolled in the experiment and 24 of them were included in the final analysis. The resting-state functional magnetic resonance (rs-fMRI) data was acquired using the Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) sequence from a 3-T Siemens scanner. This scanning acquired 180 volumes with TR = 2 s (lasting 6 min). Rs-fMRI data were processed and analyzed using the DPABI and RESTplus toolbox to calculate the amplitude of low-Frequency Fluctuation (ALFF) and Functional Connectivity (FC). On the behavioral level, we found that participants made more prosocial decisions in the Harm frame compared to the Help frame condition, resulting in a significant social framing effect. For the resting fMRI analysis, we first run a whole-brain correlation analysis between ALFF and the behavioral index and found the ALFF of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) could significantly predict the behavioral index of the social framing effect. Considering the observed social framing effect would result from different levels of moral conflict between Harm and Help frames, we predicted that it would be closely related to the moral network. Therefore, we further localized 12 seeds from a new, meta-analysis of functional MRI studies for moral processing. Seed-based FC analysis showed that the functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and the caudate was significantly associated with the behavioral index of the social framing effect. Multivariate machine learning-based regression analysis further confirmed these results, suggesting the importance of rTPJ and moral network for the observed social framing effect.The present study is based on a novel experimental paradigm, using resting functional imaging techniques to explore the brain mechanism of the social framing effect. We found that the ALFF value of the right TPJ and the strength of the functional connectivity value between the medial prefrontal lobe and the caudate within a moral network can effectively predict the social framing effect. This study is the very first one to explore the extent to which individual social decision-making can be influenced by verbal description and its underlying neural mechanisms, which shed light on the further exploration of individual differences in social decision-making.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The purpose of this research is to examine the change of ideal affect of Chinese people since 1980s, in particular, high arousal positive affects (HAP), low arousal positive affects (LAP) and positive affects (P). By employing diverse methods, three studies were conducted. In Study 1, a total of 84 participants born before 1966 were asked to assess the ideal affect of Chinese people at beginnings of 1980, 2000, 2020. Results showed that the preferences for HAP, LAP and P have been rising among Chinese people since 1980. In Study 2, a total of 1561 college students were asked to assess the ideal affect of people of three generations: their grandparents generation, their parents generation and their own generation. Results showed that the youngest generation manifested higher preferences for HAP, LAP and P than old generations. In Study 3, a large sample of college students from 31 provinces in China were surveyed (N =26209). Results indicated that students from urban areas manifest higher preference for HAP, LAP and P than those from rural areas after controlling basic demographic information and cultural orientations; moreover, HAP, LAP and P were positively correlated with each other. Taken together, findings from three studies convergently suggest that preferences for HAP, LAP and P have been rising since 1980, with modernization as a potential driver.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Humans are facing an unprecedented historical crisis and challenge. To identify the strategies that we can use to cope with historical crisis and challenge, we should investigate two well-studied strategies: “slow strategy, ” which is essentially an investment in the future, and “fast strategy” or “live fast, die young.” According to “The Ant and the Grasshopper, ” Aesop’s fable, which is under the pretext of intertemporal choice of social insects, the “slow” rather than the “fast” strategy is recommended for those who want to survive the environmental crisis. Intertemporal choice requires tradeoffs among outcomes whose effects occur at different times. In the commonly accepted language of intertemporal choice, the Ant, whose choice is the “larger but later” (LL) option, is more likely to survive the harsh winter than the Grasshopper, whose choice is the “smaller but sooner” (SS) option. To determine the optimal intertemporal choice strategy that can help us to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, we included 26, 355 participants from 18 Asian, African, European, American, and Oceanian countries in the present study. We investigated the participants’ preferences in intertemporal choice with double-dated mixed outcomes, evaluated the degree of change in their intertemporal choice by differentiating the common currency in peacetime and epidemic time (i.e., two kinds of change indicators used for differentiating currencies and stages, respectively). We then asked them to rate their self-rated surviving achievement in the fight against COVID-19. Considering that individuals’ surviving achievements were affected by individual- and religious-level factors, we analyzed all data by using multilevel linear analysis to reflect the data’s hierarchical structure. After considering individual differences in personal factors and religious factors, we constructed two-level models to explore the effects of the change in intertemporal choice on self-rated surviving achievement, and measured the moderating role of cultural orientation in terms of Hofstede’s six culture dimensions. The findings of the cross-national survey revealed that Change Indicator 1 (∆ currency) and Change Indicator 2 (∆ stage) of Chinese/Singaporeans could jointly predict their self-rated surviving achievement. Meanwhile, only Change Indicator 2 (∆ stage) alone could predict the self-rated surviving achievement of people in the cultural circle that included the India, Malaysia, Philippines, and Nigeria. Neither Change Indicator 1 (∆ currency) nor Change Indicator 2 (∆ stage) of the people in other cultures could significantly predict their self-rated surviving achievement. On the basis of the gist of The Book of Change and the resulting findings, we suggested that 1) how you differentially (flexibly) made an intertemporal choice in peacetime and epidemic time would reflect the extent to which you would survive the war against COVID-19. In addition, 2) the mindset of change might shape the competitive advantage of a nation, such as China, in response to the historical crisis. The closer the cultural distance of a country or nation from China, the greater the possibility of benefitting from a similar competitive advantage. It is our hope that our findings would contribute to answer the question of what are “Psychological Characteristics and Behaviors of Chinese People in Response to Historical Crisis?”
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