Vigilando a los vigilantes: Los modelos de honradez basados en la vigilancia no logran explicarla

Promover la honradez se considera un esfuerzo clave para la mejora de nuestras sociedades. Sin embargo, nuestra comprensión de este fenómeno, y de su gemelo maligno, la deshonestidad, sigue siendo escasa. En este texto analizamos los principales postulados asumidos por los modelos empíricos de vigilancia y sanción. Abordamos nuestro análisis en tres secciones. Inicialmente, investigamos el concepto de honestidad tal y como lo asumen las metodologías comúnmente utilizadas en el estudio de la honestidad. A continuación, esto nos lleva a identificar el elemento previamente pasado por alto pero esencial del privilegio epistémico en la caracterización de la honradez. En la tercera parte, profundizamos en cómo los actuales modelos explicativos de la honestidad no tienen suficientemente en cuenta el privilegio epistémico, lo que da lugar a narrativas incompletas sobre la honestidad. Nuestro análisis de la bibliografía existente sugiere que tanto los modelos de vigilancia interna (incluida la teoría del mantenimiento del autoconcepto) como los de vigilancia externa se quedan cortos a la hora de explicar la honestidad y la deshonestidad debido tanto a problemas conceptuales como a insuficiencias empíricas. La identificación de estas deficiencias nos permite sugerir algunas posibles líneas de investigación.Promoting honesty is considered a key endeavor in the betterment of our societies. However, our understanding of this phenomenon, and of its evil twin, dishonesty, is still lacking. In this text, we analyze the main tenets assumed by empirical models of vigilance and sanctions. We approach our analysis in three sections. Initially, we investigate the concept of honesty as assumed by commonly used methodologies in studying honesty. This then leads us to identify the previously overlooked but essential element of epistemic privilege in characterizing honesty. In the third part, we delve into how current explanatory models of honesty lack sufficient consideration of epistemic privilege, resulting in incomplete narratives about honesty. Our analysis of the extant literature suggests that both internal (including the self-concept maintenance theory) and external vigilance models fall short of explaining honesty and dishonesty because of both conceptual problems and empirical inadequacy. Identifying these shortcomings allows us to suggest some possible directions of research

Causal selection and counterfactual reasoning/ selección causal y razonamiento contrafactual/ seleção causal e raciocínio contrafactual

In this paper I defend the view that counterfactual thinking depends on our causal representation of the world, and in this sense, I argue that causal and counterfactual reasoning are tightly linked. I offer some criticisms and experimental evidence against Mandel's judgement dissociation theory (Mandel, 2003b), which claims functional independence between the process of causal selection and counterfactual reasoning in the context of causal selection. In the experiments described, I manipulated some elements of the semantics of the task to show the cases in which dissociation between causal and counterfactual reasoning does not occur. In Experiment 1, the level of description of the target event is manipulated in a list generation and rating task. Experiment 2 replicates Experiment 1 findings using an alternative coding system, whereas Experiment 3 does the same using an alternative answer format. The results of the experiments support the picture of causal understanding proposed by the causal mental models

enero-junio 2013 issn 0121-5469 impreso | 2344-8644 en línea bogotá colombia pp

A r t í c u l o d e i n v e s t i g a c i ó n c i e n t í f i c a Abstract In this paper I defend the view that counterfactual thinking depends on our causal representation of the world, and in this sense, I argue that causal and counterfactual reasoning are tightly linked. I offer some criticisms and experimental evidence against Mandel's judgement dissociation theory Keywords: counterfactual reasoning, causality, judgement dissociation theory Resumen El trabajo defiende la posición según la cual el pensamiento contrafactual depende de nuestra representación causal del mundo y, en este sentido, argumenta que existe una estrecha relación entre el razonamiento causal y el contrafactual. Se lleva a cabo una crítica a la teoría de la disociación de juicios de Mandel Palabras clave: razonamiento contrafactual, causalidad, teoría de la disociación de juicios. Resumo O trabalho defende a posição segundo a qual o pensamento contrafactual depende de nossa representação causal do mundo e, nesse sentido, argumenta que existe uma estreita relação entre o raciocínio causal e o contrafactual. Realiza-se uma crítica da teoria da dissociação de juízos de Mandel Causal selection represents a psychological puzzle: How, amongst the myriad of factors that are present in a given situation, do people select those that are considered causal? Research in psychology has traditionally focused on situations with very simple causal structures A possibility considered in philosophy ( Both proposals represent opposite ends of a spectrum of judgement on causal selection and are impossible to reconcile. In what follows, I claim that counterfactual reasoning does have a key role in causal selection (contra JDT) but based on the idea of Bayesian causal models Mandel uses cases of pre-emption to analyse and criticise counterfactual simulation accounts, echoing the discussion in philosophy In both cases the counterfactuals are false, indicating that eliminating the candidate cause does not eliminate the effect, therefore the simulation fails to identify the cause. In contrast, JDT's actuality principle allows reasoners to identify the specific event that brings about an effect because people acknowledge sufficiency as the hallmark of causality, an element not represented in either counterfactual simulation. The substitution principle predicts that people will focus on preventors during counterfactual resasoning, elements that are also out of the scope of the rival theories. Problems with jdt There are some problems with the way JDT is specified. In what follows, I point out three: the notion of sufficiency and preventor, its interpretation of counterfactual simulation, and the contraposition of mechanism and dependence information. The key concepts of "sufficiency" and "preventor" are underspecified. There is no broad agreement on how to define them, and even more importantly, it has been shown that the concepts of formal sufficiency and necessity On the other hand, Mandel's concept of counterfactual reasoning is based on an illicit generalisation of the idea of the simulation heuristic Finally, Mandel wrongly opposes causal mechanism information to probabilistic information in their importance for causality attribution. Causal selection can rely on either of these sources, and what is more, in many cases they provide equivalent information There are, however, good reasons why the object of counterfactual reasoning can be mismatched with the object of causal reasoning. I believe the key notions that JDT lacks are those of sensitive causation I maintain that counterfactual reasoning only allows singling out causal factors in cases of either insensitive causation or where the relata are modally robust. Psychologically, this simply means that a counterfactual does not identify the cause if the causal events can be instantiated in several alternative ways, and if the causal link itself can be instantiated in several ways. In the end, this comes down to the way a causal relationship is represented in the context of explanation, which in turn depends on the demands of the task or situation. JDT can 183 revista colombiana de psicología vol. 22 n.º 1 enero-junio 2013 issn 0121-5469 impreso | 2344-8644 en línea bogotá colombia -pp. [179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191][192][193][194][195][196][197] causal selection explain cases of dissociation, clearly, but not the matches, because it lacks the theoretical tools to handle changes in the way the representation of the causal relata are specified. There is also evidence that points to integration, rather than to dissociation of causal and counterfactual reasoning. Byrne (2002) has pointed out that a good guide for understanding counterfactual reasoning is to explore the representation of the factual possibilities associated with it. The appropriate modelling of the causal structure might help to understand how causal and counterfactual reasoning relate, and at the same time to provide a normative framework for studying counterfactuals An Alternative According to the causal modelling framework How is it possible then to reconcile these findings with Mandel's results? Spellman and colleagues An alternative explanation is that the mismatch observed by Mandel occurs because causal and counterfactual queries are not usually specified in the same way. In fact, Mandel's counterfactual probes always refer to undoing the "outcome of a situation" whereas causal questions refer to a particular event (Mandel, 2003a, p. 423). In other words, causal queries relate to insensitive causal relationships, whereas counterfactuals are centred on sensitive causal ones. Similarly, the instructions for the probability ratings he requested were not matched. Second, the mismatch in the description of the events in the tasks also leads to obscuring the underlying causal structure of the situation. Once the structure is clear (causally insensitive), it is feasible that counterfactual and causal tasks can have the same targets (they are modally robust). Causal queries convey cues that somehow specify the content of the causal answer(s) they are intended to receive. Thus, a question about what is the cause of a theoretical outcome has more room for interpretation than a question about the cause of a glass bottle breaking yesterday. In summary, ambiguous elements that involve a certain degree of pragmatic interpretation can be responsible for some of the cases of dissociation between causal and counterfactual reasoning. The experiments reported below manipulate these elements, the probe and the specificity of the description to contrast the results with Mandel's. Method Participants Seventy-two undergraduate students (43 female and 29 male) from different programs at the University of Warwick took part in the experiment in exchange for payment (£ 3.50). The mean age was 20.2 (SD=2.4) and all participants successfully completed the task. Materials and Procedure Participants were tested individually in a cubicle with a computer-based experiment. The selected stimuli were presented to participants on a computer screen using a program written by the author in the Delphi programming language (Texeira & Pacheco, 2001). Participants worked on the task at their own pace and all of them completed the tasks requested. The complete display included eight screenshots and followed the structure of Mandel's experiments. The first screenshot contained the general instructions, where it was emphasized that they would have the opportunity to read a vignette only once and then they would be asked questions about it. The vignette was presented in the second screenshot, where a criminal falls prey to two assassination attempts. Briefly, the first assassin puts poison in his drink, which should take one hour to have any effect. However, before the poison has killed him, the second assassin runs the criminal off the road. The criminal dies because of the explosion of the car. Once the participants had read the scenario, they proceeded to complete the causal, the counterfactual and the probability tasks. The order of the tasks was randomly counterbalanced. The causal and the counterfactuals tasks consisted of option listing and rating the answers participants wrote. For the causal task, participants were asked to list up to four factors that they "regard as causes of the 'event'". In the next screenshot they were asked to rate the importance of these factors (from 0 to 10): "Now please rate the importance of each factor you listed with regard to causality on a scale of 0-10 where 0 'not at all causal' and 10 'totally the cause'". The counterfactual task exhibited the same structure, with participants first asked to propose four ways "in which the event would have been different", and then invited to rate from 0 to 10 "how likely those alterations would have been in changing the 'event': 'Please rate the importance of each of the changes you listed with regard to how likely that change would have been in altering the event on a scale of 0-10 where 0 'not at all a good way to undo the event' death and 10 'absolutely the best way to undo the event'". The description of the "event" varied in three levels and for each level both causal and counterfactual tasks were matched. Three levels of specificity were defined for the event description: For the first or low level, the questions were about the "outcome of the situation". For the second or medium level, the judgements required were about the "death of the main character". For the third or high level, participants were asked about the "death of the main character due to the fatal burns". Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three versions defined by the specificity level of event description. Notice that the main difference between these tasks and Mandel's is the variation of the event description and the matching of the description across tasks. In the counterfactual task, Mandel (2003b) asked people about ways the "story could be changed so that the outcome would have been different" and 185 revista colombiana de psicología vol. 22 n.º 1 enero-junio 2013 issn 0121-5469 impreso | 2344-8644 en línea bogotá colombia -pp. [179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191][192][193][194][195][196][197] causal selection then rate how effective these were in undoing the "character's premature death". In the causal task the questions were simply about the death of the character. In the probability task, participants were asked to estimate four probabilities (from 1 to 100) for the outcome, given four conditions, defined by the presence/absence of the actions of the assassins: 1. None of them occurring. 2. Poisoning but not car run off the road occurring. 3. Car runoff road but not poisoning occurring. 4. Both of them occurring. For example, the sentence corresponding to condition 1 was: "What is the probability of the victim dying given that neither Mr. Vincent added poison to Mr. Wallace's drink nor Mr. Bruce pushed Mr. Wallace's car into a ravine. " Coding of Causal and Counterfactual Listings The coding was done according to the categories of interest: crime life, poison, crash and other. Two additional elements were recorded: first, in the case of the counterfactuals, whether or not the manipulation actually undid the death of the main character; second, the frequency with which participants mentioned the conjunction of any of the targets (e.g., poison and crash). Each participant provided at least one answer for the causal and the counterfactual listings. Coding was performed by the author and by an independent coder. Inter coder agreement was 88% (Raw agreement index. 498/549=90% Overall. For causal answers 92%, for counterfactual 88%. Kappa coefficients are .92, p<.01 and .96, p<.01 respectively.). Results Importance ratings were computed by dummy coding participants' causal and counterfactual listings as 0 if the target was absent and as 1 if the target was present. Then each of the answers was weighted on the basis of the importance rating given to it and averaged if any target was selected more than once. Mean counterfactual and causality scores for each participant were then calculated by averaging the sum of the scores by the number of answers. In Mandel's study, listings and ratings followed the same pattern, so the analysis focused on the ratings. This finding was not replicated. In what follows, I first present the overview of response frequencies followed by the modal responses and the importance ratings analyses, and finish with the probability ratings. Proportions of Answers Participants produced 269 and 289 answers for the causal and counterfactual listings. The difference is not significant [χ 2 (1, n=549) =0.22, p=0.63]. Contrary to JDT predictions, overall crime life was not the preferred modal answer for counterfactual task, nor crash for the causal task. There is a significant difference between the frequencies of people who chose a counterfactual target [Χ 2 (4, n=289) =86.06, p<.01]. Overall, most of the answers focused on undoing the crash to undo the event, followed by poison and the combination of both. There is also a significant difference among causal targets [Χ 2 (4, n=269)=57.37, p<.01]. There is a large number of participants who manipulated both the car accident and the poisoning in the counterfactual but not in the causal task. The highest number of responses was given in the category crash, for both types of judgements. Surprisingly, crime life was chosen more frequently as the target in causal compared to counterfactual listings. There was also a large difference between the number of responses that do not fall into any category in the causal and the counterfactual task: Whereas this accounts for just 10% of the counterfactual answers, it is relevant to 25% of the causal answers. A log linear analysis was conducted to test for differences across categories according to the level. It included specificity level (3), judgement type (2), and target (3) 1 . The three way log linear analysis produced a final model that retained the specificity level, target and the judgement type and target interactions (but not the specificity level x judgement type interaction). The likelihood of this model was [χ2(6) =3.75, p=.71]. The interaction between the specificity level and the target was significant [χ2(4) =15.16, p<.01], which indicates that the number of responses for target differ across the specificity level. In particular, the highest difference between crash and crime life occurs in the high specificity level, independent of the judgement type, indicating, first, match in the importance attributed to this factor 1 It is important to bear in mind that the log linear analysis was performed on the distribution of the total number of answers across categories, and not the number of respondents in each category. Log linear analysis was also run with 4 targets, showing no significant difference. in both causal and counterfactual judgements, and, second, that its importance increases with the specificity of the question. The interaction between the type of judgement and the target was also significant [χ2 (2)=24.91, p<.01]. It can be seen that the percentage of answers for crime life was higher for causal than for counterfactual judgements. The odds ratio suggests that a participant is 3.95 more likely to judge crime life causally relevant than counterfactually efficient in undoing the outcome of the story compared to the other targets (collapsing the other 2 categories). This clearly diverges from Mandel's results, where the frequency of judgements on crime life was clearly higher for counterfactual than for causal judgements. Analysis of the proportion of participants per target, not answers, was also performed. The same results were observed (Model: χ2 (6)=4.43. p=.61 and the same effects (specificity level X target and judgment X target). Proportions of Participants and Importance Ratings Post hoc comparisons performed on the counterfactual ratings showed that crime life is considered more effective in undoing the event William jiménez-leal in the low and medium levels, that is, the more ambiguous phrasings (significant at p<.05, Bonferroni corrected). A complementary finding is that undoing both the crash and taking the poison also got a high rating at the most general level of description, considering that was an option chosen by very few participants. For the causal task, in the high level, more people consider the combination of both important factors (crash and poison) to be the cause. This category had a similarly high rating compared with crime life in the same level. Finally, crash was rated causally effective independently of the level of description. Lastly, in order to examine the presence of the order effect, the mean within-target Pearson correlation was calculated. When the counterfactual judgements were presented first, the results show correlation values of . 29 [df=70, p=.3]. When the causal judgements were presented first, correlation results were .24 [df=70, p=.09] (drop to 0.25 and 0.20 if the fourth target is not included). The results are then evidence for the absence of order effects. Effectiveness of Counterfactual Responses Effectiveness of the counterfactual responses can be considered by examining the proportion of answers that actually undid the intended event. In this case, the proportion of counterfactual responses that failed to undo the death of the protagonist reached 30%. They represent 30%, 6%, and 1% of the low, medium and high description specificity factors, respectively, and the participants were not equally distributed across the levels of specificity [χ

Percepción de riesgo y compras por internet: su relación con la personalidad y el tipo de producto

oai:publicaciones.konradlorenz.edu.co:article/1409Teniendo en cuenta que el comportamiento del consumidor implica la toma de riesgo y que hay escasez de estudios específicos al contexto de compras por Internet que traten de incorporar los dos principales enfoques con los que se ha estudiado la toma de riesgo, el presente trabajo buscó determinar la relación existente entre los factores de personalidad, el tipo de producto (factor situacional), la percepción de riesgo y la intención y realización de compras por Internet. Para esto se diseñó una encuesta online que contenía situaciones hipotéticas a propósito del comercio electrónico y escalas de medición de factores de personalidad y de percepción de riesgo. Los participantes fueron personas de un rango de edad amplio, parte de una muestra por conveniencia. Se realizó un análisis correlacional de las variables de interés y se encontró que el género, la familiaridad, el factor de personalidad de escrupulosidad y los productos intangibles se relacionan significativamente con la percepción de riesgo general. Los factores de personalidad no parecen ser significativos a la hora de determinar la intención y realización de compras por Internet, brindando así apoyo al enfoque situacional

Within your rights: dissociating wrongness and permissibility in moral judgment

Are we ever morally permitted to do what is morally wrong? It seems intuitive that we are, but evidence for dissociations among judgment of permissibility and wrongness are relatively scarce. Across 4 experiments (N = 1,438), we show that people judge that some behaviors can be morally wrong and permissible. The dissociations arise because these judgments track different morally relevant aspects of everyday moral encounters. Judgments of individual rights predicted permissibility but not wrongness, while character assessment predicted wrongness but not permissibility. These findings suggest a picture in which moral evaluation is granular enough to express reasoning about different types of normative considerations, notably the possibility that people can exercise their rights in morally problematic ways

Purity is linked to cooperation but not necessarily through self-control

Fitouchi et al. claim that apparently victimless pleasures and nonproductive activities are moralized because they either diminish or enhance self-control. Their account makes two predictions: (1) victimless excesses are negatively moralized because they diminish self-control, and; (2) restrained behaviors are positively moralized because they enhance self-control. We provide several cases that run contrary to these predictions and call into question the general relationship between self-control and moralization

Examining the Link between Math Anxiety and Math Performance in Colombian Students

This study examines the link between math anxiety and math performance in a group of Colombian students. A total of 296 students between 8 and 16 years of age took part in this study. Analyses by gender and grade were conducted, while controlling for other types of anxiety (i.e., general and test anxiety). In line with that reported in other countries, a negative correlation was found between performance in mathematics and math anxiety. Importantly, this trend was stronger in girls than in boys. Given the limited number of studies exploring the relationship between math anxiety and math performance in Latin America and, particularly, in Colombia, this study fills an important gap in the literature. The results are particularly relevant in view of the poor performance of Colombian students in mathematics, revealed by the most recent PISA reports

Loyalty from a personal point of view: A cross-cultural prototype study of loyalty

Loyalty is considered central to people’s moral life, yet little is known about how people think about what it means to be loyal. We used a prototype approach to understand how loyalty is represented in Colombia and the United States and how these representations mediate attributions of loyalty and moral judgments of loyalty violations. Across 7 studies (N = 1,984), we found cross-cultural similarities in the associative meaning of loyalty (Study 1) but found differences in the centrality of features associated with loyalty (Study 2) and the latent structure of loyalty representations (Study 3). Colombians represent loyalty in terms of more general moral characteristics, while US participants represent loyalty in terms of interpersonal commitment, both in contrast with current approaches to loyalty. By comparing representations of loyalty and honesty, we establish that difference in loyalty conceptualizations reflect a different way of thinking about loyalty rather than morality more generally (Study 4). Further, Colombians attributed greater loyalty to individuals with general moral characteristics compared to participants from the United States sample (Study 5) and were more likely to classify non-loyal values as loyalty-related (Study 6). While the centrality of prototypical features predicts categorizing norm violations as loyalty-related, differences in prototypical structure account for differences in the severity of moral judgment for such violations (Study 7), which suggests that loyalty representations have similar functions even though these representations differ in structural characteristics

Crowdsourcing hypothesis tests: Making transparent how design choices shape research results

To what extent are research results influenced by subjective decisions that scientists make as they design studies? Fifteen research teams independently designed studies to answer fiveoriginal research questions related to moral judgments, negotiations, and implicit cognition. Participants from two separate large samples (total N > 15,000) were then randomly assigned to complete one version of each study. Effect sizes varied dramatically across different sets of materials designed to test the same hypothesis: materials from different teams renderedstatistically significant effects in opposite directions for four out of five hypotheses, with the narrowest range in estimates being d = -0.37 to +0.26. Meta-analysis and a Bayesian perspective on the results revealed overall support for two hypotheses, and a lack of support for three hypotheses. Overall, practically none of the variability in effect sizes was attributable to the skill of the research team in designing materials, while considerable variability was attributable to the hypothesis being tested. In a forecasting survey, predictions of other scientists were significantly correlated with study results, both across and within hypotheses. Crowdsourced testing of research hypotheses helps reveal the true consistency of empirical support for a scientific claim.</div