Adolescents’ and young adults’ online risk taking : the role of gist and verbatim representations

Young people are exposed to and engage in online risky activities, such as disclosing personal information and making unknown friends online. Little research has examined the psychological mechanisms underlying young people’s online risk taking. Drawing on Fuzzy Trace Theory, we examined developmental differences in adolescents’ and young adults’ online risk taking and assessed whether differential reliance on gist representations (based on vague, intuitive knowledge) or verbatim representations (based on specific, factual knowledge) could explain online risk taking. One hundred and twenty two adolescents (ages 13-17) and 172 young adults (ages 18-24) were asked about their past online risk taking behaviour, intentions to engage in future risky online behaviour, and gist and verbatim representations. Adolescents had significantly higher intentions to take online risks than young adults. Past risky online behaviours were positively associated with future intentions to take online risks for adolescents and negatively for young adults. Gist representations about risk negatively correlated with intentions to take risks online in both age groups, while verbatim representations positively correlated with online risk intentions, particularly among adolescents. Our results provide novel insights about the underlying mechanisms involved in adolescent and young adults’ online risk taking, suggesting the need to tailor the representation of online risk information to different age groups

Emotion Goals: What do Sexual Offenders Want to Feel?

Sexual offenders typically experience more negative emotions and greater difficulties in regulating emotions than non-offenders. However, limited data exist on what sexual offenders want to feel (i.e., their emotion goals). Notably, emotion goals play a key role in emotion regulation and contribute to emotional experience. The present study tested whether sexual offenders (N = 31) reported higher scores for negative emotion goals and lower scores for positive emotion goals, compared with general offenders (N = 26) and non-offenders (N = 26). In addition, we tested whether sexual offenders differed from the other two groups in their perceived pleasantness and perceived utility of emotions. Sexual offenders reported greater scores for the emotion goal of sadness, and lower scores for the emotion goal of excitement, compared with both general offenders and non-offenders. State and trait levels of these emotions could not fully account for these differences. Furthermore, sexual offenders reported lower perceived pleasantness for sadness than general offenders and lower perceived pleasantness for excitement compared with both other groups. Finally, sexual offenders reported greater perceived utility of sadness than non-offenders. These novel findings and their implications for research and interventions are discussed in the context of sexual offenders' emotional dysfunction

Social dynamics in interpersonal emotion regulation : a theoretical framework for understanding direct and indirect other-based processes

Interpersonal emotion regulation involves having emotions changed in a social context. While some research has used the term to refer to instances where others are used to alter one’s own emotions (intrinsic), other research refers to goal-directed actions aimed at modifying others’ emotional responses (extrinsic). We argue that the self-other distinction should be applied not only to the target (who has their emotion regulated) but also to the means (whether the agent uses themselves or others to achieve the regulation). Based on this, we propose interpersonal emotion regulation can take place when an agent changes a target’s emotions by affecting a third party’s emotion who will shift the emotion of the target in turn (direct other-based interpersonal ER) or by impacting a third party’s emotion (indirect other-based interpersonal ER). We discuss these processes and the conditions that lead to their emergence reconciling findings from different fields and suggesting new research venues

Simulating Moral Actions: An Investigation of Personal Force in Virtual Moral Dilemmas

Advances in Virtual Reality (VR) technologies allow the investigation of simulated moral actions in visually immersive environments. Using a robotic manipulandum and an interactive sculpture, we now also incorporate realistic haptic feedback into virtual moral simulations. In two experiments, we found that participants responded with greater utilitarian actions in virtual and haptic environments when compared to traditional questionnaire assessments of moral judgments. In experiment one, when incorporating a robotic manipulandum, we found that the physical power of simulated utilitarian responses (calculated as the product of force and speed) was predicted by individual levels of psychopathy. In experiment two, which integrated an interactive and lifelike sculpture of a human into a VR simulation, greater utilitarian actions continued to be observed. Together, these results support a disparity between simulated moral action and moral judgment. Overall this research combines state-of-the-art virtual reality, robotic movement simulations, and realistic human sculptures, to enhance moral paradigms that are often contextually impoverished. As such, this combination provides a better assessment of simulated moral action, and illustrates the embodied nature of morally-relevant actions

Correction: Virtual Morality: Transitioning from Moral Judgment to Moral Action?

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164374.]

Virtual agents and risk-taking behavior in adolescence : the twofold nature of nudging

Peer pressure can influence risk-taking behavior and it is particularly felt during adolescence. With artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly present in a range of everyday human contexts, including virtual environments, it is fundamental to examine whether AI can have an impact on human’s decision making processes and behavior. By using the balloon analogue risk task (BART) evaluating propensity to take risk, in this study 115 adolescents' risk-taking behavior was measured when playing alone and in the presence of either a robot avatar or human avatar. In the avatar conditions, participants performed the BART while the avatars either 1) verbally incited risk-taking or 2) discouraged risk-taking (experimental tasks). Risk-taking behavior in the BART was assessed in terms of total number of pumps, gain and explosions. Tendency to impulsivity was also evaluated, as well as the effects of age and gender on risky behavior. The main finding showed a significant effect of both avatars on risk-taking tendency, with riskier behavior during incitement than discouragement conditions, with the moderating effect on risk-taking being more pronounced. The results of this study open up new questions in a very sensitive and timely topic and offer various insights into the effect of nudging on adolescents’ behavior in virtual contexts

Early sympathy and social acceptance predict the development of sharing in children.

Sharing is a fascinating activity of the human species and an important basis for the development of fairness, care, and cooperation in human social interaction. Economic research has proposed that sharing, or the willingness to sacrifice own resources for others, has its roots in social emotions such as sympathy. However, only few cross-sectional experiments have investigated children's other-regarding preferences, and the question how social-emotional skills influence the willingness to share valuable resources has not been tested. In the present longitudinal-experimental study, a sample of 175 6-year-old children, their primary caregivers, and their teachers is examined over a 3-year period of time. Data are analyzed by means of growth curve modeling. The findings show that sharing valuable resources strongly increases in children from 6 to 9 years of age. Increases in sharing behavior are associated with the early-developing ability to sympathize with anonymous others. Sharing at 7 years of age is predicted by feelings of social acceptance at 6 years of age. These findings hold after controlling for children's IQ and SES. Girls share more equally than boys at 6 and 7 years of age, however, this gender difference disappears at the age of 9 years. These results indicate that human sharing strongly increases in middle childhood and, that this increase is associated with sympathy towards anonymous others and with feelings of social acceptance. Additionally, sharing develops earlier in girls than in boys. This developmental perspective contributes to new evidence on change in sharing and its social-emotional roots. A better understanding of the factors underlying differences in the development of sharing and pro-social orientations should also provide insights into the development of atypical, anti-social orientations which exhibit social-emotional differences such as aggression and bullying behavior

Cognitive and Affective Empathy, Personal Belief in a Just World, and Bullying Among Offenders

Bullying extract a heavy toll on offenders and the prison staff alike. We examined factors that may contribute to having a positive attitude towards bullying in a sample of offenders. Specifically, we studied the previously overlooked relationship between age and positive attitude towards bullying and whether this relationship is mediated by affective and/or cognitive empathy. Furthermore, we assessed the relationship between personal belief in a just world and positive attitude towards bullying, given that previous research on the topic is scarce. We found that age predicted a positive attitude toward bullying, mediated by affective empathy. However, we did not find a positive relationship between a positive attitude toward bullying and a personal belief in a just world. The results are discussed in terms of their application in possible intervention programs

Costly third-party interventions: The role of incidental anger and attention focus in punishment of the perpetrator and compensation of the victim

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Costly third-party interventions: The role of incidental anger and attention focus in punishment of the perpetrator and compensation of the victim journaltitle: Journal of Experimental Social Psychology articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.04.004 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Affection, virtue, pleasure, and profit: Developing an understanding of friendship closeness and intimacy in western and Asian societies

The development of friendship understanding has rarely been explored from a cross-cultural perspective. In this study, children and adolescents from Iceland, China, Russia, and the former East Germany were investigated in one longitudinal and three cross-sectional samples. Children from three different Chinese ecologies were interviewed to account for within-culture variation. Participants were interviewed about friendship closeness and intimacy at ages 7, 9, 12, and 15 years. Their statements were scored according to (a) structural-developmental stages and (b) content aspects of friendship reasoning. Results reveal that the development of friendship reasoning of participants from all societies could be captured by the cognitive-structural stages and content categories developed in western cultures. At the same time, distinct cultural differences emerged, especially between the Russian and Chinese participants, on the one hand, and the Icelandic and East German participants, on the other hand. The within-China analyses reveal little differences for the content aspects of friendship understanding between the three ecologies, but differences in the cognitive-structural aspects of friendship reasoning were found. © 2008 The International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development