The Influence of Perceptual-Motor Variability on the Perception of Action Boundaries for Reaching

Successful interactions within the environment are contingent upon the perceiver’s ability to perceive the maximum extent over which they can perform actions, commonly referred to as action boundaries. Individuals are extremely calibrated to their action boundaries, and the perceptual system can quickly and flexibly recalibrate to changes in the size of action boundaries in the event of physiological and/or environmental changes. However, because even the most basic motor activities are subject to variability over time, the information upon which action boundaries are based must also be subject to variability. In this set of studies, we examined the effect of random and systematic variability in reaching experience on the perception of action boundaries for reaching using virtual reality. Participants were asked to estimate their reachability following experience reaching with either a long virtual arm, short virtual arm, or a virtual arm that varied in size. Overall, we found that individuals tended toward liberal estimates of their reachability; however, individuals can be influenced to be slightly more conservative after a higher percentage of short reaches. Consequently, when anticipating our reaching capability in the event of perceptual motor variability, individuals employ a liberal approach as it would result in the highest number of successful attempts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved

Stereotype threat may not impact women's inhibitory control or mathematical performance: Providing support for the null hypothesis

Underpinned by the findings of Jamieson and Harkins (2007; Experiment 3), the current study pits the mere effort motivational account of stereotype threat against a working memory interference account. In Experiment 1, females were primed with a negative self- or group stereotype pertaining to their visuospatial ability and completed an anti-saccade eye-tracking task. In Experiment 2 they were primed with a negative or positive group stereotype and completed an anti-saccade and mental arithmetic task. Findings indicate that stereotype threat did not significantly impair women's inhibitory control (Experiments 1 and 2) or mathematical performance (Experiment 2), with Bayesian analyses providing support for the null hypothesis. These findings are discussed in relation to potential moderating factors of stereotype threat, such as task difficulty and stereotype endorsement, as well as the possibility that effect sizes reported in the stereotype threat literature are inflated due to publication bias

Unexpected questions in deception detection interviews:Does question order matter?

Purpose. Unexpected questions have been shown to increase cues to deception, without reducing the information given by truth tellers. Two studies investigated whether the detail given by an interviewee is affected by whether the expected or unexpected questions are asked first. Methods. In Study 1, participants (N = 85) were interviewed about their own intentions, and in Study 2, participants (N = 84) were given an intention by the experimenter. They were then interviewed. Results. Results showed that in both studies, differences between the expected-first and the unexpected-first order were minimal and lie detection accuracy was not improved by asking the unexpected questions first. Conclusions. These results offer important information for forensic interviewers, showing that there is no need to ask unexpected questions at a certain point in the interview. Link to associated OSF page: https://osf.io/93g7h/?view_only=586daff060d 846efb760c8155478ce9e

Moral pride:benefits and challenges of experiencing and expressing pride in one’s moral achievements

Pride is a positive emotion experienced following the recognition of one’s status or achievements. Here, we review the psychological literature that exists on pride, its expression and outcomes. We distinguish pride based on individual, competence-based achievements from moral pride where others benefit from a person’s efforts. We propose that pride is a highly social emotion experienced when appraising the social merit of one’s actions. Pride’s motivational function may be to promote continued effort towards achieving, yet there are several distinct challenges to experiencing and expressing pride. First, we consider the conditions in which pride might serve to promote perseverance versus licensing effects, that is, continuance versus discontinuance towards desirable goals. Two important moderating factors we consider are the extent to which the achievement is considered to be self-diagnostic, and the extent that agent is held socially accountable. Second, we consider whether there might be greater social costs associated with expressing pride in moral achievements than expressing pride in competence-based achievements. For one, expressing pride in moral achievements may serve to cancel the perceived selfless motive of the act, while this may not be true for competence achievements. Furthermore, expressing pride in moral achievements may be more likely to pose an identity threat to audience members than when expressing pride in one’s skills. Thus, regulation of moral pride may be of critical importance to social functioning. Throughout the chapter we highlight a number of outstanding questions on the psychology of moral pride

Improving inferences about null effects with Bayes factors and equivalence tests

Researchers often conclude an effect is absent when a null-hypothesis significance test yields a non-significant p-value. However, it is neither logically nor statistically correct to conclude an effect is absent when a hypothesis test is not significant. We present two methods to evaluate the presence or absence of effects: Equivalence testing (based on frequentist statistics) and Bayes factors (based on Bayesian statistics). In four examples from the gerontology literature we illustrate different ways to specify alternative models that can be used to reject the presence of a meaningful or predicted effect in hypothesis tests. We provide detailed explanations of how to calculate, report, and interpret Bayes factors and equivalence tests. We also discuss how to design informative studies that can provide support for a null model or for the absence of a meaningful effect. The conceptual differences between Bayes factors and equivalence tests are discussed, and we also note when and why they might lead to similar or different inferences in practice. It is important that researchers are able to falsify predictions or can quantify the support for predicted null-effects. Bayes factors and equivalence tests provide useful statistical tools to improve inferences about null effects

Are baby animals less appetizing?:Tenderness towards baby animals and appetite for meat

Three studies investigated whether thoughts and feelings generated by baby animals might oppose appetite for meat. A prestudy established babyness as an important factor predicting moral concern for farmed animals. Study 1 showed that presenting images of baby animals, versus adult animals, as the source of meat reduced appetite for meat, but this effect was weak and found exclusively among women. Study 2 replicated and extended Study 1 using a larger sample and two new animal sources. Study 3 included a no animal comparison condition, and found greatest levels of reduced appetite for meat when the meat source was presented as a baby animal, as opposed to an adult animal or no visual indication of the animal source. A meta-analysis of the results using Bayes factors revealed considerable cumulative evidence in favor of the hypothesis that images of baby animals temporarily reduce women’s appetite for meat. In contrast, the evidence for men was less strong. Our results highlight a tension within some omnivores between caring for baby animals and appetite for meat

Gendered violence and sexualized representations in video games: (Lack of) effect on gender-related attitudes

This research explored how gender portrayals in video games affect gender-related attitudes. Two hundred participants from the United Kingdom and Malaysia participated across three experiments, where the appearance and behaviour of video game characters were manipulated with regard to target (enemy) gender (Study 1), sexually explicit attire (Study 2) and level of character agency (Study 3). We found minimal evidence that exposure to gender-stereotyped content resulted in differential gender-related attitudes (implicit associations, hostile and benevolent sexism, or rape myth acceptance). However, Study 1 findings showed that individuals who played a first-person shooter with male enemies showed lower endorsement of some (benevolent) sexist attitudes (cf. control) and showed difference in game behaviour (cf. female enemies). Together, our results suggest that short-term exposure to video games containing female characters (sexualised, passive, or otherwise) does not consistently lead to the endorsement of negative gender attitudes

Four reasons to prefer Bayesian analyses over significance testing

Inference using significance testing and Bayes factors is compared and contrasted in five case studies based on real research. The first study illustrates that the methods will often agree, both in motivating researchers to conclude that H1 is supported better than H0, and the other way round, that H0 is better supported than H1. The next four, however, show that the methods will also often disagree. In these cases, the aim of the paper will be to motivate the sensible evidential conclusion, and then see which approach matches those intuitions. Specifically, it is shown that a high-powered non-significant result is consistent with no evidence for H0 over H1 worth mentioning, which a Bayes factor can show, and, conversely, that a low-powered non-significant result is consistent with substantial evidence for H0 over H1, again indicated by Bayesian analyses. The fourth study illustrates that a high-powered significant result may not amount to any evidence for H1 over H0, matching the Bayesian conclusion. Finally, the fifth study illustrates that different theories can be evidentially supported to different degrees by the same data; a fact that P-values cannot reflect but Bayes factors can. It is argued that appropriate conclusions match the Bayesian inferences, but not those based on significance testing, where they disagree

Moral expansiveness around the world:The role of societal factors across 36 countries

International audienceWhat are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness—that is, the size of people’s moral circles across countries. We found low generalized trust, greater perceptions of a breakdown in the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality were associated with smaller moral circles. Generalized trust also helped explain the effects of perceived inequality on lower levels of moral inclusiveness. Other inequality indicators (i.e., Gini coefficients) were, however, unrelated to moral expansiveness. These findings suggest that societal factors, especially those associated with generalized trust, may influence the size of our moral circles

Social mindfulness predicts concern for nature and immigrants across 36 nations

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice – known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked to a higher country environmental performance – a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicated this initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the association between social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show this relationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many current societal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related to living in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudice towards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and more complex forms of cooperation in societies