Does familiarity breed contempt or liking? Comment on Reis, Maniaci, Caprariello, Eastwick, and Finkel

Reis, Maniaci, Caprariello, Eastwick, and Finkel (2011) conducted 2 studies that demonstrate that in certain cases, familiarity can lead to liking-in seeming contrast to the results of our earlier article (Norton, Frost, & Ariely, 2007). We believe that Reis et al. (a) utilized paradigms far removed from spontaneous, everyday social interactions that were particularly likely to demonstrate a positive link between familiarity and liking and (b) failed to include and incorporate other sources of data-both academic and real-world-showing that familiarity breeds contempt. We call for further research exploring when and why familiarity is likely to lead to contempt or liking, and we suggest several factors that are likely to inform this debate. © 2011 American Psychological Association

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black: Distancing Response to Ethical Dissonance

Six studies demonstrate the "pot calling the kettle black" phenomenon whereby people are guilty of the very fault they identify in others. Recalling an undeniable ethical failure, people experience ethical dissonance between their moral values and their behavioral misconduct. Our findings indicate that to reduce ethical dissonance, individuals use a double-distancing mechanism. Using an overcompensating ethical code, they judge others more harshly and present themselves as more virtuous and ethical (Studies 1, 2, 3). We show this mechanism is exclusive for ethical dissonance and is not triggered by salience of ethicality (Study 4), general sense of personal failure, or ethically neutral cognitive dissonance (Study 5). Finally, it is characterized by some boundary conditions (Study 6). We discuss the theoretical contribution of this work to research on moral regulation and ethical behavior

Signing at the Beginning Makes Ethics Salient and Decreases Dishonest Self-reports in Comparison to Signing at the End

Many written forms required by businesses and governments rely on honest reporting. Proof of honest intent is typically provided through signature at the end of the document, e.g., tax returns or insurance policy forms. Still, people sometimes cheat to advance their financial self-interests—at great costs to society. We test an easy-to-implement method to discourage dishonesty: signing at the beginning rather than at the end of a self-report, thereby reversing the order of the current practice. Using lab and field experiments, we find that signing before rather than after the opportunity to cheat makes ethics salient when it is needed most and significantly reduces dishonesty

Gender Differences in the Motivational Processing of Babies Are Determined by Their Facial Attractiveness

Background: This study sought to determine how esthetic appearance of babies may affect their motivational processing by the adults. Methodology and Principal Findings: Healthy men and women were administered two laboratory-based tasks: a) key pressing to change the viewing time of normal-looking babies and of those with abnormal facial features (e.g., cleft palate, strabismus, skin disorders, Down's syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome) and b) attractiveness ratings of these images. Exposure to the babies' images produced two different response patterns: for normal babies, there was a similar effort by the two groups to extend the visual processing with lower attractiveness ratings by men; for abnormal babies, women exerted greater effort to shorten the viewing time despite attractiveness ratings comparable to the men. Conclusions: These results indicate that gender differences in the motivational processing of babies include excessive (relative to the esthetic valuation) motivation to extend the viewing time of normal babies by men vs. shortening the exposure to the abnormal babies by women. Such gender-specific incentive sensitization phenomenon may reflect an evolutionary-derived need for diversion of limited resources to the nurturance of healthy offspring

Analytical reasoning task reveals limits of social learning in networks

Social learning -by observing and copying others- is a highly successful cultural mechanism for adaptation, outperforming individual information acquisition and experience. Here, we investigate social learning in the context of the uniquely human capacity for reflective, analytical reasoning. A hallmark of the human mind is our ability to engage analytical reasoning, and suppress false associative intuitions. Through a set of lab-based network experiments, we find that social learning fails to propagate this cognitive strategy. When people make false intuitive conclusions, and are exposed to the analytic output of their peers, they recognize and adopt this correct output. But they fail to engage analytical reasoning in similar subsequent tasks. Thus, humans exhibit an 'unreflective copying bias,' which limits their social learning to the output, rather than the process, of their peers' reasoning -even when doing so requires minimal effort and no technical skill. In contrast to much recent work on observation-based social learning, which emphasizes the propagation of successful behavior through copying, our findings identify a limit on the power of social networks in situations that require analytical reasoning

Advertising Liking Recognition Technique Applied to Neuromarketing by Using Low-Cost EEG Headset

In this paper a new neuroscience technique is applied into Marketing, which is becoming commonly known as the field of Neuromarketing. The aim of this paper is to recognize how brain responds during the visualization of short advertising movies. Using low cost electroencephalography (EEG), brain regions used during the presentation have been studied. We may wonder about how useful it is to use neuroscience knowledge in marketing, what can neuroscience add to marketing, or why use this specific technique. By using discrete techniques over EEG frequency bands of a generated labeled dataset, C4.5 and ANN learning methods have been applied to obtain the score assigned to each ads by the user. This techniques allows to reach more than 82% of accuracy, which is an excellent result taking into account the kind of low-cost EEG sensors used.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46801- C4-1-rJunta de Andalucía TIC-805

When the relatively poor prosper: the Underdog Effect on charitable donations

In fundraising, it is common for the donor to see how much a charity has received so far. What is the impact of this information on a) how much people choose to donate and b) which charity they choose to donate to? Conditional cooperation suggests that people will donate to the charity that has received the most prior support, while the Underdog Effect suggests increased donations to the charity with the least support. Across 2 laboratory experiments, an online study (combined N = 494) and a qualitative survey (N = 60), a consistent preference to donate to the charity with the least prior support was observed. Thus, the Underdog Effect was supported. We suggest people will show a preference for the underdog if there are two or more charities to donate to, one of the charities is at a disadvantage and people have little pre-existing loyalty to either charity