Varieties of social cognition

Recent actions. KEYWORDS: implicit social work Influence within cognition, unconsciousness psychology demonstrates is cognition, corroborated that implicit unconscious by strong measures, empirical cognition priming, evidence, plays automaticity, a but central unconscious consciousness role in the states judgments are difficult and actions to verify. of We individuals. discuss procedures We distinguish aimed between at providing two basic conclusive types evidence unconscious of state social unconsciousness, cognition: unconsciousness and apply them of the to influences recent empirical on judgments findings. and actions, and unconscious of the mental states (i.e., attitudes and feelings) that give rise to judgments After reading words related to stereotypes of the elderly, such as “Florida ” and “wrinkle, ” people tend to walk more slowly (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). Being subliminally exposed to pictures of African American males makes people hostile, and thinking about professors improves their performance at Trivial Pursuit (Bargh et al., 1996; Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998). People are more likely to mistakenly judge a male to be famous, and an African American to be a criminal (Banaji & Bhaskar, 2000; Banaji & Greenwald, 1995; Payne, 2001). Based on these and other similarly dramatic findings, we and many other psychologists have come to agree with Bargh and Chartrand (1999), who proposed that: “... most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes that are put into motion by features of the environment and that operate outside of conscious awarenes

DPDnet: A Robust People Detector using Deep Learning with an Overhead Depth Camera

In this paper we propose a method based on deep learning that detects multiple people from a single overhead depth image with high reliability. Our neural network, called DPDnet, is based on two fully-convolutional encoder-decoder neural blocks based on residual layers. The Main Block takes a depth image as input and generates a pixel-wise confidence map, where each detected person in the image is represented by a Gaussian-like distribution. The refinement block combines the depth image and the output from the main block, to refine the confidence map. Both blocks are simultaneously trained end-to-end using depth images and head position labels. The experimental work shows that DPDNet outperforms state-of-the-art methods, with accuracies greater than 99% in three different publicly available datasets, without retraining not fine-tuning. In addition, the computational complexity of our proposal is independent of the number of people in the scene and runs in real time using conventional GPUs

The motivated use of moral principles

Abstract Five studies demonstrated that people selectively use general moral principles to rationalize preferred moral conclusions. In Studies 1a and 1b, college students and community respondents were presented with variations on a traditional moral scenario that asked whether it was permissible to sacrifice one innocent man in order to save a greater number of people. Political liberals, but not relatively more conservative participants, were more likely to endorse consequentialism when the victim had a stereotypically White American name than when the victim had a stereotypically Black American name. Study 2 found evidence suggesting participants believe that the moral principles they are endorsing are general in nature: when presented sequentially with both versions of the scenario, liberals again showed a bias in their judgments to the initial scenario, but demonstrated consistency thereafter. Study 3 found conservatives were more likely to endorse the unintended killing of innocent civilians when Iraqis civilians were killed than when Americans civilians were killed, while liberals showed no significant effect. In Study 4, participants primed with patriotism were more likely to endorse consequentialism when Iraqi civilians were killed by American forces than were participants primed with multiculturalism. However, this was not the case when American civilians were killed by Iraqi forces. Implications for the role of reason in moral judgment are discussed

Inference of trustworthiness from intuitive moral judgments

Moral judgments play a critical role in motivating and enforcing human cooperation, and research on the proximate mechanisms of moral judgments highlights the importance of intuitive, automatic processes in forming such judgments. Intuitive moral judgments often share characteristics with deontological theories in normative ethics, which argue that certain acts (such as killing) are absolutely wrong, regardless of their consequences. Why do moral intuitions typically follow deontological prescriptions, as opposed to those of other ethical theories? Here, we test a functional explanation for this phenomenon by investigating whether agents who express deontological moral judgments are more valued as social partners. Across 5 studies, we show that people who make characteristically deontological judgments are preferred as social partners, perceived as more moral and trustworthy, and are trusted more in economic games. These findings provide empirical support for a partner choice account of moral intuitions whereby typically deontological judgments confer an adaptive function by increasing a person’s likelihood of being chosen as a cooperation partner. Therefore, deontological moral intuitions may represent an evolutionarily prescribed prior that was selected for through partner choice mechanisms

Benefiting From Misfortune: When Harmless Actions Are Judged to Be Morally Blameworthy

Dominant theories of moral blame require an individual to have caused or intended harm. However, the current four studies demonstrate cases where no harm is caused or intended, yet individuals are nonetheless deemed worthy of blame. Specifically, individuals are judged to be blameworthy when they engage in actions that enable them to benefit from another’s misfortune (e.g., betting that a company’s stock will decline or that a natural disaster will occur). Evidence is presented suggesting that perceptions of the actor’s wicked desires are responsible for this phenomenon. It is argued that these results are consistent with a growing literature demonstrating that moral judgments are often the product of evaluations of character in addition to evaluations of acts

Ocean Dumping of Containerized DDT Waste Was a Sloppy Process

Author Posting. © American Chemical Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Chemical Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Kivenson, V., Lemkau, K. L., Pizarro, O., Yoerger, D. R., Kaiser, C., Nelson, R. K., Carmichael, C., Paul, B. G., Reddy, C. M., & Valentine, D. L. (2019). Ocean Dumping of Containerized DDT Waste Was a Sloppy Process. Environmental Science and Technology (2019), doi:10.1021/acs.est.8b05859.Industrial-scale dumping of organic waste to the deep ocean was once common practice, leaving a legacy of chemical pollution for which a paucity of information exists. Using a nested approach with autonomous and remotely operated underwater vehicles, a dumpsite offshore California was surveyed and sampled. Discarded waste containers littered the site and structured the suboxic benthic environment. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was reportedly dumped in the area, and sediment analysis revealed substantial variability in concentrations of p,p-DDT and its analogs, with a peak concentration of 257 μg g–1, ∼40 times greater than the highest level of surface sediment contamination at the nearby DDT Superfund site. The occurrence of a conspicuous hydrocarbon mixture suggests that multiple petroleum distillates, potentially used in DDT manufacture, contributed to the waste stream. Application of a two end-member mixing model with DDTs and polychlorinated biphenyls enabled source differentiation between shelf discharge versus containerized waste. Ocean dumping was found to be the major source of DDT to more than 3000 km2 of the region’s deep seafloor. These results reveal that ocean dumping of containerized DDT waste was inherently sloppy, with the contents readily breaching containment and leading to regional scale contamination of the deep benthos.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for V.K. under Grant No. 1650114. Expeditions AT-18-11 and AT-26-06 were funded by the NSF (OCE-0961725 and OCE-1046144). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We thank the captain and crew of the RV Atlantis, the pilots and crew of the ROV Jason, the crew of the AUV Sentry, the scientific party of the AT-18-11 and AT-26-06 expeditions, Justin Tran for assistance with the preparation of multibeam data, M. Indira Venkatesan for a helpful discussion of the NOAA datasets, and Nathan Dodder for advice on the procedure for compound identification

PCR reveals significantly higher rates of Trypanosoma cruzi infection than microscopy in the Chagas vector, Triatoma infestans: High rates found in Chuquisaca, Bolivia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Andean valleys of Bolivia are the only reported location of sylvatic <it>Triatoma infestans</it>, the main vector of Chagas disease in this country, and the high human prevalence of <it>Trypanosoma cruzi </it>infection in this region is hypothesized to result from the ability of vectors to persist in domestic, peri-domestic, and sylvatic environments. Determination of the rate of <it>Trypanosoma </it>infection in its triatomine vectors is an important element in programs directed at reducing human infections. Traditionally, <it>T. cruzi </it>has been detected in insect vectors by direct microscopic examination of extruded feces, or dissection and analysis of the entire bug. Although this technique has proven to be useful, several drawbacks related to its sensitivity especially in the case of small instars and applicability to large numbers of insects and dead specimens have motivated researchers to look for a molecular assay based on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) as an alternative for parasitic detection of <it>T. cruzi </it>infection in vectors. In the work presented here, we have compared a PCR assay and direct microscopic observation for diagnosis of <it>T. cruzi </it>infection in <it>T. infestans </it>collected in the field from five localities and four habitats in Chuquisaca, Bolivia. The efficacy of the methods was compared across nymphal stages, localities and habitats.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We examined 152 nymph and adult <it>T. infestans </it>collected from rural areas in the department of Chuquisaca, Bolivia. For microscopic observation, a few drops of rectal content obtained by abdominal extrusion were diluted with saline solution and compressed between a slide and a cover slip. The presence of motile parasites in 50 microscopic fields was registered using 400× magnification. For the molecular analysis, dissection of the posterior part of the abdomen of each insect followed by DNA extraction and PCR amplification was performed using the TCZ1 (5' – CGA GCT CTT GCC CAC ACG GGT GCT – 3') and TCZ2 (5' – CCT CCA AGC AGC GGA TAG TTC AGG – 3') primers. Amplicons were chromatographed on a 2% agarose gel with a 100 bp size standard, stained with ethidium bromide and viewed with UV fluorescence.</p> <p>For both the microscopy and PCR assays, we calculated sensitivity (number of positives by a method divided by the number of positives by either method) and discrepancy (one method was negative and the other was positive) at the locality, life stage and habitat level. The degree of agreement between PCR and microscopy was determined by calculating Kappa (<it>k</it>) values with 95% confidence intervals.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We observed a high prevalence of <it>T. cruzi </it>infection in <it>T. infestans </it>(81.16% by PCR and 56.52% by microscopy) and discovered that PCR is significantly more sensitive than microscopic observation. The overall degree of agreement between the two methods was moderate (Kappa = 0.43 ± 0.07). The level of infection is significantly different among communities; however, prevalence was similar among habitats and life stages.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>PCR was significantly more sensitive than microscopy in all habitats, developmental stages and localities in Chuquisaca, Bolivia. Overall we observed a high prevalence of <it>T. cruzi </it>infection in <it>T. infestans </it>in this area of Bolivia; however, microscopy underestimated infection at all levels examined.</p