Why do we overestimate others’ willingness to pay?

People typically overestimate how much others are prepared to pay for consumer goods and services. We investigated the extent to which latent beliefs about others’ affluence contribute to this overestimation. In Studies 1, 2a, and 2b we found that participants, on average, judge the other people taking part in the study to “have more money” and “have more disposable income” than themselves. The extent of these beliefs positively correlated with the overestimation of willingness to pay (WTP). Study 3 shows that the link between income-beliefs and WTP is causal, and Studies 4, 5a, and 5b show that it holds in a between-group design with a real financial transaction and is unaffected by accuracy incentives. Study 6 examines estimates of others’ income in more detail and, in conjunction with the earlier studies, indicates that participants’ reported beliefs about others’ affluence depend upon the framing of the question. Together, the data indicate that individual differences in the overestimation effect are partly due to differing affluence-beliefs, and that an overall affluence-estimation bias may contribute to the net tendency to overestimate other people’s willingness to pay.This work was funded by Leverhulme Trust grant RPG–2013–148 and Economic and Social Research Council studentship number ES/J500045/1.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Society for Judgment and Decision Making/The European Association for Decision Making via http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15909/jdm15909.pd

Age differences in social comparison tendency and personal relative deprivation

We examined age-related differences in social comparison orientation and personal relative deprivation (PRD). In Study 1, participants (N = 1,290) reported their tendencies to engage in social comparisons and PRD. Older adults reported lower levels of social comparison tendency and PRD, and social comparison tendency mediated the relation between age and PRD. The findings reported in Study 1 were replicated in Study 2 using a sample of participants between the ages of 18 to 30 (n = 180) and 60+ years old (n = 176). Our findings provide evidence that older adults report lower levels of social comparison tendency that, in turn, relate to lower levels of PRD.This research was funded by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2013-148).This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.08.00

The need to belong and the value of belongings: Does ostracism change the subjective value of personal possessions?

A growing body of research has demonstrated that feelings of possession influence the valuation of personal possessions. Psychological theories of ownership suggest that a special bond between a person and his/her possession arises in response to the innate motivation for effectance, self-identity and need for home. However, current empirical support is insufficient to make a causal link between these psychological needs and feelings of ownership. In four studies (total N > 800), we manipulated people’s basic needs by inducing feelings of ostracism, which threatens the needs for belonging, self-esteem, control, and belief in a meaningful existence. Despite the fact that these social needs are closely related to the putative antecedents of feelings of ownership, the ostracism manipulation did not significantly affect participants’ feelings of ownership, or their valuations of their possessions, whether measured by willingness to accept or willingness to pay. These results suggest that the special bond that people have with their belongings is not readily used to restore basic psychological needs following the experience of social exclusion.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804315000725

Do Changes in the Pace of Events Affect One-Off Judgments of Duration?

Five experiments examined whether changes in the pace of external events influence people’s judgments of duration. In Experiments 1a–1c, participants heard pieces of music whose tempo accelerated, decelerated, or remained constant. In Experiment 2, participants completed a visuo-motor task in which the rate of stimulus presentation accelerated, decelerated, or remained constant. In Experiment 3, participants completed a reading task in which facts appeared on-screen at accelerating, decelerating, or constant rates. In all experiments, the physical duration of the to-be-judged interval was the same across conditions. We found no significant effects of temporal structure on duration judgments in any of the experiments, either when participants knew that a time estimate would be required (prospective judgments) or when they did not (retrospective judgments). These results provide a starting point for the investigation of how temporal structure affects one-off judgments of duration like those typically made in natural settings

Effects of strength training on squat and sprint performance in soccer players

Researchers have demonstrated that increases in strength result in increases in athletic performance, although the development of strength is still neglected in some sports. Our aim was to determine whether a simple in-season strength training program would result in increases in maximal squat strength and short sprint performance, in professional soccer players. Professional soccer players (n=17, age = 18.3 ± 1.2 years, height = 1.79 ± 0.06 m, body mass (BM) = 75.5 ± 6.1 kg) completed one repetition maximum (1RM) back squat and sprint tests (5-, 10-, 20 m) before and after a six-week (2 x week) in-season strength training (85-90% 1RM) intervention. Strength training resulted in significant improvements in absolute and relative strength (pre: 125.4 ± 13.8 kg, post 149.3 ± 16.2 kg, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.62; 1RM/BM pre: 1.66 ± 0.24 kg.kg-1, post 1.96 ± 0.29 kg.kg-1, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.45; respectively). Similarly, there were small yet significant improvements in sprint performance over 5 m (pre 1.11 ± 0.04 s, post 1.05 ± 0.05 s, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.55) 10 m (pre 1.83 ± 0.05 s, post 1.78 ± 0.05 s, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.45) and 20 m (pre 3.09 ± 0.07 s, post 3.05 ± 0.05 s, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.31). Changes in maximal squat strength appear to be reflected in improvements in short sprint performance highlighting the importance of developing maximal strength to improve short sprint performance. Moreover this demonstrates that these improvements can be achieved during the competitive season in professional soccer players

Arrhythmic substrate, slowed propagation and increased dispersion in conduction direction in the right ventricular outflow tract of murine Scn5a+/- hearts.

AIM: To test a hypothesis attributing arrhythmia in Brugada Syndrome to right ventricular (RV) outflow tract (RVOT) conduction abnormalities arising from Nav 1.5 insufficiency and fibrotic change. METHODS: Arrhythmic properties of Langendorff-perfused Scn5a+/- and wild-type mouse hearts were correlated with ventricular effective refractory periods (VERPs), multi-electrode array (MEA) measurements of action potential (AP) conduction velocities and dispersions in conduction direction (CD), Nav 1.5 expression levels, and fibrotic change, as measured at the RVOT and RV. Two-way anova was used to test for both independent and interacting effects of anatomical region and genotype on these parameters. RESULTS: Scn5a+/- hearts showed greater arrhythmic frequencies during programmed electrical stimulation at the RVOT but not the RV. The Scn5a+/- genotype caused an independent increase of VERP regardless of whether the recording site was the RVOT or RV. Effective AP conduction velocities (CV†s), derived from fitting regression planes to arrays of observed local activation times were reduced in Scn5a+/- hearts and at the RVOT independently. AP conduction velocity magnitudes derived by averaging MEA results from local vector analyses, CV*, were reduced by the Scn5a+/- genotype alone. In contrast, dispersions in conduction direction, were greater in the RVOT than the RV, when the atrioventricular node was used as the pacing site. The observed reductions in Nav 1.5 expression were attributable to Scn5a+/-, whereas increased levels of fibrosis were associated with the RVOT. CONCLUSIONS: The Scn5a+/- RVOT recapitulates clinical findings of increased arrhythmogenicity through reduced CV† reflecting reduced CV* attributable to reduced Nav 1.5 expression and increased CD attributable to fibrosis

Detection of Rare Antimicrobial Resistance Profiles by Active and Passive Surveillance Approaches.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance systems are generally not specifically designed to detect emerging resistances and usually focus primarily on resistance to individual drugs. Evaluating the diversity of resistance, using ecological metrics, allows the assessment of sampling protocols with regard to the detection of rare phenotypes, comprising combinations of resistances. Surveillance data of phenotypic AMR of Canadian poultry Salmonella Heidelberg and swine Salmonella Typhimurium var. 5- were used to contrast active (representative isolates derived from healthy animals) and passive (diagnostic isolates) surveillance and assess their suitability for detecting emerging resistance patterns. Although in both datasets the prevalences of resistance to individual antimicrobials were not significantly different between the two surveillance systems, analysis of the diversity of entire resistance phenotypes demonstrated that passive surveillance of diagnostic isolates detected more unique phenotypes. Whilst the most appropriate surveillance method will depend on the relevant objectives, under the conditions of this study, passive surveillance of diagnostic isolates was more effective for the detection of rare and therefore potentially emerging resistance phenotypes.AEM was supported by the William Stewart Fellowship whilst at the University of Glasgow, and is currently supported by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant BB/ M014088/1; RR is supported by BBSRC grant BB/ E010326/1 and BB/L004070/1; LM is supported by BB/K01126X/1, BB/L004070/1, BB/F015313/1, National Science Foundation DEB1216040 and an EU-funded Marie Curie Initial Training Network (MCITN) program (NEMATODE SYSTEM HEALTH project (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN- ID:264639)).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the Public Library of Science via http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.015851

Selective exposure to deserved outcomes

Research has shown that people often reinterpret their experiences of others' harm and suffering to maintain the functional belief that people get what they deserve (e.g., by blaming the victim). Rather than focusing on such reactive responses to harm and suffering, across 7 studies we examined whether people selectively and proactively choose to be exposed to information about deserved rather than undeserved outcomes. We consistently found that participants selectively chose to learn that bad (good) things happened to bad (good) people (Studies 1 to 7)—that is, they selectively exposed themselves to deserved outcomes. This effect was mediated by the perceived deservingness of outcomes (Studies 2 and 3), and was reduced when participants learned that wrongdoers otherwise received “just deserts” for their transgressions (Study 7). Participants were not simply selectively avoiding information about undeserved outcomes but actively sought information about deserved outcomes (Studies 3 and 4), and participants invested effort in this pattern of selective exposure, seeking out information about deserved outcomes even when it was more time-consuming to find than undeserved outcomes (Studies 5 and 6). Taken together, these findings cast light on a more proactive, anticipatory means by which people maintain a commitment to deservingness

Reducing bias in auditory duration reproduction by integrating the reproduced signal

Duration estimation is known to be far from veridical and to differ for sensory estimates and motor reproduction. To investigate how these differential estimates are integrated for estimating or reproducing a duration and to examine sensorimotor biases in duration comparison and reproduction tasks, we compared estimation biases and variances among three different duration estimation tasks: perceptual comparison, motor reproduction, and auditory reproduction (i.e. a combined perceptual-motor task). We found consistent overestimation in both motor and perceptual-motor auditory reproduction tasks, and the least overestimation in the comparison task. More interestingly, compared to pure motor reproduction, the overestimation bias was reduced in the auditory reproduction task, due to the additional reproduced auditory signal. We further manipulated the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the feedback/comparison tones to examine the changes in estimation biases and variances. Considering perceptual and motor biases as two independent components, we applied the reliability-based model, which successfully predicted the biases in auditory reproduction. Our findings thus provide behavioral evidence of how the brain combines motor and perceptual information together to reduce duration estimation biases and improve estimation reliability