56 posts · 29,385 views
I'm an Applied Economics Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota. My research is mainly on Human Decision Making, which means I'm reading a lot of Psychology, Neuroscience and Cognition papers...that's also what I blog about.
Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
56 posts
Evolved Primate
0 posts
Sort by Latest Post, Most Popular
View by Condensed, Full
- November 4, 2009
- 01:44 PM
- 1,615 views
Sexual Attraction, Health and Evolution: It's a Rocky Road
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Which physical characteristics make for attraction? Many popular science reports evoke evolutionary psychology arguments as explanations of why modern humans supposedly respond to these attractiveness cues, but often times these reports fail to consider conflicting data realities as well as the many subtle limitations that are generally involved in research...... Read more »
Weeden J, & Sabini J. (2005) Physical attractiveness and health in Western societies: a review. Psychological bulletin, 131(5), 635-53. PMID: 16187849
- November 5, 2009
- 11:43 AM
- 787 views
Priming Toddlers to be Altruisitc
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Reposted from Evolved Primate
Drop a couple of pens in front of an eighteen-month-old toddler, and there is a decent chance your toddler will display a spontaneous act of altruism by picking them up for you. A recent experiment at the Max Planck Institute now shows that this kind of cooperative, altruistic behavior in toddlers can be increased by affiliative priming. Priming is a powerful tool in psychological research, and successful priming experiments usually hint that deep routed automatic and implicit mechanisms are influencing a particular behavior. For example, in 2003 a priming study related to adult affiliative priming showed that people who were primed with words such as "friend" or "together" will mimic mannerisms of a model more readily than unprimed adults.
In this very recent study, the primed subjects were eighteen-month-old toddlers, and priming was not induced by words, but by the pictures shown below.
Each of the pictures depict one priming condition, intended to help the researchers draw stronger conclusions of possible causality from their data.
After showing toddlers one of the above pictures, and them leaving them to play, the experimenters returned with six sticks, dropped them "accidentally", and then played through the following routine:
"during the first 10 s after dropping the sticks, the experimenter said nothing-she simply alternated her gaze between the fallen sticks and the infants' faces. During the next 10 s, if infants had not already begun helping, the experimenter looked toward them, called their name, and said, ‘‘My sticks, they've fallen on the floor,'' making two unsuccessful attempts to reach the sticks herself. During the next 10 s, the experimenter looked at the infants, called their name, and said, ‘‘My sticks, I need them back,'' making two more attempts to reach the sticks. During the final 10 s, the experimenter looked at the infants and said, ‘‘Please will you help me?'' while holding out her hand, palm up."
The graph below, shows the main results:
As the study's authors point out, the finding, is of huge significance for many social science disciplines, and has consequences for such diverse research topics as
"cooperation, affiliation, aggression, inter-group attitudes, and prejudice"
Spontaneous helping occurred three times more often after toddlers vied the picture including the hugging dolls.
The original paper includes some additional discussion of the results, is quite short and definitely worth a read. Also, there's another blog discussion of this paper at BPS-research.
Over, H., & Carpenter, M. (2009). Eighteen-Month-Old Infants Show Increased Helping Following Priming With Affiliation Psychological Science, 20 (10), 1189-1193 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02419.x
... Read more »
Over, H., & Carpenter, M. (2009) Eighteen-Month-Old Infants Show Increased Helping Following Priming With Affiliation. Psychological Science, 20(10), 1189-1193. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02419.x
- April 20, 2010
- 11:35 AM
- 776 views
The Role of Status For Going Green
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Among all the reasons for being more environmentally friendly, here's one that might marketing execs will love: Status!... Read more »
Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J., & Van den Bergh, B. (2010) Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3), 392-404. DOI: 10.1037/a0017346
- December 2, 2009
- 04:25 PM
- 774 views
Benford's Mathemagical Law
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
A wide range of naturally occurring number collections show a very distinct pattern: They more often feature a "one" as their first digit than any other number. This distributive feature has been described as Benford's law. Benford's law is an intriguing classic well worth (re-)appreciating; especially since it is often misunderstood...... Read more »
Fewster, R. (2009) A Simple Explanation of Benford's Law. The American Statistician, 63(1), 26-32. DOI: 10.1198/tast.2009.0005
- October 12, 2009
- 01:42 PM
- 682 views
Women and Cable TV
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
India recently introduced a policy to distribute free color TV's to urban families in Tamil Nadu. The policy is reportedly targets rural gender discrimination gender, but what is the scientific merit of the cable TV policy? A recent study in economics uses the new policy as a field experiment for determining the effect of cable tv on gender-attitudes and social norms.... Read more »
Jensen, R., & Oster, E. (2009) The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women's Status in India . Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(3), 1057-1094. DOI: 10.1162/qjec.2009.124.3.1057
- December 3, 2009
- 09:54 AM
- 679 views
How Dark is Barack Obama?
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
During the 2008 primaries, the Clinton campaign was accused of altering footage of Barack Obama to darken his skin tone. Supposedly, this would activate negative stereotypes of Americans towards Black people; possibly following the same logic that Time magazine applied in 1994 when it darkened the face of O.J. Simpson for its cover.
Whether or not this type of (subtle) manipulation actually suffices to swing people's decisions for something as important as an electoral vote is questionable (it did not seem to have worked for Hillary), yet it seems plausible enough that the combination of negative stereotypes against dark skinned people, the perception of someone being particularly dark, and our political support for this person may be linked.
One very interesting way in which these three elements truly are linked, may be somewhat different, however, from what you expected: As reported in this weeks' Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the degree to which you support a political candidate may influence how dark you perceive this candidate's skin tone to be.
The theoretical foundation that underlies the PNAS study builds on peoples' tendency to make their perceptions match their intuition and preferred choices (a line of research I am very involved in), as well as the human tendency to categorize and group people (and objects) and project desirable properties to the categories one considers as one's own group.
For example, social psychological research indicates that
"group membership affects conscious and unconscious reactions toward in-group and out-group members, and impacts both social judgments of others and visual perception of their physical features."
However, the strength of these tendencies to impact our choices - so experiments tell us - depends to a large extent on the ambiguity involved in the decision to be made. Highly ambiguous information is more readily molded in our minds into what we would like it to mean (sounds familiar?), while unequivocal information puts us more on the spot about seeing things the way they really are.
And as a consequence we often find that,
"The influence of group membership on social judgment and visual perception is stronger when the information under consideration is ambiguous"
Which is exactly why Barack Obama's candidacy in 2008 provided a terrific research environment to investigate whether political partisanship (i.e. the degree to which Barack Obama is considered to belong to one's "in-group") may be directly related to how dark one perceives him to be.
The experiment is rather clever: Participants were shown three pictures of Barack Obama, like those shown in this post. One of the pictures is manipulated to make him appear slightly more light skinned, while another is manipulated to show the current President as more dark skinned.
Which one of the pictures was manipulated differed randomly across participants, who were each asked to rate the pictures according to how representative they thought each picture was of then-candidate Barack Obama.
The hypothesis under consideration, suggested that participants who supported Barack Obama (and stated intentions of voting for him) would rate the lighter picture as more representative, while those participants who intended not to vote for B.H. Obama would consider the darkened picture as more representative.
The results are shown in the following table:
The above results (and those from two other experiments conducted for the PNAS study) suggest that
"partisans not only ‘‘darken'' those with whom they disagree, but also ‘‘lighten'' those with whom they agree."
Because the study included mostly white participants, no Black-White comparisons for this effect are possible, but even in the absence of this, the study is a fine reminder that what we think about the world and others has an enormous influence on the sense perception we eventually arrive at.
Main Reference:
Caruso EM, Mead NL, & Balcetis E (2009). Political partisanship influences perception of biracial candidates' skin tone. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America PMID: 19934033
... Read more »
Caruso EM, Mead NL, & Balcetis E. (2009) Political partisanship influences perception of biracial candidates' skin tone. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 19934033
- November 11, 2009
- 02:19 PM
- 669 views
"Voodoo" Comments - Relevance Beyond fMRI Studies
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Despite the lively debate surrounding Vul's notorious "Voodoo"-Study, I feel that there is still some need for thorough blog treatment of the commentaries accompanying Vul’s paper...here's to address this issue...... Read more »
Yarkoni, T. (2009) Big Correlations in Little Studies: Inflated fMRI Correlations Reflect Low Statistical Power-Commentary on Vul et al. (2009). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(3), 294-298. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01127.x
- February 3, 2010
- 10:10 AM
- 665 views
Girls and Math - Part II : Teacher Anxiety
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
A study in PNAS looks at the link between teacher anxiety and the gender gap in math achievement...... Read more »
Beilock, S., Gunderson, E., Ramirez, G., & Levine, S. (2010) Female teachers' math anxiety affects girls' math achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(5), 1860-1863. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910967107
- October 5, 2009
- 03:46 PM
- 655 views
My Feelings Matter For Your Self-Esteem...Sometimes
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Being rewarded for the completion of a task can increase self-esteem; more so if one is rewarded beyond ones peers. However, fairness implications and ones peers feelings also influence the degree to which a reward affects self-esteem. A study from the Journal of Economic Psychology investigates this link between rewards, self-esteem, fairness and the feelings of others.... Read more »
De Cremer, D., & Van Kleef, G. (2009) When being overpaid makes me feel good about myself: It depends on how the other feels. Journal of Economic Psychology, 30(5), 793-802. DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2009.05.008
- December 7, 2009
- 04:58 PM
- 649 views
Emotions Interfere in Theory of Mind
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Annikas' friend brings her back some chocolate, and places it into the blue cupboard. Annika sees this and then goes out to play. While Annika is gone, her friend eats some chocolate and then places it into the red cupboard. Later, when Annika comes back and goes about getting a piece of chocolate, where will she look for it?
If you are a two year old, you will expect Annika to look for the chocolate in the red cupboard, simply because you know that is where the chocolate is. If you are a little older and have already developed a so called theory of mind - of course -, you understand that Annika does not have access to what you know, that in Annika's mind the chocolate should still be in the blue cupboard, and that this is where she will most likely look.
Possession of a Theory of Mind describes
"the ability to attribute mental states -beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.- to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own."
It is hard to imagine any (social) activity in which we do not rely heavily on our theory of mind (imagine enjoying even the lamest movie plot without an adequate theory of mind...), and taking into consideration that others may not automatically know everything that we know - after a certain age (generally 4 - 6 years) - comes effortless to us; (Note: Some humans even appear capable of considering that other people may know things they themselves do not know...but this is rather seldom).
In fact, constructing other people's minds in our own head is so pervasive in our everyday lives and appears to require so little attention, effort and conscious thought, that psychologists have often assumed the process to be near automatic; saying that once you've learned that other people have minds of their own, this simply becomes the way your mind works; regardless of what else may be going on with you.
More and more experimental evidence, however, is beginning to question this assumption of an automated theory of mind module; most of which relies on the finding that people become less efficient at constructing theory of mind when they are under time pressure or distracted; thus implying that theory of mind construction does involve some (although apparently small) level of effort, and that even adults may sometimes draw conclusions about others that are equivalent to the child's assumption that Annika shares its knowledge of where the chocolate is hidden.
A further argument against an automated theory of mind can now be made based on a series of experiments that show how our mood influences how good we are at inferring other people's knowledge and intentions.
The hypothesis that emotions may influence theory of mind usage is not surprising, given that feelings of happiness and sadness are known to promote different ways of information processing. Happiness - so the current state of our knowledge - promotes heuristic-based thinking, which in turn interferes with the more deliberate processing that is usually associated with sadness.
To learn more about the potential linkage between emotions and theory of mind, a group of Psychologist at the University of Chicago set up a round of experiments including the following: As a means of inducing feelings of happiness (or sadness) participants were made to listen to a selection of happy (or sad) music. After listening to the music, the now measurably mood altered, participants were presented with an adult version of Annika's chocolate situation; which is summarized in the picture below:
Participants in the blue box condition do not know whether or not Vicki's sister moved the violin, while those in the red box condition know where the violin is. Regardless of whether participants knows where the violin is, theory of mind should lead them to infer that Vicki knows only where she put the violin, and that now the boxes have moved. Hence, any guess for where Vicki will look first should be irrespective of whether a participant is in the red-box or blue box condition.
For the group that listened to sad music at the outset of the experiment, this is also exacly what happens. For the group that listened to happy music, however, a more egocentric thought pattern emerges: People who listened to happy music and knew that the violin was in the red box, also assigned a significantly greater likelihood to the event that Vicki would look inside the red box (as compared to the happy people, who did not know where the violin was placed).
As the authors state it:
"These data suggest that participants were less likely to employ their theory of mind in the happy condition than in the sad condition."
Using this finding and those from another experiment (which can be found in the same publication), the authors come to the conclusion that
"mood states have important consequences for mental-state inferences, such that those in a happy mood may be less likely to utilize their theory of mind than those in a sad mood. These results are important [...] for the theoretical insights into how people make mental state inferences [...]. In particular, these results suggest that theory of mind requires deliberative processing to inhibit an egocentric assessment that is often more readily accessible than is specific knowledge about others. Happy people tend to rely on this egocentric default, whereas sad people incorporate knowledge about others more deliberately. These differential effects of mood are inconsistent with a purely automatic account of theory-of-mind use."
As a slight disclaimer they add that
"It is important to clarify that these results do not demonstrate that happiness will always increase egocentric bias, nor that egocentric bias will necessarily decrease accuracy"
One thing, this study has me thinking about is what this means for game theory: The premise of game theory is of course that people possess a capacity to iterate what they know other people know about what they know others to know about what... and so on...If a happy mood leads to less deliberation, and more heuristic processing this should show up in experimental games. Additionally, if experimental games over multiple... Read more »
Converse, B., Lin, S., Keysar, B., & Epley, N. (2008) In the mood to get over yourself: Mood affects theory-of-mind use. Emotion, 8(5), 725-730. DOI: 10.1037/a0013283
- October 15, 2009
- 07:35 AM
- 643 views
Prenatal Predictors of Stock Market Success
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Besides influencing the length of our index and ring finger, prenatal androgenic steroid exposure also influences performance factors for high-frequency stock trading; making the length ratio of the second and fourth digit a significant predictor of stock market success.... Read more »
Coates, J., Gurnell, M., & Rustichini, A. (2009) Second-to-fourth digit ratio predicts success among high-frequency financial traders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(2), 623-628. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0810907106
- January 27, 2010
- 07:46 PM
- 635 views
Finding Fair Lineups
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
You might never find yourself in the situation (although I might for not being able to figure out rb.org posting), but in case you were wondering how to make lineups fairer for suspects with distinct features, here's the deal...+find the anagrams... Read more »
Zarkadi T, Wade KA, & Stewart N. (2009) Creating Fair Lineups for Suspects With Distinctive Features. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. PMID: 19883492
- October 6, 2009
- 08:45 PM
- 594 views
There is Money in Your Future
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
A recent study shows that attitudes related to future-self are linked to saving behavior. People who display greater future self continuity tend to have reduced experimental discount rates and larger accumulation of real-life assets.... Read more »
Ersner-Hershfield H, Garton MT, Ballard K, Samanez-Larkin GR, & Knutson B. (2009) Don't stop thinking about tomorrow: Individual differences in future self-continuity account for saving. Judgment and decision making, 4(4), 280-286. PMID: 19774230
- October 13, 2009
- 07:24 AM
- 592 views
Finding Purpose in Labor (and Labor Economics)
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
There are a lot of things one can do with Lego's. For example, one clever experimental study uses the popular childrens-toy to investigate how the meaning, or purpose of an endeavor influence people's willingness to work. More specifically the study asks, how meaning influences our reservation wage and decisions to participate in job markets?... Read more »
Ariely, D., Kamenica, E., & Prelec, D. (2008) Man's search for meaning: The case of Legos. Journal of Economic Behavior , 67(3-4), 671-677. DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2008.01.004
- October 23, 2009
- 08:24 AM
- 592 views
Science of Speed Dating - Part 2
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
ResearchBlogging.org
By turning speed dating events into social science experiments, psychologists are gaining new insights into human behavior and mate selection.... Read more »
Finkel EJ, & Eastwick PW. (2009) Arbitrary social norms influence sex differences in romantic selectivity. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 20(10), 1290-5. PMID: 19754525
- October 8, 2009
- 12:12 AM
- 586 views
"Better to Have Loved And Lost...
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
A recent study looks at how a general human tendency to differentiate between causes of regret pays out at Black Jack tables in Las Vegas. They find that even gamblers exhibit strong omission bias. ... Read more »
Carlin B. . (2009) Fear and loathing in Las Vegas: Evidence from blackjack tables. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(5), 385-396. info:/
- December 9, 2009
- 11:48 PM
- 575 views
Parasites in the Brain
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
"In 1896, the Scientific American published an article, Is Insanity Due to a Microbe?''," and thus started a lively discussion on infectious causes of schizophrenia, epilepsy and other diseases of the mind...... Read more »
da Silva RC, & Langoni H. (2009) Toxoplasma gondii: host-parasite interaction and behavior manipulation. Parasitology research, 105(4), 893-8. PMID: 19548003
- January 15, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 571 views
Care for Some Sexy Toilet Paper? - Sex in Advertising
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Sex doesn't always sell, and there are gender differences to when it does...... Read more »
Dahl, D., Sengupta, J., & Vohs, K. (2009) Sex in Advertising: Gender Differences and the Role of Relationship Commitment. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(2), 215-231. DOI: 10.1086/597158
- February 22, 2010
- 05:34 PM
- 545 views
When We Want Something More Although We Like it Less
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Wanting something and liking something are two separate things, and it is not uncommon that people develop strong "wants", or "must haves" for things they don't particularly like.
Indeed, it is possible that certain events increase our want for an object, while simultaneously decreasing how much we actually like the object. According to a recent research report this can happen in particular, when things become seemingly hard to obtain: When something we've been thwarted in our attempt to obtain an object, we end up wanting it more, while at the same time liking it less...... Read more »
Litt, A., Khan, U., & Shiv, B. (2009) Lusting While Loathing: Parallel Counterdriving of Wanting and Liking. Psychological Science, 21(1), 118-125. DOI: 10.1177/0956797609355633
- November 9, 2009
- 05:35 PM
- 544 views
You Today, Someone Else Tomorrow
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
As a recent study shows, there are much greater similarities between decisions we make for our future-self and other people, than for future-self and current-self. Temporal inconsistencies in our choice behavior may be linked to this phenomenon...... Read more »
Pronin E, Olivola CY, & Kennedy KA. (2008) Doing unto future selves as you would do unto others: psychological distance and decision making. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 34(2), 224-36. PMID: 18156588
topics
join us!
Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.
If you don't have a blog, you can still use our site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.
