Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The role of cognitive control in divergent thinking is one of the concerns in the field of creativity research. Many scholars consider that core cognitive control involves working memory, cognitive inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. Working memory plays an important role in task goal maintenance and the retrieval and manipulation of the task-related information during divergent thinking. Different types of cognitive inhibition may affect divergent thinking in diverse ways. For example, proponent response inhibition can be used for suppressing retrieval of common ideas; resistance to task-unrelated interference can be used for maintaining proper internally-directed attention, and low resistance to potentially irrelevant stimulus can be adopted for providing all possible combinations of concepts. In addition, as a high-order cognitive control, fluid intelligence can contribute to divergent thinking through enhancing the flexibility of strategies uses. In recent years, extensive neuroscience studies have demonstrated the involvement of cooperation between default mode network and executive control network in different stages of creative cognition. Based on present findings, future research should aim to: (1) distinguish conceptual relationships among subcomponents of cognitive control; (2) explore whether the effect of cognitive control on divergent thinking could be modulated by other potential factors, such as motivation or emotion; (3) investigate whether individual differences or task demand influence the dynamic interplay between cognitive control network and default mode network.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Working memory training can effectively improve individual’s cognitive performance. In last decades, accumulating studies examined the transfer effects of working memory training on the mathematical abilities. However, findings from these studies render inconsistent depending on the measure of mathematical abilities, types of working memory training, and participants. In this meta-analysis, we thus reviewed two types of trainings strategies-uni-dimensional and multi-dimensional trainings - and their effects on the enhancement of mathematical skills, including number sense, arithmetic and mathematics reasoning. Results showed that working memory training significantly improved number sense with a medium effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.51), rather than arithmetic (Cohen’s d = 0.04) and mathematics reasoning (Cohen’s d = -0.06). Furthermore, the types of working memory training significantly moderated the transfer effects of working memory training on mathematical performance.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Individuals frequently make decisions for others in management consulting firms, investment agency companies, and daily lives. Therefore, investigating how people make decisions for others has become one of the most important issues of research concern. However, existing research has investigated the psychological mechanisms of people who make decision for others from an intrapersonal perspective with the lack of an interpersonal perspective. Besides, prior research has mainly focused on decision outcomes, but neglected decision feelings. The present research explores (1) the intrapersonal and interpersonal mechanisms of people who make decisions for others; (2) the decision feelings of people who make decisions for others, and the effect of their psychological mechanisms on decision feelings; and (3) the role of individual difference on psychological mechanisms and decision feelings. We aim to establish a model of multi-dimensional psychological mechanisms and psychological feelings for people who make decisions for others.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Rater effects refer to the impact of different raters’ idiosyncrasies in their behaviors on the evaluation results in creativity assessment. Rater effects are due to the difference in raters’ cognitive process of the evaluation, which are externally reflected in the difference of their scorings. This article first summarizes the studies of rater cognition and other influencing factors on creativity assessment, including characteristics of raters, information of creators and socio-cultural factors. It further examines inter-rater reliability indexes and their limitations, as well as the applications of Generalization Theory and Many-Facet Rasch Model in quantifying and controlling of rater effects. Finally, this paper specifies directions of future research based on the existing limitations, including deepening the investigation on rater cognition in creativity assessment, integrating the studies of rater effects on different levels, and developing new methods and techniques of creativity assessment.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Richard H. Thaler is a renowned behavioral finance researcher whose empirical findings and theoretical insights have linked economic and psychological analyses with individual decision-making. This article summarizes Thaler’s findings and introduces them to a larger audience. Thaler and colleagues found systematic price reversals for stocks that underwent extreme long-term gains or losses, wherein past losers went on to far outperform past winners, consistent with the behavioral hypothesis of investor overreaction. Additionally, Thaler and colleagues presented findings suggesting that discount fluctuations in closed-end funds were driven by changes in individual investor sentiment. Finally, Thaler and colleagues explained the equity premium puzzle in terms of so-called myopic loss aversion, wherein investors are assumed to be loss-averse and even long-term investors are assumed to evaluate their portfolios frequently. In conclusion, Thaler played a crucial role in the development of the behavioral finance field by incorporating new human psychology insights into economic analyses.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： After Herbert Simon, Reinhard Selten, and Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler became the fourth scholar winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences whose research is concerned with bounded rationality. Theoretically, Thaler not only accepted and developed the framework of bounded rationality, but also contributed to the conception and development of the theory of mental accounting. In basic research, he discovered and showed the unique attributes of mental accounting, such as the endowment effect, lack of self-control and preference for fairness. In practice, he successfully explained some puzzling phenomena in the stock and fund markets, using relevant theories in human psychology; many results from his empirical studies are widely used in business management and public administration. Furthermore, Thaler advocates the “nudge” approach to policy making, trying to improve people’s well being through subtle but effective manipulations. Thaler's research has the rare and highly desirable “theory-research-application” triadic quality, and the Nobel prize rightfully reflects his contributions to the understanding of economics and human behaviors.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Hyperscanning refers to measure neural activities simultaneously from two or more agents interacting in the same task, and explain the neural mechanism of interpersonal exchange. From the perspective of game theory, three types of tasks in hyperscanning researches are clarified: conflict, cooperation and coordination task, which contributes to distinguishing "coordination" and "cooperation", two concepts which are not well-defined in existing hyperscanning studies, and establishes a new model to depict the multi-subject paradigms in this area. Future studies might further explore the psychological and cerebral mechanism underlying the differences between cooperation and coordination behavior and the formation of norms, in combination with the usage of evolutionary game theory model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Acute stress is a series of physiological and psychological reaction that could help people adjust homeostasis, when their body facing changes and challenges in the external environment. Acute stress has a profound impact on cognitive processing, especially the core function working memory. However, inconsistent behavioral influence by acute stress exists in a plethora of previous studies. We therefore review the empirical results, and systematically summarize the findings. From three perspectives, methods to induce stress, working memory tasks/sub-components, and subjects’ individual differences, we can better explain the physiological and psychological mechanisms underlying the influence of acute stress on working memory. We proposed that the influence could be better understood from views of cognitive neural mechanisms. Future studies should jointly consider these extensive factors of stress and translate findings from basic research into intervention and regulation of negative effects of acute stress.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Secrecy is quite common in daily life. However, the non-public nature of secrecy remains a large obstacle to the development of secrecy research. The exiting literature mainly centered on the negative effects of secrecy such as the sense of burden and self-punishment, while the positive impacts of secrecy (e.g., social protection and prosocial lies) lack attention. Scholars have proposed several frameworks such as inhibition model of secrecy, preoccupation model of secrecy, perseverative thinking model and shared reality theory that can be used to explain the mechanism of secrecy’s negative effects. Furthermore, the present research findings demonstrated that individuals can mitigate the negative influence of secrecy by means of confiding secrets, exerting creativity, training emotional markers and self-awareness. Having recognized the critical role of secrecy, future research can be improved with a more accurate and consistent conceptualization as well as a precise measurement and manipulation. In addition, the empirical research could be intensified by focusing more on the positive impacts and the mechanism of secrecy and enhancing its application in different fields.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Mortality cues, ubiquitous inside and outside the workplace, are specific events and experiences that trigger individuals’ death awareness, whose double-edged effect on employee performance has been supported by a body of studies. Existing studies have explained this effect drawing on terror management theory and generativity theory. Studies from the perspective of terror management have indicated that individuals' death anxiety will induce their self-protection motivations, which in turn predicts their work withdrawal behaviors such as absenteeism, turnover, and so on. On the other hand, studies from the perspective of generativity theory have suggested that individuals will actively reflect on their long-term life meaning in the face of mortality cues, and generate prosocial motivations that motivate them to make profound contributions to society, which in turn promotes their positive work behaviors such as helping others in the workplace. However, given that some studies have found that death anxiety has a positive effect on employee performance, and each of the above perspectives focuses on explaining a single effect of mortality cues, previous studies still fail to provide an overarching theoretical explanation for the key question “how and when does mortality cues have a double-edged effect on employee performance?”. Building on the unified perspective of transactional stress theory, this current review systematically sorts out the double-edged effect of mortality cues on employee task performance, organizational behavior, and counterproductive behavior, then analyzes the psychological mechanism and boundary conditions of this double-edged effect. Specifically, mortality cues can be conceptualized as a stressor both impeding and facilitating individuals’ personal goals and well-being, and individual's different cognitive appraisal (i.e., threat-based vs. challenge-based) of mortality-cues-based stressors will produce differential state death awareness (i.e., state death anxiety vs. state death reflection) and work behaviors. When it comes to appraisals of mortality-cues-based stressors, the threat-based appraisal of mortality-cues-based stressors will hinder their task performance and organizational citizenship and cause counterproductive behavior via state death anxiety, and the challenge-based appraisal of mortality-cues-based stressors will facilitate employee’s task performance and organizational citizenship behavior via state death reflection. In addition, this double-edged effect is also moderated by personal resources such as trait death reflection, psychological power, trait mindfulness, and promotion focus, as well as organizational contextual factors such as servant leadership and internal corporate social responsibility. Both personal and organizational contextual resources will strengthen the positive relationship between mortality-cues-based stressors and the challenge-based appraisal of mortality-cues-based stressors, and weaken the positive relationship between mortality-cues-based stressors and the threat-based appraisal of mortality-cues-based stressors. Explaining the double-edged effect of mortality cues from the perspective of transactional stress theory has both theoretical and practical implications. In particular, the perspective of transactional stress theory not only captures the interaction between objective mortality cues and individuals’ subjective cognitive appraisals, but also provides an overarching explanation for the generation of different state death awareness and its subsequent double-edged effects on employee performance. The divergence between death anxiety and employee performance may also be clarified by the theoretical insight that cognitive appraisals of mortality-cues-based stressors are a dynamic process. Practitioners can also conduct some intervention programs based on the above theoretical framework to help employees cope with mortality cues more adaptively. Future research can further explore antecedents and causality in the mechanism of the double-edged effect of mortality cues, testing the theoretical validity of mortality cues as a new type of stressor and clarifying whether the generation of state death awareness depends on cognitive appraisals of mortality-cues-based stressors or not. In addition, future research can also examine whether there are boundary conditions related to cross-domain contextual resources such as family intimacy, and develop more organizational intervention programs ranging long-term mindfulness intervention to short-term nudge strategies.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Conflicts are antagonistic states where the actions taken by one party may cause direct and obvious harm to the other party. Therefore, conflicts may lead to interpersonal tensions. Rejections, raising different views, and competitions are instances that may induce conflicts. Effective conflict management can help to reduce negative impacts of conflicts and bring out potential positive impacts. However, the prevalence of misprediction hinders conflict management. Therefore, it is imperative to explore mispredictions in conflicts to facilitate effective conflict management. Extant researches have mainly shed light on mispredictions in non-conflicts from an information-driven perspective. In this line of researches, mispredictions are regarded as biases or even mistakes caused by cognitive constraints and the negative consequences of misprediction are mainly discussed. Although research on misprediction in non-conflicts is fruitful, misprediction in conflicts was largely ignored. In conflicts, people are more motivated to protect themselves and avoid interpersonal harm. To satisfy these motivations, people may strategically make mispredictions. Thus, mispredictions in conflicts may have motivational accounts. From this perspective, these mispredictions are not totally biases but sometimes adaptive because they help satisfy people’s needs. In this project, we will investigate mispredictions in conflicts and their mechanisms and consequences. Specifically, the aim of this project is fourfold. First, we will contrast mispredictions in conflicts and non-conflicts to explore the uniqueness of mispredictions in conflicts. We propose the bias-amplification effect of conflicts: mispredictions will be larger in conflicts than in non-conflicts. For instance, the opinion responders who have raised a different view to opinion proposers will mispredict the reactions of opinion proposers more than the opinion responders who have raised a similar view. Second, on the basis of motivated reasoning theory, we will investigate the negativity-driving mechanism of the bias-amplification effect. Since people worry about negative consequences of conflicts, they will process the potential outcomes of conflicts during the cognitive process (including attention, perception, and thinking) toward the negative direction to prepare for the worst results. Third, we will examine the consequences of mispredictions in conflicts such as interpersonal withdrawals or inactions. Last, we will develop effective and feasible de-biasing interventions to eliminate these mispredictions in conflicts. The mispredictions should be attenuated if people are less motivated to protect themselves and avoid harm others. This project will establish a new theoretical model of mispredictions in conflicts. This model, based on motivated-reasoning theory, reveals the bias-amplification effect of conflicts and extends the negative bias theory to interpersonal interactions. It also shifts from the cognitive constraint perspective to the motivational perspective and shows the impact of motivated reasoning on interpersonal interactions. In addition, this model contributes to the idea of ecological rationality and analyzes the adaptive functions of mispredictions. In sum, our work combines theories of mispredictions, negative bias, and motivated reasoning to establish a comprehensive theoretical framework. This project helps to extend theories on behavioral decision making as well as guide the public and social governors to make accurate predictions about others, to improve conflict management, and to reach high-quality decisions.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Rejection sensitivity (RS) refers to the cognitive-affective processing disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to cues of interpersonal rejection (Downey et al., 2004). The developmental model of rejection sensitivity suggests that rejection experience is a disadvantaged environment during the growth process of individuals with borderline personality disorder. Also, forming and maintaining stable interpersonal relationships is human motivation and the basis of physical and mental health. Social rejection is considered as an important negative event in social situations and can be used to measure individual adaption (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Compared with borderline personality disorder, individuals with higher borderline personality features are more universal in our daily life and inclined to perceive rejection and exclusion, which includes marked instability on emotion, interpersonal functioning, identity, and behavior impulsivity (APA, 2013). Previous studies have shown that there is a positive correlation between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality disorder or borderline personality features, which is related to tense and negative interpersonal relationship patterns, negative emotional experience, and so on (Ayduk et al., 2008; Hidalgo et al., 2016; Masland, 2016; Staebler et al., 2011), but the results of those previous empirical studies regarding the relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features are quite different and relatively wide (de Panfilis et al., 2016; Dixon-Gordon et al., 2013; Lazarus et al., 2018). The wide range of correlation coefficients from previous studies may be caused by other potential influencing factors, which should be fully discussed at present (Cavicchioli & Maffei, 2019; Foxhall et al., 2019; Gao et al., 2017). For example, the correlation may be stronger in more immersive laboratory studies than in questionnaires based on imagined situations, when rejection sensitivity is measured (Berenson et al., 2009; Downey & Feldman, 1996; Williams et al., 2007; Wrege et al., 2019); individualism emphasizes that people make friends with more independent choices and pays more attention to personal interests, while collectivist cultures value interpersonal relationships, which may have a stronger correlation (Chen et al., 2018; Falk et al., 2009). Therefore, the present meta-analysis study aims to examine potential factors related to the association between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features, which helps to avoid sample heterogeneity and get more precise and unique results. As mentioned above, the current study aimed at integrating the results of existing research and examining the possible factors related to the relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features through the meta-analysis. Fifty original journal articles that met the inclusion/exclusion requirements were included, including 84 effect sizes, and 7, 400 participants. The homogeneity test indicated heterogeneity of effect sizes. Therefore, we used subgroup analysis and meta-regression to explore how different types of study design, source of the sample, sample type, indices of borderline personality features, and type of rejection sensitivity measurement affect this relationship. The results revealed that (1) the relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features was the strongest in the subgroup of the cross-sectional design, non-European and American samples, mixed subject samples, overall borderline personality feature, and rejection sensitivity measured by questionnaires; (2) participants’ age and the proportion of female participants did not have the significant effect to this relationship in the subgroup with large sample size, namely the cross-sectional design, European and American samples, overall borderline personality feature, and rejection sensitivity measured by questionnaires. This is the first meta-analysis to systematically explore how the underlying moderators have the effect of the relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features, which will advance research in this field. In the future, researchers should pay more attention to explore the predictive relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features through longitudinal studies, investigate the relationship between different components of rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features, and conduct experiments studies to explore this relationship in China.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Individuals often receive others’ advice while making their decisions, and it is an effective way to improve the quality of decision outcomes by integrating outside information into their judgments. In the literature of decision behavior, decision making can be divided into two categories in terms of the number of participants, including individual decision and group decision. The core difference lying between individual decision and group decision is that group decision is made by two or more individuals via information sharing, exchanging, and discussing among group members. Accordingly, previous studies found a significant difference in advice-taking performance between individuals and groups. Based on the multi-stage of the decision process, the main factors causing the above issue include the presence or absence of initial opinion, the confidence for the initial decision, the subjective evaluation towards advice, and the objective feedback of advice. However, although group decision costs more labor, money, and time, joint decision making does not always be able to utilize advice more accurately than individual decision making does. In other words, the jury is still out on whether an individual or group can make better use of external advice. We propose that group dynamics theory could provide an insightful perspective for understanding the group decision and its difference from an individual decision. Specifically, group dynamics theory suggests that group members are independent and mutually related to each other, and their interactions constitute a group dynamics system involving cohesive force, driving force, and dissipative force. First, cohesive force binds members as a whole, such that groups which appear to be coherent and unified are more likely to display prejudice toward external opinions and advice because of the high confidence and the desire of maintaining group stability; Second, driving force serves as a motivative factor that directs members to be more involved and endorsed in the decision process, which is beneficial to the sustainable development of the group. That is, group members motivated by driving force tend to express and exchange more information about decision tasks as well as adopt a systemic approach instead of a heuristic approach to process external advice, thereby, a group with high driving force may result in greater performance by taking advice; Third, negative factors within groups would undermine members proactivity and group effectiveness, manifesting as dissipative force, which may cause biased cognition and negative emotion of members, as a consequence, hindering group performance in decision behavior. Taken together, these three forces interact, complement, and restrict each other during the group decision making process, in turn, influencing group advice-taking. We argue that the significant distinction in advice-taking behavior between individuals and groups can be partly derived from this kind of dynamics system. Therefore, understanding the changes among cohesive force, driving force, and dissipative force within a group could help us explain and predict group behavior in decision making. To date, advice-taking at the individual level has been caught a lot of attention, whereas research on group advice-taking is still in its early stages and needs to be further investigated, meanwhile, there is also an urgent call for developing the corresponding theory, method, and measurement for the group decision. According to the group dynamics theory, future research can explore the effect of the nature of groups on advice-taking, including both objective construct (e.g. the optimal number of participants in decision making) and subjective construct (e.g. social status or power between participants). In addition, it is also worth noted that whether the way of interaction would impact the group dynamics system and its subsequent advice-taking behavior, such as interactive mediums and rules, communicative atmosphere. Moreover, despite advice-taking behavior, there are a lot of other issues in the decision process that could be addressed from the perspective of group dynamics theory, such as group thinking, shared information bias, and self-other decision.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Previous studies on self-other welfare tradeoff focus more on the gain situations than the loss situations. Numerous studies have explored the influence of social distance on the tradeoff but ignored the complex interactions among gain and loss situations, others’ reference points, and psychological distance. This study investigated the influences of others’ reference points and psychological distance on self-other welfare tradeoff in gain and loss situations by using welfare tradeoff rate (WTR) as an index of altruistic degree in self-other welfare tradeoff. In Experiment 1, the effect of WTR on the gain and loss situations and its mechanism were explored. In Experiment 2, others’ reference points were added as another factor to examine their influence on WTR and interaction with the gain and loss situations. In Experiment 3, the psychological distance variable was further introduced to investigate its influence on WTR and interaction with the gain and loss situations and others’ reference points. Results of Experiment 1 showed no significant difference in WTR between gain and loss situations. In Experiment 2, WTR in the gain situation was found to be significantly higher than that in the loss situation, and WTR was reduced when others approached the bottom line, goal, and status quo. Further analyses showed that the WTR under the gain situation was significantly higher than that under the loss situation when others approached the bottom line. Meanwhile, no significant difference was observed in the WTR under the gain and loss situations when others approached the status quo and goal. In Experiment 3, the WTR of close psychological distance was found to be higher than that of far psychological distance, and the main effect of gain and loss situations disappeared. Psychological distance had complex interaction effects with gain and loss situations and others’ reference points. These findings contribute to a deep understanding of the asymmetric effects of gain and loss situations, tri-reference-point theory, and related findings from studies on social discounting and self-other decision- making differences. They also have certain practical implications for individuals, organizations, and countries in understanding and dealing with the relationships between ones’ selves and others.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Piaget's works covered philosophy, psychology, biology, and logic, as well as other fields. The psychological community attaches great importance to Piaget's influence in the field. For example, he was the President of the Swiss Psychological Society, the President of the French National Psychological Federation, the President of the 14th International Union for Psychological Science, and was awarded the Outstanding Scientific Contribution Award by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1969. Should Piaget's academic identity be that of a philosopher or a psychologist? This question is essentially about Piaget's methodology, as it is not the object of the study that defines which branch an approach belongs to, but the method of study it adopts. Piaget's theories are rich and complex, and his works are numerous. What connects such theories into a whole system is the constructional method of Piaget's epistemology. This article focuses on Piaget's works in the fields of philosophical epistemology, biological analogy methodology, as well as methodology of structuralism and dialectics, so as to analyze the key concepts in the construction process of Piaget's Genetic Epistemology. It was hoped that through such reviews, we can learn from the core constructs of Piaget's theoretical system, which are often misunderstood and ignored. It is also hoped that, by analyzing these contents, Piaget's theory can be explained as being neither psychological in the traditional sense nor philosophical epistemology in the general sense. Rather, we should think of Piaget's Genetic Epistemology as an innovative science of the mind. From this perspective, we can better understand how the Genetic Epistemology can deal with many “difficult problems” faced by contemporary cognitive science. Piaget defined his core concepts by the theory of equilibrium-construction. He demonstrated the bidirectional interaction between organisms and the external environment based on the concepts of adaptation and equilibrium in biology. Furthermore, he constructed a structuralist epistemology of Genetic Epistemology through the “isomorphism” of cognitive and biological processes. Structuralism was not only a theoretical proposition, but a construction method of Piaget's meta-theory. Piaget established structuralism as a methodology by defining three characteristics of structure: integrality, transformation, and self-adjustment. Piaget's way of thinking was dialectic. This dialectic referred to any two separate and different systems, not necessarily opposed to each other, which could merge and produce a new system. Finally, Piaget's research method was clinical interview, as well as the Geneva Discovery Technique. In terms of research methods, Piaget could be regarded as an early pioneer of qualitative research techniques. In general, Piaget's theoretical construction method had two important characteristics. First, he emphasized that relative to structure, function would be the precondition, in the sense of logic; that is, function was the adaptation of the organism to the environment. Second, the ideological basis of Piaget's methodology is dialectics. His epistemology on the one hand criticizes rationalism, while on the other hand criticizes empiricism, finally forming a unique epistemological system. Piaget's Genetic Epistemology may provide guidance and inspiration on many “difficult problems” in the study of philosophy of mind nowadays, such as the “other-mind problem” and the “induction problem.”
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： In many social comparisons, people know exactly how they and others do. These comparisons induce a self-other gap. A variety of important decisions are made on the basis of judgments of the gap between ourselves and other people. Existing research indicates biased judgments of self-other gaps, with unknown absolute performance of others. However, the question we are interested in is whether judgments of a self-other gap will be accurate when both absolute performance of oneself and others are specified. This research investigated how the self-other gap was shaped by absolute and relative performances. We proposed the generalization effect, in which individuals generalized their absolute performance to rate their relative position to others though the actual self-other gap was specified. We conducted seven studies (N = 2766) to test our proposed generalization effect on perceived self-other gap. Study 1 adopted a 2 (absolute performance: gain or loss) × 2 (relative performance: gain or loss) between-subjects design. The participants, who were informed their performance as well as their classmate's performance in a test, rated the gap between themselves and the classmate. The result indicated that absolute gain caused a larger perceived self-other gap for relative gain (“I am far ahead of her”) than for relative loss (“I am not far behind her”). Conversely, absolute loss caused a larger perceived self-other gap for relative loss (“I am far behind her”) than for relative gain (“I am not far behind her”). Studies 2 and 3 replicated the results in Study 1 with investment and social media scenarios. Besides, Study 2a excluded the influence of information order and Study 2b excluded the effect of emotion. Studies 3a and 3b ruled out the alternative explanations of numeric size. Study 4 tested the association mechanism by cutting off the associations between multiple dimensions. We adopted a 2 (association: cutting-off or control) × 2 (absolute performance: gain or loss) × 2 (relative performance: gain or loss) between-subjects design. In the cutting-off condition, we designed a debiasing intervention where general associations among multiple dimensions were cut off. As a result, the effect found in Studies 1 to 3 persisted in the control condition but disappeared in the cutting-off condition where associations among multiple dimensions were cut off. The result indicated that generalization among dimensions accounted for the effect we found. The result also ruled out the explanations of egocentrism and focalism.Study 5 manipulated the reference point in social comparison and found a null effect for reference point on the generalization effect, which ruled out the explanation of reference point.We reveal that assessments of relative performance are biased even when people have sufficient information about their own and others' absolute performances because people generalize their absolute performance to relative performance. The generalization effect reflects the overgeneralization bias in social comparison. People fail to realize that absolute performances are not necessarily related to relative performances. Moreover, the current research offers a feasible approach to reduce such a bias.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： In many cases, people intend to offer help but unfortunately cause more troubles to help recipients. After doing so, helpers often expect negative evaluations from help recipients. However, is this prediction accurate? The present research proposes a misprediction: helpers will overestimate the negative impacts (underestimate the positive impacts) of their behaviors on help recipients when they try to help but cause more troubles. The reason for this misprediction is that in contrast to helpers’ predictions about help recipients, help recipients pay more attention to helpers’ warmth and less attention to helpers’ competence. We conducted six studies (N = 1, 763) to test the proposed misprediction and test its underlying mechanism. Study 1 adopted a 2 (outcome: success or failure) × 2 (role: helper or help recipient) between-subjects design. Helpers predicted help recipients’ reactions (gratefulness, satisfaction, the likelihood to seek help again, the likelihood to recommend helpers to others), whereas help recipients rated their own reactions. The results showed a misprediction such that helpers exaggerated the negative reactions of help recipients. In addition, the misprediction was specific to failure. In the success condition, helpers made accurate predictions about help recipients’ reactions. These results also ruled out alternative explanations of the spotlight effect and social desirability bias. Studies 2a and 2b adopted an identical design to that in Study 1 and replicated the results in Study 1 in a different scenario by bounded and unbounded scales. In addition, we found the existence of the misprediction made by helpers in both proactive and reactive helping. Study 3 replicated the results by using indicators involving money. In Study 4, with an identical design to that in Study 1, helpers made predictions about how help recipients rated their warmth and competence, whereas help recipients rated helpers’ warmth and competence. Afterwards, helpers predicted help recipients’ reactions, whereas help recipients rated their own reactions. The results showed that helpers underestimated help recipients’ ratings of warmth and competence in the failure condition and that this underestimation accounted for the overestimation of help recipients’ negative reactions. In Study 5, we recorded participants’ real-time thoughts during their prediction or rating process. We found that helpers considered their competence (warmth) earlier and more (later and less) than help recipients, indicating that helpers focused more on their competence and less on their warmth when making predictions about help recipients than help recipients did. The query order and content accounted for the overestimation of help recipients’ negative reactions in the failure condition. We show that people who try to help others but eventually cause more troubles mispredict the reactions of help recipients. Helpers overestimate the negative consequences (underestimate the positive consequences) of their behaviors to help recipients. We also reveal the underlying mechanism of this misprediction that helps recipients pay more attention to helpers’ warmth and less attention to helpers’ competence compared to helpers’ predictions about help recipients. Understanding this misprediction helps alleviate the concerns of helpers when they are intended to offer help but actually do harm to others and helps promote subsequent helping behaviors.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Job candidates and competitors aim to earn admission or high ratings. People tend to avoid displaying their skills in front of an expert due to the prediction that they will be rated unfavorably because the expert can accurately evaluate their level of skill. However, is this prediction accurate? The present research proposes a misprediction: candidates will undervalue the advantages of showing skills in front of an expert. This is because evaluators partially base their evaluations on the pride elicited by alluding to their expertise, whereas candidates base their predictions on whether their competence will be accurately evaluated but neglect evaluators' pride.Eight studies (N = 1, 888) demonstrated the proposed misprediction and tested its underlying mechanism. In Study 1, we assigned the participants to the candidate or the evaluator condition. The candidates made an incentive-compatible prediction on how they would be more likely to be admitted by displaying their skills in front of an expert or a non-expert. The evaluators admitted one between a candidate displaying skills in the evaluators' area of expertise and a candidate displaying skills outside the evaluators' area of expertise. The results showed that the evaluators preferred the candidate who showcased skills in the evaluators' area of expertise. However, the candidates avoided doing so, which reduced their chances of admission.Studies 2 and 3 replicated the results in Study 1 with different competition forms (promotion or elimination) and in the case where candidates were assigned to display skills in or outside the evaluators' area of expertise. These studies ruled out two alternative explanations that the evaluators preferred the candidate who showcased skills in the evaluators' area of expertise solely because they were similar to the candidate or could easily evaluate the candidate.Studies 4 and 5 manipulated the candidates' motivation to win the competition and their level of competence, respectively, to test whether they avoided displaying skills in front of experts due to the concern that their competence could be evaluated accurately by experts. The results indicated that the candidates showed a stronger misprediction and were less likely to showcase skills in front of experts when they highly (vs. less) desired to win the competition or had a lower (vs. moderate and higher) competence.Study 6 prompted the candidates to empathize with evaluators. We asked the candidates to think about their feelings when others made references to their expertise. As a result, the candidates were aware of their pride and made a more accurate prediction. Study 7 manipulated the evaluators' pride to test whether they preferred the candidate who displayed skills in the evaluators' area of expertise because that they felt pride when their expertise was referred to. The results revealed that the evaluators with lower (vs. higher) pride were less likely to admit the candidates who displayed skills in the evaluators' area of expertise.In Study 8, we recorded the participants' real-time thoughts during their decision making. The results again showed that the candidates focused on their competence during their decision-making process, whereas the evaluators' preferences were affected by their pride. In addition, the real-time thoughts led to the underestimation about the benefits of displaying skills in front of an expert.We reveal that people fail to accurately predict the effect of a self-presentation strategy. Candidates undervalue the strategy of displaying skills in front of experts due to the empathy gap that they neglect the pride experienced by experts. Consequently, candidates mistakenly avoid displaying skills in front of experts and thus miss the chance to earn admission. Besides, we offer a feasible approach to reduce such a bias. Our findings encourage candidates to empathize with evaluators and strategically perform to experts.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The recognition of the intentions of observed actions or behaviors is an important social function in the human visual system. Previous research has invested much effort into understanding how the human vision system recognizes object-directed intentions of actions (i.e., actions are implemented to approach physical objects without influencing others). However, actions are also directed to social entities or agents to impact others, which is defined as social intentions (or social interaction intentions).This study aimed to investigate how vision systems recognize social intentions. For the purpose of demonstrating that individuals involved in social interaction are rational and should maximize the utility of actions overall, this paper proposes the hypothesis that when the costs of Agent A helping Agent B to achieve the goal state are less than the costs of Agent B acting alone to achieve this goal state (i.e., cue of minimizing cost), these two agents are recognized with social intentions.To test the above hypothesis, we manipulated the theory of minimizing costs by presenting cartoonized animations that depict how two agents move and influence each other. Specifically, a movable Agent A placed an apple in front of Agent B, who is always stationary. In front of Agent B, a fence was either set in place or not, to operationalize the costs of Agent B achieving the target (i.e., the apple). In this case, when a fence was placed in front of Agent B, his path of achieving the target was blocked; accordingly, when Agent A pushed the apple to the front of Agent B and helped Agent B achieve the target, the costs of Agent B (i.e., path) to achieve the target were less than when Agent B achieved the target alone. However, when there was no fence in front of Agent B, the costs of Agent B achieving the target alone were less than the costs of Agent A helping Agent B to achieve the target. In brief, only when there was a fence in front of Agent B, the actions of Agent A in placing the apple in front of Agent B aligns with the information of minimizing costs, and can be recognized as a social intention; when there was no fence in front of Agent B, the object-directed intention should be attributed, as Agent A approached the target of the apple. To identify the recognized intentions of actions, we measured μ suppression (electroencephalogram oscillations within the 8~13 Hz range in the sensorimotor regions; namely, C3 and C4 channels) related to action understanding. It was suggested that the functional grouping of two individuals in social intentions should induce greater suppression of the representation of individual object-directed actions. To strictly control for the possible low-level differences, the action of Agent A, placing the apple in front of Agent B (i.e., transferring action) was paired with the action of Agent A, placing the apple in front of a stone (i.e., disposing action), which was typically recognized as an object-directed intention, whether the fence was present or not. Each action lasted two seconds, and participants were asked to count the fillers (i.e., incomplete actions) when watching the actions presented on the screen.In Experiment 1, when the fence was present in front of Agent B, the transferring action (M = -17.3% relative to the baseline) induced more μ suppression than the disposing action (M = -8.5%). More importantly, the occipital α with the same frequency band as μ was not modulated by the action type, but this component was suggested to be functional with attentional mechanisms. These results were further confirmed by cluster-based permutation tests without selecting the channels of interest. In Experiment 2, to test whether the effect in Experiment 1 was dependent upon the information of minimizing costs, the fence was removed and accordingly, the critical information was absent. We found that the difference in μ suppression between transferring and disposing actions was insignificant when the fence was not present.To further test the hypothesis proposed in this study, we used a behavioral indicator (i.e., measuring the sensitivity of changes). We manipulated the information of minimizing costs, as in Experiments 1 and 2, but participants engaged in a change detection task. In this task, a set of identical actions were memorized in sequence and participants were required to detect whether anything changed in the test animation compared to those previously memorized. It has been suggested that chunking results in more efficient processing of the configuration (e.g., encoding of interactants’ identity), but involves a cost for the individual parts within it, resulting in a memory confusion effect. Hence, if Agent A is perceived as having a social intention toward Agent B, they should be chunked in memory. Accordingly, participants would be less likely to detect changes within the interaction (i.e., the roles of Agents A and B in an interaction were swapped during the test; defined as role swap), but would be more likely to detect changes in pair composition (i.e., the recipient in an interaction was replaced by the recipient from another interaction, defined as structure change) relative to kinematically identical non-social transferring actions.It was found that in Experiment 3a, when the fence was placed in front of Agent B in the role swap condition, participants were more sensitive to such change in the disposing action (M = 1.97, SE = 0.25) than to the transferring action (M =1.38, SE = 0.24); by contrast, in the structure change condition, the sensitivity of detecting such change in the transferring action (M = 2.04, SE = 0.21) was higher than that of the disposing action (M = 1.51, SE = 0.23). In Experiment 3b, when there was no fence in front of Agent B, participants were even more sensitive to the role swap change than the structure change, but it was not influenced by the action type.It has been widely suggested that the disposing action is attributed to an object-directed intention (i.e., regardless of whether the fence was present or not) and the recognized social intention should induce greater suppression and higher sensitivity for a structure change and lower sensitivity for a role swap change than the recognized object-directed intention. Hence, we concluded that the results, in which the transferring action induced more μ suppression and higher sensitivity for a structure change and lower sensitivity for a role swap change than the disposing action (i.e., when the fence was present), were attributed to the fact that the transferring action was recognized as having a social intention. However, this recognition depends on the information of minimizing costs; otherwise, the difference in μ suppression and different sensitivities of changes between transferring and disposing actions would be observed as well, when the fence was not present. Hence, this study provides solid evidence that when the costs of Agent A helping Agent B to achieve the goal state are less than the costs of Agent B acting alone to achieve this goal state (i.e., minimizing costs), they are recognized with social intentions.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： In the current age, employees are expected to work proactively in workplaces where the organizational structure is flatter and knowledge updating becomes faster than ever. There is a growing consensus on the importance of proactive behaviors from both scholars and practitioners. Proactive behavior, defined as “an anticipatory action that employees take to impact themselves and/or their environments” is thought to be self-initiated, future-oriented and change-oriented. Evidence showed that employees’ proactive behavior is beneficial for both individual performance and organizational competitiveness. Existing research regarding the impacts of proactive behavior mainly focuses on effectiveness of employees’ own proactive behaviors, such as promoting their job satisfaction or organizational commitment. However, no one is an isolated island. In a team or an organizational environment, employees’ attitudes and behaviors will inevitably be affected by their coworkers. Accordingly, this study focused on coworker proactive behavior and discussed its effectiveness in stimulating employees’ job performance. Drawing upon social learning theory, we hypothesized employee autonomous motivation will mediate the relationship between coworker proactive behavior and employee job performance. We further assumed that whether an employee possesses highly proactive personality determines the odds that employees might be motivated by their proactive coworkers. These hypotheses were tested with a field sample of supervisor-employee dyads and an experimental study. For the field study, we conducted a three-wave research design and achieved 209 valid samples from employees and their supervisors in two high-tech enterprises based in Beijing and Hebei provinces. At Time 1, employees assessed their proactive personality and their coworkers’ proactive behavior, and provided their demographic information. At Time 2 (one month after Time 1), employees were asked to report their autonomous motivation. At Time 3 (two months after Time 1), supervisors provided performance evaluation of employees who engaged in the survey. For the experimental study, we recruited 86 full-time workers from a high-tech company located in Hebei province via its internal communication channel. These respondents were separated into two groups randomly, namely coworkers with high proactive behaviors (N = 74) and coworkers with low proactive behaviors (N = 76). First, respondents were asked to finish a measure of their proactive personality and report their demographics. Then, they were given a scenario, one of which depicted a situation where coworkers were proactive (or not proactive). Finally, after reading the scenario, respondents finished a manipulation check of coworker proactive behavior and reported the degree of their autonomous motivation. We applied confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis and mixed model via SPSS 23 and Mplus 7.4 to analyze the data. Empirical results supported our hypotheses and indicated the following: (1) Coworker proactive behavior had a significant positive effect on employee autonomous motivation; (2) Employee autonomous motivation played a mediating role in the relationship between coworker proactive behavior and employee job performance; (3) Employee proactive personality played a moderating role in the relationship between coworker proactive behavior and employee autonomous motivation, such that coworker proactive behavior was positively related employee autonomous motivation when employees’ proactive personality was high, while such relationship became negative when employees’ proactive personality was low. This study makes several theoretical and managerial implications. First, by investigating the effectiveness of coworker proactive behavior, this study offers a new insight in proactive behavior research by incorporating the influence of coworker into consideration. Second, by examining the mediating role of employee autonomous motivation, this study enhances our understanding of how coworker proactive behavior translates into employee job performance. Third, by exploring the contingent role of employee proactive personality, this study shows the boundary condition under which employees are more likely to be motivated by their proactive coworkers.
Hits
Hits
Downloads
Comment