scholarly journals Motivational effects on empathic choices

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda M Ferguson ◽  
Daryl Cameron ◽  
Michael Inzlicht
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Social Reward ◽  
Null Results ◽  
Subjective Value ◽  
Context Specific

Empathy often feels automatic, but variations in empathic responding suggest that, at least some of the time, empathy is affected by one’s motivation to empathize in any particular circumstance. Here, we show that people can be motivated to engage in (or avoid) empathy-eliciting situations with strangers, and that these decisions are driven by subjective value-based estimations of the costs (e.g., cognitive effort) and benefits (e.g., social reward) inherent to empathizing. Across seven experiments (overall N = 1,348), and replicating previous work (Cameron et al., 2019), we found a robust empathy avoidance effect. We also find support for the hypothesis that individuals can be motivated to opt-in to situations requiring empathy that they would otherwise avoid. Participants were more likely to opt into empathy-eliciting situations if 1) they were incentivized monetarily for doing so (Experiments 1a and 1b), and 2) if a more familiar and liked empathy target was available (Experiments 2a and 2b). Framing empathy as explicitly related to one’s moral character and reputation did not motivate participants to engage in empathy (Experiment 3a and 3c), though these null results may be due to a weak manipulation. These findings suggest that empathy can be motivated in multiple ways, and is a process driven by context-specific value-based decision making.

scholarly journals Sources of confidence in value-based choice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Polania
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Metacognitive Awareness ◽  
Decision Quality ◽  
Comparison Process ◽  
Immediate Feedback ◽  
Computational Framework ◽  
Decision Behavior ◽  
Economic Choice ◽  
Subjective Value

"Which meal would you like, chicken or pasta? Chicken please. ...hmmm not sure. No sorry, I prefer pasta". Confidence, the subjective estimate of decision quality, is an essential component of decision making. It is necessary for learning from mistakes in the absence of immediate feedback and guiding future actions. Despite its importance, it remains unclear where confidence judgments originate from, especially for decisions that rely on individual subjective values and preferences. Here, we devised a behavioural paradigm and a computational framework that allowed us to formally tease apart the sources of confidence in value-based decisions. In line with canonical decision theories, we found that trial-to-trial fluctuations in the precision of value encoding impact economic choice consistency. Surprisingly, however, and contrary to canonical theories of confidence, this uncertainty has no influence on confidence reports. Instead, we find that confidence reflects the degree of balance and cognitive effort with which the choice alternatives have been compared. Specifically, we show that confidence emerges from endogenous attentional effort towards choice alternatives and down-stream noise in the comparison process. These findings caution a direct translation of canonical frameworks of confidence based on perceptual decision behavior into the value-based choice domain. In addition our computational framework provides an explanation for confidence miss-attributions in economic behaviour and reveals the mechanistic interplay of endogenous attentional states and subjective value for guiding decisions and metacognitive awareness.

Cognitive Processing of Miscommunication in Interactive Listening: An Evaluation of Listener Indecision and Cognitive Effort

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Roche ◽  
Arkady Zgonnikov ◽  
Laura M. Morett
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Mouse Tracking ◽  
Computer Mouse ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Computer Mouse Tracking ◽  
Listening Task ◽  
Processing Effort

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the social and cognitive underpinnings of miscommunication during an interactive listening task. Method An eye and computer mouse–tracking visual-world paradigm was used to investigate how a listener's cognitive effort (local and global) and decision-making processes were affected by a speaker's use of ambiguity that led to a miscommunication. Results Experiments 1 and 2 found that an environmental cue that made a miscommunication more or less salient impacted listener language processing effort (eye-tracking). Experiment 2 also indicated that listeners may develop different processing heuristics dependent upon the speaker's use of ambiguity that led to a miscommunication, exerting a significant impact on cognition and decision making. We also found that perspective-taking effort and decision-making complexity metrics (computer mouse tracking) predict language processing effort, indicating that instances of miscommunication produced cognitive consequences of indecision, thinking, and cognitive pull. Conclusion Together, these results indicate that listeners behave both reciprocally and adaptively when miscommunications occur, but the way they respond is largely dependent upon the type of ambiguity and how often it is produced by the speaker.

Perceived Affordances and Regret in Online Travel Agencies

2021 ◽  
pp. 004728752110149
Author(s):  
Hwirim Jo ◽  
Namho Chung ◽  
Sunyoung Hlee ◽  
Chulmo Koo
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Regulatory Focus ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Impulsive Buying ◽  
Travel Agencies ◽  
Effective Decision Making ◽  
Online Travel ◽  
Online Travel Agencies

Despite the revolutionary system of online booking, the decision-making process for booking hotels is still very stressful for customers, who face much uncertainty. The wide range of products and great volume of information result in significant cognitive overload. Therefore, online travel agencies (OTAs) try to reduce customers’ cognitive effort requirements and to induce effective decision making by triggering potential actions through perceived affordance. This study aims to explore the influence of perceived affordance on purchase decisions and postpurchase emotion in the context of OTAs. The findings show that explicit affordance and hidden affordance significantly affect impulsive buying, thus resulting in postpurchase discomfort and regret. Additionally, the outcomes of a multiple group analysis revealed a significant moderating effect of regulatory focus orientation on impulsive buying and postpurchase regret during an overall purchase process involving OTAs.

Generating Options and Choosing Between Them Depend on Distinct Forms of Value Representation

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110057
Author(s):  
Adam Morris ◽  
Jonathan Phillips ◽  
Karen Huang ◽  
Fiery Cushman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Real World ◽  
Hybrid Architecture ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Enormous Number ◽  
Value Representation

Humans have a remarkable capacity for flexible decision-making, deliberating among actions by modeling their likely outcomes. This capacity allows us to adapt to the specific features of diverse circumstances. In real-world decision-making, however, people face an important challenge: There are often an enormous number of possibilities to choose among, far too many for exhaustive consideration. There is a crucial, understudied prechoice step in which, among myriad possibilities, a few good candidates come quickly to mind. How do people accomplish this? We show across nine experiments ( N = 3,972 U.S. residents) that people use computationally frugal cached value estimates to propose a few candidate actions on the basis of their success in past contexts (even when irrelevant for the current context). Deliberative planning is then deployed just within this set, allowing people to compute more accurate values on the basis of context-specific criteria. This hybrid architecture illuminates how typically valuable thoughts come quickly to mind during decision-making.

scholarly journals Social work in municipalities

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Rolv Lyngstad
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Wide Sense ◽  
Professional Discretion ◽  
Local Decision ◽  
Local Discretion ◽  
Specific Meaning ◽  
Local Decision Making ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
The Relationship

The point of departure of this article is contemporary changes in the relationship between national and local decision making in the Norwegian political system. The last decades’ centralization tendencies seem to be challenged by a “new” emphasis on local discretion, and the article discusses how this will affect social work in municipalities. The changes are contested and controversial and allude to questions such as how much discretion should be given to local decision makers in the name of local democracy, and how much difference should be accepted in the name of diversity? The article argues that professional social work must be context-specific, meaning that in a wide sense local knowledge is a prerequisite for good social work. Devolution and local political and professional discretion are necessary in many cases, but not sufficient in themselves as conditions for success. Professional social workers will encounter a lot of difficult dilemmas arousing from issues related to the equality/liberty debate and the diversity/difference/equality debate in social work discourses. In order to approach these dilemmas, more of a focus on local deliberation and place shaping, in combination with a social work focus on democratic professionalism, is necessary. If this is done successfully, devolution and a recapturing of local discretion and decision-making power will empower clients as well as professionals. Thus, current changes in the relationship between different levels of decision making will enlarge the possibilities for professional social work in the municipalities.

scholarly journals Butt-dialing the devil: Evil agents are expected to disregard intentions behind requests

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Joy Dunk ◽  
Brandon W. Goulding ◽  
Jonathan Albert Fugelsang ◽  
Ori Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil

Evil supernatural beings are often depicted as responding to unintended requests, whereas this may be less common in representations of good supernatural beings. This asymmetry suggests that people may expect good and evil agents to differ in their sensitivity to other people's intentions. We investigated this proposal across five experiments on 2231 adult US residents. In Experiments 1 to 4, participants judged whether good or evil agents would grant requests from individuals who varied in their understanding of what they requested, and in whether they executed requests correctly. Across experiments, the good and evil agents were either supernatural beings or regular humans. Participants predicted good agents would be sensitive to intentions behind requests, but predicted evil agents would be comparatively insensitive to these intentions. In some experiments, they also predicted that evil agents would be more sensitive to whether requests were executed correctly. In Experiment 5, participants rated explanations for why an agent would grant a request from someone who did not understand what they were requesting. Participants thought evil agents might grant such requests because they are indifferent to the others' intentions, but participants did not strongly endorse this explanation for good agents. Taken together, our findings suggest that people have distinct expectations of how moral character affects decision-making. They also suggest that people's beliefs about good and evil supernatural beings may be grounded in their views of ordinary humans.

Target Detection by Opponent Coding in Monkey Prefrontal Cortex

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 751-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Makoto Kusunoki ◽  
Natasha Sigala ◽  
Hamed Nili ◽  
David Gaffan ◽  
John Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Target Detection ◽  
Neural Model ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Stimulus Category ◽  
Flexible Control ◽  
Cell Groups ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Monkey Prefrontal Cortex

The pFC plays a key role in flexible, context-specific decision making. One proposal [Machens, C. K., Romo, R., & Brody, C. D. Flexible control of mutual inhibition: A neural model of two-interval discrimination. Science, 307, 1121–1124, 2005] is that prefrontal cells may be dynamically organized into opponent coding circuits, with competitive groups of cells coding opposite behavioral decisions. Here, we show evidence for extensive, temporally evolving opponent organization in the monkey pFC during a cued target detection task. More than a half of all randomly selected cells discriminated stimulus category in this task. The largest set showed target-positive activity, with the strongest responses to the current target, intermediate activity for a nontarget that was a target on other trials, and lowest activity for nontargets never associated with the target category. Second most frequent was a reverse, antitarget pattern. In the ventrolateral frontal cortex, opponent organization was strongly established in phasic responses at stimulus onset; later, such activity was widely spread across dorsolateral and ventrolateral sites. Task-specific organization into opponent cell groups may be a general feature of prefrontal decision making.

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