Harnessing Moral Psychology to Reduce Meat Consumption

How can we make moral progress on factory farming? Part of the answer lies in human moral psychology. Meat consumption remains high, despite increased awareness of its negative impact on animal welfare. Weakness of will is part of the explanation: acceptance of the ethical arguments doesn’t always motivate changes in dietary habits. However, we draw on scientific evidence to argue that many consumers aren’t fully convinced that they morally ought to reduce their meat consumption. We then identify two key psychological mechanisms—motivated reasoning and social proof—that lead people to resist the ethical reasons. Finally, we show how to harness these psychological mechanisms to encourage reductions in meat consumption. A central lesson for moral progress generally is that durable social change requires socially-embedded reasoning.

Exploring the role of social proof of credibility and usability for internet banking adoption through media networks

Present study has offered two theoretical models which may helpful to understand the importance of social proof during internet banking (IB) adoption. The existing technology adoption model such as TAM has ignored the importance of social proof of credibility such as risk, security, and privacy. People are actively involved to take recommendations from close sources, experts, customers, and crowd opinion using social media platforms (SMPs). The purpose to gather information is to save from risk, security, and privacy issues especially when customers must share their personal and financial information during IB. It has found that conventional banks have positive word of mouth, recommendations, and reviews therefore the number of IB customers, profitability, and growth is high compared to Islamic banks. Conversely, SMPs have more negative word of mouth and stories which creates social proof regarding the uncertainty and risk in IB adoption. Findings highlights that people have social trust, confidence, and believe in their close sources and conventional banks.

The Impact of Explanations on Layperson Trust in Artificial Intelligence–Driven Symptom Checker Apps: Experimental Study

Background Artificial intelligence (AI)–driven symptom checkers are available to millions of users globally and are advocated as a tool to deliver health care more efficiently. To achieve the promoted benefits of a symptom checker, laypeople must trust and subsequently follow its instructions. In AI, explanations are seen as a tool to communicate the rationale behind black-box decisions to encourage trust and adoption. However, the effectiveness of the types of explanations used in AI-driven symptom checkers has not yet been studied. Explanations can follow many forms, including why-explanations and how-explanations. Social theories suggest that why-explanations are better at communicating knowledge and cultivating trust among laypeople. Objective The aim of this study is to ascertain whether explanations provided by a symptom checker affect explanatory trust among laypeople and whether this trust is impacted by their existing knowledge of disease. Methods A cross-sectional survey of 750 healthy participants was conducted. The participants were shown a video of a chatbot simulation that resulted in the diagnosis of either a migraine or temporal arteritis, chosen for their differing levels of epidemiological prevalence. These diagnoses were accompanied by one of four types of explanations. Each explanation type was selected either because of its current use in symptom checkers or because it was informed by theories of contrastive explanation. Exploratory factor analysis of participants’ responses followed by comparison-of-means tests were used to evaluate group differences in trust. Results Depending on the treatment group, two or three variables were generated, reflecting the prior knowledge and subsequent mental model that the participants held. When varying explanation type by disease, migraine was found to be nonsignificant (P=.65) and temporal arteritis, marginally significant (P=.09). Varying disease by explanation type resulted in statistical significance for input influence (P=.001), social proof (P=.049), and no explanation (P=.006), with counterfactual explanation (P=.053). The results suggest that trust in explanations is significantly affected by the disease being explained. When laypeople have existing knowledge of a disease, explanations have little impact on trust. Where the need for information is greater, different explanation types engender significantly different levels of trust. These results indicate that to be successful, symptom checkers need to tailor explanations to each user’s specific question and discount the diseases that they may also be aware of. Conclusions System builders developing explanations for symptom-checking apps should consider the recipient’s knowledge of a disease and tailor explanations to each user’s specific need. Effort should be placed on generating explanations that are personalized to each user of a symptom checker to fully discount the diseases that they may be aware of and to close their information gap.

Analisis Metode Penggalangan Intelijen Dalam Penerapan Program Deradikalisasi oleh BNPT

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui dan menganalisis bentuk dari program deradikalisasi yang dilakukan oleh Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Terorisme (BNPT). Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kualitatif deskriptif dengan menggunakan analisis penggalangan intelijen. Teknik pengumpulan data yang dilakukan dalam penelitian ini adalah dengan wawancara narasumber dan studi literatur. Analisa dan pengolahan data dalam penelitian ini menggunakan model triangulasi data untuk memastikan keabsahan data yang didapatkan dari narasumber satu dengan lainnya dan dari studi literatur. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa program deradikalisasi yang dilakukan oleh BNPT baik yang ada di dalam lapas dan di luar lapas menggunakan penggalangan intelijen dengan metode RASCLS (Reciprocation, Authority, Scarcity, Commitment, Liking, Social Proof) dan MICE (Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego) namun tidak secara keseluruhan. Metode Scarcity dan Coercion tidak digunakan dalam program deradikalisasi karena tujuan deradikalisasi adalah melakukan pembinaan, pendampingan, dan pemberdayaan dengan hati ke hati bukan untuk membuat target (narapidana terorisme dan mantan narapidana terorisme) menjadi susah dan dipaksa.

EXPRESS: The Effect of Slow Motion Video on Consumer Inference

Video advertisements often show actors and influence agents consuming and enjoying products in slow motion. By prolonging depictions of influence agents’ consumption utility, slow motion cinematographic effects ostensibly enhance social proof and signal product qualities that are otherwise difficult to infer visually (e.g., pleasant tastes, smells, haptic sensations, etc.). Seven studies including an eye-tracking study, a Facebook Ads field experiment, and lab and online experiments—all using real ads across diverse contexts—demonstrate that slow motion (vs. natural speed) can backfire and undercut product appeal by making the influence agent’s behavior seem more intentional and extrinsically motivated. The authors rule out several alternative explanations by showing that the effect attenuates for individuals with lower intentionality bias, is mitigated under cognitive load, and reverses when ads use non-human influence agents. The authors conclude by highlighting the potential for cross-pollination between visual information processing and social cognition research, particularly in contexts such as persuasion and trust, and discuss managerial implications for visual marketing, especially on digital and social platforms.

Theory of Social Proof and Legal Compliance: A Socio-Cognitive Explanation for Regulatory (Non) Compliance

Challenging the assumption of perfect legal knowledge, this Article employs social psychology to better understand how individuals make decisions about legal compliance under imperfect information conditions. It adapts the informational aspects of “social influence conception of criminal deterrence” to regulatory compliance at large. However, it conceptualizes social influence as more than just “visible deterrence.” Social Psychology helps us to understand who, how many, and what kind of behaviors constitute adequate social proof to guide an individual’s decision on compliance. Additionally, the interaction of social proof and legal compliance is considered within a dynamic framework in relation to specific rules and across the system. Within this framework, compliance/non-compliance cascades across different rules and can create a perception about legal compliance at large, which in turn guides initial expectations with respect to new laws. Over time, this can create high/low compliance equilibriums within which societies operate. Understanding this informational role that social influence plays in legal compliance can further our understanding of what motivates compliance, the potency of the expressive functions of law in societies operating within different compliance equilibriums, and inform policy discussions on how to improve compliance—both voluntary and through sanction/incentives.

How social engineers use persuasion principles during vishing attacks

Purpose This study aims to examine how social engineers use persuasion principles during vishing attacks. Design/methodology/approach In total, 86 examples of real-world vishing attacks were found in articles and videos. Each example was coded to determine which persuasion principles were present in that attack and how they were implemented, i.e. what specific elements of the attack contributed to the presence of each persuasion principle. Findings Authority (A), social proof (S) and distraction (D) were the most widely used persuasion principles in vishing attacks, followed by liking, similarity and deception (L). These four persuasion principles occurred in a majority of vishing attacks, while commitment, reciprocation and consistency (C) did not. Further, certain sets of persuasion principles (i.e. authority, distraction, liking, similarity, and deception and social proof; , authority, commitment, reciprocation, and consistency, distraction, liking, similarity and deception, and social proof; and authority, distraction and social proof) were used more than others. It was noteworthy that despite their similarities, those sets of persuasion principles were implemented in different ways, and certain specific ways of implementing certain persuasion principles (e.g. vishers claiming to have authority over the victim) were quite rare. Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate how social engineers use persuasion principles during vishing attacks. As such, it provides important insight into how social engineers implement vishing attacks and lays a critical foundation for future research investigating the psychological aspects of vishing attacks. The present results have important implications for vishing countermeasures and education.