Alle Publikationen
2019
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(2019): Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements. In: Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society 20 (1), S. 1-68. DOI: 10.1177/1529100619832930
DOI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6640856 Abstract: It is commonly assumed that a person's emotional state can be readily inferred from his or her facial movements, typically called emotional expressions or facial expressions. This assumption influences legal judgments, policy decisions, national security protocols, and educational practices; guides the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness, as well as the development of commercial applications; and pervades everyday social interactions as well as research in other scientific fields such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and computer vision. In this article, we survey examples of this widespread assumption, which we refer to as the common view, and we then examine the scientific evidence that tests this view, focusing on the six most popular emotion categories used by consumers of emotion research: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The available scientific evidence suggests that people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad, scowl when angry, and so on, as proposed by the common view, more than what would be expected by chance. Yet how people communicate anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise varies substantially across cultures, situations, and even across people within a single situation. Furthermore, similar configurations of facial movements variably express instances of more than one emotion category. In fact, a given configuration of facial movements, such as a scowl, often communicates something other than an emotional state. Scientists agree that facial movements convey a range of information and are important for social communication, emotional or otherwise. But our review suggests an urgent need for research that examines how people actually move their faces to express emotions and other social information in the variety of contexts that make up everyday life, as well as careful study of the mechanisms by which people perceive instances of emotion in one another. We make specific research recommendations that will yield a more valid picture of how people move their faces to express emotions and how they infer emotional meaning from facial movements in situations of everyday life. This research is crucial to provide consumers of emotion research with the translational information they require.
2018
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(2018) : Culture and peer relationships. In: Bukowski, William Michael; Laursen, Brett; Rubin, Kenneth H. (Hg.): Handbook of peer interactions, relationships, and groups.: New York: Guilford Press, S. 552-570
Abstract: Over the past several decades, there has been increased interest in culture and children’s peer relationships. The findings from various research programs have clearly indicated that cultural contexts play a significant role in shaping children’s experiences in peer interactions and relationships. Cultural beliefs and values provide guidance for how peers judge and evaluate specific behaviors that children display in interactions. Social judgments and evaluations, in turn, serve to regulate children’s behaviors and eventually affect their developmental outcomes. In addition to social evaluation and regulation processes, culture determines, in part, the features and functions of dyadic and group relationships. In this chapter, we review and discuss the issues involved in the study of cultural diversity as it relates to peer interactions and relationships. The main theme of the chapter is the understanding of cultural involvement in the organization of peer relationsh ips. We first discuss various theoretical issues concerning cultural values, children’s social functioning, and peer relationships. Then we review the literature on children’s social behaviors in peer interactions in different cultural contexts. In the following sections, we review and discuss how cultural factors may be involved in determining the structural and functional features of friendships, peer groups, and popularity. Our chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions in the study of culture and peer relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved) zitiert von 42
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(2018) : Into the wild: Big data analytics in moral psychology. In: Gray, Kurt James; Graham, Jesse (Hg.): Atlas of moral psychology: What do we evaluate when we evaluate moral character? - Helzer, Erik G.; Critcher, Clayton R.: New York, NY: The Guilford Press, S. 525-536, zuletzt geprüft am 25.04.2018
Abstract: How can we investigate moral values in the real world? We propose that naturally generated linguistic data, such as social media content, can be used to study morality outside of the laboratory. Moral values are culturally variable entities that emerge from dynamic, hierarchical interactions between individual- and group level phenomena. Human-generated unstructured data from sources such as social media offer an unprecedented opportunity to observe these phenomena in a natural habitat, which is an essential vantage point for understanding moral values and their role in moral judgment and behavior. We believe it is vital that researchers supplement traditional methodologies with alternative approaches that have greater ecological and external validity and that are better able to capture the full social–functional range of morality. In this chapter, we argue that a range of computationally intensive methods, drawn predominantly from computer science and computational linguistics , can help researchers do just this. By mining psychologically relevant information from large-scale, human-generated, online data such as blog posts, news articles, tweets, Facebook status updates, and social network structures—collectively referred to as 'big data'—researchers can use these methods to investigate morally relevant phenomena in the real world. These methods enable researchers to investigate large-scale, diachronic moral phenomena such as the diffusion of moral values through populations and the moralization of specific topics. They also offer researchers new opportunities to investigate the relationship between moral values and moral behavior, which is both notoriously difficult to study in the laboratory and deeply important for understanding how morality functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved) zitiert von: 2
Keywords: Data Mining, Medien, Interaktionsforschung, Moral, Judgment, Morality, social media, VALUES -
(2018): The role of a "common is moral" heuristic in the stability and change of moral norms. In: Journal of experimental psychology. General 147 (2), S. 228-242. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000365
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28891657 Abstract: Moral norms are fundamental for virtually all social interactions, including cooperation. Moral norms develop and change, but the mechanisms underlying when, and how, such changes occur are not well-described by theories of moral psychology. We tested, and confirmed, the hypothesis that the commonness of an observed behavior consistently influences its moral status, which we refer to as the common is moral (CIM) heuristic. In 9 experiments, we used an experimental model of dynamic social interaction that manipulated the commonness of altruistic and selfish behaviors to examine the change of peoples' moral judgments. We found that both altruistic and selfish behaviors were judged as more moral, and less deserving of punishment, when common than when rare, which could be explained by a classical formal model (social impact theory) of behavioral conformity. Furthermore, judgments of common versus rare behaviors were faster, indicating that they were computationally more efficient. Finally, we used agent-based computer simulations to investigate the endogenous population dynamics predicted to emerge if individuals use the CIM heuristic, and found that the CIM heuristic is sufficient for producing 2 hallmarks of real moral norms; stability and sudden changes. Our results demonstrate that commonness shapes our moral psychology through mechanisms similar to behavioral conformity with wide implications for understanding the stability and change of moral norms. (PsycINFO Database Record zitiert von: 1
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(2018): Supplemental Material for Unethical and Inept?. The Influence of Moral Information on Perceptions of Competence. In: Journal of personality and social psychology, S. 195-210. DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000097.supp
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000097.supp Abstract: While moral character heavily influences global evaluations of others (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014), its causal effect on perceptions of others’ competence (i.e., one’s knowledge, skills, and abilities) is less clear. We found that people readily use information about another’s morality when judging their competence, despite holding folk intuitions that these domains are independent. Across 6 studies (n = 1,567), including 2 preregistered experiments, participants judged targets who committed hypothetical transgressions (Studies 1 and 3), cheated on lab tasks (Study 2), acted selfishly in economic games (Study 4), and received low morality ratings from coworkers (Study 5 and 6) as less competent than control or moral targets. These findings were specific to morality and were not the result of incidentally manipulating impressions of warmth (Study 4), nor were they fully explained by a general halo effect (Studies 2 and 3). We hypothesized that immoral targets are seen as less competent because their immoral actions led them to be viewed as low in social intelligence. Studies 4 and 5 supported this prediction, demonstrating that social intelligence was a more reliable mediator than perceptions of self-control or general intelligence. An experimental test of this mediation argument found that presenting targets as highly socially intelligent eliminated the negative effect of immoral information on judgments of competence (Study 6). These results suggest that information about a person’s moral character readily influences perceptions of their competence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
2017
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(2017): Moral learning. Psychological and philosophical perspectives. In: Cognition 167, S. 1-10. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.06.008
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28629599 Abstract: The past 15years occasioned an extraordinary blossoming of research into the cognitive and affective mechanisms that support moral judgment and behavior. This growth in our understanding of moral mechanisms overshadowed a crucial and complementary question, however: How are they learned? As this special issue of the journal Cognition attests, a new crop of research into moral learning has now firmly taken root. This new literature draws on recent advances in formal methods developed in other domains, such as Bayesian inference, reinforcement learning and other machine learning techniques. Meanwhile, it also demonstrates how learning and deciding in a social domain-and especially in the moral domain-sometimes involves specialized cognitive systems. We review the contributions to this special issue and situate them within the broader contemporary literature. Our review focuses on how we learn moral values and moral rules, how we learn about personal moral character and relationships, and the philosophical implications of these emerging models.
Keywords: Cognition, Judgment, Kognitionswissenschaften, Lerntheorien, Moral, Morals, Philosophy, PSYCHOLOGY, science direct -
(2017): Supplemental Material for Consequences, Norms, and Generalized Inaction in Moral Dilemmas. The CNI Model of Moral Decision-Making. In: Journal of personality and social psychology, S. 343-376. DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000086.supp
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000086.supp Abstract: Research on moral dilemma judgments has been fundamentally shaped by the distinction between utilitarianism and deontology. According to the principle of utilitarianism, the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consequences; the principle of deontology states that the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consistency with moral norms. To identify the processes underlying utilitarian and deontological judgments, researchers have investigated responses to moral dilemmas that pit one principle against the other (e.g., trolley problem). However, the conceptual meaning of responses in this paradigm is ambiguous, because the central aspects of utilitarianism and deontology—consequences and norms—are not manipulated. We illustrate how this shortcoming undermines theoretical interpretations of empirical findings and describe an alternative approach that resolves the ambiguities of the traditional paradigm. Expanding on this approach, we present a multinom ial model that allows researchers to quantify sensitivity to consequences (C), sensitivity to moral norms (N), and general preference for inaction versus action irrespective of consequences and norms (I) in responses to moral dilemmas. We present 8 studies that used this model to investigate the effects of gender, cognitive load, question framing, and psychopathy on moral dilemma judgments. The findings obtained with the proposed CNI model offer more nuanced insights into the determinants of moral dilemma judgments, calling for a reassessment of dominant theoretical assumptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved) zitiert von: 3
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(2017): Personal greetings: Personalizing robot utterances based on novelty of observed behavior. In: International Journal of Social Robotics 9 (2), S. 181-198. DOI: 10.1007/s12369-016-0385-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-016-0385-4 Abstract: One challenge in creating conversational service robots is how to reproduce the kind of individual recognition and attention that a human can provide. We believe that interactions can be made to seem more warm and humanlike by using sensors to observe a person’s behavior or appearance over time, and programming the robot to comment when it observes a novel feature, such as a new hairstyle, or a consistent behavior, such as visiting every afternoon. To create a system capable of recognizing such novelty and typicality, we collected one month of training data from customers in a shopping mall and recorded features of people’s visits, such as time of day and group size. We then trained SVM classifiers to identify each feature as novel, typical, or neither, based on the inputs of a human coder, and we trained an additional classifier to choose an appropriate topic for a personalized greeting. An utterance generator was developed to generate text for the robot to speak, based on the selected topic and sensor data. A cross-validation analysis showed that the trained classifiers could accurately reproduce human novelty judgments with 88% accuracy and topic selection with 95% accuracy. We then deployed a teleoperated robot using this system to greet customers in a shopping mall for three weeks, and we present example interactions and results from interviews showing that customers appreciated the robot’s personalized greetings and felt a sense of familiarity with the robot. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
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(2017): Learning a commonsense moral theory. In: Cognition 167, S. 107-123. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.03.005
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28351662 Abstract: We introduce a computational framework for understanding the structure and dynamics of moral learning, with a focus on how people learn to trade off the interests and welfare of different individuals in their social groups and the larger society. We posit a minimal set of cognitive capacities that together can solve this learning problem: (1) an abstract and recursive utility calculus to quantitatively represent welfare trade-offs; (2) hierarchical Bayesian inference to understand the actions and judgments of others; and (3) meta-values for learning by value alignment both externally to the values of others and internally to make moral theories consistent with one's own attachments and feelings. Our model explains how children can build from sparse noisy observations of how a small set of individuals make moral decisions to a broad moral competence, able to support an infinite range of judgments and decisions that generalizes even to people they have never met and situations they have not been in or observed. It also provides insight into the causes and dynamics of moral change across time, including cases when moral change can be rapidly progressive, changing values significantly in just a few generations, and cases when it is likely to move more slowly. zitiert von: 7
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(2017): Power increases anchoring effects on judgment. In: Social Cognition 35 (1), S. 40-53
Abstract: Four experiments test the impact of power (vs powerlessness) on anchoring effects. Anchoring refers to the tendency to assimilate one's judgment to a previously considered numeric standard. Based on the notion that power facilitates the activation of and reliance on accessible information, it is hypothesized that power increases numeric anchoring effects on judgment, compared to powerlessness. Across studies, consistent support for this idea was found: when testing estimations of factual values (Experiments 1 and 2), subjective evaluations (Experiment 3), and negotiation behavior (Experiment 4). The findings of Studies 2 to 4 qualify the dominant idea in power literature that power reduces conformity to others' opinion. Power increases conformity to others' opinion, if such opinion is presented as an anchor and therefore processed more automatically. These findings also have important methodological implications for power research. They show that differences in stimulus presentation can steer observed effects of power in opposite directions.
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(2017) : Entwicklung des moralischen Urteils und der moralischen Motivation In: Sautermeister, Jochen; Ethik, Münchner Kompetenz Zentrum (Hg.): Moralpsychologie: Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven: Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag (Ethik im Diskurs), S. 108-124
Abstract: Die Entwicklung des moralischen Urteils und der moralischen Motivation wird zusammenfassend dargestellt. Im Einzelnen betreffen die Ausführungen folgende Aspekte: das kindliche Moralverständnis, moralisches Wissen, moralische Motivation, auf die Moral bezogene Lernprozesse, die Entwicklung moralischer Motivation, die Entwicklung kognitiver Strukturen, die soziokognitive Strukturentwicklung, das Zusammenspiel von Motivation und Urteil (moralische Sensibilität, moralische Haltung), moralpsychologische Forschungsdesiderate. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass nach der neueren Forschung Kohlbergs Theorie Dimensionen bündelt, die unabhängig voneinander variieren können - moralisches Wissen und moralische Motivation, Entwicklung kognitiver und soziokognitiver Denkstrukturen, bereichsspezifische Wissenssysteme. Bereits Kinder wissen früh um die kategorische Sollgeltung moralischer Normen. Moralische Motivation, ein intrinsisches, formal-urteilbezogenes "second-order desire", entwickelt sich aber erst verzögert. Sie nimmt dann im Durchschnitt stetig zu, wobei allerdings individuelle Verläufe - auch in Abhängigkeit von der Identifikation mit herrschenden Geschlechtsstereotypen - erheblich variieren. Differenzierte moralische Urteilsbildung erfordert die Entwicklung kognitiver und soziokognitiver Strukturen sowie die Bereitschaft zu moralischem Selbstmanagement, also die Bereitschaft, automatisch und unbewusst ablaufende Prozesse vorurteilsgesteuerter Wahrnehmung durch bewusst eingesetzte Gegenstrategien zu kontrollieren.
Keywords: Childhood Development, Development, Judgment, Moral, Moral Development, Morality, Motivation, Social Cognition -
(2017): Variations in judgments of intentional action and moral evaluation across eight cultures. In: Cognition 164, S. 22-30. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.02.012
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28364713 Abstract: Individuals tend to judge bad side effects as more intentional than good side effects (the Knobe or sideeffect effect). Here, we assessed how widespread these findings are by testing eleven adult cohorts of eight highly contrasted cultures on their attributions of intentional action as well as ratings of blame and praise. We found limited generalizability of the original side-effect effect, and even a reversal of the effect in two rural, traditional cultures (Samoa and Vanuatu) where participants were more likely to judge the good side effect as intentional. Three follow-up experiments indicate that this reversal of the side-effect effect is not due to semantics and may be linked to the perception of the status of the protagonist. These results highlight the importance of factoring cultural context in our understanding of moral cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved) zitiert von: 2
Keywords: 80 and over, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Costa Rica, Cross-Cultural Comparison, cross-cultural psychology, Culture, Honduras, Humans, Intention, Intentional action, Judgment, Kognitionswissenschaften, Kulturelle Unterschiede, Kulturforschung, Mexico, Middle Aged, Moral, Moral cognition, Moral evaluation, Morals, Republic of Korea, Samoa, Side-effect effect, Social Perception, United States, Vanuatu, Young Adult -
(2017): Inferences about moral character moderate the impact of consequences on blame and praise. In: Cognition 167, S. 201-211. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.004
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28527671 Abstract: Moral psychology research has highlighted several factors critical for evaluating the morality of another's choice, including the detection of norm-violating outcomes, the extent to which an agent caused an outcome, and the extent to which the agent intended good or bad consequences, as inferred from observing their decisions. However, person-centered accounts of moral judgment suggest that a motivation to infer the moral character of others can itself impact on an evaluation of their choices. Building on this person-centered account, we examine whether inferences about agents' moral character shape the sensitivity of moral judgments to the consequences of agents' choices, and agents' role in the causation of those consequences. Participants observed and judged sequences of decisions made by agents who were either bad or good, where each decision entailed a trade-off between personal profit and pain for an anonymous victim. Across trials we manipulated the magnitude of profit and pain resulting from the agent's decision (consequences), and whether the outcome was caused via action or inaction (causation). Consistent with previous findings, we found that moral judgments were sensitive to consequences and causation. Furthermore, we show that the inferred character of an agent moderated the extent to which people were sensitive to consequences in their moral judgments. Specifically, participants were more sensitive to the magnitude of consequences in judgments of bad agents' choices relative to good agents' choices. We discuss and interpret these findings within a theoretical framework that views moral judgment as a dynamic process at the intersection of attention and social cognition.
Keywords: Choice Behavior, Female, Humans, Judgment, Kognitionswissenschaften, Male, Moral, Morals, science direct, Social Behavior, Social Perception -
(2017): Examining overlap in behavioral and neural representations of morals, facts, and preferences. In: Journal of experimental psychology. General 146 (11), S. 1586-1605. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000350
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28805441 Abstract: Metaethical judgments refer to judgments about the information expressed by moral claims. Moral objectivists generally believe that moral claims are akin to facts, whereas moral subjectivists generally believe that moral claims are more akin to preferences. Evidence from developmental and social psychology has generally favored an objectivist view; however, this work has typically relied on few examples, and analyses have disallowed statistical generalizations beyond these few stimuli. The present work addresses whether morals are represented as fact-like or preference-like, using behavioral and neuroimaging methods, in combination with statistical techniques that can (a) generalize beyond our sample stimuli, and (b) test whether particular item features are associated with neural activity. Behaviorally, and contrary to prior work, morals were perceived as more preference-like than fact-like. Neurally, morals and preferences elicited common magnitudes and spatial patterns of activity, particularly within the dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), a critical region for social cognition. This common DMPFC activity for morals and preferences was present across whole-brain conjunctions, and in individually localized functional regions of interest (targeting the theory of mind network). By contrast, morals and facts did not elicit any neural activity in common. Follow-up item analyses suggested that the activity elicited in common by morals and preferences was explained by their shared tendency to evoke representations of mental states. We conclude that morals are represented as far more subjective than prior work has suggested. This conclusion is consistent with recent theoretical research, which has argued that morality is fundamentally about regulating social relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record zitiert von: 2
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(2017): How "ought" exceeds but implies "can". Description and encouragement in moral judgment. In: Cognition 168, S. 267-275. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.07.008
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28755538 Abstract: This paper tests a theory about the relationship between two important topics in moral philosophy and psychology. One topic is the function of normative language, specifically claims that one "ought" to do something. Do these claims function to describe moral responsibilities, encourage specific behavior, or both? The other topic is the relationship between saying that one "ought" to do something and one's ability to do it. In what respect, if any, does what one "ought" to do exceed what one "can" do? The theory tested here has two parts: (1) "ought" claims function to both describe responsibilities and encourage people to fulfill them (the dual-function hypothesis); (2) the two functions relate differently to ability, because the encouragement function is limited by the person's ability, but the descriptive function is not (the interaction hypothesis). If this theory is correct, then in one respect "ought implies can" is false because people have responsibilities that exceed their abilities. But in another respect "ought implies can" is legitimate because it is not worthwhile to encourage people to do things that exceed their ability. Results from two behavioral experiments support the theory that "ought" exceeds but implies "can." Results from a third experiment provide further evidence regarding an "ought" claim's primary function and how contextual features can affect the interpretation of its functions.
Keywords: Adult, Aged, Female, Humans, Judgment, Kognitionswissenschaften, Male, Middle Aged, Moral, Morals, science direct, Social Behavior, Social Norms, Sprachwissenschaften, Young Adult 2016
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(2016): Moral objectivism across the lifespan. In: Philosophical Psychology 29 (6), S. 912-929. DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2016.1174843
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2016.1174843 Abstract: We report the results of two studies that examine folk metaethical judgments about the objectivity of morality. We found that participants attributed almost as much objectivity to ethical statements as they did to statements of physical fact and significantly more objectivity to ethical statements than to statements about preferences or tastes. In both studies, younger participants attributed less objectivity to ethical statements than older participants. Females were observed to attribute slightly less objectivity to ethical statements than males, and we found important interactions between attributions of objectivity and other factors, such as how strong participants’ moral opinions were and how much disagreement about the issue they perceived to exist within society. We believe our results have significant implications for debates about the nature of folk morality and about the nature of morality in general. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved ) zitiert von 21
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(2016): Which Basic Rules Underlie Social Judgments? Agency Follows a Zero-Sum Principle and Communion Follows a Non-Zero-Sum Principle. In: Personality & social psychology bulletin 42 (5), S. 677-687. DOI: 10.1177/0146167216640902
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27029579 Abstract: How are people who generally see others positively evaluated themselves? We propose that the answer to this question crucially hinges on the content domain: We hypothesize that Agency follows a "zero-sum principle" and therefore people who see others ashighin Agency are perceived aslowin Agency themselves. In contrast, we hypothesize that Communion follows a "non-zero-sum principle" and therefore people who see others ashighin Communion are perceived ashighin Communion themselves. We tested these hypotheses in a round-robin and a half-block study. Perceiving others as agentic was indeed linked to being perceived as low in Agency. To the contrary, perceiving others as communal was linked to being perceived as high in Communion, but only when people directly interacted with each other. These results help to clarify the nature of Agency and Communion and offer explanations for divergent findings in the literature. zitiert von 6
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(2016): Ich, Du, wir und alle anderen. Soziale Entwicklung als moralische Entwicklung. In: P & E 42 (2), S. 10-16
Abstract: Ein kurzer Einblick in zentrale Aspekte der moralischen Entwicklung im Kindesalter und Jugendalter wird gegeben. Nach einer Definition von Moral und Moralitat in einem entwicklungspsychologischen Kontext werden vier Facetten der Entwicklung des Selbst in sozialen Beziehungen skizziert: moralisches Urteil, soziale Perspektivenubernahme, moralische Konzepte und moralische Emotionen. Anhand der kognitiven und emotionalen Moralentwicklung werden verschiedene Herausforderungen beim Erschliessen von Sinn aus sozialen und spezifisch aus moralischen Situationen verdeutlicht.
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(2016): Judging Facial Emotion Expressions in Context. The Influence of Culture and Self-Construal Orientation. In: Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 40 (1), S. 55-64. DOI: 10.1007/s10919-015-0223-7
Abstract: The impact of social context on the judgment of emotional facial expressions as a function of self-construal and decoding rules was assessed. Eighty-seven German and 90 Greek participants rated spontaneous emotional faces shown either alone or surrounded by other faces with congruent or incongruent facial expressions. Greek participants were higher in interdependence than German participants. In line with cultural decoding rules, Greek participants rated anger expressions less intensely and sad and disgust expressions more intensely. Social context affected the ratings by both groups in different ways. In the more interdependent culture (Greece) participants perceived anger least intensely when the group showed neutral expressions, whereas sadness expressions were rated as most intense in the absence of social context. In the independent culture (Germany) a group context (others expressing anger or happiness) additionally amplified the perception of angry and happy expressions. In line with the notion that these effects are mediated by more holistic processing linked to higher interdependence, this difference disappeared when interdependence on the individual level was controlled. The findings confirm the usefulness of considering both country level and individual level factors when studying cultural differences. zitiert von 19
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(2016): Sex Differences in Judgments of Social Desirability. In: Journal of personality 84 (4), S. 423-432. DOI: 10.1111/jopy.12169
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25728192 Abstract: This study evaluates sex differences in the perceived desirability of personality behaviors and beliefs. Men and women (N = 149, Mage = 18.7) judged the social desirability scale values (SDSVs) of 150 personality statements as applied either to a male target or a female target. For comparison, some estimated SDSVs with no target sex specified. A separate sample of 537 respondents endorsed the 150 items via self-report. Raters showed a high consensus in their SDSV judgments within conditions (α = .86 to .90) and no sex-of-rater effects across conditions. Substantial sex-of-target effects (p < .001), however, revealed many behaviors that were viewed as desirable for one sex but not for the other. The behaviors seen as more (less) desirable when applied to men rather than to women were endorsed more (less) by men than by women in the respondent sample. Similar results were found when no target sex was specified for the SDSV ratings, presumably because judges evaluated the behaviors as applied to a target of their own sex. The present results have important implications for the measurement and reporting of SDSVs, the evaluation of substance versus style in self-reports, and the construction of desirability-reduced personality inventories.
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(2016): How prescriptive norms influence causal inferences. In: Cognition 156, S. 164-176. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.07.007
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27591550 Abstract: Recent experimental findings suggest that prescriptive norms influence causal inferences. The cognitive mechanism underlying this finding is still under debate. We compare three competing theories: The culpable control model of blame argues that reasoners tend to exaggerate the causal influence of norm-violating agents, which should lead to relatively higher causal strength estimates for these agents. By contrast, the counterfactual reasoning account of causal selection assumes that norms do not alter the representation of the causal model, but rather later causal selection stages. According to this view, reasoners tend to preferentially consider counterfactual states of abnormal rather than normal factors, which leads to the choice of the abnormal factor in a causal selection task. A third view, the accountability hypothesis, claims that the effects of prescriptive norms are generated by the ambiguity of the causal test question. Asking whether an agent is a cause can be understood as a request to assess her causal contribution but also her moral accountability. According to this theory norm effects on causal selection are mediated by accountability judgments that are not only sensitive to the abnormality of behavior but also to mitigating factors, such as intentionality and knowledge of norms. Five experiments are presented that favor the accountability account over the two alternative theories.
Keywords: Adult, Female, Humans, Judgment, Male, Moral, Moral Obligations, Morals, Normen, Social Norms -
(2016): Intuition and Moral Decision-Making - The Effect of Time Pressure and Cognitive Load on Moral Judgment and Altruistic Behavior. In: PLoS one 11 (10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164012
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0164012 Abstract: Do individuals intuitively favor certain moral actions over others? This study explores the role of intuitive thinking-induced by time pressure and cognitive load-in moral judgment and behavior. We conduct experiments in three different countries (Sweden, Austria, and the United States) involving over 1,400 subjects. All subjects responded to four trolley type dilemmas and four dictator games involving different charitable causes. Decisions were made under time pressure/time delay or while experiencing cognitive load or control. Overall we find converging evidence that intuitive states do not influence moral decisions. Neither time-pressure nor cognitive load had any effect on moral judgments or altruistic behavior. Thus we find no supporting evidence for the claim that intuitive moral judgments and dictator game giving differ from more reflectively taken decisions. Across all samples and decision tasks men were more likely to make utilitarian moral judgments and act selfishly compared to women, providing further evidence that there are robust gender differences in moral decision-making. However, there were no significant interactions between gender and the treatment manipulations of intuitive versus reflective decision-making. zitiert von 19
2015
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(2015): Gender differences in responses to moral dilemmas. A process dissociation analysis. In: Personality & social psychology bulletin 41 (5), S. 696-713. DOI: 10.1177/0146167215575731
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25840987 Abstract: The principle of deontology states that the morality of an action depends on its consistency with moral norms; the principle of utilitarianism implies that the morality of an action depends on its consequences. Previous research suggests that deontological judgments are shaped by affective processes, whereas utilitarian judgments are guided by cognitive processes. The current research used process dissociation (PD) to independently assess deontological and utilitarian inclinations in women and men. A meta-analytic re-analysis of 40 studies with 6,100 participants indicated that men showed a stronger preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments than women when the two principles implied conflicting decisions (d = 0.52). PD further revealed that women exhibited stronger deontological inclinations than men (d = 0.57), while men exhibited only slightly stronger utilitarian inclinations than women (d = 0.10). The findings suggest that gender differences in moral dilemma judgments are due to differences in affective responses to harm rather than cognitive evaluations of outcomes. zitiert von: 48
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(2015): The rise of moral cognition. In: Cognition 135, S. 39-42. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.11.018
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25498900 Abstract: The field of moral cognition has grown rapidly in recent years thanks in no small part to Cognition. Consistent with its interdisciplinary tradition, Cognition encouraged the growth of this field by supporting empirical research conducted by philosophers as well as research native to neighboring fields such as social psychology, evolutionary game theory, and behavioral economics. This research has been exceptionally diverse both in its content and methodology. I argue that this is because morality is unified at the functional level, but not at the cognitive level, much as vehicles are unified by shared function rather than shared mechanics. Research in moral cognition, then, has progressed by explaining the phenomena that we identify as "moral" (for high-level functional reasons) in terms of diverse cognitive components that are not specific to morality. In light of this, research on moral cognition may continue to flourish, not as the identification and characterization of distinctive moral processes, but as a testing ground for theories of high-level, integrative cognitive function. zitiert von: 43
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(2015): Culture-Inclusive Theories of Self and Social Interaction. The Approach of Multiple Philosophical Paradigms. In: Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 45 (1), S. 40-63. DOI: 10.1111/jtsb.12050
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12050 Abstract: In view of the fact that culture‐inclusive psychology has been eluded or relatively ignored by mainstream psychology, the movement of indigenous psychology is destined to develop a new model of man that incorporates both causal psychology and intentional psychology as suggested by Vygotsky (1927). Following the principle of cultural psychology: 'one mind, many mentalities' (Shweder et al., 1998), the Mandala Model of Self (Hwang, 2011a,b) and Face and Favor Model (Hwang, 1987, 2012) were constructed to represent the universal mechanisms of self and social interaction that can be applied to any culture; both models can be used as conceptual frameworks for analyzing mentalities of people in any given culture. Taking research works from Foundations of Chinese Psychology: Confucian Social Relation as exemplars (Hwang, 2012), this article illustrates how to construct culture‐inclusive theories of Confucianism by multiple philosophical paradigms. The mechanism of culture‐ inclusiv e theory can be applied to explain qualitative research findings on lifeworld events of people in a particular society. It can also be utilized to predict results of quantitative research conducted to verify theoretical propositions in the scientific microworld by empirical methods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) zitiert von 33