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MindReader Weekly - 42th - Choice from non-choice and how you could instantly become more powerful

Potentially MindShifting Papers:^{#(see below)}

• Ifat Levy et al. (2010):

„Decision-making is often viewed as a two-stage process, where subjective values are first assigned to each option and then the option of the highest value is selected. Converging evidence suggests that these subjective values are represented in the striatum and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). A separate line of evidence suggests that activation in the same areas represents the values of rewards even when choice is not required, as in classical conditioning tasks. However, it is unclear whether the same neural mechanism is engaged in both cases. To address this question we measured brain activation with functional magnetic resonance imaging while human subjects passively viewed individual consumer goods. We then sampled activation from predefined regions of interest and used it to predict subsequent choices between the same items made outside of the scanner. Our results show that activation in the striatum and MPFC in the absence of choice predicts subsequent choices, suggesting that these brain areas represent value in a similar manner whether or not choice is required.“

• Hal Ersner-Hershfield et al. (2010):

„Four studies examined the relationship between counterfactual origins-thoughts about how the beginning of organizations, countries, and social connections might have turned out differently-and increased feelings of commitment to those institutions and connections. Study 1 found that counterfactually reflecting on the origins of one’s country increases patriotism. Study 2 extended this finding to organizational commitment and examined the mediating role of poignancy. Study 3 found that counterfactual reflection boosts organizational commitment even beyond the effects of other commitment-enhancing appeals and that perceptions of fate mediate the positive effect of counterfactual origins on commitment. Finally, Study 4 temporally separated the counterfactual manipulation from a behavioral measure of commitment and found that counterfactual reflection predicted whether participants e-mailed social contacts 2 weeks later. The robust relationship between counterfactual origins and commitment was found across a wide range of companies and countries, with undergraduates and M. B. A. students, and for attitudes and behaviors.“

• Priyanka Carr, Claude Steele (2010):

„The research presented in this article provides the first evidence that one’s decision making can be influenced by concerns about stereotypes and the devaluation of one’s identity. Many studies document gender differences in decision making, and often attribute these differences to innate and stable factors, such as biological and hormonal differences. In three studies, we found that stereotype threat affected decision making and led to gender differences in loss-aversion and risk-aversion behaviors. In Study 1, women subjected to stereotype threat in academic and business settings were more loss averse than both men and women who were not facing the threat of being viewed in light of negative stereotypes. We found no gender differences in loss-aversion behavior in the absence of stereotype threat. In Studies 2a and 2b, we found the same pattern of effects for risk-aversion behavior that we had observed for loss-aversion behavior. In addition, in Study 2b, ego depletion mediated the effects of stereotype threat on women’s decision making. These results suggest that individuals’ decision making can be influenced by stereotype concerns.“

• A. Peter McGraw et al. (2010):

„Loss aversion in choice is commonly assumed to arise from the anticipation that losses have a greater effect on feelings than gains, but evidence for this assumption in research on judged feelings is mixed. We argue that loss aversion is present in judged feelings when people compare gains and losses and assess them on a common scale. But many situations in which people judge and express their feelings lack these features. When judging their feelings about an outcome, people naturally consider a context of similar outcomes for comparison (e. g., they consider losses against other losses). This process permits gains and losses to be normed separately and produces psychological scale units that may not be the same in size or meaning for gains and losses. Our experiments show loss aversion in judged feelings for tasks that encourage gain-loss comparisons, but not tasks that discourage them, particularly those using bipolar scales.“

• Ellen Peters et al. (2010):

„Higher education (or more years of formal schooling) is widely associated with better health, but the underlying causes of this association are unclear. In this study, we tested our schooling-decision-making model, which posits that formal education fosters intellectual ability, which in turn provides individuals with enduring competencies to support better health-related behaviors. Using data from a field study on formal education in 181 adults in rural Ghana, we examined health-protective behaviors related to HIV/AIDS infection, a critical health issue in Ghana. As expected, individuals with more education practiced more protective health behaviors. Our structural equation modeling analysis showed that cognitive abilities, numeracy, and decision-making abilities increased with exposure to schooling, and that these enhanced abilities (and not HIV/AIDS knowledge) mediated the effects of education on health-protective behavior. Research and policy implications for HIV prevention efforts in sub-Saharan Africa are discussed.“

• Justine Hastings, Olivia Mitchell (2010):

„Two competing explanations for why consumers have trouble with financial decisions are gaining momentum. One is that people are financially illiterate since they lack understanding of simple economic concepts and cannot carry out computations such as computing compound interest, which could cause them to make suboptimal financial decisions. A second is that impatience or present-bias might explain suboptimal financial decisions. That is, some people persistently choose immediate gratification instead of taking advantage of larger long-term payoffs. We use experimental evidence from Chile to explore how these factors appear related to poor financial decisions. Our results show that our measure of impatience is a strong predictor of wealth and investment in health. Financial literacy is also correlated with wealth though it appears to be a weaker predictor of sensitivity to framing in investment decisions. Policymakers interested in enhancing retirement well-being would do well to consider the importance of these factors.“

• Chia-Jung Tsay, Mahzarin Banaji (2010):

„To understand how talent and achievement are perceived, three experiments compared the assessments of “naturals” and “strivers.“ Professional musicians learned about two pianists, equal in achievement but who varied in the source of achievement: the “natural” with early evidence of high innate ability, versus the “striver” with early evidence of high motivation and perseverance (Experiment 1). Although musicians reported the strong belief that strivers will achieve over naturals, their preferences and beliefs showed the reverse pattern: they judged the natural performer to be more talented, more likely to succeed, and more hirable than the striver. In Experiment 2, this “naturalness bias” was observed again in experts but not in non-experts, and replicated in a between-subjects design in Experiment 3. Together, these experiments show a bias favoring naturals over strivers even when the achievement is equal, and a dissociation between stated beliefs about achievement and actual choices in expert decision-makers.“

• Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy, and Andy Yap (2010):

„Humans and other animals express power through open, expansive postures, and they express powerlessness through closed, contractive postures. But can these postures actually cause power? The results of this study confirmed our prediction that posing in high-power nonverbal displays (as opposed to low-power nonverbal displays) would cause neuroendocrine and behavioral changes for both male and female participants: High-power posers experienced elevations in testosterone, decreases in cortisol, and increased feelings of power and tolerance for risk; low-power posers exhibited the opposite pattern. In short, posing in displays of power caused advantaged and adaptive psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes, and these findings suggest that embodiment extends beyond mere thinking and feeling, to physiology and subsequent behavioral choices. That a person can, by assuming two simple 1-min poses, embody power and instantly become more powerful has real-world, actionable implications.“

^# If you can‘t get any of the mentioned papers, please, contact me. If there is a bunch of curious students interested in discussing the topics published in MindReader, the debate will be held by Petr Koblovský, Ph.D. in „my“ restaurant at 20:00 February 21, 2011 (Monday). Discussion will be in Czech. If you are interested to participate, please send him an e-mail (in order he could book some place accordingly).