Why Heuristics Work

Rationalizing constraints on the capacity for cognitive control

Humans are remarkably limited in: (i) how many control-dependent tasks they can execute simultaneously, and (ii) how intensely they can focus on a single task. These limitations are universal assumptions of most theories of cognition. Yet, a rationale for why humans are subject to these constraints remains elusive. This feature review draws on recent insights from psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning, to suggest that constraints on cognitive control may result from a rational adaptation to fundamental, computational dilemmas in neural architectures. The reviewed literature implies that limitations in multitasking may result from a trade-off between learning efficacy and processing efficiency and that limitations in the intensity of commitment to a single task may reflect a trade-off between cognitive stability and flexibility.

A Brief Taxonomy of Hybrid Intelligence

As artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous in our lives, so do the opportunities to combine machine and human intelligence to obtain more accurate and more resilient prediction models across a wide range of domains. Hybrid intelligence can be designed in many ways, depending on the role of the human and the algorithm in the hybrid system. This paper offers a brief taxonomy of hybrid intelligence, which describes possible relationships between human and machine intelligence for robust forecasting. In this taxonomy, biological intelligence represents one axis of variation, going from individual intelligence (one individual in isolation) to collective intelligence (several connected individuals). The second axis of variation represents increasingly sophisticated algorithms that can take into account more aspects of the forecasting system, from information to task to human problem-solvers. The novelty of the paper lies in the interpretation of recent studies in hybrid intelligence as precursors of a set of algorithms that are expected to be more prominent in the future. These algorithms promise to increase hybrid system’s resilience across a wide range of human errors and biases thanks to greater human-machine understanding. This work ends with a short overview for future research in this field.

Verbal communication of effect-sizes, possible comparators, and uncertainty of evidence in the Finnish clinical practice guidelines: Omitting effect-sizes and comparators without expressing much uncertainty

RATIONALE, AIMS, AND OBJECTIVES

Our aim was to investigate verbal representations of intervention effect-size, uncertainty of evidence, and possible intervention comparators in statements concerning effects of interventions in Finnish clinical practice guidelines.

METHOD

We selected 10 clinical practice guidelines on common diseases and risk factors published by The Finnish Medical Society Duodecim. All the statements that considered beneficial effects of interventions and that were graded with a level of evidence (levels A, high, to D, very low) were included in analyses. We assessed whether the statements verbally represented intervention effect-size, uncertainty of evidence or a possible comparator, and the reported outcome.

RESULTS

Of 385 statements, verbal representation of beneficial effect-sizes occurred in 25 (6%) statements. Most (72%) statements indicated that intervention had a beneficial effect, but did not specify effect-size. Less than half (42%) of the statements represented uncertainty verbally. Comparisons to placebo or no-treatment were rare (3%) and 18% of the statements compared interventions to other treatments. Against instructions, a considerable part (35%) of statements with B-level evidence did not represent uncertainty.

CONCLUSION

Communicating beneficial intervention effects, effect-sizes, possible comparators, and uncertainty of evidence require much broader attention in the clinical practice guideline context.

Patrolling the boundaries of social domains: Neural activations to violations of expectations for romantic and work relationships

According to the social domains hypothesis, we reduce the information-processing demands of complex social cues by classifying them into a limited number of domains, each with distinct sets of expectations. This requires rapid identification of violations of the boundaries between social domains. We hypothesized that these violations are likely to be associated with neural activation of the salience system. Using fMRI we compared responses of 20 adults to expected and unexpected everyday social scenarios in personal and work interactions. The vignettes exemplified different kinds of scenarios presented in the work setting, i.e., task-focused scenarios which are expected at work and scenarios with a personal focus, which are unexpected at work. The key contrast between task and personal focussed scenarios presented in the work setting was associated with fronto-insular activation. Perceived inappropriateness of the unexpected scenarios, and shorter response time to judgment of inappropriateness were also associated with fronto-insular activation, after controlling for unpleasantness. This study indicates specific neural responses to violations of expectations in different social situations. Our findings suggest that the fronto-insular region is implicated in rapid detection of behaviors that cross the boundaries of social domains, which are hypothesized to be necessary for efficient social information processing.

Layperson Views about the Design and Evaluation of Decision Aids: A Public Deliberation

PURPOSE

We carried out the first public deliberation to elicit lay input regarding guidelines for the design and evaluation of decision aids, focusing on the example of colorectal ("colon") cancer screening.

METHODS

A random, demographically stratified sample of 28 laypeople convened for 4 days, during which they were informed about key issues regarding colon cancer, screening tests, risk communication, and decision aids. Participants then deliberated in small and large group sessions about the following: 1) What information should be included in all decision aids for colon screening? 2) What risk information should be in a decision aid and how should risk information be presented? 3) What makes a screening decision a good one (reasonable or legitimate)? 4) What makes a decision aid and the advice it provides trustworthy? With the help of a trained facilitator, the deliberants formulated recommendations, and a vote was held on each to identify support and alternative views.

RESULTS

Twenty-one recommendations ("deliberative conclusions") were strongly supported. Some conclusions matched current recommendations, such as that decision aids should be available for use with and without providers present (conclusions 1-4) and should support informed choice (conclusion 9). Some conclusions differed from current recommendations, at least in emphasis-for example, that decision aids should disclose cost of screening (conclusion 11) and should be kept simple and understandable (conclusion 14). Deliberants recommended that decision aids should disclose the baseline risk of getting colon cancer (conclusions 15, 17).

LIMITATIONS

Single location and medical decision.

CONCLUSIONS

Guidelines for design of decision aids should consider putting a greater focus on disclosing cost and keeping decision aids simple, and they possibly should recommend disclosing less extensive amounts of quantitative information than currently recommended.

Clinicians' heuristic assessments of radiographs compared with Kellgren-Lawrence and Ahlbäck ordinal grading: an exploratory study of knee radiographs using paired comparisons

OBJECTIVES

Ordinal scales provide means for communicating the severity of a condition, but they are affected by cognitive biases, they introduce statistical problems and they sacrifice resolution. Clinicians discern more details than contained in scales, for example, when assessing radiographs, but clinicians' distinctions are often based on experience-based rules of thumb, that is, heuristics. The objectives of this study are to compare clinicians' heuristic assessments to ordinal grading, to identify case elements that influence clinicians' judgements and to present a method for quantifying heuristic assessments.

DESIGN

Clinicians were presented with 17 207 random pairs from a set of 1087 knee radiographs. For each pair, the radiograph with more severe osteoarthritis was selected. The Bradley-Terry model was used to calculate an osteoarthritis strength parameter for each radiograph. Similarly, strength parameters were determined for 12 morphological features with five additional features being considered either present or absent. All radiographs were also graded according to conventional ordinal systems (Kellgren-Lawrence and Ahlbäck). Relations between clinicians' judgements and (1) the heuristics-based osteoarthritis strength, (2) conventional ordinal systems and (3) morphological features were investigated.

RESULTS

Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the Bradley-Terry model provided a good description of clinicians' assessments (area under the curve (AUC)=0.97, 95% CI 0.968 to 0.972). Morphological features (AUC=0.90, 95% CI 0.900 to 0.908) provided a superior description of clinicians' choices compared with conventional ordinal systems (AUC=0.88, 95% CI 0.878 to 0.887 and AUC=0.80, 95% CI 0.796 to 0.809) for Ahlbäck and Kellgren-Lawrence, respectively). The features most strongly associated with osteoarthritis strength were medial joint space width, flattening of the medial femoral and tibial condyles, medial osteophytes and alignment.

CONCLUSIONS

Heuristics-based assessments give a better distinction than conventional grading systems of knee osteoarthritis. The example presents a general approach to evaluate which features are part of experts' heuristics. The data suggest that experts discern more details than included in conventional ordinal grading systems. Quantitative heuristic assessments may replace ordinal scales.

Confirmation bias is adaptive when coupled with efficient metacognition

Biases in the consideration of evidence can reduce the chances of consensus between people with different viewpoints. While such altered information processing typically leads to detrimental performance in laboratory tasks, the ubiquitous nature of confirmation bias makes it unlikely that selective information processing is universally harmful. Here, we suggest that confirmation bias is adaptive to the extent that agents have good metacognition, allowing them to downweight contradictory information when correct but still able to seek new information when they realize they are wrong. Using simulation-based modelling, we explore how the adaptiveness of holding a confirmation bias depends on such metacognitive insight. We find that the behavioural consequences of selective information processing are systematically affected by agents' introspective abilities. Strikingly, we find that selective information processing can even improve decision-making when compared with unbiased evidence accumulation, as long as it is accompanied by good metacognition. These results further suggest that interventions which boost people's metacognition might be efficient in alleviating the negative effects of selective information processing on issues such as political polarization.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.

Future orientation in successful therapies: Expanding the concept of goal in the working alliance

OBJECTIVE

To better understand how therapists facilitate client goal attainment in therapy, we analyzed therapists' future-oriented actions in good outcome cases in which clients recorded high ratings on goal items in the Working Alliance Inventory-Short Revised.

METHOD

We selected clients who were within the clinical range (OQ-45.2) at pretreatment, demonstrated reliable change at the end of treatment, and recorded high WAI client goals scores early in treatment. Qualitative analyses of transcripts of the initial three sessions and client posttreatment interviews were integrated into a combined analysis to identify themes across the two separate sets of findings.

RESULTS

Therapist future-oriented activity included: (1) Picking up explicit and implicit intentions; (2) using linguistic devices, such as meta-communication, action language, and hedging; (3) using evocative interventions; and (4) nudging the client into practicing change. Core finding: Therapists aligned with clients' directionality in a forward-driven, gradually evolving process.

CONCLUSION

Conceptual and clinical implications are discussed.

Quantifying preferences around vaccination against frequent, mild disease with risk for vulnerable persons: A discrete choice experiment among French hospital health care workers

The individual determinants of vaccine acceptance among health workers (HCWs) have been described in the literature, but there is little evidence regarding the impact of vaccine characteristics and contextual factors (e.g., incentives, communication) on vaccination intentions. We developed a single profile discrete choice experiment (DCE) to assess the impact of seven attributes on stated vaccination intention against an unnamed disease, described as frequent with rapid clinical evolution and epidemic potential (similar to influenza or pertussis). Attributes evaluated vaccine characteristics (effectiveness, security profile), inter-individual aspects (epidemic risk, controversy, potential for indirect protection, vaccine coverage) and incentives (e.g., badge, hierarchical injunction). A total of 1214 French hospital-based HCWs, recruited through professional organizations, completed the online DCE questionnaire. The relative impact of each attribute was estimated using random effects logit models on the whole sample and among specific subgroups. Overall, 52% of included HCWs were vaccinated against influenza during 2017-18 and the average vaccination acceptance rate across all scenarios was 58%. Aside from the management stance, all attributes' levels had significant impact on vaccination decisions. Poor vaccine safety had the most detrimental impact on stated acceptance (OR 0.04 for the level controversy around vaccine safety). The most motivating factor was protection of family (OR 2.41) and contribution to disease control (OR 2.34). Other motivating factors included improved vaccine effectiveness (OR 2.22), high uptake among colleagues (OR 1.89) and epidemic risk declared by health authorities (OR 1.76). Social incentives (e.g., a badge I'm vaccinated) were dissuasive (OR 0.47). Compared to HCWs previously vaccinated against influenza, unvaccinated HCWs who were favorable to vaccination in general were most sensitive towards improved vaccine effectiveness. Our study suggests that vaccine safety considerations dominate vaccine decision-making among French HCWs, while adapted communication on indirect protection and social conformism can contribute to increase vaccination acceptance.

Linking ecology and cognition: does ecological specialisation predict cognitive test performance?

Variation in cognitive abilities is thought to be linked to variation in brain size, which varies across species with either social factors (Social Intelligence Hypothesis) or ecological challenges (Ecological Intelligence Hypothesis). However, the nature of the ecological processes invoked by the Ecological Intelligence Hypothesis, like adaptations to certain habitat characteristics or dietary requirements, remains relatively poorly known. Here, we review comparative studies that experimentally investigated interspecific variation in cognitive performance in relation to a species’ degree of ecological specialisation. Overall, the relevant literature was biased towards studies of mammals and birds as well as studies focusing on ecological challenges related to diet. We separated ecological challenges into those related to searching for food, accessing a food item and memorising food locations. We found interspecific variation in cognitive performance that can be explained by adaptations to different foraging styles. Species-specific adaptations to certain ecological conditions, like food patch distribution, characteristics of food items or seasonality also broadly predicted variation in cognitive abilities. A species’ innovative problem-solving and spatial processing ability, for example, could be explained by its use of specific foraging techniques or search strategies, respectively. Further, habitat generalists were more likely to outperform habitat specialists. Hence, we found evidence that ecological adaptations and cognitive performance are linked and that the classification concept of ecological specialisation can explain variation in cognitive performance only with regard to habitat, but not dietary specialisation.

Undergraduate Students' Critical Online Reasoning-Process Mining Analysis

To successfully learn using open Internet resources, students must be able to critically search, evaluate and select online information, and verify sources. Defined as critical online reasoning (COR), this construct is operationalized on two levels in our study: (1) the student level using the newly developed Critical Online Reasoning Assessment (CORA), and (2) the online information processing level using event log data, including gaze durations and fixations. The written responses of 32 students for one CORA task were scored by three independent raters. The resulting score was operationalized as "task performance," whereas the gaze fixations and durations were defined as indicators of "process performance." Following a person-oriented approach, we conducted a process mining (PM) analysis, as well as a latent class analysis (LCA) to test whether-following the dual-process theory-the undergraduates could be distinguished into two groups based on both their process and task performance. Using PM, the process performance of all 32 students was visualized and compared, indicating two distinct response process patterns. One group of students (11), defined as "strategic information processers," processed online information more comprehensively, as well as more efficiently, which was also reflected in their higher task scores. In contrast, the distributions of the process performance variables for the other group (21), defined as "avoidance information processers," indicated a poorer process performance, which was also reflected in their lower task scores. In the LCA, where two student groups were empirically distinguished by combining the process performance indicators and the task score as a joint discriminant criterion, we confirmed these two COR profiles, which were reflected in high vs. low process and task performances. The estimated parameters indicated that high-performing students were significantly more efficient at conducting strategic information processing, as reflected in their higher process performance. These findings are so far based on quantitative analyses using event log data. To enable a more differentiated analysis of students' visual attention dynamics, more in-depth qualitative research of the identified student profiles in terms of COR will be required.

Risk Perception: Reflections on 40 Years of Research

Numerous studies and practical experiences with risk have demonstrated the importance of risk perceptions for people's behavior. In this narrative review, we describe and reflect upon some of the lines of research that we feel have been important in helping us understand the factors and processes that shape people's risk perceptions. In our review, we propose that much of the research on risk perceptions to date can be grouped according to three dominant perspectives and, thus, approaches to study design; they are: the characteristics of hazards, the characteristics of risk perceivers, and the application of heuristics to inform risk judgments. In making these distinctions, we also highlight what we see as outstanding challenges for researchers and practitioners. We also highlight a few new research questions that we feel warrant attention.

Self-categorization as a basis of behavioural mimicry: Experiments in The Hive

INTRODUCTION

Do we always do what others do, and, if not, when and under what conditions do we do so? In this paper we test the hypothesis that mimicry is moderated by the mere knowledge of whether the source is a member of the same social category as ourselves.

METHODS

We investigated group influence on mimicry using three tasks on a software platform which interfaces with mobile computing devices to allow the controlled study of collective behaviour in an everyday environment.

RESULTS

Overall, participants (N = 965) were influenced by the movements of confederates (represented as dots on a screen) who belonged to their own category in both purposive and incidental tasks.

CONCLUSION

Our results are compatible with collective level explanations of social influence premised on shared social identification. This includes both a heuristic of unintended mimicry (the acts of group members are diagnostic of how one should act), and communication of affiliation (based on a desire to make one's group cohesive). The results are incompatible with traditional 'contagion' accounts which suggest mimicry is automatic and inevitable. The results have practical implications for designing behavioural interventions which can harness the power of copying behaviour, for example in emergency evacuations.

Social Judgments of Digitally Manipulated Stuttered Speech: Cognitive Heuristics Drive Implicit and Explicit Bias

Purpose People who stutter are susceptible to discrimination, stemming from negative stereotypes and social misattributions. There has been a recent push to evaluate the underlying explicit and implicit cognitive mechanisms associated with social judgments, moving away from only evaluating explicit social bias about people who stutter. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate how listeners change their implicit and explicit social (mis)attributions after hearing a people who stutter produce disfluent speech. Method The current project was an adaptation of the Byrd et al. (2017) study to evaluate listener implicit/explicit social judgments of stuttered speech across five categories (i.e., confidence, friendliness, intelligence, distractibility, and extroversion) before and after a stuttering self-disclosure. This was done by implementing a modified version of the Ferguson et al. (2019) computer mouse-tracking paradigm. Results Consistent with previous findings, participants made more explicit positive social judgments of confidence, friendliness, extroversion, and intelligence after a stuttering self-disclosure, but the distractedness category was resistant to change. Also consistent with previous findings, participants experienced a higher degree of cognitive competition (i.e., higher area under the curve) shortly after self-disclosure, which lessened over time. Conclusions Explicit and implicit biases exist, but self-disclosure significantly impacts the cognitive system of listeners. Specifically, self-disclosure may reduce explicit bias through experience and explicit belief updating, but when cognitive heuristics are strong, implicit bias may be slower to change.

Human Cognition Through the Lens of Social Engineering Cyberattacks

Social engineering cyberattacks are a major threat because they often prelude sophisticated and devastating cyberattacks. Social engineering cyberattacks are a kind of psychological attack that exploits weaknesses in human cognitive functions. Adequate defense against social engineering cyberattacks requires a deeper understanding of what aspects of human cognition are exploited by these cyberattacks, why humans are susceptible to these cyberattacks, and how we can minimize or at least mitigate their damage. These questions have received some amount of attention, but the state-of-the-art understanding is superficial and scattered in the literature. In this paper, we review human cognition through the lens of social engineering cyberattacks. Then, we propose an extended framework of human cognitive functions to accommodate social engineering cyberattacks. We cast existing studies on various aspects of social engineering cyberattacks into the extended framework, while drawing a number of insights that represent the current understanding and shed light on future research directions. The extended framework might inspire future research endeavor toward a new sub-field that can be called Cybersecurity Cognitive Psychology, which tailors or adapts principles of Cognitive Psychology to the cybersecurity domain while embracing new notions and concepts that are unique to the cybersecurity domain.

The Consumer Contextual Decision-Making Model

Consumers can have difficulty expressing their buying intentions on an explicit level. The most common explanation for this intention-action gap is that consumers have many cognitive biases that interfere with rational decision-making. The current resource-rational approach to understanding human cognition, however, suggests that brain environment interactions lead consumers to minimize the expenditure of cognitive energy according to the principle of Occam’s Razor. This means that the consumer seeks as simple of a solution as possible for a problem requiring decision-making. In addition, this resource-rational approach to decision-making emphasizes the role of inductive inference and Bayesian reasoning. Together, the principle of Occam’s Razor, inductive inference, and Bayesian reasoning illuminate the dynamic human-environment relationship. This paper analyzes these concepts from a contextual perspective and introduces the Consumer Contextual Decision-Making Model (CCDMM). Based on the CCDMM, two hypothetical strategies of consumer decision-making will be presented. First, the SIMilarity-Strategy (SIMS) is one in which most of a consumer’s decisions in a real-life context are based on prior beliefs about the role of a commodities specific to real-life situation being encountered. Because beliefs are based on previous experiences, consumers are already aware of the most likely consequences of their actions. At the same time, they do not waste time on developing contingencies for what, based on previous experience, is unlikely to happen. Second, the What-is-Out-there-in-the-World-Strategy (WOWS) is one in which prior beliefs do not work in a real-life situation, requiring consumers to update their beliefs. The principle argument being made is that most experimental consumer research describes decision-making based on the WOWS, when participants cannot apply their previous knowledge and situation-based strategy to problems. The article analyzes sensory and cognitive biases described by behavioral economists from a CCDMM perspective, followed by a description and explanation of the typical intention-action gap based on the model. Prior to a section dedicated to discussion, the neuroeconomic approach will be described along with the valuation network of the brain, which has evolved to solve problems that the human has previously encountered in an information-rich environment. The principles of brain function will also be compared to CCDMM. Finally, different approaches and the future direction of consumer research from a contextual point of view will be presented.

On predictive entrepreneurial action in uncertain, ill-structured conditions

Decision-making is at the heart of entrepreneurship. Unsurprisingly, entrepreneurship research has engaged with processes of entrepreneurial decision-making resulting, most importantly, in the notions of causation, effectuation, and enactment. Nevertheless, the range of processes delineated to date remains somewhat incomplete. Drawing on crucial insights from the analysis of decision problem structures reveals that entrepreneurship theory has lacked a process that both recognizes the ill-structuredness typically surrounding entrepreneurial decisions and places prognoses center stage. While effectuation implicitly addresses structural defects but denies prognoses a central role, causation emphasizes the importance of predictions while being associated with well-structured, risky environments, and thus, unaffected by structural defects. Theorizing about a combination thereof, that is, a process recognizing and considering the ill-structuredness of entrepreneurial environments yet building on predictions of the future is overdue. This paper, therefore, seeks to foster a more comprehensive yet nuanced understanding of entrepreneurial decision-making processes by outlining the intrinsic features of one such process that we term execution and relating it to existing processes.

Surprisingly stable: an experiment on willingness to bear uncertainty in individuals with and without entrepreneurial intentions

Purpose

Entrepreneurs are often considered to be more willing to bear and manage uncertainty than non-entrepreneurs. However, the available empirical evidence regarding this topic is limited and mixed. By adopting an experimental design, the paper’s purpose is to shed light on a causal mechanism behind decision making under uncertainty.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper outlines the performance of a quasi-laboratory experiment that investigates whether a lack of predictive information affects individuals with entrepreneurial intentions in their likelihood to choose uncertainty vis-à-vis certainty. Drawing on prospect theory, it is argued that individuals with entrepreneurial intentions are less sensitive than individuals without entrepreneurial intentions due to a framing effect that occurs when information about probabilities is manipulated. In particular, it is argued that individuals with entrepreneurial intentions are more likely than their comparable counterparts to choose consistently among monetary opportunities that share everything in common but information about probabilities of success.

Findings

This study finds support for the argument, as individuals with entrepreneurial intentions have preferences pertaining to uncertainty that are more stable compared to those of individuals without such intentions. The results hold after controlling for a number of alternative explanations, including status quo bias, prior gain effect and degree of risk effect.

Originality/value

The paper tackles a fundamental issue in entrepreneurship—namely behavior under uncertainty—by adopting a novel approach. In particular, an experimental design is used to test for causality between availability of information and choices involving monetary rewards. Results have implications for the understanding of factors that guide entrepreneurial choices under uncertainty and, ultimately, entrepreneurial action.

Science of perception, decision making and fatigue in the maritime industry

In this paper, we investigate how perception, decision making and fatigue affect safety in the maritime industry. With maritime safety incidents often having disastrous effects on the lives of the seafarers, the natural environment, and the industry as a whole, a better understanding of the science behind the human errors is necessary to increase safety at sea. We conducted interviews and real time observations of seafarers, and we combine our findings with a review of relevant academic literature with the aim of using scientific knowledge to address a real-world problem. We conclude that the seafarers consistently work at the limits of their cognitive abilities and that better care for their wellbeing is crucial for safety at sea. It is hoped that this study will be beneficial to the practitioners in the field of the maritime industry as well as psychologists studying the effects of long term, high cognitive loads in the work environment.

Simplifying and Facilitating Comprehension: The “as if” Heuristic and Its Implications for Psychological Science

Simplicity is a fundamental tenet of cognition intended to cope with a complex and intricate world. Based on the writings of the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, this article introduces a wide-ranging simplification scheme denoted the “as if” heuristic. Following this heuristic, much of our productive and constructive thoughts about the world, specifically in science, are based on idealized fictitious assumptions. Although descriptions of the world as portrayed by psychological models and theories may contain fictitious elements (antithetical or at least indifferent to the search for truth), they afford a simplification tool that facilitates our comprehension of a complex and obscured world. Numerous examples from the psychological literature in which the “as if” heuristic is apparent are presented. Specifically, we analyze the implications of exploiting the heuristic for the development of psychological constructs, theory building, and the foundations of psychological measurement. While highlighting the gains acquired from the use of the “as if” heuristic, we also discuss its possible pitfalls if not properly used.

Processing Probability Information in Nonnumerical Settings - Teachers' Bayesian and Non-bayesian Strategies During Diagnostic Judgment

A diagnostic judgment of a teacher can be seen as an inference from manifest observable evidence on a student’s behavior to his or her latent traits. This can be described by a Bayesian model of inference: The teacher starts from a set of assumptions on the student (hypotheses), with subjective probabilities for each hypothesis (priors). Subsequently, he or she uses observed evidence (students’ responses to tasks) and knowledge on conditional probabilities of this evidence (likelihoods) to revise these assumptions. Many systematic deviations from this model (biases, e.g., base-rate neglect, inverse fallacy) are reported in the literature on Bayesian reasoning. In a teacher’s situation, the information (hypotheses, priors, likelihoods) is usually not explicitly represented numerically (as in most research on Bayesian reasoning) but only by qualitative estimations in the mind of the teacher. In our study, we ask to which extent individuals (approximately) apply a rational Bayesian strategy or resort to other biased strategies of processing information for their diagnostic judgments. We explicitly pose this question with respect to nonnumerical settings. To investigate this question, we developed a scenario that visually displays all relevant information (hypotheses, priors, likelihoods) in a graphically displayed hypothesis space (called “hypothegon”)–without recurring to numerical representations or mathematical procedures. Forty-two preservice teachers were asked to judge the plausibility of different misconceptions of six students based on their responses to decimal comparison tasks (e.g., 3.39 > 3.4). Applying a Bayesian classification procedure, we identified three updating strategies: a Bayesian update strategy (BUS, processing all probabilities), a combined evidence strategy (CES, ignoring the prior probabilities but including all likelihoods), and a single evidence strategy (SES, only using the likelihood of the most probable hypothesis). In study 1, an instruction on the relevance of using all probabilities (priors and likelihoods) only weakly increased the processing of more information. In study 2, we found strong evidence that a visual explication of the prior–likelihood interaction led to an increase in processing the interaction of all relevant information. These results show that the phenomena found in general research on Bayesian reasoning in numerical settings extend to diagnostic judgments in nonnumerical settings.

Consumer acceptance of novel food technologies

Novel food technologies are important for food security, safety and sustainability. Consumers, however, are often hesitant to accept them. In this narrative Review, we organize the research describing how heuristics and individual differences among consumers influence the acceptance of agri-food technologies. Associations evoked by a food technology, its perceived naturalness and trust in the industry using it influence consumer acceptance. Food neophobia, disgust sensitivity and cultural values are crucial personality factors for explaining individual differences. Using gene technology, nanotechnology, cultured meat and food irradiation as cases, we explore factors that may explain consumers' acceptance or lack of acceptance. Climate change, food supply shocks caused by crises such as pandemics and population growth are imminent threats to the food system. Therefore, disruptive food technologies will be needed to progress towards a more resilient food system. Taking into account the factors influencing consumers' perceptions of novel food technologies during the early stage of development and introduction will hopefully result in a higher acceptance of such technologies.

Behavioural Economics and Human Decision Making: Instances from the Health Care System

Over the last two decades behavioural economics has gained much momentum among scholars because of its innovative and controversial ways of explaining processes and mechanisms underpinning individuals' judgements and decision making. Thanks to these features, behavioural economics has been applied to diversified domains, namely finance, public choice and marketing. Although the intrinsic characteristics of the health care sector, ranging from incomplete and asymmetrical information to high frequency of critical choices, make the sector a fertile ground for behavioural economics applications, research on the influences of behavioural economics on health care and clinical decision making are still rather fragmented. Therefore, through an interdisciplinary literature review integrating behavioural economics research with medical and behavioural decision-making studies, this article contributes to behavioural decision-making literature by providing a wide overview of how behavioural economics strategies may impact, and be implemented in, diverse health care circumstances. Examples of behavioural economics applications to health care circumstances include: organ donation and transplantation; habitual choices; individuals' loss aversion and trust; present-biased preference; decision fatigue and excessive choice. Hence, this article aims to promote the effective behaviour of both consumers and providers in health care.

The dual evolutionary foundations of political ideology

Research over the last fifty years has suggested that political attitudes and values around the globe are shaped by two ideological dimensions, often referred to as economic and social conservatism. However, it remains unclear why this ideological structure exists. Here we highlight the striking concordance between these dual dimensions of ideology and independent convergent evidence for two key shifts in the evolution of human group living. First, humans began to cooperate more and across wider interdependent networks. Second, humans became more group-minded, conforming to social norms in culturally marked groups and punishing norm-violators. We propose that fitness trade-offs and behavioural plasticity have maintained functional variation in willingness to cooperate and conform within modern human groups, naturally giving rise to the two dimensions of political ideology. Supported by evidence from across the behavioural sciences, this evolutionary framework provides insight into the biological and cultural basis of political ideology.

Contributions of Cognitive Aging Models to the Explanation of Source Memory Decline across the Adult Lifespan

Background: A number of cognitive aging models have been proposed to explain the age-related decline in several cognitive functions, but these models have rarely been examined together. We analyzed the contributions of four main models - processing resources, speed of processing, cognitive reserve and knowledge - to source memory decay related to the aging process.Methods: A total of 1554 healthy adults between 21 and 80 years old participated in the study. Structural equation modeling was conducted on data from the whole sample and separately in the data from young, middle-aged and older adult age groups. To estimate each cognitive model, we measured working memory discrimination levels (processing resources), working memory reaction times (speed of processing), education (cognitive reserve) and vocabulary (knowledge).Results: Processing resources mediate the effects of age on source memory across the adult lifespan, whereas speed of processing mediates these effects only in young adults, cognitive reserve only in middle-aged adults and knowledge only in older adults.Conclusions: Processing resources was the cognitive model that most contributes to explaining source memory decay. The fact that the other models are relevant to specific age groups provides useful information to exploit their benefits to preserve source memory in specific life stages.

Crossmodal Language Comprehension-Psycholinguistic Insights and Computational Approaches

Crossmodal interaction in situated language comprehension is important for effective and efficient communication. The relationship between linguistic and visual stimuli provides mutual benefit: While vision contributes, for instance, information to improve language understanding, language in turn plays a role in driving the focus of attention in the visual environment. However, language and vision are two different representational modalities, which accommodate different aspects and granularities of conceptualizations. To integrate them into a single, coherent system solution is still a challenge, which could profit from inspiration by human crossmodal processing. Based on fundamental psycholinguistic insights into the nature of situated language comprehension, we derive a set of performance characteristics facilitating the robustness of language understanding, such as crossmodal reference resolution, attention guidance, or predictive processing. Artificial systems for language comprehension should meet these characteristics in order to be able to perform in a natural and smooth manner. We discuss how empirical findings on the crossmodal support of language comprehension in humans can be applied in computational solutions for situated language comprehension and how they can help to mitigate the shortcomings of current approaches.

Selection Bias Tracking and Detailed Subset Comparison for High-Dimensional Data

The collection of large, complex datasets has become common across a wide variety of domains. Visual analytics tools increasingly play a key role in exploring and answering complex questions about these large datasets. However, many visualizations are not designed to concurrently visualize the large number of dimensions present in complex datasets (e.g. tens of thousands of distinct codes in an electronic health record system). This fact, combined with the ability of many visual analytics systems to enable rapid, ad-hoc specification of groups, or cohorts, of individuals based on a small subset of visualized dimensions, leads to the possibility of introducing selection bias-when the user creates a cohort based on a specified set of dimensions, differences across many other unseen dimensions may also be introduced. These unintended side effects may result in the cohort no longer being representative of the larger population intended to be studied, which can negatively affect the validity of subsequent analyses. We present techniques for selection bias tracking and visualization that can be incorporated into high-dimensional exploratory visual analytics systems, with a focus on medical data with existing data hierarchies. These techniques include: (1) tree-based cohort provenance and visualization, including a user-specified baseline cohort that all other cohorts are compared against, and visual encoding of cohort "drift", which indicates where selection bias may have occurred, and (2) a set of visualizations, including a novel icicle-plot based visualization, to compare in detail the per-dimension differences between the baseline and a user-specified focus cohort. These techniques are integrated into a medical temporal event sequence visual analytics tool. We present example use cases and report findings from domain expert user interviews.

Public perception of carbon capture and storage: A state-of-the-art overview

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology enabling to use fossil fuels in a sustainable way. Therefore, it attracts much attention from the industrial sector, government authorities and scientific community. However, public awareness of the technology is extremely low, and the studies of the lay people's opinion have been launched only during the last decade. Taking into account the role of public support during the implementation of CCS projects, the authors would like to present herein their review of materials on this subject published during 2002–2018 (135 articles). As part of our review, we determined 9 key aspects forming the public perception of CCS. For each of the key aspects, we summarized the available results of the studies. Apart from that, we compared the CCS current status in different countries and provided a number of reasons for involving new countries into the fight against global warming. This work shows that most attention is devoted to CO2 storage; whereas its capture and transportation are poorly studied in terms of public perception. Wider development is required for the methodology enabling a transition from global rhetoric concerning global warming issues to the implementation of particular projects, namely, CCS. The issues related to public awareness of CCS are studied rather thoroughly, but no recommendations are provided regarding the establishment of an optimal database for the lay people. Numerous assessments of general public perception have been carried out. However little attention was paid to the regions with active projects, namely, to the factors considered the most important by the local public, and how actual project results meet their expectations. Therefore, despite an extensive scientific base developed over 17 years, further studies should be aimed at filling the existing gaps. This will enable to improve CCS attractiveness for the public, including the cases when it is compared with alternative low-carbon technologies.

Positive fantasies and negative emotions in soccer fans

Positive thinking is often assumed to foster effort and success. Research has shown, however, that positive thinking in the form of fantasies about achieving an idealised future predicts less (not more) effort and success and more (not less) depressive symptoms over time. This relationship was mediated by people having invested little effort and achieved little success. Here, we ask a different question. We investigate the emotional consequences of positive fantasies about futures that people cannot act on. Specifically, we analyse these consequences when the future fantasies fail to come true (one's favourite soccer team loses). Study 1 provided correlational evidence. The more positively soccer fans fantasised about their favourite team winning an upcoming match, the stronger were their negative emotions when their team lost. That is, the more sad, disappointed, and frustrated they felt. Study 2 provided experimental evidence. Soccer fans who were led to fantasise positively about their team winning an upcoming match reported feeling stronger negative emotions after their team lost than those who were led to fantasise negatively. Positive fantasies were not related to how positive participants felt after their team won (joy, happiness, relief). We discuss theoretical and applied implications for emotion regulation in everyday life.

Wicked Problems of Smart Cities

It is often uncritically assumed that, when digital technologies are integrated into the operation of city functions, they inevitably contribute to sustainable urban development. Such a notion rests largely on the belief that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions pave the way for more democratic forms of planning, and that ‘smart’ technological devices result in a range of environmental benefits, e.g., energy efficiency and the mitigation of global warming. Drawing on the scientific literature that deals with ‘smart cities’, we here elaborate on how both propositions fail to consider drawbacks that could be characterized as ‘wicked’, i.e., problems that lack simplistic solutions and straightforward planning responses, and which often come about as ‘management surprises’, as a byproduct of achieving sustainability. We here deal with problems related to public choice constraints, ‘non-choice default technologies’ and the costs of automation for human learning and resilience. To avoid undemocratic forms of planning and too strong a dependence on non-choice default technologies, e.g., smart phones, we recommend that planners and policy makers safeguard redundancy in public-choice options by maintaining a wide range of alternative choices, including analog ones. Resilience thinking could help planners deal more effectively with the ‘wickedness’ of an increasingly hyper-connected society.

Naturalism, tractability and the adaptive toolbox

Many compelling examples have recently been provided in which people can achieve impressive epistemic success, e.g. draw highly accurate inferences, by using simple heuristics and very little information. This is possible by taking advantage of the features of the environment. The examples suggest an easy and appealing naturalization of rationality: on the one hand, people clearly can apply simple heuristics, and on the other hand, they intuitively ought do so when this brings them high accuracy at little cost.. The 'ought-can' principle is satisfied, and rationality is meaningfully normative. We show, however, that this naturalization program is endangered by a computational wrinkle in the adaptation process taken to be responsible for this heuristics-based ('ecological') rationality: for the adaptation process to guarantee even minimal rationality, it requires astronomical computational resources, making the problem intractable. We consider various plausible auxiliary assumptions in attempt to remove this obstacle, and show that they do not succeed; intractability is a robust property of adaptation. We discuss the implications of our findings for the project of naturalizing rationality.

Power and cognitive functioning

Because powerful people's thinking is impactful, it is critical to understand how power affects cognition. We detail how recent empirical findings reveal that power often improves cognitive functioning. First, power increases controlled processing, in particular intentionality. Second, power improves executive functioning, leading individuals to exhibit better inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Third, power increases abstract thinking. Synthesizing these last two points, we propose that high-power individuals' executive functions are enhanced due to their more abstract way of thinking. Both the greater social distance and reduced cognitive vigilance accompanying increased power could explain these effects. Finally, we note remaining questions, such as how much power's cognitive effects are driven by a subjective sense of power versus objective control.

A top-down saliency model with goal relevance

Most visual saliency models that integrate top-down factors process task and context information using machine learning techniques. Although these methods have been successful in improving prediction accuracy for human attention, they require significant training data and are unable to provide an understanding of what makes information relevant to a task such that it will attract gaze. This means that we still lack a general theory for the interaction between task and attention or eye movements. Recently, Tanner and Itti (2017) proposed the theory of goal relevance to explain what makes information relevant to goals. In this work, we record eye movements of 80 participants who each played one of four variants of a Mario video game and construct a combined saliency model using features from three sources: bottom-up, learned top-down, and goal relevance. We use this model to predict the eye behavior and find that the addition of goal relevance significantly improves the Normalized Scanpath Saliency score of the model from 4.35 to 5.82 (p < 1 × 10-100).

In defense of free will: Neuroscience and criminal responsibility

Is neuroscience the death of free will and if so, does this mean the imminent demise of the psycho-legal practices related to insanity and criminal responsibility? For many scholars of neuro-jurisprudence, recent advances in brain sciences suggesting that the perception of free will is merely illusory, an epiphenomenon of unconscious brain activity, do indeed undermine our traditional understandings of moral and legal responsibility. In this paper, however, we reject this radical claim and argue that neuroscientific evidence can indeed reveal how free will actually works and how its underlying neural and perceptual machinery gives rise to our sense of responsibility for our actions. First, the experience of free will is recast in terms of neuroscientific studies of agency and willed action. Second, evidence is presented of a neural network model linking agency to widely-distributed brain areas encompassing frontal motor and parietal monitoring sites. We then apply these findings to criminal responsibility practices by demonstrating (a) how the experience of intentionality and agency is generated by specific interactions of this discrete frontal-parietal network, (b) how mental disease/defect may compromise this network, and (c) how such pathologies may lead to disturbances in the sense of agency that often are central to the phenomenological experience of psychosis. The paper concludes by examining criminal responsibility practices through the lens of cultural evolution of fairness and cooperation.

Can nudge-interventions address health service overuse and underuse? Protocol for a systematic review

INTRODUCTION

Nudge-interventions aimed at health professionals are proposed to reduce the overuse and underuse of health services. However, little is known about their effectiveness at changing health professionals' behaviours in relation to overuse or underuse of tests or treatments.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study is to systematically identify and synthesise the studies that have assessed the effect of nudge-interventions aimed at health professionals on the overuse or underuse of health services.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

We will perform a systematic review. All study designs that include a control comparison will be included. Any qualified health professional, across any specialty or setting, will be included. Only nudge-interventions aimed at altering the behaviour of health professionals will be included. We will examine the effect of choice architecture nudges (default options, active choice, framing effects, order effects) and social nudges (accountable justification and pre-commitment or publicly declared pledge/contract). Studies with outcomes relevant to overuse or underuse of health services will be included. Relevant studies will be identified by a computer-aided search of the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library), MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase and PsycINFO databases. Two independent reviewers will screen studies for eligibility, extract data and perform the risk of bias assessment using the criteria recommended by the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) group. We will report our results in a structured synthesis format, as recommended by the Cochrane EPOC group.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

No ethical approval is required for this study. Results will be presented at relevant scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed literature.