Probing the Neural Basis of Superstition

The neuropharmacological profile of interval responding during operant tasks

Responses occurring during intervals of operant tasks have been subdivided as interim, facultative, and terminal, depending on the time between response onset and reward. Although interval responses, also known as adjunctive responses, have been described in pigeons, rats, mice, monkeys, and humans, most experiments have been conducted in rats. We review the neurochemical basis of interval responses and examine the hypothesis that these responses modulate operant performance. Preliminary experiments indicate the involvement of biogenic amines, acetylcholine, and GABA during interval responding associated with operant tasks. In particular, catecholaminergic deafferentation of the basal ganglia modulated interval responses as did the peripheral injection of catecholamine reuptake blockers. Under the influence of amphetamine, interval responding may either increase or decrease, so that a wide range of responses must be selected to gauge drug effects. In non-drugged pigeons and rats, the expression of interval responses facilitates operant training.

The myth of regaining control: Ostracism increases superstitious tendencies

Whether and how interpersonal experiences predispose people to show superstitious tendencies have been largely unexamined by past studies. By adopting a multimethod approach, three studies tested (a) whether ostracism increases superstitious tendencies through thwarted perceived control, (b) whether the dispositional need for closure moderates the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies and (c) whether restoring ostracized people's thwarted control weakens their superstitious tendencies. The results revealed that ostracized participants had higher superstitious tendencies than nonostracized participants did (Studies 1-3). Moreover, thwarted control mediated the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies (Study 2). In addition, the dispositional need for closure moderated the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies, such that the effect was stronger among participants with a high need for closure (Studies 1-2). Finally, restoring ostracized participants' perceived control weakened the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies (Study 3). Altogether, these findings feature the essential role of thwarted perceived control in understanding the link between ostracism and superstitious tendencies and the implication of control restoration in weakening the link. They also highlight the importance of dispositional characteristics in moderating people's responses to superstitions following ostracism and related forms of interpersonal maltreatment.

The effect of lucky price end numbers on consumers' intention to purchase a product

Consumers' cognition of a number or numbers in prices as being lucky can affect their purchase intention. We carried out four experiments with 450 undergraduate students to investigate their purchase intention when buying products with price end numbers that they considered to be lucky or unlucky. The results show that participants in the group that was offered the product with a lucky price end number had higher purchase intention when they experienced negative (vs. positive) emotions, were superstitious, felt they had lost control, or had experienced a significant event. When they had experienced a significant event, that is, taking the College English Test Band 4, participants were more likely to avoid an unlucky price end number. Our findings indicate that retailers should consider the influence of lucky number pricing on consumers' choices when implementing pricing strategies.

Early Departure, Early Revival: A ''Free From Care'' Account of Negative Temporal Discounting

According to the positive temporal discounting theory and our relevant observations, when faced with future losses, people should, and do, prefer delayed negative events (e.g., deferring paying taxes, debts, or tickets), which can lead to substantial individual and societal costs. However, a counterexample has been identified and it appears to depart from the prediction of positive temporal discounting when faced with negative events. This study proposed and investigated the novel free from care account for the reverse preference. Results of five laboratory and field studies showed that students preferred an immediate negative event (i.e., an English oral exam) when "something tying one up" was imposed, in which coping with a distraction induced by such a situation could play a mediating role. In particular, the addition of "something tying one up" was found to be an effective behavioral nudge in terms of reliability and reproducibility and should be simple for potential users to follow. Specifically, the association between being tied up and undergoing a negative event immediately in the present studies mirrored the association between outgroup threat and intergroup cooperation in the Robbers Cave experiment.

Worth-based choice: giving an offered smaller pear an even greater fictional value

Choices between options represented in a multidimensional space, in which each dimension signifies a distinct attribute describing the objects, are presumably guided by the principle of value maximization. However, the current study assumes that in a real-world setting, those who are able to imagine things that do not actually exist could modify the multidimensional space by self-generating an unoffered but fictional dimension. We define the utility (Uv) assigned by the decision makers to the options on the offered/given dimension as value (v[x]) and the utility (Uw) on the self-generated/fictional dimension as worth (w[xc]). Our series of experiments demonstrated that an option with a greater value established strictly on that given set of dimensions might not necessarily be chosen (which contradicted the principle of value maximization). Choosing an option with less value (i.e. giving away the bigger pear) behavior can be described and explained by the “worth-based choice” approach, as people behave to select the option with the highest worth rather than that with the highest value. We are optimistic that the resulting findings will facilitate our understanding of the beauty of such a “one step further” choice and assist us in understanding the following: the ability to further generate a fictional dimension and to assign a delayed utility (worth) to the options on the fictional dimension, and to make a worth-based choice, which could eventually be taken as the operational definition to measure the degree of “fiction-generating ability”, as proposed by Harari ( 2014 ).

Pain now or later: an outgrowth account of pain-minimization

The preference for immediate negative events contradicts the minimizing loss principle given that the value of a delayed negative event is discounted by the amount of time it is delayed. However, this preference is understandable if we assume that the value of a future outcome is not restricted to the discounted utility of the outcome per se but is complemented by an anticipated negative utility assigned to an unoffered dimension, which we termed the "outgrowth." We conducted three studies to establish the existence of the outgrowth and empirically investigated the mechanism underlying the preference for immediate negative outcomes. Study 1 used a content analysis method to examine whether the outgrowth was generated in accompaniment with the delayed negative events. The results revealed that the investigated outgrowth was composed of two elements. The first component is the anticipated negative emotions elicited by the delayed negative event, and the other is the anticipated rumination during the waiting process, in which one cannot stop thinking about the negative event. Study 2 used a follow-up investigation to examine whether people actually experienced the negative emotions they anticipated in a real situation of waiting for a delayed negative event. The results showed that the participants actually experienced a number of negative emotions when waiting for a negative event. Study 3 examined whether the existence of the outgrowth could make the minimizing loss principle work. The results showed that the difference in pain anticipation between the immediate event and the delayed event could significantly predict the timing preference of the negative event. Our findings suggest that people's preference for experiencing negative events sooner serves to minimize the overall negative utility, which is divided into two parts: the discounted utility of the outcome itself and an anticipated negative utility assigned to the outgrowth.