Chapter 7 Development and Dual Processes in Moral Reasoning: A Fuzzy‐trace Theory Approach

A process for creating data report-back tools to improve equity in environmental health

BACKGROUND

Although there is increasing interest in reporting results of environmental research efforts back to participants, evidence-based tools have not yet been applied to developed materials to ensure their accessibility in terms of literacy, numeracy, and data visualization demand. Additionally, there is not yet guidance as to how to formally assess the created materials to assure a match with the intended audience.

METHODS

Relying on formative qualitative research with participants of an indoor air quality study in Dorchester, Massachusetts, we identified means of enhancing accessibility of indoor air quality data report-back materials for participants. Participants (n = 20) engaged in semi-structured interviews in which they described challenges they encountered with scientific and medical materials and outlined written and verbal communication techniques that would help facilitate engagement with and accessibility of environmental health report-back materials. We coupled these insights from participants with best practice guidelines for written materials by operationalizing health literacy tools to produce accessible audience-informed data report-back materials.

RESULTS

The resulting data report-back materials had a 7th -grade reading level, and between a 4th -8th grade level of overall document complexity. The numeracy skills required to engage with the material were of the lowest demand, and we incorporated best practices for risk communication and facilitating understanding and actionability of the materials. Use of a rigorous assessment tool provides evidence of accessibility and appropriateness of the material for the audience.

CONCLUSIONS

We outline a process for developing and evaluating environmental health data reports that are tailored to inspire risk-reduction actions, and are demonstrably accessible in terms of their literacy, numeracy, and data visualization demand. Adapting health literacy tools to create and evaluate environmental data report-back materials is a novel and evidence-based means of ensuring their accessibility.

Framing Effects on Judgments of Social Robots' (Im)Moral Behaviors

Frames—discursive structures that make dimensions of a situation more or less salient—are understood to influence how people understand novel technologies. As technological agents are increasingly integrated into society, it becomes important to discover how native understandings (i.e., individual frames) of social robots are associated with how they are characterized by media, technology developers, and even the agents themselves (i.e., produced frames). Moreover, these individual and produced frames may influence the ways in which people see social robots as legitimate and trustworthy agents—especially in the face of (im)moral behavior. This three-study investigation begins to address this knowledge gap by 1) identifying individually held frames for explaining an android’s (im)moral behavior, and experimentally testing how produced frames prime judgments about an android’s morally ambiguous behavior in 2) mediated representations and 3) face-to-face exposures. Results indicate that people rely on discernible ground rules to explain social robot behaviors; these frames induced only limited effects on responsibility judgments of that robot’s morally ambiguous behavior. Evidence also suggests that technophobia-induced reactance may move people to reject a produced frame in favor of a divergent individual frame.

Decision Making, Morality, and Machiavellianism: The Role of Dispositional Traits in Gist Extraction

Fuzzy Trace Theory (FTT) is a promising new framework for evaluating decision making processes related to risk. In brief, FTT argues that individuals use either a mature and meaningful process (i.e., “gist”) or a cold and numbers-based process (i.e., “verbatim”) when making a decision based on information. However, the fundamental meaning that one may extract from a set of information may depend entirely on the motivations, values, and personality of the individual. We argue that in the case of Machiavellianism, individuals may be using gist-based processes, much like others, but arrive at vastly different conclusions with respect to the best course of action. This assertion is based on the fact that Machiavellian individuals lack the fundamental morality and empathy necessary to have concern for others when making decisions. Thus, we outline a theoretical argument as to when gist based extraction may be altered by individual differences. We further discuss the practical implications that individual differences have for decision making through the lens of FTT.

Developmental reversals in risky decision making: intelligence agents show larger decision biases than college students

Intelligence agents make risky decisions routinely, with serious consequences for national security. Although common sense and most theories imply that experienced intelligence professionals should be less prone to irrational inconsistencies than college students, we show the opposite. Moreover, the growth of experience-based intuition predicts this developmental reversal. We presented intelligence agents, college students, and postcollege adults with 30 risky-choice problems in gain and loss frames and then compared the three groups' decisions. The agents not only exhibited larger framing biases than the students, but also were more confident in their decisions. The postcollege adults (who were selected to be similar to the students) occupied an interesting middle ground, being generally as biased as the students (sometimes more biased) but less biased than the agents. An experimental manipulation testing an explanation for these effects, derived from fuzzy-trace theory, made the students look as biased as the agents. These results show that, although framing biases are irrational (because equivalent outcomes are treated differently), they are the ironical output of cognitively advanced mechanisms of meaning making.

Individual Differences in Base Rate Neglect: A Fuzzy Processing Preference Index

Little is known about individual differences in integrating numeric base-rates and qualitative text in making probability judgments. Fuzzy-Trace Theory predicts a preference for fuzzy processing. We conducted six studies to develop the FPPI, a reliable and valid instrument assessing individual differences in this fuzzy processing preference. It consists of 19 probability estimation items plus 4 "M-Scale" items that distinguish simple pattern matching from "base rate respect." Cronbach's Alpha was consistently above 0.90. Validity is suggested by significant correlations between FPPI scores and three other measurers: "Rule Based" Process Dissociation Procedure scores; the number of conjunction fallacies in joint probability estimation; and logic index scores on syllogistic reasoning. Replicating norms collected in a university study with a web-based study produced negligible differences in FPPI scores, indicating robustness. The predicted relationships between individual differences in base rate respect and both conjunction fallacies and syllogistic reasoning were partially replicated in two web-based studies.

Risk perception and communication in vaccination decisions: a fuzzy-trace theory approach

The tenets of fuzzy-trace theory, along with prior research on risk perception and risk communication, are used to develop a process model of vaccination decisions in the era of Web 2.0. The theory characterizes these decisions in terms of background knowledge, dual mental representations (verbatim and gist), retrieval of values, and application of values to representations in context. Lack of knowledge interferes with the ability to extract the essential meaning, or gist, of vaccination messages. Prevention decisions have, by definition, a status quo option of "feeling okay." Psychological evidence from other prevention decisions, such as cancer screening, indicates that many people initially mentally represent their decision options in terms of simple, categorical gist: a choice between (a) a feeling-okay option (e.g., the unvaccinated status quo) versus (b) taking up preventive behavior that can have two potential categorical outcomes: feeling okay or not feeling okay. Hence, applying the same theoretical rules as used to explain framing effects and the Allais paradox, the decision to get a flu shot, for example, boils down to feeling okay (not sick) versus feeling okay (not sick) or not feeling okay (sick, side effects, or death). Because feeling okay is superior to not feeling okay (a retrieved value), this impoverished gist supports choosing not to have the flu vaccine. Anti-vaccination sources provide more coherent accounts of the gist of vaccination than official sources, filling a need to understand rare adverse outcomes.

A new intuitionism: Meaning, memory, and development in Fuzzy-Trace Theory

Combining meaning, memory, and development, the perennially popular topic of intuition can be approached in a new way. Fuzzy-trace theory integrates these topics by distinguishing between meaning-based gist representations, which support fuzzy (yet advanced) intuition, and superficial verbatim representations of information, which support precise analysis. Here, I review the counterintuitive findings that led to the development of the theory and its most recent extensions to the neuroscience of risky decision making. These findings include memory interference (worse verbatim memory is associated with better reasoning); nonnumerical framing (framing effects increase when numbers are deleted from decision problems); developmental decreases in gray matter and increases in brain connectivity; developmental reversals in memory, judgment, and decision making (heuristics and biases based on gist increase from childhood to adulthood, challenging conceptions of rationality); and selective attention effects that provide critical tests comparing fuzzy-trace theory, expected utility theory, and its variants (e.g., prospect theory). Surprising implications for judgment and decision making in real life are also discussed, notably, that adaptive decision making relies mainly on gist-based intuition in law, medicine, and public health.