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Krahé C, Koukoutsakis A, Fotopoulou A. Updating beliefs about pain following advice: Trustworthiness of social advice predicts pain expectations and experience. Cognition 2024; 246:105756. [PMID: 38442585 PMCID: PMC7616089 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105756] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/10/2023] [Revised: 02/09/2024] [Accepted: 02/20/2024] [Indexed: 03/07/2024]
Abstract
Prior expectations influence pain experience. These expectations, in turn, rely on prior pain experience, but they may also be socially influenced. Yet, most research has focused on self rather than social expectations about pain, and hardly any studies examined their combined effects on pain. Here, we adopted a Bayesian learning perspective to investigate how explicitly communicated social expectations ('advice about pain tolerance') affect own pain expectations, and ultimately pain tolerance, under varying conditions of social epistemic uncertainty (trustworthiness of the advice). N = 72 female participants took part in a coldpressor (cold water) task before (self-learning baseline) and after (socially-influenced learning) receiving advice about their likely pain tolerance from a confederate, the trustworthiness of whom was experimentally manipulated. We used path analysis to test the hypothesis that social advice from a highly trustworthy confederate would influence participants' expectations about pain more than advice from a less trustworthy source, and that the degree of this social influence would in turn predict pain tolerance. We further used a simplified, Bayesian learning, computational approach for explicit belief updating to examine the role of latent parameters of precision optimisation in how participants subsequently changed their future pain expectations (prospective posterior beliefs) based on the combined effect of the confederate's advice on their own pain expectations, and their own task experience. Results confirmed that participants adjusted their pain expectations towards the confederate's advice more in the high- vs. low-trustworthiness condition, and this advice taking predicted their pain tolerance. Furthermore, the confederate's trustworthiness influenced how participants weighted the confederate's advice in relation to their own expectations and task experience in forming prospective posterior beliefs. When participants received advice from a less trustworthy confederate, their own sensory experience was weighted more highly than their socially-influenced prior expectations. Thus, explicit social advice appears to impact pain by influencing one's own pain expectations, but low social trustworthiness leads to these expectations becoming more malleable to novel, sensory learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Charlotte Krahé
- Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
| | - Athanasios Koukoutsakis
- Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Aikaterini Fotopoulou
- Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
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2
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Schleihauf H, Zhang Z, Gomez A, Engelmann JM. From outcome to process: A developmental shift in judgments of good reasoning. Cognition 2023; 236:105425. [PMID: 36907114 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105425] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2022] [Revised: 02/20/2023] [Accepted: 02/27/2023] [Indexed: 03/12/2023]
Abstract
What does it mean to reason well? One might argue that good reasoning means that the outcome of the reasoning process is correct: reaching the right belief. Alternatively, good reasoning might refer to the reasoning process itself: following the right epistemic procedures. In a preregistered study, we investigated children's (4-9-year-olds) and adults' judgments of reasoning in China and the US (N = 256). Participants of all age groups evaluated the outcome when the process was kept constant - they favored agents who reached correct over incorrect beliefs, and they evaluated the process when the outcome was kept constant - they preferred agents who formed their beliefs using valid over invalid procedures. Developmental changes emerged when we pitted outcome against process: young children weighed outcome more heavily than process; older children and adults showed the reverse preference. This pattern was constant across the two cultural contexts, with the switch from outcome to process happening earlier in development in China. These results suggest that children initially value what someone believes, but, with development, come to increasingly value how beliefs are formed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hanna Schleihauf
- Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands; Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Göttingen, Germany; Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
| | - Zhen Zhang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
| | - Alissa Gomez
- Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
| | - Jan M Engelmann
- Social Origins Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
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Langenhoff AF, Engelmann JM, Srinivasan M. Children's developing ability to adjust their beliefs reasonably in light of disagreement. Child Dev 2023; 94:44-59. [PMID: 35924791 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13838] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
Abstract
Two preregistered experiments (N = 218) investigated children's developing ability to respond reasonably to disagreement. U.S. children aged 4-9, and adults (50% female, mostly white) formed an initial belief, and were confronted with the belief of a disagreeing other, whose evidence was weaker, stronger than, or equal to participants' evidence. With age, participants were increasingly likely to maintain their initial belief when their own evidence was stronger, adopt the other's belief when their evidence was weaker, and suspend judgment when both had equally strong evidence. Interestingly, 4- to 6-year-olds only suspended judgment reliably when this was assessed via the search for additional information (Experiment 2). Together, our experiments suggest that the ability to respond reasonably to disagreement develops over the preschool years.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antonia F Langenhoff
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Jan M Engelmann
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Mahesh Srinivasan
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA
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Baer C, Kidd C. Learning with certainty in childhood. Trends Cogn Sci 2022; 26:887-896. [PMID: 36085134 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.07.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2022] [Revised: 07/13/2022] [Accepted: 07/21/2022] [Indexed: 10/14/2022]
Abstract
Learners use certainty to guide learning. They maintain existing beliefs when certain, but seek further information when they feel uninformed. Here, we review developmental evidence that this metacognitive strategy does not require reportable processing. Uncertainty prompts nonverbal human infants and nonhuman animals to engage in strategies like seeking help, searching for additional information, or opting out. Certainty directs children's attention and active learning strategies and provides a common metric for comparing and integrating conflicting beliefs across people. We conclude that certainty is a continuous, domain-general signal of belief quality even early in life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carolyn Baer
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
| | - Celeste Kidd
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
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Schleihauf H, Herrmann E, Fischer J, Engelmann JM. How children revise their beliefs in light of reasons. Child Dev 2022; 93:1072-1089. [PMID: 35383921 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13758] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
We investigate how the ability to respond appropriately to reasons provided in discourse develops in young children. In Study 1 (N = 58, Germany, 26 girls), 4- and 5-, but not 3-year-old children, differentiated good from bad reasons. In Study 2 (N = 131, Germany, 64 girls), 4- and 5-year-old children considered both the strength of evidence for their initial belief and the quality of socially provided reasons for an alternative view when deciding whether to change their minds. Study 3 (N = 80, the United States, 42 girls, preregistered) shows that 4- and 5-year-old children also consider meta-reasons (reasons about reasons) in their belief revision. These results suggest that by age 4, children possess key critical thinking capacities for participating in public discourse.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hanna Schleihauf
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.,Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center-Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Göttingen, Germany.,Department for Primate Cognition, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.,Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, Göttingen, Germany
| | | | - Julia Fischer
- Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center-Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Göttingen, Germany.,Department for Primate Cognition, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.,Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Jan M Engelmann
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA
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Rakoczy H, Miosga N, Schultze T. Young children evaluate and follow others’ arguments when forming and revising beliefs. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1111/sode.12533] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Hannes Rakoczy
- Department of Developmental Psychology University of Göttingen Göttingen Germany
| | - Nadja Miosga
- Department of Developmental Psychology University of Göttingen Göttingen Germany
| | - Thomas Schultze
- Department of Developmental Psychology University of Göttingen Göttingen Germany
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