How you get it matters: Moderating role of transfer method in guiding ownership assignments for modified objects

Introduction

Previous research has found that value change and creation drive people to support the laborer more than the original owner in ownership reasoning for modified objects; however, the transfer methods used to resolve conflicts have largely been ignored. In this work, two studies were designed to investigate the role of value change and creation in adults' labor-based ownership judgments in four transfer conditions (i.e., take/steal/borrow/find).

Methods

Scenarios involving different extent of value change and creation in different transfer ways were presented to Chinese adult subjects after which they were asked to judge who is the owner.

Results

People were more likely to assign ownership to the original owner in the take, steal and borrow conditions but not in the find condition, and this reasoning held regardless of whether the original materials showed high or low value appreciation or successful creation, and it was applicable to raw materials with low (Study 1) and high values (Study 2). In addition, the effect of value change and creation on ownership reasoning varied according to different transfer methods.

Conclusion

The results suggest the moderating role of transfer method in people's ownership assignments, which will provide insights for real-life mediation of ownership conflicts.

A computational account of how individuals resolve the dilemma of dirty money

Money can be tainted when it is associated with direct or indirect harm to others. Deciding whether to accept "dirty money" poses a dilemma because money can be used to help others, but accepting dirty money has moral costs. How people resolve the dilemma of dirty money remains unknown. One theory casts the dilemma as a valuation conflict that can be resolved by integrating the costs and benefits of accepting dirty money. Here, we use behavioral experiments and computational modeling to test the valuation conflict account and unveil the cognitive computations employed when deciding whether to accept or reject morally tainted cash. In Study 1, British participants decided whether to accept "dirty" money obtained by inflicting electric shocks on another person (versus "clean" money obtained by shocking oneself). Computational models showed that the source of the money (dirty versus clean) impacted decisions by shifting the relative valuation of the money's positive and negative attributes, rather than imposing a uniform bias on decision-making. Studies 2 and 3 replicate this finding and show that participants were more willing to accept dirty money when the money was directed towards a good cause, and observers judged such decisions to be more praiseworthy than accepting dirty money for one's own profit. Our findings suggest that dirty money can be psychologically "laundered" through charitable activities and have implications for understanding and preventing the social norms that can justify corrupt behavior.

A Dollar Is a Dollar Is a Dollar, or Is It? Insights From Children's Reasoning About "Dirty Money"

Money can take many forms-a coin or a bill, a payment for an automobile or a prize for an award, a piece from the 1989 series or the 2019 series, and so on-but despite this, money is designed to represent an amount and only that. Thus, a dollar is a dollar, in the sense that money is fungible. But when adults ordinarily think about money, they think about it in terms of its source, and in particular, its moral source (e.g., dirty money). Here we investigate the development of the belief that money carries traces of its moral history. We study children ages 5-6 and 8-9, who are sensitive to both object history and morality, and thus possess the component pieces needed to think that a dollar may not be like any other. Across three principal studies (and three additional studies in Appendix S1; N = 327; 219 five- and six-year-olds; 108 eight- and nine-year-olds), we find that children are less likely to want money with negative moral history, a pattern that was stronger and more consistent among 8- and 9-year-olds than 5- and 6-year-olds. These findings highlight pressing directions for future research that could help shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to the belief that money carries traces of its moral history.

Countering demand for ineffective health remedies: Do consumers respond to risks, lack of benefits, or both?

OBJECTIVE

We tested whether targeting the illusion of causality and/or misperceptions about health risks had the potential to reduce consumer demand for an ineffective health remedy (multivitamin supplements).

DESIGN

We adopted a 2 (contingency information: no/yes) × 2 (fear appeal: no/yes) factorial design, with willingness-to-pay as the dependent variable. The contingency information specified, in table format, the number of people reporting a benefit vs. no benefit from both multivitamins and placebo, plus a causal explanation for lack of efficacy over placebo. The fear appeal involved a summary of clinical-trial results that indicated multivitamins can cause health harms. The control condition received only irrelevant information.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE

Experimental auctions measured people's willingness-to-pay for multivitamins. Experiment 1 (N = 260) elicited hypothetical willingness-to-pay online. Experiment 2 (N = 207) elicited incentivised willingness-to-pay in the laboratory.

RESULTS

Compared to a control group, we found independent effects of contingency information (-22%) and the fear appeal (-32%) on willingness-to-pay. The combination of both interventions had the greatest impact (-50%) on willingness-to-pay.

CONCLUSION

We found evidence that consumer choices are influenced by both perceptions of efficacy and risk. The combination of both elements can provide additive effects that appear superior to either approach alone.

Beliefs About the Persistence of History in Objects and Spaces in the United States and India

Scattered evidence in the literature suggests that people may believe that non-visible traces of past events (e.g., origins, emotions, and qualities of the owner) persist over time in objects and spaces, even after the original source has been removed. To date, however, there has been no unified treatment to determine the scope and cultural consistency of this expectation. This study had four primary goals: (a) to assess how broadly participants display persistence-of-history beliefs, (b) to explore individual differences in these beliefs, (c) to examine the explanatory frameworks for these beliefs, and (d) to determine whether these beliefs were endorsed across two cultural settings. Adults in both United States ( N = 195) and India ( N = 173) evaluated a broad range of situations involving possible persistence of history. In both countries, three patterns emerged: (a) A broad range of persistence-of-history scenarios were judged to be possible, falling into two underlying thematic clusters (supernatural vs. non-supernatural); (b) paranormal beliefs predicted endorsement of items in both thematic clusters; and yet (c) most scenarios were explained using natural explanatory frameworks. Together, these results demonstrate broad endorsement of the persistence of history—across cultures, situations, and individuals—as well as substantial individual variation.

Grounded procedures: A proximate mechanism for the psychology of cleansing and other physical actions

Experimental work has revealed causal links between physical cleansing and various psychological variables. Empirically, how robust are they? Theoretically, how do they operate? Major prevailing accounts focus on morality or disgust, capturing a subset of cleansing effects, but cannot easily handle cleansing effects in non-moral, non-disgusting contexts. Building on grounded views on cognitive processes and known properties of mental procedures, we propose grounded procedures of separation as a proximate mechanism underlying cleansing effects. This account differs from prevailing accounts in terms of explanatory kind, interpretive parsimony, and predictive scope. Its unique and falsifiable predictions have received empirical support: Cleansing attenuates or eliminates otherwise observed influences of prior events (1) across domains and (2) across valences. (3) Cleansing manipulations produce stronger effects the more strongly they engage sensorimotor capacities. (4) Reversing the causal arrow, motivation for cleansing is triggered more readily by negative than positive entities. (5) Conceptually similar effects extend to other physical actions of separation. On the flipside, grounded procedures of connection are also observed. Together, separation and connection organize prior findings relevant to multiple perspectives (e.g., conceptual metaphor, sympathetic magic) and open up new questions. Their predictions are more generalizable than the specific mappings in conceptual metaphors, but more fine-grained than the broad assumptions of grounded cognition. This intermediate level of analysis sheds light on the interplay between mental and physical processes.

Customers' contamination concerns: an integrative framework and future prospects for service management

Purpose

Customers might become concerned about getting contaminated and adapt their behavior accordingly, which is of critical concern for service managers. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, this paper synthesizes the extant body of research within psychology and marketing into an integrative framework that helps understand the current state of knowledge on contamination. Second, this review summarizes evidence-based managerial recommendations on how to deal with customers' contamination concerns. Third, this paper provides guidance for future research by proposing several ways in which those concerns might influence service management.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper conducts an integrative literature review of over 30 years of psychology and marketing research on contamination concerns.

Findings

The paper reviews physical and metaphysical contagion models, the situational cues that may activate customers' contamination concerns, the psychological mechanisms that underlie the relationship between contamination and customer outcomes and the individual characteristics that influence customer sensitivity to contamination cues. Moreover, this review identifies actions that service managers can take to prevent customers' contamination concerns. Finally, still much has to be learned about how organizations should deal with fear of contamination by the time a next pandemic breaks out.

Originality/value

This paper develops an integrative framework that serves as a structured knowledge map onto the contamination phenomenon and paves the way for future service research.

Protecting consumers from fraudulent health claims: A taxonomy of psychological drivers, interventions, barriers, and treatments

OBJECTIVE

Fraudulent health claims-false or misleading claims used to promote health remedies that are untested, ineffective, and often harmful-cause extensive and persistent harm to consumers. To address this problem, novel interventions are needed that address the underlying cognitive mechanisms that render consumers susceptible to fraudulent health claims. However, there is currently no single framework of relevant psychological insights to design interventions for this purpose. The current review aims to address this gap.

METHOD

An integrative theoretical review was conducted across several relevant disciplines including criminology; behavioural economics; and cognitive, health, and social psychology.

RESULTS

The current review presents a novel taxonomy that aims to serve as an agenda for future research to systematically design and compare interventions based on empirical evidence. Specifically, this taxonomy identifies (i) the psychological drivers that make consumers susceptible to fraudulent health claims, (ii) the psychological barriers that may prevent successful application of interventions, and (iii) proposes evidence-informed treatments to overcome those barriers.

CONCLUSIONS

The resulting framework integrates behavioural insights from several hitherto distinct disciplines and structures promising interventions according to five underlying psychological drivers: Visceral influence, Affect, Nescience, Misinformation, and Norms (VANMaN). The taxonomy presents an integrative and accessible theoretical framework for designing evidence-informed interventions to protect consumers from fraudulent health claims. This review has broad implications for numerous topical issues including the design and evaluation of anti-fraud campaigns, efforts to address the growing problem of health-related misinformation, and for countering the polarisation of politically sensitive health issues.

I'm so touched! Self-touch increases attitude extremity via self-focused attention

In everyday life, people often engage in behaviors like chin touching, hand clasping, and arm crossing. Such self-touching behaviors have been found to emerge under emotional stress and while performing tasks requiring concentration and focus. In contrast to work examining antecedents of self-touch, the current research experimentally investigates the causal outcomes of self-touch, specifically its influence on evaluative cognitions such as attitudes toward external objects and events. Four studies support the prediction that both instructed and spontaneous self-touch enhance focus on the self, resulting in greater attitude extremity toward evaluated targets. A last study demonstrates that people do not have a fully accurate understanding of the influence of self-touch on consequential outcomes such as self-focus and attitude extremity. Thus, this common behavior may incidentally influence a wide variety of judgments.

Moral contagion: Devaluation effect of immorality on hypothetical judgments of economic value

Moral contagion is a phenomenon in which individuals or objects take on the moral essence of the people who are associated with them. Previous studies have found that individuals value objects associated with moral and likable people more than those associated with immoral and dislikable people. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this "moral contagion effect" have not yet been explored. In the present study, we combined a novel "Second-hand Goods Pricing" paradigm with functional magnetic resonance imaging to (a) confirm the existence of the moral contagion effect on the hypothetical economic valuation of objects and (b) determine the neural substrates underlying it. Participants were shown second-hand goods, information regarding the moral valence of the previous owner, and an initial price assigned to the object by computer. The participants were then asked to adjust the initial price to one they deemed most reasonable. Behaviorally, we found a significant devaluation effect for immoral owners and a weaker reverse effect for moral owners. Imaging data showed that the devaluation effect was primarily driven by neural responses in the dorsal striatum (mainly the caudate nucleus) that were triggered by high initial prices assigned to the "contaminated" objects. Dynamic causal modeling revealed that the high initial price assigned to "contaminated" objects led to increased effective connectivity from the caudate nucleus to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex-the brain area that integrates values during decision making.

Reversing the causal arrow: Incidence and properties of negative backward magical contagion in Americans

Backward magical contagion describes instances in which individuals (sources) express discomfort or pleasure when something connected to them (medium; e.g., hair, a diary) falls into the possession of a negatively- or positively-perceived individual (recipient). The reaction seems illogical, since it is made clear that the source will never experience the object again, and the psychological effect appears to reverse the standard forward model of causality. Backward magical contagion was originally believed to be a belief held only within traditional cultures. Two studies examined negative backward contagion in adult Americans in online surveys. Study 1 indicated that backward contagion effects occur commonly, particularly when a recipient knows of the medium’s source. Study 2 showed that backward contagion effects tend to be neutralized when the recipient burns the object, as opposed to just possessing it or discarding it. Ironically, in traditional cultures, burning is a particularly potent cause of backward contagion.