Emotion, rationality, and decision-making: how to link affective and social neuroscience with social theory

Cultural values, risk characteristics, and risk perceptions of controversial issues: How does cultural theory work?

Cultural theory and the psychometric paradigm are two frameworks proposed to explain risk perceptions, mostly used independently of each other. On the one hand, psychometric research identified key characteristics of hazards responsible for their level of perceived riskiness. On the other hand, cultural studies provided evidence that different worldviews lead to divergent perceptions of risk in a way supportive of individuals' cultural values. The purpose of this research was to combine both approaches into mediational models in which cultural values impact risk perceptions of controversial hazards through their influence on the characteristics associated with those hazards. Using data from an online survey completed by 629 French participants, findings indicated specific associations between cultural values and risk characteristics, both of them exhibiting effects on risk perceptions that depend largely on hazardous issues. More specifically, we found that people confer specific characteristics on hazards (common or dreadful, beneficial or costly, affecting few or many people), depending on whether they are hierarchists-individualists, egalitarians, or fatalists; in turn, such characteristics have an impact on the perceived riskiness of hazards such as cannabis, social movement, global warming, genetically modified organisms, nuclear power, public transportation, and coronavirus. Finally, this article discussed the interest of addressing the mechanisms that explain how cultural values shape individuals' perceptions of risk.

Trait impulsivity influences behavioural and physiological responses to threat in a virtual environment

Trait impulsivity represents a tendency to take action without forethought or consideration of consequences. This trait is multifaceted and can be decomposed into attentional, motor and non-planning subtypes of impulsivity. The purpose of the current study was to investigate how subtypes of trait impulsivity responded to different degrees of threat within room-scale virtual reality (VR) with respect to behaviour and level of physiological activation. Thirty-four participants were required to negotiate a virtual environment (VE) where they walked at height with the continuous threat of a virtual 'fall.' Behavioural measures related to the speed of movement, interaction frequency and risk were collected. Participants also wore ambulatory sensors to collect data from electrocardiogram (ECG) and electrodermal activity (EDA). Our results indicated that participants who scored highly on non-planning impulsivity exhibited riskier behaviour and higher skin conductance level (SCL). Participants with higher motor impulsivity interacted with more objects in the VE when threat was high, they also exhibited contradictory indicators of physiological activation. Attentional impulsivity was associated with a greater number of falls across the VE. The results demonstrate that subtypes of trait impulsivity respond to threats via different patterns of behaviour and levels of physiological activation, reinforcing the multifaceted nature of the trait.

Home-schooling and caring for children during the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK: emotional states, systems of support and coping strategies in working mothers

Introduction

We examined the experience of the intensification of home-schooling and/or childcare in working mothers in the United Kingdom during the first national COVID-19 lockdown. Our focus was on understanding how mothers dealt with this challenging period both emotionally and practically.

Methods

Eligible mothers (n = 47; Mage  =  39.6) participated in an anonymous online survey of openended questions.

Results

Thematic analysis of responses showed that mothers found home-schooling and/or childcare to be challenging. This was particularly notable in situations where support from partners, schools, and workplaces was limited. For single working mothers, the absence of support resources was especially impactful. Mothers often felt overly stressed trying to balance work and family responsibilities, guilty for not meeting their child's needs, and were worried over their child's well-being and academic progress and over increasing work demands. Common strategies mothers used to cope with the challenges of home-schooling and/or childcare included adopting a positive outlook, implementing flexible family structures, increasing family connectedness, and negotiating alternative partnership models.

Discussion

The intensification of home-schooling and/or childcare during the lockdown in the United Kingdom negatively affected maternal well-being, particularly due to limited support. These findings underscore the importance of prioritizing maternal wellbeing in post-pandemic recovery efforts. Additionally, they highlight the social dimension of maternal wellbeing and suggest a comprehensive approach to support it that includes both timely access to intervention for mental health but also implementing family-friendly work policies and offering support with childcare and children's learning as essential measures.

Clinical decision making in physical therapy - Exploring the 'heuristic' in clinical practice

Clinical decision-making (CDM) plays an integral role in the work of a physical therapist and has ramifications for patient outcomes and experience. Rational decision-making - acting in a manner that helps us achieve our goals - is influenced by cognitive, emotional, and social variables. The dual process theory helps us understand how clinicians make what they perceive to be rational decisions. Within dual process is the use of cognitive decisional shortcuts, commonly referred to as 'heuristics,' which are either developed through experience or the use of fast and frugal trees (FFT). The use of heuristics in physical therapy practice has yet to be explored. This paper aims to describe this subset of physical therapy decision-making and to identify the typical cognitive biases - the error in heuristic-driven decision making - inherent in this style of reasoning. Common heuristics and their related biases are described and illustrated with vignettes, including the anchoring, availability, confirmatory, and representative heuristics. The authors conclude by proposing interventions to optimize physical therapists' awareness of their use of heuristics in clinical decision-making and to identify and minimize the influence of potential bias.

Why People Settle in Shrinking Communities: A Unified Framework of Psychological, Environmental, and Cognitive Factors

The interpretation of settlement behavior in shrinking areas can provide insights into sustainability strategies in shrinking communities. However, the choice to settle in areas undergoing shrinkage is hard to interpret when considering residents as rational decisionmakers. To attain a deeper understanding of this decision-making process, a framework of residential decision making (RDM) considering a subjective environmental evaluation dimension, psychological dimension, and cognitive dimension is proposed. This process was further validated by conducting a questionnaire survey in Japanese communities. The results of the structural equation modeling reveal that the RDM framework proposed is applicable to RDM in shrinking communities. By considering geographical differences, we further found that residents in suburban communities tend to consider overall satisfaction with their location when deciding whether to stay, whereas residents in mountainous communities value emotional satisfaction factors such as place attachment when considering continuous residence. Different residential preferences contributing to the formation of RDM factors were also revealed between communities. The results of this study imply that sustainable development strategies to assist shrinking communities should be tailored to their geographical characteristics. Further, a regional design that can enrich residential experiences and neighborhood communication is important for promoting population settlement.

Bridging Ecological Rationality, Embodied Emotion, and Neuroeconomics: Insights From the Somatic Marker Hypothesis

The somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) has been utilized to demonstrate the role of emotion and somatic state in decision-making under uncertainty over the past two decades. Despite some debate, the SMH has provided not only a neurobiological framework for understanding emotion and decision-making but also a good empirical support for ecological rationality and embodied emotion. Unlike the traditional maximizing rationality and bounded satisficing rationality, the ecological rationality stresses that emotions should be brought to the decision-making process. The embodied emotion furthermore emphasizes that emotions are embodied in the body and the brain. On the other hand, behavioral decision-making has spawned many new interdisciplines, including neuroeconomics. In this case, the SMH could act as a bridge to translate the ecological rationality and the embodied emotion into emerging neuroeconomics. Thus, this mini-review article aims to propose an integrated framework for introducing ecological rationality and embodied emotion into the field of neuroeconomics by virtue of insights from the SMH.

Active Confirmation Bias in the Evaluative Processing of Food Images

Predictive processing is fundamental to many aspects of the human mind, including perception and decision-making. It remains to be elucidated, however, in which way predictive information impacts on evaluative processing, particularly in tasks that employ bivalent stimulus sets. Various accounts, including framing, proactive interference, and cognitive control, appear to imply contradictory proposals on the relation between prediction and preference formation. To disambiguate whether predictive cues produce congruent biases versus opponent mechanisms in evaluative processing, we conducted two experiments in which participants were asked to rate individual food images. The image database included appetitive and aversive items. In each trial, a cue predicted, with varying degrees of reliability, the valence of the impending food image. In both experiments, we found that the ratings exhibited congruent biases as a function of the reliability of the predictive cue, with the highest evaluations following the most reliable positive-valence predictions. Eye prepositioning further showed a selective spatial bias suggestive of response preparation in line with the predictions. The response times also exhibited a pattern of results consistent with selective preparation, producing slow responses following invalid predictions. The data suggested an active form of evaluative processing, implementing a confirmation bias that aims to accommodate the prediction.

Probing culture in the head: the neural correlates of relational models

Relational Models Theory or RMT proposes that there are four universal ways in which socio-economic relations can be organized. According to the RMT, each of its four relational models (Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing) is associated with a distinct cognitive representation, with a cumulative pattern in which each relational model is a superset of the next lower model. This report for the first time uses a combination of cognitive and the social neuroscience to put this model to the test. RMT proposes that members of every culture use all four relational models, just in different proportions. It should therefore be possible to study their neural correlates in a mono-cultural sample. In this study, thirty-nine European-American students were imaged in a 3T Siemens Trio with a 24-channel head coil while rating the extent to which each relational model organized relationships with each of thirty-two acquaintances/friend/relatives in a boxcar design. FreeSurfer Functional Analysis Stream (FS-FAST) analyses revealed distinct patterns of activation for each of the relational models. The activations did not follow a cumulative hierarchical pattern, suggestive that this aspect of the RMT model should be revised.

Social tipping points in global groundwater management

Groundwater is critical to global food security, environmental flows, and millions of rural livelihoods in the face of climate change ¹ . Although a third of Earth's largest groundwater basins are being depleted by irrigated agriculture ² , little is known about the conditions that lead resource users to comply with conservation policies. Here we developed an agent-based model ^3,4 of irrigated agriculture rooted in principles of cooperation ^5,6 and collective action ⁷ and grounded on the World Values Survey Wave 6 (n = 90,350). Simulations of three major aquifer systems facing unsustainable demands reveal tipping points where social norms towards groundwater conservation shift abruptly with small changes in cultural values and monitoring and enforcement provisions. These tipping points are amplified by group size and best invoked by engaging a minority of rule followers. Overall, we present a powerful tool for evaluating the contingency of regulatory compliance upon cultural, socioeconomic, institutional and physical conditions, and its susceptibility to change beyond thresholds. Managing these thresholds may help to avoid unsustainable groundwater development, reduce enforcement costs, better account for cultural diversity in transboundary aquifer management and increase community resilience to changes in regional climate. Although we focus on groundwater, our methods and findings apply broadly to other resource management issues.

Aristotle Meets Zeno: Psychophysiological Evidence

This study, a tribute to Aristotle's 2400 years, used a juxtaposition of valid Aristotelian arguments to the paradoxes formulated by Zeno the Eleatic, in order to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of attentional and /or memory processing effects in the course of deductive reasoning. Participants undertook reasoning tasks based on visually presented arguments which were either (a) valid (Aristotelian) statements or (b) paradoxes. We compared brain activation patterns while participants maintained the premises / conclusions of either the valid statements or the paradoxes in working memory (WM). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs), specifically the P300 component of ERPs, were recorded during the WM phase, during which participants were required to draw a logical conclusion regarding the correctness of the valid syllogisms or the paradoxes. During the processing of paradoxes, results demonstrated a more positive event-related potential deflection (P300) across frontal regions, whereas processing of valid statements was associated with noticeable P300 amplitudes across parieto-occipital regions. These findings suggest that paradoxes mobilize frontal attention mechanisms, while valid deduction promotes parieto-occipital activity associated with attention and/or subsequent memory processing.