Remembering chosen and assigned options

Experts' decision-making processes in Swedish forensic psychiatric investigations: A case vignette study

It has previously been demonstrated that decisions made by forensic experts can suffer from issues with both bias and poor reliability. The outcome of Swedish forensic psychiatric investigations can have a major impact on the courts' choice of sanction for a mentally disordered offender. These investigations are performed by multi-professional teams of experts, where each expert is obliged to state their opinion on whether the client has a severe mental disorder (SMD) or not. In the present study, a case vignette design was used to simulate the decision-making process of forensic psychiatric investigations. Of the 73 Swedish experts working with forensic psychiatric investigations, a total of 27 (37%) participated in the study. The results showed that the Swedish experts formulated multiple diagnostic hypotheses about cases throughout the process and revised these hypotheses when presented with new information. There was substantial variation between the experts in which hypotheses were seen as most relevant. While the experts grew more certain of their opinions on SMD during the simulated investigation, there was considerable variation in their opinions both throughout and at the end of the process. Although low statistical power and the sample not being randomized limit generalizations, the results indicate no idiosyncratic patterns in the decision-making processes of Swedish experts or signs of confirmation bias. If used properly, the variation in both process and outcome could be used to safeguard and possibly increase the reliability and validity of the final decision of Swedish forensic psychiatric investigations.

News Framing and Preference-Based Reinforcement: Evidence from a Real Framing Environment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 is a news issue that can be covered from many different angles. When reporting, journalists have to select, accentuate, or exclude particular aspects, which, in turn, may evoke a specific, and possibly constricted, perspective in viewers, a phenomenon termed the news-framing effect. Guided by the reinforcing spiral framework, we conducted a multi-study project that investigated the news-framing effect's underlying mechanism by studying the dynamic of self-reinforcing effects. Grounded in a real-life framing environment observed during the pandemic and systematically assessed via a content analysis (study 1) and survey (study 2), we offer supporting evidence for a preference-based reinforcement model by utilizing a combination of the selective exposure (i.e., self-selected exposure) and causal effects (i.e., forced exposure) paradigms within one randomized controlled study (study 3). Self-selection of news content by viewers was a necessary precondition for frame-consistent (reinforcement) effects. Forced exposure did not elicit causal effects in a frame-consistent direction.

Challenges of measuring empathic accuracy: A mentalizing versus experience-sharing paradigm

Empathic accuracy, the ability to accurately infer the mental states of others, is essential to successful interpersonal relationships. Perceivers can interpret targets' emotional experiences by decoding facial and voice cues (mentalizing) or by using their own feelings as referents (experience-sharing). We examined the relative efficacy of these processes via a replication and extension of Zhou et al. (Psychol Sci., 28, 2017, 482) who found experience-sharing to be more successful but undervalued. Participants estimated targets' emotional ratings in response to positive, neutral and negative images in mentalizing or experience-sharing conditions. Our analysis of absolute magnitudes of error showed similar levels of accuracy across process conditions (a non-replication of Zhou et al.); however, our exploratory analysis of directional variation across valence using raw scores revealed a pattern of conservative estimates for affective stimuli, which was accentuated in the mentalizing condition. Thus, our exploratory analysis lends conceptual support to Zhou et al.'s finding that experience-sharing represents the more successful process, and we replicated their finding that it was nevertheless undervalued. Extending Zhou et al., we also found that empathic accuracy was predicted by individual differences in fiction-exposure. Future research may further examine the impact of individual differences and stimulus properties in the employment of empathic inferencing strategies.

Decision Reversibility and Satisfaction: The Mediating Role of Counterfactual Thinking and Anticipated Regret

Purpose

Extensive research has shown that reversible decisions yield lower post-decision satisfaction than irreversible decisions. However, to date, little is known about how decision reversibility affects post-decision satisfaction. Based on regret theory, this study aimed to examine the mediating role of counterfactual thinking and anticipated regret in the association between decision reversibility and satisfaction.

Methods

In this study (130 participants), participants were randomly assigned to two personnel decision situations with reversible and irreversible decision outcomes, and all participants completed questionnaires during the process of completing the decision task. The questionnaires used included the Counterfactual Thinking for Negative Events Scale, Anticipated Regret Scale, and satisfaction questionnaire. Finally, the data were statistically analyzed using the base package in R and PROCESS 3.5.

Results

The results show that (1) Compared to irreversible decisions, reversible decisions have a significant negative impact on satisfaction. (2) Counterfactual thinking plays a mediating role between decision reversibility and satisfaction. (3) Compared with irreversible decisions, reversible decisions further lowered the level of post-decision satisfaction through the chain mediating effects of counterfactual thinking and anticipated regret.

Conclusion

People's lowered levels of post-decision satisfaction in the reversible decision condition relate to increased levels of counterfactual thinking and anticipated regret. In addition, counterfactual thinking can play a mediating role alone, indicating that this variable may be critical in understanding the mechanisms by which decision reversibility affects satisfaction. This knowledge may be used to help people optimize their decision-making behavior.

Beyond stereotypes: Using socioemotional selectivity theory to improve messaging to older adults

The tremendous heterogeneity in functional and demographic characteristics of the over-65 age group presents challenges to effective marketing and public health communications. Messages grounded on tacit assumptions that older people are frail, incompetent, and needy risk being overlooked by most of the older population; on the other hand, ignoring age-associated vulnerabilities is problematic. We argue that while traditional approaches to market segmentation based on chronological age often fail, reliable age differences in motivation can inform the types of information that older people typically prefer, attend to, and remember. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that as future time horizons grow limited - as they typically do with age - emotional goals are prioritized over goals that focus on exploration. As time left becomes more limited, positive messages are remembered better than negative, and products that help people savor the moment are preferred over those that benefit the long-term future. Relatedly, acknowledging individual strengths and personal resilience are likely to be especially appealing to older people.

"Choice-supportive bias" in science: Explanation and mitigation

Mistakes in scientific research, their origins, and the possible solutions have always been noteworthy. On the other hand, researchers in some fields have focused on cognitive biases and their interventions in thinking and information processing. In this article, by bridging between these two issues, i.e., scientific research mistakes and cognitive bias, it will be first shown that scientific research requires scientists' choices in various stages such as subject selection, data treatment, theory determination, and technological design. Then, we show the involvement of choice-supportive bias in scientific inquiry as one of the potential cognitive limitations of science. Finally, three ways are discussed to mitigate the effects of this bias in science: more scores to self-criticism publications, recording of the shortcomings of the research by the researcher before publishing, and emphasizing control processes before researcher choices in scientific inquiry.

Context-Dependent Risk Aversion: A Model-Based Approach

Most research on risk aversion in behavioral science with human subjects has focused on a component of risk aversion that does not adapt itself to context. More recently, studies have explored risk aversion adaptation to changing circumstances in sequential decision-making tasks. It is an open question whether one can identify evidence, at the single subject level, for such risk aversion adaptation. We conducted a behavioral experiment on human subjects, using a sequential decision making task. We developed a model-based approach for estimating the adaptation of risk-taking behavior with single-trial resolution by modeling a subject's goals and internal representation of task contingencies. Using this model-based approach, we estimated the subject-specific adaptation of risk aversion depending on the current task context. We found striking inter-subject variations in the adaptation of risk-taking behavior. We show that these differences can be explained by differences in subjects' internal representations of task contingencies and goals. We discuss that the proposed approach can be adapted to a wide range of experimental paradigms and be used to analyze behavioral measures other than risk aversion.

Choice-Supportive Misremembering: A New Taxonomy and Review

Although the literature on the influence of memory on decisions is well developed, research on the effects of decision making on memory is rather sparse and scattered. Choice-supportive misremembering (i.e., misremembering choice-related information that boosts the chosen option and/or demotes the foregone options) has been observed in several studies and has the potential to affect future choices. Nonetheless, no attempt has been made to review the relevant literature, categorize the different types of choice-supportive misremembering observed, and critically appraise the existing evidence and proposed explanations. Thus, starting from a new theoretically motivated and empirically grounded taxonomy, we review the current research. Our taxonomy classifies choice-supportive misremembering into four conceptually distinct types: misattribution is when information is attributed to the wrong source, fact distortion when the facts are remembered in a distorted manner, false memory when items that were not part of the original decision scenarios are remembered as presented and, finally, selective forgetting is when information is selectively forgotten. After assessing the impact of various potentially moderating factors, we evaluate the evidence for each type of misremembering and conclude that the support for the phenomenon is solid in relation to misattribution when recognition memory is assessed, but significantly weaker for the other three types, and when other memory tests are used to assess memory. Finally, we review the cognitive and emotional explanations proposed for choice-supportive misremembering in the light of the available evidence and identify the main gaps in the current knowledge and the more promising avenues for future research.

Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory

Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential, 'autonoetic' character. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms, and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken towards an event simulation. On this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in 'future-oriented mental time travel' neither do justice to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons for why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events.

New proposal of silver diamine fluoride use in arresting approximal caries: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Approximal surfaces are a challenge to caries lesions control. Silver diamine fluoride (SDF) is a simple,low-cost and promisor intervention for arresting caries lesions, but it has never been tested on approximal surfaces. Our aim is to evaluate the efficacy and cost-efficacy of SDF in arresting initial lesions compared to resin infiltration and exclusively flossing (control group). Our second aim is to assess discomfort and satisfaction regarding interventions.

METHODS/DESIGN

This is a randomized clinical trial, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study. Children/adolescents presenting at least one approximal initial caries lesion in primary molars/permanent premolars and molars will be included. Surfaces with advanced dentine lesions identified by radiography and participants who refuse to participate or present negative behaviors will be excluded. A minimum sample size of 504 surfaces will be required for each subgroup. Individuals will be randomly allocated in three groups of interventions: SDF, resin infiltration, and control group. Depending on the allocation, the patients will receive the active treatment and respective placebo therapies. All patients will be oriented to daily flossing the included surfaces. Our primary outcome will be caries progression by clinical and radiographic examinations. Appointments will be timed and costs of materials will be considered to calculate cost-efficacy. Patient discomfort will be assessed after interventions. Parent and patient satisfaction with the treatment will be collected after treatment and in the last follow-up visit. Individuals will be assessed at 1 and 3 months after treatment to evaluate dental biofilm and at 6, 12, and 24 months to assess caries progression by visual examination and/or radiography. Multilevel analyses will be used to verify if the type of treatment influenced on the tested outcomes. Costs will be compared and analyses of cost-efficacy will be performed. Poisson analysis will test the association between intervention and reported discomfort and satisfaction.

DISCUSSION

Our hypothesis is that SDF is the most cost-efficacious option from all tested interventions. If our hypothesis is confirmed, the use of SDF in private and public contexts could represent an easier and effective option in the treatment of enamel approximal caries in children/adolescents.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01477385), Initial release: 11/16/2011: last update: 06/02/2014.

Dishonest Deed, Clear Conscience: When Cheating Leads to Moral Disengagement and Motivated Forgetting

People routinely engage in dishonest acts without feeling guilty about their behavior. When and why does this occur? Across four studies, people justified their dishonest deeds through moral disengagement and exhibited motivated forgetting of information that might otherwise limit their dishonesty. Using hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1 and 2) and real tasks involving the opportunity to cheat (Studies 3 and 4), the authors find that one’s own dishonest behavior increased moral disengagement and motivated forgetting of moral rules. Such changes did not occur in the case of honest behavior or consideration of the dishonest behavior of others. In addition, increasing moral saliency by having participants read or sign an honor code significantly reduced unethical behavior and prevented subsequent moral disengagement. Although dishonest behavior motivated moral leniency and led to forgetting of moral rules, honest behavior motivated moral stringency and diligent recollection of moral rules.

Extended self: medial prefrontal activity during transient association of self and objects

The idea of 'extended self' refers to the incorporation of personally relevant external stimuli into one's concept of self. The current study used a transient imagined ownership paradigm to explore brain regions that support the association between self and objects. We hypothesized that incidental associations between self and objects would be manifested by activation in a brain region, medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), recruited in explicit self-referential processing. We further predicted that a memorial advantage for, and positivity-bias towards, self-relevant objects would be related to activity in MPFC. As anticipated, MPFC showed greater activation when objects were assigned to participants compared to when objects were assigned to another person. Activity in MPFC was also associated with superior subsequent source memory and increased preference for objects assigned to the self. These findings provide neural evidence for the incorporation of self-relevant objects into an extended self, which, in turn, increases their judged value (mere ownership effect).

Post-decision consolidation and distortion of facts

Participants decided whom of two patients to prioritize for surgery in three studies. The factual quantitative information about the patients (e.g., probability of surviving surgery) was given in vignette form with case descriptions on Visual Analogue Scales — VAS’s. Differentiation and Consolidation theory predicts that not only the attractiveness of facts but also the mental representations of objective facts themselves will be restructured in post-decision processes in support of a decision (Svenson, 2003). After the decision, participants were asked to reproduce the objective facts about the patients. The results showed that distortions of objective facts were used to consolidate a prior decision. The consolidation process relied on facts initially favoring the non-chosen alternative and on facts rated as less, rather than more important.

Yours or mine? Ownership and memory

An important function of the self is to identify external objects that are potentially personally relevant. We suggest that such objects may be identified through mere ownership. Extant research suggests that encoding information in a self-relevant context enhances memory (the so-called 'self-reference effect'), thus an experiment was designed to test the impact of ownership on memory performance. Participants either moved or observed the movement of picture cards into two baskets; one of which belonged to self and one which belonged to another participant. A subsequent recognition test revealed that there was a significant memory advantage for objects that were owned by self. Acting on items (i.e., moving them) had no impact on memory. Results are discussed with reference to the importance of self-object associations in cognition.

The feeling of choosing: Self-involvement and the cognitive status of things past

Previous research has demonstrated that self-involvement enhances the memorability of information (i.e., self>other) encountered in the past. The emergence of this effect, however, is dependent on guided evaluative processing and the explicit association of items with self. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether self-memory effects would emerge in task contexts characterized by incidental-encoding and minimal self-involvement. Integrating insights from work on source monitoring and action recognition, we hypothesized that the effects of self-involvement on memory function may be moderated by the extent to which encoding experiences entail volitional (i.e., choice-based) processing. The results of three experiments supported this prediction. Despite the adoption of an incidental task context and stimulus materials that were inconsequential to participants, the act of selection enhanced the memorability and accessibility of information. The implications of these findings for contemporary treatments of self are considered.

Regret and Behavior: Comment on Zeelenberg and Pieters

Zeelenberg and Pieter's (2007) regret regulation theory 1.0 offers a synthesis that brings together concepts spanning numerous literatures. We have no substantive disagreement with their theory, but instead offer 3 observations to further aid regret researchers studying consumer decision making. First, the overall arch of any regret theory must be situated within an understanding of behavior regulation. Second, the distinction between regrets of action versus inaction is best understood in terms of motivational implications, particularly with regard to Higgin's (1998) distinction between promotion and prevention focus. Third, the opportunity principle offers a particularly clear means of summarizing the regulatory consequences of the regret experience. Regret is an emotion pivotal for decision making, and its cognitive underpinning has and continues to be elucidated in research focusing on counterfactual thinking.

Wishful thinking and source monitoring

Memory distortions sometimes serve a purpose: It may be in our interest to misremember some details of an event or to forget others altogether. The present work examines whether a similar phenomenon occurs for source attribution. Given that the source of a memory provides information about the accuracy of its content, people may be biased toward source attributions that are consistent with desired accuracy. In Experiment 1, participants read desirable and undesirable predictions made by sources differing in their a priori reliability and showed a wishful thinking bias--that is, a bias to attribute desirable predictions to the reliable source and undesirable predictions to the unreliable source. Experiment 2 showed that this wishful thinking effect depends on retrieval processes. Experiment 3 showed that under some circumstances, wishes concerning one event can produce systematic source memory errors for others.

The allure of the alignable: younger and older adults' false memories of choice features

When making choices, people often try to directly compare the features of different options rather than evaluating each option separately. Not every feature has an analogous (or alignable) feature in the other option, however. In this study, both younger and older adults filled in such gaps when remembering, creating features in the other option to contrast with existing features. Thus, participants had a tendency to remember choice options as more comparable than they originally were. High performance on tasks tapping strategic processing was associated with a pattern of mostly feature-based comparisons during choice for older adults but with a pattern of mostly option-based comparisons for younger adults. This pattern suggests that younger and older adults' comparison processes are influenced by different goals.