Exploring open science practices in behavioural public policy research

In their book 'Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness', Thaler & Sunstein (2009) argue that choice architectures are promising public policy interventions. This research programme motivated the creation of 'nudge units', government agencies which aim to apply insights from behavioural science to improve public policy. We closely examine a meta-analysis of the evidence gathered by two of the largest and most influential nudge units (DellaVigna & Linos (2022 Econometrica 90, 81-116 (doi:10.3982/ECTA18709))) and use statistical techniques to detect reporting biases. Our analysis shows evidence suggestive of selective reporting. We additionally evaluate the public pre-analysis plans from one of the two nudge units (Office of Evaluation Sciences). We identify several instances of excellent practice; however, we also find that the analysis plans and reporting often lack sufficient detail to evaluate (unintentional) reporting biases. We highlight several improvements that would enhance the effectiveness of the pre-analysis plans and reports as a means to combat reporting biases. Our findings and suggestions can further improve the evidence base for policy decisions.

Group reciprocity and the evolution of stereotyping

Stereotypes are generalized beliefs about groups of people, which are used to make decisions and judgements about them. Although such heuristics can be useful when decisions must be made quickly, or when information is lacking, they can also serve as the basis for prejudice and discrimination. In this paper, we study the evolution of stereotypes through group reciprocity. We characterize the warmth of a stereotype as the willingness to cooperate with an individual based solely on the identity of the group they belong to. We show that when stereotype groups are large, such group reciprocity is less likely to evolve, and stereotypes tend to be negative. We also show that, even when stereotypes are broadly positive, individuals are often overly pessimistic about the willingness of those they stereotype to cooperate. We then show that the tendency for stereotyping itself to evolve is driven by the costs of cognition, so that more people are stereotyped with greater coarseness as costs increase. Finally we show that extrinsic 'shocks', in which the benefits of cooperation are suddenly reduced, can cause stereotype warmth and judgement bias to turn sharply negative, consistent with the view that economic and other crises are drivers of out-group animosity.

Factors affecting conspiracy theory endorsement in paranoia

Paranoia and conspiracy thinking are known to be distinct but correlated constructs, but it is unknown whether certain types of conspiracy thinking are more common in paranoia than others. In a large (n = 1000), pre-registered online study we tested if endorsement of items on a new Components of Conspiracy Ideation Questionnaire varied according to whether harm was described as being (a) intentional and (b) self-referential. Our predictions were supported: paranoia was positively associated with endorsement of items on this questionnaire overall and more paranoid individuals were more likely to endorse items describing intentional and self-referential harm. Belief in any item on the Components of Conspiracy Ideation Questionnaire was associated with belief in others and items describing incidental harm and harm to others were found to be more believable overall. Individuals who endorsed conspiracy theory items on the questionnaire were more likely to state that people similar to them would as well, although this effect was not reduced in paranoia, counter to our expectations.

The benefits of being seen to help others: indirect reciprocity and reputation-based partner choice

When one individual helps another, it benefits the recipient and may also gain a reputation for being cooperative. This may induce others to favour the helper in subsequent interactions, so investing in being seen to help others may be adaptive. The best-known mechanism for this is indirect reciprocity (IR), in which the profit comes from an observer who pays a cost to benefit the original helper. IR has attracted considerable theoretical and empirical interest, but it is not the only way in which cooperative reputations can bring benefits. Signalling theory proposes that paying a cost to benefit others is a strategic investment which benefits the signaller through changing receiver behaviour, in particular by being more likely to choose the signaller as a partner. This reputation-based partner choice can result in competitive helping whereby those who help are favoured as partners. These theories have been confused in the literature. We therefore set out the assumptions, the mechanisms and the predictions of each theory for how developing a cooperative reputation can be adaptive. The benefits of being seen to be cooperative may have been a major driver of sociality, especially in humans. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.

The psychological foundations of reputation-based cooperation

Humans care about having a positive reputation, which may prompt them to help in scenarios where the return benefits are not obvious. Various game-theoretical models support the hypothesis that concern for reputation may stabilize cooperation beyond kin, pairs or small groups. However, such models are not explicit about the underlying psychological mechanisms that support reputation-based cooperation. These models therefore cannot account for the apparent rarity of reputation-based cooperation in other species. Here, we identify the cognitive mechanisms that may support reputation-based cooperation in the absence of language. We argue that a large working memory enhances the ability to delay gratification, to understand others' mental states (which allows for perspective-taking and attribution of intentions) and to create and follow norms, which are key building blocks for increasingly complex reputation-based cooperation. We review the existing evidence for the appearance of these processes during human ontogeny as well as their presence in non-human apes and other vertebrates. Based on this review, we predict that most non-human species are cognitively constrained to show only simple forms of reputation-based cooperation. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.

The roles of coalitional threat and safety in paranoia: A network approach

OBJECTIVE

Paranoia is known to vary with levels of coalitional threat and safety present in the social environment. However, it remains underexplored whether threat and safety are differentially associated with paranoia, if these relationships vary with the source of threat and safety, and whether such effects hold across the continuum of severity of paranoid thoughts.

METHODS

We employed a network analysis approach with community analysis on a large dataset (n = 6,337), the UK Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007, to explore these questions. We included one node to capture paranoia typical in the general population, and one pertaining to thought interference common in persecutory delusions in psychosis.

RESULTS

Nodes reflecting paranoia in the general population as well as persecution-related concerns in psychosis shared the strongest positive edges with nodes representing threat stemming from close social relationships. Paranoia common in the general population was negatively associated with both safety stemming from the wider social environment, and safety in close relationships, where the former association was strongest.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that threat from within one's immediate social group is more closely linked to paranoid thoughts than is safety from either one's social group or the wider social environment. Further, our results imply that coalitional threat may be a particularly associated with concerns common in psychosis, whereas paranoid ideation more common in the general population is also associated with reduced coalitional safety. Overall, this network analysis offers a broad view of how paranoia relates to multiple aspects of our coalitional environment and provides some testable predictions for future research in this area.

PRACTITIONER POINTS

Individuals with paranoia more typical of delusions may find threat in close social relationships most challenging Variation in paranoia in the general population may be attributed to feeling safe in the wider social environment more than in close social relationships.

Trusting and learning from others: immediate and long-term effects of learning from observation and advice

Social learning underpins our species's extraordinary success. Learning through observation has been investigated in several species, but learning from advice-where information is intentionally broadcast-is less understood. We used a pre-registered, online experiment (n = 1492) combined with computational modelling to examine learning through observation and advice. Participants were more likely to immediately follow advice than to copy an observed choice, but this was dependent upon trust in the adviser: highly paranoid participants were less likely to follow advice in the short term. Reinforcement learning modelling revealed two distinct patterns regarding the long-term effects of social information: some individuals relied fully on social information, whereas others reverted to trial-and-error learning. This variation may affect the prevalence and fidelity of socially transmitted information. Our results highlight the privileged status of advice relative to observation and how the assimilation of intentionally broadcast information is affected by trust in others.

Reward, punishment, and prosocial behavior: Recent developments and implications

Reward and punishment change the payoff structures of social interactions and therefore can potentially play a role in promoting prosocial behavior. Yet, there are boundary conditions for them to be effective. We review recent work that addresses the conditions under which rewards and punishment can enhance prosocial behavior, the proximate and ultimate mechanisms for individuals' rewarding and punishing decisions, and the reputational and behavioral consequences of reward and punishment under noise. The reviewed evidence points to the importance of more field research on how reward and punishment can promote prosocial behavior in real-world settings. We also highlight the need to integrate different methodologies to better examine the effects of reward and punishment on prosocial behavior.

Social reward, punishment, and prosociality in paranoia

Paranoia is the exaggerated belief that harm will occur and is intended by others. Although commonly framed in terms of attributing malicious intent to others, recent work has explored how paranoia also affects social decision-making, using economic games. Previous work found that paranoia is associated with decreased cooperation and increased punishment in the Dictator Game (where cooperating and punishing involve paying a cost to respectively increase or decrease a partner's income). These findings suggest that paranoia might be associated with variation in subjective reward from positive and/or negative social decision-making, a possibility we explore using a preregistered experiment with U.S.-based participants (n = 2,004). Paranoia was associated with increased self-reported enjoyment of negative social interactions and decreased self-reported enjoyment of prosocial interactions. More paranoid participants attributed stronger harmful intent to a partner. Harmful intent attributions and the enjoyment of negative social interactions positively predicted the tendency to pay to punish the partner. Cooperation was positively associated with the tendency to enjoy prosocial interactions and increased with participant age. There was no main effect of paranoia on tendency to cooperate in this setting. We discuss these findings in light of previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Derationalizing Delusions

Because of the traditional conceptualization of delusion as “irrational belief,” cognitive models of delusions largely focus on impairments to domain-general reasoning. Nevertheless, current rationality-impairment models do not account for the fact that (a) equivalently irrational beliefs can be induced through adaptive social cognitive processes, reflecting social integration rather than impairment; (b) delusions are overwhelmingly socially themed; and (c) delusions show a reduced sensitivity to social context both in terms of how they are shaped and how they are communicated. Consequently, we argue that models of delusions need to include alteration to coalitional cognition—processes involved in affiliation, group perception, and the strategic management of relationships. This approach has the advantage of better accounting for both content (social themes) and form (fixity) of delusion. It is also supported by the established role of mesolimbic dopamine in both delusions and social organization and the ongoing reconceptualization of belief as serving a social organizational function.

Neighbourhood wealth, not urbanicity, predicts prosociality towards strangers

Urbanization is perhaps the most significant and rapid cause of demographic change in human societies, with more than half the world's population now living in cities. Urban lifestyles have been associated with increased risk for mental disorders, greater stress responses, and lower trust. However, it is not known whether a general tendency towards prosocial behaviour varies across the urban-rural gradient, or whether other factors such as neighbourhood wealth might be more predictive of variation in prosocial behaviour. Here, we present findings from three real-world experiments conducted in 37 different neighbourhoods, in 12 cities and 12 towns and villages across the UK. We measured whether people: (i) posted a lost letter; (ii) returned a dropped item; and (iii) stopped to let someone cross the road in each neighbourhood. We expected to find that people were less willing to help a stranger in more urban locations, with increased diffusion of responsibility and perceived anonymity in cities being measured as variables that might drive this effect. Our data did not support this hypothesis. There was no effect of either urbanicity or population density on people's willingness to help a stranger. Instead, the neighbourhood level of deprivation explained most of the variance in helping behaviour with help being offered less frequently in more deprived neighbourhoods. These findings highlight the importance of socio-economic factors, rather than urbanicity per se, in shaping variation in prosocial behaviour in humans.

Paranoia, sensitization and social inference: findings from two large-scale, multi-round behavioural experiments

The sensitization model suggests that paranoia is explained by over-sensitivity to social threat. However, this has been difficult to test experimentally. We report two preregistered social interaction studies that tested (i) whether paranoia predicted overall attribution and peak attribution of harmful intent and (ii) whether anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity and worry predicted the attribution of harmful intent. In Study 1, we recruited a large general population sample (N = 987) who serially interacted with other participants in multi-round dictator games and matched to fair, partially fair or unfair partners. Participants rated attributions of harmful intent and self-interest after each interaction. In Study 2 (N = 1011), a new sample of participants completed the same procedure and additionally completed measures of anxiety, worry and interpersonal sensitivity. As predicted, prior paranoid ideation was associated with higher and faster overall harmful intent attributions, whereas attributions of self-interest were unaffected, supporting the sensitization model. Contrary to predictions, neither worry, interpersonal sensitivity nor anxiety was associated with harmful intent attributions. In a third exploratory internal meta-analysis, we combined datasets to examine the effect of paranoia on trial-by-trial attributional changes when playing fair and unfair dictators. Paranoia was associated with a greater reduction in harmful intent attributions when playing a fair but not unfair dictator, suggesting that paranoia may also exaggerate the volatility of beliefs about the harmful intent of others.

Erratum: Punishment: one tool, many uses - CORRIGENDUM

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2019.12.].

Paranoia and conspiracy: group cohesion increases harmful intent attribution in the Trust Game

Current theories argue that hyper-sensitisation of social threat perception is central to paranoia. Affected people often also report misperceptions of group cohesion (conspiracy) but little is known about the cognitive mechanisms underpinning this conspiracy thinking in live interactions. In a pre-registered experimental study, we used a large-scale game theory approach (N > 1,000) to test whether the social cohesion of an opposing group affects paranoid attributions in a mixed online and lab-based sample. Participants spanning the full population distribution of paranoia played as proposers in a modified Trust Game: they were allocated a bonus and chose how much money to send to a pair of responders which was quadrupled before reaching these responders. Responders decided how much to return to the proposers through the same process. Participants played in one of two conditions: against a cohesive group who communicated and arrived at a joint decision, or a non-cohesive group who made independent decisions. After the exchange, proposers rated the extent to which the responders’ decisions were driven by (i) self-interest and (ii) intent to harm. Although the true motives are ambiguous, cohesive responders were reliably rated by participants as being more strongly motivated by intent to harm, indicating that group cohesion affects social threat perception. Highly paranoid participants attributed harmful intent more strongly overall but were equally reactive to social cohesion as other participants. This suggests that paranoia involves a generally lowered threshold for social threat detection but with an intact sensitivity for cohesion-related group characteristics.

Paranoia and conspiracy: group cohesion increases harmful intent attribution in the Trust Game

Current theories argue that hyper-sensitisation of social threat perception is central to paranoia. Affected people often also report misperceptions of group cohesion (conspiracy) but little is known about the cognitive mechanisms underpinning this conspiracy thinking in live interactions. In a pre-registered experimental study, we used a large-scale game theory approach (N > 1,000) to test whether the social cohesion of an opposing group affects paranoid attributions in a mixed online and lab-based sample. Participants spanning the full population distribution of paranoia played as proposers in a modified Trust Game: they were allocated a bonus and chose how much money to send to a pair of responders which was quadrupled before reaching these responders. Responders decided how much to return to the proposers through the same process. Participants played in one of two conditions: against a cohesive group who communicated and arrived at a joint decision, or a non-cohesive group who made independent decisions. After the exchange, proposers rated the extent to which the responders' decisions were driven by (i) self-interest and (ii) intent to harm. Although the true motives are ambiguous, cohesive responders were reliably rated by participants as being more strongly motivated by intent to harm, indicating that group cohesion affects social threat perception. Highly paranoid participants attributed harmful intent more strongly overall but were equally reactive to social cohesion as other participants. This suggests that paranoia involves a generally lowered threshold for social threat detection but with an intact sensitivity for cohesion-related group characteristics.