Fenneman et al.'s (2022) review of formal impulsivity models: Implications for theory and measures of impulsivity

In Fenneman et al.'s (2022) review of theories and integrated impulsivity model, the authors distinguish between information impulsivity (i.e., acting without considering consequences) and temporal impulsivity (i.e., the tendency to pick sooner outcomes over later ones). The authors find that both types of impulsivity can be adaptive in different contexts. For example, when individuals experience scarcity of resources or when they are close to a minimum level of reserves (critical threshold). In this commentary, we extend their findings to a discussion about the measurement of impulsivity. We argue that a common method for measuring temporal impulsivity in which people make decisions between outcomes that are spaced out in time (intertemporal choice tasks), puts individuals in a specific context that is unlikely to generalize well to other situations. Furthermore, trait measures of impulsivity may only be modestly informative about future impulsive behavior because they largely abstract away from important context. To address these issues, we advocate for the development of dynamic measures of the two types of impulsivity. We argue that measuring temporal impulsivity in naturalistic contexts with varying environmental and state parameters could provide insights into whether individuals (i.e., humans and nonhuman animals) react to environmental changes adaptively, while trait measures of impulsivity more generally should collect and provide more contextual information. Dynamic measurement of different types of impulsivity will also allow for more discussion about adaptive impulsive responses in different contexts, which could help combat the stigmatization of various disorders associated with impulsivity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Episodic future thinking and compassion reduce non-compliance urges regarding public health guidelines: a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND

People often feel urges to engage in activities that violate pandemic public health guidelines. Research on these urges has been reliant on measures of typical behaviour, which fail to capture these urges as they unfold. Guideline adherence could be improved through interventions, but few methods allow for ecologically valid observation of the range of behaviours that pandemic guidelines prescribe.

METHODS

In this preregistered parallel randomised trial, 95 participants aged 18-65 from the UK were assigned to three groups using blinded block randomisation, and engaged in episodic future thinking (n = 33), compassion exercises (n = 31), or a control procedure (n = 31). Following an ecological momentary assessment procedure, participants report on the intensity of their occurrent urges (min. 1, max. 10) and their ability to control them. The study further investigates whether, and through which mechanism, state impulsivity and vaccine attitudes affect guideline adherence.

RESULTS

Episodic future thinking (b = -1.80) and compassion exercises (b = -1.45) reduced the intensity of urges. State impulsivity is associated with stronger urges, but we found no evidence that vaccine hesitancy predicts lesser self-control.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that episodic future thinking exercises and compassion training may be used to decrease non-compliance urges of individuals who are an acute public health risk for the community, such as those in voluntary isolation.

Modelling pandemic behaviour using an economic multiplayer game

During a pandemic, isolating oneself from the community limits viral transmission and helps avoid repeated societal lockdowns. This entails a social dilemma—either distance oneself from others for the benefit of the public good or free-ride and enjoy the benefits of freedom. It is not yet understood how the unfamiliar incentive structure and interpersonal context presented by a pandemic together modulate individuals’ approach to this social dilemma. In this preregistered study, we take a game-theoretical approach and investigate people’s decisions to self-isolate, using a novel iterated multiplayer game designed to capture the decision-making environment in the pandemic. To elucidate players’ thinking, we use a variation of the strategy method and elicit beliefs about how much others will self-isolate. Players tend to respond to social norms with abidance, rather than transgression; they resist the temptation to freeride when others are self-isolating. However, they deal with exponential growth poorly, as they only self-isolate sufficiently when lockdowns are imminent. Further, increased collective risk can motivate more self-isolation, even though the link between self-isolation and lockdowns is stochastic. Players underreport the influence of others’ choices on their own, and underestimate others’ self-isolation. We discuss implications for public health, and communication to the public.

Risk perception, illusory superiority and personal responsibility during COVID-19: An experimental study of attitudes to staying home

Little is known about how different government communication strategies may systematically affect people's attitudes to staying home or going out during the COVID-19 pandemic, nor how people perceive and process the risk of viral transmission in different scenarios. In this study, we report results from two experiments that examine the degree to which people's attitudes regarding the permissibility of leaving one's home are (1) sensitive to different levels of risk of viral transmission in specific scenarios, (2) sensitive to communication framings that are either imperative or that emphasize personal responsibility, or (3) creating 'loopholes' for themselves, enabling a more permissive approach to their own compliance. We find that the level of risk influences attitudes to going out, and that participants report less permissive attitudes to going out when prompted with messages framed in imperative terms, rather than messages emphasizing personal responsibility; for self-loopholes, we find no evidence that participants' attitudes towards going out in specific scenarios are more permissive for themselves than for others. However, participants report they are more rigorous in staying home than others, which may cause moral licensing. Additionally, we find that age is negatively associated with permissive attitudes, and that male participants are more permissive to going out. Thus, during phases where it is important to promote staying home for all scenarios, including those perceived to be low-risk, imperative communication may be best suited to increase compliance.

Beyond avatars and arrows: Testing the mentalising and submentalising hypotheses with a novel entity paradigm

In recent years, there has been a heated debate about how to interpret findings that seem to show that humans rapidly and automatically calculate the visual perspectives of others. In this study, we investigated the question of whether automatic interference effects found in the dot-perspective task are the product of domain-specific perspective-taking processes or of domain-general “submentalising” processes. Previous attempts to address this question have done so by implementing inanimate controls, such as arrows, as stimuli. The rationale for this is that submentalising processes that respond to directionality should be engaged by such stimuli, whereas domain-specific perspective-taking mechanisms, if they exist, should not. These previous attempts have been limited, however, by the implied intentionality of the stimuli they have used (e.g., arrows), which may have invited participants to imbue them with perspectival agency. Drawing inspiration from “novel entity” paradigms from infant gaze–following research, we designed a version of the dot-perspective task that allowed us to precisely control whether a central stimulus was viewed as animate or inanimate. Across four experiments, we found no evidence that automatic “perspective-taking” effects in the dot-perspective task are modulated by beliefs about the animacy of the central stimulus. Our results also suggest that these effects may be due to the task-switching elements of the dot-perspective paradigm, rather than automatic directional orienting. Together, these results indicate that neither the perspective-taking nor the standard submentalising interpretations of the dot-perspective task are fully correct.