Journal of Experimental Psychology-Applied最新文献

After a transgression, people often use neutralizations to account for their behavior, for instance, by apologizing or offering a justification. Previous research has mostly centered around the intrapersonal effects of neutralizations on actors. Consequently, we know very little of the interpersonal effects of neutralizations on observers' perceptions and judgments. Our overarching hypothesis is that neutralizations that contain an acknowledgment of wrongdoing (i.e., apologies and excuses) lead to more favorable perceptions of the transgressor and the transgression than neutralizations that do not (i.e., justifications). We report three studies (N = 800) to investigate the relationship between the type of neutralization used and observers' perceptions of actors and their behaviors. Our findings show that actor and behavior are evaluated differently depending on whether the neutralization used is an apology, an excuse, a consequentialist justification, or a deontological justification. Overall, justifications led to more negative evaluations (especially when invoking deontological reasoning), while apologies and excuses fostered more positive evaluations. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the social dynamics of norm violations and the social and legal implications for enforcing norm abidance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

In an attempt to display themselves as warm, approachable, and trustworthy, researchers might reveal personal details about themselves (i.e., self-disclosure) when communicating their science to the public. Here, we test whether self-disclosure in science communication can actually increase public trust in science. We present six online experiments (overall N = 2,431), integrate their results in a mini meta-analysis, and report a field experiment in a science museum (N = 480): In sum, our findings suggest that self-disclosure leads to small, but measurable increases in laypeople's feelings of closeness toward researchers and perceptions of researchers' warmth-related trustworthiness; yet, self-disclosure also leads to decreases in competence-related trustworthiness perceptions. The credibility of scientific findings was, overall, unaffected by self-disclosing communication. Findings from the field study further question whether self-disclosure in science communication has any practical relevance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Society's most pressing problems involve social dilemmas, yet few individuals recognize and understand their core components. We examined how a serious social dilemma game used in an educational setting impacted understanding of a classic social dilemma, the tragedy of the commons. Participants (N = 186) were randomly assigned to one of two gameplay conditions or a Lesson-Only condition without the game (traditional lesson with a reading). In the Explore-First condition, participants played the game as an exploratory learning activity before the lesson. In the Lesson-First condition, participants played the game after the lesson. Both gameplay conditions were rated as more interesting than the Lesson-Only condition. However, participants in the Explore-First condition exhibited higher conceptual understanding and spontaneous transfer to real-world dilemmas than the other conditions, which did not differ. These benefits were selective to social concepts (e.g., self-interest, interdependency) explored via gameplay. These benefits did not occur for ecological concepts (e.g., scarcity, tragedy), which were taught to everyone during the beginning instructions. Policy preferences were equal across conditions. Serious social dilemma games offer a promising educational tool for conceptual development when students can explore the complexities of social dilemmas for themselves. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

We applied a computational model to examine the extent to which participants used an automated decision aid as an advisor, as compared to a more autonomous trigger of responding, at varying levels of decision aid reliability. In an air traffic control conflict detection task, we found higher accuracy when the decision aid was correct, and more errors when the decision aid was incorrect, as compared to a manual condition (no decision aid). Responses that were correct despite incorrect automated advice were slower than matched manual responses. Decision aids set at lower reliability (75%) had smaller effects on choices and response times, and were subjectively trusted less, than decision aids set at higher reliability (95%). We fitted an evidence accumulation model to choices and response times to measure how information processing was affected by decision aid inputs. Participants primarily treated low-reliability decision aids as an advisor rather than directly accumulating evidence based on its advice. Participants directly accumulated evidence based upon the advice of high-reliability decision aids, consistent with granting decision aids more autonomous influence over decisions. Individual differences in the level of direct accumulation correlated with subjective trust, suggesting a cognitive mechanism by which trust impacts human decisions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research shows that posing many questions about an event may lead to asking questions about unwitnessed details and that people sometimes provide substantive and erroneous answers to them. Therefore, two experiments investigated the role of the problem-solving and judgment processes, which are unrelated to memory access, in improving responding to unanswerable questions. Experiment 1 compared the effects of a brief retrieval training with the effects of an instruction to increase the criterion of reporting. As expected, the two manipulations had different effects on participants' answers, which demonstrates that training can do more than just instigate more cautious responding. However, we found evidence against our prediction that an enhancement in metacognitive ability underlies improved responding after training. Experiment 2 investigated, for the first time, the role of constant awareness that questions can be unanswerable and that such questions should be rejected. We compared the effects of training with the effects of a small change in response format that ensured such awareness. The effects of the two manipulations were similar, which supports our prediction that the constant awareness of unanswerable questions is a key factor behind improved responding. Practical implications for the eyewitness memory domain are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Can people learn about implicit bias through an online course? We developed a brief (∼30 min) online educational program called Understanding Implicit Bias (UIB) consisting of four modules: (a) what is implicit bias? (b) the Implicit Association Test, (c) implicit bias and behavior, and (d) what can you do? In Experiment 1, we randomly assigned 6,729 college students across three separate samples to complete dependent measures before (control group) or after (intervention group) the UIB program. In Experiment 2, we randomly assigned 389 college students to complete the UIB program (intervention group) or two TED talks (control group) before dependent measures. Compared to control groups, the intervention groups had significantly higher objective knowledge about bias (ds = 0.39, 1.49) and subjective knowledge about bias (ds = 1.43, 2.61), awareness of bias (ds = 0.10, 0.54), and behavioral intentions to reduce bias (ds = 0.19, 0.84). These differences were again observed at a 2-week follow-up. These results suggest that brief online education about bias can affect knowledge and awareness of bias, as well as intentions to change behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).