Most mind-wandering paradigms use self-reports following task performance, but the extent to which these reports are confounded by performance cues is unknown. In two experiments with adult human participants, we examine...Most mind-wandering paradigms use self-reports following task performance, but the extent to which these reports are confounded by performance cues is unknown. In two experiments with adult human participants, we examined whether self-reports and confidence therein are influenced by performance indicators during visual metronome response tasks. In Experiment 1 ( = 40), sham feedback modulated reports independently of behavioral performance with participants more likely to report mind wandering after incorrect than correct sham feedback. In Experiment 2 ( = 111), we replicated this pattern using a more implicit manipulation of perceived performance-a surreptitious delay in the onset of response targets. Participants were more likely to report mind wandering after this delay than they were in control trials. In both experiments, confidence in on-task reports was lower when the corresponding indicator (falsely) implied poor performance. These findings suggest that mind-wandering reports and experiential state confidence are partly confounded by performance monitoring and have implications for experience-sampling methodologies.
Adults selectively avoid useful information. We examined the development of information avoidance in 5- to 10-year-old American children ( = 320). In Experiment 1, children considered scenarios that might elicit informat...Adults selectively avoid useful information. We examined the development of information avoidance in 5- to 10-year-old American children ( = 320). In Experiment 1, children considered scenarios that might elicit information avoidance: protecting against negative emotions, maintaining perceptions of likeability and competence, preserving beliefs and preferences, and acting in self-interest. When a motivation for avoidance was present, children were more likely to avoid learning information, particularly with age. Experiment 2 presented the self-interest scenario (a moral "wiggle room" task) involving real payoffs. Although children could reveal their partner's payoff without cost, older children capitalized on moral "wiggle room" by avoiding this information and choosing the self-interested payoff. In Experiment 3, we considered conditions under which even young children might avoid information, finding that they too avoided information when explicitly encouraged to protect their emotions. Additional qualitative findings probed children's open-ended responses about why people seek and avoid information. Together, these experiments document the origins of information avoidance.
People often protect public goods by sanctioning free riders. This occurs in simple situations in which protecting the public good does not conflict with other moral considerations. How do people navigate situations in w...People often protect public goods by sanctioning free riders. This occurs in simple situations in which protecting the public good does not conflict with other moral considerations. How do people navigate situations in which protecting the public good comes at the expense of helping someone? We theorized that people would prioritize the needs of the public or another individual on the basis of the individual's group membership. To test this theory, we conducted a field experiment with male confederates approaching adult male travelers passing through check-in gates at Dutch train stations. The confederates requested to follow the travelers without checking in themselves. We observed whether travelers sanctioned the free rider by rejecting and disapproving of this request or helped by opening the gates. At three train stations, 801 travelers were approached by 10 different confederates. Group membership was varied by having five native-majority and five ethnic-minority confederates. Robust evidence was found for travelers being more likely to help native-majority free riders and to sanction ethnic-minority free riders.
Nordmo M, Sunde HF, Kleppestø TH
… +4 more, Nordmo M, Caspi A, Moffitt TE, Torvik FA
Psychol Sci
· 2025 Jul · PMID 40569666
·
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The positive relation between mental health and educational attainment is well established, yet the extent to which cognitive abilities influence this gradient or independently predict mental health outcomes remains uncl...The positive relation between mental health and educational attainment is well established, yet the extent to which cognitive abilities influence this gradient or independently predict mental health outcomes remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the association between adolescent cognitive abilities, educational attainment, and adult mental health. Cognitive ability was ascertained in Norwegian military conscript test data ( = 272,351; mean age 17.8 years; males only), whereas mental disorders were ascertained using the Norwegian register of primary care diagnoses received between the age of 36-40. Higher cognitive abilities were associated with a monotonically decreasing risk of developing all the studied mental disorders except bipolar disorder. The association held even when comparing the cognitive abilities of brothers raised in the same family, attesting that cognitive ability and mental disorders are not associated because both arise from the same family background circumstances. Similarly, individuals with higher educational attainment had fewer mental health disorders. The association between low cognitive abilities and the risk of mental disorders was notably stronger in males with low educational attainment, compared to those with high educational attainment. These individuals may be an underutilized target group for mental-disorder prevention.
A powerful cue when reasoning is whether an apparent consensus has been reached. However, we do not yet know how the strength of this cue varies between different individuals and types of claims. In the current study ( =...A powerful cue when reasoning is whether an apparent consensus has been reached. However, we do not yet know how the strength of this cue varies between different individuals and types of claims. In the current study ( = 78 U.S. adults, recruited from Prolific), we evaluated this with a realistic mock social-media paradigm in which each participant evaluated 60 diverse, real-world claims based on posts from people who either disagreed with each other, formed a consensus independently, or formed a consensus using shared sources. Almost all participants revised their beliefs to align with the consensus; many also qualitatively changed their minds. A consensus was also more persuasive for claims more likely to have a ground truth (i.e., more knowable claims). Although most people were insensitive to consensus independence, some were more persuaded by a consensus formed independently, whereas some were equally convinced by a consensus formed using the same sources.
Languages tend to describe "who is doing what to whom" by placing subjects before objects. This may reflect a bias for agents in event cognition: Agents capture more attention than patients in human adults and infants. W...Languages tend to describe "who is doing what to whom" by placing subjects before objects. This may reflect a bias for agents in event cognition: Agents capture more attention than patients in human adults and infants. We investigated whether this agent preference is shared with nonhuman animals. We presented Guinea baboons ( = 13) with a change-detection paradigm on chasing animations. The baboons were trained to respond to a color change that was applied to either the chaser/agent or the chasee/patient. They were faster to detect a change to the chaser than to the chasee, which could not be explained by low-level features in our stimuli such as the chaser's motion pattern or position. An agent preference may be an evolutionarily old mechanism that is shared between humans and other primates that could have become externalized in language as a tendency to place the subject first.
The gambler's fallacy is typically defined as the false belief that a random event is less likely to occur if it has occurred recently. Although forms of this fallacy have been documented numerous times, past work either...The gambler's fallacy is typically defined as the false belief that a random event is less likely to occur if it has occurred recently. Although forms of this fallacy have been documented numerous times, past work either has not actually measured probabilistic predictions but rather point predictions or used sequences that were not independent. To address these problems, we conducted a series of high-powered, preregistered studies in which we asked 750 adult Amazon Mechanical Turk workers from the United States to report probabilistic predictions for truly independent sequences. In contrast to point predictions, which generated a significant gambler's fallacy, probabilistic predictions were not found to lead to a gambler's fallacy. Moreover, the point predictions could not be reconstructed by sampling from the probability judgments. This suggests that the gambler's fallacy originates at the decision stage rather than in probabilistic reasoning, as posited by several leading theories. New theories of the gambler's fallacy may be needed to explain these findings.
Humans rely on more knowledgeable individuals to acquire information. But when we are ignorant, how are we to tell who is knowledgeable? We propose that human knowledge is nested: People who know only a few things tend t...Humans rely on more knowledgeable individuals to acquire information. But when we are ignorant, how are we to tell who is knowledgeable? We propose that human knowledge is nested: People who know only a few things tend to know very common pieces of information, whereas rare pieces of information are known only by people who know many things, including common things. This leads to the possibility of reliably inferring knowledgeability from minimal cues. In this study ( = 848 U.S. adults recruited online), we show that individuals can accurately gauge others' knowledgeability on the basis of very limited information, relying on their ability to estimate the rarity of different pieces of knowledge and on the fact that knowing a rare piece of information indicates a high likelihood of knowing more information in the same theme. Even participants who are largely ignorant of a theme can infer how knowledgeable other individuals are on the basis of the possession of a single piece of knowledge.
The idea that some people completely lack inner speech is of both scientific and popular interest. In a recent study, Nedergaard and Lupyan compared self-reporting high and low inner-speech-prevalence groups and found th...The idea that some people completely lack inner speech is of both scientific and popular interest. In a recent study, Nedergaard and Lupyan compared self-reporting high and low inner-speech-prevalence groups and found that participants in the low-prevalence group performed worse on a verbal working memory test and responded more slowly and less accurately during rhyme judgments. These results represent an original contribution to the study of inner speech. However, the authors go on to draw the unfounded conclusion that their findings, together with previous empirical and anecdotal data, show that some people have no inner speech at all. They have coined the term for this trait. This commentary examines Nedergaard and Lupyan's claim of demonstrated anendophasia; I conclude they present no compelling evidence that some individuals lack inner speech.
Geiger SJ, Köhler JK, Delabrida ZNC
… +17 more, Garduño-Realivazquez KA, Haugestad CAP, Imada H, Iyer A, Maharja C, Mann DC, Marczak M, Melville O, Nijssen SRR, Powdthavee N, Praptiwi RA, Ranade G, Rosa CD, Vitale V, Winkowska M, Zhang L, White MP
Most people believe in human-caused climate change, yet this public consensus can be collectively underestimated (). Across two studies using primary data ( = 3,653 adult participants; 11 countries) and secondary data (s...Most people believe in human-caused climate change, yet this public consensus can be collectively underestimated (). Across two studies using primary data ( = 3,653 adult participants; 11 countries) and secondary data (s = 60,230 and 22,496 adult participants; 55 countries), we tested (a) the generalizability of pluralistic ignorance about climate-change beliefs, (b) the effects of a public-consensus intervention on climate action, and (c) the possibility that cultural tightness-looseness might serve as a country-level predictor of pluralistic ignorance. In Study 1, people across 11 countries underestimated the prevalence of proclimate views by at least 7.5% in Indonesia (90% credible interval, or CrI = [5.0, 10.1]), and up to 20.8% in Brazil (90% CrI = [18.2, 23.4]. Providing information about the actual public consensus on climate change was largely ineffective, except for a slight increase in willingness to express one's proclimate opinion, δ = 0.05 (90% CrI = [-0.02, 0.11]). In Study 2, pluralistic ignorance about willingness to contribute financially to fight climate change was slightly more pronounced in looser than tighter cultures, highlighting the particular need for pluralistic-ignorance research in these countries.
Resource constraints in neural information processing imply that numerical discriminability optimally adapts to the frequency of numerical magnitudes in a decision maker's environment. Here, we tested the economic conseq...Resource constraints in neural information processing imply that numerical discriminability optimally adapts to the frequency of numerical magnitudes in a decision maker's environment. Here, we tested the economic consequences of efficient numerical range adaptation in representative samples of the United Kingdom and Japan ( = 2,309) and in a replication in Austria and Hungary ( = 607). We exploited natural variation in currency units and combined it with an orthogonal variation in experimental currency units to detect the effect of habitual versus nonhabitual numerical ranges on the incidence of errors in decisions under risk. The results highlight the direct economic importance of numerical adaptation, thus calling into question standard assumptions that choice quantities are perceived without noise.
The prevailing view among scholars has been that the preference for strong leaders is an idiosyncratic feature of right-wing individuals. However, it is unclear whether this inference is accurate given that prior researc...The prevailing view among scholars has been that the preference for strong leaders is an idiosyncratic feature of right-wing individuals. However, it is unclear whether this inference is accurate given that prior research has largely overlooked the role of ethnicity. We analyzed data from the United States and Western Europe ( = 34,443) and found that ethnic minorities (and right-wing individuals) preferred strong leaders to a greater extent than Whites (and left-wing individuals). Notably, ethnic minorities across diverse ethnic and political backgrounds were closer to right-wing Whites on strong-leader preference than to left-wing Whites. Our work also provides some evidence, using both measurement-of-mediation (Studies 1-4) and experimental mediation (preregistered Studies 5 and 6), that generalized trust helps explain group differences in strong-leader preference. In sum, our research illustrates the unique nature of left-wing Whites' leadership preferences, and highlights the importance of testing social science theories using diverse participant samples.
Certain emotion-regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal) are associated with better well-being and are therefore seen as adaptive (health-promoting) strategies. However, it is unlikely that any strategy is adaptive rega...Certain emotion-regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal) are associated with better well-being and are therefore seen as adaptive (health-promoting) strategies. However, it is unlikely that any strategy is adaptive regardless of context. Indeed, reappraisal is associated with positive outcomes in the context of uncontrollable life stress but negative outcomes in the context of controllable life stress. It follows that individuals who have better "strategy-situation fit" (use reappraisal more during uncontrollable vs. controllable situations) should have better well-being beyond their habitual reappraisal use. A previous test of this hypothesis found that strategy-situation fit in daily life was associated with greater well-being ( = 74). We conducted a well-powered preregistered direct replication of this study in 285 U.S. adults. We failed to replicate the original findings and found no evidence for the strategy-situation fit hypothesis, including when accounting for key confounders and moderators. We discuss implications for theory and future research.
Psychol Sci
· 2025 May · PMID 40354460
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The current study examined bidirectional relationships between well-being and cognitive function using up to 10 annual assessments ( 5.67, 3.43) of different types of well-being and a comprehensive cognitive battery fro...The current study examined bidirectional relationships between well-being and cognitive function using up to 10 annual assessments ( 5.67, 3.43) of different types of well-being and a comprehensive cognitive battery from a sample of older adults living in the Chicago metropolitan area ( = 1,702; mean age = 81.07 years, = 8.04; 75.1% White Americans, 23.9% Black Americans). Bivariate latent growth curve models indicated older adults who started out with better well-being also had better cognitive function, and sharper decreases in well-being were associated with sharper declines in cognitive function. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models indicated older adults with better well-being on average had better cognitive function on average. Further, well-being change at one time point predicted subsequent cognitive change and vice versa. These findings were stronger for eudaimonic well-being and sense of purpose than for life satisfaction. Findings highlight the role of well-being in the goal to combat cognitive decline, as well as the importance of supporting well-being in individuals experiencing cognitive decline.
Four studies ( = 2,524 U.S.-based adults recruited from the University of California, Berkeley, or Amazon Mechanical Turk) provide support for doubling-back aversion, a reluctance to pursue more efficient means to a goal...Four studies ( = 2,524 U.S.-based adults recruited from the University of California, Berkeley, or Amazon Mechanical Turk) provide support for doubling-back aversion, a reluctance to pursue more efficient means to a goal when they entail undoing progress already made. These effects emerged in diverse contexts, both as participants physically navigated a virtual-reality world and as they completed different performance tasks. Doubling back was decomposed into two components: the deletion of progress already made and the addition to the proportion of a task that was left to complete. Each contributed independently to doubling-back aversion. These effects were robustly explained by shifts in subjective construals of both one's past and future efforts that would result from doubling back, not by changes in perceptions of the relative length of different routes to an end state. Participants' aversion to feeling their past efforts were a waste encouraged them to pursue less efficient means. We end by discussing how doubling-back aversion is distinct from established phenomena (e.g., the sunk-cost fallacy).
Psychol Sci
· 2025 May · PMID 40324454
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Perceptual distraction distorts visual working memories. Recent research has shown divergent effects of distraction on memory performance, including attractive biases, impairment of memory precision, and an increase in t...Perceptual distraction distorts visual working memories. Recent research has shown divergent effects of distraction on memory performance, including attractive biases, impairment of memory precision, and an increase in the guess rate, indicating multiple mechanisms of distraction interference. Here we propose a novel signal-intrusion model based on the TCC (target-confusability-competition) framework to reconcile those discrepant results. We hypothesized that sensory interference is driven by the integration of a target signal and an intrusive distractor signal. Model comparisons showed that this TCC-intrusion model had a superior fit to memory error distributions across three delayed-estimation tasks with distraction ( = 220 adults) compared with other candidate models. According to the model, distractor intrusions decreased along with target-distractor dissimilarity, in accordance with the sensory-recruitment hypothesis. Moreover, TCC-intrusion successfully replicated divergent effects of distraction on memory bias, precision, and guess rate using this one intrusion mechanism. Together, these results suggest that perceptual distractors affect working memories through a unified mechanism of signal intrusion.
Psychol Sci
· 2025 Apr · PMID 40261301
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Full text
In face-to-face conversation, people use speech and gesture to convey meaning. Seeing gestures alongside speech facilitates comprehenders' language processing, but crucially, the mechanisms underlying this facilitation r...In face-to-face conversation, people use speech and gesture to convey meaning. Seeing gestures alongside speech facilitates comprehenders' language processing, but crucially, the mechanisms underlying this facilitation remain unclear. We investigated whether comprehenders use the semantic information in gestures, typically preceding related speech, to predict upcoming meaning. Dutch adults listened to questions asked by a virtual avatar. Questions were accompanied by an iconic gesture (e.g., typing) or meaningless control movement (e.g., arm scratch) followed by a short pause and target word (e.g., "type"). A Cloze experiment showed that gestures improved explicit predictions of upcoming target words. Moreover, an EEG experiment showed that gestures reduced alpha and beta power during the pause, indicating anticipation, and reduced N400 amplitudes, demonstrating facilitated semantic processing. Thus, comprehenders use iconic gestures to predict upcoming meaning. Theories of linguistic prediction should incorporate communicative bodily signals as predictive cues to capture how language is processed in face-to-face interaction.
Recent research suggests that failure undermines learning: People learn less from failure (vs. success) because failure is ego-threatening and causes people to tune out. I argue that the core paradigm (the Script Task) p...Recent research suggests that failure undermines learning: People learn less from failure (vs. success) because failure is ego-threatening and causes people to tune out. I argue that the core paradigm (the Script Task) provides a confounded test of that claim. When people do not learn from test feedback, they may give internally consistent answers on a subsequent test. The Script Task's scoring guidelines mark consistent answers as correct following success but incorrect following failure. As a result, differences in performance between conditions may result from equivalent learning combined with consistent responding when people do not learn. A descriptive mathematical model shows that lower performance alone is insufficient to conclude that people learn less. An experiment with U.S. Amazon Mechanical Turk workers demonstrates that a retroactive manipulation without feedback replicates the effect. Because the effect of failure on performance is confounded with consistency, the Script Task is not diagnostic regarding whether people learn less from failure unless consistency is ruled out.
Gaze following in infancy allows triadic social interactions and a comprehension of other individuals and their surroundings. Despite its importance for early development, its ontology is debated, with theories suggestin...Gaze following in infancy allows triadic social interactions and a comprehension of other individuals and their surroundings. Despite its importance for early development, its ontology is debated, with theories suggesting that gaze following is either a universal core capacity or an experience-dependent learned behavior. A critical test of these theories among 809 nine-month-olds from Africa (Uganda and Zimbabwe), Europe (Sweden), and Asia (Bhutan) demonstrated that infants follow gaze to a similar degree regardless of environmental factors such as culture, maternal well-being (postpartum depression, well-being), or traumatic family events (related to war and/or climate change). These findings suggest that gaze following may be a universal, experience-expectant process that is resilient to adversity and similar across a wide range of human experiences-a core foundation for social development.