Perspectives On Psychological Science[JOURNAL]
Sun
200 papers
Toward a General Framework of Biased Reasoning: Coherence-Based Reasoning.
Simon D, Read SJ
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 May · PMID 37983541 · Publisher ↗
A considerable amount of experimental research has been devoted to uncovering biased forms of reasoning. Notwithstanding the richness and overall empirical soundness of the bias research, the field can be described as di...
A considerable amount of experimental research has been devoted to uncovering biased forms of reasoning. Notwithstanding the richness and overall empirical soundness of the bias research, the field can be described as disjointed, incomplete, and undertheorized. In this article, we seek to address this disconnect by offering "coherence-based reasoning" as a parsimonious theoretical framework that explains a sizable number of important deviations from normative forms of reasoning. Represented in connectionist networks and processed through constraint-satisfaction processing, coherence-based reasoning serves as a ubiquitous, essential, and overwhelmingly adaptive apparatus in people's mental toolbox. This adaptive process, however, can readily be overrun by bias when the network is dominated by nodes or links that are incorrect, overweighted, or otherwise nonnormative. We apply this framework to explain a variety of well-established biased forms of reasoning, including confirmation bias, the halo effect, stereotype spillovers, hindsight bias, motivated reasoning, emotion-driven reasoning, ideological reasoning, and more.
Learning Landscape in Gamification: The Need for a Methodological Protocol in Research Applications.
Orsoni M, Dubé A, Prandi C … +4 more , Giovagnoli S, Benassi M, Mazzoni E, Benvenuti M
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 May · PMID 37983480 · Publisher ↗
In education, the term "gamification" refers to of the use of game-design elements and gaming experiences in the learning processes to enhance learners' motivation and engagement. Despite researchers' efforts to evaluate...
In education, the term "gamification" refers to of the use of game-design elements and gaming experiences in the learning processes to enhance learners' motivation and engagement. Despite researchers' efforts to evaluate the impact of gamification in educational settings, several methodological drawbacks are still present. Indeed, the number of studies with high methodological rigor is reduced and, consequently, so are the reliability of results. In this work, we identified the key concepts explaining the methodological issues in the use of gamification in learning and education, and we exploited the controverses identified in the extant literature. Our final goal was to set up a checklist protocol that will facilitate the design of more rigorous studies in the gamified-learning framework. The checklist suggests potential moderators explaining the link between gamification, learning, and education identified by recent reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses: study design, theory foundations, personalization, motivation and engagement, game elements, game design, and learning outcomes.
Repositioning Construct Validity Theory: From Nomological Networks to Pragmatic Theories and Their Evaluation by Explanatory Means.
Haig BD
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37939401 · Full text
In this article, I argue for a number of important changes to the conceptual foundations of construct validity theory. I begin by suggesting that construct validity theorists should shift their attention from the validat...
In this article, I argue for a number of important changes to the conceptual foundations of construct validity theory. I begin by suggesting that construct validity theorists should shift their attention from the validation of constructs to the process of evaluating scientific theories. This shift in focus is facilitated by distinguishing construct validation (understood as theory evaluation) from test validation, thereby freeing it from its long-standing focus on psychological measurement. In repositioning construct validity theory in this way, researchers should jettison the outmoded but superficially popular notion that theories are nomological networks in favor of a more plausible pragmatic view of their natures, such as the idea that theories are explanatorily coherent networks. Consistent with this shift in understanding the nature of theories, my recommendation is that construct validation should embrace an explanationist perspective on the theory evaluation process to complement its focus on hypothetico-deductive theory testing. On this view, abductive research methods have an important role to play. The revisionist perspective on construct validity proposed here is discussed in light of relevant developments in scientific methodology and is applied to an influential account of the validation process that has shaped research practice.
Toward an Integrative Approach to the Study of Positive-Affect-Related Aggression.
Quansah JE, Gagnon J
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37938111 · Full text
Research on aggression usually aims at gaining a better understanding of its more negative aspects, such as the role and effects of aversive social interactions, hostile cognitions, or negative affect. However, there are...
Research on aggression usually aims at gaining a better understanding of its more negative aspects, such as the role and effects of aversive social interactions, hostile cognitions, or negative affect. However, there are conditions under which an act of aggression can elicit a positive affective response, even among the most nonviolent of individuals. One might experience the "sweetness of revenge" on reacting aggressively to a betrayal or social rejection. A soldier may feel elated after "shooting to kill" in the name of the flag. There are many factors that contribute to the appeal of aggression, but despite growing interest in researching these phenomena, there is still no unitary framework that organizes existing theories and empirical findings and can be applied to a model to generate testable hypotheses. This article presents a narrative review of the literature on positive-affect-related forms of aggression and explores the role of aggression in eliciting positive affect across diverse social situations and relational contexts. An integrative model that unifies existing theories and findings is proposed, with the objective to inspire and inform future research.
Diminished State Space Theory of Human Aging.
Eppinger B, Ruel A, Bolenz F
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37931229 · Full text
Many new technologies, such as smartphones, computers, or public-access systems (like ticket-vending machines), are a challenge for older adults. One feature that these technologies have in common is that they involve un...
Many new technologies, such as smartphones, computers, or public-access systems (like ticket-vending machines), are a challenge for older adults. One feature that these technologies have in common is that they involve underlying, partially observable, structures () that determine the actions that are necessary to reach a certain goal (e.g., to move from one menu to another, to change a function, or to activate a new service). In this work we provide a theoretical, neurocomputational account to explain these behavioral difficulties in older adults. Based on recent findings from age-comparative computational- and cognitive-neuroscience studies, we propose that age-related impairments in complex goal-directed behavior result from an underlying deficit in the representation of state spaces of cognitive tasks. Furthermore, we suggest that these age-related deficits in adaptive decision-making are due to impoverished neural representations in the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus.
Basic Emotions or Constructed Emotions: Insights From Taking an Evolutionary Perspective.
van Heijst K, Kret ME, Ploeger A
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 May · PMID 37916982 · Full text
The ongoing debate between basic emotion theories (BETs) and the theory of constructed emotion (TCE) hampers progress in the field of emotion research. Providing a new perspective, here we aim to bring the theories close...
The ongoing debate between basic emotion theories (BETs) and the theory of constructed emotion (TCE) hampers progress in the field of emotion research. Providing a new perspective, here we aim to bring the theories closer together by dissecting them according to Tinbergen's four questions to clarify a focus on their evolutionary basis. On the basis of our review of the literature, we conclude that whereas BETs focus on the evolution question of Tinbergen, the TCE is more concerned with the causation of emotion. On the survival value of emotions both theories largely agree: to provide the best reaction in specific situations. Evidence is converging on the evolutionary history of emotions but is still limited for both theories-research within both frameworks focuses heavily on the causation. We conclude that BETs and the TCE explain two different phenomena: emotion and feeling. Therefore, they seem irreconcilable but possibly supplementary for explaining and investigating the evolution of emotion-especially considering their similar answer to the question of survival value. Last, this article further highlights the importance of carefully describing what aspect of emotion is being discussed or studied. Only then can evidence be interpreted to converge toward explaining emotion.
A Challenge to Orthodoxy in Psychology: Thomas Sowell and Social Justice.
O'Donohue W, Silander NC, Frisby CL … +1 more , Fisher JE
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37916981 · Publisher ↗
Psychologists address social-justice problems in their research and applied work, and their scholarly efforts have been influenced by assumptions, constructs, and hypotheses from the political left. Recently, some psycho...
Psychologists address social-justice problems in their research and applied work, and their scholarly efforts have been influenced by assumptions, constructs, and hypotheses from the political left. Recently, some psychologists have called for increased intellectual and political diversity in psychology, particularly as such diversity may lead to improved problem-solving. As an attempt to increase intellectual diversity in psychology, we review here the scholarship of Thomas Sowell. His work represents a rich source of hypotheses for psychologists' future research. We focus on his views on the importance of freedom; the extent to which reforms can reduce freedom; the importance of free markets to human flourishing; the role of free markets in producing costs for discrimination; the way spontaneously ordered systems can contain knowledge that can be overlooked in reforms; and the importance of culture and cultural capital. We will also discuss Sowell's more thoroughgoing economic analyses of problems and solutions and his analyses of contingencies operating on politicians and reformers, as well as his views on conflicts in fundamental visions about human nature and the pivotal role of improvements in minority education.
Memory of Fictional Information: A Theoretical Framework.
Gander P, Szita K, Falck A … +1 more , Lowe R
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37916977 · Full text
Much of the information people encounter in everyday life is not factual; it originates from fictional sources, such as movies, novels, and video games, and from direct experience such as pretense, role-playing, and ever...
Much of the information people encounter in everyday life is not factual; it originates from fictional sources, such as movies, novels, and video games, and from direct experience such as pretense, role-playing, and everyday conversation. Despite the recent increase in research on fiction, there is no theoretical account of how memory of fictional information is related to other types of memory or of which mechanisms allow people to separate fact and fiction in memory. We present a theoretical framework that places memory of fiction in relation to other cognitive phenomena as a distinct construct and argue that it is an essential component for any general theory of human memory. We show how fictionality can be integrated in an existing memory model by extending Rubin's dimensional conceptual memory model. By this means, our model can account for explicit and implicit memory of fictional information of events, places, characters, and objects. Further, we propose a set of mechanisms involving various degrees of complexity and levels of conscious processing that mostly keep fact and fiction separated but also allow information from fiction to influence real-world attitudes and beliefs: content-based reasoning, source monitoring, and an associative link from the memory to the concept of fiction.
Understanding Sensory-Motor Disorders in Autism Spectrum Disorders by Extending Hebbian Theory: Formation of a Rigid-Autonomous Phase Sequence.
Nojiri E, Takase K
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37910043 · Publisher ↗
Autism spectrum disorder is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. The s...
Autism spectrum disorder is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. The symptoms invariably appear in early childhood and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, and other important functions. Various abnormalities in the genetic, neurological, and endocrine systems of patients with autism spectrum disorder have been reported as the etiology; however, no clear factor leading to the onset of the disease has been identified. Additionally, higher order cognitive dysfunctions, which are represented by a lack of theory of mind, sensorimotor disorders, and memory-related disorders (e.g., flashbacks), have been reported in recent years, but no theoretical framework has been proposed to explain these behavioral abnormalities. In this study, we extended Hebb's biopsychology theory to provide a theoretical framework that comprehensively explains the various behavioral abnormalities observed in autism spectrum disorder. Specifically, we propose that a wide range of symptoms in autism spectrum disorder may be caused by the formation of a rigid-autonomous phase sequence (RAPS) in the brain. Using the RAPS formation theory, we propose a biopsychological mechanism that could be a target for the treatment of autism spectrum disorders.
Building Human-Like Artificial Agents: A General Cognitive Algorithm for Emulating Human Decision-Making in Dynamic Environments.
Gonzalez C
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2024 Sep · PMID 37906108 · Publisher ↗
One of the early goals of artificial intelligence (AI) was to create algorithms that exhibited behavior indistinguishable from human behavior (i.e., human-like behavior). Today, AI has diverged, often aiming to excel in...
One of the early goals of artificial intelligence (AI) was to create algorithms that exhibited behavior indistinguishable from human behavior (i.e., human-like behavior). Today, AI has diverged, often aiming to excel in tasks inspired by human capabilities and outperform humans, rather than replicating human cogntion and action. In this paper, I explore the overarching question of whether computational algorithms have achieved this initial goal of AI. I focus on dynamic decision-making, approaching the question from the perspective of computational cognitive science. I present a general cognitive algorithm that intends to emulate human decision-making in dynamic environments, as defined in instance-based learning theory (IBLT). I use the cognitive steps proposed in IBLT to organize and discuss current evidence that supports some of the human-likeness of the decision-making mechanisms. I also highlight the significant gaps in research that are required to improve current models and to create higher fidelity in computational algorithms to represent human decision processes. I conclude with concrete steps toward advancing the construction of algorithms that exhibit human-like behavior with the ultimate goal of supporting human dynamic decision-making.
A Shared Intentionality Account of Uniquely Human Social Bonding.
Wolf W, Tomasello M
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37883801 · Full text
Many mechanisms of social bonding are common to all primates, but humans seemingly have developed some that are unique to the species. These involve various kinds of interactive experiences-from taking a walk together to...
Many mechanisms of social bonding are common to all primates, but humans seemingly have developed some that are unique to the species. These involve various kinds of interactive experiences-from taking a walk together to having a conversation-whose common feature is the triadic sharing of experience. Current theories of social bonding have no explanation for why humans should have these unique bonding mechanisms. Here we propose a shared intentionality account of uniquely human social bonding. Humans evolved to participate with others in unique forms of cooperative and communicative activities that both depend on and create shared experience. Sharing experience in these activities causes partners to feel closer because it allows them to assess their partner's cooperative competence and motivation toward them and because the shared representations created during such interactions make subsequent cooperative interactions easier and more effective.
Motivated Cognition in Cooperation.
Fiedler S, Habibnia H, Fahrenwaldt A … +1 more , Rahal RM
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2024 Mar · PMID 37883800 · Full text
Successful cooperation is tightly linked to individuals' beliefs about their interaction partners, the decision setting, and existing norms, perceptions, and values. This article reviews and integrates findings from judg...
Successful cooperation is tightly linked to individuals' beliefs about their interaction partners, the decision setting, and existing norms, perceptions, and values. This article reviews and integrates findings from judgment and decision-making, social and cognitive psychology, political science, and economics, developing a systematic overview of the mechanisms underlying motivated cognition in cooperation. We elaborate on how theories and concepts related to motivated cognition developed in various disciplines define the concept and describe its functionality. We explain why beliefs play such an essential role in cooperation, how they can be distorted, and how this fosters or harms cooperation. We also highlight how individual differences and situational factors change the propensity to engage in motivated cognition. In the form of a construct map, we provide a visualization of the theoretical and empirical knowledge structure regarding the role of motivated cognition, including its many interdependencies, feedback loops, and moderating influences. We conclude with a brief suggestion for a future research agenda based on this compiled evidence.
Transmission Versus Truth, Imitation Versus Innovation: What Children Can Do That Large Language and Language-and-Vision Models Cannot (Yet).
Yiu E, Kosoy E, Gopnik A
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2024 Sep · PMID 37883796 · Full text
Much discussion about large language models and language-and-vision models has focused on whether these models are intelligent agents. We present an alternative perspective. First, we argue that these artificial intellig...
Much discussion about large language models and language-and-vision models has focused on whether these models are intelligent agents. We present an alternative perspective. First, we argue that these artificial intelligence (AI) models are cultural technologies that enhance cultural transmission and are efficient and powerful imitation engines. Second, we explore what AI models can tell us about imitation and innovation by testing whether they can be used to discover new tools and novel causal structures and contrasting their responses with those of human children. Our work serves as a first step in determining which particular representations and competences, as well as which kinds of knowledge or skill, can be derived from particular learning techniques and data. In particular, we explore which kinds of cognitive capacities can be enabled by statistical analysis of large-scale linguistic data. Critically, our findings suggest that machines may need more than large-scale language and image data to allow the kinds of innovation that a small child can produce.
Experimental Therapeutics: Opportunities and Challenges Stemming From the National Institute of Mental Health Workshop on Novel Target Discovery and Psychosocial Intervention Development.
Zucker NL, Strauss GP, Smyth JM … +8 more , Scherf KS, Brotman MA, Boyd RC, Choi J, Davila M, Ajilore OA, Gunning F, Schweitzer JB
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 May · PMID 37874961 · Full text
There has been slow progress in the development of interventions that prevent and/or reduce mental-health morbidity and mortality. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) launched an experimental-therapeutics init...
There has been slow progress in the development of interventions that prevent and/or reduce mental-health morbidity and mortality. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) launched an experimental-therapeutics initiative with the goal of accelerating the development of effective interventions. The emphasis is on interventions designed to engage a target mechanism. A target mechanism is a process (e.g., behavioral, neurobiological) proposed to underlie change in a defined clinical endpoint and through change in which an intervention exerts its effect. This article is based on discussions from an NIMH workshop conducted in February 2020 and subsequent conversations among researchers using this approach. We discuss the components of an experimental-therapeutics approach such as clinical-outcome selection, target definition and measurement, intervention design and selection, and implementation of a team-science strategy. We emphasize the important contributions of different constituencies (e.g., patients, caregivers, providers) in deriving hypotheses about novel target mechanisms. We highlight strategies for target-mechanism identification using published and hypothetical examples. We consider the decision-making dilemmas that arise with different patterns of results in purported mechanisms and clinical outcomes. We end with considerations of the practical challenges of this approach and the implications for future directions of this initiative.
The Psychology of Collectives.
Garcia D, Galesic M, Olsson H
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2024 Mar · PMID 37874955 · Publisher ↗
Abstract loading — click title to view on PubMed.
The State of Cognitive Control in Language Processing.
Ness T, Langlois VJ, Kim AE … +1 more , Novick JM
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37819251 · Publisher ↗
Understanding language requires readers and listeners to cull meaning from fast-unfolding messages that often contain conflicting cues pointing to incompatible ways of interpreting the input (e.g., "The cat was chased by...
Understanding language requires readers and listeners to cull meaning from fast-unfolding messages that often contain conflicting cues pointing to incompatible ways of interpreting the input (e.g., "The cat was chased by the mouse"). This article reviews mounting evidence from multiple methods demonstrating that cognitive control plays an essential role in resolving conflict during language comprehension. How does cognitive control accomplish this task? Psycholinguistic proposals have conspicuously failed to address this question. We introduce an account in which cognitive control aids language processing when cues conflict by sending top-down biasing signals that strengthen the interpretation supported by the most reliable evidence available. We also provide a computationally plausible model that solves the critical problem of how cognitive control "knows" which way to direct its biasing signal by allowing linguistic knowledge itself to issue crucial guidance. Such a mental architecture can explain a range of experimental findings, including how moment-to-moment shifts in cognitive-control state-its level of activity within a person-directly impact how quickly and successfully language comprehension is achieved.
Facecraft: Race Reification in Psychological Research With Faces.
Martinez JE
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Jan · PMID 37819250 · Publisher ↗
Faces are socially important surfaces of the body on which various meanings are attached. The widespread physiognomic belief that faces inherently contain socially predictive value is why they make a generative stimulus...
Faces are socially important surfaces of the body on which various meanings are attached. The widespread physiognomic belief that faces inherently contain socially predictive value is why they make a generative stimulus for perception research. However, critical problems arise in studies that simultaneously investigate faces and race. Researchers studying race and racism inadvertently engage in various research practices that transform faces with specific phenotypes into straightforward representatives of their presumed race category, thereby taking race and its phenotypic associations for granted. I argue that research practices that map race categories onto faces using bioessentialist ideas of racial phenotypes constitute a form of racecraft ideology, the dubious reasoning of which presupposes the reality of race and mystifies the causal relation between race and racism. In considering how to study racism without reifying race in face studies, this article places these practices in context, describes how they reproduce racecraft ideology and impair theoretical inferences, and then suggests counterpractices for minimizing this problem.
The Loneliness of the Odd One Out: How Deviations From Social Norms Can Help Explain Loneliness Across Cultures.
Heu LC
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37819246 · Full text
Loneliness is an important health risk, which is why it is important to understand what can cause persistent or severe loneliness. Previous research has identified numerous personal or relational risk factors for lonelin...
Loneliness is an important health risk, which is why it is important to understand what can cause persistent or severe loneliness. Previous research has identified numerous personal or relational risk factors for loneliness. Cultural predictors, however, have been considered less. The new framework of norm deviations and loneliness (NoDeL) proposes that social norms, which are defining features of culture, can help explain loneliness within and across cultural contexts. Specifically, people who deviate from social norms are suggested to be at an increased risk for feeling lonely because they are more likely to experience alienation, inauthenticity, lower self-worth, social rejection, relationship dissatisfaction, and/or unfulfilled relational needs. Given that social norms vary by social, geographical, and temporal context, they can furthermore be considered cultural moderators between individual-level risk factors and loneliness: Personal or relational characteristics, such as shyness or being single, may increase the risk for loneliness particularly if they do not fit social norms in a specific environment. Integrating previous quantitative and qualitative findings, I hence offer a framework (NoDeL) to predict loneliness and cultural differences in risk factors for it. Thus, the NoDeL framework may help prepare culture-sensitive interventions against loneliness.
Information Avoidance: Past Perspectives and Future Directions.
Foust JL, Taber JM
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2025 Mar · PMID 37819241 · Publisher ↗
In the present age of unprecedented access to information, it is important to understand how and why people avoid information. Multiple definitions of "information avoidance" exist, and key aspects of these definitions d...
In the present age of unprecedented access to information, it is important to understand how and why people avoid information. Multiple definitions of "information avoidance" exist, and key aspects of these definitions deserve attention, such as distinguishing information avoidance from (lack of) information seeking, considering the intentionality and temporal nature of information avoidance, and considering the personal relevance of the information. In this review, we provide a cross-disciplinary historical account of theories and empirical research on information avoidance and seeking, drawing from research in multiple fields. We provide a framework of antecedents of information avoidance, categorized into beliefs about the information (e.g., risk perceptions), beliefs about oneself (e.g., coping resources), and social and situational factors (e.g., social norms), noting that constructs across categories overlap and are intertwined. We suggest that research is needed on both positive and negative consequences of information avoidance and on interventions to reduce information avoidance (when appropriate). Research is also needed to better understand temporal dynamics of information avoidance and how it manifests in everyday life. Finally, comprehensive theoretical models are needed that differentiate avoidance from seeking. Research on information avoidance is quickly expanding, and the topic will only grow in importance.
Toward Understanding of the Social Hysteresis: Insights From Agent-Based Modeling.
Sznajd-Weron K, Jȩdrzejewski A, Kamińska B
Perspect Psychol Sci · 2024 Mar · PMID 37811605 · Publisher ↗
Hysteresis has been used to understand various social phenomena, such as political polarization, the persistence of the vaccination-compliance problem, or the delayed response of employees in a firm to wage incentives. T...
Hysteresis has been used to understand various social phenomena, such as political polarization, the persistence of the vaccination-compliance problem, or the delayed response of employees in a firm to wage incentives. The aim of this article is to show the insights that can be gained from using agent-based models (ABMs) to study hysteresis. To build up an intuition about hysteresis, we start with an illustrative example from physics that demonstrates how hysteresis manifests as collective memory. Next, we present examples of hysteresis in psychology and social systems. We then present two simple ABMs of binary decisions-the Ising model and the -voter model-to explain how hysteresis can be observed in ABMs. Specifically, we show that hysteresis can result from the influence of various external factors present in social systems, such as organizational polices, governmental laws, or mass media campaigns, as well as internal noise associated with random changes in agent decisions. Finally, we clarify the relationship between several closely related concepts such as order-disorder transitions or bifurcation, and we conclude the article with a discussion of the advantages of ABMs.
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