Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Entscheidungspsychologie


Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Blog

Archive for January, 2017

Happy 100th birthday, JAP!

JAP

The Journal of Applied Psychology turned 100 this year and is publishing a number of review articles on central themes in applied/organizational psychology that may be interesting to many of us in the Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology area.

For those not familiar with the journal, JAP was founded by Stanley Hall (first president of the America Psychological Association and first to start a formal psych lab in the USA), John Baird, and Ludwig Geissler. According to the journal’s website, JAP covers “empirical and theoretical investigations that enhance understanding of cognitive, motivational, affective, and behavioral psychological phenomena in work and organizational settings, broadly defined”.

As I mentioned before in this blog, there is a long standing tension between — in Hall’s terminology — “pure” and “applied” fields in psychology. Hall, Baird, and Geissler stood, of course, by the “applied” side but hoped to bridge potential gaps to “pure” psychology with JAP. Here’s an excerpt from their Foreword of the first edition from 1917.

“The psychologist finds that the old distinction between pure and applied science is already obscured in his domain; and he is beginning to realize that applied psychology can no longer be relegated to a distinctly inferior plane. (…) (The authors) hope that the JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY (a) may bring together the now widely scattered data in this and other countries; (b) may gather from the various industries and from other practical fields data which shall be of real value for pure psychology; (c) may indicate new applications of psychology to the arts and to the occupations of human life, to which psychologists have hitherto made but little contribution.”

I found these three papers from the upcoming 2017 issue gave interesting historical overviews of the field…

Ployhart, R. E., Schmitt, N., & Tippins, N. T. (2017). Solving the Supreme Problem: 100 Years of Selection and Recruitment at the Journal of Applied Psychology. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1–15. http://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000081

DeNisi, A. S., & Murphy, K. R. (2017). Performance Appraisal and Performance Management: 100 Years of Progress? Journal of Applied Psychology, 1–14. http://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000085

Hofmann, D. A., Burke, M. J., & Zohar, D. (2017). 100 Years of Occupational Safety Research: From Basic Protections and Work Analysis to a Multilevel View of Workplace Safety and Risk. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1–15. http://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000114

Small Group Meeting on Ostracism, Social Exclusion and Rejection

Quelle: Wikipedia

Applications are invited from EASP members to participate in a Small Group Meeting on Ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection at Vitznau, Lake Lucerne (Switzerland), from June 29th – July 2nd, 2017.

Ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection represent ubiquitous phenomena in society, that usually result in very negative and hurtful consequences. Research on ostracism, for instance, has shown that individuals are highly sensitive to being excluded or ignored by others, so that even minimal exclusion experiences which occur on a daily basis threaten fundamental human needs and cause feelings of pain. The consequences can be far-reaching and extend into various fields of social psychology: Typically, ostracized individuals seek to restore their threatened needs which is why exclusion affects a variety of physiological, affective, cognitive, and behavioral variables. Other lines of research have focused on potential moderators of experiencing social exclusion as well as the underlying causes for why individuals are being excluded. While most research has focused on the targets of social exclusion so far, we would also be interested in and invite contributions focusing on the sources of social exclusion, such as why and how individuals use to inflict ostracism and exclusion on others. This small group meeting will focus on future developments and new pathways to study ostracism, social exclusion and rejection in intergroup and interpersonal settings.

In addition to established researchers, we hope to attract PhD students and post-docs. Our goal is to facilitate as much productive discussion as possible so that participants have the chance to network, and form new international research collaborations. The EASP grants generous financial support, so that we can limit the conference fee to 80 € for PhD students and 180 € for participants holding a PhD.

The deadline for applications is February 28, 2017. All applications should include the applicant’s current affiliation and position, whether they are members of EASP and whether they would prefer a talk or a poster presentation. Moreover, they should provide a title and short (150 word) abstract of their potential presentation. Please send applications to sp@unibas.ch

We are looking forward to welcome you to Switzerland!

Selma Rudert, University of Basel
Rainer Greifeneder, University of Basel
Kipling Williams, Purdue University

Memory and decision making

Regina Weilbächer and Sebastian Gluth have a new paper that reviews the roles as well as the interplay of hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in memory-based decisions.

The Interplay of Hippocampus and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Memory-Based Decision Making

Episodic memory and value-based decision making are two widely studied psychological constructs. The hippocampus plays a central role in episodic memory, while the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is essential in value-based decision making.

In our review, we focus on the hippocampal-prefrontal interactions in value-based decisions that require memory retrieval. We briefly present two methods used to investigate the coupling of those two brain regions, such as the phase coherence across specific frequency ranges (i.e. theta and gamma band synchrony) and dynamic causal modeling of fMRI data. Additionally we present theories and frameworks resulting from these connectivity studies. In the end we raise open questions that need to be addressed in future investigations.

In summary, this review article gives an overview of the current research regarding the interplay of hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in memory and value-based decisions and discusses directions for future research on the neural and cognitive foundations of those decisions.

Weilbächer, R. A., & Gluth, S. (2017). The Interplay of Hippocampus and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Memory-Based Decision Making. Brain Sciences, 7(1), 4.

The attraction effect

Sebastian Gluth, Jared Hotaling and Jörg Rieskamp have a new paper on the influence of the attraction effect on intertemporal choices and the coding of reward value in the brain.

The Attraction Effect Modulates Reward Prediction Errors and Intertemporal Choices

The attraction effect is a well-established phenomenon in decisions between three alternative. If a person is indifferent between two choice options (let’s say between staying in a cheap 2-star hotel vs an expensive 5-star hotel), adding a third option that is clearly inferior to one of the option (let’s say another 5-star hotel that is even more expensive) can change the preference between the inital options (in this case in favor of the first 5-star hotel). This effect refutes any model of decision making that assumes independent evaluations of options.

In our paper, we show that the attraction effect also influences the evaluation of rewards in the absence of choice, with respect to both self-reported satisfaction about rewards and brain activation of the reward system (measured with fMRI). We used intertemporal choices and rewards to elicit the attraction effect. Thus, we also demonstrated the attraction effect in intertemporal choice for the first time.

In summary, our study has important implications for models of intertemporal choice and shows the context-dependency of reward signals in the human brain.

Gluth, S., Hotaling, J.M., & Rieskamp, J. (2017). The attraction effect modulates reward prediction errors and intertemporal choices. Journal of Neuroscience, 37(2), 371-382.

Research visit at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour

IMG_2117

Variety is not only the spice of life, it is also an important source for ideas and progress in science. Experiencing new labs, talking to different people, learning new methods: these are the goals for my current research visit to the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging in Nijmegen (Netherlands, but not Holland!)

Until the end of February I am with the ‘Motivational and Cognitive Control’ group led by Roshan Cools, where I will be working with Guillaume Sescousse on analysing behavioural and neuroimaging data from a risky choice task. As communication is key to scientific exchange and progress, I will also give two talks about my research at Cognitive and Decision Sciences in Basel.

The institute here is buzzing with activity, people, talks, and events, and I look forward to spending a few weeks immersed in all things ‘neuro’. For a bit of balance, later this week there will be a talk entitled ‘Against neurofetishism’; just to keep the critical hat firmly in place.

Processing Fluency in Education

Rolf Reber and myself have a paper forthcoming on the role of processing fluency in education. Processing fluency is the ease or difficulty with which information can be processed, and informs as well as regulates a variety of cognitive processes. This review illustrates how fluency is important in educational settings, and how teachers as well as students can benefit from knowing about fluency.

Processing Fluency in Education: How Metacognitive Feelings Shape Learning, Belief Formation, and Affect

Processing fluency—the experienced ease with which a mental operation is performed—has attracted little attention in educational psychology, despite its relevance. The present article reviews and integrates empirical evidence on processing fluency that is relevant to school education. Fluency is important, for instance, in learning, self-assessment of knowledge, testing, grading, teacher–student communication, social interaction in the multicultural classroom, and emergence of interest. After a brief overview of basic fluency research we review effects of processing fluency in three broad areas: metacognition in learning, belief formation, and affect. Within each area, we provide evidence-based implications for education. Along the way, we offer fluency-based insights into phenomena that were long known but not yet sufficiently explained (e.g., the effect of handwriting on grading). Bringing fluency (back) to education may contribute to research and school practice alike.

Reber, R., & Greifeneder, R. (in press). Processing Fluency in Education: How Metacognitive Feelings Shape Learning, Belief Formation, and Affect. Educational Psychologist. doi:10.1080/00461520.2016.1258173

 

Clinical Research Day 2017

On January 19 the Clinical Research Day took place at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland. Researchers from several research groups presented their current projects. The day consisted of interesting scientific presentations and engaging discussions about ongoing research at the University Hospital Basel. Victoria Siegrist, from the department of Cognitive and Decision Sciences, won the first prize for her poster “Effects of Empathy vs. Structure Skills Training in Discharge Communication in the Emergency Department”. A great day ended with the so-called Mojito-Party!

risk attitudes

David Kellen, Clintin Davis-Stober, and I have a new paper out on risk attitudes (see below for title, abstract, and full reference).

In this work, we help further muddling the field by showing that individual and age differences are not consistent across different types of decision problems, such as those between two risky options involving gains, or losses, or both (as opposed to a risky option vs. a sure outcome which has been the focus of most past work). For example, we show that in some but not all gamble problems, age differences can be found…

Individual classification of strong risk attitudes: An application across lottery types and age groups

Empirical evaluations of risk attitudes often rely on a weak definition of risk that concerns preferences towards risky and riskless options (e.g., a lottery vs. a sure outcome). A large body of work has shown that individuals tend to be weak risk averse in choice contexts involving risky and riskless gains but weak risk seeking in contexts involving losses, a phenomenon known as the reflection effect. Recent attempts to evaluate age differences in risk attitudes have relied on this weak definition, testing whether the reflection effect increases or diminishes as we grow older. The present work argues that weak risk attitudes have limited generalizability and proposes the use of a strong definition of risk that is concerned with preferences towards options with the same expected value but different degrees of risk (i.e., outcome variance). A reanalysis of previously-published data and the results from a new study show that only a minority of individuals manifests the reflection effect under a strong definition of risk, and that, when facing certain lottery-pair types, older adults appear to be more risk seeking than younger adults.

Kellen, D., Mata, R., & Davis-Stober, C.P. (2017). Individual classification of strong risk attitudes: An application across lottery types and age groups. Psychological Bulletin & Review. doi: 10.3758/s13423-016-1212-5.