Cultural differences in room size perception

Cultural differences in room size perception. By Aurelie Saulton et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2017, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176115

Abstract: Cultural differences in spatial perception have been little investigated, which gives rise to the impression that spatial cognitive processes might be universal. Contrary to this idea, we demonstrate cultural differences in spatial volume perception of computer generated rooms between Germans and South Koreans. We used a psychophysical task in which participants had to judge whether a rectangular room was larger or smaller than a square room of reference. We systematically varied the room rectangularity (depth to width aspect ratio) and the viewpoint (middle of the short wall vs. long wall) from which the room was viewed. South Koreans were significantly less biased by room rectangularity and viewpoint than their German counterparts. These results are in line with previous notions of general cognitive processing strategies being more context dependent in East Asian societies than Western ones. We point to the necessity of considering culturally-specific cognitive processing strategies in visual spatial cognition research.

Reverse Ego-Depletion: Acts of Self-Control Can Improve Subsequent Performance in Indian Cultural Contexts

Reverse Ego-Depletion: Acts of Self-Control Can Improve Subsequent Performance in Indian Cultural Contexts. By Krishna Savani & Veronika Job
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28581300

Abstract: The strength model of self-control has been predominantly tested with people from Western cultures. The present research asks whether the phenomenon of ego-depletion generalizes to a culture emphasizing the virtues of exerting mental self-control in everyday life. A pilot study found that whereas Americans tended to believe that exerting willpower on mental tasks is depleting, Indians tended to believe that exerting willpower is energizing. Using dual task ego-depletion paradigms, Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c found reverse ego-depletion among Indian participants, such that participants exhibited better mental self-control on a subsequent task after initially working on strenuous rather than nonstrenuous cognitive tasks. Studies 2 and 3 found that Westerners exhibited the ego-depletion effect whereas Indians exhibited the reverse ego-depletion effect on the same set of tasks. Study 4 documented the causal effect of lay beliefs about whether exerting willpower is depleting versus energizing on reverse ego-depletion with both Indian and Western participants. Together, these studies reveal the underlying basis of the ego-depletion phenomenon in culturally shaped lay theories about willpower.

Kinship Systems, Cooperation and the Evolution of Culture

Kinship Systems, Cooperation and the Evolution of Culture. By Benjamin Enke
NBER Working Paper, June 2017, http://www.nber.org/papers/w23499

Abstract: Cultural psychologists and anthropologists argue that societies have developed heterogeneous systems of social organization to cope with social dilemmas, and that an entire bundle of cultural characteristics has coevolved to enforce cooperation within these different systems. This paper develops a measure of the historical tightness of kinship structures to provide empirical evidence for this large body of theories. In the data, societies with loose ancestral kinship ties cooperate and trust broadly, which is apparently sustained through a belief in moralizing gods, universally applicable moral principles, feelings of guilt, and large-scale institutions. Societies with a historically tightly knit kinship structure, on the other hand, exhibit strong in-group favoritism: they cheat on and are distrusting of out-group members, but readily support in-group members in need. This cooperation scheme is enforced by moral values of in-group loyalty, conformity to tight social norms, emotions of shame, and strong local institutions. These relationships hold across historical ethnicities, contemporary countries, ethnicities within countries, and migrants. The results suggest that religious beliefs, language, emotions, morality, and social norms all coevolved to support specific social cooperation systems.

Russians Inhibit the Expression of Happiness to Strangers: Testing a Display Rule Model

Russians Inhibit the Expression of Happiness to Strangers: Testing a Display Rule Model. By Kennon Sheldon et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, June 2017, Pages 718-733, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022022117699883?ai=1gvoi&mi=3ricys&af=R

Abstract: Cultural stereotypes and considerable psychological research suggest that Russians are less happy and more stoic than Americans and Westerners. However, a second possibility is simply that cultural norms deter Russians from displaying happiness that they actually feel. To test this second possibility, three studies compared the emotional inhibition tendencies in U.S. and Russian student samples. Although Russians and Americans were no different on subjective well-being (SWB), a consistent three-way interaction was found such that Russians (compared with Americans) reported greater inhibition of the expression of happiness (vs. unhappiness), but mainly to strangers (vs. friends/family). Russians also viewed their peers and countrymen as behaving similarly. Furthermore, a consistent interaction was found such that the degree of happiness inhibition with strangers was negatively correlated with SWB in the U.S. samples but was unrelated to SWB in the Russian samples. Given the equivalent levels of SWB observed in these data, we suggest that Russians may not be less happy than Americans, as this would illogically entail that they exaggerate their SWB reports while also claiming to inhibit their expression of happiness. Implications for emotion researchers and international relations are considered.

Coarse Grades: Informing the Public by Withholding Information

Coarse Grades: Informing the Public by Withholding Information. By Rick Harbaugh & Eric Rasmusen
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mic.20130078

Abstract: Certifiers of quality often report only coarse grades to the public despite having measured quality more finely, e.g., "Pass" or "Certified" instead of "73 out of 100". Why? We show that coarse grades result in more information being provided to the public because the coarseness encourages those of middling quality to apply for certification. Dropping exact grading in favor of the best coarse grading scheme reduces public uncertainty because the extra participation outweighs the coarser reporting. In some circumstances, the coarsest meaningful grading scheme, pass-fail grading, results in the most information.

Charitable Giving, Emotions, and the Default Effect

Charitable Giving, Emotions, and the Default Effect. By Lenka Fiala & Charles Noussair
Economic Inquiry, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2648844

Abstract: We report an experiment to study the effect of defaults on charitable giving. In three different treatments, participants face varying default levels of donation. In three other treatments that are paired with the first three, they receive the same defaults, but are informed that defaults are thought to have an effect on their donation decisions. The emotional state of all individuals is monitored throughout the sessions using Facereading software, and some participants are required to report their emotional state after the donation decision. We find that the level at which a default is set has no effect on donations, and informing individuals of the possible impact of defaults also has no effect. Individuals who are happier and in a more positive overall emotional state donate more. Donors experience a negative change in the valence of their emotional state subsequent to donating, when valence is measured with Facereading software. This contrasts with the self-report data, in which donating correlates with a more positive reported subsequent emotional state.

Endorsing Help For Others That You Oppose For Yourself: Mind Perception Alters the Perceived Effectiveness of Paternalism

Endorsing Help For Others That You Oppose For Yourself: Mind Perception Alters the Perceived Effectiveness of Paternalism. By Juliana Schroeder, Adam Waytz & Nicholas Epley
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28557510
Abstract: How people choose to help each other can be just as important as how much people help. Help can come through relatively paternalistic or agentic aid. Paternalistic aid, such as banning certain foods to encourage weight loss or donating food to alleviate poverty, restricts recipients' choices compared with agentic aid, such as providing calorie counts or donating cash. Nine experiments demonstrate that how people choose to help depends partly on their beliefs about the recipient's mental capacities. People perceive paternalistic aid to be more effective for those who seem less mentally capable (Experiments 1 and 2), and people therefore give more paternalistically when others are described as relatively incompetent (Experiment 3). Because people tend to believe that they are more mentally capable than are others, people also believe that paternalistic aid will be more effective for others than for oneself, effectively treating other adults more like children (Experiments 4a-5b). Experiencing a personal mental shortcoming - overeating on Thanksgiving - therefore increased the perceived effectiveness of paternalism for oneself, such that participants thought paternalistic antiobesity policies would be more effective when surveyed the day after Thanksgiving than the day before (Experiment 6). A final experiment demonstrates that the link between perceived effectiveness of aid and mental capacity is bidirectional: Those receiving paternalistic aid were perceived as less mentally capable than those receiving relatively agentic aid (Experiment 7). Beliefs about how best to help someone in need are affected by subtle inferences about the mind of the person in need.

Conforming Conservatives: How Salient Social Identities Can Increase Donations

Conforming Conservatives: How Salient Social Identities Can Increase Donations. By Andrew Kaikati et al.
Journal of Consumer Psychology, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2980940
Abstract: This research considers how common perceptions of liberals' generosity can be harnessed for increasing donations. Given conservatives' greater tendency to conform to group norms than liberals, we theorize that conformity tendencies can increase donations by conservatives when accountable to a liberal audience who share a salient identity. Specifically, conservatives donate more when they are accountable to a liberal audience with whom they have a salient shared identity (Study 1) due to their motivation for social approval (Studies 3 and 4). However, if the donation context activates political identity (Studies 2 and 3) or if the unifying social identity is not salient (Study 4), accountability does not impact donation decisions. Notably, liberals do not alter their behavior, ruling out alternative explanations for the pattern of conformity. This research provides insight into the distinct role of accountability for conservatives and importance of audience characteristics for conformity. Though both liberals and conservatives can be generous, this research demonstrates how conformity can be used to increase charitable giving among conservatives.

Holding Your Flag: The Effects of Exposure to a Regional Symbol on People's Behavior

Holding Your Flag: The Effects of Exposure to a Regional Symbol on People's Behavior. By Nicolas Guéguen, Angélique Martin; Jordy Stefan
European Journal of Social Psychology, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2239/full

Abstract: Research has shown that exposure to the national flag alters people's behavior and political and intergroup judgments. In several field studies conducted in an area of France with a strong regional identity, we examined the effect of the presence of the regional flag vs the national flag vs no flag on behaviors. Various situations (e.g., money solicitation, implicit helping behavior, food tasting) were tested in Brittany, on the French west Atlantic coast. Car drivers, passersby in the street, patrons in bakeries were exposed to no flag vs the French flag vs the Brittany flag held by requesters or presented on a product or on a car. Findings showed that the regional flag increased helping behavior dramatically. Other studies also revealed that the presence of the Brittany flag reduced aggressiveness and influenced preference for food products. The power of a flag as a symbol that could increase in-group membership is discussed.

Youth Bulges and Civil Conflict: Causal Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Youth Bulges and Civil Conflict: Causal Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. By Matthias Flückiger & Markus Ludwig
Journal of Conflict Resolution, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022002717707303

Abstract: The presence of an exceptionally large youth population, that is, a youth bulge, is often associated with an elevated risk of civil conflict. In this article, we develop an instrumental variable approach in which the size of the youth cohorts in Sub-Saharan Africa is identified using variation in birth-year drought incidence. Our results show that an increase in the size of the population group aged fifteen to nineteen raises the risk of low-intensity conflict. A 1 percent increase in the size of this age-group augments the likelihood of civil conflict incidence (onset) by 2.3 (1.2) percentage points. On the other hand, we do not find any association between the size of the two adjacent youth cohorts, that is, the population groups aged ten to fourteen and twenty to twenty-four

Sharing genes fosters identity fusion and altruism

Sharing genes fosters identity fusion and altruism. By Alexandra Vázquez et al.
Self and Identity, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15298868.2017.1296887?journalCode=psai20

Abstract: Researchers have shown that the more genes twins share, the more they care about one another. Here, we examine a psychological mediator of such genetic influences, “identity fusion” (a visceral sense of oneness with them). Results supported this hypothesis. Relative to dizygotic twins, monozygotic twins reported stronger fusion and elevated desire to have contact and share experiences with their twin (Study 1), to forgive and grant favors to their twin after being disappointed by him/her (Study 2), and willingness to make sacrifices for their twin (Study 3). Fusion with the twin mediated the impact of zygosity on these outcomes. These findings demonstrate that genetic relatedness fosters a powerful feeling of union with one’s twin that predicts sharing, tolerance, and self-sacrificial behavior toward him or her.

All You Need to Do Is Ask? The Exhortation to Be Creative Improves Creative Performance More for Nonexpert Than Expert Jazz Musicians

All You Need to Do Is Ask? The Exhortation to Be Creative Improves Creative Performance More for Nonexpert Than Expert Jazz Musicians. By David Rosen et al.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2017-14257-001/

Abstract: Current creativity research reveals a fundamental disagreement about the nature of creative thought, specifically, whether it is primarily based on automatic, associative (Type 1) or executive, controlled (Type 2) cognitive processes. We propose that Type 1 and Type 2 processes make differential contributions to creative production depending on domain expertise and situational factors such as task instructions. We tested this hypothesis with jazz pianists who were instructed to improvise to a novel chord sequence and rhythm accompaniment. Afterward, they were asked to perform again under instructions to be especially creative which, via goal activation, is thought to prompt the musicians to engage Type 2 processes. Jazz experts rated all performances. Overall, performances by more experienced pianists were rated as superior. Moreover, creativity instructions resulted in higher ratings. However, there was an interaction between instructions and expertise, revealing that explicit creativity instructions significantly improved improvisation ratings only for the less experienced musicians. We propose that activating or reconfiguring executive Type 2 processes facilitates creativity for less experienced musicians, but does not improve creative performance significantly for more experienced ones because the latter have largely automatized the processes responsible for high-level improvisation or because they have achieved a near-optimal balance between associative Type 1 and executive Type 2 processes. Thus, increasing controlled Type 2 processing is unlikely to help, and may sometimes even diminish, the creativity of experts’ performances.

Minorities in Dictatorship and Democracy

Minorities in Dictatorship and Democracy. By Arseniy Samsonov
University of California Working Paper, May 2017. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2961627

Abstract: It is a widely-held belief that democracy is good for minorities. However, there are countries like India, Turkey, or Sri Lanka where a competitive political system coincided with ethnic discrimination and conflict. I build a theoretical model that links minority welfare to the level of democracy and the ethnic structure of the society. In the game, ethnic groups form coalitions to share resources, and the level of democracy is modeled as the size of the minimum decisive coalition. I show that, for minorities, a very high or very low level of democracy is preferable to a medium level, because in an autocracy minority rule is possible, while a very democratic system makes the inclusion of minorities necessary. Given a medium level of democracy, the majority group is sufficient to rule, so minorities are not included. Minorities are more likely to prefer autocracy over democracy if the majority group is sufficiently large and the level of diversity is high. I find empirical support for the model's main results using the Ethnic Power Relations dataset.