Moral Uncanny Valley revisited - how human expectations of robot morality based on robot appearance moderate the perceived morality of robot decisions in high conflict moral dilemmas.

In recent years a new sub-field of moral psychology has emerged: moral psychology of AI and robotics. In this field there are several outstanding questions on how robot appearance and other perceived properties of the robots influences the way their decisions are evaluated. Researchers have observed that robot decision are not treated identically to human decisions, even if their antecedents and consequences are identical to human decisions. To study this moral judgment asymmetry effect further, two studies with a series of high conflict moral dilemmas were conducted: Study 1 - which used photorealistic full body imagery -- revealed that utilitarian decisions by human or non-creepy (i.e., nice) looking robotic agents were less condemned than "creepy" (i.e., unease inducing) robots, whereas "creepy" robots received higher moral approval when making deontological decisions. Furthermore, an exploratory analysis demonstrated that the creepiest robot did not cause moral surprise or disappointment when making utilitarian decisions. However, Study 2 showed that mere symbolic representation of the agent's face did not trigger the Moral Uncanny Valley (where decisions of creepy robots are perceived negatively), suggesting that the effect is dependent on the photorealistic appearance of the agent. These results are in tension with some previous findings in robot moral judgment literature. Future research should focus on creating standardized stimuli for studying moral decisions involving robots and elucidating the complex interactions between agent appearance, decision type, and pre-decision expectations. This work deepens our understanding of the relationship between a decision-making agent's appearance and the moral judgment of their decisions. The findings have significant implications for the design and implementation of autonomous agents in morally charged situations.

Health trajectories of individuals who quit active religious attendance: analysis of four prospective cohort studies in the United States.

PURPOSE: To examine whether trajectories of health (depressive symptoms, psychological wellbeing, self-rated health, and body mass index) and health behaviors (smoking, heavy alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, and cannabis use) changed for individuals who first reported at least monthly religious attendance and then in subsequent study waves reported no active religious attendance. METHODS: Data were from four cohort studies from the United States collected between 1996 and 2018: National Longitudinal Survey of 1997 (NLSY1997); National Longitudinal Survey of Young Adults (NLSY-YA); Transition to Adulthood Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID-TA); and Health and Retirement Study (HRS) with a total n = 6592 individuals and 37,743 person-observations. RESULTS: None of the 10-year trajectories of health or health behaviors changed for the worse after the change from active to inactive religious attendance. Instead, the adverse trends were observed already during the time of active religious attendance. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that religious disengagement is a correlate-not a cause-of a life course characterized by poorer health and health behaviors. The religious decline caused by people leaving their religion is unlikely to influence population health.

Obesity as a causal risk factor for depression: Systematic review and meta-analysis of Mendelian Randomization studies and implications for population mental health.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Obesity has been associated with elevated risk of depression. If this association is causal, the increasing obesity prevalence might lead to worsening population mental health, but the strength of the causal effect has not been systematically evaluated. SUBJECTS/METHODS: The current study provides a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining associations between body mass index and depression using Mendelian randomization with multiple genetic variants as instruments for body mass index. We used this estimate to calculate the expected changes in prevalence of population psychological distress from the 1990s-2010s, which were compared with the empirically observed trends in psychological distress in the Health Survey for England (HSE) and U.S. National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS). RESULTS: Meta-analysis of 8 Mendelian randomization studies indicated an OR = 1.33 higher depression risk associated with obesity (95% confidence interval 1.19, 1.48). Between 15% and 20% of the participants of HSE and NHIS reported at least moderate psychological distress. The increase of obesity prevalence from the 1990s-2010s in HSE and NHIS would have led to a 0.6 percentage-point increase in population psychological distress. CONCLUSIONS: Mendelian randomization studies suggest that obesity is a causal risk factor for elevated risk of depression. The increasing obesity rates may have modestly increased the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the general population. Mendelian randomization relies on methodological assumptions that may not always hold, so other quasi-experimental methods are needed to confirm the current conclusions.

Social and moral psychology of COVID-19 across 69 countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables.

Would you exchange your soul for immortality?-existential meaning and afterlife beliefs predict mind upload approval.

Mind upload, or the digital copying of an individual brain and mind, could theoretically allow one to "live forever." If such a technology became available, who would be most likely to approve of it or condemn it? Research has shown that fear of death positively predicts the moral approval of hypothetical mind upload technology, while religiosity may have the opposite effect. We build on these findings, drawing also from work on religiosity and existential mattering as predictors of perceived meaning in one's life. In a cross-sectional study (N = 1,007), we show that existential mattering and afterlife beliefs are negatively associated with moral approval of mind upload technology: people who believe there is a soul or some form of afterlife and who also report a high level of existential mattering, are least likely to morally approve of mind upload technology. Indeed, mind uploading-if it ever becomes feasible-is a form of technology that would fundamentally redraw the existential boundaries of what it means to be human.

Psychometric analysis of the flow short scale translated to Finnish.

Flow is a well-known construct describing the experience of deep absorption in a task, typically demanding but intrinsically motivating, and conducted with high skill. Flow is operationalized by self-report, and various instruments have been developed for this, but none have been made available in the Finnish language in thoroughly validated form. We present a psychometric scale-validation study for the Finnish translation of the Flow Short Scale (FSS). We collected data from 201 Finnish speaking participants using the Prolific Academic platform. We assessed the scale's factorial structure using Mokken scale analysis, Parallel Analysis, Very Simple Structures analysis and a standard Confirmatory Factor Analysis. We then evaluated how correlated was the FSS with the Flow State Scale and Flow Core Scale. Finally, we evaluated how well the FSS distinguished Flow-inducing experiences from boring (non-Flow-inducing) experiences. Taken together, our results show that an 8-item, two-factor version of the scale was a justified instrument with good psychometric properties.

Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism.

A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule's letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants' adherence to rules' literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule's purpose, the rule's literal meaning provides a clear focal point-an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges.

National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic.

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = -0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.

Online betting intensity is linked with Extraversion and Conscientiousness.

INTRODUCTION: Extraversion and Conscientiousness are well-studied personality traits associated with reward processing and goal prioritization, respectively, and bear on individual differences in financial risk-taking. Using unique large datasets, we investigated the link between these traits and male online gamblers' actual betting participation and intensity. METHOD: We combined datasets containing online horse betting data (during 2015-2016) from the Finnish monopoly betting company, administrative registry data from Statistics Finland, and personality trait measures from the Finnish Defence Forces corresponding to Extraversion and Conscientiousness as defined in the five-factor model. We modelled associations between these traits and betting participation (n = 471,968) and intensity (n = 11,217) among male horse bettors (age = 36-53). RESULTS: Controlling for demographics and IQ, individuals scoring high on Conscientiousness (or Extraversion) were less (or more) likely to bet and less (or more) intensive bettors-even when personality was measured 16-34 years before betting occurred. One SD personality score increase represented an annual decrease (Conscientiousness) or increase (Extraversion) of €570-754 in spending. CONCLUSIONS: Extraversion and Conscientiousness are implicated in real-life financial behavior with tangible consequences for individuals. These effects are stronger than for many known demographic variables used in gambling studies and persist up to 34 years after personality has been measured.

Challenges in Process Dissociation Measures for Moral Cognition.

The process dissociation procedure (PDP) for moral cognition was created to separately measure two dispositions of moral judgment based on the dual-process theory of moral reasoning: deontological and utilitarian inclinations. In this paper we raise some concerns from a psychometrics perspective regarding the structure, reliability, and validity of the moral PDP as a measure of individual differences. Using two simulation studies as well as a real sample of N = 1,010, we investigate the psychometric properties of the moral PDP. We present novel evidence showing that (1) some correlations between PDP parameters are mathematical artifacts, and as such cannot be taken as evidence in support of a theory, (2) there are severe response inconsistencies within dilemma batteries, and (3) reliability estimates for these scores seem to be far below the accepted standards. We discuss some potential theoretical and content-related reasons for these statistical issues and their implications. We conclude that in their current form, PDP measures of utilitarian and deontological tendencies are sub-optimal for assessing individual differences.

Homophily in Personality Enhances Group Success Among Real-Life Friends.

Personality affects dyadic relations and teamwork, yet its role among groups of friends has been little explored. We examine for the first time whether similarity in personality enhances the effectiveness of real-life friendship groups. Using data from a longitudinal study of a European fraternity (10 male and 15 female groups), we investigate how individual Big Five personality traits were associated with group formation and whether personality homophily related to how successful the groups were over 1 year (N = 147-196). Group success was measured as group performance/identification (adoption of group markers) and as group bonding (using the inclusion-of-other-in-self scale). Results show that individuals' similarity in neuroticism and conscientiousness predicted group formation. Furthermore, personality similarity was associated with group success, even after controlling for individual's own personality. Especially higher group-level similarity in conscientiousness was associated with group performance, and with bonding in male groups.

Experience and Passion in Poker: Are There Well-Being Implications?

Previous studies on gambling passion have identified that obsessive passion is related to negative consequences, including gambling pathology, whereas harmonious passion is mostly related to positive outcomes both during and after engagement in gambling activity. In the present study, we focused on poker players (N = 311) and investigated the associations between the two types of gambling passion and subjective well-being, while taking into account acquired poker experience. We found that harmonious passion toward poker was associated with higher levels of well-being, whereas the reverse was true for obsessive passion. Poker experience was positively related to harmonious but not obsessive passion, and moderated the relationship between harmonious passion and quality of life. Our findings contribute to extant literature on passion and further solidify its application in a gambling context. Most importantly, our results underline the relevance of accounting for poker experience when studying gambling among poker players.

Evaluating the replicability of the uncanny valley effect.

The uncanny valley (UV) effect refers to an eerie feeling of unfamiliarity people get while observing or interacting with robots that resemble humans almost but not quite perfectly. The effect is not well understood, and it is also unclear how well results from previous research on the UV can be replicated. In six studies, both in the laboratory and online (N = 1343), we attempted to replicate the UV effect with various stimuli used in previous research. In Studies 1 and 2 we failed to replicate the UV effect with CGI stimuli created using the so-called morphing technique (a robot image morphed into a human image, resulting in a supposedly creepy robot-human image). In Studies 3a and 3b we found a prominent UV effect using pre-evaluated, non-morphed and photorealistic robot pictures. Finally, in exploratory Studies 4a and 4b we found the UV effect using morphed and photorealistic human and robot pictures. Our results suggest that the UV effect is more robust when elicited by pre-validated or prima facie uncanny robot pictures than by non-photorealistic images generated using the morphing technique. We argue that photorealistic pictures are more suitable than less realistic CGI pictures as stimuli for research attempting to elicit the UV effect - however, our results do not invalidate any previous research on the UV effect using morphing techniques, but point to their domain of applicability and context sensitivity.

Money for microbes-Pathogen avoidance and out-group helping behaviour.

Humans have evolved various adaptations against pathogens, including the physiological immune system. However, not all of these adaptations are physiological: the cognitive mechanisms whereby we avoid potential sources of pathogens-for example, disgust elicited by uncleanliness-can be considered as parts of a behavioural immune system (BIS). The mechanisms of BIS extend also to inter-group relations: Pathogen cues have been shown to increase xenophobia/ethnocentrism, as people prefer to keep their societal in-group norms unaltered and "clean." Nonetheless, little is known how pathogen cues influence people's willingness to provide humanitarian aid to out-group members. We examined how pathogen cues affected decisions of providing humanitarian aid in either instrumental (sending money) or non-instrumental form (sending personnel to help, or accepting refugees), and whether these effects were moderated by individual differences in BIS sensitivity. Data were collected in two online studies (Ns: 188 and 210). When the hypothetical humanitarian crisis involved a clear risk of infection, participants with high BIS sensitivity preferred to send money rather than personnel or to accept refugees. The results suggest that pathogen cues influence BIS-sensitive individuals' willingness to provide humanitarian aid when there is a risk of contamination to in-group members.

Individual Differences in Moral Disgust Do Not Predict Utilitarian Judgments, Sexual and Pathogen Disgust Do.

The role of emotional disgust and disgust sensitivity in moral judgment and decision-making has been debated intensively for over 20 years. Until very recently, there were two main evolutionary narratives for this rather puzzling association. One of the models suggest that it was developed through some form of group selection mechanism, where the internal norms of the groups were acting as pathogen safety mechanisms. Another model suggested that these mechanisms were developed through hygiene norms, which were piggybacking on pathogen disgust mechanisms. In this study we present another alternative, namely that this mechanism might have evolved through sexual disgust sensitivity. We note that though the role of disgust in moral judgment has been questioned recently, few studies have taken disgust sensitivity to account. We present data from a large sample (N = 1300) where we analyzed the associations between The Three Domain Disgust Scale and the most commonly used 12 moral dilemmas measuring utilitarian/deontological preferences with Structural Equation Modeling. Our results indicate that of the three domains of disgust, only sexual disgust is associated with more deontological moral preferences. We also found that pathogen disgust was associated with more utilitarian preferences. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Are Utilitarian/Deontological Preferences Unidimensional?

Utilitarian versus deontological inclinations have been studied extensively in the field of moral psychology. However, the field has been lacking a thorough psychometric evaluation of the most commonly used measures. In this paper, we examine the factorial structure of an often used set of 12 moral dilemmas purportedly measuring utilitarian/deontological moral inclinations. We ran three different studies (and a pilot) to investigate the issue. In Study 1, we used standard Exploratory Factor Analysis and Schmid-Leimann (g factor) analysis; results of which informed the a priori single-factor model for our second study. Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis in Study 2 were replicated in Study 3. Finally, we ran a weak invariance analysis between the models of Study 2 and 3, concluding that there is no significant difference between factor loading in these studies. We find reason to support a single-factor model of utilitarian/deontological inclinations. In addition, certain dilemmas have consistent error covariance, suggesting that this should be taken into consideration in future studies. In conclusion, three studies, pilot and an invariance analysis, systematically suggest the following. (1) No item needs to be dropped from the scale. (2) There is a unidimensional structure for utilitarian/deontological preferences behind the most often used dilemmas in moral psychology, suggesting a single latent cognitive mechanism. (3) The most common set of dilemmas in moral psychology can be successfully used as a unidimensional measure of utilitarian/deontological moral inclinations, but would benefit from using weighted averages over simple averages. (4) Consideration should be given to dilemmas describing infants.

"To Bluff like a Man or Fold like a Girl?" - Gender Biased Deceptive Behavior in Online Poker.

Evolutionary psychology suggests that men are more likely than women to deceive to bolster their status and influence. Also gender perception influences deceptive behavior, which is linked to pervasive gender stereotypes: women are typically viewed as weaker and more gullible than men. We assessed bluffing in an online experiment (N = 502), where participants made decisions to bluff or not in simulated poker tasks against opponents represented by avatars. Participants bluffed on average 6% more frequently at poker tables with female-only avatars than at tables with male-only or gender mixed avatars-a highly significant effect in games involving repeated decisions. Nonetheless, participants did not believe the avatar genders affected their decisions. Males bluffed 13% more frequently than females. Unlike most economic games employed exclusively in research contexts, online poker is played for money by tens of millions of people worldwide. Thus, gender effects in bluffing have significant monetary consequences for poker players.

Emotional and Social Factors influence Poker Decision Making Accuracy.

Poker is a social game, where success depends on both game strategic knowledge and emotion regulation abilities. Thus, poker provides a productive environment for studying the effects of emotional and social factors on micro-economic decision making. Previous research indicates that experiencing negative emotions, such as moral anger, reduces mathematical accuracy in poker decision making. Furthermore, various social aspects of the game­such as losing against "bad players" due to "bad luck"­seem to fuel these emotional states. We designed an Internet-based experiment, where participants' (N = 459) mathematical accuracy in five different poker decision making tasks were assessed. In addition, we manipulated the emotional and social conditions under which the tasks were presented, in a 2 × 2 experimental setup: (1) Anger versus neutral emotional state­participants were primed either with an anger-inducing, or emotionally neutral story, and (2) Social cue versus non-social cue­during the tasks, either an image of a pair of human eyes was "following" the mouse cursor, or an image of a black moving box was presented. The results showed that anger reduced mathematical accuracy of decision making only when participants were "being watched" by a pair of moving eyes. Experienced poker players made mathematically more accurate decisions than inexperienced ones. The results contribute to current understanding on how emotional and social factors influence decision making accuracy in economic games.