Choosing between bad and worse: investigating choice in moral dilemmas through the lens of control.

People's preferences for the utilitarian outcome in sacrificial moral dilemmas, where a larger group of individuals are saved at the cost of a few, have been argued to be influenced by various factors. Taking expected utility (EU) theory into consideration, we investigate whether the expected effectiveness of actions elucidate certain inconsistencies in moral judgments. Additionally, we also explore whether participants' role in the dilemma as the executor or a superior who merely makes a decision, which is carried out by a subordinate, influences judgments-a factor generally overlooked by classical EU models. We test these hypotheses using a modified moral dilemma paradigm with a choice between two actions, one highly successful and the other more likely to fail. Both actions are either expected to result in a favorable outcome of saving five individuals by sacrificing one or an unfavorable outcome of sacrificing five to save one. When the efficient action is anticipated to lead to a favorable outcome, in line with EU models, people almost invariably choose the efficient action. However, in conditions where the EUs associated with efficient and inefficient actions are close to each other, people's choice for favored outcome is above chance when they act as agents themselves. We discuss the implications of our results for existing theories of moral judgments.

Statistical prediction alone cannot identify good models of behavior.

The dissociation between statistical prediction and scientific explanation advanced by Bowers et al. for studies of vision using deep neural networks is also observed in several other domains of behavior research, and is in fact unavoidable when fitting large models such as deep nets and other supervised learners, with weak theoretical commitments, to restricted samples of highly stochastic behavioral phenomena.

Intended emotions influence intentional binding with emotional faces: Larger binding for intended negative emotions.

The effect of emotions on Intentional binding (IB) is equivocal. In addition, most studies on IB have not manipulated emotional content of intentions. This study investigates the effect of intended and outcome emotions using emotional faces (happy or disgust face in experiment 1 and a happy or angry face in experiment 3). To see whether the effects are due to priming, we used instructions with a happy-disgust pair in experiment 2 and happy-angry pair in experiment 4. Outcome emotional faces were not predictable. Results showed that intending a negative emotional face resulted in shorter action-outcome interval judgments compared to a happy face irrespective of the emotional content of the outcome face. This effect was absent in experiments 2 and 4 with instructed emotions. In addition to showing the importance of having explicit intentions, the results show that emotional content of our intentions does influence IB possibly due to prospective mechanisms.

Gradedness of visual awareness depends on attentional scope: Global perception is more graded than local perception.

The gradedness or discreteness of our visual awareness has been debated. Here, we investigate the influence of spatial scope of attention on the gradedness of visual awareness. We manipulated scope of attention using hierarchical letter-based tasks (global: broad scope; local: narrow scope). Participants reported the identity of a masked hierarchical letter either at the global level or at the local level. We measured subjective awareness using the perceptual awareness scale ratings and objective performance. The results indicate more graded visual awareness (lesser slope for the awareness rating curve) at the global level compared to the local level. Graded perception was also observed in visibility ratings usage with global level task showing higher usage of the middle PAS ratings. Our results are in line with the prediction of level of processing hypothesis and show that global/local attentional scope and contextual endogenous factors influence the graded nature of our visual awareness.

Hedonic impacts of gains versus losses of time: are we loss averse?

A large part of our daily activities involves judging the psychological value of time. This study tested a previously less explored aspect about whether people are loss averse for time - i.e. do losses of time loom larger than corresponding gains? Using comparative hedonic judgments, the impact of prospective gains versus losses of time was examined for common contexts like waiting and local travel based on suggestions by typical navigation apps. The magnitude of time was varied without an explicit reference point (experiment 1) and with a clear reference without any overt consequence (experiment 2). The contextual nature of outcome along with magnitude was also manipulated (experiment 3). Prospective gains loomed as larger or equal to losses for low magnitudes while there was a trend of losses to loom larger than gains only for high magnitudes of time. These results weaken the empirical evidence for loss aversion and highlight its magnitude-dependent nature thus presenting a nuanced perspective to the affective psychology of time.

Global-local processing and dispositional bias interact with emotion processing in the psychological refractory period paradigm.

The reciprocal link between scope of attention and emotional processing is an important aspect of the relationship between emotion and attention. Larger scope of attention or global processing has been linked to positive emotions and narrow scope of attention or local processing has been linked to negative emotions. The nature of this relationship in the context of central capacity limitations and individual differences in attentional processing has not been studied in detail so far. To investigate such a relationship, here we used the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, in which we manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA: 150 ms, 300 ms, 900 ms) of stimuli corresponding to two tasks in a sequence. The first task was identifying a number at the global or local level; the second task was recognizing the emotional expression (happy or angry). Additionally, predisposition towards local or global perceptual dimension was measured with the global-local task. Results indicated that global precedence modulated PRP effect and that response accuracy was impaired by the combination of local-angry task modalities. Interestingly, interference between simultaneous tasks was modulated by the predisposition to different perceptual levels resulting in different cognitive strategies for performing simultaneous tasks: locally biased subjects tended more towards serial processing, meanwhile globally biased ones were performing tasks in a parallel manner. This result suggest that individual differences may play a role in the choice of dual-task performing strategies.

Attentional blink with emotional faces depends on emotional expressions: a relative positive valence advantage.

Contribution of emotional valence and arousal to attentional processing over time is not fully understood. We employed a rapid serial visual paradigm (RSVP) in three experiments to investigate the role of valence and arousal. In three experiments, participants had to identify the expression of the two targets (experiment 1 - happy and angry; experiment 2 - angry and surprise; experiment 3 - happy and surprise) presented among neutral upright face distracters. In the first and third experiments, the two targets differed both in valence and arousal ratings. In experiment 2, the surprise and angry expressions differed in terms of valence but were matched for arousal. There was a happy expression advantage (lesser attentional blink) when the first target was anger (experiment 1) or surprise (experiment 3) and a surprise expression advantage when the first target was anger (experiment 2). There was a backward blink with reduced detection of the first target primarily by the relatively more positive valence second target. These results indicate that the benefit for happy and surprise expressions in comparison to angry expression identification is probably due to valence (more positive) and not arousal. Our results demonstrate a novel dynamic interplay of emotional information on temporal attention.

Parasite stress and pathogen avoidance relate to distinct dimensions of political ideology across 30 nations.

People who are more avoidant of pathogens are more politically conservative, as are nations with greater parasite stress. In the current research, we test two prominent hypotheses that have been proposed as explanations for these relationships. The first, which is an intragroup account, holds that these relationships between pathogens and politics are based on motivations to adhere to local norms, which are sometimes shaped by cultural evolution to have pathogen-neutralizing properties. The second, which is an intergroup account, holds that these same relationships are based on motivations to avoid contact with outgroups, who might pose greater infectious disease threats than ingroup members. Results from a study surveying 11,501 participants across 30 nations are more consistent with the intragroup account than with the intergroup account. National parasite stress relates to traditionalism (an aspect of conservatism especially related to adherence to group norms) but not to social dominance orientation (SDO; an aspect of conservatism especially related to endorsements of intergroup barriers and negativity toward ethnic and racial outgroups). Further, individual differences in pathogen-avoidance motives (i.e., disgust sensitivity) relate more strongly to traditionalism than to SDO within the 30 nations.

Proactive and reactive control depends on emotional valence: a Stroop study with emotional expressions and words.

We examined proactive and reactive control effects in the context of task-relevant happy, sad, and angry facial expressions on a face-word Stroop task. Participants identified the emotion expressed by a face that contained a congruent or incongruent emotional word (happy/sad/angry). Proactive control effects were measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop interference (difference between incongruent and congruent trials) as a function of previous trial emotion and previous trial congruence. Reactive control effects were measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop interference as a function of current trial emotion and previous trial congruence. Previous trial negative emotions exert greater influence on proactive control than the positive emotion. Sad faces in the previous trial resulted in greater reduction in the Stroop interference for happy faces in the current trial. However, current trial angry faces showed stronger adaptation effects compared to happy faces. Thus, both proactive and reactive control mechanisms are dependent on emotional valence of task-relevant stimuli.

Multi-scale control influences sense of agency: Investigating intentional binding using event-control approach.

Control exercised by humans through interactions with the environment is critical for sense of agency. Here, we investigate how control at multiple levels influence implicit sense of agency measured using intentional binding. Participants are asked to hit a moving target using a joystick with noisy control followed by an intentional binding task initiated by the target hitting action. Perceptual-motor level control was manipulated through noise in the joystick controller (experiment 1) and goal-level control in terms of feedback about successful hit (experiments 2a and 2b). In the first experiment, intentional binding increased with amount of joystick control only when goal was not achieved and independent otherwise suggesting that the two levels interact hierarchically. In the second experiment, the estimated duration was dependent on when participants knew about goal completion. The results are similar to those obtained with explicit measures of sense of agency indicating that multi-scale event control influences agency.

Intertemporal impulsivity can also arise from persistent failure of long-term plans.

We suggest that steep intertemporal discounting in individuals of low socioeconomic status (SES) may arise as a rational metacognitive adaptation to experiencing planning and control failures in long-term plans. Low SES individuals' plans fail more frequently because they operate close to budgetary boundaries, in turn because they consistently operate with limited budgets of money, status, trust, or other forms of social utility.

Explaining effervescence: Investigating the relationship between shared social identity and positive experience in crowds.

We investigated the intensely positive emotional experiences arising from participation in a large-scale collective event. We predicted such experiences arise when those attending a collective event are (1) able to enact their valued collective identity and (2) experience close relations with other participants. In turn, we predicted both of these to be more likely when participants perceived crowd members to share a common collective identity. We investigated these predictions in a survey of pilgrims (N = 416) attending a month-long Hindu pilgrimage festival in north India. We found participants' perceptions of a shared identity amongst crowd members had an indirect effect on their positive experience at the event through (1) increasing participants' sense that they were able to enact their collective identity and (2) increasing the sense of intimacy with other crowd members. We discuss the implications of these data for how crowd emotion should be conceptualised.

Only irrelevant sad but not happy faces are inhibited under high perceptual load.

Perceptual load plays a critical role in identification and awareness of stimuli. Given the differences in emotion-attention interactions, we investigated the perception of distractor emotional faces in two different load conditions under divided attention with a task based on the inattentional blindness paradigm. Participants performed a low- or high-load task with a string of letters presented against a happy, sad or neutral face (in a circular form) as the background. Participants were asked to identify the face that appeared in the critical trial. Results indicate an interaction between emotion and load. First, identification of faces with happy expression was better than chance and unaffected by load. Second, performance was worse than chance for faces with sad expression in the high-load condition, indicating inhibition of unattended sad distractor faces in the critical trial. This indicates that inhibitory processes during a difficult attentional task under divided attention influence subsequent perception of distractor stimuli especially sad faces. The results have implications for the theories of selective attention as well as the role of emotions in conscious perception.

Even "unconscious thought" is influenced by attentional mechanisms.

In this commentary, we focus on the role of attentional mechanisms in unconscious thought. We argue that even distracted or unconscious thought is capacity limited and differences in scope of attention influence processing during unconscious thought. Attention also would influence processes at different stages in the proposed lens model. We conclude that there is a clear need to understand the role of attention to better understand conscious or unconscious thought.

Global processing fosters donations toward charity appeals framed in an approach orientation.

People are often influenced by how persuasive appeals are framed. While decisions and preferences seem dependent on the effects of a fit between one's regulatory focus and the motivational orientation of a message, specific cognitive mechanisms involved are not yet clear. This study investigated how perceptual processing styles (global vs local) linked with the scope of attention (broad vs narrow) influence decisions depending on motivation-dependent framing (approach vs avoidance). We found that a global processing style fits approach-oriented message appeals and fosters monetary allocation toward charities framed in eager motivational terms. We discuss implications of the findings on processing styles in relation to affective versus deliberate modes of processing and the need to address in detail the role of attentional scope-dependent processing styles in decision making.

Disinterested attention and aesthetic experience.

Research studies have focused on stimulus features as well as internal or contextual factors to understand aesthetic experience. An important question is the nature of processes that are involved in all aesthetic experiences. One possible process is "disinterested attention" that may be necessary for one to have an aesthetic experience. This can be contrasted with a perceiver who attends to an object or event only in a goal-directed or instrumental or practical manner. It has been claimed that "disinterested attention" involves attention being focused on the aesthetic object or event while being distributed across its features or components. Other ideas have focused on better reallocation of attention over time. The potential nature of attention could be linked to aspects of mindfulness. Studies looking at the effects of mindfulness on aesthetic experience have shown it increases the frequency of having aesthetic experience. The nature of attention needed for an aesthetic experience can be thought of as a form of generosity that could be linked to the notions of a gift. Mindful attention to objects or life as a gift, perhaps enables us to see objects and perhaps life itself in non-instrumental terms resulting in an aesthetic experience.

Bilingualism and the increased attentional blink effect: evidence that the difference between bilinguals and monolinguals generalizes to different levels of second language proficiency.

The attentional blink task involves rapid serial presentation of visual stimuli, two of which the participants have to report. The usual finding is that participants are impaired at reporting the second target if it appears in close temporal proximity to the first target. Previous research has shown that the effect is stronger in bilinguals than monolinguals. We investigated whether the difference between monolinguals and proficient bilinguals can be extended to bilinguals of different proficiency levels. Therefore, we replicated the paradigm in a large sample of Hindi-English bilinguals with different proficiency levels of English, as measured with a validated vocabulary test. We additionally measured the participants' intelligence with the raven progressive matrices. We found that the size of the attentional blink effect correlates with the degree of second language proficiency and not with the degree of intelligence. This indicates that research on executive control functions can be done with bilinguals of different proficiency levels. Our results are also in line with recent findings showing that the attentional blink effect is not primarily due to limited processing resources.

Temporal correspondence in perceptual organization: Reciprocal interactions between temporal sensitivity and figure-ground segregation.

How do visual representations account for time? Is it the case that they represent time by themselves possessing temporal properties (temporal mirroring) or by atemporal markers/tags (temporal tagging)? This question has been asked for the past 5 decades and more, in neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. To address this debate, we designed a study to test temporal correspondence. We tested whether a temporal property (flicker frequency) could influence figure-ground segregation, and in turn, reciprocally, whether a figure-ground segregation would alter a temporal property (here, temporal resolution). We manipulated flicker frequency of dots on either side of an ambiguous edge in Experiment 1 and asked participants to indicate the figural region. In Experiment 2, we measured temporal sensitivity using a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task in both figural and ground regions. We showed temporal correspondence by showing specifically that figure-ground segregation depends on flicker frequency differences between two regions in ambiguous displays, where slow-flickering regions are seen as figural (Experiment 1). Reciprocally, in Experiment 2, we showed that participants performed a temporal-order judgment task better when the task had to be performed on a region seen as background compared with the same region seen as a figure. We show how relatively slower flickering regions are seen as figural, and correspondingly, seeing a region as figural is associated with a poorer temporal resolution. Our results collectively allow us to demonstrate a tight temporal correspondence in figure-ground perception, which could be explained using the parvocellular and magnocellular pathways, the two major retino-geniculo-cortical pathways.

Letting it go: The interplay between mind wandering, mindfulness, and creativity.

A creative idea is always appreciated. However, it is still unclear as to what helps people in coming up with creative ideas. The current chapter explores how mind wandering, mindfulness and meditation influence creative ideation. Most specifically, we explore the cognition behind each of these faculties and how they interact to enable us in navigating across our internal and external environments constantly. In this chapter, we also discuss an empirical study that examines mind-wandering tendencies in two types of creativity tasks-convergent and divergent, by manipulating task difficulty. The findings of our study provide evidence in support of the process theories that indicate mind wandering is based on the nature of creative tasks being performed and mind wandering tendencies are higher in the divergent compared to the convergent task. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion on how understanding the cognition of meditators provides insights to creative thought process and explores avenues of study for such complex and subjective cognitive faculties.