The effects of social presence on cooperative trust with algorithms.

Algorithms support many processes in modern society. Research using trust games frequently reports that people are less inclined to cooperate when believed to play against an algorithm. Trust is, however, malleable by contextual factors and social presence can increase the willingness to collaborate. We investigated whether situating cooperation with an algorithm in the presence of another person increases cooperative trust. Three groups of participants played a trust game against a pre-programmed algorithm in an online webhosted experiment. The first group was told they played against another person who was present online. The second group was told they played against an algorithm. The third group was told they played against an algorithm while another person was present online. More cooperative responses were observed in the first group compared to the second group. A difference in cooperation that replicates previous findings. In addition, cooperative trust dropped more over the course of the trust game when participants interacted with an algorithm in the absence another person compared to the other two groups. This latter finding suggests that social presence can mitigate distrust in interacting with an algorithm. We discuss the cognitive mechanisms that can mediate this effect.

How the environment evokes actions that lead to different goals: the role of object multi-functionality in pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer.

Research shows that stimuli in the environment can trigger behavior via the activation of goal representations. This process can be tested in the Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) paradigm, where stimuli can only affect behavior through the activation of the representation of its desired outcome (i.e., the PIT effect). Previous research has demonstrated that the PIT effect is stronger when the goal is more desirable. While this research only looked at actions that have single outcomes (e.g., obtaining a snack to satisfy appetite), in the present paper, we reason that actions that are instrumental in obtaining outcomes that are desirable in multiple ways (e.g., obtaining a snack to satisfy one's appetite, giving it to a friend, trading it for money) should produce stronger PIT effects. In two experiments, participants learned to perform left and right key presses to earn a snack, either framed as having a single function or multiple functions. Participants also learned to associate the two differently framed snacks with two cues. In a PIT test, they were required to press the keys as fast as possible upon exposure to the cues (i.e., the PIT effect). We found that cues associated with the multi-functional snack facilitated the actions that earned those snacks before, while cues associated with the single-functional snack did not facilitate such actions. We discuss these findings in the context of research on free choice and personal autonomy and how people appreciate the multi-functional nature of their goal-directed behavior in the environment. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04612-2.

Environmental control of social goals: using Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer to test cue-based pro-self and pro-social outcome responses.

A large amount of literature demonstrates that social behaviour can be triggered by environmental cues. A long-standing debate involves the question of whether such stimuli trigger behaviour directly (i.e. habits) or whether these effects mediate goals. As studies on automatic goal pursuit typically use real-world cues that are already associated with the behaviour and potentially the goal, it is impossible to make strong claims about the nature of the effects. In the present paper, we use a paradigm inspired by the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) literature to examine how the environment can trigger goal-directed behaviour. Building on the essence of pro-self and pro-social motives in humans, two experiments explored the PIT effect when the outcomes were framed in terms of self- versus other-interest. Participants performed actions to earn money for themselves or a charity. Each outcome was linked to a different cue. The results showed that a cue predictive of self-interest outcomes facilitated responses instrumental in gaining the outcome, while such specific PIT effect for other-interest outcomes only emerged when participants were free to donate the money. We briefly discuss these findings reflecting on whether the PIT effect in our paradigm is indeed sensitive to the value of social goals.

Spatiotemporal variations of public opinion on social distancing in the Netherlands: Comparison of Twitter and longitudinal survey data.

Background: Social distancing has been implemented by many countries to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding public support for this policy calls for effective and efficient methods of monitoring public opinion on social distancing. Twitter analysis has been suggested as a cheaper and faster-responding alternative to traditional survey methods. The current empirical evidence is mixed in terms of the correspondence between the two methods. Objective: We aim to compare the two methods in the context of monitoring the Dutch public's opinion on social distancing. For this comparison, we quantified the temporal and spatial variations in public opinion and their sensitivities to critical events using data from both Dutch Twitter users and respondents from a longitudinal survey. Methods: A longitudinal survey on a representative Dutch sample (n = 1,200) was conducted between July and November 2020 to measure opinions on social distancing weekly. From the same period, near 100,000 Dutch tweets were categorized as supporting or rejecting social distancing based on a model trained with annotated data. Average stances for the 12 Dutch provinces and over the 20 weeks were computed from the two data sources and were compared through visualizations and statistical analyses. Results: Both data sources suggested strong support for social distancing, but public opinion was much more varied among tweets than survey responses. Both data sources showed an increase in public support for social distancing over time, and a strong temporal correspondence between them was found for most of the provinces. In addition, the survey but not Twitter data revealed structured differences among the 12 provinces, while the two data sources did not correspond much spatially. Finally, stances estimated from tweets were more sensitive to critical events happened during the study period. Conclusions: Our findings indicate consistencies between Twitter data analysis and survey methods in describing the overall stance on social distancing and temporal trends. The lack of spatial correspondence may imply limitations in the data collections and calls for surveys with larger regional samples. For public health management, Twitter analysis can be used to complement survey methods, especially for capturing public's reactivities to critical events amid the current pandemic.

Moving targets in space: Movement distance as a predictor for experiences of movement agency.

Previous research indicates that the experience of agency over one's actions and movements is influenced by movement predictability as well as movement distance (Hon, Seow, & Pereira, 2018). Addressing previous limitations, we present a compelling test of the relation between movement distance and movement agency. Participants in two studies moved targets predictably or unpredictably, and for short, medium, or long distances. Following prior research, distractor cues moved in the opposite direction of the targets. Results showed that movement agency scores were higher for predictable compared to unpredictable movements. Results also consistently showed that when movements were predictable, longer distances by either the target or the distractor cues increased agency relative to shorter distances. Our findings replicate and extend previous findings showing that stimulus movement distances influence judgments of movement agency.

Habit formation of preventive behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal study of physical distancing and hand washing.

BACKGROUND: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing and hand washing have been used as effective means to reduce virus transmission in the Netherlands. However, these measures pose a societal challenge as they require people to change their customary behaviours in various contexts. The science of habit formation is potentially useful for informing policy-making in public health, but the current literature largely overlooked the role of habit in predicting and explaining these preventive behaviours. Our research aimed to describe habit formation processes of physical distancing and hand washing and to estimate the influences of habit strength and intention on behavioural adherence. METHODS: A longitudinal survey was conducted between July and November 2020 on a representative Dutch sample (n = 800). Respondents reported their intentions, habit strengths, and adherence regarding six context-specific preventive behaviours on a weekly basis. Temporal developments of the measured variables were visualized, quantified, and mapped onto five distinct phases of the pandemic. Regression models were used to test the effects of intention, habit strength, and their interaction on behavioural adherence. RESULTS: Dutch respondents generally had strong intentions to adhere to all preventive measures and their adherence rates were between 70% and 90%. They also self-reported to experience their behaviours as more automatic over time, and this increasing trend in habit strength was more evident for physical-distancing than for hand washing behaviours. For all six behaviours, both intention and habit strength predicted subsequent adherence (all ps < 2e-16). In addition, the predictive power of intention decreased over time and was weaker for respondents with strong habits for physical distancing when visiting supermarkets (B = -0.63, p <.0001) and having guests at home (B = -0.54, p <.0001) in the later phases of the study, but not for hand washing. CONCLUSIONS: People's adaptations to physical-distancing and hand washing measures involve both intentional and habitual processes. For public health management, our findings highlight the importance of using contextual cues to promote habit formation, especially for maintaining physical-distancing practices. For habit theories, our study provides a unique dataset that covers multiple health behaviours in a critical real-world setting.

"Keep your distance for me": A field experiment on empathy prompts to promote distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has turned out to be a major challenge to societies all over the globe. Curbing the pandemic requires rapid and extensive behavioural change to limit social interaction, including physical distancing. In this study, we tested the notion that inducing empathy for people vulnerable to the virus may result in actual distancing behaviour beyond the mere motivation to do so. In a large field experiment with a sequential case-control design, we found that (a) empathy prompts may increase distancing as assessed by camera recordings and (b) effectiveness of prompts depends on the dynamics of the pandemic and associated public health policies. In sum, the present study demonstrates the potential of empathy-generating interventions to promote pro-social behaviour and emphasizes the necessity of field experiments to assess the role of context before advising policy makers to implement measures derived from behavioural science. Please refer to Supplementary Material to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Examining mechanistic explanations for ideomotor effects.

Ideomotor (IM) theory provides a popular mechanistic account for understanding how goal-directed action can be learned and instigated. That is, when associations between actions and outcomes have been established in memory, the perception or thought of the outcome could automatically activate the associated action. Whereas a sizable literature provides evidence in line with this account, it does not successfully exclude alternative explanations in terms of propositions based on causal inferences. In the present paper, we present an online IM paradigm, in which learning and testing occurs on the same trials. In line with recent findings, we demonstrate that IM effects can emerge within a couple of trials, but also that people can update learned action-outcome associations immediately when a new mapping of outcomes on actions is introduced, without any switch costs. Together, this suggests that IM effects may be driven by propositions about causal relations, rather than bidirectional associations stored in memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of fragrance and self-esteem in perception of body odors and impressions of others.

Human sweat odor serves as social communication signal for a person's traits and emotional states. This study explored whether body odors can also communicate information about one's self-esteem, and the role of applied fragrance in this relationship. Female participants were asked to rate self-esteem and attractiveness of different male contestants of a dating show, while being exposed to male participant's body odors differing in self-esteem. High self-esteem sweat was rated more pleasant and less intense than low self-esteem sweat. However, there was no difference in perceived self-esteem and attractiveness of male contestants in videos, hence explicit differences in body odor did not transfer to judgments of related person characteristics. When the body odor was fragranced using a fragranced body spray, male contestants were rated as having higher self-esteem and being more attractive. The finding that body odors from male participants differing in self-esteem are rated differently and can be discriminated suggests self-esteem has distinct perceivable olfactory features, but the remaining findings imply that only fragrance affect the psychological impression someone makes. These findings are discussed in the context of the role of body odor and fragrance in human perception and social communication.

Exploring Peoples' Perception of Autonomy and Reactance in Everyday AI Interactions.

Applications using Artificial Intelligence (AI) have become commonplace and embedded in our daily lives. Much of our communication has transitioned from human-human interaction to human-technology or technology-mediated interaction. As technology is handed over control and streamlines choices and decision-making in different contexts, people are increasingly concerned about a potential threat to their autonomy. In this paper, we explore autonomy perception when interacting with AI-based applications in everyday contexts using a design fiction-based survey with 328 participants. We probed if providing users with explanations on "why" an application made certain choices or decisions influenced their perception of autonomy or reactance regarding the interaction with the applications. We also looked at changes in perception when users are aware of AI's presence in an application. In the social media context, we found that people perceived a greater reactance and lower sense of autonomy perhaps owing to the personal and identity-sensitive nature of the application context. Providing explanations on "why" in the navigation context, contributed to enhancing their autonomy perception, and reducing reactance since it influenced the users' subsequent actions based on the recommendation. We discuss our findings and the implications it has for the future development of everyday AI applications that respect human autonomy.

Facial emotion detection in Vestibular Schwannoma patients with and without facial paresis.

This study investigates whether there exist differences in facial emotion detection accuracy in patients suffering from Vestibular Schwannoma (VS) due to their facial paresis. Forty-four VS patients, half of them with, and half of them without a facial paresis, had to classify pictures of facial expressions as being emotional or non-emotional. The visual information of images was systematically manipulated by adding different levels of visual noise. The study had a mixed design with emotional expression (happy vs. angry) and visual noise level (10% to 80%) as repeated measures and facial paresis (present vs. absent) and degree of facial dysfunction as between subjects' factors. Emotion detection accuracy declined when visual information declined, an effect that was stronger for anger than for happy expressions. Overall, emotion detection accuracy for happy and angry faces did not differ between VS patients with or without a facial paresis, although exploratory analyses suggest that the ability to recognize emotions in angry facial expressions was slightly more impaired in patients with facial paresis. The findings are discussed in the context of the effects of facial paresis on emotion detection, and the role of facial mimicry, in particular, as an important mechanism for facial emotion processing and understanding.

Perceiving emotions in visual stimuli: social verbal context facilitates emotion detection of words but not of faces.

Building on the notion that processing of emotional stimuli is sensitive to context, in two experimental tasks we explored whether the detection of emotion in emotional words (task 1) and facial expressions (task 2) is facilitated by social verbal context. Three different levels of contextual supporting information were compared, namely (1) no information, (2) the verbal expression of an emotionally matched word pronounced with a neutral intonation, and (3) the verbal expression of an emotionally matched word pronounced with emotionally matched intonation. We found that increasing levels of supporting contextual information enhanced emotion detection for words, but not for facial expressions. We also measured activity of the corrugator and zygomaticus muscle to assess facial simulation, as processing of emotional stimuli can be facilitated by facial simulation. While facial simulation emerged for facial expressions, the level of contextual supporting information did not qualify this effect. All in all, our findings suggest that adding emotional-relevant voice elements positively influence emotion detection.

Quality of life, social function, emotion, and facial paresis in Dutch vestibular schwannoma patients.

OBJECTIVES: The present study aimed to replicate the finding that vestibular schwannoma (VS) patients with facial paresis experience lower health related quality of life (QoL) than those without facial paresis in a Dutch sample, and to extend these findings by measuring VS patients' overall satisfaction with life, social function, and emotion. METHODS: Forty-seven VS patients, differing in degree of facial functioning, half of them with and half of them without a facial paresis, answered questionnaires about health related QoL (SF-36 and PANQOL), overall satisfaction with life, fear of being evaluated negatively by others, social avoidance and distress, and characteristics and symptoms of depression. RESULTS: We observed that VS patients with facial paresis experience lower health-related QoL as well negatively impacted social function and emotion compared to VS patients without facial paresis. VS patients with facial paresis experienced lower overall satisfaction with life, more characteristic symptoms of depression, and more fear of being evaluated negatively by others than VS patients without facial paresis. CONCLUSION: These findings corroborate previous research showing an association between impaired facial functioning and lower QoL, but also extend them by showing differences on the quality of social function and emotion. Being aware of this difference between VS patients with and without facial paresis informs health practitioners regarding the specific support these patients might need. Moreover, it is also relevant to consider the influence of a facial paresis on patients' life when deciding between treatment options and in case of surgery the type of resection. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 3.

Lateralization of facial emotion processing and facial paresis in Vestibular Schwannoma patients.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates whether there exist differences in lateralization of facial emotion processing in patients suffering from Vestibular Schwannoma (VS) based on the presence of a facial paresis and their degree of facial functioning as measured by the House Brackmann Grading scale (HBG). METHODS: Forty-four VS patients, half of them with a facial paresis and half of them without a facial paresis, rated how emotive they considered images of faces showing emotion in the left versus right visual field. Stimuli consisted of faces with a neutral half and an emotional (happy or angry) half. The study had a mixed design with emotional expression (happy vs. angry) and emotional half (left vs. right visual field) of the faces as repeated measures, and facial paresis (present vs. absent) and HBG as between subjects' factors. The visual field bias was the main dependent variable. RESULTS: In line with typical findings in the normal population, a left visual field bias showed in the current sample: patients judged emotional expressions shown in the left visual field as more emotive than those shown in the right visual field. No differences in visual field bias showed based on the presence of a facial paresis nor based on patients' HBG. CONCLUSION: VS patients show a left visual field bias when processing facial emotion. No differences in lateralization showed based on the presence of a facial paresis or on patients' HBG. Based on this study, facial paresis thus does not affect the lateralization of facial emotion processing in patients with VS.

Ideomotor Action: Evidence for Automaticity in Learning, but Not Execution.

Human habits are widely assumed to result from stimulus-response (S-R) associations that are formed if one frequently and consistently does the same thing in the same situation. According to Ideomotor Theory, a distinct but similar process could lead to response-outcome (R-O) associations if responses frequently and consistently produce the same outcomes. This process is assumed to occur spontaneously, and because these associations can operate in a bidirectional manner, merely perceiving or thinking of an outcome should automatically activate the associated action. In the current paper we test this automaticity feature of ideomotor learning. In four experiments, participants completed the same learning phase in which they could acquire associations, and were either explicitly informed about the contingency between actions and outcomes, or not. Automatic action selection and initiation were investigated using a free-choice task in Experiment 1 and forced-choice tasks in Experiment 2, 3a, and 3b. An ideomotor effect was only obtained in the free-choice, but not convincingly in the forced-choice tasks. Together, this suggests that action-outcome relations can be learned spontaneously, but that there may be limits to the automaticity of the ideomotor effect.

From sterile labs to rich VR: Immersive multisensory context critical for odors to induce motivated cleaning behavior.

Extending traditional research methods for studying the effects of odor on behavior, this study applied virtual reality (VR) to create a real-world, immersive context that was compared with a traditional sterile, non-immersive lab setting. Using precise odor administration with olfactometry, participants were exposed to three odors (cleaning-related pleasant smell, cleaning-unrelated pleasant smell: vanillin, and odorless air). Our aim was to tease apart whether participants' motivation to clean was driven by cleaning associations and/or odor pleasantness, and how context would accentuate these effects. The results indeed showed that, in VR only, the cleaning-related smell elicited faster and more energetic cleaning behavior on a custom-designed cleaning task, and faster and more voluminous olfactory sampling compared with controls (vanillin, air). These effects were not driven by odor valence, given the general absence of significant differences between the pleasant control odor vanillin and odorless air. In sum, combining rigorous experimental control with high ecological validity, this research shows the context dependency of (congruent) odors affecting motivated behavior in an immersive context only.

Lateralization of facial emotion processing and facial mimicry.

The two halves of the brain are believed to play different roles in emotional processing. In studies involving chimeric faces, emotional expressions in the left visual field are more strongly perceived as emotional than those in the right visual field. Notably, the role of facial mimicry has not been studied in relation to hemispheric lateralization. In the current study, which used a novel stimulus set of chimeric faces, we proposed and found that emotional intensity judgments replicate the left visual field bias for facial expressions of emotions. While a general facial mimicry effect to the chimeric faces occurred for the corrugator muscle, these mimicry effects were not related to the visual field bias. The results suggest that encoding the emotionality of another person's facial expression might occur independent from the mere mimicry of the facial expression itself.

Moving Forward: On the Limits of Motor-Based Forward Models.

The human ability to anticipate the consequences that result from action is an essential building block for cognitive, emotional, and social functioning. A dominant view is that this faculty is based on motor predictions, in which a forward model uses a copy of the motor command to predict imminent sensory action-consequences. Although this account was originally conceived to explain the processing of action-outcomes that are tightly coupled to bodily movements, it has been increasingly extrapolated to effects beyond the body. Here, we critically evaluate this generalization and argue that, although there is ample evidence for the role of predictions in the processing of environment-related action-outcomes, there is hitherto little reason to assume that these predictions result from motor-based forward models.

The Role of Intentional Strength in Shaping the Sense of Agency.

Awareness of action is a pervasive personal experience that is crucial in understanding self-generated and other-generated actions as well as their effects. A large body of research suggests that action awareness, as measured by the magnitude of temporal binding between an action and its effect in an operant action task (i.e., intentional binding), is rooted in the human capacity to experience self-agency and establish action intentions. Whereas previous research mainly addressed the role of intentionality itself in these socially well-shared experiences, in the present study we focused specifically on one important aspect of it: the quality or strength of action intentions. We expected and established that stronger intentions increase intentional binding. Specifically, the magnitude of the binding effect, as assessed by the Libet clock task in which two actions were followed by the same neutral tone, was elevated for the action that was enacted with stronger intentions. We briefly discuss the implications of the observed role of intentional strength in temporal binding between action and effect, for promoting a better understanding and examination of how the concept of intentionality is associated with action awareness in general, and the experience of being the agent of one's own actions in particular.

Quantifying the informational value of classification images.

Reverse correlation is an influential psychophysical paradigm that uses a participant's responses to randomly varying images to build a classification image (CI), which is commonly interpreted as a visualization of the participant's mental representation. It is unclear, however, how to statistically quantify the amount of signal present in CIs, which limits the interpretability of these images. In this article, we propose a novel metric, infoVal, which assesses informational value relative to a resampled random distribution and can be interpreted like a z score. In the first part, we define the infoVal metric and show, through simulations, that it adheres to typical Type I error rates under various task conditions (internal validity). In the second part, we show that the metric correlates with markers of data quality in empirical reverse-correlation data, such as the subjective recognizability, objective discriminability, and test-retest reliability of the CIs (convergent validity). In the final part, we demonstrate how the infoVal metric can be used to compare the informational value of reverse-correlation datasets, by comparing data acquired online with data acquired in a controlled lab environment. We recommend a new standard of good practice in which researchers assess the infoVal scores of reverse-correlation data in order to ensure that they do not read signal in CIs where no signal is present. The infoVal metric is implemented in the open-source rcicr R package, to facilitate its adoption.