Curiosity is more than novelty seeking.

The novelty-seeking model (NSM) does not offer a compelling unifying framework for understanding creativity and curiosity. It fails to explain important manifestations and features of curiosity. Moreover, the arguments offered to support a curiosity-creativity link - a shared association with a common core process and various superficial associations between them - are neither convincing nor do they yield useful predictions.

"WEIRD" societies still value (even needless) self-control and self-sacrifice.

Some aspects of moral disciplining theory (MDT) - the association between cooperation and self-control; the notion that people and societies value sacrifice and costly prosocial behaviors - are well supported. However, other aspects of MDT - the association between religion/religiosity and cooperation; the notion that sacrifice and costly prosocial behaviors are no longer valued in "western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic" (WEIRD) societies - are inconsistent with existing evidence.

Is Identity Essentialism a Fundamental Feature of Human Cognition?

The present research examines whether identity essentialism, an important component of psychological essentialism, is a fundamental feature of human cognition. Across three studies (Ntotal = 1723), we report evidence that essentialist intuitions about the identity of kinds are culturally dependent, demographically variable, and easily malleable. The first study considered essentialist intuitions in 10 different countries spread across four continents. Participants were presented with two scenarios meant to elicit essentialist intuitions. Their answers suggest that essentialist intuitions vary dramatically across cultures. Furthermore, these intuitions were found to vary with gender, education, and across eliciting stimuli. The second study further examined whether essentialist intuitions are stable across different kinds of eliciting stimuli. Participants were presented with two different scenarios meant to elicit essentialist intuitions-the "discovery" and "transformation" scenarios. Their answers suggest that the nature of the eliciting stimuli influences whether or not people report essentialist intuitions. Finally, the third study demonstrates that essentialist intuitions are susceptible to framing effects. Keeping the eliciting stimulus (i.e., the scenario) constant, we show that the formulation of the question eliciting a judgment influences whether or not people have essentialist intuitions. Implications of these findings for identity essentialism and psychological essentialism, in general, are discussed.

Loss aversion, the endowment effect, and gain-loss framing shape preferences for noninstrumental information.

We often talk about interacting with information as we would with a physical good (e.g., "consuming content") and describe our attachment to personal beliefs in the same way as our attachment to personal belongings (e.g., "holding on to" or "letting go of" our beliefs). But do we in fact value information the way we do objects? The valuation of money and material goods has been extensively researched, but surprisingly few insights from this literature have been applied to the study of information valuation. This paper demonstrates that two fundamental features of how we value money and material goods embodied in Prospect Theory-loss aversion and different risk preferences for gains versus losses-also hold true for information, even when it has no material value. Study 1 establishes loss aversion for noninstrumental information by showing that people are less likely to choose a gamble when the same outcome is framed as a loss (rather than gain) of information. Study 2 shows that people exhibit the endowment effect for noninstrumental information, and so value information more, simply by virtue of "owning" it. Study 3 provides a conceptual replication of the classic "Asian Disease" gain-loss pattern of risk preferences, but with facts instead of human lives, thereby also documenting a gain-loss framing effect for noninstrumental information. These findings represent a critical step in building a theoretical analogy between information and objects, and provide a useful perspective on why we often resist changing (or losing) our beliefs.

Using big data to map the relationship between time perspectives and economic outputs.

Recent studies have shown that population-level time perspectives can be approximated using "big data" on search engine queries, and that these indices, in turn, predict the per-capita Gross Domestic Product of countries. Although these findings seem to support Baumard's suggestion that affluence makes people more future-oriented, they also reveal a more complex relationship between time perspectives and economic outputs.

For Whom Does Determinism Undermine Moral Responsibility? Surveying the Conditions for Free Will Across Cultures.

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one's actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one's actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions.

The Interpersonal Sunk-Cost Effect.

The sunk-cost fallacy-pursuing an inferior alternative merely because we have previously invested significant, but nonrecoverable, resources in it-represents a striking violation of rational decision making. Whereas theoretical accounts and empirical examinations of the sunk-cost effect have generally been based on the assumption that it is a purely intrapersonal phenomenon (i.e., solely driven by one's own past investments), the present research demonstrates that it is also an interpersonal effect (i.e., people will alter their choices in response to other people's past investments). Across eight experiments ( N = 6,076) covering diverse scenarios, I documented sunk-cost effects when the costs are borne by someone other than the decision maker. Moreover, the interpersonal sunk-cost effect is not moderated by social closeness or whether other people observe their sunk costs being "honored." These findings uncover a previously undocumented bias, reveal that the sunk-cost effect is a much broader phenomenon than previously thought, and pose interesting challenges for existing accounts of this fascinating human tendency.

The Effort Paradox: Effort Is Both Costly and Valued.

According to prominent models in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and economics, effort (be it physical or mental) is costly: when given a choice, humans and non-human animals alike tend to avoid effort. Here, we suggest that the opposite is also true and review extensive evidence that effort can also add value. Not only can the same outcomes be more rewarding if we apply more (not less) effort, sometimes we select options precisely because they require effort. Given the increasing recognition of effort's role in motivation, cognitive control, and value-based decision-making, considering this neglected side of effort will not only improve formal computational models, but also provide clues about how to promote sustained mental effort across time.

The motivation to sacrifice for a cause reflects a basic cognitive bias.

Many extreme forms of self-sacrifice occur without identity fusion or out-group threats. For example, people willingly participate in extreme charity fundraisers - exerting effort, enduring pain, and risking bodily injury - to advance desired causes. Therefore, it seems plausible that the motivation to engage in extreme self-sacrifice reflects a basic cognitive bias, rather than an evolutionary-cultural adaption specifically designed for intergroup conflict.

The biasing effects of appearances go beyond physical attractiveness and mating motives.

The influence of appearances goes well beyond physical attractiveness and includes the surprisingly powerful impact of "face-ism" - the tendency to stereotype individuals based on their facial features. A growing body of research has revealed that these face-based social attributions bias the outcomes of labor markets and experimental economic games in ways that are hard to explain via evolutionary mating motives.

Numerical magnitude evaluation as a foundation for decision making.

The evaluation of magnitudes serves as a foundation not only for numerical and mathematical cognition, but also for decision making. Recent theoretical developments and empirical studies have linked numerical magnitude evaluation to a wide variety of core phenomena in decision making and challenge the idea that preferences are driven by an innate, universal, and stable sense of number or value.

Searching Choices: Quantifying Decision-Making Processes Using Search Engine Data.

When making a decision, humans consider two types of information: information they have acquired through their prior experience of the world, and further information they gather to support the decision in question. Here, we present evidence that data from search engines such as Google can help us model both sources of information. We show that statistics from search engines on the frequency of content on the Internet can help us estimate the statistical structure of prior experience; and, specifically, we outline how such statistics can inform psychological theories concerning the valuation of human lives, or choices involving delayed outcomes. Turning to information gathering, we show that search query data might help measure human information gathering, and it may predict subsequent decisions. Such data enable us to compare information gathered across nations, where analyses suggest, for example, a greater focus on the future in countries with a higher per capita GDP. We conclude that search engine data constitute a valuable new resource for cognitive scientists, offering a fascinating new tool for understanding the human decision-making process.

Social attributions from faces: determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance.

Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributing social and personality characteristics from facial appearance. Recent studies have shown that surprisingly little time and effort are needed to arrive at this consensus. Here we review recent research on social attributions from faces. Section I outlines data-driven methods capable of identifying the perceptual basis of consensus in social attributions from faces (e.g., What makes a face look threatening?). Section II describes nonperceptual determinants of social attributions (e.g., person knowledge and incidental associations). Section III discusses evidence that attributions from faces predict important social outcomes in diverse domains (e.g., investment decisions and leader selection). In Section IV, we argue that the diagnostic validity of these attributions has been greatly overstated in the literature. In the final section, we offer an account of the functional significance of these attributions.

Is psychological essentialism an inherent feature of human cognition?

Recent evidence shows that psychological essentialism is neither a universal nor stable feature of human cognition. The extent to which people report essentialist intuitions varies enormously across cultures and education levels, and is also influenced by subtle, normatively irrelevant contextual manipulations. These results challenge the notion that the human mind is "fitted" with a built-in inherence heuristic that produces essentialist intuitions.

Social attributions from faces bias human choices.

Our success and well-being, as individuals and societies, depend on our ability to make wise social decisions about important interpersonal matters, such as the leaders we select and the individuals we choose to trust. Nevertheless, our impressions of people are shaped by their facial appearances and, consequently, so too are these social decisions. This article summarizes research linking facial morphological traits to important social outcomes and discusses various factors that moderate this relationship.

Many behavioral tendencies associated with right-leaning (conservative) political ideologies are malleable and unrelated to negativity.

Recent research has identified several judgment and decision making tendencies associated with right-leaning political ideologies that are difficult (if not impossible) to explain in terms of stable, negative affective appraisals because they (1) are uncorrelated with the negativity of the stimuli being considered, (2) do not reflect divergent affective evaluations, and (3) can be eliminated by superficial manipulations and interventions.

Characterizing the time-perspective of nations with search engine query data.

Vast quantities of data on human behavior are being created by our everyday internet usage. Building upon a recent study by Preis, Moat, Stanley, and Bishop (2012), we used search engine query data to construct measures of the time-perspective of nations, and tested these measures against per-capita gross domestic product (GDP). The results indicate that nations with higher per-capita GDP are more focused on the future and less on the past, and that when these nations do focus on the past, it is more likely to be the distant past. These results demonstrate the viability of using nation-level data to build psychological constructs.

Using big data to predict collective behavior in the real world.

Recent studies provide convincing evidence that data on online information gathering, alongside massive real-world datasets, can give new insights into real-world collective decision making and can even anticipate future actions. We argue that Bentley et al.'s timely account should consider the full breadth, and, above all, the predictive power of big data.