Efficacy of relational agents for loneliness across age groups: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Loneliness is a serious public health concern. Although previous interventions have had some success in mitigating loneliness, the field is in search of novel, more effective, and more scalable solutions. Here, we focus on "relational agents", a form of software agents that are increasingly powered by artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs). We report on a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate the impact of relational agents on loneliness across age groups. METHODS: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched 11 databases including Ovid MEDLINE and Embase from inception to Sep 16, 2022. We included randomised controlled trials and non-randomised studies of interventions published in English across all age groups. These loneliness interventions, typically attempt to improve social skills, social support, social interaction, and maladaptive cognitions. Peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, Master's and PhD theses, or conference papers were eligible for inclusion. Two reviewers independently screened studies, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias via the RoB 2 and ROBINS-I tools. We calculated pooled estimates of Hedge's g in a random-effects meta-analysis and conducted sensitivity and sub-group analyses. We evaluated publication bias via funnel plots, Egger's test, and a trim-and-fill algorithm. FINDINGS: Our search identified 3,935 records of which 14 met eligibility criteria and were included in our meta-analysis. Included studies comprised 286 participants with individual study sample sizes ranging from 4 to 42 participants (x̄ = 20.43, s = 11.58, x̃ = 20). We used a Bonferroni correction with αBonferroni = 0.05 / 4 = 0.0125 and applied Knapp-Hartung adjustments. Relational agents reduced loneliness significantly at an adjusted αBonferroni (g = -0.552; 95% Knapp-Hartung CI, -0.877 to -0.226; P = 0.003), which corresponds to a moderate reduction in loneliness. CONCLUSION: Our results are currently the most comprehensive of their kind and provide promising evidence for the efficacy of relational agents. Relational agents are a promising technology that can alleviate loneliness in a scalable way and that can be a meaningful complement to other approaches. The advent of LLMs should boost their efficacy, and further research is needed to explore the optimal design and use of relational agents. Future research could also address shortcomings of current results, such as small sample sizes and high risk of bias. Particularly young audiences have been overlooked in past research.

(Not) Eating for the environment: The impact of restaurant menu design on vegetarian food choice.

Previous research has shown that restaurant menu design can influence food choices. However, it remains unknown whether such contextual effects on food selection are dependent on people's past behavior. In the present study, we focused on vegetarian food choices, given their important implications for the environment, and investigated whether the influence of different restaurant menus on the likelihood of selecting a vegetarian dish is moderated by the number of days on which people reported eating only vegetarian food during the previous week. In an online scenario, participants were randomly assigned to four different restaurant menu conditions-control (all dishes presented in the same manner), recommendation (vegetarian dish presented as chef's recommendation), descriptive (more appealing description of vegetarian dish), and vegetarian (vegetarian dishes placed in a separate section)-and ordered a dish for dinner. The results showed that the recommendation and descriptive menus increased the likelihood of vegetarian dish choices for infrequent eaters of vegetarian foods, whereas these effects tended to reverse for those who ate vegetarian meals more often. The vegetarian menu had no impact on the infrequent vegetarian eaters' choice but backfired for the frequent vegetarian eaters and made them less likely to order a vegetarian dish. These findings indicate that people's past behavior is an important determinant of the impact of nudging on food choices, and that achieving sustainable eating may require more personalized interventions.

Pandemic related changes in social interaction are associated with changes in automatic approach-avoidance behaviour.

People's natural tendencies to either approach or avoid different stimuli in their environment are considered fundamental motivators of human behaviour. There is a wealth of research exploring how changes in approach and avoidance motivational orientations impact behaviour with consequences for wellbeing. However, research has seldom explored this relationship in reverse. The COVID-19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to explore whether widespread changes in social behaviour are associated with changes in automatic approach-avoidance tendencies over time. We gathered online survey data on people's adherence to 7 of the prescribed social restrictions set out by the UK government and people's automatic approach-avoidance tendencies in response to different stimuli (sad/happy faces and social scenes) at three time points during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reduced-overall-interaction (digital and in person) was found to be significantly associated with faster avoidance relative to approach of sad faces. The results suggest that automatic approach-avoidance tendencies may function to protect people against the typically negative experience of reduced social interaction, with important implications for understanding public resilience during times of crisis, and beyond.

The positive-negative-competence (PNC) model of psychological responses to representations of robots.

Robots are becoming an increasingly prominent part of society. Despite their growing importance, there exists no overarching model that synthesizes people's psychological reactions to robots and identifies what factors shape them. To address this, we created a taxonomy of affective, cognitive and behavioural processes in response to a comprehensive stimulus sample depicting robots from 28 domains of human activity (for example, education, hospitality and industry) and examined its individual difference predictors. Across seven studies that tested 9,274 UK and US participants recruited via online panels, we used a data-driven approach combining qualitative and quantitative techniques to develop the positive-negative-competence model, which categorizes all psychological processes in response to the stimulus sample into three dimensions: positive, negative and competence-related. We also established the main individual difference predictors of these dimensions and examined the mechanisms for each predictor. Overall, this research provides an in-depth understanding of psychological functioning regarding representations of robots.

Exploring the need for external input through the prism of social, material and sensation seeking input.

External input is any kind of physical stimulation created by an individual's surroundings that can be detected by the senses. The present research established a novel conceptualization of this construct by investigating it in relation to the needs for material, social and sensation seeking input, and by testing whether these needs predict psychological functioning during long- and short-term input deprivation. It was established that the three needs constitute different dimensions of an overarching construct (i.e. need for external input). The research also suggested that the needs for social and sensation seeking input are negatively linked to people's experiences of long-term input deprivation (i.e. COVID-19 restrictions), and that the need for material input may negatively predict the experiences of short-term input deprivation (i.e. sitting in a chair without doing anything else but thinking). Overall, this research indicates that the needs for social, material and sensation seeking input may have fundamental implications for experiences and actions in a range of different contexts.

Measuring the transformative utopian impulse for planetary health in the age of the Anthropocene: a multi-study scale development and validation.

BACKGROUND: Transformative utopian impulse for planetary health is people's propensity to have thoughts and engage in actions of which the purpose is to transform the current society into a better one in the future by addressing existing global issues. We aimed to develop a well-validated scale that can measure the transformative utopian impulse for planetary health and uncover its role in societal transformation. METHODS: We developed a scale to measure the transformative utopian impulse for planetary health across 11 studies with 6248 participants from the USA (from the MTurk database) and the UK (from the Prolifico.co database). Participants were eligible take part in the studies if they completed the consent form. Participants who did not pass the seriousness check or did not accurately answer all instructed response items were excluded from statistical analyses. We used exploratory factor analyses (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to determine the factor structure of the Transformative Utopian Impulse for Planetary Health Scale (TUIPHS). Then we analysed the TUIPHS' nomological network (ie, the relationships between TUIPHS and various constructs ranging from personality traits and values to economic, social, and political attitudes and beliefs). We then examined the scale's incremental predictive validity by testing whether it predicts various attitudes and behaviours relevant to social change beyond scales that measure competing constructs (this part of the study is registered at OSF Registries [https://osf.io/ztj2f]). Finally, we examined the TUIPHS' longitudinal predictive validity by probing whether it predicts people's future support for social change. FINDINGS: Data were collected between Oct 8, 2018, and July 6, 2020. We established that TUIPHS has a four-factor structure and can also be scored as a single general factor, indicating that it captures an overarching theoretical construct (ie, the transformative utopian impulse for planetary health). We then showed that the scale is related to various specific individual difference measures that capture diverse aspects of people's propensity to actively engage in thoughts and actions oriented toward the betterment of society. Moreover, TUIPHS predicted, above and beyond 20 competing scales highly correlated (r ≥0·50) with it, a series of 19 self-reported behavioural and attitudinal constructs pertaining to social change. Finally, participants' past TUIPHS scores predicted their support, a few months later, for social movements that aim to build a more just and resilient society than in the current day. INTERPRETATION: This research lays the groundwork for future theoretical and empirical research into the psychological and behavioural processes attached to the transformative utopian impulse for planetary health as a source of transformative social change toward a better way of being and living. FUNDING: The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Unburdening the Shoulders of Giants: A Quest for Disconnected Academic Psychology.

In current academic psychology, scholars typically develop their research and ideas by drawing on the work of other contemporary and preceding psychological scientists and by following certain conventions of the field. I refer to this variant of psychology as connected because the emphasis is on connecting various research findings and ideas generated by different scholars (e.g., by showing how they are related to each other via referencing). In this article, I argue that, although connected psychology advances psychological knowledge, it restricts the total amount of knowledge that could eventually be produced and therefore limits the potential of the discipline to improve the understanding of psychological phenomena. As a solution, I propose that, alongside the currently existing connected psychology, disconnected psychology should be established. In disconnected psychology, researchers develop their ideas by following the main principles of psychological method, but they are disconnected from a "field" consisting of other psychologists and therefore do not follow the discipline's norms and conventions. By drawing on one of the core constructs from information theory-information entropy-I argue that combining the two streams of psychology would result in the most significant advancement of psychological knowledge.

Looking at Spillovers in the Mirror: Making a Case for "Behavioral Spillunders".

Behavioral spillovers refer to the influence that a given intervention targeting behavior 1 exerts on a subsequent, non-targeted, behavior 2, which may or may not be in the same domain (health, finance, etc.) as one another. So, a nudge to exercise more, for example, could lead people to eat more or less, or possibly even to give more or less to charity depending on the nature of the spillover. But what if spillovers also operate backward; that is, if the expectation of behavior 1 influences behavior 0 that precedes it? For example, a person may form an intention to exercise prompted by a policy intervention but overeat at present as a result. We define such a possibility as a "spillunder." In the proposed article, we critically review the few papers that we have identified through a narrative literature review which have demonstrated spillunder effects to date, and we propose a conceptual framework. Based on evidence about the human mind and behavior from psychology and economics, we argue that spillunder effects may be more common than the limited empirical findings suggest. We propose six representative mechanisms through which the prospect of behavior 1 may impact behavior 0: executive functions, moral licensing and moral cleansing, emotion regulation, energization, construal level, and savoring and dread. We further discuss the policy and practical implications of spillunder effects and examine methodological issues that need to be considered when empirically testing these effects. As with our earlier paper on spillovers, we aim to motivate other behavioral scientists to research behavioral spillunders more systematically and extensively, and to prompt decision makers to consider these effects when designing behavioral interventions.

Close or far? Affect explains conflicting findings on motivated distance perception to rewards.

Research on motivated perception has yielded conflicting findings: Whereas Balcetis and Dunning (2010) showed that people approaching (vs. avoiding) rewarding objects (e.g. food) see them as closer, Krpan and Schnall (2014a) found the opposite. Furthermore, whereas Balcetis (2016) suggested that people who perceive rewarding objects as closer (vs. farther) should subsequently consume more, Krpan and Schnall (2017) showed that they actually ate less. We introduce affect as the missing link to explain these conflicting findings. Two experiments showed that approach and avoidance can either involve, or lack, an affective experience, which in turn determines how they influence perception, and how perception is related to behavior. Consistent with Krpan and Schnall (2017), non-affective approach (vs. avoidance) motivation made candies look farther; seeing candies as farther in turn predicted increased consumption (Experiment 1). In contrast, consistent with Balcetis and Dunning (2010), affective approach (vs. avoidance) motivation made these stimuli look closer; seeing candies as closer was associated with more being eaten (Experiment 2). Our findings therefore reconcile previous inconsistencies on motivated perception, and suggest that people's view of their surroundings is more dynamic than previously assumed.

Behavioral Priming 2.0: Enter a Dynamical Systems Perspective.

On a daily basis, people are exposed to numerous stimuli, ranging from colors and smells to sounds and words, that could potentially activate different cognitive constructs and influence their actions. This type of influence on human behavior is referred to as priming. Roughly two decades ago, behavioral priming was hailed as one of the core forces that shape automatic behavior. However, failures to replicate some of the representative findings in this domain soon followed, which posed the following question: "How robust are behavioral priming effects, and to what extent are they actually important in shaping people's actions?" To shed a new light on this question, I revisit behavioral priming through the prism of a dynamical systems perspective (DSP). The DSP is a scientific paradigm that has been developed through a combined effort of many different academic disciplines, ranging from mathematics and physics to biology, economics, psychology, etc., and it deals with behavior of simple and complex systems over time. In the present paper, I use conceptual and methodological tools stemming from the DSP to propose circumstances under which behavioral priming effects are likely to occur. More precisely, I outline three possible types of the influence of priming on human behavior, to which I refer as emergence, readjustment, and attractor switch, and propose experimental designs to examine them. Finally, I discuss relevant implications for behavioral priming effects and their replications.

A dual systems account of visual perception: Predicting candy consumption from distance estimates.

A substantial amount of evidence shows that visual perception is influenced by forces that control human actions, ranging from motivation to physiological potential. However, studies have not yet provided convincing evidence that perception itself is directly involved in everyday behaviors such as eating. We suggest that this issue can be resolved by employing the dual systems account of human behavior. We tested the link between perceived distance to candies and their consumption for participants who were tired or depleted (impulsive system), versus those who were not (reflective system). Perception predicted eating only when participants were tired (Experiment 1) or depleted (Experiments 2 and 3). In contrast, a rational determinant of behavior-eating restraint towards candies-predicted eating for non-depleted individuals (Experiment 2). Finally, Experiment 3 established that perceived distance was correlated with participants' self-reported motivation to consume candies. Overall, these findings suggest that the dynamics between perception and behavior depend on the interplay of the two behavioral systems.

Too close for comfort: Stimulus valence moderates the influence of motivational orientation on distance perception.

The relationship between approach and avoidance motivational orientations and valenced stimuli has previously been discussed in relation to physical distance. However, it has remained unclear whether approach and avoidance can actually change how people perceive the physical distance to valenced stimuli. Drawing on research on motivational orientation and valence as well as the motivated perception account, we predicted that valenced stimuli incompatible with motivational orientation would be perceived as closer than compatible stimuli because they motivate the goal of resolving the inconsistency arising from discrepant affective information. This prediction was supported in a series of 4 experiments. Findings were consistent across different manipulations of motivational orientation, including motor movements (Experiments 1 and 2) and cognitive procedures (Experiments 3 and 4), and across different types of stimuli, including abstract words (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and photos of concrete objects (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 further investigated the mechanism behind the influence of incompatibility versus compatibility between motivational orientation and valence on distance perception. The findings showed that, relative to compatibility, incompatibility resulted in participants solving more anagrams, presumably because the goal-related motivational state gave rise to a general state of activation. Furthermore, perceptual estimates were correlated with the activity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the activity of the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) relative to the BIS, further suggesting that goal-related motivation may be associated with perception. Overall, the present research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that visual perception is shaped by motivational considerations.