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Five experiments (N = 2,204) examined responses to a realistic moral dilemma: a military pilot must decide whether to bomb a dangerous enemy target, also killing a bystander. Few people endorsed bombing when the bystander was an innocent civilian; however, when the bystander's identity was unknown, over twice as many people endorsed the bombing. Follow-up studies tested boundary conditions and found the effect to extend beyond modern-day conflicts in the Middle East, showing a similar pattern of judgment for a fictional war. Bombing endorsement was predicted by attitudes towards total war, the theory that there should be no distinction between military and civilian targets in wartime conflict. Bombing endorsement was lower for UK compared to US participants due to differences in total war attitudes. This work has implications for conflicts where unidentified bystanders are common by revealing a potentially deadly bias: people often assume unidentified bystanders are guilty unless proven innocent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online questionnaires that use crowdsourcing platforms to recruit participants have become commonplace, due to their ease of use and low costs. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based large language models (LLMs) have made it easy for bad actors to automatically fill in online forms, including generating meaningful text for open-ended tasks. These technological advances threaten the data quality for studies that use online questionnaires. This study tested whether text generated by an AI for the purpose of an online study can be detected by both humans and automatic AI detection systems. While humans were able to correctly identify the authorship of such text above chance level (76% accuracy), their performance was still below what would be required to ensure satisfactory data quality. Researchers currently have to rely on a lack of interest among bad actors to successfully use open-ended responses as a useful tool for ensuring data quality. Automatic AI detection systems are currently completely unusable. If AI submissions of responses become too prevalent, then the costs associated with detecting fraudulent submissions will outweigh the benefits of online questionnaires. Individual attention checks will no longer be a sufficient tool to ensure good data quality. This problem can only be systematically addressed by crowdsourcing platforms. They cannot rely on automatic AI detection systems and it is unclear how they can ensure data quality for their paying clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted a preregistered close replication and extension of Studies 1, 2, and 4 in Hsee (1998). Hsee found that when evaluating choices jointly, people compare and judge the option higher on desirable attributes as better ("more is better"). However, when people evaluate options separately, they rely on contextual cues and reference points, sometimes resulting in evaluating the option with less as being better ("less is better"). We found support for "less is better" across all studies (N = 403; Study 1 original d = 0.70 [0.24,1.15], replication d = 0.99 [0.72,1.26]; Study 2 original d = 0.74 [0.12,1.35], replication d = 0.32 [0.07,0.56]; Study 4 original d = 0.97 [0.43,1.50], replication d = 0.76 [0.50,1.02]), with weaker support for "more is better" (Study 2 original d = 0.92 [0.42,1.40], replication dz = 0.33 [.23,.43]; Study 4 original d = 0.37 [0.02,0.72], replication dz = 0.09 [-0.05,0.23]). Some results of our exploratory extensions were surprising, leading to open questions. We discuss remaining implications and directions for theory and measurement relating to economic rationality and the evaluability hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that implicit self-theories—a theory predicated on the idea that people's underlying beliefs about whether self-attributes, such as intelligence, are malleable (incremental theory) or unchangeable (entity theory), can influence people's perceptions of emerging social robots developed for everyday use. Other avenues of research have identified a close link between ability and effort-focused praise and the promotion of individual implicit self-theories. In line with these findings, we posit that implicit self-theories and robot-delivered praise can interactively influence the way people evaluate a social robot, after a challenging task. Specifically, we show empirically that those endorsing more of an entity theory, indicate more favorable responses to a robot that delivers ability praise than to one that delivers effort praise. In addition, we show that those endorsing more of an incremental theory, remain largely unaffected by either praise type, and instead evaluate a robot favorably regardless of the praise it delivers. Together, these findings expand the state-of-the-art, by providing evidence of an interactive match between implicit self-theories and ability, and effort-focused praise in the context of a human-robot interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding people's perceptions and inferences about social robots and, thus, their responses toward them, constitutes one of the most pervasive research themes in the field of Human–Robot interaction today. We herein augment and extend this line of work by investigating, for the first time, the novel proposition that one's implicit self-theory orientation (underlying beliefs about the malleability of self-attributes, such as one's intelligence), can influence one's perceptions of emerging social robots developed for everyday use. We show that those who view self-attributes as fixed (entity theorists) express greater robot anxiety than those who view self-attributes as malleable (incremental theorists). This result holds even when controlling for well-known covariate influences, like prior robot experience, media exposure to science fiction, technology commitment, and certain demographic factors. However, only marginal effects were obtained for both attitudinal and intentional robot acceptance, respectively. In addition, we show that incremental theorists respond more favorably to social robots, compared to entity theorists. Furthermore, we find evidence indicating that entity theorists exhibit more favorable responses to a social robot positioned as a servant. We conclude with a discussion about our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an interdisciplinary theory that considers how loss of membership in international organizations affects states' human rights practices. Drawing mostly from social psychology and international relations research, we argue that states are socialized into the international community through a process of social influence, whereby they are incentivized to comply with group norms by the promise (threat) of social rewards (punishments). Social influence occurs when states form social bonds through interactions with other states. When social bonds are severed, fewer opportunities for social influence occur due to lower information to both the remaining states and the state that lost those social bonds. Thus, we hypothesize that the loss of membership from IGOs reduces incentives to comply with group norms and adversely affects human rights practices at home. A combination of propensity score matching/regression and autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) models on a global cross-section across the years 1978-2012 supports the theory. Specifically, losing at least one IGO membership leads to a long-run drop in human rights respect of about one quarter to one half standard deviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people believe in immortality, but who is perceived to live on and how exactly do they live on? Seven studies reveal that good- and evil-doers are perceived to possess more immortality-albeit different kinds. Good-doers have "transcendent" immortality, with their souls persisting beyond space and time; evil-doers have "trapped" immortality, with their souls persisting on Earth, bound to a physical location. Studies 1 to 4 reveal bidirectional links between perceptions of morality and type of immortality. Studies 5 to 7 reveal how these links explain paranormal perceptions. People generally tie paranormal events to evil spirits (Study 5), but this depends upon location: Evil spirits are perceived to haunt houses and dense forests, whereas good spirits are perceived in expansive locations such as mountaintops (Study 6). However, even good spirits may be seen as trapped on Earth given extenuating circumstances (Study 7). Materials include a scale for measuring trapped and transcendent immorality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Across two studies, we find evidence for our prediction that experimentally increasing feelings of physical safety increases conservatives' socially progressive attitudes. Specifically, Republican and conservative participants who imagined being endowed with a superpower that made them invulnerable to physical harm (vs. the ability to fly) were more socially (but not economically) liberal (Study 1) and less resistant to social change (Study 2). Results suggest that socially (but not economically) conservative attitudes are driven, at least in part, by needs for safety and security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greater belief in free will is associated with greater empathy towards the working poor, support for social mobility, greater desire for socio-economic equality, and less belief that poor people are fated to live in poverty. We found no sign that belief in free will led to prejudice or discrimination against poor people or undercut justice. These findings from an online survey flatly contradict the claims made by James Miles (2013). Belief in a just world did produce many of the patterns Miles attributed to belief in free will. We also question the reasoning and the strength of the purported evidence in his article, and we recommend that future writers on the topic should cultivate cautious, open-minded consideration of competing views. Miles' article is a useful reminder that to some writers, the topic of free will elicits strong emotional reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power has been linked to both self-regulatory success and failure. Power typically aids self-regulation of task performance by making people motivated and goal-oriented. However, because people's self-regulatory resources are limited, as powerful people exert effort on their focal tasks, they may fail to self-regulate in other domains. This type of goal myopia may lead to detriments in impulse control. Wielding power, by making decisions and leading subordinates, can deplete people's self-regulatory resources, making subsequent acts of self-control more difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the few studies to examine judgments of personal control in a contingency situation found that participants did not overestimate their control on a task where actual control was possible. However, that study used a design that confounded control and reinforcement. In this study, control (none, medium, high) and reinforcement (low, high) were independently manipulated. College students (N = 100) participated in a computer task in which they pressed or did not press the space bar, after which a target or nontarget screen appeared. Participants rated their control over the appearance of the target screen. Support was found for the idea that in some situations of actual control, illusions of control are found: high-control participants with high reinforcement overestimated their control. Results also indicated that underestimators, accurate estimators, and overestimators used different information when estimating their levels of control. Causes and implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss other components of the essence of morality in contrast with the analysis of Gray, Young and Waytz which asserts that morality is based on mind perception. They note that self-regulation is as important as mind perception when moral action is considered as part of choosing how to act oneself. They mention that culture has used morality to lessen the level of violence and suffering; thus it should be included as part of the essence of morality.

The article comments on several research studies related to the concept of free will in self-organization. Free will refers to independent actions, which are devoid of the influence of external environments. The authors' discusses R.T. Ramo's study on how self-organization acts as a powerful tool in free will theory. The studies reflects that only brain based cognitive and emotional analysis does not affect decision making but it in turn also affects the brain and its functionality .