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OBJECTIVE: This study is a cross-validation of the Cognitive Bias Scale (CBS) from the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI), a ten-item scale designed to assess symptom endorsement associated with performance validity test failure in neuropsychological samples. The study utilized a mixed neuropsychological sample of consecutively referred patients at a large academic medical center in the Midwest. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Participants were 332 patients who completed embedded and free-standing performance validity tests (PVTs) and the PAI. Pass and fail groups were created based on PVT performance to evaluate classification accuracy of the CBS. RESULTS: The results were generally consistent with the initial study for overall classification accuracy, sensitivity, and cut-off score. Consistent with the validation study, CBS had better classification accuracy than the original PAI validity scales and a comparable effect size to that obtained in the original validation publication; however, the Somatic Complaints scale (SOM) and the Conversion subscale (SOM-C) also demonstrated good classification accuracy. The CBS had incremental predictive ability compared to existing PAI scales. CONCLUSIONS: The results supported the CBS, but further research is needed on specific populations. Findings from this present study also suggest the relationship between conversion tendencies and PVT failure may be stronger in some geographic locations or population types (forensic versus clinical patients).

Adults tend to make biased inferences when they are given base-rates (i.e., prior probabilities) that conflict with individuating information (i.e., a personality description), relying heavily on individuating information. Recent work has shown that six-year-olds do the same, whereas four-year-olds rely more on prior probabilities. In the present article, we revisit the argument that producing responses that align closely with base-rates should necessarily be seen as normative. We instead posit that rational inferences should be sensitive to all relevant information and should depend on its strength. In three experiments, we explored four-year-olds', six-year-olds' (N = 200), and adults' (N = 196) information use by manipulating the strength of individuating and base-rate information. Across base-rate manipulations, adults showed a bias for individuating information regardless of its strength. In contrast, six-year-olds appeared to use each type of information flexibly, depending on which was more informative. Four-year-olds' performance was less clear: Although they relied on base-rates when they were informative, they struggled to use the individuating information in their inferences and did not appreciate the manipulation of the strength of individuating information. Thus, six-year-olds appear to more flexibly use multiple sources of information than both younger children and adults, suggesting a period in development where children are able to weigh information before they are too biased toward individuating information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Language production involves action sequencing to produce fluent speech in real time, placing a computational burden on working memory that leads to sequencing biases in production. Here we examine whether these biases extend beyond language to constrain one of the most complex human behaviors: music improvisation. Using a large corpus of improvised solos from eminent jazz musicians, we test for a production bias observed in language termed easy first-a tendency for more accessible sequences to occur at the beginning of a phrase, allowing incremental planning later in the same phrase. Our analysis shows consistent evidence of easy first in improvised music, with the beginning of musical phrases containing both more frequent and less complex sequences. The findings indicate that expert jazz musicians, known for spontaneous creative performance, reliably retrieve easily accessed melodic sequences before creating more complex sequences, suggesting that a domain-general sequencing system may support multiple forms of complex human behavior, from language production to music improvisation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Purpose The majority of research studying the relationship between job stress and chronic pain has relied on physiological responses. This study aims to determine psycho-social mechanisms by which job stress can influence chronic pain in workers. Methods This cross-sectional study was carried out among 793 workers in gas and oil platforms or petroleum refinery plants in southern Iran. Structural equation modelling was applied to evaluate the direct, indirect, and total effects of job stress on chronic pain in the presence of mediating variables (work-family conflict and depression). Results According to the results, job stress (B=0.024, β=0.477), 95% CI [0.016, 0.032], work-family conflict (B=0.031, β=0.446), 95% CI [0.023, 0.038], depression (B=0.046, β=0.224), 95% CI [0.028, 0.064], and work experience (B=0.083, β=0.380), 95% CI [0.065, 0.101] had significant direct effects on chronic pain. The indirect paths from job stress to chronic pain via depression (B=0.002, β=0.042), 95%CI [0.001, 0.003] and work-family conflict (B=0.004, β=0.085), 95%CI [0.003, 0.006] were significant. Conclusions Given that depression and work-family conflict mediate the effects of job stress on pain, stress management programs for workers might include various strategies to reduce negative thoughts as well as cognitive biases and minimize role conflicts between work and private life.

The hypothesis of the psychosis continuum enables to study the mechanisms of psychosis risk not only in clinical samples but in non-clinical as well. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate self-disturbances (SD), a risk factor that has attracted substantial interest over the last two decades, in combination with trauma, cognitive biases and personality, and to test whether SD are associated with subclinical positive symptoms (PS) over a 12-month follow-up period. Our study was conducted in a non-clinical sample of 139 Polish young adults (81 females, age M = 25.32, SD = 4.51) who were selected for frequent experience of subclinical PS. Participants completed self-report questionnaires for the evaluation of SD (IPASE), trauma (CECA.Q), cognitive biases (DACOBS) and personality (TCI), and were interviewed for subclinical PS (CAARMS). SD and subclinical PS were re-assessed 12 months after baseline measurement. The hypothesized model for psychosis risk was tested using path analysis. The change in SD and subclinical PS over the 12-month period was investigated with non-parametric equivalent of dependent sample t-tests. The models with self-transcendence (ST) and harm avoidance (HA) as personality variables were found to be well-fitted and explained 34% of the variance in subclinical PS at follow-up. Moreover, we found a significant reduction of SD and subclinical PS after 12 months. Our study suggests that combining trauma, cognitive biases, SD and personality traits such as ST and HA into one model can enhance our understanding of appearance as well as maintenance of subclinical PS.

Obstetric anesthesiologists provide care under unique conditions, where frequently unscheduled cases demand flexibility in thinking and acting. And although most obstetric patients may be healthy, they can quickly deteriorate, necessitating rapid team diagnostic and treatment interventions. Examining decision making is a critical step in improving care to these patients. This article reviews evidence-based models of decision making both with individuals and with teams, and presents strategies to improve decision making under any circumstance.

Background Cognitive biases towards social stimuli have been identified as one of the putative modifiable mechanisms to remediate interpersonal difficulties in adolescents with mental disorders. However, evidence for these biases in adolescents with eating disorders is scarce. Methods This study assessed interpersonal sensitivity, cognitive biases towards social stimuli, and quantity and quality of social group memberships in adolescents with eating disorders (n = 80), compared to healthy controls (n = 78), and examined whether a negative interpretation bias would mediate the relationship between interpersonal sensitivity, eating disorder symptoms and positive group memberships. Results Adolescents with eating disorders displayed greater interpersonal awareness, negative interpretation biases of ambiguous social information and poorer quality relationships with their social groups compared to healthy controls. In a simple mediation model, interpersonal awareness predicted eating disorder symptoms, and this effect was partially mediated by a negative interpretation bias. Conclusions Psychological interventions which aim to reduce a negative interpretation bias might help to reduce the severity of eating disorder symptoms in adolescents with eating disorders.

Need for closure (NFC) is a cognitive bias that has been implicated in the pathogenesis of delusions. A general population sample (N = 1465) was dichotomized into high versus low schizotypal participants and matched based on core social demographic characteristics (each n = 98). For the first time, we aimed at capturing NFC subjectively (with the NFC Scale) and objectively with a new experimental paradigm, the Ambiguous Movie Scene Task. In this task, participants viewed video scenes with either open or closed endings (i.e., high or low ambiguity) and rated their (emotional) reactions to the clips. Open endings were expected to lead to more frustration (i.e., due to increased need for closure) and to induce greater eagerness to learn about the possible resolution among those high on positive schizotypy. High schizotypal individuals displayed higher scores on the NFC Scale than low schizotypal individuals. Contrary to our expectations, high schizotypal participants did not recognize video scenes with open endings as ambiguous and were less eager to learn about a possible resolution than low schizotypal individuals. In the Ambiguous Movie Scene Task, high schizotypal individuals showed evidence of a jumping to conclusions bias rather than frustration over unresolved storylines. We found an overall stronger emotional response in schizotypal participants and overconfidence in their judgments. The NFC Scale and selected scores of the new task correlated moderately. The study corroborates earlier evidence for a dissociation between objective and subjective biases in the psychosis spectrum.

Accurate self-assessment of knowledge and technical skills is key to self-directed education required in surgical training. We aimed to investigate the presence and magnitude of cognitive bias in self-assessment among a cohort of surgical interns.First-year general surgery residents self-assessed performance on a battery of technical skill tasks (knot tying, suturing, vascular anastomosis, Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Skills peg transfer and intracorporeal suturing) at the beginning of residency. Each self-assessment was compared to actual performance. Bias and deviation were defined as arithmetic and absolute difference between actual and estimated scores. Spearman correlation assessed covariation between actual and estimated scores. Improvement in participant performance was analyzed after an end-of-year assessment.Participants (N = 34) completed assessments from 2017 to 2019. Actual and self-assessment scores were positively correlated (0.55, P.001). Residents generally underestimated performance (bias -4.7 + 8.1). Participants who performed above cohort average tended to assess themselves more negatively (bias -7.3 vs -2.3) and had a larger discrepancy between self and actual scores than below average performers (deviation index 9.7 + 8.2 vs 3.8 + 3.1, P.05). End-of-year total scores improved in 31 (91.2%) participants by an average of 11 points (90 possible). Least accurate residents in initial self-assessments (deviation indices75th percentile) improved less than more accurate residents (median 5 vs 16 points, P.05). All residents with a deviation index75 percentile underestimated their performance.Cognitive bias in technical surgical skills is apparent in first-year surgical residents, particularly in those who are higher performers. Inaccuracy in self-assessment may influence improvement and should be addressed in surgical training.

BACKGROUND While the goal of facial vascularized composite allotransplantation (FVCA) is to provide patients with improved physical and social function, no study has evaluated layperson perception of social acceptance and perceived career success of patients with FVCA. The purpose of this study was to determine how FVCA changes social acceptance and perceived career success of patients with facial disfiguration. METHODS Eight hundred fifteen laypersons were surveyed through Mechanical Turk to evaluate their perceptions of patients with FVCA. Respondents were shown facial photographs of patients pre-FVCA, post-FVCA, and matched controls and evaluated these photos on 26 items of perceived social acceptance and career success. Responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. RESULTS Both male and female post-FVCA photos were perceived as significantly more socially accepted and professionally successful than their pre-FVCA photos in at least 21 out of 26 items (P

Eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, are challenging to treat successfully and have a very high relapse rate. Body image disturbance (BID) is a core component of these eating disorders. It is a predictor of onset, treatment outcome and future relapse. However, recent studies suggest that BID can be improved by an adaptation of cognitive bias training. This does not target the accuracy of body size judgements, but instead focuses on how a body of a particular size is categorized by a patient. This recalibration of the categorical boundary at which bodies are judged as overweight, which challenges a patient's existing preconceptions about which constitutes an acceptable body size, seems to lead to a more general reassessment of eating disordered attitudes and a significant improvement in their psychological profile. These promising findings need further trials to determine the long-term effectiveness of such a targeted intervention, but it potentially provides an important additional treatment option. In addition, this cognitive bias training may also be an effective augmentation to treatment in other conditions that feature BID, such as bulimia nervosa and body dysmorphia.

Supernatural fears, although common, are not as well-understood as natural fears and phobias (e.g., social, blood, and animal phobias) which are prepared by evolution, such that they are easily acquired through direct experience and relatively immune to cognitive mediation. In contrast, supernatural fears do not involve direct experience but seem to be related to sensory or cognitive biases in the interpretation of stimuli as well as culturally driven cognitions and beliefs. In this multidisciplinary synthesis and collaborative review, we claim that supernatural beliefs are “super natural.” That is, they occur spontaneously and are easy to acquire, possibly because such beliefs rest on intuitive concepts such as mind-body dualism and animism, and may inspire fear in believers as well as non-believers. As suggested by psychological and neuroscientific evidence, they tap into an evolutionarily prepared fear of potential impending dangers or unknown objects and have their roots in “prepared fears” as well as “cognitively prepared beliefs,” making fear of supernatural agents a fruitful research avenue for social, anthropological, and psychological inquires.

Time perception is malleable, and the perceived duration of stimuli can be strongly affected by the sensory response they evoke. Such "temporal illusions" provide a window on how different sensory systems contribute to our sense of time. Evidence suggests that the sensory response to different features affects time perception to different extents, mediated by the level of arousal or surprise that they evoke. This, however, makes it difficult to disentangle effects of the sensory response itself from the derived arousal or surprise effects. Here, we demonstrate that time perception is differentially affected by different stimulus features when arousal and surprise are kept constant. In four temporal discrimination experiments, participants were presented with empty intervals (1.25 s-2.25 s) marked by two briefly presented visual marker stimuli, and judged whether the duration was longer or shorter than a 1.75 s reference. Markers either repeated or changed along one of six feature dimensions, in a manner fully predictable to participants. Repetitions and changes would modulate sensory response magnitudes due to neural repetition suppression. Results showed that intervals were perceived as longer when markers changed in location, size, or numerosity. Conversely, changes in face identity, orientation or luminance did not affect time perception. These results point to neural and functional selectivity in the way different stimulus features affect time perception.Public Significance StatementThe neural sensory response evoked by a stimulus can affect its perceived duration. When a stimulus repeats, sensory neurons will have an attenuated response, which makes the stimulus seem to last shorter than when a stimulus changes. This study uses this observation to disseminate the relation between time perception and sensory responses to different visual features, and demonstrates that the different features that make up a stimulus affect its perceived duration.

The concept of emotion disposition is proposed as an important dimension of individual differences. It refers to a stable tendency to experience certain emotions more or less frequently or intensely for similar classes of situations or events in daily experience than the majority of other people. In contrast to classic "trait affect" traditions, the theoretical framework described here proposes a specific mechanism based on the notion of appraisal bias, that is, the evaluation of events or situations in biased, often unrealistic, fashion. The bias toward internal versus external causal attribution is a classic example. It is suggested that such biases can affect virtually all appraisal criteria (e.g., novelty/expectedness, (un)pleasantness, goal conduciveness/obstruction, causation, control, power, and norm compliance), creating a disposition to experience specific emotions more frequently. In some cases, this process may lead to the development of affective disorders. Two studies are herein reported: (a) administering an emotion disposition assessment instrument to several thousand adults in personnel assessment contexts (N = 3,012), demonstrating the existence and intensity of emotion dispositions and identifying potential individual difference correlates; and (b) using an updated version of the instrument in a representative survey panel study (N = 190), assessing both emotion dispositions and appraisal biases, allowing analysis of their relationships (in addition to examining the effect of correlates). The results confirm the viability of the underlying theoretical assumptions as well as of the scenario method used for the assessment and provide leads for further research, particularly in the areas of emotional competence and affective disorders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

In light of the need for objective mechanism-based diagnostic tools, the current research describes a novel diagnostic support system aimed to differentiate between anxiety and depression disorders in a clinical sample. Eighty-six psychiatric patients with clinical anxiety and/or depression were recruited from a public hospital and assigned to one of the experimental groups: Depression, Anxiety, or Mixed. The control group included 25 participants with no psychiatric diagnosis. Participants performed a battery of six cognitive-behavioral tasks assessing biases of attention, expectancies, memory, interpretation and executive functions. Data were analyzed with a machine-learning (ML) random forest-based algorithm and cross-validation techniques. The model assigned participants to clinical groups based solely on their aggregated cognitive performance. By detecting each group's unique performance pattern and the specific measures contributing to the prediction, the ML algorithm predicted diagnosis classification in two models: (I) anxiety/depression/mixed vs. control (76.81% specificity, 69.66% sensitivity), and (II) anxiety group vs. depression group (80.50% and 66.46% success rates in classifying anxiety and depression, respectively). The findings demonstrate that the cognitive battery can be utilized as a support system for psychiatric diagnosis alongside the clinical interview. This implicit tool, which is not based on self-report, is expected to enable the clinician to achieve increased diagnostic specificity and precision. Further, this tool may increase the confidence of both clinician and patient in the diagnosis by equipping them with an objective assessment tool. Finally, the battery provides a profile of biased cognitions that characterizes the patient, which in turn enables more fine-tuned, individually-tailored therapy.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) of depression is hypothesized to achieve its effects by correcting negative biases. However, little research has tested how biases change over the course of CBT. We focus on biases in interpersonal judgments and examine whether changes in biases occur in CBT and are associated with symptom improvements. A sample of 126 adults (60% women, mean age 31.7, 83% White) participated in CBT of depression. Observers provided ratings of patients participating in two interpersonal tasks on three occasions. Patients were asked to predict observers’ ratings. In a thin slice (TS) task, observers evaluated how patients came across in a brief segment in which patients talked about themselves. In a Standard Interaction Task (SIT), observers rated the social skills patients displayed in challenging role plays. The difference between patient predictions and observer ratings provided measures of bias in these interpersonal judgments. TS and SIT bias became significantly less pessimistic and more realistic over the course of CBT. Improvements in TS bias were associated with a faster reduction in symptoms, whereas there was a non-significant trend for improvement in SIT bias being associated with faster symptom reduction. Consistent with the CBT model, negative interpersonal biases became more realistic throughout a course of CBT for depression and at least some of the changes in bias were related to therapeutic outcomes. We encourage future researchers to continue examining for whom and under which conditions correcting such biases produces the greatest benefits.

Errors in diagnostic radiology are not infrequent. Patient harm related to these errors is however less common and may be avoided via various preventative mechanisms within the medical system including, but not limited to, multidisciplinary meetings, second opinions, subspecialty expertise and clinician experience. Failure at a number of points in the system is often required to result in patient harm. Radiologists, and in particular departmental leaders, should proactively address the known underlying root causes of diagnostic errors and cognitive biases, ensure systems are in place to promptly discover and control unmitigated root causes as they arise and ensure an unbiased 'blameless' or 'just' culture of error investigation and proces sing including the implementation of non-punitive peer feedback and peer learning. This article provides an overview of errors in diagnostic radiology including the causes and potential ramifications and how we might reduce their frequency and impact.

Objectives Defects in human cognition commonly result in clinical reasoning failures that can lead to diagnostic errors. Case presentation A 43-year-old female was brought to the emergency department with 4–5 days of confusion, disequilibrium resulting in several falls, and hallucinations. Further investigation revealed tachycardia, diaphoresis, mydriatic pupils, incomprehensible speech and she was seen picking at the air. Given multiple recent medication changes, there was initial concern for serotonin syndrome vs. an anticholinergic toxidrome. She then developed a fever, marked leukocytosis, and worsening encephalopathy. She underwent lumbar puncture and aspiration of an identified left ankle effusion. Methicillin sensitive staph aureus (MSSA) grew from blood, joint, and cerebrospinal fluid cultures within 18 h. She improved with antibiotics and incision, drainage, and washout of her ankle by orthopedic surgery. Conclusions Through integrated commentary on the diagnostic reasoning process from clinical reasoning experts, this case underscores how multiple cognitive biases can cascade sequentially, skewing clinical reasoning toward erroneous conclusions and driving potentially inappropriate testing and treatment. A fishbone diagram is provided to visually demonstrate the major factors that contributed to the diagnostic error. A case discussant describes the importance of structured reflection, a tool to promote metacognitive analysis, and the application of knowledge organization tools such as illness scripts to navigate these cognitive biases.

BACKGROUND Studies examining the effect of biased cognitions on later pain outcomes have primarily focused on attentional biases, leaving the role of interpretation biases largely unexplored. Also, few studies have examined pain-related cognitive biases in elderly persons. The current study aims to fill these research gaps. METHODS Younger and older adults with and without chronic pain (N = 126) completed an interpretation bias task and a free-viewing task of injury and neutral scenes at baseline. Participants' pain intensity and disability were assessed at baseline and at a 6-month follow-up. A machine-learning data-driven approach to analysing eye movement data was adopted. RESULTS Eye movement analyses revealed two common attentional pattern subgroups for scene-viewing: an "explorative" group and a "focused" group. At baseline, participants with chronic pain endorsed more injury-/illness-related interpretations compared to pain-free controls, but they did not differ in eye movements on scene images. Older adults interpreted illness-related scenarios more negatively compared to younger adults, but there was also no difference in eye movements between age groups. Moreover, negative interpretation biases were associated with baseline but not follow-up pain disability, whereas a focused gaze tendency for injury scenes was associated with follow-up but not baseline pain disability. Additionally, there was an indirect effect of interpretation biases on pain disability 6 months later through attentional bias for pain-related images. CONCLUSIONS The present study provided evidence for pain status and age group differences in injury-/illness-related interpretation biases. Results also revealed distinct roles of interpretation and attentional biases in pain chronicity. SIGNIFICANCE Adults with chronic pain endorsed more injury-/illness-related interpretations than pain-free controls. Older adults endorsed more illness interpretations than younger adults. A more negative interpretation bias indirectly predicted pain disability 6 months later through hypervigilance towards pain.

I discuss recent research suggesting that individual differences in cognitive style give rise to and explain religious and related supernatural and paranormal beliefs. To do so, I illustrate intuitive cognitive biases (e.g., anthropomorphism) underlying these beliefs and then review the accumulated evidence indicating that non-believers are more open-minded, reflective, and less susceptible to holding epistemically suspect beliefs (e.g., conspiracy theories) on average than those who believe in supernatural events or paranormal experiences such as astrology or magic. However, seeing religion as a search for truth positively predicts reasoning performance. Although these findings are robust across diverse measures, evidence for a causal relationship remains mixed. Stronger and more precise manipulations and cross-cultural investigations are needed.

What explains the ubiquity and diversity of religions around the world? Widespread cognitive tendencies, including mentalizing and intuitive thinking, offer part of the explanation for recurrent features of religion, and individual differences in religious commitments. However, vast diversity in religious beliefs points to the importance of the cultural context in which religious beliefs are transmitted. Cultural evolutionary theory provides the basis of a unified explanation for how cognition and culture interact to shape religious beliefs, in ways that are uniquely adapted to local ecological pressures. These insights lay the groundwork for future research regarding how cultural learning interacts with other evolved aspects of human psychology to generate the recurrent and the diverse forms of religious commitments observed around the world.

Purpose: Cognitive biases and factors affecting decision making in critical care can potentially lead to life threatening errors. We aimed to examine the existing evidence on the influence of cognitive biases and factors on decision making in critical care. Materials and methods: We conducted a scoping review by searching MEDLINE for articles from 2004 to November 2020. We included studies conducted in physicians that described cognitive biases or factors associated with decision making. During the study process we decided on the method to summarize the evidence, and based on the obtained studies a descriptive summary of findings was the best fit. Results: Thirty heterogenous studies were included. Four main biases or factors were observed, e.g. cognitive biases, personal factors, environmental factors, and patient factors. Six (20%) studies reported biases associated with decision making comprising omission-, status quo-, implicit-, explicit-, outcome-, and overconfidence bias. Nineteen (63%) studies described personal factors, twenty-two (73%) studies described environmental factors, and sixteen (53%) studies described patient factors. Conclusions: The current evidence on cognitive biases and factors is heterogenous, but shows they influence clinical decision. Future studies should investigate the prevalence of cognitive biases and factors in clinical practice and their impact on clinical outcomes. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Previous studies identified an association between schizophrenia and emotional instability. However, the relationship between schizotypal personality traits and emotional instability has not been explored to date. Furthermore, both mediating and moderating factors need to be identified.A total of 2936 students completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ), the Affective Lability Scale-Short Form (ALS-SF), and the Davos Assessment of Cognitive Biases Scale (DACOBS).1) The total scores of DACOBS (and all dimensions) and ALS-SF (and all dimensions) in the high schizotypal personality trait group were higher than in the low schizotypal personality trait group (all P0.05). 2) SPQ score and DACOBS social cognition problems, subjective cognitive problems, jumping to conclusions bias, and external attribution bias subscale scores positively predicted the total score of ALS-SF (or the dimensions of ALS-SF) in both male and female populations (all P0.05). 3) In the male population, DACOBS social cognition problems, subjective cognitive problems, jumping to conclusions bias, and external attribution bias subscale scores mediated the relationship between SPQ score and ALS-SF total score (or its subscales). In the female population, DACOBS attention for threat bias, external attribution bias, jumping to conclusions bias, social cognition problems, and subjective cognitive problems subscale scores mediated the relationship between SPQ score and ALS-SF total score (or its subscales). 4) Gender exerted a moderating effect on this relationship between SPQ score and ALS-SF total/anxiety-depression score (all P0.05).Schizotypal personality traits might influence emotional instability through cognitive biases, and the degree of this influence varies depending on gender.

Here, we take a computational approach to understand the mechanisms underlying face perception biases in depression. Thirty participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder and 30 healthy control participants took part in three studies involving recognition of identity and emotion in faces. We used signal detection theory to determine whether any perceptual biases exist in depression aside from decisional biases. We found lower sensitivity to happiness in general, and lower sensitivity to both happiness and sadness with ambiguous stimuli. Our use of highly-controlled face stimuli ensures that such asymmetry is truly perceptual in nature, rather than the result of studying expressions with inherently different discriminability. We found no systematic effect of depression on the perceptual interactions between face expression and identity. We also found that decisional strategies used in our task were different for people with depression and controls, but in a way that was highly specific to the stimulus set presented. We show through simulation that the observed perceptual effects, as well as other biases found in the literature, can be explained by a computational model in which channels encoding positive expressions are selectively suppressed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The most effective charities are hundreds of times more effective than typical charities, yet few donors prioritize effectiveness. Why is that? How might we increase the effectiveness of charitable giving? We review the motivational and epistemic causes of (in)effective giving. Many donors view charitable giving as a matter of personal preference, which favors decisions based on emotional appeal rather than effectiveness. In addition, while many donors are motivated to give effectively, they often have misconceptions and cognitive biases that reduce effective giving. Nearly all research on charitable giving interventions focuses on increasing donation amounts. However, to increase societal benefit, donation effectiveness is likely to be more important. This underscores the need for research on strategies to encourage effective giving.

Traditionally, jurors are not permitted to discuss trial evidence with one another prior to jury deliberation. Allowing such discussions, at least in civil trials, is a jury innovation that has become increasingly popular. Prior field research has generally supported the assumption that this innovation is benign and, in particular, introduces no systematic bias in jury verdicts. These issues are examined again here within an experimental jury simulation study. The opportunity for predeliberation juror discussion (PJD) between the plaintiff and defense cases-in-chief was manipulated. The results revealed that PJD biased jury verdicts. The nature of this bias was not, as commonly suspected, a commitment to evidence heard prior to PJD, but rather a greater weight placed on evidence heard following the PJD. One good explanation of this bias was that jurors acted as if evidence heard prior to PJD had "already been covered" during the PJD, and so primary attention was given to post-PJD evidence in jury deliberations. Little evidence was found to corroborate several other purported benefits or drawbacks of PJD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Habits underlie much of human behavior. However, people may prefer agentic accounts that overlook habits in favor of inner states, such as mood. We tested this misattribution hypothesis in an online experiment of helping behavior ( N = 809 adults) as well as in an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study of U.S. college students’ everyday coffee drinking ( N = 112). Both studies revealed a substantial gap between perceived and actual drivers of behavior: Habit strength outperformed or matched inner states in predicting behavior, but participants’ explanations of their behavior emphasized inner states. Participants continued to misattribute habits to inner states when incentivized for accuracy and when explaining other people’s behavior. We discuss how this misperception could adversely influence self-regulation.

To decide whether a course of action is worth pursuing, individuals typically weigh its expected costs and benefits. Optimal decision-making relies upon accurate effort cost anticipation, which is generally assumed to be performed independently from goal valuation. In two experiments (n = 46), we challenged this independence principle of standard decision theory. We presented participants with a series of treadmill routes randomly associated to monetary rewards and collected both ‘accept’ versus ‘decline’ decisions and subjective estimates of energetic cost. Behavioural results show that higher monetary prospects led participants to provide higher cost estimates, although reward was independent from effort in our design. Among candidate cognitive explanations, they support a model in which prospective cost assessment is biased by the output of an automatic computation adjusting effort expenditure to goal value. This decision bias might lead people to abandon the pursuit of valuable goals that are in fact not so costly to achieve.

Many patients with advanced illness have unrealistic survival expectations, largely due to cognitive biases. Studies suggests that when people are motivated to be accurate, they are less prone to succumb to these biases. Using a randomized survey design, we test whether offering advanced cancer patients ( n = 200) incentives to estimate their prognosis improves accuracy. We also test whether presenting treatment benefits in terms of a loss (mortality) rather than a gain (survival) reduces willingness to take up a hypothetical treatment. Results are not consistent with the proposed hypotheses for either accuracy incentives or framing effects.

Social media are digitalising massive amounts of users' cognitions in terms of timelines and emotional content. Such Big Data opens unprecedented opportunities for investigating cognitive phenomena like perception, personality and information diffusion but requires suitable interpretable frameworks. Since social media data come from users' minds, worthy candidates for this challenge are cognitive networks, models of cognition giving structure to mental conceptual associations. This work outlines how cognitive network science can open new, quantitative ways for understanding cognition through online media, like: (i) reconstructing how users semantically and emotionally frame events with contextual knowledge unavailable to machine learning, (ii) investigating conceptual salience/prominence through knowledge structure in social discourse; (iii) studying users' personality traits like openness-to-experience, curiosity, and creativity through language in posts; (iv) bridging cognitive/emotional content and social dynamics via multilayer networks comparing the mindsets of influencers and followers. These advancements combine cognitive-, network- and computer science to understand cognitive mechanisms in both digital and real-world settings but come with limitations concerning representativeness, individual variability and data integration. Such aspects are discussed along the ethical implications of manipulating socio-cognitive data. In the future, reading cognitions through networks and social media can expose cognitive biases amplified by online platforms and relevantly inform policy making, education and markets about massive, complex cognitive trends.

The current study examined whether couples' relationship problems negatively influenced perceptions of partners' parenting and, in turn, undermined family functioning. Couples (N = 96) completed assessments of relationship problems and family chaos before participating in a family play activity with their 4- to 5-year-old child. Parents reported on their own and their partner's responsiveness toward their child and how much the interaction was a positive and connected family experience. Objective observers also rated each parent's responsiveness toward their child. Parents completed measures assessing family chaos 1 year later. Perceptions of partners' parental responsiveness were significantly associated with both partners' self-reported and observers' ratings of partners' parental responsiveness, but such levels of relative agreement were modest. After accounting for agreement, perceptions of parental responsiveness was shaped by 2 sources of bias: (a) Parents who felt that they were less versus more responsive to their child viewed their partners as less versus more responsive as a parent (assumed similarity), and (b) parents who experienced greater relationship problems perceived their partner to be less responsive as a parent (relationship bias). Perceiving partners to be a less responsive parent, in turn, predicted (a) feeling less connected as a family during the interaction and residual increases in family chaos 1 year later. The results indicate that couples' relationship problems spill over to bias perceptions of parenting, which interferes with couples' ability to provide a connected, stable, and secure family environment. The results highlight that perceptual processes are important in understanding and addressing the ways couples' problems spill over across family subsystems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

OBJECTIVE The present research examined whether concurrent expert testimony ("hot tubbing") and court-appointed testimony reduced adversarial allegiance in clinical experts' judgments compared with traditional adversarial expert testimony. HYPOTHESES We predicted Hypothesis 1: Defense experts would render more not responsible judgments and lower ratings of criminal responsibility than would prosecution experts; Hypothesis 2: Adversarial allegiance effects on experts' judgments would be heightened for adversarial experts and attenuated for concurrent experts over time; Hypothesis 3: Adversarial and concurrent experts would report higher dissonance than would court-appointed experts and adversarial experts' ratings would increase over time, concurrent experts' ratings would decrease, and court-appointed experts' ratings would remain unchanged. METHOD Clinicians and advanced clinical doctoral students conducted simulated criminal responsibility evaluations for the prosecution, defense, or court. We categorized participants as favoring the prosecution or defense based on their preexisting attitudes and randomly assigned them to the adversarial, concurrent, or court-appointed expert testimony conditions. Participants completed a dichotomous responsibility judgment, strength of responsibility ratings, and cognitive dissonance measure after initial evidence review (n = 93), report completion (n = 52), and testimony (n = 48). Concurrent experts generated a joint report outlining areas of agreement and disagreement before providing testimony. RESULTS Concurrent testimony did not eliminate adversarial allegiance. Adversarial and concurrent experts' perceptions of responsibility did not significantly differ (d = .04, 95% CI [-.64, .71]) or change over time (ηp2 = .03); however, prosecution experts-across testimony types-rated the defendant as significantly more responsible than did defense experts (d = 1.87, 95% CI [1.06, 2.67]). Concurrent and adversarial experts did not differ in their reports and minimally differed in testimony content. CONCLUSIONS Experts who initially favored the prosecution or defense showed adversarial allegiance regardless of expert testimony method, and we observed no attenuation of this bias over the course of their case involvement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Pharmacists have the same duty as prescribers to prevent inappropriate use of dangerous drugs. Loperamide, for example, is an over-the-counter medication that has been reported to be potentially misused for euphoric effects. Pharmacists and prescribers alike face challenges in providing optimal care for patients and protecting communities from drug misuse. These challenges include cognitive bias, underdeveloped safety culture, and differing expectations of responsibilities of the other party in ensuring safe prescribing. This commentary explores legal, ethical, and practical considerations for pharmacists and prescribers working together to address uncertainty in drug prescribing.

Understanding how emotion regulation and gambling-related cognitive distortions relate to gambling problems has direct relevance for problem gambling prevention and treatment. Although these factors have been identified as robust psychological correlates for problem gambling, the interplay between emotional regulation and cognitive biases in influencing problem gambling behaviours is yet to be fully understood. Accordingly, this study examined the explanatory role of cognitive distortions in the association between emotion regulation difficulties and problem gambling behaviours and also explored the interaction between emotion regulation and cognitive distortions in predicting gambling severity. A total of 301 adults (182 males and 119 females; age range: 18-71 years, M = 32.62, SD = 10.03) completed an online questionnaire comprising measures of emotional regulation difficulties, gambling-related beliefs and problem gambling severity. Analyses revealed that emotion regulation difficulties and erroneous gambling beliefs were positively related to problem gambling severity. Further, cognitive distortions partially accounted for the relationship between emotional regulation difficulties and problem gambling, although emotion regulation retained a direct relationship with problem gambling. There was no interaction between emotional regulation and cognitive distortions. The findings indicate that emotion regulation may serve as a precursor to the development of cognitive distortions, while also directly influencing problem gambling. Implications for assessment and treatment of problem gambling are discussed.

Palliative care is associated with improved patient-centred and caregiver-centred outcomes, higher-quality end-of-life care, and decreased healthcare use among patients with serious illness.1–3 The Centre to Advance Palliative Care has established a set of recommended clinical criteria (or ‘triggers’), including a projected survival of less than 1 year,4 to help clinicians identify patients likely to benefit from palliative care. Nevertheless, referrals often occur within the last 3 months of life5 due in part to clinician overestimation of prognosis.6 A growing number of automated predictive models leverage vast data in the electronic medical record (EMR) to accurately predict short-term mortality risk in real time and can be paired with systems to prompt clinicians to refer to palliative care.7–12 These models hold great promise to overcome the many clinician-level and system-level barriers to improving access to timely palliative care. First, mortality risk prediction algorithms have been shown to outperform clinician prognostic assessment, and clinician–machine collaboration may even outperform both.13 Second, algorithm-based ‘nudges’ that systematically provide prognostic information could address many cognitive biases, including status quo bias and optimism bias,14 15 that make clinicians less apt to identify patients who may benefit from palliative care. Indeed, such models have been shown to improve the frequency of palliative care delivery and patient outcomes in the hospital and clinic settings.9 16 17 With that said, successful implementation of automated prognostic models into routine clinical care at scale requires clinician and patient engagement and support. In this issue of BMJ Quality & Safety , Saunders and colleagues report on the acceptability of using the EMR-based Modified Hospitalised-Patient One-Year Mortality Risk (mHOMR) score to alert clinicians to individual patients with a >21% risk of dying within 12 months. The goal of the clinician notification of an elevated risk score was to prompt …

BACKGROUND: The advances in experimental psychology in the last decade have led to a greater understanding of cognitive bias, and the investigation of cognitive bias modifications as a therapeutic option. Whilst conventionally such interventions are delivered in a laboratory, technological advances are changing the potential modes of delivery of these interventions. Whereas mobile delivery of interventions might seem to increase accessibility and encourage compliance, this might not be the case for cognitive bias modification interventions. To reduce boredom, researchers have investigated whether gamification of the task could help reduce repetitiveness, and the diminished motivation that participants had over time. In a prior review of cognitive bias modification interventions, a collaboration between academics and developers was recommended to ensure that the developed product is evidence-based. With the increased recognition of the importance of participatory action research, participants could better help conventional intervention to meet their needs. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this article was to describe the iterative steps in the conceptualization of the co-designed gamified cognitive bias modification intervention for individuals with opioid use disorders. METHODS AND RESULTS: A multidisciplinary team worked through the differences in the perspectives offered by healthcare professionals and patient participants, and jointly worked with a developer to conceptualize a new co-designed gamified attention bias modification intervention. The methods shared in this article could be considered and applied to future conceptualization of co-designed interventions.

AIMS: Cognitive bias has been recognized as a potential source of medical error as it may affect clinical decision making. In this study, we explored how cognitive bias, specifically left-digit bias, may affect patient outcomes in in-hospital cardiac arrest.METHODS: Using the Get With The Guidelines® - Resuscitation registry, we included adult patients with an in-hospital cardiac arrest from 2011 to 2019. The primary outcome was survival to hospital discharge. Secondary outcomes included return of spontaneous circulation, favorable neurological outcome, and duration of resuscitation. Using a regression discontinuity design, we explored whether there was a sudden change in survival at the age threshold of 80 years which would indicate left-digit bias. Additional analyses were performed at age thresholds of 60, 70, and 90 years.RESULTS: A total of 26,784 patients were included for the primary analysis. The overall survival was 22% in this cohort. There was no discontinuity of survival below and above the age of 80 years (risk difference, 0.47%; 95%CI, -1.61% to 2.56%). Similar results were estimated for the secondary outcomes and for the age thresholds of 60, 70, and 90 years. The results were consistent in sensitivity analyses.CONCLUSIONS: There was no indication that cognitive bias based on age affected outcomes in in-hospital cardiac arrest in these data.

Objectives: While cognitive bias in younger adults with depression has been extensively researched, there have been relatively few investigations of the presence of cognitive bias in late life depression (LLD). This exploratory study aimed to ascertain whether negative cognitive bias exists across a range of cognitive domains in participants with LLD. Methods/Design: Participants were 19 patients with LLD and 19 matched non-depressed older adults. Participants completed standardised tests to assess bias in facial expression recognition, attention, recall of adjectives and interpretation. Results: LLD participants were slower to identify surprised faces, and more likely to create negative statements in the interpretation task. There was no evidence of negative bias in memory or attention, but participants with LLD performed more poorly on the recall task. Conclusions: This study provides new evidence of negative bias in interpretation in LLD, but the findings are not consistent with a global cognitive bias Further work is needed to investigate cognitive bias in LLD. It may be that interventions which target negative interpretation biases, such as cognitive bias modification, could be helpful in treating LLD.

Theoretical models emphasize the role of both automatic appraisals (i.e., associations) and conscious appraisals (i.e., interpretations) for sexual desire. Studies on sexuality-related appraisals have not combined self-report measures and experimental paradigms in order to compare the relevance of associations or interpretations. The aim of this study was to assess the relative contribution of both associations and interpretations to the explanation of low sexual desire in women. Toward this goal, indirect measures assessing associations (via a Single Target Implicit Association Test [STIAT]) and interpretations (via a Scrambled Sentences Test [SST] and a scenario task) were administered in a sample of 263 women (Mage = 27.90, SD 8.27) with varying levels of sexual desire and different sexual orientations (exclusively heterosexual women: 54.6%). Negative sexuality-related interpretations as assessed with two variants of the SST as well as the scenario task added to the explanation of lower sexual desire in women. Negative associations as measured with the STIAT were predictive of lower sexual desire only in women who did not indicate an exclusively heterosexual orientation. In this study, sexuality-related interpretations were more relevant to women’s sexual desire than automatic associations. Future studies should assess the causal mechanism underlying sexuality-related interpretations (e.g., by evaluating whether these can be changed via cognitive bias modification techniques or psychological treatments).

Discrimination has persisted in our society despite steady improvements in explicit attitudes toward marginalized social groups. The most common explanation for this apparent paradox is that due to implicit biases, most individuals behave in slightly discriminatory ways outside of their own awareness (the dispersed discrimination account). Another explanation holds that a numerical minority of individuals who are moderately or highly biased are responsible for most observed discriminatory behaviors (the concentrated discrimination account). We tested these 2 accounts against each other in a series of studies at a large, public university (total N = 16,600). In 4 large-scale surveys, students from marginalized groups reported that they generally felt welcome and respected on campus (albeit less so than nonmarginalized students) and that a numerical minority of their peers (around 20%) engage in subtle or explicit forms of discrimination. In 5 field experiments with 8 different samples, we manipulated the social group membership of trained confederates and measured the behaviors of naïve bystanders. The results showed that between 5% and 20% of the participants treated the confederates belonging to marginalized groups more negatively than nonmarginalized confederates. Our findings are inconsistent with the dispersed discrimination account but support the concentrated discrimination account. The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Our results suggest that the Pareto principle also applies to discrimination, at least at the large, public university where the studies were conducted. We discuss implications for prodiversity initiatives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective Many patients with advanced illness are unrealistically optimistic about their prognosis. We test for the presence of several cognitive biases, including optimism bias, illusion of superiority, self-deception, misattribution, and optimistic update bias, that could explain unrealistically optimistic prognostic beliefs among advanced cancer patients and quantifies the extent to which hope exacerbates these biases. Methods A cross-sectional survey was administered to 200 advanced cancer patients with physician-estimated prognoses of one year or less. Hope was measured using the Herth Hope Index (HHI). Hypotheses were tested using linear and logistic regressions and a structural-equation model. Results Results are consistent with the presence of optimism bias, illusion of superiority, self-deception, and misattribution. All of these biases are amplified by higher levels of hope. Each 1-point higher HHI is associated with a 6% (OR: 1.06; 95% CI: 1.01-1.11) greater odds of believing their illness is curable, a 0.33-year (95% CI: 0.17-0.49) longer expected survival, a 6% (OR: 1.06; 95% CI: 1.02-1.11) higher probability of believing that survival outcomes are better than the average patient, a 5% higher odds of believing primary intent of treatment is curative (OR: 1.05; 95% CI: 1.00-1.10), and a 12% (OR: 1.12; 95% CI: 1.05-1.17) higher odds of believing they are well-informed. Mediation analyses revealed that hope significantly mediates the effect of mental-well-being and loneliness on expected survival. Conclusions Results suggest advanced cancer patients succumb to several cognitive biases which are exacerbated by greater levels of hope. As a result, they are susceptible to possible over-treatment and regret.

Contains fulltext : 237657.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) The combined cognitive bias hypothesis proposes that emotional information-processing biases may conjointly influence mental health. Yet, little is known about the interrelationships amongst cognitive biases, particularly in adolescence. We used data from the CogBIAS longitudinal study (Booth et al., 2017), including 450 adolescents who completed measures of interpretation bias, memory bias, and a validated measure of general mental health in a typically developing population. We used a moderated network modelling approach to examine positive mental health-related moderation of the cognitive bias network. We found that mental health was directly associated with positive and negative memory biases, and positive interpretation biases, but not negative interpretation biases. Further, we observed some mental health-related moderation of the network structure. Network connectivity decreased with higher positive mental health scores. Network approaches allow us to model complex relationships amongst cognitive biases and develop novel hypotheses for future research.

When people predict their performance, they can be miscalibrated in two ways—they may mispredict how they will perform relative to others (misplacement) and how they will perform in absolute terms (misestimation). Prior work has yielded contradictory conclusions about the relative direction of these two types of miscalibration. Some research found that they occur in opposite directions—that is, that people who believe they are better than average (BTA) tend to underestimate their absolute performance, whereas those who believe they are worse than average (WTA) tend to overestimate their performance. Other studies found that the two types of miscalibration occur in the same direction—that is, that people with BTA beliefs tend to overestimate their performance. We reconcile these apparently conflicting findings by disentangling placement beliefs that are correct from those that are erroneous and focusing on the latter as only these represent instances of misplacement. Two field studies reveal a key asymmetry—erroneous BTA beliefs are primarily driven by misestimation of one’s own absolute performance, whereas erroneous WTA beliefs tend to be driven by misestimation of others’ absolute performance. A reexamination of data from Moore and Small (2007) supports this insight about the sources of misplacement beliefs. The findings suggest that the conflicting conclusions from prior work might have been attributable to differences in the extent to which results were based on observations with erroneous (as opposed to correct) placement beliefs. This research provides novel insights into the psychology of miscalibration in performance predictions and helps unify seemingly contradictory prior findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Non-emotional (e.g., executive functions) and emotional cognitive (e.g., facial emotion recognition) impairments are a well-known aspect of alcohol use disorder (AUD). These deficits may impede on treatment outcomes, increase the risk of relapse, and lead to socio-occupational disabilities. Previous systematic reviews have examined the effectiveness of cognitive enhancing pharmacological agents (CEPAs) targeting non-emotional, but not emotional, cognition in AUD. Our aim was to systematically review the effectiveness of CEPAs targeting emotional cognition in subclinical and clinical AUD populations. A qualitative synthesis of controlled trials was conducted, and the studies were assessed for risk of bias. Eight studies were eligible (15 ≤ ns ≤ 143), and they all had a moderate risk of bias. Modafinil and nalmefene were the most examined agents, with the findings suggesting a potential beneficial effect of the agents on implicit emotional domains (i.e., reward processing). Methodological shortcomings and heterogeneous findings across the studies do not allow inferences about the effectiveness of these compounds in AUD. Future studies should examine CEPAs targeting emotional cognition in more detail.