Alexander C. Walker

Verified

Alexander verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Alexander verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• PhD
• Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University

Previous research has demonstrated a link between illusory pattern perception and various irrational beliefs. On this basis, we hypothesized that participants who displayed greater degrees of illusory pattern perception would also be more likely to rate pseudo-profound bullshit statements as profound. We find support for this prediction across thre...

The present work (N = 1906 U.S. residents) investigates the extent to which peoples' evaluations of actions can be biased by the strategic use of euphemistic (agreeable) and dysphemistic (disagreeable) terms. We find that participants' evaluations of actions are made more favorable by replacing a disagreeable term (e.g., torture) with a semanticall...

Across six studies (N = 1988 US residents and 81 traditional people of Papua), participants judged agents acting in sacrificial moral dilemmas. Utilitarian agents, described as opting to sacrifice a single individual for the greater good, were perceived as less predictable and less moral than deontological agents whose inaction resulted in five peo...

Across six studies (N = 2646), we demonstrate the role that perceptions of predictability play in judgments of moral character, finding that people demonstrate a moral preference for more predictable immoral actors. Participants judged agents performing an immoral action (e.g., assault) for an unintelligible reason as less predictable and less mora...

Does the legal status of an action shape how morally wrong people perceive it to be? Across three experiments (N = 1,226), we find that participants judged actions to be more morally wrong when labelled as “illegal” as opposed to “not illegal.” Furthermore, we demonstrate the robustness of this effect, revealing the impact of act legality on moral...

People commonly exhibit a bias blind spot, judging themselves to be less susceptible to bias than the “average other.” However, less is known about how people attribute bias to familiar others who evoke strong affect. The present work (N = 1,980) examines the degree to which participants’ attributions of bias are sensitive to their affective impres...

We examine the impact of partisan language (language used to support a political agenda), both with regard to peoples’ perceptions of the speakers who use it and their evaluations of events it is used to describe. Two experiments recruited 1,121 Democrats and Republicans from the United States. Using a set of liberal-biased (expand voting rights) a...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public...

Across four studies participants ( N = 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo ), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8 ), and no titles. Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of comput...

Individuals often assess themselves as being less susceptible to common biases compared to others. This bias blind spot (BBS) is thought to represent a metacognitive error. In this research, we tested three explanations for the effect: The cognitive sophistication hypothesis posits that individuals who display the BBS more strongly are actually les...

Individuals often assess themselves as being less susceptible to common biases compared to others. This bias blind spot (BBS) is thought to represent a metacognitive error. In this research, we tested three explanations for the effect: The cognitive sophistication hypothesis posits that individuals who display the BBS more strongly are actually les...

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied ma...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behavior change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public h...

In the domain of scratch card gambling, “pushes” refer to outcomes in which a prize is won that is equal to the cost of a scratch card game. Despite resulting in no net monetary gain, these outcomes are categorized as wins by lottery operators, effectively inflating published scratch card information (e.g., posted odds of winning). Additionally, th...

The Keats heuristic suggests that people find esthetically pleasing expressions more accurate than mundane expressions. We test this notion with chiastic statements. Chiasmus is a stylistic phenomenon in which at least two linguistic constituents are repeated in reverse order, conventionally represented by the formula A-B-B-A. Our study focuses on...

A consistent finding reported in the literature is that epistemically suspect beliefs (e.g., paranormal beliefs) are less frequently endorsed by individuals with a greater tendency to think analytically. However, these results have been observed predominantly in Western participants. In the present work, we explore various individual differences kn...

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and str...

Past work has demonstrated that presenting statistical information in a foreground-background icon array can improve risk understanding, reduce decision-making biases, and decrease the salience of low-probability risks. In the present study, we assess whether presenting readily available gambling information within a foreground-background icon arra...

Past work has demonstrated that presenting statistical information in a foreground-background icon array can improve risk understanding, reduce decision-making biases, and decrease the salience of low-probability risks. In the present study, we assess whether presenting readily available gambling information within a foreground-background icon arra...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health guidance (e.g., regarding the use of non-medical masks) changed over time. Although many revisions were a result of gains in scientific understanding, we nonetheless hypothesized that making changes in guidance salient would negatively affect evaluations of experts and health-protective intentions. In Stu...

Despite autonomous vehicles (AVs) being safer than human drivers, people are averse to their presence on roads. Across three studies (N = 4,014), we examined peoples’ perceptions of human drivers and AVs acting within a moral dilemma. Scenarios involved an out-of-control vehicle (piloted by a human, or autonomously) that could stay on its present c...

In the domain of scratch card gambling, “pushes” refer to outcomes in which a prize is won that is equal to the cost of a scratch card game. Despite resulting in no net monetary gain, these outcomes are categorized as wins by lottery operators, effectively inflating published scratch card information (e.g., posted odds of winning). Additionally, th...

Across six studies (N = 2,646), we demonstrate the role that perceptions of predictability play in judgments of moral character, finding that people demonstrate a moral preference for more predictable immoral actors. Participants judged agents performing an immoral action (e.g., assault) for an unintelligible reason as less predictable and less mor...

Across six studies (N = 2,646), we demonstrate the role that perceptions of predictability play in judgments of moral character, finding that people demonstrate a moral preference for more predictable immoral actors. Participants judged agents performing an immoral action (e.g., assault) for an unintelligible reason as less predictable and less mor...

Across six studies (N = 1,988 US residents and 81 traditional people of Papua), participants judged agents acting in sacrificial moral dilemmas. Utilitarian agents, described as opting to sacrifice a single individual for the greater good, were perceived as less predictable and less moral than deontological agents whose inaction resulted in five pe...

Navigating social systems efficiently is critical to our species. Humans appear endowed with a cognitive system that has formed to meet the unique challenges that emerge for highly social species. Bullshitting, communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without concern for truth, is ubiquitous within human societies. Ac...

The present work (N = 1,906 U.S. residents) investigates the extent to which peoples’ evaluations of actions can be biased by the strategic use of euphemistic (agreeable) and dysphemistic (disagreeable) terms. We find that participants’ evaluations of actions are made more favorable by replacing a disagreeable term (e.g., torture) with a semantical...

Previous research suggests that intuitively appealing, yet uninformative unclaimed prize information is capable of biasing gambling-related judgments when people compare scratch cards that vary in the number of unclaimed prizes. However, it is unknown if the mere presence of unclaimed prize information alters a game’s attractiveness. Using an onlin...

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a devastating global health crisis. Without a vaccine or effective medication, the best hope for mitigating virus transmission is collective behavior change and support for public health interventions (e.g., physical distancing, physical hygiene, and endorsement of health policies). In a large-scale international co...

The Keats heuristic suggests that people find aesthetically pleasing expressions more accurate than mundane expressions. We test this notion with chiastic statements. Chiasmus is a stylistic phenomenon in which at least two linguistic constituents are repeated in reverse order, following an A-B-B-A pattern. Our study focuses on the specific form of...

Using participants who have been previously exposed to experimental stimuli (referred to as non-naïveté) can reduce effect sizes. The workforce of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is particularly vulnerable to this problem and solutions are usually cost and time inefficient and of mixed effectiveness. In response to this problem and its currently underwhel...

Previous work has demonstrated that peoples’ gambling-related judgments (e.g., perceived likelihood of winning) are often biased by non-diagnostic unclaimed prize information (i.e., the number of prizes still available to be won) resulting in non-optimal scratch card preferences. Another line of research suggests that people make less biased decisi...

The current study explores various individual difference factors known to predict epistemically suspect beliefs across Western and Eastern cultures. While Western individuals scoring higher on measures of analytic thinking endorsed less epistemically suspect beliefs, this association was not observed in our Japanese samples, suggesting that the oft...

The Keats heuristic suggests that people find aesthetically pleasing expressions more accurate than mundane expressions. We test this notion with antimetabolic statements. Antimetabole is a stylistic phenomenon in which at least two words are repeated in reverse order, following an A-B-B-A pattern (e.g., “all for one and one for all”). Across four...

The ability to navigate social systems efficiently is critical to our species. Humans appear endowed with a cognitive system that has at least partially formed to best meet the unique cognitive challenges that emerge in a highly social species. Bullshitting, a style of communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without...

The ability to navigate social systems efficiently is critical to our species. Humans appear endowed with a cognitive system that has at least partially formed to best meet the unique cognitive challenges that emerge in a highly social species. Bullshitting, a style of communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without...

Across two experiments (N=799) we demonstrate that people’s use of quantitative information (e.g., base-rates) when making a judgment varies as the causal link of qualitative information (e.g., stereotypes) changes. That is, when a clear causal link for stereotypes is provided, people make judgments that are far more in line with them. When the cau...

Across two experiments (N=799) we demonstrate that people’s use of quantitative information (e.g., base-rates) when making a judgment varies as the causal link of qualitative information (e.g., stereotypes) changes. That is, when a clear causal link for stereotypes is provided, people make judgments that are far more in line with them. When the cau...

Across four studies participants (N = 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8), and no titles. Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer-...

The domain of gambling is rife with both diagnostic and non-diagnostic information. Previous studies examining scratch card gambling have demonstrated that people are often biased by intuitively appealing, yet non-diagnostic information (i.e., unclaimed prize information). The current study investigated how varying the presentation format of a diag...

Doublespeak refers to the strategic use of language to distort, obscure, or misrepresent events or information. It avoids outright falsehoods while simultaneously stretching the truth in order to impart the reality most favourable to a speaker. Using real-world examples of doublespeak, the current study (N = 1768) investigates whether peoples’ eval...

Across four studies participants (N = 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8), and no titles. Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer...

Previous research has revealed that intuitive confidence is an important predictor of how people choose between an intuitive and non-intuitive alternative when faced with information that opposes the intuitive response. In the current study, we investigated the speed of intuition generation as a predictor of intuitive confidence and participant cho...

Supplementary Materials

Scratch cards are a popular form of lottery gambling available in many jurisdictions. However, there is a paucity of research that examines associations between individual differences in thinking style, participation in scratch card gambling, and problem gambling severity. In three studies, we sought to examine the relationships among these variab...

Unclaimed prize information (i.e., the number of prizes still available to be won) is information commonly provided to scratch card gamblers. However, unless the number of tickets remaining to be purchased is also provided, this information is uninformative. Despite its lack of utility in assisting gamblers in choosing the most favourable type of s...

In the current study, cross-task interactions between number order and sound intensity judgments were assessed using a dual-task paradigm. Participants first categorized numerical sequences composed of Arabic digits as either ordered (ascending, descending) or non-ordered. Following each number sequence participants then had to judge the intensity-...

In the current study, we examined how the contextual repetition of magnitude information presented in either symbolic (Arabic digits) or nonsymbolic (numerosities) formats impacted on the perceived duration of a later occurring target number. The results of the current study demonstrated a time-magnitude bias in which, on average, large magnitude t...

The cross-modal impact of number magnitude (i.e. Arabic digits) on perceived sound loudness was examined. Participants compared a target sound's intensity level against a previously heard reference sound (which they judged as quieter or louder). Paired with each target sound was a task irrelevant Arabic digit that varied in magnitude, being either...

It has been proposed that a key function of the brain is to integrate information across sensory modalities 1 . l One side-effect of this integrative function is that information in one modality (e.g., visual) can produce interference effects, and bias judgements in a different modality (e.g., auditory). l These cross-modal interference effects hav...