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Belief in Free Will: Implications for Practice and Policy
Abstract
The conviction one holds about free will serves as a foundation for the views one holds about the consumption activities of other consumers, the nature of social support systems, and the constraints that should or should not be placed on industry. Across multiple paradigms and contexts, the authors assess people's beliefs about the control consumers have over consumption activities in the face of various constraints on agency. They find that beliefs regarding personal discretion are robust and resilient, consistent with their finding that free will is viewed as noncorporeal. Nonetheless, they also find that these beliefs are not monolithic but vary as a function of identifiable differences across individuals and the perceived cause of behavior, particularly with regard to physical causation. Taken together, the results support the general wisdom of libertarian paternalism as a framework for public policy and highlight current and emerging situations in which policy makers might be granted greater latitude.
... Research highlights how various mindsets influence consumer motivations, decision processes, activities, and behaviors (MacDonnell and White 2015; Moreau and Engeset 2016), and emphasizes that understanding mindsets is vital to questions that guide consumer behavior (John and Park 2016;Murphy and Dweck 2016;Priester and Petty 2016;Rucker and Galinsky 2016;White et al. 2011). Our intent is not to examine the veracity of the fresh start mindset as a description of reality (Frank 2016;Zheng, van Osselaer, and Alba 2016), but to examine how variations in the mindset's strength shape consumers' beliefs, expectations, and actions about transformation in their own and others' lives. We see the fresh start mindset as affecting self-construal (as emphasized by Murphy and Dweck 2016 in relationship to the growth mindset), and also other-construal (Wheeler and Omair 2016). ...
... Importantly, the fresh start mindset goes beyond the neoliberal belief that people can internally grow and experience free will within social and institutional constraints (Dweck 2006;Zheng et al. 2016). Although grounded in optimism, perseverance, and a future focus, the fresh start mindset is differentiated from a belief in future good luck or prospects defined by privileges of birth and class (Frank 2016). ...
... Fresh Start Mindset and Supporting Others to Make a Fresh Start. Some scholars argue that belief in selfdeterminism and free will makes individuals unsympathetic to the plight of the poor and disadvantaged who are seen as "stuck" because of their flawed characters and lack of willful initiative (Frank 2016;Zheng et al. 2016). However, the fresh start mindset embraces the belief that people can change and are not defined by immutable character flaws or failed pasts. ...
This article introduces the fresh start mindset, defined as a belief that people can make a new start, get a new beginning, and chart a new course in life, regardless of their past or present circumstances. With historical roots in American culture and neoliberalism, and with contemporary links to liquid modernity and global consumer culture, this mindset structures reasoning, experience, and everyday language , and guides behavior across self-and other-transformative consumption domains. We develop a six-item scale (FSM) to measure the fresh start mindset and situate it within a broader nomological network, including growth mindset, personal capacity for change, optimism, future temporal focus, internal locus of control , self-efficacy, perseverance, resilience, and consumer variety seeking. Individuals with a stronger (vs. weaker) fresh start mindset invest in transformative change through changing their circumstances, including their own consumption choices (e.g., buying a new pair of sunglasses and getting a new self); they also are more supportive of transformative programs that assist those who are challenged to get a fresh start (i.e., disadvantaged youth, at-risk teens, veterans, and tax-burdened adults). Our work significantly contributes to transformative consumer research with attention to self-activities and programs for vulnerable populations that enable new beginnings.
... These studies suggest that threats to autonomy (or even just the belief in autonomy) affect participants' behavior online and in the lab. This is also underpinned by studies in social psychology and marketing (Baumeister et al., 2009;Steindl et al., 2015;Zheng et al., 2016). A related phenomenon is the so-called single-option or comparison aversion (Mochon, 2013;Hedgcock et al., 2016;Maltz and Rachmilevitch, 2021). ...
Regulators of artificial intelligence (AI) emphasize the importance of human autonomy and oversight in AI-assisted decision-making (European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, 2021; 117th Congress, 2022). Predictions are the foundation of all AI tools; thus, if AI can predict our decisions , how might these predictions influence our ultimate choices? We examine how salient, personalized AI predictions affect decision outcomes and investigate the role of reactance, i.e., an adverse reaction to a perceived reduction in individual freedom. We trained an AI tool on previous dictator game decisions to generate personalized predictions of dictators' choices. In our AI treatment, dictators received this prediction before deciding. In a treatment involving human oversight, the decision of whether participants in our experiment were provided with the AI prediction was made by a previous participant (a 'human overseer'). In the baseline, participants did not receive the prediction. We find that participants sent less to the recipient when they received a personalized prediction but the strongest reduction occurred when the AI's prediction was intentionally not shared by the human overseer. Our findings underscore the importance of considering human reactions to AI predictions in assessing the accuracy and impact of these tools as well as the potential adverse effects of human oversight.
... negative) consumption experience to boost individuals' trust in their ability to make sound decisions, increasing customer satisfaction. We do not expect the valence of the experience to move individuals' belief in free will-as discussed previously, free-will belief is less dependent on variations in specific outcomes or experiences (e.g., Zheng et al. 2016). We test the moderating effect of valence of the experience on individuals' trust in decisions and free-will beliefs in Study 4. Importantly, because liberals (vs. ...
This article examines the effect of political identity on customers’ satisfaction with the products and services they consume. Recent work suggests that conservatives are less likely to complain than liberals. Building on that work, the present research examines how political identity shapes customer satisfaction which has broad implications for customers and firms. Nine studies combine different methodologies, primary and secondary data, real and hypothetical behavior, different product categories, and diverse participant populations to show that conservatives (vs. liberals) are more satisfied with the products and services they consume. This happens because conservatives (vs. liberals) are more likely to believe in free will (i.e., that people have agency over their decisions) and therefore to trust their decisions. We document the broad and tangible downstream consequences of this effect for customers’ repurchase and recommendation intentions and firms’ sales. The association of political identity and customer satisfaction is attenuated when belief in free will is externally weakened, choice is limited, or the consumption experience is overwhelmingly positive.
... Thus, consumers' cognitive process of advertising plays an important role to mediate between the content of advertising and consumers' comprehension of it. Previous laboratory experiments have demonstrated that consumers are likely to perceive pragmatically implied information in advertising as a fact (Harris, 1977;Hastak & Mazis, 2011;Zheng, Van Osselaer, & Alba, 2016). The prototypic paradigm begins with a learning phrase of a series of advertisements, then in the test phase, participants are required to judge whether statements are consistent with what they have just learned. ...
People employ automatic inferential processing when confronting pragmatically implied claims in advertising. However, whether comprehension and memorization of pragmatic implications differ between young and older adults is unclear. In the present study, we used eye-tracking technology to investigate online cognitive processes during reading of misleading advertisements. We found an interaction between age and advertising content, manifested as our older participants generated higher misleading rates in health-related than in health-irrelevant products, whereas this content-bias did not appear in their younger counterparts. Eye movement data further showed that the older adults spent more time processing critical claims for the health-related products than for the health-irrelevant products. Moreover, the correlations between fixation duration on pragmatic implications and misleading rates showed opposite trends in the two groups. The eye-tracking evidence novelly suggests that young and older adults may adopt different information processing strategies to comprehend pragmatic implications in advertising: More reading possibly enhances young adults’ gist memory whereas it facilitates older adults’ verbatim memory instead.
... That one's own food preferences and perceptions of a child's preferences might guide decisions about foods seems obvious, but in terms of junk food that might be unhealthy for the child, we must delve deeper. According to Zheng et al. (2016), convictions held about free will serve as a foundation for the views one holds about the consumption of others. Importantly, Zheng et al. find that belief about the control others have is not monolithic but varies across individuals. ...
Food systems and the ways food products are formulated, packaged, and marketed contribute to obesogenic environments. The current research focuses on products informally referred to as junk food (foods high in sugar, fat, and salt) and how they function as a mechanism in developing taste preferences in children three to five years old. Across two studies, the authors examine how parents’ taste preferences, their lay theories of self-control, and their resulting decisions about foods to provide to their children are associated with their children’s taste preferences and consumption of healthy food. Using a parent survey, Study 1 examines how parent preferences and exposure to junk food contribute to the development of child food preferences. Study 2, which is based on a parent survey and observation of child meals out of home, confirms Study 1 findings. Furthermore, Study 2 shows how parental lay theories and parental decisions regarding junk food provided to a child are related to the child’s consumption of vegetables. Implications for food brands, policy, and parents are discussed.
... Consumers seem to exhibit a fundamental need for autonomy: evidence of external influence on behavior need not undermine perceived autonomy (Nahmias et al. 2005), and perceived (or at least reported) autonomy remains resilient in the face of numerous threats (Rose, Buckwalter and Nicholas 2017;Zheng et al. 2016). In fact, people act to reinforce their sense of free will when it is threatened (Bear and Knobe 2016). ...
We propose that autonomy is a crucial aspect of consumer choice. We offer a definition that situates autonomy among related constructs in philosophy and psychology, contrast actual with perceived autonomy in consumer contexts, examine the resilience of perceived autonomy, and sketch out an agenda for research into the role of perceived autonomy in an evolving marketplace increasingly characterized by automation.
... Une approche économique de ce phénomène amènerait à penser que cette augmentation du choix et de l'autonomie réduirait les coûts de recherche des consommateurs pour trouver les produits, les services ou les expériences qui répondent le mieux à leurs besoins et augmenterait leur utilité (Stigler, 1961). Une perspective psychologique conforterait cette approche positive de l'autonomie -autrement dit d'avoir la possibilité de choisir ses actions (Deci et Ryan, 1985a ;White, 1959) -, considérant l'autonomie comme une condition essentielle du bien-être (Deci, 1981 ;. Il n'est donc pas surprenant que les recherches considèrent que les consommateurs aspirent à être autonomes (Zheng et al., 2016), qu'il s'agisse de la liberté de choix (Markus et Schwartz 2010) ou de la liberté de comportement (Levav et Zhu, 2009 ;Xu et al., 2012). Ainsi, des études ont montré que lorsque les consommateurs perçoivent une menace sur leur autonomie et leur liberté d'agir, ils développent une certaine réactance (Fitzsimons et Lehmann, 2004 ;Moore et Fitzsimons, 2014), par laquelle ils dérogent à la source de la restriction et sont davantage motivés à rétablir leur liberté (Brehm, 1966). ...
Résumé
Cette recherché remet en cause l’idée selon laquelle l’autonomie est bénéfique pour les consommateurs quelle que soit la situation. Plus précisément, cette recherche démontre, à travers deux expérimentations et une étude terrain, que l’autonomie ne donne lieu à du plaisir que lorsque le risque est faible. Ces études identifient également le contrôle personnel comme un mécanisme expliquant pourquoi l’autonomie rend la consommation plus ou moins agréable, et ce, en fonction de la perception du risque. Dans l’étude 1, nous démontrons que le risque perçu modère l’effet que l’autonomie peut avoir sur le fait de rendre une expérience agréable, l’absence de risque permettant à l’autonomie d’accroître le contrôle personnel. L’étude 2 réplique cet effet modérateur du risque au cours d’une étude terrain. Pour tester si de mêmes effets peuvent être retrouvés avec un autre type de risque perçu, l’étude 3 manipule le risque social et réplique l’effet modérateur du risque dans la relation entre autonomie, contrôle personnel et plaisir observé dans les études 1 et 2. D’une manière générale, cette recherche met en avant la nécessité de prendre en considération le risque lorsqu’on rend les consommateurs autonomes, et offre de nouvelles contributions aux recherches sur l’autonomie des consommateurs.
... A psychological lens would support this view of being autonomous -in other words, being choiceful in one's actions (Deci and Ryan, 1985a;White, 1959) -as positive, seeing autonomy as an essential condition for well-being (Deci, 1981;Ryan and Deci, 2000). It is thus unsurprising that research recognizes that consumers are eager for autonomy (Zheng et al., 2016), whether referring to freedom of choice (Markus and Schwartz, 2010) or freedom in behavior (Levav and Zhu, 2009;Xu et al., 2012). As evidence, research has shown that when consumers perceive that their autonomy and freedom to act are threatened, they develop some reactance (Fitzsimons and Lehmann, 2004;Moore and Fitzsimons, 2014), whereby they derogate the source of the restriction and are more motivated to restore the freedom that has been restricted (Brehm, 1966). ...
This research challenges the notion that autonomy is beneficial for consumers in every situation. Specifically, this research demonstrates across two experiments and one field study that autonomy can lead to pleasure only when risk is low. Importantly, these studies also identify personal control as a mechanism that explains why autonomy makes the consumption experience more or less pleasurable, depending on risk perceptions. In Study 1, we demonstrate that perceived risk moderates the effect that autonomy may have on making the experience pleasurable, with a lack of risk making autonomy increase personal control. Study 2 replicates this moderating effect of risk in a field study. To test if the effects replicate using another type of perceived risk, Study 3 manipulates social risk and replicates its moderating effect on the relationship between autonomy and personal control on the pleasure observed in Studies 1 and 2. Collectively, this research draws attention to the need to consider risk when making consumers autonomous, and it offers novel contributions to the work on consumer autonomy.
... Consumers think of themselves and their actions as if they had free will [68], to the point that they consider the existence of free will self-evident [9] and exhibit unshakeable confidence in its existence [73]. They think about the processes that lead them to a particular choice in terms of deliberation and intentionality, see their own actions as internally driven and motivated [69], and come up with internally consistent reasons when the true drivers of choice are not immediately available to them [45]. ...
Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence and data analytics are facilitating the automation of some consumer chores (e.g., in smart homes and in self-driving cars) and allow the emergence of big-data-driven, micro-targeting marketing practices (e.g., personalized content recommendation algorithms). We contend that those developments can generate a tension for marketers, consumers, and policy makers: They can, on the one hand, contribute to consumer well-being by making consumer choices easier, more practical, and more efficient. On the other hand, they can also undermine consumers’ sense of autonomy, the absence of which can be detrimental to consumer well-being. Drawing on diverse perspectives from marketing, economics, philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology, we explore how consumers’ sense of autonomy in making choices affects their well-being. We discuss how new technologies may enhance or diminish consumers’ perceptions of being in control of their choices and how either of those can, in turn, enhance of detract from consumer well-being. Building on this, we identify open research questions in the domain of choice, well-being, and consumer welfare, and suggest avenues for future research.
... The risk here is real, as the lack of scientific understanding of what consciousness is makes it easy for people to ascribe nonscientific, magical, and extramaterial properties to conscious thinking (Wegner 2002;Zheng, van Osselaer, and Alba 2016). For example, in examining the illusion of conscious will, Wegner and colleagues (Wegner, Sparrow, and Winerman 2004;Wegner and Wheatley 1999) conducted a series of experiments designed to demonstrate how deceptively easy it is to get people to view their conscious thoughts as the cause of impossible (or in some cases predetermined, externally governed) outcomes. ...
Future efforts to better understand the causal antecedents of consumer behavior are aided by conceptual clarity, methodological rigor, collaboration, and debate. For these reasons we thank Baumeister, Clark, Kim, and Lau (this issue; henceforth BCKL), Plassmann and Mormann (this issue; henceforth PM), and Sweldens, Tuk, and Hütter (this issue; henceforth STH) for their insightful and indispensable comments on Williams and Poehlman (this issue; henceforth WP). In this rejoinder, we present an expanded case for our suggestion that we as a field consider consciousness second when building causal models of behavior. Because of the lack of scientific consensus regarding the biological underpinnings of consciousness, we maintain that treating consciousness as a cause hurts the field's ability to connect top-down construct-level understanding to principles derived from more bottom-up, mechanistic (physiological) aspects of consumer functioning. We offer that the path forward must be characterized by a much more inquisitive take on the impact of consciousness on consumer outcomes.
... The risk here is real, as the lack of scientific understanding of what consciousness is makes it easy for people to ascribe non-scientific, magical, and extra-material properties to conscious thinking (Wegner 2002;Zheng, van Osselaer, and Alba 2016). For example, in examining the illusion of conscious will, Wegner and colleagues (Wegner, Sparrow, and Winerman 2004;Wegner and Wheatley 1999) conducted a series of experiments designed to demonstrate how deceptively easy it is to get people to view their conscious thoughts as the cause of impossible (or in some cases predetermined, externally governed) outcomes. ...
Future efforts to better understand the causal antecedents of consumer behavior are aided by conceptual clarity, methodological rigor, collaboration, and debate. For these reasons we thank Baumeister, Clark, Kim, and Lau (this issue; henceforth BCKL), Plassmann and Mormann (this issue; henceforth PM), and Sweldens, Tuk, and Hütter (this issue; henceforth STH) for their insightful and indispensable comments on Williams and Poehlman (this issue; henceforth WP). In this rejoinder, we present an expanded case for our suggestion that we as a field consider consciousness second when building causal models of behavior. Because of the lack of scientific consensus regarding the biological underpinnings of consciousness, we maintain that treating consciousness as a cause hurts the field’s ability to connect top-down construct level understanding to principles derived from more bottom-up, mechanistic (physiological) aspects of consumer functioning. We offer that the path forward must be characterized by a much more inquisitive take on the impact of consciousness on consumer outcomes.
... Dulany 1968; Fishbein and Ajzen 1975; Gollwitzer 1999; Ryan and Bonfield 1975; Sheppard, Hartwick, and Warshaw 1988; Wegner 2002). Indeed, when people ascribe reasons for their own moment-to-moment behavior-or the behavior of others-they almost always point to conscious will as the immediate causal force behind action (Zheng, van Osselaer, and Alba 2016; Baumeister, Masicampo, and Vohs 2008; Clarkson et al. 2015;Searle 1983; Vohs and Schooler 2008). This tendency to attribute action to conscious thought emerges early in childhood, persists into adulthood, and is quite reasonable from an ecological and evolutionary perspective (Leslie, Friedman and German 2004). ...
An outsized focus on the explanatory value of conscious thought can constrain opportunities to
more rigorously examine the influence of less obvious drivers of consumer behavior. This paper
proposes a more circumscribed conceptualization of consciousness, distinguishing it from other
higher-order mental processes such as deliberation and control. We outline the benefits of this
more precise, disaggregated, and minimized perspective on consciousness for guiding research
on choice, self-control, and persuasion. Lastly, in a set of recommendations centering on theory,
methods, and training, we suggest ways for consumer researchers to more critically evaluate
whether the contents of consciousness, compared to more low-level mechanistic factors, play a
meaningful role in driving behavior.
Purpose
This paper aims to identify religiosity scale usage in academic marketing articles and compare the effectiveness of different religiosity scales in predicting marketing and consumer behavior outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Articles ( n = 397) in the top 20 marketing journals are reviewed and a follow-up study is conducted that compares 22 religiosity scales in predicting 18 marketing variables.
Findings
Most scales are from preexisting sources (64.3%), only 20% are multi-dimensional and over 58% are used in only one journal article. Only 22.5% of possible regressions in the follow-up study predicting marketing variables from religiosity scales were significant.
Research limitations/implications
This research is limited by the journals and dependent variables chosen. Implications include diversify research topics, expand publication outlets, decrease use of author-generated scales, increase use of multi-item and multi-dimensional measures, replicate findings methodologically and conceptually and make cultural context adaptations.
Practical implications
Marketers would benefit from using preexisting scales, ensuring that religiosity is measured using a multi-item measure that contains appropriate items for the dominant religious beliefs of the sample, as well as consider multi-dimensional measures to best guide marketing strategy decisions, such as target market definition.
Originality/value
This is the first research study to compare the use of religiosity scales in marketing. This offers key value to the marketing literature by highlighting tactics to take to improve consistency in research practices to increase the comparability and accuracy of findings.
O presente artigo tem como problema de pesquisa o seguinte questionamento: quais os benefícios e desafios trazidos ao Direito do Consumidor pela implementação e utilização da Inteligência Artificial (IA) nas relações negociais? Na primeira seção, apresenta-se a relação de como a IA está redefinindo a indústria de bens de consumo. Partindo-se dessa constatação, questionam-se quais são os ganhos e riscos para o consumidor na utilização da IA nesse cenário. Na segunda seção, abordam-se as possíveis influências e interferências da utilização de IA para o processo decisório do consumidor durante a aquisição de produtos ou de serviços. Por fim, na terceira seção, demonstra-se como o Código de Proteção e Defesa do Consumidor, em conjunto com legislações similares, pode, adequadamente, responder e solucionar os desafios trazidos pela utilização de tecnologia de IA. Conclui-se que, embora as situações fáticas não se adéquem, perfeitamente, aos normativos positivados no CDC, seu caráter principiológico é capaz de regular a utilização da IA no mercado de consumo se ampliado através de sua hermenêutica. Para subsidiar a presente argumentação, utiliza-se o método de pesquisa integrada e o método dedutivo.
The authors argue that appreciation of the biological underpinnings of human behavior can alter the beliefs and actions of multiple marketing stakeholders in ways that have immense welfare implications. However, a biological perspective often deviates from the lay perspective. The realization of improved welfare depends in part on narrowing this gap. The authors review biological evidence on self-control and report 10 empirical studies that examine lay response to biological characterizations of self-control. The authors contrast lay response with scientific understanding and then offer implications of biology—as well as the gap between the scientific and lay perspectives—for policymakers, firms, consumers, marketing educators, and scholars. The authors also identify opportunities for future research. The authors conclude that marketing scholars can and should play an active role in narrowing the gap between the scientific and lay perspectives in the service of both theory development and human welfare.
This monograph describes the marketing research that has been published in the top marketing journals since their inception relating to health care, broadly defined. Over 1,000 articles are summarized across the chapters relating to consumer behavior and food, consumer behavior and other consumption, and business marketing issues. Research from outside of marketing is also briefly reviewed. This monograph celebrates the research that has been accomplished and closes with suggestions for future research.
The experience of willing an act arises from interpreting one's thought as the cause of the act. Conscious will is thus experienced as a function of the priority, consistency, and exclusivity of the thought about the action. The thought must occur before the action, be consistent with the action, and not be accompanied by other causes. An experiment illustrating the role of priority found that people can arrive at the mistaken belief that they have intentionally caused an action that in fact they were forced to perform when they are simply led to think about the action just before its occurrence.
Responsibility acts as a psychological adhesive that connects an actor to an event and to relevant prescriptions that should govern conduct. People are held responsible to the extent that (a) a clear, well-defined set of prescriptions is applicable to an event (prescription–event link); (b) the actor is perceived to be bound by the prescriptions by virtue of his or her identity (prescription–identity link); and (c) the actor is connected to the event, especially by virtue of appearing to have personal control over it (identity–event link). Studies supported the model, showing that attributions of responsibility are a direct function of the combined strengths of the 3 linkages (Study 1) and that, when judging responsibility, people seek out information that is relevant to the linkages (Study 2). The model clarifies prior multiple meanings of responsibility and provides a coherent framework for understanding social judgment.
Going back to Kohlberg, moral development research affirms that people progress through different stages of moral reasoning as cognitive abilities mature. Individuals at a lower level of moral reasoning judge moral issues mainly based on self-interest (personal interests schema) or based on adherence to laws and rules (maintaining norms schema), whereas individuals at the post-conventional level judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals. However, the extent to which moral development is reflected in structural brain architecture remains unknown. To investigate this question, we used voxel-based morphometry and examined the brain structure in a sample of 67 Master of Business Administration (MBA) students. Subjects completed the Defining Issues Test (DIT-2) which measures moral development in terms of cognitive schema preference. Results demonstrate that subjects at the post-conventional level of moral reasoning were characterized by increased gray matter volume in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, compared with subjects at a lower level of moral reasoning. Our findings support an important role for both cognitive and emotional processes in moral reasoning and provide first evidence for individual differences in brain structure according to the stages of moral reasoning first proposed by Kohlberg decades ago.
Individual variability in delay of gratification (DG) is associated with a number of important outcomes in both non-human and human primates. Using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), this study describes the relationship between probabilistic estimates of white matter tracts projecting from the caudate to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and DG abilities in a sample of 49 captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). After accounting for time between collection of DTI scans and DG measurement, age and sex, higher white matter connectivity between the caudate and right dorsal PFC was found to be significantly associated with the acquisition (i.e. training phase) but not the maintenance of DG abilities. No other associations were found to be significant. The integrity of white matter connectivity between regions of the striatum and the PFC appear to be associated with inhibitory control in chimpanzees, with perturbations on this circuit potentially leading to a variety of maladaptive outcomes. Additionally, results have potential translational implications for understanding the pathophysiology of a number of psychiatric and clinical outcomes in humans.
© 2015 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.
Socioeconomic disparities are associated with differences in cognitive development. The extent to which this translates to disparities in brain structure is unclear. We investigated relationships between socioeconomic factors and brain morphometry, independently of genetic ancestry, among a cohort of 1,099 typically developing individuals between 3 and 20 years of age. Income was logarithmically associated with brain surface area. Among children from lower income families, small differences in income were associated with relatively large differences in surface area, whereas, among children from higher income families, similar income increments were associated with smaller differences in surface area. These relationships were most prominent in regions supporting language, reading, executive functions and spatial skills; surface area mediated socioeconomic differences in certain neurocognitive abilities. These data imply that income relates most strongly to brain structure among the most disadvantaged children.
A statement or action can be said to be manipulative if it does not sufficiently engage or appeal to people’s capacity for reflective and deliberative choice. One problem with manipulation, thus understood, is that it fails to respect people’s autonomy and is an affront to their dignity. Another problem is that if they are products of manipulation, people’s choices might fail to promote their own welfare, and might instead promote the welfare of the manipulator. To that extent, the central objection to manipulation is rooted in a version of Mill’s Harm Principle: People know what is in their best interests and should have a (manipulation-free) opportunity to make that decision. On welfarist grounds, the norm against manipulation can be seen as a kind of heuristic, one that generally works well, but that can also lead to serious errors, at least when the manipulator is both informed and genuinely interested in the welfare of the chooser.
For the legal system, a pervasive puzzle is why manipulation is rarely policed. The simplest answer is that manipulation has so many shades, and in a social order that values free markets and is committed to freedom of expression, it is exceptionally difficult to regulate manipulation as such. But as the manipulator’s motives become more self-interested or venal, and as efforts to bypass people’s deliberative capacities becomes more successful, the ethical objections to manipulation become very forceful, and the argument for a legal response is fortified. The analysis of manipulation bears on emerging first amendment issues raised by compelled speech, especially in the context of graphic health warnings. Importantly, it can also help orient the regulation of financial products, where manipulation of consumer choices is an evident but rarely explicit concern.
Background:
In 2010, overweight and obesity were estimated to cause 3·4 million deaths, 3·9% of years of life lost, and 3·8% of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) worldwide. The rise in obesity has led to widespread calls for regular monitoring of changes in overweight and obesity prevalence in all populations. Comparable, up-to-date information about levels and trends is essential to quantify population health effects and to prompt decision makers to prioritise action. We estimate the global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980-2013.
Methods:
We systematically identified surveys, reports, and published studies (n=1769) that included data for height and weight, both through physical measurements and self-reports. We used mixed effects linear regression to correct for bias in self-reports. We obtained data for prevalence of obesity and overweight by age, sex, country, and year (n=19,244) with a spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression model to estimate prevalence with 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs).
Findings:
Worldwide, the proportion of adults with a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 kg/m(2) or greater increased between 1980 and 2013 from 28·8% (95% UI 28·4-29·3) to 36·9% (36·3-37·4) in men, and from 29·8% (29·3-30·2) to 38·0% (37·5-38·5) in women. Prevalence has increased substantially in children and adolescents in developed countries; 23·8% (22·9-24·7) of boys and 22·6% (21·7-23·6) of girls were overweight or obese in 2013. The prevalence of overweight and obesity has also increased in children and adolescents in developing countries, from 8·1% (7·7-8·6) to 12·9% (12·3-13·5) in 2013 for boys and from 8·4% (8·1-8·8) to 13·4% (13·0-13·9) in girls. In adults, estimated prevalence of obesity exceeded 50% in men in Tonga and in women in Kuwait, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Libya, Qatar, Tonga, and Samoa. Since 2006, the increase in adult obesity in developed countries has slowed down.
Interpretation:
Because of the established health risks and substantial increases in prevalence, obesity has become a major global health challenge. Not only is obesity increasing, but no national success stories have been reported in the past 33 years. Urgent global action and leadership is needed to help countries to more effectively intervene.
Funding:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
If free will beliefs support attributions of moral responsibility, then reducing these beliefs should make people less retributive in their attitudes about punishment. Four studies using both measured and manipulated free will beliefs found that people with weaker beliefs reported less retributive, but not consequentialist, punishment towards criminals (Study 1). Subsequent studies showed that exposing people to research about the neural bases of human behavior, either through lab-based manipulations or by virtue of having taken an undergraduate neuroscience class, reduced retributive punishment (Studies 2-4). These results illustrate the consequences that exposure to debates about free will and scientific research on the neural basis of behavior may have on attributions of moral responsibility.
Belief in free will is a pervasive phenomenon that has important consequences for prosocial actions and punitive judgments, but little research has investigated why free will beliefs are so widespread. Across 5 studies using experimental, survey, and archival data and multiple measures of free will belief, we tested the hypothesis that a key factor promoting belief in free will is a fundamental desire to hold others morally responsible for their wrongful behaviors. In Study 1, participants reported greater belief in free will after considering an immoral action than a morally neutral one. Study 2 provided evidence that this effect was due to heightened punitive motivations. In a field experiment (Study 3), an ostensibly real classroom cheating incident led to increased free will beliefs, again due to heightened punitive motivations. In Study 4, reading about others' immoral behaviors reduced the perceived merit of anti-free-will research, thus demonstrating the effect with an indirect measure of free will belief. Finally, Study 5 examined this relationship outside the laboratory and found that the real-world prevalence of immoral behavior (as measured by crime and homicide rates) predicted free will belief on a country level. Taken together, these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
During critical periods of development early in life, excessive or scarce nutritional environments can disrupt the development of central feeding and metabolic neural circuitry, leading to obesity and metabolic disorders in adulthood. A better understanding of the genetic networks that control the development of feeding and metabolic neural circuits, along with knowledge of how and where dietary signals disrupt this process, can serve as the basis for future therapies aimed at reversing the public health crisis that is now building as a result of the global obesity epidemic. This review of animal and human studies highlights recent insights into the molecular mechanisms that regulate the development of central feeding circuitries, the mechanisms by which gestational and early postnatal nutritional status affects this process, and approaches aimed at counteracting the deleterious effects of early over- and underfeeding. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Physiology Volume 76 is February 10, 2014. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
Social attitudes, political attitudes and religiousness are highly inter-correlated. Furthermore, each is substantially influenced by genetic factors. Koenig and Bouchard (2006) hypothesized that these three areas (which they termed the Traditional Moral Values Triad) each derive from an underlying latent trait concerning the tendency to obey traditional authorities. We tested this hypothesis with data from a sample of twins raised in different homes. We assessed social attitudes with Altemeyer’s (1988) Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale, political attitudes with Wilson and Patterson’s (1968) Conservatism scale, and religiousness with Wiggins’ (1966) Religious Fundamentalism scale. The best-fitting model identified the three TMVT domains as different manifestations of a single latent and significantly heritable factor. Further, the genetic and environmental bases for this factor overlapped heavily with those for the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Traditionalism scale, supporting the conception of traditionalism as the latent factor represented by the three scales in contemporary Western societies.
It is common for authors discovering a significant interaction of a measured variable X with a manipulated variable Z to examine simple effects of Z at different levels of X. These “spotlight” tests are often misunderstood even in the simplest cases, and it appears that consumer researchers are unsure how to extend them to more complex designs. We explain the general principles of spotlight tests, show that they rely on familiar regression techniques, and provide a tutorial showing how to apply these tests across an array of experimental designs. Rather than following the common practice of reporting spotlight tests at one standard deviation above and below the mean of X, we recommend that when X has focal values, researchers report spotlight tests at those focal values. When X does not have focal values, we recommend researchers report ranges of significance using a version of Johnson and Neyman’s (1936) test we call a “floodlight”.
The prominence of neuroscience in the public sphere has escalated in recent years, provoking questions about how the public engages with neuroscientific ideas. Commentaries on neuroscience's role in society often present it as having revolutionary implications, fundamentally overturning established beliefs about personhood. The purpose of this article is to collate and review the extant empirical evidence on the influence of neuroscience on commonsense understandings of personhood. The article evaluates the scope of neuroscience's presence in public consciousness and examines the empirical evidence for three frequently encountered claims about neuroscience's societal influence: that neuroscience fosters a conception of the self that is based in biology, that neuroscience promotes conceptions of individual fate as predetermined, and that neuroscience attenuates the stigma attached to particular social categories. It concludes that many neuroscientific ideas have assimilated in ways that perpetuate rather than challenge existing modes of understanding self, others and society.
Obesity has become a true pandemic. In the United States, over two thirds of adults are obese or overweight. The prevalence of obesity has doubled since 1980. The increase in the prevalence of obese and overweight individuals has happened too rapidly for it to be due to an alteration in the genome. The gastrointestinal, sensory (taste and olfaction), and brain feeding mechanisms that developed during the past 2 million years were highly adaptive for ancestral hunter-gatherers living in an environment with limited high-density foods and periods of food deprivation. Today, however, humans in industrialized countries live in what has been called an "obesogenic environment." The nonhomeostatic brain reward circuitry that was acquired during evolution to seek out and eat as many nutritionally high-dense foods as possible is able to overrule the physiological inhibitory mechanisms that were designed to limit meal size and weight gain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
College students and suburban residents completed questionnaires designed to examine the tendency of scientific explanations of undesirable behaviors to mitigate perceived culpability. In vignettes relating behaviors to an explanatory antecedent, we manipulated the uniformity of the behavior given the antecedent, the responsiveness of the behavior to deterrence, and the explanatory antecedent-type offered- physiological (e.g., a chemical imbalance) or experiential (e.g., abusive parents). Physiological explanations had a greater tendency to exonerate actors than did experiential explanations. The effects of uniformity and deterrence were smaller, and the latter had a significant effect on judgment only when physiological rather than experiential antecedents were specified. Physiologically explained behavior was more likely to be characterized as "automatic," and willpower and character were less likely to be cited as relevant to the behavior. Physiological explanations of undesirable behavior may mitigate blame by inviting nonteleological causal attributions. Keywords: person perception, volition, moral attribution, responsibility
Food marketing is often singled out as the leading cause of the obesity epidemic. The present review examines current food marketing practices to determine how exactly they may be influencing food intake, and how food marketers could meet their business objectives while helping people eat healthier. Particular attention is paid to the insights provided by recently published studies in the areas of marketing and consumer research, and those insights are integrated with findings from studies in nutrition and related disciplines. The review begins with an examination of the multiple ways in which 1) food pricing strategies and 2) marketing communication (including branding and food claims) bias food consumption. It then describes the effects of newer and less conspicuous marketing actions, focusing on 3) packaging (including the effects of package design and package-based claims) and 4) the eating environment (including the availability, salience, and convenience of food). Throughout, this review underscores the promising opportunities that food manufacturers and retailers have to make profitable "win-win" adjustments to help consumers eat better.
People’s concept of free will is often assumed to be incompatible with the deterministic, scientific model of the universe.
Indeed, many scholars treat the folk concept of free will as assuming a special form of nondeterministic causation, possibly
the notion of uncaused causes. However, little work to date has directly probed individuals’ beliefs about what it means to
have free will. The present studies sought to reconstruct this folk concept of free will by asking people to define the concept
(Study 1) and by confronting them with a neuroscientific claim that free will is an illusion (Study 2), which invited them
to either reconcile or contrast free will with determinism. The results suggest that the core of people’s concept of free
will is a choice that fulfills one’s desires and is free from internal or external constraints. No evidence was found for metaphysical assumptions
about dualism or indeterminism.
Many philosophical problems are rooted in everyday thought, and experimental philosophy uses social scientific techniques to study the psychological underpinnings of such problems. In the case of free will, research suggests that people in a diverse range of cultures reject determinism, but people give conflicting responses on whether determinism would undermine moral responsibility. When presented with abstract questions, people tend to maintain that determinism would undermine responsibility, but when presented with concrete cases of wrongdoing, people tend to say that determinism is consistent with moral responsibility. It remains unclear why people reject determinism and what drives people's conflicted attitudes about responsibility. Experimental philosophy aims to address these issues and thereby illuminate the philosophical problem of free will.
We describe the development of FAD-Plus, a 27-item measure of lay beliefs in free will and 3 closely related constructs: scientific determinism, fatalistic determinism, and unpredictability. Previously published measures included only a subset of these variables and tended to assume an a priori pattern of relations among these 4 beliefs. In Study 1, exploratory factor analyses suggested relatively independent factors. This independence was sustained in Study 2, using a confirmatory analysis. Each of the 4 subscales (Free Will, Scientific Determinism, Fatalistic Determinism, and Unpredictability) showed acceptable internal consistencies. Study 2 also mapped out associations with the Big Five personality traits and showed that believing in free will is not synonymous with having an internal locus of control. Study 3 replicated the instrument's structure and subscale reliabilities in a community sample. Preliminary applications are described.
This paper examines three common explanations for human characteristics: genes, the environment, and choice. Based on data from a representative sample of White and Black Americans, respondents indicated how much they believed each factor influenced individual differences in athleticism, nurturance, drive, math ability, violence, intelligence, and sexual orientation. Results show that across traits: 1) Black respondents generally favor choice and reject genetic explanations, whereas White respondents indicate less causal consistency; 2) although a sizeable subset of respondents endorse just one factor, most report multiple factors as at least partly influential; and 3) among White respondents greater endorsement of genetic explanations is associated with less acceptance of choice and the environment, although among Black respondents a negative relationship holds only between genes and choice. The social relevance of these findings is discussed within the context of the attribution, essentialism and lay theory literature. The results underscore the need to consider more complex and nuanced issues than are implied by the simplistic, unidimensional character of the nature/nurture and determinism/free will debates - perennial controversies that have significance in the current genomic era.
Recent research consistently reports that persistent poverty has more detrimental effects on IQ, school achievement, and socioemotional functioning than transitory poverty, with children experiencing both types of poverty generally doing less well than never-poor children. Higher rates of perinatal complications, reduced access to resources that buffer the negative effects of perinatal complications, increased exposure to lead, and less home-based cognitive stimulation partly account for diminished cognitive functioning in poor children. These factors, along with lower teacher expectancies and poorer academic-readiness skills, also appear to contribute to lower levels of school achievement among poor children. The link between socioeconomic disadvantage and children's socioemotional functioning appears to be mediated partly by harsh, inconsistent parenting and elevated exposure to acute and chronic stressors. The implications of research findings for practice and policy are considered.
The experience of willing an act arises from interpreting one's thought as the cause of the act. Conscious will is thus experienced as a function of the priority, consistency, and exclusivity of the thought about the action. The thought must occur before the action, be consistent with the action, and not be accompanied by other causes. An experiment illustrating the role of priority found that people can arrive at the mistaken belief that they have intentionally caused an action that in fact they were forced to perform when they are simply led to think about the action just before its occurrence.
The "end of ideology" was declared by social scientists in the aftermath of World War II. They argued that (a) ordinary citizens' political attitudes lack the kind of stability, consistency, and constraint that ideology requires; (b) ideological constructs such as liberalism and conservatism lack motivational potency and behavioral significance; (c) there are no major differences in content (or substance) between liberal and conservative points of view; and (d) there are few important differences in psychological processes (or styles) that underlie liberal versus conservative orientations. The end-of-ideologists were so influential that researchers ignored the topic of ideology for many years. However, current political realities, recent data from the American National Election Studies, and results from an emerging psychological paradigm provide strong grounds for returning to the study of ideology. Studies reveal that there are indeed meaningful political and psychological differences that covary with ideological self-placement. Situational variables--including system threat and mortality salience--and dispositional variables--including openness and conscientiousness--affect the degree to which an individual is drawn to liberal versus conservative leaders, parties, and opinions. A psychological analysis is also useful for understanding the political divide between "red states" and "blue states."
The prevalence of obesity and its associated health problems have increased sharply in the past 2 decades. New revisions to Medicare policy will allow funding for obesity treatments of proven efficacy. The authors review studies of the long-term outcomes of calorie-restricting diets to assess whether dieting is an effective treatment for obesity. These studies show that one third to two thirds of dieters regain more weight than they lost on their diets, and these studies likely underestimate the extent to which dieting is counterproductive because of several methodological problems, all of which bias the studies toward showing successful weight loss maintenance. In addition, the studies do not provide consistent evidence that dieting results in significant health improvements, regardless of weight change. In sum, there is little support for the notion that diets lead to lasting weight loss or health benefits.
The feeling that we are agents, intentionally making things happen by our own actions, is foundational to our understanding of ourselves as humans. People's metacognitions of agency were investigated in 4 experiments. Participants played a game in which they tried to touch downward scrolling Xs and avoid touching Os. Variables that affected accuracy included speed of the scroll, density of the targets, and feedback. Of central interest were variables directed not only at accuracy but also at people's control: the turbulence of the cursor and how close the cursor had to come to the target for a hit (i.e., "magic"). After each trial, people made judgments of agency or judgments of performance. People were selectively sensitive to the variables to which they should be responsive in agency monitoring--whether the cursor moved in close synchrony to their movements and whether targets disappeared by magic. People knew, separably from their objective or judged performance, when they were in control and when they were not. These results indicate that people can sensitively monitor their own agency.
Food and Addiction: A Comprehensive Handbook brings scientific order to the issue of food and addiction, spanning multiple disciplines to create the foundation for what is a rapidly advancing field and to highlight needed advances in science and public policy. It assembles leading scientists and policy makers from fields such as nutrition, addiction, psychology, epidemiology, and public health to explore and analyze the scientific evidence for the addictive properties of food. It provides complete and comprehensive coverage of all subjects pertinent to food and addiction, from basic background information on topics such as food intake, metabolism, and environmental risk factors for obesity, to diagnostic criteria for food addiction, the evolutionary and developmental bases of eating addictions, and behavioral and pharmacologic interventions, to the clinical, public health, and legal and policy implications of recognizing the validity of food addiction. Each chapter reviews the available science and notes needed scientific advances in the field.
Both marketers and politicians are often accused of “manipulation†, but the term is far from self-defining. A statement or action can be said to be manipulative if it does not sufficiently engage or appeal to people’s capacity for reflective and deliberative choice. One problem with manipulation, thus understood, is that it fails to respect people’s autonomy and is an affront to their dignity. Another problem is that if they are products of manipulation, people’s choices might fail to promote their own welfare, and might instead promote the welfare of the manipulator. To that extent, the central objection to manipulation is rooted in a version of John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle: People know what is in their best interests and should have a (manipulationfree) opportunity to make that decision. On welfarist grounds, the norm against manipulation can be seen as a kind of heuristic, one that generally works well, but that can also lead to serious errors, at least when the manipulator is both informed and genuinely interested in the welfare of the chooser. For politics and law, a pervasive puzzle is why manipulation is rarely policed. The simplest answer is that manipulation has so many shades, and in a social order that values-free markets and consumer sovereignty, it is exceptionally difficult to regulate manipulation as such. Those who sell products are often engaged in at least arguable forms of manipulation. But as the manipulator’s motives become more self-interested or venal, and as efforts to bypass people’s deliberative capacities become more successful, the ethical objections to manipulation may be very forceful, and the argument for a legal response is fortified. The analysis of manipulation bears on emerging free speech issues raised by compelled disclosure, especially in the context of graphic health warnings. It can also help orient the regulation of financial products, where manipulation of consumer choices is an evident but rarely explicit concern.
In the United States, the difference in academic achievement between higher- and lower-income students (i.e., the income-achievement gap) is substantial and growing. In the research reported here, we investigated neuroanatomical correlates of this gap in adolescents (N = 58) in whom academic achievement was measured by statewide standardized testing. Cortical gray-matter volume was significantly greater in students from higher-income backgrounds (n = 35) than in students from lower-income backgrounds (n = 23), but cortical white-matter volume and total cortical surface area did not differ significantly between groups. Cortical thickness in all lobes of the brain was greater in students from higher-income than lower-income backgrounds. Greater cortical thickness, particularly in temporal and occipital lobes, was associated with better test performance. These results represent the first evidence that cortical thickness in higher- and lower-income students differs across broad swaths of the brain and that cortical thickness is related to scores on academic-achievement tests.
© The Author(s) 2015.
Neuroimaging has greatly enhanced the cognitive neuroscience understanding of the human brain and its variation across individuals (neurodiversity) in both health and disease. Such progress has not yet, however, propelled changes in educational or medical practices that improve people's lives. We review neuroimaging findings in which initial brain measures (neuromarkers) are correlated with or predict future education, learning, and performance in children and adults; criminality; health-related behaviors; and responses to pharmacological or behavioral treatments. Neuromarkers often provide better predictions (neuroprognosis), alone or in combination with other measures, than traditional behavioral measures. With further advances in study designs and analyses, neuromarkers may offer opportunities to personalize educational and clinical practices that lead to better outcomes for people.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
What happens to a society that believes people have no conscious control over their actions?
[opening paragraph] -- Clark: The ‘astonishing hypothesis’ which you put forward in your book, and which you obviously feel is very controversial, is that ‘You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are, in fact, no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: ‘You're nothing but a pack of neurons’.’ But it seems to me that this is not so astonishing a statement for a scientist to make. Isn't this what reductionist science has always believed?
The debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists depends in large part on what ordinary people mean by ‘free will’, a matter on which previous experimental philosophy studies have yielded conflicting results. In Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner (2005, 2006), most participants judged that agents in deterministic scenarios could have free will and be morally responsible. Nichols and Knobe (2007), though, suggest that these apparent compatibilist responses are performance errors produced by using concrete scenarios, and that their abstract scenarios reveal the folk theory of free will for what it actually is—incompatibilist. Here, we argue that the results of two new studies suggest just the opposite. Most participants only give apparent incompatibilist judgments when they mistakenly interpret determinism to imply that agents’ mental states are bypassed in the causal chains that lead to their behavior. Determinism does not entail bypassing, so these responses do not reflect genuine incompatibilist intuitions. When participants understand what determinism does mean, the vast majority take it to be compatible with free will. Further results indicate that most people’s concepts of choice and the ability to do otherwise do not commit them to incompatibilism, either, putting pressure on incompatibilist arguments that rely on transfer principles, such as the Consequence Argument. We discuss the implications of these findings for philosophical debates about free will, and suggest that incompatibilism appears to be either false, or else a thesis about something other than what most people mean by ‘free will’.
What draws us into addictive relationships with food? David Kessler examines animal and human studies and collects his own information on modern food science and the marketing of processed food to come up with suggestions about how to deal with our national compulsion to overeat. The obvious answer, one that anyone with the problem would be able to identify, is that foods that combine sugar, fat and salt just right are "highly palatable", and the vulnerable among us will eat them in spite of the known consequences of doing so to excess. How addictive are they? Animal experiments on the addictive nature of fat and sugar showed that the animals were willing to work almost as hard for fat and sugar combined as for cocaine. At the level of the physical body, salt, fat, and sugar pull us to eat them for reasons related to evolutionary pressures that formed our tastes. (We were rewarded with good mood chemistry when we ate essential things that were short in supply: salt, fat, sugar.) Now, our culture is loaded with "reinforcers" – circumstances of the environment that invite us to overeat: Reinforcers (Invitations to Overeat) * Location is a big one. Drive past your favorite fast food place and see what happens to how you feel. * Novelty. Appetite is taste-specific (Think of the full child who has room for dessert.) Invites us to overeat because the brain chemicals of reward attached to one food are different from those connected to another. So you could, for example, habituate to and lose your appetite for salty peanuts but be stimulated to eat again if chocolate appears. * Primer: Betcha can't eat just one (having some leads to more).
The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes
cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances
and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive
function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest,
when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition,
or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account
for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that
this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously
unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for poverty policy.
A poll intended to study evolutionists' views of religion is presented. Detailed questionnaire on evolution and religion were sent to 271 professional evolutionary scientists and an interview was conducted from the sample group on the relation between modern evolutionary biology and religion. The most revealing question is choosing the letter that most closely represented where his/her views are included. Majority of the evolutionists polled A with 78% while no scientist chose pure deism. On the relation, between evolution and religion, most respondents said that religion is a social phenomenon that has developed with the biological evolution of Homo Sapiens - therefore religion should be considered as a part of our biological heritage, and its tenets should be seen as a labile social adaptation, subject to change and interpretation. Meanwhile, free will was not mentioned in the interview because there is conflation free will with choice. Every year, 90% or more favor the idea of human free will for the reason that if people make choices, they have free will.
This paper relies on experimental methods to explore the psychological underpinnings of folk intuitions about free will and responsibility. In different conditions, people give conflicting responses about agency and responsibility. In some contexts, people treat agency as indeterminist; in other contexts, they treat agency as determinist. Furthermore, in some contexts people treat responsibility as incompatible with determinism, and in other contexts people treat responsibility as compatible with determinism. The paper considers possible accounts of the psychological mechanisms that underlie these conflicting responses.
Research in consumer behavior points to a relationship between self-regulation and buying behavior. This chapter addresses how three types of buying behaviors--self-gifting, impulse buying and compulsive buying--result from self-regulatory efforts or failures. Existing literature on self-gifting suggests that it can serve to reward self-control efforts as well as be an outcome of self-regulatory failure. Impulsive and compulsive buying most often result from failed efforts at self-control. Impulse buying is often the result of a single violation stemming from underregulation caused by resource depletion. Compulsive buying, conversely, is best be described as chronic inability to self-regulate resulting from misregulation due to conflicting goals and ineffective monitoring. Findings regarding compulsive buying closely match expectations derived from escape theory. This chapter suggests that future research on self-regulation and consumption can serve to further our knowledge regarding both disciplines. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Baumeister, Sparks, Stillman, and Vohs (2007) sketch a theory of free will as the human ability to exert self-control. Self-control can produce goal-directed behavior, which free will conceptualized as random behavior cannot. We question whether consumer psychology can shed light on the ontological question of whether free will exists. We suggest that it is more fruitful for consumer psychology to examine consumers' belief in free will. Specifically, we propose that this belief arises from consumers' phenomenological experience of exercising self-control in the face of moral or intertemporal conflicts of will. Based on extant literature in philosophy, psychology, and economics, we offer both a narrower conceptualization of the nature of self-control problems and a more general conceptualization of self-control strategies, involving not only willpower but also precommitment. We conclude with a discussion of the consequences of consumers' belief in free will.
What are the folk-conceptual connections between free will and consciousness? In this paper I present results which indicate that consciousness plays central roles in folk conceptions of free will. When conscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent acted freely. And when unconscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent did not act freely. Further, these studies contribute to recent experimental work on folk philosophical affiliation, which analyzes folk responses to determine whether folk views are consistent with the view that free will and determinism are incompatible (incompatibilism) or with the opposite view (compatibilism). Conscious causation of behavior tends to elicit pro-free will judgments, even when the causation takes place deterministically. Thus, when controlling for consciousness, many folk seem to be compatibilists. However, participants who disagree with the deterministic or cognitive scientific descriptions given of human behavior tend to give incompatibilist responses.
Four experiments identify a tendency for people to believe that their own lives are more guided by the tenets of free will than are the lives of their peers. These tenets involve the a priori unpredictability of personal action, the presence of multiple possible paths in a person's future, and the causal power of one's personal desires and intentions in guiding one's actions. In experiment 1, participants viewed their own pasts and futures as less predictable a priori than those of their peers. In experiments 2 and 3, participants thought there were more possible paths (whether good or bad) in their own futures than their peers' futures. In experiment 4, participants viewed their own future behavior, compared with that of their peers, as uniquely driven by intentions and desires (rather than personality, random features of the situation, or history). Implications for the classic actor-observer bias, for debates about free will, and for perceptions of personal responsibility are discussed.
Responsibility acts as a psychological adhesive that connects an actor to an event and to relevant prescriptions that should govern conduct. People are held responsible to the extent that (a) a clear, well-defined set of prescriptions is applicable to an event (prescription-event link); (b) the actor is perceived to be bound by the prescriptions by virtue of his or her identity (prescription-identity link); and (c) the actor is connected to the event, especially by virtue of appearing to have personal control over it (identity-event link). Studies supported the model, showing that attributions of responsibility are a direct function of the combined strengths of the 3 linkages (Study 1) and that, when judging responsibility, people seek out information that is relevant to the linkages (Study 2). The model clarifies prior multiple meanings of responsibility and provides a coherent framework for understanding social judgment.
The rapidly growing field of cognitive neuroscience holds the promise of explaining the operations of the mind in terms of the physical operations of the brain. Some suggest that our emerging understanding of the physical causes of human (mis)behaviour will have a transformative effect on the law. Others argue that new neuroscience will provide only new details and that existing legal doctrine can accommodate whatever new information neuroscience will provide. We argue that neuroscience will probably have a transformative effect on the law, despite the fact that existing legal doctrine can, in principle, accommodate whatever neuroscience will tell us. New neuroscience will change the law, not by undermining its current assumptions, but by transforming people's moral intuitions about free will and responsibility. This change in moral outlook will result not from the discovery of crucial new facts or clever new arguments, but from a new appreciation of old arguments, bolstered by vivid new illustrations provided by cognitive neuroscience. We foresee, and recommend, a shift away from punishment aimed at retribution in favour of a more progressive, consequentialist approach to the criminal law.