Ambiguous Actions Research Articles

Online Intervention Reduces Hostile Attribution Bias, Anger, Aggressive Driving, and Cyber-Aggression, Results of Two Randomized Trials

Anger and aggression often result from attributing hostile intent to the ambiguous actions of other people. Two online double-blind parallel randomized pilot studies with healthy adult volunteers tested a novel online cognitive intervention called Hostile Bias Modification Training (HBMT). We hypothesized HBMT would reduce hostile attribution bias, anger, and aggression. In study one, 180 volunteers were randomized to one of three versions of HBMT (active, alternative, and placebo). In study two, 217 volunteers were randomized to either active or placebo HBMT and returned 24–96 h later to complete measures of hostile attribution bias, anger, and aggression. In study one, volunteers who completed active HBMT (vs. placebo) subsequently interpreted hypothetical vignettes as significantly less hostile (d = 0.64, p = .006) and reported significantly less imagined anger (d = 0.51, p = .006) and aggression (d = 0.73, p < .001). In study two, active HBMT (vs. placebo) was associated with reduced hostile attribution bias ( $${\upeta }_{p}^{2}$$ = .089, p < .001), less aggressive driving ( $${\upeta }_{p}^{2}$$ = .039, p = .027), and lower likelihood of cyber-aggression (OR 0.56, p = .004) 24–96 h after intervention. These results suggest HBMT may be an easily implemented intervention to improve anger-related outcomes. No harms to volunteers were observed. This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04015440 on July 11 2019.

Negative Attribution Bias and Related Risk Factors After Brain Injury.

In participants with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and peer controls, examine (1) differences in negative attributions (interpret ambiguous behaviors negatively); (2) cognitive and emotional factors associated with negative attributions; and (3) negative attribution associations with anger responses, life satisfaction, and participation. Two TBI outpatient rehabilitation centers. Participants with complicated mild to severe TBI (n = 105) and peer controls (n = 105). Cross-sectional survey study. Hypothetical scenarios describing ambiguous behaviors were used to assess situational anger and attributions of intent, hostility, and blame. Executive functioning, perspective taking, emotion perception and social inference, alexithymia, aggression, anxiety, depression, participation, and life satisfaction were also assessed. Compared with peer controls, participants with TBI rated behaviors significantly more intentional, hostile, and blameworthy. Regression models explained a significant amount of attribution variance (25%-43%). Aggression was a significant predictor in all models; social inference was also a significant predictor of intent and hostility attributions. Negative attributions were associated with anger responses and lower life satisfaction. People with TBI who have higher trait aggression and poor social inferencing skills may be prone to negative interpretations of people's ambiguous actions. Negative attributions and social inferencing skills should be considered when treating anger problems after TBI.

The Ethics of Maximizing or Satisficing

This study explores the relationship between decision-making styles and moral judgements to understand how maximizers and satisficers differ in their analysis of ethical dilemmas. It also explores the linkage between decision-making styles and the moral reasoning perspectives of absolutism and relativism, investigating if ethical ideologies play a mediating role in how maximizers and satisficers evaluate ethical situations. In order to test these relationships, data is collected from a sample of 187 upper level business students. Results indicate that maximizers are significantly more likely than satisficers to judge ethically ambiguous actions as immoral. Underlying this effect, maximizers (vs. satisficers) have a more idealistic ethical ideology.

ANALYSIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP ON THE UKRAINIAN MARKET OF MILK AND MILK PRODUCTS

The research presents relevance and timeliness of the analysis concerning the development of business partnership on the market of milk and milk products of Ukraine. The process of milk production has historically been established in Ukraine and has a significant competitive advantage in a broad range of market or industry segments. The market of milk and milk products is a part of the agro-industrial sector, which is characterized by the lack of a development strategy and ambiguous actions in terms of the land market. In 2018, Ukraine ranks 18th position in the world concerning the volume of milk production. Meanwhile, according to the opinion of the World Bank experts, Ukraine could become one of TOP-10 world producers of milk and milk products due to the available resources, potential and in case of the constant development. Despite this, in 2019, the Ukrainian market of milk and milk products shows a negative trend. The article focuses on studying the development of business partnership in the market of milk and milk products of Ukraine, which enable to define the prospects of its improvement. The scientific significance of the research is presented by systematization of the scientific approaches to the development of business partnership in the market of milk and milk products, as well as the practical views of experts on the state support of agriculture, especially animal husbandry. Results of the study enable to point out that development of the business partnership could be realised in the case of timely and complete using of the state funds in the reporting year, as well as the implementation of new programs of the state support for the Ukrainian agriculture sector aimed at providing the production capacity of the market of milk and milk products. The practical value of the research is presented by comprehensive analysis of the development of business partnership in the market of milk and milk products considering the features of the development of agriculture, in particular animal husbandry, the process industries and the state of the consumer market. The author points out that only in case of the joint efforts of the state, producers and processors, as full-fledged business partners, the Ukrainian market of milk and milk products can become a basis for profitable business development both on the domestic, European and other markets in the long run perspective. In the scope of this, it is necessary to overcome the problems related to the shortage of raw material and insufficient state control in the field of compliance with the quality and safety requirements of products. The milk production mostly by domestic households causes seasonal variations in its volume. This complicates the possibility to forecast the production volumes and, consequently, leads to the shortage of raw material of enterprises. It could be also observed a quite difficult approach to the possibilities of stimulating the development of such a market and state control over the quality of milk. Meanwhile, integration with the European Union and the World Trade Organization requires that companies should comply with relevant international standards. Keywords : analysis, business partnership, development, milk, milk products, milk quality, market, trends.

Promiscuous condemnation: People assume ambiguous actions are immoral

Do people view others as good or evil? Although people generally cooperate with others and view others' “true selves” as intrinsically good, we suggest that they are likely to assume that the actions of others are evil—at least when they are ambiguous. Nine experiments provide support for promiscuous condemnation: the general tendency to assume that ambiguous actions are immoral. Both cognitive and functional arguments support the idea of promiscuous condemnation. Cognitively, dyadic completion suggests that when the mind perceives some elements of immorality (or harm), it cannot help but perceive other elements of immorality. Functionally, assuming that ambiguous actions are immoral helps people quickly identify potential harm and provide aid to others. In the first seven experiments, participants often judged neutral nonsense actions (e.g., “John pelled”) as immoral, especially when the context surrounding these nonsense actions included elements of immorality (e.g., intentionality and suffering). In the last two experiments, participants showed greater promiscuous condemnation under time pressure, suggesting an automatic tendency to assume immorality that people must effortfully control.

Hierarchical Posture Representation for Robust Action Recognition

By modeling an action as the evolution of postures, Posture-based recognition algorithms possess interpretative patterns. However, there are two limitations resulted from individual diversity. First, the same action can be performed by different organs. Such actions are denoted as ambiguous actions. Second, the postures of the same action can be badly influenced by personal characteristics (e.g., personal habits and the height). In order to tackle the problems above, we propose a hierarchical posture representation (HPR). A posture is composed of several skeletal points. Each skeletal point can perform a unique operation and provide a certain amount of information. Thus, an action can be recognized based on the relationships and the information contribution levels of all skeletal points. In HPR, each skeletal point is first represented by its interaction features with other skeletal points. The interaction features are independent of the type of posture. Then, the information contribution level of each skeletal point is estimated based on its interaction features. An end-to-end adaptive action recognition network (AARN) is proposed to accomplish the three processes (estimating the information contribution level, mining the relationships among skeletal points, and recognizing actions). The proposed algorithm shows promising accuracy on two databases. Our work does not only solve the problem above but also introduce a novel action modeling method.

Modulation of the formation of active forms of nitrogen by ingredients of plant products in the inhibition of carcinogenesis

The review analyzes literature data and the results of our own research on the role of reactive nitrogen species (NO, NO 2 , N 2 O 3 ) in the initiation and progression of tumors. The possibility of modulating the activity of inducible NO synthase by the biologically active components of plant products and their effect on carcinogenesis is analyzed. Possible mechanisms of the ambiguous action of NO and its metabolic products in the mechanisms of carcinogenesis are discussed. The generalization and analysis of these data allowed us to formulate some principles for the use of substances that modulate the activity of inducible NO synthase and affect the formation of NO and its metabolic products in inhibiting carcinogenesis.

Black Wax(ing): On Gil Scott-Heron and the Walking Interlude

Black Wax(ing): On Gil Scott-Heron and the Walking Interlude

IRON: Reliable domain specific language for programming IoT devices

A domain-specific language (DSL) is a programming language that is specialized to a particular application domain. IRON is a DSL for the IoT domain which allows not only to program in an easy way using the Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules but also to prevent incorrect actions. In this paper, we formally describe the semantics of IRON.The anomalies that IRON prevents are: (i) the presence of cycles that determine the non-termination, (ii) the ambiguous actions that do not allow the definition of a final configuration, (iii) the breaking of invariances. In addition to the formal description of IRON, an interpreter was created in a host language (LUA) that captures and manages the three anomalies. This provides a general scheme for the implementation of languages based on ECA rules.

Experimentally induced social threat increases paranoid thinking.

The ability to attribute intentions to others is a hallmark of human social cognition but is altered in paranoia. Paranoia is the most common positive symptom of psychosis but is also present to varying degrees in the general population. Epidemiological models suggest that psychosis risk is associated with low social rank and minority status, but the causal effects of status and group affiliation on paranoid thinking remain unclear. We examined whether relative social status and perceived group affiliation, respectively, affect live paranoid thinking using two large-N (N = 2030), pre-registered experiments. Interacting with someone from a higher social rank or a political out-group led to an increase in paranoid attributions of harmful intent for ambiguous actions. Pre-existing paranoia predicted a general increase in harmful intent attribution, but there was no interaction with either type of social threat: highly paranoid people showed the same magnitude of increase as non-paranoid people, although from a higher baseline. We conclude social threat in the form of low social status and out-group status affects paranoid attributions, but ongoing paranoia represents a lowered threshold for detecting social threat rather than an impaired reactivity to it.

It wasn't me: The role of perspective in self-perceptions of responsibility.

Perceiving oneself as agentic is dependent upon the integration of conscious intention, a corresponding outcome, and body-congruent sensorimotor information. Altering these critical cues, such as the vantage point from which an event is viewed, can have a notable impact on one's sense of agency, including an increased sense of ownership over another person's actions or a reduced sense of responsibility (or control) over one's own actions. In three studies, we investigated whether mentally simulated and written perspectives could have similar effects. Participants were asked to consider ambiguous actions from either a first-person or a third-person perspective. Results revealed that third-person perspectives reduced judgments of personal responsibility for positive and negative actions. Perceptions of personal action execution as well as the perceived overlap between one's real and imagined self were identified as mediators of the reduced sense of responsibility that characterized negative, but not positive, events constructed from a third-person perspective.

28. The Nose Knows: A Sensual Analysis of Paradise Lost and His Dark Materials

Both John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Philip Pullman’s retelling of the story, His Dark Materials, use scent imagery in descriptions of morally significant characters. But what is the significance of the consistent scent imagery? Hans J. Rindisbacher’s theory in The Smell of Books: A Cultural-Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature (1992) states that scent imagery, in literature pertaining to Christian symbolism, indicates a dichotomy of morality. This theory is modified to illustrate that scent is used to signify a character’s condition of knowledge. The presence of good scent in Paradise Lost indicates that a character possesses pure knowledge of good and evil, the presence of bad scent indicates a character’s corrupt condition of knowledge of good and evil. Alternatively, the presence of good scent in His Dark Materials signifies that a character possesses pure self-knowledge, whereas the presence of bad scent indicates the corruption of a character’s self-knowledge. Furthermore, the attribution of neutral scent or lack of scent imagery to morally significant characters, such as Satan and Mrs. Coulter, signifies the morally ambiguous actions which make these characters difficult to define as virtuous or evil. The analysis of the scent imagery in Paradise Lost and His Dark Materials demonstrates the significance of scent theory in the research and analysis of literature, as a possible method of evaluating a character’s moral status.

Individual differences in the intentionality bias and its association with cognitive empathy

Previous research indicates that we tend to over-attribute intention when interpreting the actions of others. This ‘intentionality bias’ is explained by a dual-process model of intention attribution (Rosset, 2008). However, it is currently unclear whether individual differences exist in the intentionality bias, and specifically whether cognitive and/or affective empathy skills are associated with hyper-intentionality. In the current study, we adopted Rosset's (2008) ambiguous sentence paradigm to test whether individual differences in the intentionality bias are associated with self-reported perspective taking, online simulation, emotion contagion, proximal responsivity and peripheral responsivity. Regression analyses revealed that cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy, significantly predicted the proportion of intentional judgements when participants were asked to interpret ambiguous sentences that were prototypically accidental. Moreover, greater perspective taking skills predicted a higher proportion of intentional over accidental judgements of ambiguous actions. The implications of these findings for understanding prosocial behaviour and ‘shared intentionality’ among humans are discussed.

Exploring the boundaries of research ethics: Perceptions of ethics and ethical behaviors in applied linguistics research

Research ethics are a cornerstone of modern data collection, yet training in various areas of research ethics are often lacking in Applied Linguistics. This article explores the reactions that members of the field have towards scenarios in which the ethicality of action cannot be easily identified as right or wrong. Survey respondents read 10 scenarios in which actors completed ethical ambiguous action and then rate them for 1) level of ethicality, 2) frequency of similar issues, and 3) how frequent the respondent believed researchers faced similar issues. Results indicated that situations involving materials covered during ethical review training were rated as being less ethical compared to items that revolved around issues of academic integrity. Counter intuitively, more experienced researchers rated scenarios as being intrinsically more ethical, indicating that time spent in the field might result in a more lax view of ethics. Finally, participants relied heavily on ethical review board requirements as their guide to making decisions about what is ethical and what is not. Taken together, these data indicate that more discussion in research ethics is needed for the field, especially with elements of academic integrity and ethically gray areas.

Flirting: A Designedly Ambiguous Action?

ABSTRACTFlirting is typically regarded as an ambiguous social action, which, in the absence of members’ orientations, is subject to multiple interpretations and hard to pin down analytically. This article demonstrates a methodological technique for identifying the interactional practices that constitute vehicles for “possible flirting” by examining instances that contain (a) “endogenous” orientations to flirting, (b) orientations to flirting that are “exogenous” and post hoc, and (c) no orientations. Analyses suggest that flirting practices are often not ambiguous to members and involve the flirting party claiming epistemic rights to greater familiarity or intimacy with the flirt recipient than the interactional context, or the status of the speakers, might otherwise make procedurally relevant. Data are in British English.

EXPERIENCE AND STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS OF UKRAINE'S CO-OPERATION WITH THE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE FUND

Introduction. The article deals with theoretical and practical views on the peculiarities of the activities of the International Monetary Fund, in particular the provision of loans to developing countries. The domestic experience of cooperation with the IMF is analyzed. The main problems and threats for the national economy are outlined. Purpose. The aim of the article is to study international and domestic experience of cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, as well as to develop proposals for the formulation of strategic guidelines for the development of Ukraine in the context of studying expediency of interaction with the Fund. Method (methodology). Methods of empirical and retrospective analysis of the activities of the International Monetary Fund in lending to developing countries and Ukraine; methods of analogy and comparison when studying the problem aspects of cooperation between Ukraine and the IMF; statistical methods for analyzing the dynamics of indices of the domestic currency market; a systematic approach to substantiating strategic guidelines for the development of the domestic economy without the support of the IMF have been used in this research. Results. The main ambiguous actions of the International Monetary Fund concerning the developing countries have been analyzed. The main aspects of cooperation between the IMF and Ukraine have been studied. On their basis the threatening requirements of the IMF programs for the national economy have been singled out. The proposals on the expediency of restricting cooperation have been substantiated. We have worked out the recommendations as for the formation of strategic guidelines for the development of the domestic economy at the expense of internal resources and opportunities without the support of the IMF.

Visual adaptation enhances action sound discrimination

Prolonged exposure, or adaptation, to a stimulus in 1 modality can bias, but also enhance, perception of a subsequent stimulus presented within the same modality. However, recent research has also found that adaptation in 1 modality can bias perception in another modality. Here, we show a novel crossmodal adaptation effect, where adaptation to a visual stimulus enhances subsequent auditory perception. We found that when compared to no adaptation, prior adaptation to visual, auditory, or audiovisual hand actions enhanced discrimination between 2 subsequently presented hand action sounds. Discrimination was most enhanced when the visual action “matched” the auditory action. In addition, prior adaptation to a visual, auditory, or audiovisual action caused subsequent ambiguous action sounds to be perceived as less like the adaptor. In contrast, these crossmodal action aftereffects were not generated by adaptation to the names of actions. Enhanced crossmodal discrimination and crossmodal perceptual aftereffects may result from separate mechanisms operating in audiovisual action sensitive neurons within perceptual systems. Adaptation-induced crossmodal enhancements cannot be explained by postperceptual responses or decisions. More generally, these results together indicate that adaptation is a ubiquitous mechanism for optimizing perceptual processing of multisensory stimuli.

. (Age Policy. Analysis of Generational Stratification of Russian Society)

Russian Abstract: В данной работе проводится анализ ключевых характеристик социального статуса пожилых людей в России. Ситуация межпоколенческих контактов в ряде случаев изначально оказывается потенциально-конфликтной: для молодежи характерны настороженно-безразличные аттитюды по отношению к пожилым людям. Негативные ожидания каждой из сторон помогают истолковывать всякие неоднозначные действия другого как потенциально конфликтные, что обостряет ситуацию, не оставляя место тому, что можно было бы описать как «нейтральное поведение». Ограниченность в средствах представителей третьего возраста способствует возникновению особых поведенческих практик, дающих тактическое преимущество, но потенциально способных понизить статус пожилого человека и способствовать закреплению негативных стереотипов о старости.English Abstract: In this paper, an analysis of the key characteristics of the social status of the elderly in Russia was made.The situation of intergenerational contacts in a number of cases initially is potentially a conflict: youth is characterized by cautious, indifferent attitudes towards older people. Negative expectations of each party to help interpret any ambiguous actions of the other as a potential conflict, which exacerbates the situation, leaving no place that could be described as neutral behavior. Restrictions on the media representatives of the third age contributes to a specific behavioral practices that give a tactical advantage, but the potential to lower the status of the elderly person and help to perpetuate negative stereotypes about old age.

Neural adaptation in pSTS correlates with perceptual aftereffects to biological motion and with autistic traits

The adaptive nature of biological motion perception has been documented in behavioral studies, with research showing that prolonged viewing of an action can bias judgments of subsequent actions towards the opposite of its attributes. However, the neural mechanisms underlying action adaptation aftereffects remain unknown. We examined adaptation-induced changes in brain responses to an ambiguous action after adapting to walking or running actions within two bilateral regions of interest: 1) human middle temporal area (hMT+), a lower-level motion-sensitive region of cortex, and 2) posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), a higher-level action-selective area. We found a significant correlation between neural adaptation strength in right pSTS and perceptual aftereffects to biological motion measured behaviorally, but not in hMT+. The magnitude of neural adaptation in right pSTS was also strongly correlated with individual differences in the degree of autistic traits. Participants with more autistic traits exhibited less adaptation-induced modulations of brain responses in right pSTS and correspondingly weaker perceptual aftereffects. These results suggest a direct link between perceptual aftereffects and adaptation of neural populations in right pSTS after prolonged viewing of a biological motion stimulus, and highlight the potential importance of this brain region for understanding differences in social-cognitive processing along the autistic spectrum.

Violent media and hostile appraisals: A meta-analytic review.

Hostile people tend to view the world as a hostile place. Although there are individual differences in hostile world-views, situational factors can also play a role. For example, scenes of violence in the mass media might influence people to view the world as a hostile place. This meta-analysis aggregates, for the first time, all studies that have investigated the link between exposure to violent media and hostile appraisals (e.g., perceiving the ambiguous actions by others as aggressive actions). This meta-analysis included 37 independent studies involving 10,410 participants. The results showed a "small" to "moderate" sized average correlation between exposure to violent media and hostile appraisals (r+ = .20, 95%CI = .14, .26). Significant correlations were found in experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal studies, indicating a triangulation of evidence. Effects were not correlated with participant gender. Effects were also stable over time. However, the link between exposure to violent media and hostile appraisals was positively related to age, perhaps because violent media can have cumulative effects over time. There was no evidence of publication bias. The findings from this meta-analysis are consistent with the General Aggression Model (e.g., Anderson, & Bushman, 2002; Annual Review of Psychology 53:27-51). These results compliment those from previous meta-analyses showing that violent media can increase aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal, and aggressive behavior. These findings also have practical significance, because people who view the world in a hostile manner are more likely to behave aggressively themselves. Aggr. Behav. 42:605-613, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.