Brunswik's Lens Model Research Articles

‘LinkedIn, LinkedIn on the screen, who is the greatest and smartest ever seen?’: A machine learning approach using valid LinkedIn cues to predict narcissism and intelligence

AbstractRecruiters routinely use LinkedIn profiles to infer applicants' individual traits like narcissism and intelligence, two key traits in online network and organizational contexts. However, little is known about LinkedIn profiles' predictive potential to accurately infer individual traits. According to Brunswik's lens model, accurate trait inferences depend on (a) the presence of valid cues in LinkedIn profiles containing information about users' individual traits and (b) the sensitive and consistent utilization of valid cues. We assessed narcissism (self‐report) and intelligence (aptitude tests) in a sample of 406 LinkedIn users along with 64 LinkedIn cues (coded by three trained coders) that we derived from trait theory and previous empirical findings. We used a transparent, easy‐to‐interpret machine learning algorithm leveraging practical application potentials (elastic net) and applied state‐of‐the‐art resampling techniques (nested cross‐validation) to ensure robust results. Thereby, we uncover LinkedIn profiles' predictive potential: (a) LinkedIn profiles contain valid information about narcissism (e.g. uploading a background picture) and intelligence (e.g. listing many accomplishments), and (b) the elastic nets sensitively and consistently using these valid cues attain prediction accuracy (r = .35/.41 for narcissism/intelligence). The results have practical implications for improving recruiters' accuracy and foreshadow potentials and limitations of automated LinkedIn‐based assessments for selection purposes.

Making residential green space exposure evaluation more accurate: A composite assessment framework that integrates objective and subjective indicators

Traditional satellite or land use-derived indicators for assessing residential green space (RGS) exposure have limitations in predicting health benefits, owing to the individual differences in the absorption of ‘real’ green exposure. This study developed a novel framework, Greenspace Exposure Composite Indices (GCIs), that modifies objective RGS metrics by including residents’ subjective factors. First, three RGS objective indicators were established based on 3D point clouds: the overall green exposure index(GEI), floor-level green exposure index(FGEI), and activity-site green exposure index(AGEI). The individual factors (i.e. perception, emotion, and behaviour towards RGS) are then weighted to these objective indicators to obtain modified GCIs through the Brunswikian lens model. We also used this novel framework to examine the effects of the RGS indicators on environmental satisfaction based on a case study including 1594 participants in Nanjing, China. The Random Forest Model was used to examine the associations between GCIs and environmental satisfaction, and the results showed that GCIs had a higher explanatory degree of environmental satisfaction than traditional objective ones. Our findings demonstrated that incorporating subjective indicators to optimise objective RGS indicators could offer advantages in predicting environmental satisfaction. This framework is also applicable for predicting the potential effects of RGS exposure on other health-related outcomes.

The Brunswik Lens Model: a theoretical framework for advancing understanding of deceptive communication in autism.

Due to differences in social communication and cognitive functioning, autistic adults may have greater difficulty engaging in and detecting deception compared to neurotypical adults. Consequently, autistic adults may experience strained social relationships or face increased risk of victimization. It is therefore crucial that research investigates the psychological mechanisms that are responsible for autistic adults' difficulties in the deception process in order to inform interventions required to reduce risk. However, weaknesses of extant research exploring deception in autism include a heavy focus on children and limited theoretical exploration of underlying psychological mechanisms. To address these weaknesses, this review aims to introduce a system-level theoretical framework to the study of deception in autistic adulthood: The Brunswik Lens Model of Deception. Here, we provide a comprehensive account of how autism may influence all processes involved in deception, including: Choosing to Lie (1), Producing Deception Cues (2), Perceiving Deception Cues (3), and Making the Veracity Decision (4). This review also offers evidence-based, theoretical predictions and testable hypotheses concerning how autistic and neurotypical adults' behavior may differ at each stage in the deception process. The call to organize future research in relation to a joint theoretical perspective will encourage the field to make substantive, theoretically motivated progress toward the development of a comprehensive model of deception in autistic adulthood. Moreover, the utilization of the Brunswik Lens Model of Deception in future autism research may assist in the development of interventions to help protect autistic adults against manipulation and victimization.

Roles of Phonation Types and Decoders' Gender in Recognizing Mandarin Emotional Speech.

Capturing phonation types such as breathy, modal, and pressed voices precisely can facilitate the recognition of human emotions. However, little is known about how exactly phonation types and decoders' gender influence the perception of emotional speech. Based on the modified Brunswikian lens model, this article aims to examine the roles of phonation types and decoders' gender in Mandarin emotional speech recognition by virtue of articulatory speech synthesis. Fifty-five participants (28 male and 27 female) completed a recognition task of Mandarin emotional speech, with 200 stimuli representing five emotional categories (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, and neutrality) and five types (original, copied, breathy, modal, and pressed). Repeated-measures analyses of variance were performed to analyze recognition accuracy and confusion data. For male and female decoders, the recognition accuracy of anger from pressed stimuli and fear from breathy stimuli was high; across all phonation-type stimuli, the recognition accuracy of sadness was also high, but that of happiness was low. The confusion data revealed that in recognizing fear from all phonation-type stimuli, female decoders chose fear responses more frequently and neutral responses less frequently than male decoders. In recognizing neutrality from breathy stimuli, female decoders significantly reduced their choice of neutral responses and misidentified neutrality as anger, while male decoders mistook neutrality from pressed stimuli for anger. This study revealed that, in Mandarin, phonation types play crucial roles in recognizing anger, fear, and neutrality, while the recognition of sadness and happiness seems not to depend heavily on phonation types. Moreover, the decoders' gender affects their recognition of neutrality and fear. These findings support the modified Brunswikian lens model and have significance for diagnosis and intervention among clinical populations with hearing impairment or gender-related psychiatric disorders. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24302221.

Perceived conscientiousness and openness to experience mediate the relationship between vocal and visual features and hiring decision in the interview

This study used the theory of dispositional attribution and an adapted version of Brunswik's lens model to examine whether the relationship between vocal and visual cues and hiring recommendation is mediated by raters' judgments of speakers' personality traits. The results of mediation analyses suggest that for most of the vocal and visual cues examined, perceptions of interviewees' conscientiousness and openness to experience mediated the relationship between cues and interview performance. This suggests that the vocal and visual cues an interviewee displays convey important information about his or her personality traits to an interviewer.

A Multivariate Analysis of the Links between Transport Noncompliance and Financial Uncertainty in Times of COVID-19 Pandemics and War

Sanctions should improve business compliance and mitigate the risks of non-conformity. This premise motivated our research and led to very interesting results for the trinomen business performance—transport infrastructure and local development strategies—public control. We used a customized Brunswik lens model to illustrate the decision-making process based on the interactions between the analysis of sanctions in the transport sector and the projected financial judgement, as we have traditionally understood and experienced them. We clustered 186,671 cases of noncompliance sanctioned by the Romanian authorities and created a chromatic map with accents on the risks of nonconformities. We employed principal component analysis to find patterns and correlations between faulty behavior in transport activities and the evolution of financial indicators, such as exports and imports. The ROC curve was used to investigate the credibility of a possible connection between transport sanctions and the development of regional exports and imports. We found multiple challenges that interfere with the projection of a trustworthy financial judgement in transport and offer insights and recommendations for integrated local governance practices and strategies aimed at mitigating the risks of noncompliance and promoting sustainable development in transport.

The Relationship Between Body Morphology and Narcissism at Zero Acquaintance

Narcissistic people are exceedingly successful in conveying positive first impressions to their social surrounding, yet, they appear to be the driving force behind unfavorable long-term social and romantic relationships. Hence, a quick identification of narcissistic people may be of adaptive value for their social partners. Narcissism perception research, however, is lacking evidence on human body morphology. In this study, N = 110 raters evaluated natural 3D body scans of unacquainted N = 307 target participants (152 men and 155 women) regarding narcissistic admiration and rivalry. Based on the Brunswikian lens model, multiple regression models revealed that bodily attractiveness (β = .54, 95% CI = [0.41; 0.66]), BMI (β = .32, 95% CI = [0.13; 0.51]), shoulder-to-hip ratio (β = .33, 95% CI = [0.20; 0.47]) and physical strength (β = .23, 95% CI = [0.07; 0.39]) were utilized in judging narcissistic admiration and rivalry. Shoulder-hip ratio showed small relationships with self-reported narcissistic admiration (β = .21, 95% CI = [0.03; 0.38]) and rivalry (β = .23, 95% CI = [0.07; 0.39]) that were not robust across all analyses. Correlations between self-reported and judged narcissism showed a significant positive association for narcissistic admiration (r = .17, 95% CI = [0.06; 0.28]). Results indicate a perceptual bias when judging narcissism, as perceivers used body cues to draw inferences about target’s levels of narcissism that were not significantly related to self-reported narcissistic admiration and rivalry (and can thus be seen as invalid). However, perceivers were able to somewhat accurately judge target’s levels of narcissistic admiration and rivalry, based on body morphology alone. Thus, people’s bodies might disclose social information at zero acquaintance, but different stimuli material with more information on the targets may lead to more accurate judgments.

“You don't know what this means to me” – Uncovering idiosyncratic influences on metamemory judgments

Studies of the mind often focus on general effects on cognitive processes, whereas influences of idiosyncratic interactions between participants and items evade experimental control or assessment. For instance, assessments of one's own learning and memory processes—metamemory judgments—are attributed to people's reliance on commonly shared characteristics of study materials (e.g., word frequency) or learning conditions (e.g., number of study opportunities). By contrast, few studies have investigated how idiosyncratic information such as the personal significance of items affects memory and metamemory. We propose that hitherto elusive idiosyncratic influences on metamemory can be measured by the C component of Egon Brunswik's (1952) lens model. In two experiments, we made randomly chosen items personally significant (Experiment 1) or assessed the personal significance of items (Experiment 2). Personal significance increased both metamemory judgments and memory performance. Including personal significance as a predictor in the lens model reduced C, whereas including familiarity from a previous encounter did not. Hence, at least part of the lens model's C parameter captures idiosyncratic influences on metamemory. The C parameter may serve as a useful tool for future research.

How the Brunswikian Lens Model Illustrates the Relationship Between Physiological and Behavioral Signals and Psychological Emotional and Cognitive States.

Social relationships are constructed by and through the relational communication that people exchange. Relational messages are implicit nonverbal and verbal messages that signal how people regard one another and define their interpersonal relationships—equal or unequal, affectionate or hostile, inclusive or exclusive, similar or dissimilar, and so forth. Such signals can be measured automatically by the latest machine learning software tools and combined into meaningful factors that represent the socioemotional expressions that constitute relational messages between people. Relational messages operate continuously on a parallel track with verbal communication, implicitly telling interactants the current state of their relationship and how to interpret the verbal messages being exchanged. We report an investigation that explored how group members signal these implicit messages through multimodal behaviors measured by sensor data and linked to the socioemotional cognitions interpreted as relational messages. By use of a modified Brunswikian lens model, we predicted perceived relational messages of dominance, affection, involvement, composure, similarity and trust from automatically measured kinesic, vocalic and linguistic indicators. The relational messages in turn predicted the veracity of group members. The Brunswikian Lens Model offers a way to connect objective behaviors exhibited by social actors to the emotions and cognitions being perceived by other interactants and linking those perceptions to social outcomes. This method can be used to ascertain what behaviors and/or perceptions are associated with judgments of an actor’s veracity. Computerized measurements of behaviors and perceptions can replace manual measurements, significantly expediting analysis and drilling down to micro-level measurement in a previously unavailable manner.

Intelligence Perception from Text: Accuracy and Cues

The present study deals with the first impression about a person’s intelligence, based solely on their text. We attempted to calculate the accuracy of a reader’s judgment, and to determine which features of the text are associated with both the reader’s impression as well as the author’s intelligence test scores (Brunswik lens model). The study involved 116 participants aged 16 to 23 years. Each of them read and evaluated 4 out of 20 texts that were written by other participants in an earlier study. Participants evaluated both the general impression of the author’s intelligence and of the text itself, scoring responses to questions such as “How smart is the author of this text?” and to other text features that may be associated with intelligence judgement, including “vocabulary richness” and “grammar complexity”. In addition, objective indicators such as readability (Flesch-Kincaid score), length, and relative errors were calculated for the texts. The accuracy of reader judgments, estimated in a text-based analysis as the Spearman correlation coefficient between the “how smart is the author” score and the actual author test scores, did not reach statistical significance. However, the data indicate the presence of a nonlinear relationship. As revealed by a participant-based analysis, authors from the lower quartile (based on test scores) tend to be rated lower by participants as well. Readability, vocabulary richness, grammar complexity, and the relative number of words longer than six letters all were utilized by the reader participants in their judgments (i.e., correlated with impression scores) and at the same time were valid (i.e., correlated with test scores). We discuss the problem of the narrowness of scientific and psychological impressions on intelligence, compared to everyday perceptions

Cultivating Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Digital Government

While there is growing consensus that the analytical and cognitive tools of artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to transform government in positive ways, it is also clear that AI challenges traditional government decision-making processes and threatens the democratic values within which they are framed. These conditions argue for conservative approaches to AI that focus on cultivating and sustaining public trust. We use the extended Brunswik lens model as a framework to illustrate the distinctions between policy analysis and decision making as we have traditionally understood and practiced them and how they are evolving in the current AI context along with the challenges this poses for the use of trustworthy AI. We offer a set of recommendations for practices, processes, and governance structures in government to provide for trust in AI and suggest lines of research that support them.

I searched, I collected, I experienced: Exploring how mobile augmented reality makes the players go

By adapting Brunswik's lens model and the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics (MDA) framework, this study empirically investigated how perceptions of the game features (mechanics), influence game-challenge reactions (dynamics) and playfulness (aesthetics); these influences affected service experience evaluation. The findings revealed that locatability, navigability, and controllability exert positive effects on game-challenge reactions, whereas navigability and nostalgia had positive effects on feelings of playfulness. Furthermore, the relationship between game-challenge reactions and playfulness was determined to be nonrecursive, and both of these factors positively influenced service experience evaluation.

Self-presentation and impressions of personality through text-based online dating profiles: A lens model analysis

In online dating, the self-authored profile serves as the primary way for daters to introduce themselves to others and to learn more about potential partners. However, few studies have examined the extent to which daters’ self-authored profile content is consistent with the impressions that others actually form. This study applied the Brunswikian lens model (1956) to examine self-presentation and impression formation in the text-based “about me” portion of the online dating profile. Using the meaning extraction method, we analyzed 190 profiles. Consistent with the lexical approach to personality, daters were able to encode aspects of themselves through linguistic self-description (cue validity), and observers were able to decode profile information to form impressions (cue utilization). However, there were few significant associations between a dater’s self-presentation and observers’ judgments (functional achievement). Findings are interpreted in line with previous work examining self-presentation and impressions in online dating profiles.

Conceptualizing Rater Judgments and Rating Processes for Rater‐Mediated Assessments

AbstractRater‐mediated assessments exhibit scoring challenges due to the involvement of human raters. The quality of human ratings largely determines the reliability, validity, and fairness of the assessment process. Our research recommends that the evaluation of ratings should be based on two aspects: a theoretical model of human judgment and an appropriate measurement model for evaluating these judgments. In rater‐mediated assessments, the underlying constructs and response processes may require the use of different rater judgment models and the application of different measurement models. We describe the use of Brunswik's lens model as an organizing theme for conceptualizing human judgments in rater‐mediated assessments. The constructs vary depending on which distal variables are identified in the lens models for the underlying rater‐mediated assessment. For example, one lens model can be developed to emphasize the measurement of student proficiency, while another lens model can stress the evaluation of rater accuracy. Next, we describe two measurement models that reflect different response processes (cumulative and unfolding) from raters: Rasch and hyperbolic cosine models. Future directions for the development and evaluation of rater‐mediated assessments are suggested.

Metamemory viewed through the judgment lens

Metamemory research makes extensive use of judgments, such as judgments of learning (JOLs). In a JOL, people predict their chance of remembering a recently studied item in a memory test. There is a general agreement that JOLs rely on probabilistic cues that are combined in an inference process. Accuracy as measured by the gamma correlation between JOLs and actual performance is usually mediocre, suggesting limited metacognitive abilities. In judgment and decision-making research, Brunswik's lens model is often used to decompose judgmental accuracy: A matching index G measures how adequately people's cue weights match the optimal weights, two reliability indices assess the predictability of judgments and environment, respectively, and a nonlinear component measures systematic variance not captured by the cues. We employed the lens model equation for the first time to analyze four published and one new JOL data sets. There was considerable interindividual variance in metamemory monitoring. Although gamma was on average higher than the Pearson correlation, it still underestimated metacognitive ability in terms of matching (G). Also, the nonlinear component was considerably higher than in other judgment domains, pointing to substantial item-person-interactions that we interpret as idiosyncratic encoding strategies. An exploratory cluster analysis suggests different metacognitive strategies used by subgroups of participants. We suggest the lens model as a potentially promising tool in metacognition research.

Mentor judgements and decision-making in the assessment of student nurse competence in practice: A mixed-methods study.

To investigate how mentors form judgements and reach summative assessment decisions regarding student competence in practice. Competence assessment is a significant component of pre-registration nursing programmes in the United Kingdom. Concerns exist that assessments are subjective, lack consistency and that mentors fail to judge student performance as unsatisfactory. A two-stage sequential embedded mixed-methods design. Data collected 2012-2013. This study involved a whole student cohort completing a UK undergraduate adult nursing programme (N=41). Stage 1: quantitative data on mentor conduct of assessment interviews and the final decision recorded (N=330 from 270 mentors) were extracted from student Practice Assessment Documents (PADs). Stage 2: mentor feedback in student PADs was used in Stimulated Recall interviews with a purposive sample of final placement mentors (N=17). These were thematically analysed. Findings were integrated to develop a theoretically driven model of mentor decision-making. Course assessment strategies and documentation had limited effect in framing mentor judgements and decisions. Rather, mentors amassed impressions, moderated by expectations of an "idealized student" by practice area and programme stage that influenced their management and outcome of the assessment process. These impressions were accumulated and combined into judgements that informed the final decision. This process can best be understood and conceptualized through the Brunswik's lens model of social judgement. Mentor decisions were reasoned and there was a shared understanding of judgement criteria and their importance. This impression-based nature of mentor decision-making questions the reliability and validity of competency-based assessments used in nursing pre-registration programmes.

Judgments of the Dark Triad based on Facebook profiles

This study investigates observer accuracy for the Dark Triad (DT) traits – narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism – based on Facebook profiles. In a round-robin design, 145 individuals in 34 groups provided DT self-ratings and rated their group members on these traits based on Facebook profiles. Social Relations Model analyses revealed significant observer accuracy for narcissism, but not for psychopathy or Machiavellianism. Variance component estimates suggested that unique perceiver-target relationships account for a majority of variance in ratings of the DT. Finally, Brunswik lens model analyses suggested that, for narcissism and psychopathy, there is a moderate association between the cues observers utilize in making judgments of the DT traits and the cues that correspond to targets’ personality.

Observer judgments of identification accuracy are affected by non‐valid cues: A Brunswikian lens model analysis

AbstractThis study investigated persuasive effects of behavior cues on observer judgments of eyewitness identification decisions. Forty‐eight positive identification statements (50% of which were objectively correct) were evaluated regarding witness likeability, trustworthiness, knowledge, and impression of confidence. Moreover, ratings of different speech style characteristics (e.g., hedges, hesitations, gestures, speech rate, and answer length) and of different person and event description qualities were collected. It was investigated (i) whether these cues were related to objective identification accuracy and (ii) whether observers used them to make their judgments and how they weighed them. Observers heavily relied on the impression of witness confidence and overestimated the discriminative value of several description qualities, although none of these cues was a valid indicator of identification accuracy. Effects of speech style characteristics depended on the presence of additional descriptions. Recommendations for the evaluation of identification decisions in criminal proceedings are discussed.

Studying Stereotype Accuracy from an Integrative Social‐Personality Perspective

AbstractThis article proposes an integrative framework for understanding the accuracy and inaccuracy of stereotypes. Specifically, we highlight research issues and traditions from social and personality psychology that do not often intersect, but which can be mutually informative. Within this framework, the social psychologist's interest in the accuracy of group stereotypes is conceptually much like a personality psychologist's interest in the accuracy with which perceivers can identify types of individuals, for example extraverts. Both fields make use, implicitly or explicitly, of personal attributes and behaviors (cues) in assessing accuracy of beliefs about group or individual traits. By using Brunswik's lens model perspective in combination with concepts from signal detection theory, judgments of stereotypes can be discovered to be accurate or inaccurate depending on how perceivers judge or use the cues. In drawing on research traditions and theoretical frameworks from both social and personality psychology, researchers can go beyond an all‐or‐nothing stance regarding stereotype accuracy to achieve a more nuanced understanding of when, how, and to what extent stereotypes are accurate.

Managing complexity: from visual perception to sustainable transitions\u2014contributions of Brunswik\u2019s Theory of Probabilistic Functionalism

Coping with the multitude of information, relationships, and dynamics of the biotic and abiotic environment is a fundamental prerequisite for the survival of any organismic system. This paper discusses what contribution the Theory of Probabilistic Functionalism (TPF) of Egon Brunswik (1903–1955), which was originally developed for visual perception (including certain cognitive processes) and later for judgment, may provide today. The present paper elaborates that the principles of TPF go beyond the common weighting and regression analysis-based model of information processing that has been associated with the Brunswikian Lens Model. We argue that Brunswik’s TPF rather provides basic principles of how organisms interact with complex environmental systems when processing cues (instead of information) and thus are able to produce evolutionarily stable representations of and judgments about the environment. TPF was formulated with no references to physiological processes. The present paper aims to demonstrate how well these principles correspond with current biophysical and neurophysiological findings, models, and simulations of sensation. We then discuss in what ways planning groups may be seen as organisms and how groups resemble and differ from (biological) organisms on the level of the individual and below. Based on this, we suggest how the principles of TPF can be used to describe planning groups’ activities when constructing planning variants or scenarios for sustainable transitioning. We illustrate the ways in which (under ideal constraints that may be provided in ideal transdisciplinary processes) planning groups follow principles such as vicarious mediation. Here, we reflect on the ways decision theoretic tools (such as Formative Scenario Analysis and Multi-Attribute Decision Analysis) can serve to construct robust (i.e., “evolutionarily stable”) orientations for the future. It is difficult to validate big theories such as TPF. Thus, special attention is paid to the question of how strategies of validation (according to normal scientific principles) for different principles and TPF as such can be developed. We conclude that (in the context of sustainable transitioning) TPF can be utilized from a descriptive, prescriptive, and normative perspective. All three perspectives call for different strategies of validation.