Cognitive Tendencies Research Articles

The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach.

Although human existence is enveloped by ideologies, remarkably little is understood about the relationships between ideological attitudes and psychological traits. Even less is known about how cognitive dispositions—individual differences in how information is perceived and processed— sculpt individuals' ideological worldviews, proclivities for extremist beliefs and resistance (or receptivity) to evidence. Using an unprecedented number of cognitive tasks (n = 37) and personality surveys (n = 22), along with data-driven analyses including drift-diffusion and Bayesian modelling, we uncovered the specific psychological signatures of political, nationalistic, religious and dogmatic beliefs. Cognitive and personality assessments consistently outperformed demographic predictors in accounting for individual differences in ideological preferences by 4 to 15-fold. Furthermore, data-driven analyses revealed that individuals’ ideological attitudes mirrored their cognitive decision-making strategies. Conservatism and nationalism were related to greater caution in perceptual decision-making tasks and to reduced strategic information processing, while dogmatism was associated with slower evidence accumulation and impulsive tendencies. Religiosity was implicated in heightened agreeableness and risk perception. Extreme pro-group attitudes, including violence endorsement against outgroups, were linked to poorer working memory, slower perceptual strategies, and tendencies towards impulsivity and sensation-seeking—reflecting overlaps with the psychological profiles of conservatism and dogmatism. Cognitive and personality signatures were also generated for ideologies such as authoritarianism, system justification, social dominance orientation, patriotism and receptivity to evidence or alternative viewpoints; elucidating their underpinnings and highlighting avenues for future research. Together these findings suggest that ideological worldviews may be reflective of low-level perceptual and cognitive functions.This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.

Does having multiple identities predict life satisfaction? Holistic thinking as a condition for achieving integrated self-concept

In today’s diverse and mobile world, it is common for people to engage in different roles, which make their self-concept more complex and layered, hence enriching their cognitive and behavioural repertoires. Given the importance of the self-concept, it is worthwhile to further understand the process and condition of the self on psychological functioning. The present research aims to investigate the effect of multiple identities on life satisfaction and identify the mechanism underlying this linkage and its boundary condition. We hypothesised a moderated mediation model with multiple identities predicting life satisfaction through identity integration, and the development of a cohesive self-concept depends largely on people’s holistic thinking, a cognitive tendency to attend to the linkages among objects and orient towards the context or field as a whole, instead of focusing on the unique properties of discrete objects. Results converged from Study 1 (N = 383) and Study 2 (N = 210) to support the mediating effect of identity integration on the association between multiple identities and life satisfaction. Moreover, we found in Study 2 that the relation between multiple identities and life satisfaction was significant when holistic thinking was high or moderate, but not when holistic thinking was low. In sum, the present research provided empirical evidence that identity integration represents the key mechanism, whereas holistic thinking represents the key condition in determining how multiple identities can be associated with life satisfaction.

How we Think About Human Nature: Cognitive Errors and Concrete Remedies

Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We seek to analyze such claims rhetorically, cognitively, and epistemically. Namely, how do we think about human nature? Claims about human nature, we show, are susceptible to widely exhibited deficits in cognitive tendencies such as framing, confirmation bias, satisficing, and teleological perspectives, as well as motivated reasoning. Such missteps foster methodological, empirical, and psychological mistakes and biases. Specifically, they promote the naturalizing error, whereby cultural ideology and values are projected onto an apparently objective description of nature. Concrete remedies are offered to aid scientists in conducting and reporting their research goals and findings more responsibly and effectively (relevant also to educators and other communicators who convey these findings publicly). Recommendations include acknowledging that human nature claims are often context-dependent, seeking multiple critical perspectives, and explicitly labeling uncertainties.

Leisure Satisfaction Effect According to Enthusiast Tendency of Marine Leisure Sports Participants

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of leisure satisfaction according to the enthusiast tendency of marine leisure sports participants and, based on the findings review the results of participants in marine leisure sports. This study used a convenience sampling method in the non-probability sampling method. The survey was performed with the questionnaire, and respondents were asked to fill it out. To this end, excluding copies of the questionnaire which were not sincerely filled out, this research used 293 participant survey copies for the final analysis. To examine relations among variables, this research performed a complete correlation analysis, and to examine causal relations among variables, it performed a review of the multiple regression analysis. The results of the study are as follows. First, the correlation between enthusiast tendency and leisure satisfaction of marine leisure sports participants showed a statistically significant positive correlation in all sub-variables. Second, as a result of examining the effect of leisure satisfaction according to enthusiast tendency of marine leisure sports participants, cognitive tendency, emotional tendency, and behavioral tendency, which are sub-variables of enthusiast tendency, the results showed the positive effects on psychological satisfaction, education satisfaction, social satisfaction, physical satisfaction, and environmental satisfaction. These conclusions show that the marine leisure sports enthusiasts who do their best in their daily lives and use their spare time to overcome and master their limits, are therefore satisfied with the leisure experiences or situations that they experience. In other words, enthusiasts who enjoy marine leisure sports, regardless of their tendency, feel a sense of positive satisfaction with their leisure activities, and as a result, it can be concluded that their quality of life as well as a healthy happiness feeling are accompanied.

Cognitive Pathways to Belief in Karma and Belief in God.

Supernatural beliefs are ubiquitous around the world, and mounting evidence indicates that these beliefs partly rely on intuitive, cross-culturally recurrent cognitive processes. Specifically, past research has focused on humans' intuitive tendency to perceive minds as part of the cognitive foundations of belief in a personified God-an agentic, morally concerned supernatural entity. However, much less is known about belief in karma-another culturally widespread but ostensibly non-agentic supernatural entity reflecting ethical causation across reincarnations. In two studies and four high-powered samples, including mostly Christian Canadians and mostly Hindu Indians (Study 1, N=2,006) and mostly Christian Americans and Singaporean Buddhists (Study 2, N=1,752), we provide the first systematic empirical investigation of the cognitive intuitions underlying various forms of belief in karma. We used path analyses to (a) replicate tests of the previously documented cognitive predictors of belief in God, (b) test whether this same network of variables predicts belief in karma, and (c) examine the relative contributions of cognitive and cultural variables to both sets of beliefs. We found that cognitive tendencies toward intuitive thinking, mentalizing, dualism, and teleological thinking predicted a variety of beliefs about karma-including morally laden, non-agentic, and agentic conceptualizations-above and beyond the variability explained by cultural learning about karma across cultures. These results provide further evidence for an independent role for both culture and cognition in supporting diverse types of supernatural beliefs in distinct cultural contexts.

Information visualization in context of modern education megatrends

In light of technological advancement and formation of new visual culture, there arises a vital problem of visual presentation of information for solving new problems and performing a wider range of functions in education. In this regard, visualization should be considered in context of such megatrends as the Prosumer concept, knowledge management, the use of platform services to present information as a single unity. Cognitive visualization as the basis for visual presentation of educational information is represented by five main tendencies which students should take into consideration creating infographics: concentration and generalization of knowledge, expansion of the orientation and presentation functions of visual aids, algorithmization of educational and cognitive actions by visual means, and multicode presentation of information. Experimental training resulted in establishing connections between these megatrends and the cognitive visualization tendencies; besides it revealed that concentration of knowledge and multicode presentation of information were the most difficult information visualization operations for the students when using platform services for creating visual content.

A Social Critique of Behavioral Approaches to International Law

Behavioral approaches have been successful in challenging the rational actor model of international legal analysis and supplementing that model with empirical evidence. Yet observing a set of features about the world requires ignoring or bracketing others. Behavioral approaches retain their own inevitable blind spots, which are not necessarily products of flawed experimental design, but stem from the paradigmatic traits of these approaches. These blind spots derive from an emphasis on methodological individualism, positivism, and experimentation. This emphasis may obscure the social aspects of international legal decision-making. For example, behavioral approaches to international law often use experimental data to describe cognitive tendencies. In doing so, these approaches may not seek and likely will not have tools to discover the meaning of a state action, or the human actions that produce that state action. That latter inquiry requires “historical, ethnographic and other sociological methods that analyze social life outside of the experimental setting.” In sum, behavioral approaches pursue both theoretical and empirical concerns different from those pursued in an interpretive mode of meaning-making.

TESTING A METACOGNITIVE REGULATION APPROACH FOR JUDGMENT OF SATIATION: MIGHT HUNGER AND FULLNESS NOT BE THE POLAR OPPOSITES OF THE SAME DIMENSION?

Despite the existence of several cognitive influences, metacognitive factors on eating and satiation still remain unclear. Therefore, we investigated a relatively recent metacognitive regulation approach and its measurement method in a lab-experiment. Participants (N=216) were shown photografs of varying portions of common lunch foods (selected after a separate study, N=94) and asked to make predicted judgments of satiation (JOS) for each via considering their actual hunger levels and whilst imagining other bodily states (e.g., extremely hungry and completely full). Differences calculated between observed-JOS and their reference scores -those presumed to yield accurate matches for the cases- produced either deviances or none at all (discordant- or concordant-JOS). Hungry-group yielded significantly lower concordant-JOS percentage than full-group regardless of portion size, indicating a clearer cognitive tendency to lose control over consumption when being hungry than satiated. Critically, full-group could not imagine extreme hunger as hungry-group whereas hungry-group imagined complete fullness just as full-group did, suggesting that whilst hunger was not an obstacle to imagine fullness, fullness hindered the ability to imagine hunger. These findings suggest that hunger and fullness might not be the polar opposites on the very same dimension, which would, for instance, reveal a need to revisit the treatments of eating disorders accordingly. Keywords: Metacognition, eating, dietary control, satiation, hunger, fullness

Energy Labels and Heuristic Decision-Making: The Role of Cognition and Energy Literacy

To overcome the inefficiency in household energy use, energy labels with a grade-like categorical efficiency rating-scale are widely used across the globe. However, presenting energy efficiency information in categories has been found to induce heuristic rather than rational decision-making, known as the class valuation effect: consumers value the classes, while being inattentive to the actual energy use of the respective appliance. Although replacing the categorical by a continuous scale could eradicate this effect, it has not been formally examined to what extent a continuous scale promotes more rational decision-making. This study investigates whether visualising energy efficiency using a continuous-scale instead of a categorical-scale energy label increases consumers’ awareness of the energy performance of appliances. We experimentally examine this question in an online survey with randomised decision tasks conducted in China and the Netherlands, two countries using energy labels with categorical rating-scale whose populations differ in cognitive style and energy literacy (energy-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours). We find that continuous-scale labels are overall more effective in promoting rational decision-making. For Dutch respondents the effectiveness depends on their holistic cognitive tendency and the type of comparison they are faced with, whereas the Chinese sample is not sensitive to these moderators. Moreover, we find that the different aspects of energy literacy have opposing influence on rational choices: possessing knowledge related to daily-life energy use increases the likelihood of rational decisions, while energy-saving attitudes and behaviours encourage individuals to opt for more energy-efficient appliances even when it is not economically optimal. Based on the results, we suggest to represent energy efficiency on continuous scales as an auxiliary visual information to support purchase decisions. In energy education and information programmes, emphasis should be put on energy knowledge that directly links to daily life, which is well translated into consumers’ conscious decisions.

Towards a Standard Model of the Cognitive Science of Nationalism – the Calendar

Abstract The Cognitive Science of Nationalistic Behavior (CSNB), presented in this paper, integrates the political sciences of nationalities as invented communities with an evolutionary cognitive analysis of social forms as products of the human mind. The framework is modeled after the Cognitive Science of Religion, where decades of cross-disciplinary work has generated standards, predictions, and data about the role of individual cognitive tendencies in shaping societies. We study the nationalistic calendar as a cultural attractor and draw on cue-based behavioral motivation and differential autobiographical memory systems to explain its appeal to the human mind. Calendrical elements are analyzed in the context of essentialist thought patterns and action representation systems. We conclude with the implications of calendrical thinking on the control of elites who aim to forge and reinforce national identities. This paper lays the groundwork for applying a similar approach to the study of other nationalistic elements.

Need, competence and compliance: Selective empowering in the distribution of medical technologies in the Norwegian health care system

The development of medical technologies is often assumed to improve medical treatment, but may also reproduce health inequalities if their benefits are unequally distributed. Sociological studies have shown that social and moral evaluations matter for medical decision making, and that inequalities in access and outcome exist even in universal health care systems. This article uses the distribution of medical technologies in the treatment of type 1 diabetes as a case for examining the social production of health care inequalities. Drawing on observational data and in-depth interviews with physicians and nurses working in a Norwegian hospital, I demonstrate that medical staff evaluate patients based on a combination of medical, social and moral criteria. The concept of selective empowering is then elaborated and refined as a term for the practice in which medical professionals steer resources towards patients based on evaluations of need, competence and compliance. While previous studies of inequalities in medical care have often focused on medical staff’s cognitive dispositions, I argue that selective empowering may be interpreted as a reflexive response to increasing health care costs and a structural dependency on expensive and commercially produced medical technologies.

When bad gets worse: Negative wording amplifies negative recall in persons with the borderline personality trait

SummaryThe emotional valence of memory recall strongly influences the extreme, and often self‐destructive behavioral response. Overall, 4427 people from the community filled out our screening questionnaire, of which 674 (mean age: 32.9 years, 64.7% women) passed the threshold for the likely presence of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Participants watched one of 9 possible video clips differing in valence (positive, negative or neutral). Results indicate support (ß = .151, p < .05) for a negative cognitive tendency in the evaluations proportionate to the severity of BPD but only when the impression is assessed with negatively‐worded items. This effect is detectable regardless of other factors such as negative mood, extremity of the answers or general impression of the character. These effects are unaffected by acute trauma. To conclude, different factors influence the recall of emotional stimuli, depending on the valence of the stimuli and the valence of the rating scale in persons with strong borderline tendencies.

Development of visuospatial memory in preterm infants: A new paradigm to assess short-term and working memory

ABSTRACT Preterm infants have a higher risk of showing visuospatial memory impairment, the function that allows to encode and remember visual and spatial information. It has been studied in late childhood in preterm children. Studies on visuospatial memory throughout the first 2 years of life are still scarce. Behavior, temperament, and overall cognition could be altered in preterm children affecting memory performance. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to evaluate short-term and visuospatial working memory performance in a preterm sample followed longitudinally at 12, 15, 18, and 22 months (N = 15), and compare their performance with that of full-term children (N = 65). The secondary aim was to analyze the course of mnesic development in preterm infants and relate their memory performance to other cognitive abilities and behavioral tendencies. Assessment included previously published tasks and an experimental paradigm. Results showed that preterm children scored lower than full-term children on visuospatial short-term and working memory at 12 and 22 months of age, although these results varied depending on the memory test used. Preterm children’s memory results showed that these skills improve in this population between the first and second year of life. Finally, memory performance was directly associated with the level of cognitive development and the presence of proactive behaviors, while being inversely correlated with the presence of disruptive behaviors and a difficult temperamental style. These preliminary findings suggest that it is possible to detect visuospatial memory difficulties in the preterm population before the age of two.

Gesture Use and Processing: A Review on Individual Differences in Cognitive Resources.

Speakers use spontaneous hand gestures as they speak and think. These gestures serve many functions for speakers who produce them as well as for listeners who observe them. To date, studies in the gesture literature mostly focused on group-comparisons or the external sources of variation to examine when people use, process, and benefit from using and observing gestures. However, there are also internal sources of variation in gesture use and processing. People differ in how frequently they use gestures, how salient their gestures are, for what purposes they produce gestures, and how much they benefit from using and seeing gestures during comprehension and learning depending on their cognitive dispositions. This review addresses how individual differences in different cognitive skills relate to how people employ gestures in production and comprehension across different ages (from infancy through adulthood to healthy aging) from a functionalist perspective. We conclude that speakers and listeners can use gestures as a compensation tool during communication and thinking that interacts with individuals’ cognitive dispositions.

Catastrophising and repetitive negative thinking tendencies in patients with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures or epilepsy

PurposePrevious research suggests that catastrophisation and perseverative, or repetitive negative thinking (RNT) could play an important role in the aetiology of Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures (PNES). This study was designed to explore whether these cognitive tendencies are more prevalent in patients with PNES than those with epilepsy and to examine the relationship between these cognitions, depression, anxiety, seizure frequency and diagnosis. Methods26 patients with PNES (PWPNES) and 29 with epilepsy (PWE) self-reported RNT (Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire), catastrophisation tendencies (modified Safety Behaviors and Catastrophizing Scale), symptoms of anxiety (Generalised Anxiety Disorder Assessment 7) and depression (Primary Health Questionnaire 9) as well as seizure frequency. ResultsRNT and catastrophic thinking were highly correlated with each other and more prevalent in PWPNES than PWE. Positive correlations were also found between all other self-report measures and seizure frequency. The PNES diagnosis predicted RNT (perseverative thinking) independently of catastrophic thinking, anxiety, depression and seizure frequency. ConclusionPWPNES exhibit greater negative perseverative and catastrophising cognitive tendencies than PWE. PNES as a diagnosis independently predicted RNT. Hence, RNT and catastrophisation should be considered as possible specific targets for psychological interventions in patients with PNES.

Cognitive disposition to respond in postgraduate trainees of general surgery at Rawalpindi Medical University

Introduction: Cognitive biases leading to diagnostic errors are associate with adverse outcomes and compromise patient safety and contribute to morbidity and mortality. Exploration and identification of cognitive biases have been a difficult task for the clinicians and medical educators. The literature is deficient in the identification of cognitive biases in surgical trainees. The objective of the study was to identify various cognitive biases that may negatively impact clinical reasoning skills and lead to diagnostic errors in trainees of general surgery.
 Materials and Methods: A quantitative study was conducted involving 48 trainees of general surgery to explore the various cognitive biases. The questionnaire was devised and consisted of ten items devised to explore five biases. .Descriptive statistical analysis was done on SPSS 20 and the respondents with score >25 were categorized as predisposed to error scores of 20-25 were taken as a borderline and overall score of <25 was insignificant for the presence of cognitive bias.
 Results: Premature closure was the most frequent cognitive bias found significant in 34 (70 %) of trainees followed by anchoring bias in 14 (58, 3 %) trainees. The relative frequencies of different biases are shown in Table 2. The mean score of the questionnaire was 22.7 (range 10 to 38) SD 7.2. Ten out of forty-eight (21%) trainees with a mean score of >25 showed a clear inclination toward cognitive errors whereas 11 (22%) with a score in the range of 21 to 25 were categorized as having an equivocal tendency towards committing an error, Whereas 27 (56%) with a score of less than 20 were less prone to cognitive errors.
 Conclusion: The two most common errors seen in the study were anchoring bias and premature closure and both are related to information gathering. A larger study is required to explore the association of cognitive bias with different specialties and experience of clinicians.

MOTIVATION AND RELATIONSHIP OF STUDY HABITS AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS- A REVIEW

Habit can be defined as acquired automatic mechanical and cognitive disposition that is tendencies to behave in a practical way. Study habits are habitual way of exercising and practicing the ability for learning. These are techniques, which students employ to go about his or her studies, which are consistent and have become stereotyped as a result of neither long application nor practice.

Using theory to better communicate to different audiences about Whooping Crane conservation

ABSTRACT Effective outreach for an endangered species often requires an understanding of human dimensions information to guide pro-conservation behavior. To provide a foundation for outreach communication strategies regarding Whooping Crane conservation in Alabama, we administered surveys to local residents, waterfowl hunters, and birders. We tested a theoretical framework using constructs from the cognitive hierarchy, value-belief-norm theory, emotional dispositions, and knowledge about the species to identify the best predictors of attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the conservation of Whooping Cranes. Regression analyzes revealed that a combination of constructs from these frameworks directly predicted attitudes and behavioral intentions toward Whooping Cranes. Findings demonstrated that the best predictors were different across audiences and different for predicting attitudes and behavioral intentions. Each of the predictor variables from the multiple theories provided explanatory power for both attitudes and behavioral intentions and across all audiences. Outreach can use this information to develop content and audience-specific messaging.

Post-Supernatural Cultures: There and Back Again

The abandonment of supernatural religious beliefs and rituals seems to occur quite easily in some contexts, but post-supernaturalist cultures require a specific set of conditions that are difficult to produce and sustain on a large scale and thus are historically rare. Despite the worldwide resurgence of supernaturalist religion, some subcultures reliably produce people who deny the existence of supernatural entities. This social phenomenon has evoked competing explanations, many of which enjoy empirical support. We synthesize six of the most influential social-science explanations, demonstrating that they provide complementary perspectives on a complex causal architecture. We incorporate this theoretical synthesis into a computer simulation, identifying conditions under which the predominant attitude toward supernaturalism in a population shifts from acceptance to rejection (and vice versa). The model suggests that the conditions for producing widespread rejection of supernatural worldviews are highly specific and difficult to produce and sustain. When those conditions combine, which is historically rare, a stable social equilibrium emerges within which post-supernaturalist worldviews are widespread; however, this equilibrium is easier to disrupt than equilibria whose cohesion is stabilized by supernatural religion due to persistent cognitive tendencies toward supernaturalism in evolved human minds.

Data, Communication, and Human Cognition: Challenges and Best Practices

Organizations of various sizes and fields have experienced an influx of data-related challenges due to rapid technological advancement in the fields of information and communications technology which impacts every facet of operation. Consequently, the currency of this modern world is no longer only in terms of products, services and dollars, but most importantly in data and the capability to leverage it for the organization’s strategic advantage. Big data has impacted all sectors of the industry, although not fully realized in healthcare as noted by the McKinsey Global Institute in its 2016 report. Meanwhile it is projected to continue to drive innovation in Healthcare especially in transforming clinical care and providing personalized medicine. Hence, this presentation takes this impact as a point of departure to argue that managing data will be a continuing challenge for organization. It shall also argue that communication of data within the organization and among stakeholders shall be a critical skill that must be maintained and developed as it is a hinge pin for success in realizing the objectives associated with managing data. In addition it shall also argue that effective communication can happen when human cognitive tendencies are understood in the communication process leading to exploration and survey of practical techniques of presenting data visually in a more engaging, effective and compelling ways.