Explicit Beliefs Research Articles

Do Gender-Related Stereotypes Affect Spatial Performance? Exploring When, How and to Whom Using a Chronometric Two-Choice Mental Rotation Task.

It is a common belief that males have superior visuospatial abilities and that differences in this and other cognitive domains (e.g., math) contribute to the reduced interest and low representation of girls and women in STEM education and professions. However, previous studies show that gender-related implicit associations and explicit beliefs, as well as situational variables, might affect cognitive performance in those gender-stereotyped domains and produce between-gender spurious differences. Therefore, the present study aimed to provide information on when, how and who might be affected by the situational reactivation of stereotypic gender-science beliefs/associations while performing a 3D mental rotation chronometric task (3DMRT). More specifically, we assessed the explicit beliefs and implicit associations (by the Implicit Association Test) held by female and male students of humanities and STEM majors and compared their performance in a 3DMRT after receiving stereotype- congruent, incongruent and nullifying experimental instructions. Our results show that implicit stereotypic gender-science associations correlate with 3DMRT performance in both females and males, but that inter-gender differences emerge only under stereotype-reactivating conditions. We also found that changes in self-confidence mediate these instructions’ effects and that academic specialization moderates them, hence promoting 3DMRT performance differences between male and female humanities, but not STEM, students. Taken together, these observations suggest that the common statement “males have superior mental rotation abilities” simplifies a much more complex reality and might promote stereotypes which, in turn, might induce artefactual performance differences between females and males in such tasks.

Volitional media multitasking: awareness of performance costs and modulation of media multitasking as a function of task demand.

In two experiments, we sought to determine whether (a) people are aware of the frequently observed performance costs associated with engaging in media multitasking (Experiment 1), and (b) if so, whether they modulate the extent to which they engage in multitasking as a function of task demand (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants completed a high-demand task (2-back) both independently and while a video was simultaneously presented. To determine whether people were sensitive to the impact that the concurrent video had on primary-task performance, subjective estimates of performance were collected following both trial types (No-Video vs. Video trials), as were explicit beliefs about the influence of the video on performance. In Experiment 2, we modified our paradigm by allowing participants to turn the video on and off at their discretion, and had them complete either a high-demand task (2-back) or a low-demand task (0-back). Findings from Experiment 1 indicated that people are sensitive to the magnitude of the decrement that media multitasking has on primary-task performance. In addition, findings from Experiment 2 indicated that people modulate the extent to which they engage in media multitasking in accordance with the demands of their primary task. In particular, participants completing the high-demand task were more likely to turn off the optional video stream compared to those completing the low-demand task. The results suggest that people media multitask in a strategic manner by balancing considerations of task performance with other potential concerns.

Complexity of Organ Donation Registration: Determinants of Registration Behavior Among Lower-educated Adolescents

BackgroundRegistration rates are low for organ donation among lower educated adolescents in The Netherlands. This could be improved by preparing them for making a decision regarding donation when they become 18 years old. To do so, more insight is needed into their beliefs about organ donation and registration. MethodsA cross-sectional quantitative study was conducted among students in intermediate vocational education schools. Data were gathered my means of self-administrated questionnaires. The outcome measurements included current registration status, being an organ donor, intention to register, and intention to become a donor. Correlation coefficients were used to assess the strength of associations between beliefs and each of the 4 outcome measurements. ResultsA total of 405 participants (mean age, 18.86 years) were included, of whom 26.6% had already registered a decision. Most beliefs showed a significant correlation with one or more of the outcomes. In general, the correlations were of small to medium size and participants scored around the middle of the scales on the beliefs. ConclusionMeans and correlations need to be combined to gain insight into the importance of certain beliefs for future interventions. However, it is plausible that, in addition to these explicit beliefs, implicit factors play a role in registration behavior. This could be explored in future research. Results could support intervention development for increasing registration rates.

The Dynamics of Epistemic Attitudes in Resource-Bounded Agents

The paper presents a new logic for reasoning about the formation of beliefs through perception or through inference in non-omniscient resource-bounded agents. The logic distinguishes the concept of explicit belief from the concept of background knowledge. This distinction is reflected in its formal semantics and axiomatics: (i) we use a non-standard semantics putting together a neighborhood semantics for explicit beliefs and relational semantics for background knowledge, and (ii) we have specific axioms in the logic highlighting the relationship between the two concepts. Mental operations of perceptive type and inferential type, having effects on epistemic states of agents, are primitives in the object language of the logic. At the semantic level, they are modelled as special kinds of model-update operations, in the style of dynamic epistemic logic. Results about axiomatization, decidability and complexity for the logic are given in the paper.

Implicit Measures of Actual Versus Ideal Body Image: Relations with Self-Reported Body Dissatisfaction and Dieting Behaviors

Body dissatisfaction refers to a negative appreciation of one’s own body stemming from a discrepancy between how one perceives his/her body (actual body image) and how he/she wants it to be (ideal body image). To circumvent the limitations of self-report measures of body image, measures were developed that allow for a distinction between actual and ideal body image at the implicit level. The first goal of the present study was to investigate whether self-reported body dissatisfaction is related to implicit measures of actual and ideal body image as captured by the Relational Responding Task (RRT). Secondly, we examined whether these RRT measures were related to several indices of dieting behavior. Women high in body dissatisfaction (n = 30) were characterized by relatively strong implicit I-am-fat beliefs, whereas their implicit I-want-to-be-thinner beliefs were similar to individuals low in body dissatisfaction (n = 37). Implicit body image beliefs showed no added value over explicit body image beliefs in predicting body dissatisfaction and dieting behavior. These findings support the idea that the interplay between ideal and actual body image drives (self-reported) body dissatisfaction. However, strong support for the view that it would be critical to differentiate between explicit and implicit body image beliefs is missing.

Reasoning about nature’s agency and design in the cultural context of China

ABSTRACTResearch has found that non-religious adults have an automatic tendency to construe natural phenomena as intentionally created. Related work has focused on whether Western and non-Western adults spontaneously assign functions to natural phenomena but, to date, no studies have explored whether an assumption of intentional origins extends to a non-Western culture without an Abrahamic cultural tradition and associated design discourse. We therefore explored whether adults in China display an intentional design bias. Participants performed a speeded judgment task in which they evaluated whether depicted items were intentionally created or not. Chinese adults favored a design-based construal of natural phenomena under processing constraints. We also created a novel culturally sensitive survey to more fully document supernatural beliefs and practices. The survey confirmed participants’ primarily atheistic self-identification while also revealing various supernatural practices and animistic beliefs. Aspects of these folk beliefs positively predicted design intuitions about nature. Cumulatively, these results demonstrate that intuitions about intentional origins are present independent of any Western creationist discourse or Abrahamic God belief. They provide first evidence of a potentially universal intentional design bias in adults. They also point to the need for more nuanced, culturally sensitive, survey approaches to explicit supernatural belief and practice.

Teachers’ attitudes towards students with high- and low-educated parents

Educational inequalities may be derived from differential teacher expectations toward students from different backgrounds. Such expectations may be associated with stereotypical beliefs and attitudes, which guide behavior and judgments. Although ample research is available concerning differential teacher attitudes based on student ethnicity, few studies have considered the effect of the educational level of the parents. The aim of the current study was to investigate teachers’ implicit and explicit attitudes toward students with differentially educated parents. Implicit attitudes were measured using an implicit association task (IAT). The first name of the student was used as a proxy for the educational level of parents, whereby we created separate versions for boys and girls. Participants were randomly divided in two groups, whereby the first group completed the IAT-boys version and the other group the IAT-girls version. Explicit attitudes were measured using a questionnaire. Participants indicated positive implicit attitudes toward students with highly educated parents, independent of the gender of the student. Teachers did not express differential explicit beliefs regarding the learning and social behaviors of students based on the educational level of the parents, and their expectations concerning the motivation and ambitions or educational chances of these students were neutral. The dissociation between implicit and explicit attitudes may be an indication of the social sensitivity of the relationship between students’ social background and educational achievements and opportunities. Especially implicit attitudes may account for differences in teacher behaviors toward different groups of students and in turn their educational opportunities, and could therefore partly account for consistent findings of educational inequalities based on the social status of families.

Pre-service teachers' implicit and explicit beliefs about English language learners: An implicit association test study

Pre-service teachers' attitudes and beliefs about English Learners (ELs) are especially critical as they enter their professions among an increasingly diverse student population. This study uses an Implicit Association Test to explore implicit and explicit beliefs and attitudes of pre-service teachers about ELs. Pre-service teachers from a Southeastern U.S. university hold generally positive implicit beliefs about ELs and express positive expectations for working with ELs and school support. Implicit association test measures have potential as tools for preparing pre-service teachers and evaluating the impact of interventions that seek to improve teachers’ readiness to serve this population.

Mainstream Teachers’ Implicit Beliefs about English Language Learners: An Implicit Association Test Study of Teacher Beliefs

ABSTRACTTeacher attitudes toward inclusion of English Learners (ELs) in the mainstream classroom have primarily focused on explicit beliefs as accessed through observation, case studies, and self-report surveys. The authors explore implicit mainstream teacher beliefs about ELs using the newly created Implicit Association Test–EL, with correlations to explicit beliefs being made using the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) Students in Mainstream Classrooms: A Survey of Teachers’ Explicit Beliefs survey. Findings from the IAT–EL indicate a slightly negative implicit belief about ELs from 197 respondents. Implicit and explicit beliefs about ELs were not significantly correlated, which is in keeping with current Implicit Associate Test (IAT) literature.

No rationality through brute-force

All reasoners described in the most widespread models of a rational reasoner exhibit logical omniscience, which is impossible for finite reasoners (real reasoners). The most common strategy for dealing with the problem of logical omniscience is to interpret the models using a notion of beliefs different from explicit beliefs. For example, the models could be interpreted as describing the beliefs that the reasoner would hold if the reasoner were able reason indefinitely (stable beliefs). Then the models would describe maximum rationality, which a finite reasoner can only approach in the limit of a reasoning sequence. This strategy has important consequences for epistemology. If a finite reasoner can only approach maximum rationality in the limit of a reasoning sequence, then the efficiency of reasoning is epistemically (and not only pragmatically) relevant. In this paper, I present an argument to this conclusion and discuss its consequences, as, for example, the vindication of the principle ‘no rationality through brute-force’. Keywords: finite reasoning, logical omniscience, efficient reasoning, asymptotic analysis, computational complexity.

Seeking Convergent Evidence of Epistemological Beliefs: A Novel Survey

Introduction. This paper explains the development and testing of a novel paper-and-pencil measure designed to support inferences of five epistemological belief dimensions based on three forms of evidence. The three evidence types are anticipated to converge at a single theoretical level, permitting better-supported inferences than existing survey measures.Method. Data were collected from 12 university-level students from Hong Kong (19 to 34 years of age, M = 24.9, SD = 4.2). Participants completed a survey designed to capture three different sources of evidence of epistemological beliefs: epistemological judgments, intentions, and explicit beliefs. A theoretical level (i.e., dualism, relativism discovered, and contextual relativism) is assigned for each evidence type for each of five dimensions. The theoretical-level assignments across the three evidence sources are then analyzed for convergence.Results. Results indicate the three assigned theoretical levels for each dimension did not converge. Therefore, a comprehensive theoretical level per dimension could not be given. Instead, summative scores could to be determined based on average performance per dimension and for all dimensions combined. As a group, participants scored moderately on all dimensions combined, performing worst on the Organization of knowledge and Justification of knowledge dimensions and best on the Stability of knowledge dimension.Discussion and Conclusions. Three explanations for evidence type variability are discussed: a) the MESSEB is incorrectly eliciting the intended evidence, (b) the types of evidence are not appropriate for inferring the intended epistemological beliefs, and (c) epistemological beliefs are being measured as intended, but variation is genuine and typical. The ramifications of each explanation are discussed along with possibilities to address them in future research.

Folk-economic beliefs: An evolutionary cognitive model

The domain of "folk-economics" consists in explicit beliefs about the economy held by laypeople, untrained in economics, about such topics as, for example, the causes of the wealth of nations, the benefits or drawbacks of markets and international trade, the effects of regulation, the origins of inequality, the connection between work and wages, the economic consequences of immigration, or the possible causes of unemployment. These beliefs are crucial in forming people's political beliefs and in shaping their reception of different policies. Yet, they often conflict with elementary principles of economic theory and are often described as the consequences of ignorance, irrationality, or specific biases. As we will argue, these past perspectives fail to predict the particular contents of popular folk-economic beliefs and, as a result, there is no systematic study of the cognitive factors involved in their emergence and cultural success. Here we propose that the cultural success of particular beliefs about the economy is predictable if we consider the influence of specialized, largely automatic inference systems that evolved as adaptations to ancestral human small-scale sociality. These systems, for which there is independent evidence, include free-rider detection, fairness-based partner choice, ownership intuitions, coalitional psychology, and more. Information about modern mass-market conditions activates these specific inference systems, resulting in particular intuitions, for example, that impersonal transactions are dangerous or that international trade is a zero-sum game. These intuitions in turn make specific policy proposals more likely than others to become intuitively compelling, and, as a consequence, exert a crucial influence on political choices.

Ethical Products = Less Strong: How Explicit and Implicit Reliance on the Lay Theory Affects Consumption Behaviors

Many consumers implicitly associate sustainability with lower product strength. This so-called ethical = less strong intuition (ELSI) poses a major threat for the success of sustainable products. This article explores this pervasive lay theory and examines whether it is a key barrier for sustainable consumption patterns. Even more importantly, little is known about the underlying mechanisms that might operate differently at the implicit and explicit levels of the consumer’s decision-making. To fill this gap, three studies examine how the implicit judgments that consumers activate automatically shape their consumption behaviors, in concert with their more controlled explicit beliefs about sustainable products. The Main Study investigates the ELSI’s imprint on actual shopping patterns and disentangles the implicit and explicit mechanisms of the lay theory. This paper also asks how this negative influence can be attenuated by examining whether the consumer’s interest in sustainable consumption reduces reliance on the ELSI. Two follow-up studies confirm the robustness from different methodological and practical perspectives. Implications for companies and policy makers are derived.

Long-Term Effect of a Stigma-Reduction Educational Intervention for Physician Assistants.

Stigma towards people with substance use disorders is a common phenomenon with far reaching effects. This study evaluated the long-term effect of using an educational intervention on the attitudes of physician assistant students. Physician assistant students received a one-week educational intervention focused on substance abuse. Changes in student attitudes were measured one year later using the Attitude to Mental Health Questionnaire (AMIQ). Significant and sustained improvement was noted in attitudes in the AMIQ score for the opiate use disorder vignette; no significant change was noted in the alcohol use disorder vignette. The persistence of improved attitudes (although they remained negative) in study participants towards people with opiate use disorders is a cautiously encouraging finding. Educational interventions can have a sustained effect on stigma reduction, but much more work on the etiology of these implicit and explicit beliefs is needed to inform robust future interventions.

Disruption of the Right Temporoparietal Junction Impairs Probabilistic Belief Updating.

Generating and updating probabilistic models of the environment is a fundamental modus operandi of the human brain. Although crucial for various cognitive functions, the neural mechanisms of these inference processes remain to be elucidated. Here, we show the causal involvement of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in updating probabilistic beliefs and we provide new insights into the chronometry of the process by combining online transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with computational modeling of behavioral responses. Female and male participants performed a modified location-cueing paradigm, where false information about the percentage of cue validity (%CV) was provided in half of the experimental blocks to prompt updating of prior expectations. Online double-pulse TMS over rTPJ 300 ms (but not 50 ms) after target appearance selectively decreased participants' updating of false prior beliefs concerning %CV, reflected in a decreased learning rate of a Rescorla-Wagner model. Online TMS over rTPJ also impacted on participants' explicit beliefs, causing them to overestimate %CV. These results confirm the involvement of rTPJ in updating of probabilistic beliefs, thereby advancing our understanding of this area's function during cognitive processing.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Contemporary views propose that the brain maintains probabilistic models of the world to minimize surprise about sensory inputs. Here, we provide evidence that the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) is causally involved in this process. Because neuroimaging has suggested that rTPJ is implicated in divergent cognitive domains, the demonstration of an involvement in updating internal models provides a novel unifying explanation for these findings. We used computational modeling to characterize how participants change their beliefs after new observations. By interfering with rTPJ activity through online transcranial magnetic stimulation, we showed that participants were less able to update prior beliefs with TMS delivered at 300 ms after target onset.

The Role of Evidence Diversity and Explanation in 4- and 5-Year-Olds’ Resolution of Counterevidence

ABSTRACTThree experiments examined whether 4- and 5-year-olds can explicitly revise uncertain beliefs in light of disconfirming evidence. We considered 2 factors that might influence belief revision: a) the type and variability of evidence provided, and b) whether children generated an explanation of their initial hypothesis. When provided with limited observed evidence, children revised their belief about their initial guess greater than chance expectations, but differences were not observed when the quality of the explanation was considered (Experiment 1). In a similar paradigm, children revised their beliefs more often than chance when asked to explain or describe their initial belief when shown more diverse counterevidence (Experiment 2) or when told that their initial belief was incorrect (Experiment 3). Overall, these data suggest that preschoolers have nascent capacities for explicit belief revision in light of counterevidence.

An enactive account of placebo effects

Placebos are commonly defined as ineffective treatments. They are treatments that lack a known mechanism linking their properties to the properties of the condition on which treatment aims to intervene. Given this, the fact that placebos can have substantial therapeutic effects looks puzzling. The puzzle, we argue, arises from the relationship placebos present between culturally meaningful entities (such as treatments or therapies), our intentional relationship to the environment (such as implicit or explicit beliefs about a treatment’s healing powers) and bodily effects (placebo responses). How can a mere attitude toward a treatment result in appropriate bodily changes? We argue that an ‘enactive’ conception of cognition accommodates and renders intelligible the phenomenon of placebo effects. Enactivism depicts an organism’s adaptive bodily processes, its intentional directedness, and the meaningful properties of its environment as co-emergent aspects of a single dynamic system. In doing so it provides an account of the interrelations between mind, body and world that demystifies placebo effects.

Czech gamblers view on luck as the cause of uncontrollable events

The belief in deterministic luck is considered to be one of the factors contributing to maintenance of gambling behavior. This belief was found to be stronger during the gamble situation in problematic gamblers than non-problematic. The present study deals with the difference in luck attribution between the Czech gamblers and the control group. The main goal was to find out whether the difference between belief in luck is also present in non-gamble situation. A questionnaire containing the Belief in luck and luckiness scale and 14 stories of uncontrollable events was administered to 30 pathological gamblers and 30 matched participant (by age, education, gender and nationality), who did not play any hazard games regularly. In uncontrollable events participants chose from non-material causes (luck, chance, god, destiny) one they believed to be the best fit. Results have shown a statistically significant difference between gamblers and control group in the way of attributing the causes. Control group has chosen significantly more “chance” option meanwhile gamblers opted for luck, God and destiny. There was no statistically significant difference in explicitly formulated belief in luck. It seems that the stronger casual attribution of luck, god and destiny in pathological gamblers compared to non-gamblers are not restricted only to gaming situations. Rather we can find it in other uncontrollable events as well. The absence of the difference between patients and control group in explicit belief in luck measured by questionnaire could be pointing to the stronger effect of the treatment for explicit belief than for more subtle causal attributing.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Emerged challenges for English education in Japan

Although Japanese students study English for 6 years as one of mandatory subjects in secondary school, they often demonstrate little success with it when they enter higher education. Many students come to university with emotional baggage, or negative thoughts on learning English. These negative functions may be associated with the beliefs that students develop before they come to university. These learner beliefs serve to determine the future behavior of students and hinder or enhance the learning process, thus, it may be effective to investigate the beliefs that limit student motivation and the characteristics of those negative beliefs. While many researchers still depend on the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) (Horwitz, 1987) questionnaire to determine explicit beliefs, alternative approaches, particularly those designed to reveal implicit beliefs and emotions, can be helpful for understanding when and how it is appropriate for teachers to intervene in the promotion of learning. A new trend in belief studies uses visual outcomes such as drawings and photographs. Such visual accounts have rarely been used as research tolls in the study of language learning and teaching in Japan. In this note, the method of eliciting learners’ unconscious beliefs via drawings and interpretation of the drawings is discussed.

The true self and existential structure? Unexpected effects of mortality salience and personal need for structure on belief in a true self

Two studies examined (what seemed to be) a relatively straightforward prediction that mortality salience would increase belief in a true self. This hypothesis was based on existing evidence that the idea of a true self helps people organize the world as well as evidence suggesting that people are particularly likely to rely on such organizing structures when death is salient. We further hypothesized that this effect would be pronounced for individuals high in personal need for structure (PNS). However, our results revealed a pattern in the opposite direction as predicted. While PNS did moderate the effect of mortality salience on belief in a true self, high PNS individuals were actually less likely to derogate the author of an essay suggesting the true self is an illusion (Study 1) and less likely to endorse items assessing explicit belief in the true self (Study 2) following MS. These findings contradict existing theory and evidence and suggest an interesting potential avenue for future research.