Human-Android Interaction in the Near and Distant Future

Will robots look and act exactly like us within 50 years? According to Neal J. Roese and Eyal Amir, technology for realistic movement and emotion detection is progressing rapidly, but artificial intelligence will remain a limitation to making robots completely human-like. However, it is interesting to consider psychological challenges for making realistic androids and the implications for human–android interactions. During casual simple encounters, such as buying lunch or booking a plane ticket, we may not care if the “person” we are talking to is real or fake. But, in more complex social interactions like during an argument or complaint, we may react differently to an android than we would to a human.

Also, humans have a strong tendency to dislike members of outside groups. If stereotypes develop about androids, could they be the stigmatized group of the future?

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Achieving and Sustaining a Good Life

Are you living a good life? Psychological research has historically advised us what not to do, but a life spent merely avoiding certain behaviors does not necessarily equate to living well. In a new report, Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson suggest some ways that psychological research can give positive guidance for living well and achieving a good life. For example, they suggest studying people who live well, emphasizing their actual behaviors and not what they say they do. In addition, research into the psychology of living well needs to examine multiple variables and their interactions (as opposed to studying only a few variables at a time) and psychologists must undertake more longitudinal studies. Park and Peterson also note that interdisciplinary research and collaborations are crucial to figuring out how to live a good life.

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Why Do Different Individuals Progress Along Different Life Trajectories?

One of the most important questions facing clinical psychological science is why everyone moves along a different life path — in other words, why do we all have different personalities? As Gregory T. Smith writes in a new report, in order to answer this question, psychologists need to first identify and test specific links leading from genes to behavior and also distinguish between psychological traits that are universal and those that are culture-specific. Smith notes that in order to meet these goals, psychological scientists have to develop more precise tools for studying phenotypes and they need to recruit modeling methodologies (such as computer simulations) from other disciplines. Lastly, researchers must establish a more valid system for describing psychological dysfunction.

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Mechanisms of Gene–Environment Interaction Effects in the Development of Conduct Disorder

Conduct disorder, the most common child psychiatric disorder, is a repetitive pattern of antisocial behaviors, including theft and aggression. Research has suggested that it occurs in individuals who carry a specific form of the monoamine oxidase A gene and who have been exposed to threatening life experiences (e.g., physical abuse, harsh parenting).  However, the exact mechanisms involved in this gene-environment interaction are unknown. Kenneth A. Dodge proposes a new model that suggests that the environment causes conduct disorder through a combination of cognitive, emotional, and neurochemical processes; for this reason, a multidisciplinary approach is required for understanding the causes of antisocial behavior. Dodge offers clinical, experimental, and longitudinal methods that can test this model and also suggests that it may be useful for studying other forms of developmental psychopathology.

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Perspectives on Preference Aggregation

Social choice theory describes the way that an individual’s preferences can be incorporated into a decision by the group as a whole—voting is one example of a social choice procedure. A number of disciplines, such as economics and political science, have examined social-choice procedures; however theoretical findings emerging from these fields have not corresponded to work coming from psychological science. For instance, theoretical findings from economics support voting paradoxes (when a candidate who was not preferred by the majority of voters ends up winning an election), but empirical data does not. In a new report, Michel Regenwetter considers a number of social-choice ranking methods, which may be based on different theories, but actually yield similar results.  Regenwetter also discusses a number of questions on how to reconcile the theories with the empirical data.

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Unpacking Intuition: A Conjecture

Many important decisions are the result of intuition (decision making that is fast, not conscious, based on prior experiences, and not easily described afterwards). But exactly how intuition occurs remains a mystery. In a new report, Martin E.P. Seligman and Michael Kahana suggest that intuitive decision making processes may be  similar to processes involved in recognizing categories and faces of members of the same family, and if so, intuition may be learned. Seligman and Kahana go on to surmise that it may be possible to teach intuition on a large scale and that intuitive decision making may be enhanced by virtual simulation. For example, exposing a surgeon to simulated medical emergencies may help with intuitive decision-making processes: When an emergency does occur, the surgeon will be able to respond effectively and without much guesswork, since he’s “seen it before.”

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Giving Debiasing Away: Can Psychological Research on Correcting Cognitive Errors Promote Human Welfare?

Often, our judgments and decisions are clouded by biases. In extreme forms, confirmation bias — the tendency to seek out evidence consistent with one’s own viewpoint while ignoring contradictory evidence — can lead to prejudice and violence. For example, history abounds with many examples of violent regimes gaining followers by presenting only one point of view, while blocking them from all other perspectives. In a new report, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Rachel Ammirati, and Kristin Landfield suggest that debiasing efforts — techniques that diminish biases’ intensity and frequency or eliminate biases all together — could be one of psychology’s most important legacies to the promotion of human welfare. The authors offer a number of methods for debiasing, such as teaching “consider-the-opposite” strategies, which may help people to understand and appreciate alternative opinions.

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Know Thyself

How well do you know yourself? It’s a question many of us struggle with, as we try to figure out how close we are to who we actually want to be. In a new report, Timothy D. Wilson describes theories behind self-knowledge (that is, how people form beliefs about themselves), cites challenges psychologists encounter while studying it, and offers ways we can get to know ourselves a little better.

The study of self-knowledge has tended to focus on how accurate we are at determining our own internal states, such as our emotions, personality, and attitudes. However, Wilson notes that self-knowledge can be broadened to include memory, like recalling how we felt in the past, and prospection, predicting how we will feel in the future. Knowing who we were and who we will be are as important to self-knowledge as knowing who we are in the present. Wilson suggests some ways that can help us learn more about ourselves, such as really attempting to be objective when considering our behaviors and trying to see ourselves through the eyes of other people. In addition, another way of knowing ourselves better is to become more aware of findings from psychological science.

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How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

Thanks to 50 years of research on judgment and decision-making, psychologists are gaining a detailed understanding of what influences our judgment. Despite that, however, many of us still make unwise choices from time to time, such as making the wrong investment or eating that donut while on a diet. Bad decisions can have serious consequences. Is there a way we can improve our decision making abilities? In a new report, Katherine Milkman, Dolly Chugh, and Max Bazerman provide a review of current strategies that may help improve decision making and discuss future directions for this important research (for example, more emphasis on identifying improvement strategies).

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Can We Improve Our Physical Health by Altering Our Social Networks?

We have known for more than 30 years about the positive health benefits associated with having lots of social relationships. Study after study have suggested that being a part of a diverse social network (filled with lots of friends and including membership in a variety of social groups) may result in less dementia, greater resistance to infectious disease, and a longer life. However, the exact nature of this link remains uncertain. Understanding this connection has many important implications for public health, including lowering health care costs and promoting healthier and happier lives of citizens. In a new report, Sheldon Cohen and Denise Janicki-Deverts suggest that psychologists (with their unique skills and training) are in the best position to uncover the answer.

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