New Research From Psychological Science

Metacognition in Decision-Making Across Domains and Modalities: Evidence from Three Studies
Audrey Mazancieux, Katarzyna Hat, Renate Rutiku, Michał Wierzchoń, Kristian Sandberg

Metacognition involves second-order judgments about first-order judgments. It remains unclear whether an individual’s confidence in being correct is generated by the same system across tasks (domain generality) or whether it is computed independently in the context of each task (domain specificity). Previous studies have focused on correlations across several tasks, yet the evidence is mixed, and more complex models of domain generality were not taken into account. Analyzing data from 10 tasks collected across three studies in Denmark and Poland (N= 253–547 adult participants), we found a fixed pattern of cross-task correlations for both metacognitive bias and metacognitive efficiency. In accordance with previous studies, we found that hierarchical estimation of metacognitive efficiency led to higher correlations. We used confirmatory factor analyses to investigate the existence of general processes. We found evidence for a weak domain generality with a metacognitive module for perceptual tasks and another for cognitive tasks.

Detection of Idiosyncratic Gaze-Fingerprint Signatures in Humans
Sarah K. Crockford, Eleonora Satta, Ines Severino, et al.

Do individuals possess a “gaze fingerprint” that reveals how they uniquely look at the world? We tested this question by examining intra- and intersubject gaze similarity across 700 static pictures of complex natural scenes. Independent discovery (n= 105) and replication data sets (n= 46) of adults aged 18 to 50 years (sampled from Italy and Germany) revealed that gaze fingerprinting is possible at relatively high rates (e.g., 52%–63%) compared with chance (e.g., 1%–2%). We also identifygaze-fingerprint barcodes, which reveal a unique individualized code describing which stimuli an individual can be gaze-fingerprinted on. Preregistered longitudinal follow-up experiments have shown that gaze-fingerprint barcodes are nonrandom within an individual over short and long time fraframmes. Finally, we find that increased gaze fingerprintability for social stimuli is associated with decreased levels of autistic traits. To summarize, this work showcases the potential of gaze fingerprinting for isolating traitlike factors that may be of high neurodevelopmental and biological significance.

Pretending Not to Know Reveals a Capacity for Model-Based Self-Simulation
Matan Mazor, Chaz Firestone, Ian Phillips

Pretending not to know requires appreciating how one would behave without a given piece of knowledge and acting accordingly. Here, two game-based experiments reveal a capacity to simulate decision-making under such counterfactual ignorance. English-speaking adults (N= 1,001) saw the solution to a game (ship locations in Battleship, the hidden word in Hangman) but attempted to play as though they never had this information. Pretenders accurately mimicked broad aspects of genuine play, including the number of guesses required to reach a solution, as well as subtle patterns, such as the effects of decision uncertainty on decision time. Although peers were unable to detect pretense, statistical analysis and computational modeling uncovered traces of overacting in pretenders’ decisions, suggesting a schematic simulation of their minds. Opening up a new approach to studying self-simulation, our results reveal intricate metacognitive knowledge about decision-making, drawn from a rich—but simplified—internal model of cognition.

To Believe or Not to Believe in Conspiracy Claims? That Is a Question for Signal Detection Theory
Maude Tagand, Dominique Muller, Cécile Nurra, Olivier Klein, Benjamin Aubert-Teillaud, Kenzo Nera

Conspiracy mentality is conceptualized as a continuum. Research on this topic has focused on unwarranted conspiracy claims and the upper end of the conspiracy-mentality continuum—people seeing conspiracies everywhere. This focus neglects warranted conspiracy claims and the lower end of the continuum. To better understand conspiracy mentality, we aimed to clarify both ends of the continuum using signal detection theory. We examined how people evaluate warranted and unwarranted conspiracy claims across levels of conspiracy mentality in two studies with 331 French-speaking adult participants from France, Switzerland, and Belgium (Study 1) and 576 English-speaking adult participants from the United States and the United Kingdom (Study 2), both groups recruited via Prolific. Compared with participants high in conspiracy mentality, those low in conspiracy mentality not only believed less in conspiracies but also underestimated their prevalence. However, participants low in conspiracy mentality were more accurate at distinguishing warranted from unwarranted conspiracy claims. These results provide a better understanding of conspiracy mentality and its relationship with the perceived truthfulness of conspiracies.

Associations Between Meat Consumption and Depression Are Small and Unlikely to Be Causal
Nicholas Poh-Jie Tan, Michael D. Krämer, Peter Haehner, Wiebke Bleidorn, Christopher J. Hopwood

Evidence from cross-sectional studies suggests that people who eat more meat tend to report somewhat lower depression—a link that, if causal, could have important implications for mental health. However, little is known about why meat consumption is associated with depression. We examined the nature and magnitude of this association in three large, representative, longitudinal samples in the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia (total N = 77,678, aged 14–102 years). Adjusting for income, age, education, and gender, we observed a weak association of β = −0.05 between meat consumption and depression that was not moderated by living context. Moreover, the longitudinal within-person association was very small (β = −0.01) and lagged within-person effects were not significant, casting doubt on a direct causal association. Overall, results do not support low meat consumption as an important risk factor for depression.

The Structure of Social Situations: Insights From the Large-Scale Automated Coding of Text
Sudeep Bhatia, Andrew Yang, Taya R. Cohen

Social situations are key determinants of cognition and behavior, and although several frameworks for representing situations have been proposed, these remain partial, nonintegrated, and not systematically mapped onto the rich space of situations encountered in everyday life. We address this problem by analyzing more than 20,000 detailed textual descriptions of dyadic social interactions obtained from participant-generated stories, published fiction, blogs, and autobiographical narratives. Our main methodological contribution is to use generative artificial intelligence to code these textual descriptions along a very large set of features and derive a detailed taxonomy of situational classes or categories of social interactions. We subsequently relate these situational classes to high-level situational variables like conflict, power, and duty, which have been identified by prior theory. In this way, our article provides a comprehensive, data-driven, and integrative framework for quantifying situational structure, advancing the study of social cognition and behavior.

From Capture to Control: Initial Capture Increases Learned Suppression
Yue Zhang, Nicholas Gaspelin

Salient stimuli have the potential to distract us from our immediate goals. Much research has therefore aimed to understand how we learn to use attention to resist distraction by salient stimuli. We propose a new hypothesis whereby an initial instance of distraction can improve future suppression of salient stimuli. Across three experiments (N= 120 college students, aged 18–35 years), we provide evidence for this hypothesis using a new eye-tracking approach. The results demonstrated that an initial instance of distraction occurred before salient distractors were suppressed. Notably, if this initial instance of distraction was eliminated or weakened via experimental manipulations, learned suppression of the distracting stimuli was greatly reduced. Together, these findings suggest that attentional capture can serve as a learning signal that improves future attentional control. They also indicate that learned suppression emerges rapidly, which has strong implications for models of attention and cognitive control.

Commentary: On the Equal-Opportunity Jerk “Defense”: Rudeness Complicates Sexism Attributions but Comes at a Cost
Shiyao Bao, Anna Bajet, Rocío Martínez, Johannes Müller-Trede, Isabelle Engeler, Sebastian Hafenbrädl

Sexism is a pervasive and persistent problem. In their 2022 article “The ‘Equal-Opportunity Jerk’ Defense: Rudeness Can Obfuscate Gender Bias” (Psychological Science, Vol. 33, pp. 397–411), Belmi et al. argued that sexism can be obfuscated and go unpunished if perpetrators also act rudely toward men: the “equal-opportunity jerk defense.” We introduce a simple Bayesian model that accounts for Belmi et al.’s findings and corroborated their predictions and implications in five preregistered experiments (N= 6,968 U.S. adults recruited via Prolific). We replicated that being rude toward men decreased perceived sexism but importantly found that it came at the cost of increased punishment (Study 1). Moreover, rudeness primarily decreased actors’ perceived sexism, whereas their actions were still perceived as sexist (Study 2). Sexism ratings were sensitive to prior beliefs about the prevalence of sexism and to the diagnosticity of observed sexist behavior (Supplementary Studies S1-S2), in line with a broader Bayesian perspective. Bias in sexism ratings thus need not implicate fallacious cognitive processes or an “illusion of gender blindness.”

The Relation Between Attributions of Mental Capacities and Moral Standing Across Six Diverse Cultures
Bastian Jaeger, Maarten Bosten

Whose welfare and interests matter from a moral perspective? This question is at the center of many polarizing debates, for example, on the ethicality of abortion or meat consumption. A widely cited hypothesis holds that attributions of moral standing are guided by which mental capacities an entity is perceived to have. Specifically, perceivedsentience(the capacity to feel pleasure and pain) is thought to be the primary determinant, rather than perceivedagency(the capacity to navigate the world and social relationships) or other abilities. This has been described as a general feature of moral cognition, but the evidence for this is mixed and overwhelmingly based on Western participants. Here, we examined the link between attributions of mind and moral standing across six culturally diverse countries—Brazil, Nigeria, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India, and the Philippines—using a sample of 1,255 participants (aged 18–74 years old) who were recruited via the online platform Toloka. In every country, entities’ moral standing was most strongly related to their perceived sentience.

Does Income Inequality Predict Adolescent Depressive Symptoms?
Sondre Aasen Nilsen, Kyrre Breivik, Kjell Morten Stormark, Tormod Bøe

Income inequality is frequently cited as a forceful determinant of mental health and as a possible contributor to the rising trend in adolescent depressive symptoms. However, research findings often rely on low-powered cross-sectional designs. We conducted a preregistered study of the within-municipality effect of income inequality on adolescent depressive symptoms in Norway, covering ≈550,000 respondents nested within 863 municipality years and 340 municipalities. Using multilevel modeling and equivalence testing, the overall within-municipality effect of income inequality was neither statistically significant nor practically meaningful and did not significantly interact with family financial situation. A significant gender interaction showed that rising inequality predicted slightly higher depressive symptoms among females and slightly lower among males; however, the main gender effects were also probably too small to be meaningful. We conclude that changes in income inequality likely do not meaningfully predict nor help explain changes in adolescent depressive symptoms in Norway from 2010 to 2019.

Conscious Detection of Spoken Words Depends on Their Valence
Gal R. Chen, Zaheera Maswadeh, Leon Deouell, Ran R. Hassin

Conscious experiences appear to play a central role in human behavior, yet most neural processing occurs outside of consciousness. Understanding how the mind prioritizes information for consciousness is, therefore, crucial for theories of cognition. Prior research has largely focused on vision, but generalization is tenuous given the vastly different characteristics of the senses—particularly for audition, which lacks foveation and cannot be intentionally stopped. We examine the affective domain, for which prioritization is not well understood. In three experiments (two preregistered), 101 Hebrew-speaking adults completed a visual task with a stream of auditory pseudowords in the background. Occasionally a meaningful word appeared, and participants were asked about its presence. Using objective and subjective awareness measures, we found that neutral words were prioritized over negative words, regardless of task difficulty, intelligibility, and low-level features. These findings challenge theorizing and modal intuitions, and we discuss ways in which those can be reconciled.

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