Journal: Collabra: Psychology

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University of California Press

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ISSN

2474-7394

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2019 - 201912020 - 20254
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Publications 1 - 5 of 5
  • Faces Do Not Attract More Attention Than Non-Social Distractors in the Stroop Task
    Item type: Journal Article
    Henschel, Anna; Bargel, Hannah; Cross, Emily S. (2021)
    Collabra: Psychology
    As robots begin to receive citizenship, are treated as beloved pets, and given a place at Japanese family tables, it is becoming clear that these machines are taking on increasingly social roles. While human-robot interaction research relies heavily on self-report measures for assessing people’s perception of robots, a distinct lack of robust cognitive and behavioural measures to gauge the scope and limits of social motivation towards artificial agents exists. Here we adapted Conty and colleagues’ (2010) social version of the classic Stroop paradigm, in which we showed four kinds of distractor images above incongruent and neutral words: human faces, robot faces, object faces (for example, a cloud with facial features) and flowers (control). We predicted that social stimuli, like human faces, would be extremely salient and draw attention away from the to-be-processed words. A repeated-measures ANOVA indicated that the task worked (the Stroop effect was observed), and a distractor-dependent enhancement of Stroop interference emerged. Planned contrasts indicated that specifically human faces presented above incongruent words significantly slowed participants’ reaction times. To investigate this small effect further, we conducted a second experiment (N=51) with a larger stimulus set. While the main effect of the incongruent condition slowing down participants’ reaction time replicated, we did not observe an interaction effect of the social distractors (human faces) drawing more attention than the other distractor types. We question the suitability of this task as a robust measure for social motivation and discuss our findings in the light of recent conflicting results in the social attentional capture literature
  • The Ontogenesis of Action Syntax
    Item type: Journal Article
    Maffongelli, Laura; D'Ausilio, Alessandro; Fadiga, Luciano; et al. (2019)
    Collabra: Psychology
    Language and action share similar organizational principles. Both are thought to be hierarchical and recursive in nature. Here we address the relationship between language and action from developmental and neurophysiological perspectives. We discuss three major aspects: The extent of the analogy between language and action; the necessity to extend research on the yet largely neglected aspect of action syntax; the positive contribution of a developmental approach to this topic. We elaborate on the claim that adding an ontogenetic approach will help to obtain a comprehensive picture about both the interplay between language and action and its development, and to answer the question whether the underlying mechanisms of detecting syntactic violations of action sequences are similar to or different from the processing of language syntactic violations.
  • A Call for Greater Modesty in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
    Item type: Journal Article
    Ramsey, Richard (2021)
    Collabra: Psychology
    Exaggerated claims and low levels of reproducibility are commonplace in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, due to an incentive structure that demands “newsworthy” results. My overall argument here is that in addition to methodological reform, greater modesty is required across all levels - from individual researchers to the systems that govern science (e.g., editors, reviewers, grant panels, hiring committees) - to redirect expectations regarding what psychological and brain science can effectively deliver. Empirical work and the reform agenda should pivot away from making big claims on narrow evidence bases or single tools and focus on the limitations of our individual efforts, as well as how we can work together to build ways of thinking that enable integration and synthesis across multiple modalities and levels of description. I outline why modesty matters for science including the reform agenda, provide some practical steps that we can take to embrace modesty, rebut common misconceptions of what modesty means for science, and present some limitations of the approach. Ultimately, by presenting a more sober view of our capacities and achievements, whilst placing work within a wider context that respects the complexity of the human brain, we will bolster the fidelity of scientific inference and thus help in a small way to generate a firmer footing upon which to build a cumulative science.
  • Personality and Dropout From Military Training
    Item type: Journal Article
    Heitz, Etienne J.; Annen, Hubert (2025)
    Collabra: Psychology
    This prospective study examined whether Big Five traits and self-esteem predict voluntary and involuntary dropout from military training, beyond the effects of age, education, and self-reported physical fitness. We analyzed two independent samples, including 634 and 219 conscripts from the Swiss Armed Forces, using hierarchical logistic regression. Results indicate that lower self-esteem was associated with a higher likelihood of voluntary dropout, as hypothesized. Furthermore, lower levels of Big Five facet respectfulness were linked to an increased likelihood of voluntary dropout, and lower levels of facet creative imagination were linked to an increased likelihood of involuntary dropout. However, the effect of facets was less substantiated than that of self-esteem. None of the other variables significantly predicted dropout, and most hypothesized associations were not supported. We discuss potential explanations and highlight more promising predictors for future research. The findings contribute to our understanding of the predictive validity of personality scales and have practical implications for military personnel managers. We recommend using self-esteem as a screening measure to identify recruits prone to voluntary dropout. The present study was limited by a low number of dropout cases and potential selection effects that may have reduced predictive associations prior to analysis.
  • Are Natural Faces Merely Labelled as Artificial Trusted Less?
    Item type: Journal Article
    Liefooghe, Baptist; Oliveira, Manuel; Leisten, Luca M.; et al. (2023)
    Collabra: Psychology
    Artificial intelligence increasingly plays a crucial role in daily life. At the same time, artificial intelligence is often met with reluctance and distrust. Previous research demonstrated that faces that are visibly artificial are considered to be less trustworthy and remembered less accurately compared to natural faces. Current technology, however, enables the generation of artificial faces that are indistinguishable from natural faces. In five experiments (total N = 867), we tested whether natural faces that are merely labelled to be artificial are also trusted less. A meta-analysis of all five experiments suggested that natural faces merely labeled as being artificial were judged to be less trustworthy. This bias did not depend on the degree of trustworthiness and attractiveness of the faces (Experiments 1-3). It was not modulated by changing raters’ attitude towards artificial intelligence (Experiments 2-3) or by information communicated by the faces (Experiment 4). We also did not observe differences in recall performance between faces labelled as artificial or natural (Experiment 3). When participants only judged one type of face (i.e., either labelled as artificial or natural), the difference in trustworthiness judgments was eliminated (Experiment 5) suggesting that the contrast between the natural and artificial categories in the same task promoted the labelling effect. We conclude that faces that are merely labelled to be artificial are trusted less in situations that also include faces labelled to be real. We propose that understanding and changing social evaluations towards artificial intelligence goes beyond eliminating physical differences between artificial and natural entities.
Publications 1 - 5 of 5