Andreas Kappes

Mental Contrasting and the Self-Regulation of Responding to Negative Feedback

Mentally contrasting a desired future with impeding reality promotes goal pursuit when expectations of success are high and curbs goal pursuit when expectations of success are low. Four studies tested whether mental contrasting affects responses to goal-relevant negative feedback. Mental contrasting promoted the processing of negative feedback (Studies 1 and 2), which in turn helped participants to form plans beneficial for goal pursuit (Study 2). Mental contrasting also protected the self-view of competence against negative feedback (Study 3) and facilitated beneficial attributions for negative feedback (Study 4). All effects occurred in line with expectations of success. These results suggest that mental contrasting regulates effective responses to negative feedback by bringing goal pursuit in line with expectations of success.

Implicit theories of emotion shape regulation of negative affect

Implicit theories of emotion—assumptions about whether emotions are fixed (entity theory) or malleable (incremental theory)—have previously been shown to influence affective outcomes over time. We examined whether implicit theories of emotion also relate to the immediate regulation of negative affect. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that the more students endorsed an entity theory of emotion, the more discomfort they reported while watching an aversive movie clip, the more they avoided affective stimuli in this movie clip, the more negative affect they reported after the clip, and the less likely they were to watch the same clip again to learn about its ending. These findings suggest that implicit theories of emotion might produce poor affective outcomes immediately as well as over time. They also offer insight into why some people avoid negative affect while others confront it.

At the Heart of Morality Lies Neuro-Visceral Integration: Lower Cardiac Vagal Tone Predicts Utilitarian Moral Judgment

To not harm others is widely considered the most basic element of human morality. The aversion to harm others can be either rooted in the outcomes of an action (utilitarianism) or reactions to the action itself (deontology). We speculated that the human moral judgments rely on the integration of neural computations of harm and visceral reactions. The present research examined whether utilitarian or deontological aspects of moral judgment are associated with cardiac vagal tone, a physiological proxy for neuro-visceral integration. We investigated the relationship between cardiac vagal tone and moral judgment by using a mix of moral dilemmas, mathematical modeling and psychophysiological measures. An index of bipolar deontology-utilitarianism was correlated with resting heart rate variability (HRV)-an index of cardiac vagal tone-such that more utilitarian judgments were associated with lower HRV. Follow-up analyses using process dissociation, which independently quantifies utilitarian and deontological moral inclinations, provided further evidence that utilitarian (but not deontological) judgments were associated with lower HRV. Our results suggest that the functional integration of neural and visceral systems during moral judgments can restrict outcome-based, utilitarian moral preferences. Implications for theories of moral judgment are discussed.

Concern for Others Leads to Vicarious Optimism

An optimistic learning bias leads people to update their beliefs in response to better-than-expected good news but neglect worse-than-expected bad news. Because evidence suggests that this bias arises from self-concern, we hypothesized that a similar bias may affect beliefs about other people’s futures, to the extent that people care about others. Here, we demonstrated the phenomenon of vicarious optimism and showed that it arises from concern for others. Participants predicted the likelihood of unpleasant future events that could happen to either themselves or others. In addition to showing an optimistic learning bias for events affecting themselves, people showed vicarious optimism when learning about events affecting friends and strangers. Vicarious optimism for strangers correlated with generosity toward strangers, and experimentally increasing concern for strangers amplified vicarious optimism for them. These findings suggest that concern for others can bias beliefs about their future welfare and that optimism in learning is not restricted to oneself.

Uncertainty about the impact of social decisions increases prosocial behaviour

Uncertainty about how our choices will affect others infuses social life. Past research suggests uncertainty has a negative effect on prosocial behaviour1–12 by enabling people to adopt self-serving narratives about their actions1,13. We show that uncertainty does not always promote selfishness. We introduce a distinction between two types of uncertainty that have opposite effects on prosocial behaviour. Previous work focused on outcome uncertainty (uncertainty about whether or not a decision will lead to a particular outcome). However, as soon as people’s decisions might have negative consequences for others, there is also impact uncertainty (uncertainty about how others’ well-being will be impacted by the negative outcome). Consistent with past research1–12, we found decreased prosocial behaviour under outcome uncertainty. In contrast, prosocial behaviour was increased under impact uncertainty in incentivized economic decisions and hypothetical decisions about infectious disease threats. Perceptions of social norms paralleled the behavioural effects. The effect of impact uncertainty on prosocial behaviour did not depend on the individuation of others or the mere mention of harm, and was stronger when impact uncertainty was made more salient. Our findings offer insights into communicating uncertainty, especially in contexts where prosocial behaviour is paramount, such as responding to infectious disease threats.Experiments using economic games and hypothetical infectious disease scenarios show that uncertainty about a decision’s outcome reduces prosocial actions, but when the impact on others is made uncertain, prosociality increases.

From risk to fairness

Kadcyla is a drug that extends the life of breast cancer patients by an average of 6 mo. It also happens to be incredibly expensive. The United Kingdom’s National Health Service sparked controversy when it refused to provide this drug to patients, citing its low cost effectiveness. Cases like this raise the question of how societies should make distributive decisions. Should we maximize utility or should we aim to improve the lives of the least fortunate, even if doing so is costly for everyone else? The influential philosopher John Rawls tackled this dilemma by framing fair distributive decisions as a kind of gamble (1). Rawls famously argued that we should choose the kind of society we would all prefer if our choice was made from behind a “veil of ignorance”—that is, under conditions of complete uncertainty about where we would end up. He held that people should make such choices by following a risk-averse “maximin” strategy of maximizing the minimum possible outcome for themselves and others. Echoing Rawls’s theory, new research by Kameda et al. (2) links risk and fairness by showing that preferences about risk and about distribution may arise from common psychological and neural substrates. In the experiments, participants made two kinds of decisions that at first glance seem rather different: distributive decisions involved allocating payoffs to anonymous others, whereas risky decisions involved choosing between lotteries affecting their own payoffs. However, most participants deployed similar strategies for both types of decisions. Those who followed a “Rawlsian” maximin strategy in their distributive decisions tended to adopt a similar strategy for risky decisions, avoiding lotteries with the lowest possible payoffs. Meanwhile, “utilitarian” participants maximized total welfare in their distributions and preferred lotteries that maximized expected payoffs. Participants’ diverse decision patterns thus appear to mirror the philosophical debate between Rawls and … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: molly.crockett{at}psy.ox.ac.uk. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1