Desmond C. Ong

A Second Look at Automatic Theory of Mind Reconsidering Kovács, Téglás, and Endress (2010)

In recent work, Kovács, Téglás, and Endress (2010) argued that human adults automatically represented other agents’ beliefs even when those beliefs were completely irrelevant to the task being performed. In a series of 13 experiments, we replicated these previous findings but demonstrated that the effects found arose from artifacts in the experimental paradigm. In particular, the critical findings demonstrating automatic belief computation were driven by inconsistencies in the timing of an attention check, and thus do not provide evidence for automatic theory of mind in adults.

Glassy Dislocation Dynamics in 2D Colloidal Dimer Crystals

Although glassy relaxation is typically associated with disorder, here we report on a new type of glassy dynamics relating to dislocations within 2D crystals of colloidal dimers. Previous studies have demonstrated that dislocation motion in dimer crystals is restricted by certain particle orientations. Here, we drag an optically trapped particle through such dimer crystals, creating dislocations. We find a two-stage relaxation response where initially dislocations glide until encountering particles that cage their motion. Subsequent relaxation occurs logarithmically slowly through a second process where dislocations hop between caged configurations. Finally, in simulations of sheared dimer crystals, the dislocation mean squared displacement displays a caging plateau typical of glassy dynamics. Together, these results reveal a novel glassy system within a colloidal crystal.

Prosocial Conformity: Prosocial Norms Generalize Across Behavior and Empathy

Generosity is contagious: People imitate others’ prosocial behaviors. However, research on such prosocial conformity focuses on cases in which people merely reproduce others’ positive actions. Hence, we know little about the breadth of prosocial conformity. Can prosocial conformity cross behavior types or even jump from behavior to affect? Five studies address these questions. In Studies 1 to 3, participants decided how much to donate to charities before learning that others donated generously or stingily. Participants who observed generous donations donated more than those who observed stingy donations (Studies 1 and 2). Crucially, this generalized across behaviors: Participants who observed generous donations later wrote more supportive notes to another participant (Study 3). In Studies 4 and 5, participants observed empathic or non-empathic group responses to vignettes. Group empathy ratings not only shifted participants’ own empathic feelings (Study 4), but they also influenced participants’ donations to a homeless shelter (Study 5). These findings reveal the remarkable breadth of prosocial conformity.

Not As Good as You Think? Trait Positive Emotion Is Associated with Increased Self-Reported Empathy but Decreased Empathic Performance

How is positive emotion associated with our ability to empathize with others? Extant research provides support for two competing predictions about this question. An empathy amplification hypothesis suggests positive emotion would be associated with greater empathy, as it often enhances other prosocial processes. A contrasting empathy attenuation hypothesis suggests positive emotion would be associated with lower empathy, because positive emotion promotes self-focused or antisocial behaviors. The present investigation tested these competing perspectives by examining associations between dispositional positive emotion and both subjective (i.e., self-report) and objective (i.e., task performance) measures of empathy. Findings revealed that although trait positive emotion was associated with increased subjective beliefs about empathic tendencies, it was associated with both increases and decreases in task-based empathic performance depending on the target’s emotional state. More specifically, trait positive emotion was linked to lower overall empathic accuracy toward a high-intensity negative target, but also a higher sensitivity to emotion upshifts (i.e., shifts in emotion from negative to positive) toward positive targets. This suggests that trait positive affect may be associated with decreased objective empathy in the context of mood incongruent (i.e., negative) emotional stimuli, but may increase some aspects of empathic performance in the context of mood congruent (i.e., positive) stimuli. Taken together, these findings suggest that trait positive emotion engenders a compelling subjective-objective gap regarding its association with empathy, in being related to a heightened perception of empathic tendencies, despite being linked to mixed abilities in regards to empathic performance. (Word count: 242).

Strategic Resource Use for Learning: A Self-Administered Intervention That Guides Self-Reflection on Effective Resource Use Enhances Academic Performance:

Many educational policies provide learners with more resources (e.g., new learning activities, study materials, or technologies), but less often do they address whether students are using these resources effectively. We hypothesized that making students more self-reflective about how they should approach their learning with the resources available to them would improve their class performance. We designed a novel Strategic Resource Use intervention that students could self-administer online and tested its effects in two cohorts of a college-level introductory statistics class. Before each exam, students randomly assigned to the treatment condition strategized about which academic resources they would use for studying, why each resource would be useful, and how they would use their resources. Students randomly assigned to the treatment condition reported being more self-reflective about their learning throughout the class, used their resources more effectively, and outperformed students in the control condition by an average of one third of a letter grade in the class.

Analysis of laser speckle severity, granularity, and anisotropy using the power spectral density in polar-coordinate representation

The conventional speckle contrast measures only speckle severity, and is unable to characterize granularity and anisotropy in displayed images, which are easily picked up by human observers. Here, we propose a comprehensive method based on the power spectral density which allows the simultaneous measurement of three components of laser speckle-severity, granularity and anisotropy-as a superior way to evaluate both speckle and speckle reduction techniques.

Empathy and well-being correlate with centrality in different social networks

Significance Which traits make individuals popular or lead others to turn to them in times of stress? We examine these questions by observing newly formed social networks in first-year college dormitories. We measured dorm members’ traits (for example, their empathy) as well as their position in their dorm’s social networks. Via network analysis, we corroborate insights from psychological research: people who exude positive emotions are sought out by others for fun and excitement, whereas empathic individuals are sought out for trust and support. These findings show that individuals’ traits are related to their network positions and to the different roles that they play in supporting their communities. Individuals benefit from occupying central roles in social networks, but little is known about the psychological traits that predict centrality. Across four college freshman dorms (n = 193), we characterized individuals with a battery of personality questionnaires and also asked them to nominate dorm members with whom they had different types of relationships. This revealed several social networks within dorm communities with differing characteristics. In particular, additional data showed that networks varied in the degree to which nominations depend on (i) trust and (ii) shared fun and excitement. Networks more dependent upon trust were further defined by fewer connections than those more dependent on fun. Crucially, network and personality features interacted to predict individuals’ centrality: people high in well-being (i.e., life satisfaction and positive emotion) were central to networks characterized by fun, whereas people high in empathy were central to networks characterized by trust. Together, these findings provide network-based corroboration of psychological evidence that well-being is socially attractive, whereas empathy supports close relationships. More broadly, these data highlight how an individual’s personality relates to the roles that they play in sustaining their community.

Tracking the Emotional Highs but Missing the Lows: Hypomania Risk is Associated With Positively Biased Empathic Inference

Empathy plays a vital role in emotional and social functioning. Research suggests that empathy may be disrupted in disorders of negative emotion (e.g., depression, anxiety), though less work has examined how empathy is impacted in disorders of positive emotion (e.g., mania), which are associated with positive biases in emotion experience and perception. The present research explored how variation in self-reported hypomania risk was associated with performance on an objective empathic accuracy task with real-world targets. Risk for hypomania was associated with heightened moment-by-moment detection of emotional up-shifts (i.e., increases in positive emotion) for targets describing positive events; however, it was also associated with overly-positive retrospective ratings (i.e., overestimating global positive emotion) for targets describing negative events. These findings suggest that hypomania risk may lead to positive biases in detecting others’ emotion across both positive and negative life events when using both micro-level continuous and global retrospective emotion measures.

Interpersonal emotion regulation: Implications for affiliation, perceived support, relationships, and well-being.

People often recruit social resources to manage their emotions, a phenomenon known as interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). Despite its importance, IER’s psychological structure remains poorly understood. We propose that two key dimensions describe IER: (a) individuals’ tendency to pursue IER in response to emotional events, and (b) the efficacy with which they perceive IER improves their emotional lives. To probe these dimensions, we developed the Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire (IRQ), a valid and reliable measure of individual differences in IER. Factor analyses of participants’ responses confirmed tendency and efficacy as independent dimensions of IER (Study 1; N = 285), and demonstrated independence between how individuals engage with IER in response to negative, versus positive, emotion. In Study 2 (N = 347), we found that individuals high in IER tendency and efficacy are more emotionally expressive, empathetic, and socially connected. Two subsequent studies highlighted behavioral consequences of IER dimensions: people high in IER tendency sought out others more often following experimentally induced emotion (Study 3; N = 400), and individuals high in IER efficacy benefitted more from social support after real-world emotional events (Study 4; N = 787). Finally, a field study of social networks in freshman dormitories revealed that individuals high in IER tendency and efficacy developed more supportive relationships during the first year of college (Study 5; N = 193). These data (a) identify distinct dimensions underlying IER, (b) demonstrate that these dimensions can be stably measured and separated from related constructs, and (c) reveal their implications for relationships and well-being.

Computational Models of Emotion Inference in Theory of Mind: A Review and Roadmap

Abstract Research on social cognition has fruitfully applied computational modeling approaches to explain how observers understand and reason about others’ mental states. By contrast, there has been less work on modeling observers’ understanding of emotional states. We propose an intuitive theory framework to studying affective cognition—how humans reason about emotions—and derive a taxonomy of inferences within affective cognition. Using this taxonomy, we review formal computational modeling work on such inferences, including causal reasoning about how others react to events, reasoning about unseen causes of emotions, reasoning with multiple cues, as well as reasoning from emotions to other mental states. In addition, we provide a roadmap for future research by charting out inferences—such as hypothetical and counterfactual reasoning about emotions—that are ripe for future computational modeling work. This framework proposes unifying these various types of reasoning as Bayesian inference within a common “intuitive Theory of Emotion.” Finally, we end with a discussion of important theoretical and methodological challenges that lie ahead in modeling affective cognition.