Natalie Gold

The Bitter Truth About Sugar and Willpower: The Limited Evidential Value of the Glucose Model of Ego Depletion.

The idea behind ego depletion is that willpower draws on a limited mental resource, so that engaging in an act of self-control impairs self-control in subsequent tasks. To present ego depletion as more than a convenient metaphor, some researchers have proposed that glucose is the limited resource that becomes depleted with self-control. However, there have been theoretical challenges to the proposed glucose mechanism, and the experiments that have tested it have found mixed results. We used a new meta-analytic tool, p-curve analysis, to examine the reliability of the evidence from these experiments. We found that the effect sizes reported in this literature are possibly influenced by publication or reporting bias and that, even within studies yielding significant results, the evidential value of this research is weak. In light of these results, and pending further evidence, researchers and policymakers should refrain from drawing any conclusions about the role of glucose in self-control.

Framing as Path-Dependence

A `framing` effect occurs when an agent`s choices are not invariant under changes in the way a choice problem is formulated, e.g. changes in the way the options are described (violation of description invariance) or in the way preferences are elicited (violation of procedure invariance). In this paper we examine precisely which classical conditions of rationality it is whose non-satisfaction may lead to framing effects. We show that (under certain conditions), if (and only if) an agent`s initial dispositions on a set of propositions are implicitly inconsistent, her decisions may be path-dependent, i.e. dependent on the order in which the propositions are considered. We suggest that different ways of framing a choice problem may induce the order in which relevant propositions are considered and hence affect the decision made. This theoretical explanation suggests some observations about human psychology which are consistent with those made by psychologists and provides a unified framework for explaining violations of description and procedure invariance.

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE: COMPARING JUDGEMENTS IN TROLLEY PROBLEMS INVOLVING ECONOMIC AND EMOTIONAL HARMS, INJURY AND DEATH

There is a long-standing debate in philosophy about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others and, if not, what is the moral principle underlying the prohibition. Hypothetical moral dilemmas are used in order to probe moral intuitions. Philosophers use them to achieve a reflective equilibrium between intuitions and principles, psychologists to investigate moral decision-making processes. In the dilemmas, the harms that are traded off are almost always deaths. However, the moral principles and psychological processes are supposed to be broader than this, encompassing harms other than death. Further, if the standard pattern of intuitions is preserved in the domain of economic harm, then that would open up the possibility of studying behaviour in trolley problems using the tools of experimental economics. We report the results of two studies designed to test whether the standard patterns of intuitions are preserved when the domain and severity of harm are varied. Our findings show that the difference in moral intuitions between bystander and footbridge scenarios is replicated across different domains and levels of physical and non-physical harm, including economic harms.

The outlandish, the realistic, and the real: contextual manipulation and agent role effects in trolley problems

Hypothetical trolley problems are widely used to elicit moral intuitions, which are employed in the development of moral theory and the psychological study of moral judgments. The scenarios used are outlandish, and some philosophers and psychologists have questioned whether the judgments made in such unrealistic and unfamiliar scenarios are a reliable basis for theory-building. We present two experiments that investigate whether differences in moral judgment due to the role of the agent, previously found in a standard trolley scenario, persist when the structure of the problem is transplanted to a more familiar context. Our first experiment compares judgments in hypothetical scenarios; our second experiment operationalizes some of those scenarios in the laboratory, allowing us to observe judgments about decisions that are really being made. In the hypothetical experiment, we found that the role effect reversed in our more familiar context, both in judgments about what the actor ought to do and in judgments about the moral rightness of the action. However, in our laboratory experiment, the effects reversed back or disappeared. Among judgments of what the actor ought to do, we found the same role effect as in the standard hypothetical trolley scenario, but the effect of role on moral judgments disappeared.

Self and identity in borderline personality disorder: Agency and mental time travel

Abstract We consider how conceptions of the self and identity from the philosophical literature can help us to understand identity disturbance in borderline personality disorder (BPD). We present 3 philosophical approaches: connectedness, narrative, and agency. We show how these map on to 3 different ways in which the self can be temporally extended. The connectedness approach is dominant in philosophy, and the narrative approach has been used by psychiatry, but we argue that the lesser‐known agency approach provides a promising way to theorize some aspects of identity disturbance in BPD. It relates the 2 diagnostic criteria of identity disturbance and disinhibition and is consistent with evidence of memory deficits and altered self‐processing in BPD patients.

Normative theory in decision making and moral reasoning

Normative theories can be useful in developing descriptive theories, as when normative subjective expected utility theory is used to develop descriptive rational choice theory and behavioral game theory. “Ought” questions are also the essence of theories of moral reasoning, a domain of higher mental processing that could not survive without normative considerations.

Searching for the bottom of the ego well: failure to uncover ego depletion in Many Labs 3

According to a popular model of self-control, willpower depends on a limited resource that can be depleted when we perform a task demanding self-control. This theory has been put to the test in hundreds of experiments showing that completing a task that demands high self-control usually hinders performance in any secondary task that subsequently taxes self-control. Over the last 5 years, the reliability of the empirical evidence supporting this model has been questioned. In the present study, we reanalysed data from a large-scale study—Many Labs 3—to test whether performing a depleting task has any effect on a secondary task that also relies on self-control. Although we used a large sample of more than 2000 participants for our analyses, we did not find any significant evidence of ego depletion: persistence on an anagram-solving task (a typical measure of self-control) was not affected by previous completion of a Stroop task (a typical depleting task in this literature). Our results suggest that either ego depletion is not a real effect or, alternatively, persistence in anagram solving may not be an optimal measure to test it.

Team reasoning: Solving the puzzle of coordination

In many everyday activities, individuals have a common interest in coordinating their actions. Orthodox game theory cannot explain such intuitively obvious forms of coordination as the selection of an outcome that is best for all in a common-interest game. Theories of team reasoning provide a convincing solution by proposing that people are sometimes motivated to maximize the collective payoff of a group and that they adopt a distinctive mode of reasoning from preferences to decisions. This also offers a compelling explanation of cooperation in social dilemmas. A review of team reasoning and related theories suggests how team reasoning could be incorporated into psychological theories of group identification and social value orientation theory to provide a deeper understanding of these phenomena.

Interdisciplinary workshop on “mental disorder and self over time”

Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Kings College London, London, UK Senior Lecturer, Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, Dickson Poon School of Law, Kings College London, London, UK Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, Mental Health, Ethics and Law research group, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, Kings College London, London, UK

Introduction: Teamwork in Theory and in Practice

Teamwork is studied in many disciplines, but there is as yet no comprehensive theory of teams. This book brings together perspectives on teamwork from evolutionary biology, psychology, economics, robotics, philosophy, management and artificial intelligence. They provide a wide-ranging survey of current research on teams, using methodologies as diverse as laboratory experiments and evolutionary modelling, epistemic logic and the programming of robots. But teamwork is not only of theoretical, academic interest. It is also of practical application in our everyday lives. Obvious examples are found in the workplace and on the sports field but, if we allow that a team is a group of agents with a common goal which can only be achieved by appropriate combinations of individual activities, then it becomes clear that teamwork is a phenomenon which occurs in a wide variety of forms. Teamwork is commonly found when people engage in any type of joint activity. Professionals such as managers and coaches may have a specialist expertise but we all have some experience of teamwork.