Peter Roelofsma

The potential for social contextual and group biases in team decision-making: biases, conditions and psychological mechanisms

This paper provides a critical review of social contextual and group biases that are relevant to team decision-making in command and control situations. Motivated by the insufficient level of attention this area has received, the purpose of the paper is to provide an insight into the potential that these types of biases have to affect the decision-making of such teams. The biases considered are: false consensus, groupthink, group polarization and group escalation of commitment. For each bias the following four questions are addressed. What is the descriptive nature of the bias? What factors induce the bias? What psychological mechanisms underlie the bias? What is the relevance of the bias to command and control teams? The analysis suggests that these biases have a strong potential to affect team decisions. Consistent with the nature of team decision-making in command and control situations, all of the biases considered tend to be associated with those decisions that are important or novel and are promoted by time pressure and high levels of uncertainty. A concept unifying these biases is that of the shared mental model, but whereas false consensus emanates from social projection tendencies, the rest emanate from social influence factors. The authors also discuss the ‘tricky’ distinction between teams and groups and propose a revised definition for command and control team. Finally, the authors emphasize the need for future empirical research in this area to pay additional attention to the social side of cognition and the potential that social biases have to affect team decision-making.

Why Religion’s Burdens Are Light: From Religiosity to Implicit Self-Regulation:

To maintain religious standards, individuals must frequently endure aversive or forsake pleasurable experiences. Yet religious individuals on average display higher levels of emotional well-being compared to nonreligious individuals. The present article seeks to resolve this paradox by suggesting that many forms of religion may facilitate a self-regulatory mode that is flexible, efficient, and largely unconscious. In this implicit mode of self-regulation, religious individuals may be able to strive for high standards and simultaneously maintain high emotional well-being. A review of the empirical literature confirmed that religious stimuli and practices foster implicit self-regulation, particularly among individuals who fully internalized their religion’s standards. The present work suggests that some seemingly irrational aspects of religion may have important psychological benefits by promoting implicit self-regulation.

Age and Violent-Content Labels Make Video Games Forbidden Fruits for Youth

OBJECTIVE. To protect minors from exposure to video games with objectionable content (eg, violence and sex), the Pan European Game Information developed a classification system for video games (eg, 18+). We tested the hypothesis that this classification system may actually increase the attractiveness of games for children younger than the age rating. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS. Participants were 310 Dutch youth. The design was a 3 (age group: 7–8, 12–13, and 16–17 years) × 2 (participant gender) × 7 (label: 7+, 12+, 16+, 18+, violence, no violence, or no label control) × 2 (game description: violent or nonviolent) mixed factorial. The first 2 factors were between subjects, whereas the last 2 factors were within subjects. Three personality traits (ie, reactance, trait aggressiveness, and sensation seeking) were also included in the analyses. Participants read fictitious video game descriptions and rated how much they wanted to play each game. RESULTS. Results revealed that restrictive age labels and violent-content labels increased the attractiveness of video games for all of the age groups (even 7- to 8-year-olds and girls). CONCLUSIONS. Although the Pan European Game Information system was developed to protect youth from objectionable content, this system actually makes such games forbidden fruits. Pediatricians should be aware of this forbidden-fruit effect, because video games with objectionable content can have harmful effects on children and adolescents.

The Effect of Dominance Manipulation on the Perception and Believability of an Emotional Expression

Models of affect are used in virtual characters to predict the emotions that can be shown by the character and thus to increase the believability of the character. In some specific situations it may not be clear which appraisals are the most important and thus which emotion should be generated. For example, both anger and sadness can be shown if another person does something blameworthy that is negative for one’s own goals. Based on experimental and theoretical findings in emotion psychology, we propose a model using social dominance as a way to choose between anger and sadness. We hypothesize that anger should be generated (and expressed) in the dominant virtual character and sadness in the non-dominant character. We test this hypothesis with a virtual reality scenario in which a user and an agent negotiate about job options. The negotiation always fails as a result of actions of the user. We have a \(2 \times 2\) experimental setup with agent role (dominant/submissive) and expressed emotion at the end of the scenario (angry/sad) as factors. No significant effect on the believability measure between the different conditions was found so the hypotheses cannot be confirmed. A significant influence of agent role was found on the perception of the emotional expressions, showing that social context influences perception of expressed emotions.

Increasing Physical and Social Activity through Virtual Coaching in an Ambient Environment

This paper describes the development and the validation of an ambient system (AAL-VU) that empowers its users in self-management of daily activities and social connectedness. The system combines state-of-the-art psychological knowledge on elderly user requirements for sustained behavior change with modern ICT technology in suggesting an adaptive ambient solution for the prevention and management of chronic diseases, inactivity and loneliness, thus resulting in a higher quality of life. Specifically, the AAL-VU system stimulates beneficial levels of activity in elderly as well as social connectedness. The focus on physical and social activity was chosen as this is recognized as a crucial element for the prevention, cure, and management of many chronic illnesses.

Preference Elicitation without Numbers

The development of autonomous multi-agent systems acting upon the interests of one or more users involves the elicitation of preferences of these users. In decision theory, models have been developed with which one is able to perform this elicitation. Some common anomolies have been identified to existing models for applying preference elicitation in electronic commerce settings. This paper presents a novel preference elicitation model based on cross modality matching.

We like to move it move it!: motivation and parasocial interaction

Researchers studying virtual coaching have identified a variety of characteristics associated with heightened motivation, but have not, to date, identified a mechanism underlying the success of particular coaches. This project tests two possible explanations for how coaches heighten motivation: the first is the straightforward explanation that coaching heightens self-efficacy, which in turn raises motivation; the second is the more novel idea that the quality of the pseudo-relationship between the virtual coach and the trainee is key to motivation. In an experiment comparing three systematically differing coaches, virtual coaches heightened both self-efficacy and parasocial interaction in some coaching conditions, but only parasocial interaction explained the patterns of results for intrinsic motivation. The findings have important theoretical implications for understanding the effects of parasocial interaction on health behaviors, with practical applications for the design of virtual coaches to improve health.

Modelling the effect of religion on human empathy based on an adaptive temporal–causal network model

BackgroundReligion is a central aspect of many individuals’ lives around the world, and its influence on human behaviour has been extensively studied from many different perspectives.MethodsThe current study integrates a number of these perspectives into one adaptive temporal–causal network model describing the mental states involved, their mutual relations, and the adaptation of some of these relations over time due to learning.ResultsBy first developing a conceptual representation of a network model based on the literature, and then formalizing this model into a numerical representation, simulations can be done for almost any kind of religion and person, showing different behaviours for persons with different religious backgrounds and characters. The focus was mainly on the influence of religion on human empathy and dis-empathy, a topic very relevant today.ConclusionsThe developed model could be valuable for many uses, involving support for a better understanding, and even prediction, of the behaviour of religious individuals. It is illustrated for a number of different scenarios based on different characteristics of the persons and of the religion.

A Temporal-Causal Network Model for the Relation Between Religion and Human Empathy

Religion has been extensively studied from many different perspectives. The current study aims at integrating a number of these perspectives into one computational network model. By first developing a conceptual temporal-causal network model based on literature, and then formalizing this model into a numerical network model, simulations can be done for almost any kind of religious person, showing different behaviours for persons with different religious backgrounds and characters. The focus was mainly on the influence of religion on human empathy and disempathy, a topic very relevant today.

Personalization of Virtual Coaching Applications using Procedural Modeling

Virtual coaching is an application area that allows individuals to improve existing skills or learn new ones; it ranges from simple textual tutoring tools to fully immersive 3D learning situations. The latter aim at improving the learning experience with realistic 3D environments. In highly individual training scenarios it can be beneficial to provide some level of personalization of the environment. This can be supported using procedural modeling that allows to easily modify shape, look and contents of an environment. We present the application of personalization using procedural modeling in learning applications in the project V2me. This project combines virtual and social networks to help senior citizens maintain and create meaningful relationships. We present a system that uses a procedurally generated ambient virtual coaching environment that can be adjusted by training subjects themselves or in collaboration. A small user experience study has been executed that gives first insight to the acceptance of such an approach.