Human cognition is distinguished by our ability to adapt to different environments and circumstances. Yet the mechanisms driving adaptive behavior have predominantly been studied in separate asocial and social contexts, with an integrated framework …
During pretend play, children create imaginary scenarios and take on various roles, from princesses to pirates conquering the Seven Seas. Some children, particularly those with imaginary companions (IC), become deeply immersed in these imagined …
Generalization, defined as applying limited experiences to novel situations, represents a cornerstone of human intelligence. Our review traces the evolution and continuity of psychological theories of generalization, from origins in concept learning …
Any new medical innovation must first prove its benefits with reliable evidence from clinical trials. Evidence is commonly expressed using two metrics, summarizing treatment benefits based on either absolute risk reductions (ARRs) or relative risk …
Pandemic management of SARS-CoV-2 has involved temporary freedom restrictions to curb the spread of infection. In this study, citizens are asked for whom they would grant freedoms and it is examined how their granting is influenced by risk …
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) promise to make traffic safer, but their societal integration poses ethical challenges. What behavior of AVs is morally acceptable in critical traffic situations when consequences are only probabilistically known (a …
How are judgments in moral dilemmas affected by uncertainty, as opposed to certainty? We tested the predictions of a consequentialist and deontological account using a hindsight paradigm. The key result is a hindsight effect in moral judgment. …
How can heuristic strategies emerge from smaller building blocks? We propose Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) as a computational solution to this problem. As a first proof of concept, we demonstrate how a heuristic decision strategy such as …
_Background_: Treatment benefits and harms are often communicated as relative risk reductions and increases, which are frequently misunderstood by doctors and patients. One suggestion for improving understanding of such risk information is to also …
We investigate whether people rely on their causal intuitions to determine the predictive value or importance of cues. Our real-world data set consists of one criterion variable (child mortality) and nine cues (e.g., GDP per capita). We elicited …