Understanding Recurrent Crime as System-Immanent Collective Behavior

Containing the spreading of crime is a major challenge for society. Yet, since thousands of years, no effective strategy has been found to overcome crime. To the contrary, empirical evidence shows that crime is recurrent, a fact that is not captured well by rational choice theories of crime. According to these, strong enough punishment should prevent crime from happening. To gain a better understanding of the relationship between crime and punishment, we consider that the latter requires prior discovery of illicit behavior and study a spatial version of the inspection game. Simulations reveal the spontaneous emergence of cyclic dominance between “criminals”, “inspectors”, and “ordinary people” as a consequence of spatial interactions. Such cycles dominate the evolutionary process, in particular when the temptation to commit crime or the cost of inspection are low or moderate. Yet, there are also critical parameter values beyond which cycles cease to exist and the population is dominated either by a stable mixture of criminals and inspectors or one of these two strategies alone. Both continuous and discontinuous phase transitions to different final states are possible, indicating that successful strategies to contain crime can be very much counter-intuitive and complex. Our results demonstrate that spatial interactions are crucial for the evolutionary outcome of the inspection game, and they also reveal why criminal behavior is likely to be recurrent rather than evolving towards an equilibrium with monotonous parameter dependencies.     

Getting “Just Deserts” or Seeing the “Silver Lining”: The Relation between Judgments of Immanent and Ultimate Justice

People can perceive misfortunes as caused by previous bad deeds (immanent justice reasoning) or resulting in ultimate compensation (ultimate justice reasoning). Across two studies, we investigated the relation between these types of justice reasoning and identified the processes (perceptions of deservingness) that underlie them for both others (Study 1) and the self (Study 2). Study 1 demonstrated that observers engaged in more ultimate (vs. immanent) justice reasoning for a “good” victim and greater immanent (vs. ultimate) justice reasoning for a “bad” victim. In Study 2, participants'' construals of their bad breaks varied as a function of their self-worth, with greater ultimate (immanent) justice reasoning for participants with higher (lower) self-esteem. Across both studies, perceived deservingness of bad breaks or perceived deservingness of ultimate compensation mediated immanent and ultimate justice reasoning respectively.     

Evolutionary Establishment of Moral and Double Moral Standards through Spatial Interactions

Situations where individuals have to contribute to joint efforts or share scarce resources are ubiquitous. Yet, without proper mechanisms to ensure cooperation, the evolutionary pressure to maximize individual success tends to create a tragedy of the commons (such as over-fishing or the destruction of our environment). This contribution addresses a number of related puzzles of human behavior with an evolutionary game theoretical approach as it has been successfully used to explain the behavior of other biological species many times, from bacteria to vertebrates. Our agent-based model distinguishes individuals applying four different behavioral strategies: non-cooperative individuals (“defectors”), cooperative individuals abstaining from punishment efforts (called “cooperators” or “second-order free-riders”), cooperators who punish non-cooperative behavior (“moralists”), and defectors, who punish other defectors despite being non-cooperative themselves (“immoralists”). By considering spatial interactions with neighboring individuals, our model reveals several interesting effects: First, moralists can fully eliminate cooperators. This spreading of punishing behavior requires a segregation of behavioral strategies and solves the “second-order free-rider problem”. Second, the system behavior changes its character significantly even after very long times (“who laughs last laughs best effect”). Third, the presence of a number of defectors can largely accelerate the victory of moralists over non-punishing cooperators. Fourth, in order to succeed, moralists may profit from immoralists in a way that appears like an “unholy collaboration”. Our findings suggest that the consideration of punishment strategies allows one to understand the establishment and spreading of “moral behavior” by means of game-theoretical concepts. This demonstrates that quantitative biological modeling approaches are powerful even in domains that have been addressed with non-mathematical concepts so far. The complex dynamics of certain social behaviors become understandable as the result of an evolutionary competition between different behavioral strategies.     

The Human Factor: Behavioral and Neural Correlates of Humanized Perception in Moral Decision Making

The extent to which people regard others as full-blown individuals with mental states (“humanization”) seems crucial for their prosocial motivation towards them. Previous research has shown that decisions about moral dilemmas in which one person can be sacrificed to save multiple others do not consistently follow utilitarian principles. We hypothesized that this behavior can be explained by the potential victim’s perceived humanness and an ensuing increase in vicarious emotions and emotional conflict during decision making. Using fMRI, we assessed neural activity underlying moral decisions that affected fictitious persons that had or had not been experimentally humanized. In implicit priming trials, participants either engaged in mentalizing about these persons (Humanized condition) or not (Neutral condition). In subsequent moral dilemmas, participants had to decide about sacrificing these persons’ lives in order to save the lives of numerous others. Humanized persons were sacrificed less often, and the activation pattern during decisions about them indicated increased negative affect, emotional conflict, vicarious emotions, and behavioral control (pgACC/mOFC, anterior insula/IFG, aMCC and precuneus/PCC). Besides, we found enhanced effective connectivity between aMCC and anterior insula, which suggests increased emotion regulation during decisions affecting humanized victims. These findings highlight the importance of others’ perceived humanness for prosocial behavior - with aversive affect and other-related concern when imagining harming more “human-like” persons acting against purely utilitarian decisions.     

Inability and Obligation in Moral Judgment

It is often thought that judgments about what we ought to do are limited by judgments about what we can do, or that “ought implies can.” We conducted eight experiments to test the link between a range of moral requirements and abilities in ordinary moral evaluations. Moral obligations were repeatedly attributed in tandem with inability, regardless of the type (Experiments 1–3), temporal duration (Experiment 5), or scope (Experiment 6) of inability. This pattern was consistently observed using a variety of moral vocabulary to probe moral judgments and was insensitive to different levels of seriousness for the consequences of inaction (Experiment 4). Judgments about moral obligation were no different for individuals who can or cannot perform physical actions, and these judgments differed from evaluations of a non-moral obligation (Experiment 7). Together these results demonstrate that commonsense morality rejects the “ought implies can” principle for moral requirements, and that judgments about moral obligation are made independently of considerations about ability. By contrast, judgments of blame were highly sensitive to considerations about ability (Experiment 8), which suggests that commonsense morality might accept a “blame implies can” principle.     

The two faces of revenge: moral responsibility and the culture of honor

Retributive emotions and behavior are thought to be adaptive for their role in improving social coordination. However, since retaliation is generally not in the short-term interests of the individual, rational self-interest erodes the motivational link between retributive emotions and the accompanying adaptive behavior. I argue that two different sets of norms have emerged to reinforce this link: (1) norms about honor and (2) norms about moral responsibility and desert. I observe that the primary difference between these types of retribution motivators lies in where the normative focus is placed after an offense. In the first form of retribution, the normative focus is on the offended party. In the second, it is on the offender. Next, I show how each class of norms is well tailored to the particular features of the environment in which these forms of retributive behavior emerge. Finally, I consider some philosophical implications of these observations. I suggest that my account, if correct, would pose tough challenges for contemporary philosophical theories of moral responsibility and punishment.

Impact of Psychopathy on Moral Judgments about Causing Fear and Physical Harm

Psychopathy is a personality variable associated with persistent immoral behaviors. Despite this, attempts to link moral reasoning deficits to psychopathic traits have yielded mixed results with many findings supporting intact moral reasoning in individuals with psychopathic traits. Abundant evidence shows that psychopathy impairs responses to others’ emotional distress. However, most studies of morality and psychopathy focus on judgments about causing others physical harm. Results of such studies may be inconsistent because physical harm is an imperfect proxy for emotional distress. No previous paradigm has explicitly separated judgments about physical harm and emotional distress and assessed how psychopathy affects each type of judgment. In three studies we found that psychopathy impairs judgments about causing others emotional distress (specifically fear) but minimally affects judgments about causing physical harm and that judgments about causing fear predict instrumental aggression in psychopathy. These findings are consistent with reports linking psychopathy to insensitivity to others’ fear, and suggest that sensitivity to others’ fear may play a fundamental role in the types of moral decision-making impaired by psychopathy.     

The Co-Evolution of Fairness Preferences and Costly Punishment

We study the co-evolutionary emergence of fairness preferences in the form of other-regarding behavior and its effect on the origination of costly punishment behavior in public good games. Our approach closely combines empirical results from three experiments with an evolutionary simulation model. In this way, we try to fill a gap between the evolutionary theoretical literature on cooperation and punishment on the one hand and the empirical findings from experimental economics on the other hand. As a principal result, we show that the evolution among interacting agents inevitably favors a sense for fairness in the form of “disadvantageous inequity aversion”. The evolutionary dominance and stability of disadvantageous inequity aversion is demonstrated by enabling agents to co-evolve with different self- and other-regarding preferences in a competitive environment with limited resources. Disadvantageous inequity aversion leads to the emergence of costly (“altruistic”) punishment behavior and quantitatively explains the level of punishment observed in contemporary lab experiments performed on subjects with a western culture. Our findings corroborate, complement, and interlink the experimental and theoretical literature that has shown the importance of other-regarding behavior in various decision settings.     

Understanding Neighborhood Environment Related to Hong Kong Children’s Physical Activity: A Qualitative Study Using Nominal Group Technique

Background

Relationships between the neighborhood environment and children’s physical activity have been well documented in Western countries but are less investigated in ultra-dense Asian cities. The aim of this study was to identify the environmental facilitators and barriers of physical activity behaviors among Hong Kong Chinese children using nominal group technique.

Methods

Five nominal groups were conducted among 34 children aged 10–11 years from four types of neighborhoods varying in socio-economic status and walkability in Hong Kong. Environmental factors were generated by children in response to the question “What neighborhood environments do you think would increase or decrease your willingness to do physical activity?” Factors were prioritized in order of their importance to children’s physical activity.

Results

Sixteen unique environmental factors, which were perceived as the most important to children’s physical activity, were identified. Factors perceived as physical activity-facilitators included “Sufficient lighting”, “Bridge or tunnel”, “Few cars on roads”, “Convenient transportation”, “Subway station”, “Recreation grounds”, “Shopping malls with air conditioning”, “Fresh air”, “Interesting animals”, and “Perfume shop”. Factors perceived as physical activity-barriers included “People who make me feel unsafe”, “Crimes nearby”, “Afraid of being taken or hurt at night”, “Hard to find toilet in shopping mall”, “Too much noise”, and “Too many people in recreation grounds”.

Conclusions

Specific physical activity-related environmental facilitators and barriers, which are unique in an ultra-dense city, were identified by Hong Kong children. These initial findings can inform future examinations of the physical activity-environment relationship among children in Hong Kong and similar Asian cities.     

When Sex Doesn't Sell: Using Sexualized Images of Women Reduces Support for Ethical Campaigns

Images of scantily clad women are used by advertisers to make products more attractive to men. This “sex sells” approach is increasingly employed to promote ethical causes, most prominently by the animal-rights organization PETA. Yet sexualized images can dehumanize women, leaving an unresolved paradox – is it effective to advertise an ethical cause using unethical means? In Study 1, a sample of Australian male undergraduates (N = 82) viewed PETA advertisements containing either sexualized or non-sexualized images of women. Intentions to support the ethical organization were reduced for those exposed to the sexualized advertising, and this was explained by their dehumanization of the sexualized women, and not by increased arousal. Study 2 used a mixed-gender community sample from the United States (N = 280), replicating this finding and extending it by showing that behaviors helpful to the ethical cause diminished after viewing the sexualized advertisements, which was again mediated by the dehumanization of the women depicted. Alternative explanations relating to the reduced credibility of the sexualized women and their objectification were not supported. When promoting ethical causes, organizations may benefit from using advertising strategies that do not dehumanize women.     

Are Forensic Experts Already Biased before Adversarial Legal Parties Hire Them?

This survey of 206 forensic psychologists tested the “filtering” effects of preexisting expert attitudes in adversarial proceedings. Results confirmed the hypothesis that evaluator attitudes toward capital punishment influence willingness to accept capital case referrals from particular adversarial parties. Stronger death penalty opposition was associated with higher willingness to conduct evaluations for the defense and higher likelihood of rejecting referrals from all sources. Conversely, stronger support was associated with higher willingness to be involved in capital cases generally, regardless of referral source. The findings raise the specter of skewed evaluator involvement in capital evaluations, where evaluators willing to do capital casework may have stronger capital punishment support than evaluators who opt out, and evaluators with strong opposition may work selectively for the defense. The results may provide a partial explanation for the “allegiance effect” in adversarial legal settings such that preexisting attitudes may contribute to partisan participation through a self-selection process.     

Criminal Defectors Lead to the Emergence of Cooperation in an Experimental,Adversarial Game

While the evolution of cooperation has been widely studied, little attention has been devoted to adversarial settings wherein one actor can directly harm another. Recent theoretical work addresses this issue, introducing an adversarial game in which the emergence of cooperation is heavily reliant on the presence of “Informants,” actors who defect at first-order by harming others, but who cooperate at second-order by punishing other defectors. We experimentally study this adversarial environment in the laboratory with human subjects to test whether Informants are indeed critical for the emergence of cooperation. We find in these experiments that, even more so than predicted by theory, Informants are crucial for the emergence and sustenance of a high cooperation state. A key lesson is that successfully reaching and maintaining a low defection society may require the cultivation of criminals who will also aid in the punishment of others.     

The Role of Informative and Ambiguous Feedback in Avoidance Behavior: Empirical and Computational Findings

Avoidance behavior is a critical component of many psychiatric disorders, and as such, it is important to understand how avoidance behavior arises, and whether it can be modified. In this study, we used empirical and computational methods to assess the role of informational feedback and ambiguous outcome in avoidance behavior. We adapted a computer-based probabilistic classification learning task, which includes positive, negative and no-feedback outcomes; the latter outcome is ambiguous as it might signal either a successful outcome (missed punishment) or a failure (missed reward). Prior work with this task suggested that most healthy subjects viewed the no-feedback outcome as strongly positive. Interestingly, in a later version of the classification task, when healthy subjects were allowed to opt out of (i.e. avoid) responding, some subjects (“avoiders”) reliably avoided trials where there was a risk of punishment, but other subjects (“non-avoiders”) never made any avoidance responses at all. One possible interpretation is that the “non-avoiders” valued the no-feedback outcome so positively on punishment-based trials that they had little incentive to avoid. Another possible interpretation is that the outcome of an avoided trial is unspecified and that lack of information is aversive, decreasing subjects’ tendency to avoid. To examine these ideas, we here tested healthy young adults on versions of the task where avoidance responses either did or did not generate informational feedback about the optimal response. Results showed that provision of informational feedback decreased avoidance responses and also decreased categorization performance, without significantly affecting the percentage of subjects classified as “avoiders.” To better understand these results, we used a modified Q-learning model to fit individual subject data. Simulation results suggest that subjects in the feedback condition adjusted their behavior faster following better-than-expected outcomes, compared to subjects in the no-feedback condition. Additionally, in both task conditions, “avoiders” adjusted their behavior faster following worse-than-expected outcomes, and treated the ambiguous no-feedback outcome as less rewarding, compared to non-avoiders. Together, results shed light on the important role of ambiguous and informative feedback in avoidance behavior.     

An Approach for the Accurate Measurement of Social Morality Levels

In the social sciences, computer-based modeling has become an increasingly important tool receiving widespread attention. However, the derivation of the quantitative relationships linking individual moral behavior and social morality levels, so as to provide a useful basis for social policy-making, remains a challenge in the scholarly literature today. A quantitative measurement of morality from the perspective of complexity science constitutes an innovative attempt. Based on the NetLogo platform, this article examines the effect of various factors on social morality levels, using agents modeling moral behavior, immoral behavior, and a range of environmental social resources. Threshold values for the various parameters are obtained through sensitivity analysis; and practical solutions are proposed for reversing declines in social morality levels. The results show that: (1) Population size may accelerate or impede the speed with which immoral behavior comes to determine the overall level of social morality, but it has no effect on the level of social morality itself; (2) The impact of rewards and punishment on social morality levels follows the “5∶1 rewards-to-punishment rule,” which is to say that 5 units of rewards have the same effect as 1 unit of punishment; (3) The abundance of public resources is inversely related to the level of social morality; (4) When the cost of population mobility reaches 10% of the total energy level, immoral behavior begins to be suppressed (i.e. the 1/10 moral cost rule). The research approach and methods presented in this paper successfully address the difficulties involved in measuring social morality levels, and promise extensive application potentials.     

Stress and the Multiple-Role Woman: Taking a Closer Look at the “Superwoman”

In the academic literature there is debate as to whether women who engage in multiple social roles experience more or less stress than women in fewer roles. For the present research we examined the relationship between levels of engagement in seven distinct roles and perceived stress and life satisfaction in a small non-random sample of women in North America (N = 308). We did not find a significant correlation between role engagement and perceived stress, though we did find a small but significant positive correlation between role engagement and life satisfaction. Similarly, in a subset of the participants (N = 31), there was not a significant relationship between the level of role engagement and physiological stress as measured by hair or urinary cortisol levels. We found a significant negative correlation between perceived stress and life satisfaction, and role satisfaction. The results from multiple regression models did not identify the level of role engagement as a significant predictor of either perceived stress or life satisfaction. Role satisfaction in addition to several life style variables such as the frequency of sex and exercise were identified as significant predictors of both outcome variables. We also examined the popularized notion of the “superwoman”, which we defined as women who fell within the 4^th quartile of role engagement, or those engaged in the wife/mother/worker/homemaker role combination. Based on popular discourses surrounding the superwoman we expected that superwomen would exhibit higher levels of perceived stress. Our results revealed that superwomen do not experience a significantly higher level of perceived stress than non-superwomen. The results of our study therefore suggest that multiple role engagement in women, even at a relatively high level as experienced by “superwomen”, is not associated with significantly higher stress, or reduced life satisfaction.     

Development and Evaluation of a Parenting Resilience Elements Questionnaire (PREQ) Measuring Resiliency in Rearing Children with Developmental Disorders

We developed a parenting resilience elements questionnaire (PREQ) measuring the degree to which mothers possess elements that aid in adapting to challenges and difficulties related to children with developmental disorders (DD). A total of 424 parents of children with DD were recruited from five medical institutes. Psychometric properties of PREQ were evaluated using data of 363 mothers of children with DD. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis was performed, predicting depressive symptoms and parenting behavior with PREQ subscales, a general health questionnaire, and the total difficulties score of a strength and difficulties questionnaire. Factor analysis revealed three reliable factors: “knowledge of the child’s characteristics,” “perceived social supports,” and “positive perceptions of parenting.” Moreover, multiple regression analysis showed that “knowledge of the child’s characteristics” was associated with parenting behavior, whereas “perceived social supports” predicted depressive symptoms; “positive perceptions of parenting” influenced both parenting behavior and depressive symptoms. These findings indicated that the PREQ may be used as a scale measuring resiliency in mothers of children with DD and is useful for evaluating their parenting ability in clinical interventions.     

Systematic Classification of Disease Severity for Evaluation of Expanded Carrier Screening Panels

Professional guidelines dictate that disease severity is a key criterion for carrier screening. Expanded carrier screening, which tests for hundreds to thousands of mutations simultaneously, requires an objective, systematic means of describing a given disease''s severity to build screening panels. We hypothesized that diseases with characteristics deemed to be of highest impact would likewise be rated as most severe, and diseases with characteristics of lower impact would be rated as less severe. We describe a pilot test of this hypothesis in which we surveyed 192 health care professionals to determine the impact of specific disease phenotypic characteristics on perceived severity, and asked the same group to rate the severity of selected inherited diseases. The results support the hypothesis: we identified four “Tiers” of disease characteristics (1–4). Based on these responses, we developed an algorithm that, based on the combination of characteristics normally seen in an affected individual, classifies the disease as Profound, Severe, Moderate, or Mild. This algorithm allows simple classification of disease severity that is replicable and not labor intensive.     

Reduction of Pavlovian Bias in Schizophrenia: Enhanced Effects in Clozapine-Administered Patients

The negative symptoms of schizophrenia (SZ) are associated with a pattern of reinforcement learning (RL) deficits likely related to degraded representations of reward values. However, the RL tasks used to date have required active responses to both reward and punishing stimuli. Pavlovian biases have been shown to affect performance on these tasks through invigoration of action to reward and inhibition of action to punishment, and may be partially responsible for the effects found in patients. Forty-five patients with schizophrenia and 30 demographically-matched controls completed a four-stimulus reinforcement learning task that crossed action (“Go” or “NoGo”) and the valence of the optimal outcome (reward or punishment-avoidance), such that all combinations of action and outcome valence were tested. Behaviour was modelled using a six-parameter RL model and EEG was simultaneously recorded. Patients demonstrated a reduction in Pavlovian performance bias that was evident in a reduced Go bias across the full group. In a subset of patients administered clozapine, the reduction in Pavlovian bias was enhanced. The reduction in Pavlovian bias in SZ patients was accompanied by feedback processing differences at the time of the P3a component. The reduced Pavlovian bias in patients is suggested to be due to reduced fidelity in the communication between striatal regions and frontal cortex. It may also partially account for previous findings of poorer “Go-learning” in schizophrenia where “Go” responses or Pavlovian consistent responses are required for optimal performance. An attenuated P3a component dynamic in patients is consistent with a view that deficits in operant learning are due to impairments in adaptively using feedback to update representations of stimulus value.     

Outcomes for patients with the same disease treated inside and outside of randomized trials: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background:

It is unclear whether participation in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), irrespective of assigned treatment, is harmful or beneficial to participants. We compared outcomes for patients with the same diagnoses who did (“insiders”) and did not (“outsiders”) enter RCTs, without regard to the specific therapies received for their respective diagnoses.

Methods:

By searching the MEDLINE (1966–2010), Embase (1980–2010), CENTRAL (1960–2010) and PsycINFO (1880–2010) databases, we identified 147 studies that reported the health outcomes of “insiders” and a group of parallel or consecutive “outsiders” within the same time period. We prepared a narrative review and, as appropriate, meta-analyses of patients’ outcomes.

Results:

We found no clinically or statistically significant differences in outcomes between “insiders” and “outsiders” in the 23 studies in which the experimental intervention was ineffective (standard mean difference in continuous outcomes −0.03, 95% confidence interval [CI] −0.1 to 0.04) or in the 7 studies in which the experimental intervention was effective and was received by both “insiders” and “outsiders” (mean difference 0.04, 95% CI −0.04 to 0.13). However, in 9 studies in which an effective intervention was received only by “insiders,” the “outsiders” experienced significantly worse health outcomes (mean difference −0.36, 95% CI −0.61 to −0.12).

Interpretation:

We found no evidence to support clinically important overall harm or benefit arising from participation in RCTs. This conclusion refutes earlier claims that trial participants are at increased risk of harm.When people are asked to participate in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), it is natural for them to ask several questions in return. How safe are these treatments? How many extra visits and tests must I undergo? Will the researchers keep my family doctor informed about what’s going on? What outcomes are to be measured, and do they include ones that are of interest to me as a patient?These multiple questions can be summarized as follows: Would I fare better being treated within the trial (as an “insider”) or in routine clinical care outside it (as an “outsider”)? Patients may ask this question in 1 of 2 ways. The first is highly specific: “Am I better off receiving this specific treatment as an insider or as an outsider?” Alternatively, they might ask a more general question: “Am I better off having my illness managed, regardless of the specific treatment I would receive, as an insider or as an outsider?” These questions are highly appropriate, and both deserve to be asked and answered,^1,2 especially given that nonsystematic reviews have suggested a possible “inclusion benefit” from participating in trials.³These 2 specific patient questions are analogous to those posed by researchers asking whether treatments do more good than harm when applied under “ideal” circumstances (in explanatory trials) or in the “real world” of routine health care (in pragmatic trials). Vist and colleagues answered the explanatory question when their earlier review⁴ found no advantage or disadvantage from receiving the same treatment inside or outside an RCT. Left unanswered, however, was the broader, more pragmatic question. In our experience, trial participants are often offered new, as-yet-untested treatments that would not be available to them outside the trial. This review looks at the dilemma faced by these patients, which needs to be addressed before general conclusions can be drawn about trial safety.