Knowledge that Transforms

Generalizing from past experiences to novel situations is critical for adaptive behavior, whereas overgeneralization can promote maladaptive responses (e.g., context-inappropriate fear in anxiety). Here, we propose that overgeneralizing alcohol-related associations characterizes risky drinking. We conducted two online experiments assessing generalization of alcohol-related gains (Study 1) and losses (Study 2) among individuals who engaged in light or risky patterns of drinking (Study 1: N = 88, 24–44 years old; Study 2: N = 87, 21–44 years old). After learning to associate cards with alcohol and non-alcohol-related outcomes, participants chose whether to play with cards varying in perceptual similarity to those shown during conditioning. Finally, participants completed a surprise recognition memory test for all outcomes. Although both groups showed comparable conditioning, we found that risky drinkers overgeneralized alcohol-related gains and losses. Risky drinkers also showed a bias toward recognizing alcohol-related images. These results indicate a novel role for overgeneralization of alcohol-related gains and losses as a mechanism associated with risky drinking.

We examined whether there is evidence for racial and gender bias in the voting patterns of contestants on Survivor, a reality-television zero-sum game in which contestants compete for up to 39 days to win $1 million. Among 731 contestants across 40 seasons, we found evidence of racial and gender bias at multiple stages of Survivor. Compared with men, women were more likely to be voted out of their tribe first and were less likely to make it to the individual-competition stage of the game (i.e., the “merge”). They were also less likely to win Survivor. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) contestants, compared with White contestants, were more likely to be voted out of their tribe first and were less likely to make it to the individual-competition stage of the game. These findings suggest a systemic bias in favor of White men and against women of color.

Visual short-term memory (STM) is a foundational component of general cognition that develops rapidly during the first year of life. Although previous research has revealed important relations between overt visual fixation and memory formation, it is unknown whether infants can maintain distinct memories for sequentially fixated items or remember nonfixated array items. Participants (5-month-olds, 11-month-olds, and adults; n = 24 at each age) from the United States were tested in a passive change-detection paradigm with an n-back manipulation to examine memory for the last fixated item (one-back), second-to-last fixated item (two-back), or nonfixated item (change-other). Eye tracking was used to measure overt fixation while participants passively viewed arrays of colored circles. Results for all ages revealed convergent evidence of memory for up to two sequentially fixated objects (i.e., one-back, two-back), with moderate evidence for nonfixated array items (change-other). A permutation analysis examining change preference over time suggested that differences could not be explained by perseverative looking or location biases.

Vishkin (2022) shows that female participation in chess is lower in more gender equal countries (the “gender-equality paradox”) but that this relation is driven by the mean age of the players in a country, which makes it more of an epiphenomenon than a real paradox. Relying on the same data on competitive chess players ( N = 768,480 from 91 countries) as well as on data on 15-year-old students ( N = 312,571 from 64 countries), we show that the gender-equality paradox for chess holds among young players. The paradox also remains on the whole population of chess players when controlling for the age of the players at the individual rather than at the country level or when controlling for age differences across countries. Therefore, there is a gender-equality paradox in chess that is not entirely driven by a generational shift mechanism as argued by Vishkin (2022), and previous explanations for the paradox cannot be dismissed.

In established relationships, are couples who are funny more satisfied with each other, or are satisfied couples more able to see the funny side of their partners? Much research has examined the evolutionary function of humor in relationship initiation, but not in relationship maintenance. Using a dyadic daily-diary study composed of college students from Singapore, results showed that relationship quality was positively associated with same-day humor production and perception. Importantly, and consistent with an interest-indicator perspective in which humor exchanges communicate relationship interest, relationship quality was also positively associated with next-day humor production and perception, and across both sexes. Results also indicated some support for a sexual-selection perspective in which humor exchanges predicted only same- and next-day satisfaction, but not commitment. Our findings suggest that humor can ultimately function as a strategy to monitor and maintain established relationships.

both for cutting with a knife and for cutting with scissors, but other languages use distinct verbs for these events. We asked whether, despite this variability, there are universal constraints on how languages categorize events involving tools (e.g., knife-cutting). We analyzed descriptions of tool events from two groups: (a) 43 hearing adult speakers of English, Spanish, and Chinese and (b) 10 deaf child homesigners ages 3 to 11 (each of whom has created a gestural language without input from a conventional language model) in five different countries (Guatemala, Nicaragua, United States, Taiwan, Turkey). We found alignment across these two groups-events that elicited tool-prominent language among the spoken-language users also elicited tool-prominent language among the homesigners. These results suggest ways of conceptualizing tool events that are so prominent as to constitute a universal constraint on how events are categorized in language.

Defaults are powerful tools for nudging individuals toward potentially beneficial options. However, defaults typically guide all decision-makers toward the same option and, consequently, may misguide individuals with minority interests. We test whether presenting defaults with information about heterogeneity can help individuals with minority interests select alternative options, and we dub this intervention a “reason default.” Reason defaults preselect the option that is best for most individuals (like standard defaults) but also explain (a) why the default was selected and (b) who should opt for an alternative. In five preregistered studies using online convenience samples of adults ( N = 4,210), we find that reason defaults can improve decision-makers’ outcomes over standard defaults and forced choices by guiding most individuals toward the default option while helping individuals with minority interests select an alternative. Further, participants reported that reason defaults enhance transparency, decision ease, and understanding of the choice relative to standard defaults and forced choices.

This article presents new evidence on the prevalence, dynamics, and hedonic correlates of experienced love from data describing the emotion, well-being, and time use of a diverse sample of 3,867 U.S. adults every half hour for 10 days ( N = 1.12 million) supplemented by a hedonic snapshot of an additional 7,255 adults. The findings allude to the seemingly functional and adaptive nature of love and to similarities across binary gender—men and women reported comparable degrees of (passionate) partner love overall, elevated partner love after prolonged same-day separations, substantially elevated well-being in love’s presence, and reduced (but not extinguished) partner love in mature marital cohorts. The gender differences that were found—women reported more child love than men, and men exhibited a less pronounced reduction in partner love across cohorts—are also consistent with functional accounts of love that recognize the varying role of men and women in the formation and sustenance of relationships.

Avoiding activities posing bodily threat is adaptive. However, spreading of avoidance to safe activities may cause functional disability in people with chronic pain. We investigated whether costly pain-related avoidance would generalize from one activity to another on the basis of real-life categorical knowledge in 40 pain-free people (30 female; mean age = 25 years; university students and public of Maastricht, The Netherlands). In a computer task, participants moved a joystick to complete activities from two categories (gardening and cleaning). During activities from the avoidance category, pain could be avoided at the cost of task efficiency by deviating from a short, pain-associated joystick movement. Activities from the safe category were never painful. Subsequently, we tested generalization of avoidance to novel pain-free activities from both categories. Participants generalized avoidance to novel activities from the avoidance category despite the novel activities not being paired with pain and despite avoidance costs, suggesting that costly (pain-related) avoidance generalizes from one activity to another on the basis of category knowledge and can thus be wide reaching, creating detrimental consequences.

Recent years have brought increased accountability for personal misconduct, yet often, unequal consequences have resulted from similar offenses. Findings from a unique archival data set ( N = 619; all university faculty) and three preregistered experiments ( N = 2,594) show that the perceived artistic-versus-scientific nature of the offender’s professional contributions influences the professional punishment received. In Study 1, analysis of four decades of university sexual-misconduct cases reveals that faculty in artistic (vs. scientific) fields have on average received more severe professional consequences. Study 2 demonstrates this experimentally, offering mediational evidence that greater difficulty morally decoupling art (vs. science) contributes to the phenomenon. Study 3 provides further evidence for this mechanism through experimental moderation. Finally, Study 4 shows that merely framing an individual’s work as artistic versus scientific results in replication of these effects. Several potential alternative mechanisms to moral decoupling are tested but not supported. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.