In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Brains, it has recently been argued, are essentially prediction machines. They are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions. This is achieved using a hierarchical generative model that aims to minimize prediction error within a bidirectional cascade of cortical processing. Such accounts offer a unifying model of perception and action, illuminate the functional role of attention, and may neatly capture the special contribution of cortical processing to adaptive success. This target article critically examines this "hierarchical prediction machine" approach, concluding that it offers the best clue yet to the shape of a unified science of mind and action. Sections 1 and 2 lay out the key elements and implications of the approach. Section 3 explores a variety of pitfalls and challenges, spanning the evidential, the methodological, and the more properly conceptual. The paper ends (sections 4 and 5) by asking how such approaches might impact our more general vision of mind, experience, and agency.

/pdf/whatever-next-predictive-brains-situated-agents-and-the-epj56cs868.pdf

Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science

Emotion and Adaptation

Perceived discrimination has been studied with regard to its impact on several types of health effects. This meta-analysis provides a comprehensive account of the relationships between multiple forms of perceived discrimination and both mental and physical health outcomes. In addition, this meta-analysis examines potential mechanisms by which perceiving discrimination may affect health, including through psychological and physiological stress responses and health behaviors. Analysis of 134 samples suggests that when weighting each study's contribution by sample size, perceived discrimination has a significant negative effect on both mental and physical health. Perceived discrimination also produces significantly heightened stress responses and is related to participation in unhealthy and nonparticipation in healthy behaviors. These findings suggest potential pathways linking perceived discrimination to negative health outcomes.

/pdf/perceived-discrimination-and-health-a-meta-analytic-review-4aai112ban.pdf

Perceived discrimination and health: a meta-analytic review.

Two studies explored the role of implicit theories of intelligence in adolescents' mathematics achievement. In Study 1 with 373 7th graders, the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) predicted an upward trajectory in grades over the two years of junior high school, while a belief that intelligence is fixed (entity theory) predicted a flat trajectory. A mediational model including learning goals, positive beliefs about effort, and causal attributions and strategies was tested. In Study 2, an intervention teaching an incremental theory to 7th graders (N=48) promoted positive change in classroom motivation, compared with a control group (N=43). Simultaneously, students in the control group displayed a continuing downward trajectory in grades, while this decline was reversed for students in the experimental group.

/pdf/implicit-theories-of-intelligence-predict-achievement-across-aigf3sh9at.pdf

Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: a longitudinal study and an intervention

http://users.nber.org/~sewp/events/2005.01.14/Bios+Links/Good-rec1-Good_Aronson_%26_Inzlicht.pdf

Improving adolescents' standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat

Does placing females in environments in which they have contact with males cause deficits in their problem-solving perfor- mance? Is a situational cue, such as gender composition, sufficient for creating a threatening intellectual environment for females—an en- vironment that elicits performance-impinging stereotypes? Two stud- ies explored these questions. Participants completed a difficult math or verbal test in 3-person groups, each of which included 2 additional people of the same sex as the participant (same-sex condition) or of the opposite sex (minority condition). Female participants in the mi- nority condition experienced performance deficits in the math test only, whereas males performed equally well on the math test in the two conditions. Further investigation showed that females' deficits were proportional to the number of males in their group. Even females who were placed in a mixed-sex majority condition (2 females and 1 male) experienced moderate but significant deficits. Findings are dis- cussed in relation to theories of distinctiveness, stereotype threat, and tokenism. Females currently are a small minority of students and researchers in the natural and physical sciences. A recent National Science Foun- dation (1996) report showed that females constitute 35% of under- graduate students enrolled in physics, math, and computer science classes; 16% of undergraduate students enrolled in engineering classes; and less than 10% of graduate students in physics and engi- neering. Moreover, this report showed that females suffer from higher attrition rates in their academic careers than do males, so that by the time women reach the workplace, they occupy only 22% of jobs in mathematical and scientific domains. Does females' problem-solving performance diminish when they are placed in an environment in which males outnumber them? If so, are such performance deficits specifically linked to domains that are associated with negative ste- reotypes about females' intellectual capacity? Examining these ques- tions can inform theories of how social stereotypes affect the intellectual processing of individuals who are the targets of these stereotypes, as well as educational practice.

http://mypages.valdosta.edu/mwhatley/7670/articles/attribution/attrib3.pdf

A threatening intellectual environment: why females are susceptible to experiencing problem-solving deficits in the presence of males.

According to the resource model of self-control, overriding one’s predominant response tendencies consumes and temporarily depletes a limited inner resource. Over 100 experiments have lent support ...

What Is Ego Depletion? Toward a Mechanistic Revision of the Resource Model of Self-Control

https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/pdf/S1364-6613(13)00294-5.pdf

Why self-control seems (but may not be) limited.

Research shows that stereotype threat reduces performance by diminishing executive resources, but less is known about the psychological processes responsible for these impairments. The authors tested the idea that targets of stereotype threat try to regulate their emotions and that this regulation depletes executive resources, resulting in underperformance. Across 4 experiments, they provide converging evidence that targets of stereotype threat spontaneously attempt to control their expression of anxiety and that such emotion regulation depletes executive resources needed to perform well on tests of cognitive ability. They also demonstrate that providing threatened individuals with a means to effectively cope with negative emotions—by reappraising the situation or the meaning of their anxiety—can restore executive resources and improve test performance. They discuss these results within the framework of an integrated process model of stereotype threat, in which affective and cognitive processes interact to undermine performance.

/pdf/stereotype-threat-and-executive-resource-depletion-examining-14hhobz1z7.pdf

Michael Inzlicht

Papers

Improving adolescents' standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat

A threatening intellectual environment: why females are susceptible to experiencing problem-solving deficits in the presence of males.

What Is Ego Depletion? Toward a Mechanistic Revision of the Resource Model of Self-Control

Why self-control seems (but may not be) limited.

Stereotype Threat and Executive Resource Depletion: Examining the Influence of Emotion Regulation