The optics of lying: How pursuing an honest social image shapes dishonest behavior.

People frequently engage in dishonest behavior. Yet, they do so only to a limited extent, often forgoing potential profits. In the past few decades, the dominant psychological account explaining people's "limited dishonesty" characterized this behavior as driven by a desire to preserve a positive image of the self. Recently, a new account has been put forward, based on social considerations. This social image account claims that limited dishonesty is driven by a desire to be viewed positively by others. Here we review empirical findings from psychology and behavioral economics on the role of social image in dishonest behavior. We conclude by suggesting that both self-image and social image are at play.

Physicians prescribe fewer analgesics during night shifts than day shifts.

Adequate pain management is one of the biggest challenges of the modern healthcare system. Physician perception of patient subjective pain, which is crucial to pain management, is susceptible to a host of potential biases. Here we explore the timing of physicians' work as a previously unrecognized source of systematic bias in pain management. We hypothesized that during night shifts, sleep deprivation, fatigue, and stress would reduce physicians' empathy for others' pain, leading to underprescription of analgesics for patient pain relief. In study 1, 67 resident physicians, either following a night shift or not, performed empathy for pain assessment tasks and simulated patient scenarios in laboratory conditions. As predicted, following a night shift, physicians showed reduced empathy for pain. In study 2, we explored this phenomenon in medical decisions in the field. We analyzed three emergency department datasets from Israel and the United States that included discharge notes of patients arriving with pain complaints during 2013 to 2020 (n = 13,482). Across all datasets, physicians were less likely to prescribe an analgesic during night shifts (compared to daytime shifts) and prescribed fewer analgesics than generally recommended by the World Health Organization. This effect remained significant after adjusting for patient, physician, type of complaint, and emergency department characteristics. Underprescription for pain during night shifts was particularly prominent for opioids. We conclude that night shift work is an important and previously unrecognized source of bias in pain management, likely stemming from impaired perception of pain. We consider the implications for hospitals and other organizations employing night shifts.

Social exploration: When people deviate from options explored by others.

People often face choices between known options and unknown ones. Our research documents a social-exploration effect: People are more likely to explore unknown options when they learn about known options from other people's experiences. Across four studies (N = 2,333), we used an incentive-compatible paradigm where participants chose between known and unknown options (e.g., cash bonuses). We found higher exploration rates (i.e., choosing of unknown options) when information about known options came from other people, compared with an unidentified source (Study 1a) or a computer (Studies 1b-4). We theorize that the social-exploration effect results from people's tendency to intuitively adopt a group-level perspective with other people: a "we"-perspective. Thus, in social contexts, people explore more to diversify their experience as a group. Supporting this account, we find the effect attenuates in exploration of losses, where people do not wish to adopt a group-level perspective of others' losses (Study 2). Furthermore, the effect is obtained only if others have experienced the outcome; not when they only revealed its content (Study 3). Finally, the social-exploration effect generalizes to everyday choices, such as choosing a movie to watch (Study 4). Taken together, these findings highlight the social aspect of individual exploration decisions and offer practical implications for how to encourage exploration. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on sleep duration in children and adolescents: A survey across different continents.

BACKGROUND: A parent survey was conducted to assess the sleep habits of children residing in various countries before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. It was hypothesized that lockdown would be associated with increased sleep duration. METHODS: Outcomes were changes in bedtime, wake time, and sleep duration in the pandemic compared to before. Logistic regression was applied to evaluate the effects of age and covariates on outcomes. RESULTS: A total of 845 questionnaires completed from May 1 to June 10, 2020 were analyzed (45.8% female; age 3-17 years). During the pandemic, 23.1% of preschoolers, 46.2% of school-age children, and 89.8% of adolescents were going to bed after 10 p.m. on weekdays compared to 7.1%, 9.4%, and 57.1% respectively before the pandemic, with these proportions being higher on weekends. Likewise, 42.5% of preschoolers, 61.3% of school-age children, and 81.2% of adolescents were waking after 8 a.m. on weekdays (11.6%, 4.9%, and 10.3%, before) with these proportions being greater on weekends. Sleep duration did not change in 43% of participants on weekdays and in 46.2% on weekends. The 14-17 years group had fourfold increased odds for longer sleep duration on weekdays (p < .01), and children aged 6-13 years had twofold increased odds for longer sleep duration on weekends relative to the 3-5 years age group (p = .01). CONCLUSIONS: Although lockdown was associated with later bedtime and wake time, this shift did not alter sleep duration in more than 40% of children. Yet, compared to preschoolers, high school-aged children were more likely to sleep more on weekdays and primary school children on weekends.

Escalation of sleep disturbances amid the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional international study.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: The stress imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing social isolation could adversely affect sleep. As sleep problems may persist and hurt health, it is important to identify which populations have experienced changes in sleeping patterns during the pandemic and their extent. METHODS: In Study 1, 3,062 responders from 49 countries accessed the survey website voluntarily between March 26 and April 26, 2020, and 2,562 (84%; age: 45.2 ± 14.5, 68% women) completed the study. In Study 2, 1,022 adult US responders were recruited for pay through Mechanical Turk, and 971 (95%; age 40.4 ± 13.6, 52% women) completed the study. The survey tool included demographics and items adapted from validated sleep questionnaires on sleep duration, quality and timing, and sleeping pills consumption. RESULTS: In Study 1, 58% of the responders were unsatisfied with their sleep. Forty percent of the responders reported a decreased sleep quality vs before COVID-19 crisis. Self-reported sleeping pill consumption increased by 20% (P < .001). Multivariable analysis indicated that female sex, being in quarantine, and 31- to 45-years age group, reduced physical activity and adverse impact on livelihood were independently associated with more severe worsening of sleep quality during the pandemic. The majority of findings were reproduced in the independent cohort of Study 2. CONCLUSIONS: Changes imposed due to the pandemic have led to a surge in individuals reporting sleep problems across the globe. The findings raise the need to screen for worsening sleep patterns and use of sleeping aids, especially in more susceptible populations, namely, women and people with insecure livelihoods subjected to social isolation.

Acute and chronic sleep deprivation in residents: Cognition and stress biomarkers.

OBJECTIVES: Insufficient sleep affects circadian hormonal profiles and inflammatory markers and may modulate attention, executive functioning and decision-making. Medical professionals and specifically resident physicians, who are involved in long-term nightshift schedules during their post-graduate training, are prone to acute and chronic sleep deprivation and disruption, putting them at risk for making medical errors. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of chronic and acute-on-chronic sleep deprivation and disruption among residents on selected physiological and cognitive measures. METHODS: Thirty-three medical and surgical residents were evaluated twice - at baseline and after a 26-hour shift. Eighteen young attending physicians who did not engage in nightshift schedules served as controls and were evaluated once. Measures included morning cortisol and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), computerised tests of attention and behaviour, the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function, a risk-taking questionnaire and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. RESULTS: Residents, but not attendings, reported chronic sleep disruption and deprivation. Residents at baseline exhibited reduced morning cortisol levels and elevated hs-CRP levels, compared to attendings. Residents at baseline had impaired global executive function compared to attendings. A nightshift with acute sleep deprivation further reduced residents' executive function. Residents at baseline and after a nightshift demonstrated increased impulsivity and slower processing time than attendings. Residents and attendings did not differ in risk-taking tendencies which were assessed in a separate cohort. CONCLUSIONS: In a real-life setting, resident physicians exhibit increased low-grade systemic inflammation (hs-CRP) and impaired HPA-axis function. Their chronic sleep curtailment is associated with greater impulsivity, slower cognitive processing, and impaired executive function. Future research is warranted to understand how improving working schedule by increasing sleep duration may minimise the short-term and potential long-term risks to physicians in training.

Who are "we"? Dealing with conflicting moral obligations.

Satisfying one's obligations is an important part of being human. However, people's obligations can often prescribe contradictory behaviors. Moral obligations conflict (loyalty vs. fairness), and so do obligations to different groups (country vs. family when one is called to war). We propose that a broader framework is needed to account for how people balance different social and moral obligations.

Lying to appear honest.

People try to avoid appearing dishonest. Although efforts to avoid appearing dishonest can often reduce lying, we argue that, at times, the desire to appear honest can actually lead people to lie. We hypothesize that people may lie to appear honest in cases where the truth is highly favorable to them, such that telling the truth might make them appear dishonest to others. A series of studies provided robust evidence for our hypothesis. Lawyers, university students, and MTurk and Prolific participants said that they would have underreported extremely favorable outcomes in real-world scenarios (Studies 1a-1d). They did so to avoid appearing dishonest. Furthermore, in a novel behavioral paradigm involving a chance game with monetary prizes, participants who received in private a very large number of wins reported fewer wins than they received; they lied and incurred a monetary cost to avoid looking like liars (Studies 2a-2c). Finally, we show that people's concern that others would think that they have overreported is valid (Studies 3a-3b). We discuss our findings in relation to the literatures on dishonesty and on reputation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Disadvantaged but not dissatisfied: How agency ameliorates negative reactions to unequal pay.

Workers tend to be dissatisfied when their peers receive more than them for doing the same work. The fear of creating such dissatisfaction may cause leaders in organizations to waste resources that cannot be allocated equally between their workers. Here we explore the effectiveness of a procedure designed to reduce such waste by empowering workers with the agency to decide whether or not to pay other workers more. We predict that workers' sense of agency reduces their dissatisfaction with others' better outcomes. Seven studies supported this prediction by demonstrating that agentic participants, who were involved in creating allocations, tended to be more satisfied with others' better outcomes than nonagentic participants, who were not involved in creating allocations. Longitudinal lab studies, measuring real behavior, showed that agentic participants remained more satisfied than nonagentic ones even five weeks after their initial decision. The findings provided evidence for two mechanisms underlying the effect: increased feelings of generosity, and reduced perception of unfairness. We found that the agency procedure was comparable with other fair procedures in its ability to improve worker satisfaction. We discuss our findings in relation to the literatures on social preference, fairness, and voice, and highlight the implications for organizational efficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The Development of Inequity Aversion.

Children and adults respond negatively to inequity. Traditional accounts of inequity aversion suggest that as children mature into adults, they become less likely to endorse all forms of inequity. We challenge the idea that children have a unified concern with inequity that simply becomes stronger with age. Instead, we argue that the developmental trajectory of inequity aversion depends on whether the inequity is seen as fair or unfair. In three studies ( N = 501), 7- to 8-year-olds were more likely than 4- to 6-year-olds to create inequity that disadvantaged themselves-a fair type of inequity. In findings consistent with our theory, 7- to 8-year-olds were not more likely than 4- to 6-year-olds to endorse advantageous inequity (Study 1) or inequity created by third parties (Studies 2 and 3)-unfair types of inequity. We discuss how these results expand on recent accounts of children's developing concerns with generosity and partiality.

Waste management: how reducing partiality can promote efficient resource allocation.

Two central principles that guide resource-allocation decisions are equity (providing equal pay for equal work) and efficiency (not wasting resources). When these two principles conflict with one another, people will often waste resources to avoid inequity. We suggest that people wish to avoid inequity not because they find it inherently unfair, but because they want to avoid the appearance of partiality associated with it. We explore one way to reduce waste by reducing the perceived partiality of inequitable allocations. Specifically, we hypothesize that people will be more likely to favor an efficient (albeit inequitable) allocation if it puts them in a disadvantaged position than if it puts others in a disadvantaged position. To test this hypothesis, we asked participants to choose between giving some extra resource to one person (thereby creating inequity between this person and equally deserving others) and not giving the resource to anyone (thereby wasting the resource). Six studies, using realistic scenarios and behavioral paradigms, provide robust evidence for a self-disadvantaging effect: Allocators were consistently more likely to create inequity to avoid wasting resources when the resulting inequity would put them at a relative disadvantage than when it would put others at a relative disadvantage. We further find that this self-disadvantaging effect is a direct result of people's concern about appearing partial. Our findings suggest the importance of impartiality even in distributive justice, thereby bridging a gap between the distributive and procedural justice literatures.

Agency and the construction of social preference: between inequality aversion and prosocial behavior.

The term social preference refers to decision makers' satisfaction with their own outcomes and those attained by comparable others. The present research was inspired by what appears to be a discrepancy in the literature on social preferences--specifically, between a class of studies demonstrating people's concern with inequality and others documenting their motivation to increase social welfare. The authors propose a theoretical framework to account for this puzzling difference. In particular, they argue that a characteristic of the decision setting--an individual's role in creating the outcomes, referred to as agency--critically affects decision makers' weighting of opposing social motives. Namely, in settings in which people can merely judge the outcomes, but cannot affect them ("low agency"), their concern with inequality figures prominently. In contrast, in settings in which people determine the outcomes for themselves and others ("high agency"), their concern with the welfare of others is prominent. Three studies using a new salary-allocation paradigm document a robust effect of agency. In the high-agency condition, participants had to assign salaries, whereas in the low-agency condition, they indicated their satisfaction with equivalent predetermined salaries. It was found that, compared with low-agency participants, high-agency participants were less concerned with disadvantageous salary allocations and were even willing to sacrifice a portion of their pay to better others' outcomes. The effects of agency are discussed in connection to inequality aversion, social comparison, prosocial behavior, and preference construction.

Spurious consensus and opinion revision: why might people be more confident in their less accurate judgments?

In the interest of improving their decision making, individuals revise their opinions on the basis of samples of opinions obtained from others. However, such a revision process may lead decision makers to experience greater confidence in their less accurate judgments. The authors theorize that people tend to underestimate the informative value of independently drawn opinions, if these appear to conflict with one another, yet place some confidence even in the spurious consensus, which may arise when opinions are sampled interdependently. The experimental task involved people's revision of their opinions (caloric estimates of foods) on the basis of advice. The method of sampling the advisory opinions (independent or interdependent) was the main factor. The results reveal a dissociation between confidence and accuracy. A theoretical underlying mechanism is suggested whereby people attend to consensus (consistency) cues at the expense of information on interdependence. Implications for belief updating and for individual and group decisions are discussed.