An Agenda-Setting Account for Psychological Typhoon Eye Effect on Responses to the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan.

During the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan in 2020, we conducted a nationwide survey of 8170 respondents from 31 provinces/municipalities in China via Sojump to examine the relationship between the distance to respondents' city of residence from Wuhan and their safety concerns and risk perception of the epidemic that occurred in Wuhan City. We found that (1) the farther (psychologically or physically) people were from Wuhan, the more concerned they were with the safety of the epidemic risk in Wuhan, which we dubbed the psychological typhoon eye (PTE) effect on responses to the outbreak of COVID-19; (2) agenda setting can provide a principled account for such effect: the risk information proportion mediated the PTE effect. The theoretical and managerial implications for the PTE effect and public opinion disposal were discussed, and agenda setting was identified to be responsible for the preventable overestimated risk perception.

Impaired social decision-making in males with methamphetamine use disorder.

Individuals with methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) commonly exhibit socially problematic behaviours. Investigating the prosocial decision-making of individuals with MUD could enable a better understanding of their impaired social functioning and help improve their social relationships. We conducted two studies to examine the performance of individuals with MUD and healthy controls on a modified dictator game. In Study 1, 55 male individuals with MUD and 34 healthy male participants made a series of choices between two pairs of monetary prizes for themselves and for others. In Study 2, 62 male individuals with MUD and 31 healthy male participants made the same choices as in Study 1 after a brief exposure to methamphetamine-related pictures. In both studies, we consistently found a context dependency of decreased prosociality in individuals with MUD. That is, individuals with MUD made fewer prosocial choices than healthy individuals in disadvantageous contexts (but not advantageous contexts). The results of the computational model suggested that the lower prosociality of individuals with MUD in disadvantageous contexts could be attributed to the lower weight placed on others' benefits. Moreover, when exposed to methamphetamine-related pictures, individuals with MUD showed less caution and slower encoding/motor speed than healthy individuals, and individuals with MUD with a longer history of methamphetamine use tended to respond less cautiously. Our findings provide evidence that in disadvantageous contexts, individuals with MUD show reduced prosociality and less consideration of others' benefits. Identifying the origin of the alterations in prosocial decision-making has implications for diagnosis and treatment.

Emotion, analytic thinking and susceptibility to misinformation during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Misinformation has become prevalent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand why people believe and share misinformation, we conducted a nationwide survey during the COVID-19 outbreak in China. We found the indirect effects of COVID-19 risk on people's information accuracy judgment and associated information sharing intention through people's emotional states. People faced with a higher level of COVID-19 risk (measured by a 7-day moving average of daily new deaths or new cases) experienced weaker positive and stronger negative emotions, and heightened emotionality (both the positive and negative emotions) was associated with increased belief in and greater likelihood to share the COVID-19 information regardless of veracity. We also found that only the negative emotion mediated the relation between the COVID-19 risk and the truth discernment regarding accuracy judgment. However, the mediating effect of negative emotion disappeared among people with high analytic thinking ability. These findings suggest that the analytic thinking ability could moderate the destructive relationship between negative emotion and accuracy discernment. Based on a large sample, our findings provide actionable insights for the policymakers to respond to the spread of misinformation appropriately and promptly during the pandemic.

Impaired delay discounting and time sensitivity in methcathinone use disorder.

Substance use disorder (SUD) is characterized by continued drug use despite adverse consequences. Methcathinone is a new type of psychoactive substance that is associated with high excitement and impulsive behaviors. However, it is unclear if individuals with methcathinone use disorders (MCUD) are with impaired decision-making ability. We analyzed the task performance in 45 male MCUD subjects and 35 male matched healthy controls (HC) with intertemporal decision-making task. Constant sensitivity discounting model was used to estimate potential changes in both discounting rate and time sensitivity. The results showed that MCUD individuals exhibited a higher delay discounting rate (p = 0.003, Cohen's d = 0.683) and reduced sensitivity to time (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 1.662). The delay discounting rate was correlated to the first age for drug use (r = - 0.41, p = 0.004), and the time sensitivity was negatively correlated with the duration of abstinence (r = - 0.31, p = 0.036). We conclude that MCUD individuals are with impaired decision-making ability and time perception disturbances.

Beyond Smiles: Static Expressions in Maxillary Protrusion and Associated Positivity.

Smiles play an important role in social perception. However, it is unclear whether a similar role is played by static facial features associated with smiles (e.g., stretched mouth and visible teeth). In dental science, maxillary dental protrusions increase the baring of the teeth and thus produce partial facial features of a smile even when the individual is not choosing to smile, whereas mandibular dental protrusions do not. We conducted three experiments to assess whether individuals ascribe positive evaluations to these facial features, which are not genuine emotional expressions. In Experiment 1, participants viewed facial photographs of maxillary and mandibular protrusions and indicated the smiling and emotional status of the faces. The results showed that, while no difference was observed in participants' perception of the presence of a smile across both types of dental protrusion, participants felt more positive to faces with maxillary than mandibular protrusions. In Experiment 2, participants completed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) test measuring implicit attitudes toward faces with maxillary vs. mandibular protrusions. The results showed that participants had more positive attitude toward faces with maxillary than mandibular protrusions. In Experiment 3, individuals with either maxillary or mandibular protrusions completed the same IAT test to assess whether any preference would be affected by in-group/out-group preferences. The results showed both groups had more positive attitudes toward faces with maxillary protrusion, indicating that this preference is independent of the group effect. These findings suggest that facial features associated with smiles are viewed positively in social situations. We discuss this in terms of the social-function account.

Early Departure, Early Revival: A ''Free From Care'' Account of Negative Temporal Discounting.

According to the positive temporal discounting theory and our relevant observations, when faced with future losses, people should, and do, prefer delayed negative events (e.g., deferring paying taxes, debts, or tickets), which can lead to substantial individual and societal costs. However, a counterexample has been identified and it appears to depart from the prediction of positive temporal discounting when faced with negative events. This study proposed and investigated the novel free from care account for the reverse preference. Results of five laboratory and field studies showed that students preferred an immediate negative event (i.e., an English oral exam) when "something tying one up" was imposed, in which coping with a distraction induced by such a situation could play a mediating role. In particular, the addition of "something tying one up" was found to be an effective behavioral nudge in terms of reliability and reproducibility and should be simple for potential users to follow. Specifically, the association between being tied up and undergoing a negative event immediately in the present studies mirrored the association between outgroup threat and intergroup cooperation in the Robbers Cave experiment.

The timing of gaze-contingent decision prompts influences risky choice.

Risky decisions are ubiquitous in daily life and are central to human behavior, but little attention has been devoted to exploring whether risky choice can be influenced by gaze direction. In the current study, we used gaze-contingent manipulation to manipulate an individual's gaze while he/she decided between two risky options, and we examined whether risky decisions could be biased toward a randomly determined target. We found that participants' risky choices were biased toward a randomly determined target when they were manipulated to gaze longer at the target option (Study 1, N=37; Study 3, N=40) or at the target outcome dimension (Study 2, N=37). We also found that both the relative time advantage and the location of the last fixation mediated the effect of the gaze-contingent manipulation on risky choice in the valid trials. However, the mediation effects of the relative time advantage and the location of the last fixation were not significant when timed-out trials were included in Studies 2 and 3, indicating that the gaze-contingent manipulation did not effectively enforce a bias toward attending to a particular stimulus through eye gaze in all trials. Future work is needed to improve the effectiveness of the gaze-contingent prompt procedure.

Born for fairness: evidence of genetic contribution to a neural basis of fairness intuition.

Human beings often curb self-interest to develop and enforce social norms, such as fairness, as exemplified in the ultimatum game (UG). Inspired by the dual-system account for the responder's choice during the UG, we investigated whether the neural basis of psychological process induced by fairness is under genetic control using a twin fMRI study (62 monozygotic, 48 dizygotic; mean age: 19.32 ± 1.38 years). We found a moderate genetic contribution to the rejection rate of unfair proposals (24%-35%), independent of stake size or proposer type, during the UG. Using a voxel-level analysis, we found that genetic factors moderately contributed to unfairness-evoked activation in the bilateral anterior insula (AI), regions representing the intuition of fairness norm violations (mean heritability: left 37%, right 40%). No genetic contributions were found in regions related to deliberate, controlled processes in the UG. This study provides the first evidence that evoked brain activity by unfairness in the bilateral AI is influenced by genes and sheds light on the genetic basis of brain processes underlying costly punishment.

Do People Believe That They Are More Deontological Than Others?

The question of how we decide that someone else has done something wrong is at the heart of moral psychology. Little work has been done to investigate whether people believe that others' moral judgment differs from their own in moral dilemmas. We conducted four experiments using various measures and diverse samples to demonstrate the self-other discrepancy in moral judgment. We found that (a) people were more deontological when they made moral judgments themselves than when they judged a stranger (Studies 1-4) and (b) a protected values (PVs) account outperformed an emotion account and a construal-level theory account in explaining this self-other discrepancy (Studies 3 and 4). We argued that the self-other discrepancy in moral judgment may serve as a protective mechanism co-evolving alongside the social exchange mechanism and may contribute to better understanding the obstacles preventing people from cooperation.

Suffering a Loss Is Good Fortune: Myth or Reality?

We sometimes decide to take an offered option that results in apparent loss (e.g., unpaid overtime). Mainstream decision theory does not predict or explain this as a choice we want to make, whereas such a choice has long been described and highly regarded by the traditional Chinese dogma "" (suffering a loss is good fortune). To explore what makes the dogma work, we developed a celebrity anecdote-based scale to measure "Chikui" (suffering a loss) likelihood and found that:(i) people with higher scores on the Chikui Likelihood Scale (CLS) were more likely to report higher scores on subjective well-being and the Socioeconomic Index for the present and (ii) the current Socioeconomic Index could be positively predicted not only by current CLS scores but also by retrospective CLS scores recalled for the past, and the predictive effect was enhanced with increasing time intervals. Our findings suggest that "suffering a loss is good fortune" is not a myth but a certain reality.

Genetic Contribution to Variation in Risk Taking: A Functional MRI Twin Study of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task.

Excessive risk-taking behaviors have been implicated as a potential endophenotype for substance use disorders and psychopathological gambling. However, the genetic and environmental influences on risk taking and the risk-related brain activations remain unclear. This study investigated the heritability of risk taking and the genetic influence on individual variation in risk-related brain activation. The Balloon Analogue Risk Task was used to assess individuals' risk-taking behavior. In a sample of 244 pairs of young adult twins, we found that there was a moderate heritability (41%) of risk taking. Using voxel-level analysis, we found a moderate genetic influence on risk-related brain activation. We also found a moderate genetic correlation between risk-taking behavior and risk-related brain activation in the left insula, right striatum, and right superior parietal lobule in the active-choice condition. The present study provides important evidence for the genetic correlation between risk-taking behavior and risk-related brain activation.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Gambling: A Meta-Analysis of Twin Studies.

Disentangling the genetic and environmental influences of gambling is important for explaining the roots of individual differences in gambling behavior and providing guidance for precaution and intervention, but we are unaware of any comprehensive and systematic quantitative meta-analysis. We systematically identified 18 twin studies on gambling in the meta-analysis. The correlation coefficients within monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins, along with the corresponding sample size, were used to calculate the proportion of the total variance accounted for by additive genes (A), dominant genes (D), the shared environment (C), and the non-shared environment plus measurement error (E). We further assessed the moderating effects of gambling assessment (symptom oriented assessment vs. behavior oriented assessment), age, and sex. The whole sample analyses showed moderate additive genetic (a2 = 0.50) and non-shared environmental influences (e2 = 0.50) on gambling. The magnitude of the genetic influence (a2) was higher for disordered gambling assessed with symptom oriented assessment (53%) than for general gambling assessed with behavior oriented assessment (41%). Additionally, the magnitude of the genetic influence (a2) was higher for adults (53%) than adolescents (42%). Genetic influence (a2) was greater for male (47%) gambling than female (28%) gambling. Shared environment had noticeable effects on female gambling (c2 = 14%) but zero effect on male gambling. In conclusion, gambling behavior was moderately heritable and moderately influenced by non-shared environmental factors. Gambling assessment, age, and sex significantly moderated the magnitude of genetic and environmental influences on gambling. Note that the number of studies might serve as a limitation.

Neural substrates of framing effects in social contexts: A meta-analytical approach.

We hypothesize that framing effects (risk-averse in the positive frame and risk-seeking in the negative frame) are likely to occur when ambiguous social contexts result in ambiguous or ambivalent risk preferences, leading the decision-maker to search for more subtle cues, such as verbal framing. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we examined framing effects in both unambiguous homogeneous group and more ambiguous heterogeneous group contexts. We began by conducting a meta-analysis and identified three regions of interest: the right inferior frontal gyrus, the left anterior cingulate (ACC)/ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and the left amygdala. Our own fMRI data were collected while the participants made choices between a sure option and a gamble framed in terms of the number of lives to either save or die. The framing effect was evident in a heterogeneous context with a mixture of kin and strangers, but disappeared in a homogeneous group of either all kin-members or all strangers. The fMRI results revealed a greater activation in the right middle/inferior frontal gyrus under the negative than the positive framing, and less ACC/vmPFC deactivation under positive framing in the heterogamous/ambiguous context. The activation of the amygdala was correlated with greater risk-seeking preference in homogeneous kinship contexts.

Gain-loss asymmetry in neural correlates of temporal discounting: An approach-avoidance motivation perspective.

Gain-loss asymmetry in temporal discounting (i.e., when individuals discount gains more than losses) has been implicated in numerous problematic and addictive behaviors, resulting in enormous personal and societal costs. On the basis of findings from a previous study, we speculated that approach-avoidance motivation would modulate gain-loss asymmetry. To test this speculation, we examined the effects of motivation on gain-loss asymmetry by analyzing functional connectivity. We found that approach and avoidance motivation were negatively associated with functional connectivity between the medial orbitofrontal cortex (MOFC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and functional connectivity between the MOFC and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) in the gain domain. Only avoidance motivation was found to be positively associated with functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) as well as between the MPFC and the insula in the loss domain. Our findings suggest that the relationships of approach-avoidance motivation and neural correlates yielded an asymmetrical pattern between the gain and loss domains in temporal discounting. Thus, we provide new insight into understanding gain-loss asymmetry in temporal discounting.

Genetic Effects on Fine-Grained Human Cortical Regionalization.

Various brain structural and functional features such as cytoarchitecture, topographic mapping, gyral/sulcal anatomy, and anatomical and functional connectivity have been used in human brain parcellation. However, the fine-grained intrinsic genetic architecture of the cortex remains unknown. In the present study, we parcellated specific regions of the cortex into subregions based on genetic correlations (i.e., shared genetic influences) between the surface area of each pair of cortical locations within the seed region. The genetic correlations were estimated by comparing the correlations of the surface area between monozygotic and dizygotic twins using bivariate twin models. Our genetic subdivisions of diverse brain regions were reproducible across 2 independent datasets and corresponded closely to fine-grained functional specializations. Furthermore, subregional genetic correlation profiles were generally consistent with functional connectivity patterns. Our findings indicate that the magnitude of the genetic covariance in brain anatomy could be used to delineate the boundaries of functional subregions of the brain and may be of value in the next generation human brain atlas.

The neural correlates of risky decision making across short and long runs.

People frequently change their preferences for options of gambles which they play once compared to those they play multiple times. In general, preferences for repeated play gambles are more consistent with the expected values of the options. According to the one-process view, the change in preference is due to a change in the structure of the gamble that is relevant to decision making. According to the two-process view, the change is attributable to a shift in the decision making strategy that is used. To adjudicate between these two theories, we asked participants to choose between gambles played once or 100 times, and to choose between them based on their expected value. Consistent with the two-process theory, we found a set of brain regions that were sensitive to the extent of behavioral change between single and aggregated play and also showed significant (de)activation in the expected value choice task. These results support the view that people change their decision making strategies for risky choice considered once or multiple times.

Town mouse or country mouse: identifying a town dislocation effect in Chinese urbanization.

Understanding urbanization and evaluating its impact are vital for formulating global sustainable development. The results obtained from evaluating the impact of urbanization, however, depend on the kind of measurement used. With the goal of increasing our understanding of the impact of urbanization, we developed direct and indirect subjective indicators to measure how people assess their living situation. The survey revealed that the projected endorsements and perceived social ambiance of people toward living in different types of settlements did not improve along with the urbanization level in China. The assessment scores from the city dwellers were not significantly different from those from the country areas and, more surprisingly, both were significantly higher than the assessment scores of the town dwellers, which we had expected to fall between the assessment scores of the country and city dwellers. Instead their scores were the lowest. We dubbed this V-shaped relationship the "town dislocation effect." When searching for a potential explanation for this effect, we found additional town dislocation effects in social support, loss aversion, and receptivity toward genetically modified food. Further analysis showed that only social support mediated the relationship between the three tiers of settlements (cities, country areas, and towns) and the subjective indicator. The projected endorsements yielded significant subjective assessments that could enhance our understanding of Chinese urbanization. Towns posed specific problems that require special attention.

Exploring the knowledge behind predictions in everyday cognition: an iterated learning study.

Making accurate predictions about events is an important but difficult task. Recent work suggests that people are adept at this task, making predictions that reflect surprisingly accurate knowledge of the distributions of real quantities. Across three experiments, we used an iterated learning procedure to explore the basis of this knowledge: to what extent is domain experience critical to accurate predictions and how accurate are people when faced with unfamiliar domains? In Experiment 1, two groups of participants, one resident in Australia, the other in China, predicted the values of quantities familiar to both (movie run-times), unfamiliar to both (the lengths of Pharaoh reigns), and familiar to one but unfamiliar to the other (cake baking durations and the lengths of Beijing bus routes). While predictions from both groups were reasonably accurate overall, predictions were inaccurate in the selectively unfamiliar domains and, surprisingly, predictions by the China-resident group were also inaccurate for a highly familiar domain: local bus route lengths. Focusing on bus routes, two follow-up experiments with Australia-resident groups clarified the knowledge and strategies that people draw upon, plus important determinants of accurate predictions. For unfamiliar domains, people appear to rely on extrapolating from (not simply directly applying) related knowledge. However, we show that people's predictions are subject to two sources of error: in the estimation of quantities in a familiar domain and extension to plausible values in an unfamiliar domain. We propose that the key to successful predictions is not simply domain experience itself, but explicit experience of relevant quantities.

The hidden opportunity cost of time effect on intertemporal choice.

An interesting phenomenon called "hidden opportunity cost of time effect" was detected in intertemporal choices. The majority of our participants preferred the smaller but sooner (SS) option to the larger but later (LL) option if opportunity cost was explicit. However, a higher proportion of participants preferred the LL to SS option if opportunity cost was hidden. This shift violates the invariance principle and opens a new way to encourage future-oriented behavior. By simply mentioning the "obvious" opportunity cost of alternatives, decision makers can be more informed in prioritizing their long-term goals rather than short-term goals.

Pain now or later: an outgrowth account of pain-minimization.

The preference for immediate negative events contradicts the minimizing loss principle given that the value of a delayed negative event is discounted by the amount of time it is delayed. However, this preference is understandable if we assume that the value of a future outcome is not restricted to the discounted utility of the outcome per se but is complemented by an anticipated negative utility assigned to an unoffered dimension, which we termed the "outgrowth." We conducted three studies to establish the existence of the outgrowth and empirically investigated the mechanism underlying the preference for immediate negative outcomes. Study 1 used a content analysis method to examine whether the outgrowth was generated in accompaniment with the delayed negative events. The results revealed that the investigated outgrowth was composed of two elements. The first component is the anticipated negative emotions elicited by the delayed negative event, and the other is the anticipated rumination during the waiting process, in which one cannot stop thinking about the negative event. Study 2 used a follow-up investigation to examine whether people actually experienced the negative emotions they anticipated in a real situation of waiting for a delayed negative event. The results showed that the participants actually experienced a number of negative emotions when waiting for a negative event. Study 3 examined whether the existence of the outgrowth could make the minimizing loss principle work. The results showed that the difference in pain anticipation between the immediate event and the delayed event could significantly predict the timing preference of the negative event. Our findings suggest that people's preference for experiencing negative events sooner serves to minimize the overall negative utility, which is divided into two parts: the discounted utility of the outcome itself and an anticipated negative utility assigned to the outgrowth.